by George Tome
He touched the bracelet stealthily through the tunic’s fabric and found, relieved, that it was lying dutifully on his arm. The three specks of fluff scattered on the edge of the nest he had left before he fell asleep were still there, a sign that no disturbance had happened in the dome during his kyi’s absence from the “shell.”
Although he had expected to be attacked, the assault took him completely by surprise. Yet, he had no reason to blame himself. After all, who could have expected that such a technology existed in Ropolis? The kyi’s holiness was protected by impenetrable walls raised over time by Bailas’ edicts. The Shindam’s scholars had barely made a few feeble steps toward deciphering its mysteries. The only real application was the neural inductor, but its brutish manipulation of the vestibular apparatus was no match for the invasion of his ganglions by the ice creature. The virtual world was far from innocent, and the mining city was serving only as a decoy.
Gill started to understand… He had only lifted the veil just a little bit, he had only stayed there for several minutes, and yet it became obvious that the real world was there, on the other side of the interface. How naïve he was to imagine he had landed in the middle of a puny revolt against the temples… What was happening here was much, much worse! Baila had his reasons to attack with blind rage. The Ropolis population—totally out of control, crazy, and drugged to the brim, became increasingly alien from everything Antyra stood for; with every passing day, it was growing like a mutant excrescence, morphing under their very eyes into another species.
Loneliness began to hurt him physically. He would have given anything to be able to talk with a friendly creature he didn’t have to suspect of betrayal or hidden interests. Unfortunately, he had no choice—he was forced to carry the secret alone in a hostile world till he died. Until then, he would trust nobody: all, even the closest Antyrans, would be corrupted by Baila’s or Ugo’s treacherous aromas.
He absently gazed at Urdun’s “shell” laying in the other nest, the feeding tubes swarming in his inert body. Is he able to disconnect to the real world after such a long time? he wondered with purely scientific interest. That would be a great topic for comparative anatomy, if he ever reached his lab in the Archivists Tower and, obviously, if he could scan Urdun’s “shell.” Hmm, the Archivists Tower… The bitter cloud of remembrance brought back in his memory the tarjis’ blind fury. By this time, the tower was most likely reduced to a pile of smoldering rubble, the tomb of so many irreplaceable artifacts from their world’s ancient history…
He deformed the space in front of the skylight, ready to push his body outside and trigger the chaos of a general pursuit—this time through the dark catacombs of the Blue Crevice. Yet, something held him back. The swarming tubes in his companion’s body gave him an idea… But he was hesitant to go into the trance again, afraid that he might be attacked by the invisible creature. What worried him most was that the assault might unfold much more quickly this time. Probably Ugo, the entity, whatever it was, learned from the previous encounter and would paralyze his feet along with his hands. On the other tail, he knew the nature of the weapon; at the first sign of coldness, he would pull off the interface…
Could he afford to risk his precious tail again? The more he thought about it, the more tempting was the idea. A hasty return to the virtual world after such a dreadful encounter would be the last thing Ugo would expect from him. After all, a jure’s effectiveness could be diminished to the same extent by complacency as by not knowing his opponent.
This time, he woke up before the stinky licants had a chance to reach him. His body quickly adapted to the drug. Urdun lay against a tree, overwhelmed by thoughts, but he raised his eyes as soon as he noticed Gill’s appearance.
“You’re back already?” Urdun exclaimed, bewildered, unable to believe his nostrils that he could smell him again. “I thought—”
“How do I get out of here?” Gill yelled brutally, wiping the fake joy off his mug.
‘I told you, there’s no way…”
“You said it’s possible! Right now, I want the details!” Gill made a few menacing steps toward him.
“I don’t know!” Urdun cried defensively. He tried to sound convincing, but Gill could smell the stink of his lies from the distance.
“You lie! When I wanted to disconnect, you promised we’d go to the architects!”
