by K M McGuire
The cube pulsed a dull red glow, as though in a low thought. He should know by now what is at stake.
“But none are as lucrative as his dealings with the king of Tasso, they at least are capable of providing much for him,” Eigan sighed, rubbing his forehead. “And it makes it rather hard, being our deposits of Azucrepyhs are harvested in his mines! We must tread lightly when it comes to him. He may not know why we want them, but he knows what it costs us! If we make an attempt against him…any way other than total victory is foolish. We dare not risk a war at sea, either! Surely, you have other paths to take?”
Again, the cube nearly faded in its center, the swirling pillar of fire inside the diamond hardly noticeable. Perhaps, the cube finally replied, it may be worth selling out knowledge of them-trade our technology. I will need to rest and commune with my children. I will plan better when I have a broader vision.
Eigan allowed for the thought to roll in his head. “It’s rather a pity Kintza had not made it.”
It is nothing, the cube assured him. I assume you have asked your scientists to study his body for improving our forces? That may provide much more value than he would have. He is wise but hides much of his secrets. I can divulge more of his secrets when I scour the Codex. You have extracted his Azucrepyh correct? Good, if need be, I think we can rebuild him.
A knock on the door interrupted the conversation. “What?” Eigan called irritably.
“Sire,” the Azuchon sounded rather determined. “We brought the Zemilia’s Azucrepyh.”
Eigan stood and placed the black cube inside his cloak.
“Good,” he said as he opened the door, revealing a scrawny, bulbous-headed Scez. He felt himself try and smile, but he couldn’t, not for these vile beings. They had dismal courage, no matter how intelligent they were. If it wasn’t for their ability to control so many Azuchons and implement tactics so well, he would have disposed of them long ago. Genocide would only bring the other nations together against him, and he could not risk all that he had gained. Slow, methodic takeover was easier to maintain. At least he made an example out of Koruza to the rest of the Scez. They were not above scrutiny. He had set them all with augmentations now, sleeker than the common Azuchons, with mechanics that worked far better than what Koruza had engineered. The Scez-Azuchon gave Eigan a slight glance, his bionic eye examining Eigan’s grim expression, and he could see how intimidating his image was inside the glass sphere. He held his smile for his vanity at bay.
The hybrid Scez finally remembered himself and began rummaging through his white satchel. “I hope you haven’t lost it,” Eigan said, enjoying the torture, as the sweat beaded at the Azuchon’s forehead. It was the little things that tugged Eigan towards happiness. “I believe we could contact Alezel and arrange for you to join Koruza and the others in the mines. But I suppose that wouldn’t do, taking your Azucrepyh would be rather difficult for your body to do without.”
The Scez swallowed hard and slowly lifted the large, green Azucrepyh, its core bright orange, spinning lazily inside. Eigan felt the black cube twitch in his cloak.
“Excellent,” he said as he took the green box. “Now, gather your brethren. We need to plan for our next siege. I believe officially turning the Scez Empire over is our next step. I will join you shortly.”
The Scez nodded and turned quickly, uttering a stifled formality, but Eigan ignored them. One step closer. He walked through the halls of the Keep, indifferently watching the banners in the halls now being hung of a black hexagon, its center opening at the diamond. He walked up to his chamber door, guarded by the biggest Azuchons he had, their faces lost to the thick carapace that took over much of their heads. He looked at their dull expressions. He remembered them as builders from Adetia and realized how similar the one looked to Voden, finally seeing it was his father. He nearly laughed as he entered his room. How easily many of them caved to his will was pathetic. He was more surprised at how many refused them, thinking there would be many more. They didn’t choose their belief. The ones who died did. They merely picked up a system for their own vanity.
The door clicked shut as he turned and faced his largest accomplishment. It looked similar to the two Azucrepyhs he had on his person, but it loomed over him, standing near the height of the ceiling. It flickered with violent sparks of colors, flaring with hundreds of storming paroxysms, strings of static made clouds of swirling texture. On the face that pointed towards Eigan was a square hole, where each point reached up to the center of the sides and fell back into the chaos that ravaged inside the cube. This was the Codex. It pulsed as he approached, and he lifted the Zemilia’s Azucrepyh into the maw. Instantly, it was sucked into the vortex and hit the orb in the center, where static drew in from the faces and began to dissolve the cube. After a moment, the storm settled, and Eigan dug inside his cloak and pulled out the black Azucrepyh.
“Call me when you have formulated your plan,” Eigan said. He lifted his hands towards the vortex. The Azucrepyh lulled into the center of the orb of chaos and fixed itself amid the cloudy textures, and with a sudden jolt, the black Azucrepyh began spinning. It whirled viciously, fetching the static nimbus and forced it into a maelstrom, creating a thundering torus that swelled with flickering colors, until the cube burst into brilliant white light, flashing across the room. With satisfaction, the Codex hummed. “I will leave you to it. For now, I shall move forward with this conquest.”
∞ ∞ ∞
Blossum rode her horse up to the gates of Volimijud. They lay wide open, fallen to the ground from years of disuse, and what little upkeep that was given to the religious town. She breathed heavy clouds that mingled with her horses and stared at the misty waterfall splitting over the heads of the warrior and the prophet. Relief brought her some warmth, though the eerie silence of the streets gave her an odd chill. She cantered up the cobble, unable to wipe away the subtle pangs of sorrow for the hamlet, glancing at the collapsed roofs blanketed in snow, where old tomes swelled with ages of moisture. She doubted she would be able