“I said it just so you wouldn’t harm yourself. You felt it on your tail; you can’t cross the siclides…”
“Stop lying, Urdun! I know you’re Ugo’s Antyran. It’s over! I’m going to the dome to disconnect you! Maybe the real world will help you become more reasonable!”
Gill made a move to pull off the interface.
“Wait!” Urdun screamed, terrified, “You’re going to kill me!”
He was expecting the answer—after all, the skinny “shell” in the nest didn’t seem able to take care of itself. But he also knew he was able to make good on his threats without any of his head spikes wrinkling the slightest. In the last few days, he had killed quite a lot of Antyrans with no remorse, so he decided to press on.
“Why should I believe you, old fool? You lied so many times, I don’t care what you say anymore!”
“I haven’t woken up in ages,” Urdun cried. “If you disconnect me, it is over! My kyi has lost its functions, and only the machines keep me alive. I’ll die in minutes!”
“All right, let’s pretend for a moment you’re telling the truth. I’m going to ask you nicely one more time: How do I get out of here?” he asked in a hostile voice, which promised nothing good.
His face congested by fear, Urdun started to look around, most likely awaiting the return of the ice creature.
“Well? I can’t hear you…”
“Shhh.” Urdun made a sign for Gill to shut up. “The licants are his spies. When you want to say something, make sure there’s no one around!”
“I don’t see any—”
“Come here.”
Urdun pulled the bushes near him, pointing at the waterhole where Gill had earlier mirrored his face.
“I’m going to get disconnected by you or by Ugo, so why worry?” Urdun exclaimed angrily. “This way we can reach the nearby island.”
Seeing Gill’s distrustful eyes, he added, “The smart architects always leave hidden gates. I was one of them—obviously I know the shortcuts around here,” he said, smiling bitterly. “We have many hidden doors scattered all around the islands.”
“And how do you propose to travel through the water?” Gill asked incredulously.
“Breathe normally. You may inhale it without drowning.”
“What? Is it keron? I thought only the military had such substances.”
“Come on—keron? We’re in a virtual world. What’s stopping us from having things like this? It’s the perfect gate. Who would ever imagine this water is breathable?”
Gill stared at him, unsure whether to believe him or not.
“After all, I offered to help you,” said Urdun. “If you don’t want to go, we may stay here.”
“Go ahead,” he barked peevishly.
Without a word, the old Antyran jumped into the hole, splashing the disk-shaped grass around.
Gill approached the waterhole and looked into its crystal-clear depths, startled by the prospect of jumping in headfirst . He saw Urdun’s feet quickly swimming away. He had to follow him if he didn’t want to lose him from his sight, but the thought that the cold water would rush into his chest and quickly suffocate him wasn’t exactly reassuring. He felt the atavistic fear of drowning that had haunted the Antyrans ever since their long-gone ancestors had lost the ability to breathe underwater through the recessive gills.
His companion was barely visible. He couldn’t give up, not with Sigia’s fate at stake.
“On Zhan’s eye!” he exclaimed. He gathered all his courage, closed his nostrils, and jumped in after Urdun.
Just as expected, the water was cold as ice, and the tunnel was long, narrow
, and darker with every inch.
Very soon, he couldn’t hold his breath, and Urdun was still swimming forward. He couldn’t glimpse another realm or even a cave to provide a mouthful of air. When he realized he couldn’t go further, he tried to turn back, but the walls were too narrow. Gill started to struggle, muddying the water around him. As soon as he took his hand from his nostrils, the cold water gushed in… He inhaled it into his chest, suffocating, while trying to reach the interface to pull it off.
After several seconds of agonizing convulsions, he calmed down. Urdun didn’t lie this time; he could breathe normally—although perhaps a bit harder than in the air. The only inconvenience was that the cold was freezing his chest, but it was not so much as to prevent him from going forward.
Terror gave way to excitement. The feeling of breathing water, of being able to breathe it like air, filled him with a kind of euphoria unknown to his species since time immemorial!
After several dozens of yards, he saw light, a sign that they approached another exit. The tunnel became slightly larger, allowing him to swim vigorously to catch up with Urdun.
They came out of the hole in a dense forest of tall trees, covered in small, thin leaves curved in all directions. The leaves had a dark green—almost black—hue. The light was weaker here, and not just because of the trees—it was dusk. It seemed they had left the prison island and arrived on another one where the local time was just before nightfall.
Urdun scouted the surroundings as if he expected something dangerous to come out of the darkness. Satisfied with the inspection, he pointed to a small opening in the thicket.
“See the path? Go on, it will lead to a road.”
“And you?”
“Right behind you. Be careful not to lose the trail; it’s not wise to stray off the path in this place.”
“The council is on this island?”
“Be patient, we’ll get to it later.”
They traveled for a while in the woods, Gill leading the way and Urdun a few steps behind. The air around was heavy, cold, and moist, and no breath of wind could pass through the impenetrable green wall. They had to hurry to avoid freezing to the bones. As they pressed on, the place gradually revealed its true face… It was a sinister, huge swamp, suffocated by poisonous gases and covered by black trees growing in the mud. Over time, the fallen trunks and leaves made a putrid platform, hiding most of the water and mud underneath. Only occasionally, in a few less-crowded places, they could see the long, thin stems of the arkanes, the herbs of the peat bogs.
The place looked exactly like the childhood stories of the Black Forest, the place where no mortal should enter…
In the story of the Black Forest, the trees were purposely impregnated by the bog’s nifle to confuse the travelers while the trails behind them changed their place. The poor Antyrans who had the misfortune to step inside were never to be seen again, their kyis forever doomed to haunt the clearings and lure other victims to end up like them.
Of course, it was only a legend of the old days before Zhan’s coming, a story told at dusk in the aromary rooms customary in all respectable nesting shelters. The storyteller always started by opening his aromary box, to allow the carefully crafted fragrances to spread into the air and accompany the story.
Bailas had banned all the legends that made Antyrans believe in anything else but Zhan, but they didn’t die. Parents kept telling them to their children, from generation to generation, even though in the last centuries nobody believed them . Nobody believed them because there were no black forests anymore…71
And yet, Gill was in precisely such a forest.
He turned to speak to Urdun, but his companion had disappeared.
“Urdun! Where are you? Urdun!”
No one answered, not even the echo. He shivered, pervaded by cold, the bitter flavor of defeat stalking him from all the corners of the sinister forest. Urdun wasn’t scared by his threats and had dared to deceive him again…
The realism of the simulation made him forget where he was; it made him lose sight of essential details—like the fact that in the realm of mirages, things were never what they seemed.
The old Antyran had seemed genuinely frightened by the prospect of a forced disconnection, numbing Gill’s vigilance. For a moment, he felt the sharp sting of fear—he underestimated Ugo and stepped obliviously into a new trap, a plan hidden in another plan… What else did he miss? He couldn’t understand—when did Ugo have the time to warp all the threads of the complicated reality in which he had trapped him? How did the jure manage to anticipate his every move? The enemy proved to be more resourceful and dangerous than he imagined… more dangerous than he could have ever imagined.
His negligence in allowing his companion to walk behind him might have closed the doors of the virtual world. He would be forced to follow the only remaining path that Ugo was unaware of—the escape through the skylight—in a storm of physical violence. It would be a long day, a day when death would gather with obscenity a rich harvest of kyis. And the kyis… would belong to the others.
For an instant, he stopped to look at the inner seed that lent him strength to move forward, regardless of the number of bodies he had to step on. A quote came into his head, a paragraph from the Book of Creation Inrumiral, verse 12.3. The orations of Zhan’s third coming: “From darkness with darkness combined, from ice upon ice multiplied, through the vein of night, Arghail creeps into existence. His footsteps will fade and his voice will vanish, and eternity will be death.”
He was feeling the same about himself; he was feeling the source of power growing inside him with every passing moment, becoming more indifferent to the sight of death.
The madness of the last days insinuated in his kyi like an insidious, toxic aroma, which, for the first time, made him doubt that he still knew where the border between good and evil was. Maybe Baila wasn’t so wrong to proclaim that “Gillabrian is Arghail’s tool.” The night’s border was thin, and he no longer had a problem with crossing it. For Sigia.
He turned back on his steps, trying to make as little noise as he could, afraid that he’d wake the forest’s life lurking in the darkness. But the old Antyran was nowhere to be found, so he finally burst toward the tunnel leading to the prison meadow on Tormalin. Although it was the only path, he kept losing it and had to search it out through the thicket, his head spikes wrinkled by the fear that he might be lost for good. Was the fear clouding his smell, or was the path playing tricks on him?
After several long minutes, he finally reached the puddle to Tormalin without finding a trace of his fellow companion. It was definitely the right hole, surrounded by their footprints embedded in the mud. Where could he be, then? Perhaps in his running, he had passed a crossroad and didn’t see some other path. He decided to search one more time, so he turned back and began walking on the trail, this time checking any opening in the bushes or any smell that could reveal a different path.
Gill had already passed two broader trees on the right side when he figured out that the light-colored spot between them could be a footprint. He turned to smell it. Undoubtedly, here Urdun had left his treacherous trail embedded in the muddy ground. His hearts pounding fiercely in his chest, he pushed aside the fleshy arkane bushes and saw a forest path, narrower than the one he just left and completely camouflaged by the vegetation. He could barely squeeze under the thick branches that formed a compact canopy over his head. Without hesitation, he began to creep slowly into the dark, careful to avoid the smallest rustle, to find out what the old Antyran was up to.
He didn’t have to crawl for long; after he pushed a knotty branch blocking his view, he almost stumbled into the small glade where Urdun was hiding. He instantly froze, trying to avoid the slightest sound that would betray his presence. Fortunately, his companion—or, better to say, ex-companion—was too absorbed to notice him. Urdun was looking at a spot between two broad trees fused at the base, like a giant V. Behind them, a ten-foot-tall basaltic eruption rose from the
bog, its columns titled to the right or collapsed under the weight of the passing eons.
Around the glade, the forest was darker and more impenetrable than anywhere else. The icy wind blowing from the rocks gave him a good clue of who—or what—Urdun’s companion was, in case he still had any doubts…
“I delayed him as much as I could. I kept my side of the deal. I hope you don’t fail this time, or else he’ll disconnect me!”
“Still a coward,” mocked a familiar voice from the basalt pile.
The ice creature that had attacked him earlier in the prison meadow was the jure himself, Gill realized, not at all surprised. His first attack had failed, so they prepared the second. The architect’s weird nature revealed yet another face, one of many he could surely morph into.
He thought of turning back, convinced that Ugo would find him if he lingered any longer, but their little chat was far too interesting to miss…
“What’s the bother if you’re disconnected? Your shell will die in a few days anyway,” the shadow kept taunting him.
“I know, I know. I’d rather you didn’t remind me of that little detail. I’d hate to die and promised myself to stretch it as much as possible!”
“You squirm needlessly and hoard miasmas in your kyi.”
“Of course, how easy for you to say! You’re here in the light, and I’ll end up down in the amnesic smog. After you wake me up, I want to be brought to Rabinda. I want to be the first. Do you hear me?”
“Don’t worry. Ugo always keeps his promise!”
“You do that! I’m fed up with the council’s foolishness and their stupid restrictions. How much we could have progressed if dear Forbat and the other cowards wouldn’t have betrayed the kaura dead!”
“Very soon, the council won’t mean anything. But for that, I have to smell Gillabrian’s glands…”
His self-preservation instinct whispered that it was about time to leave the place. Deciding to follow it for a change, Gill started to walk backward, his hearts shrunk like a fluff of licant at the thought that he would make a noise and betray his presence. As soon as he reached the path, he stepped quietly in the opposite direction than the one indicated by Urdun, hoping to buy some time.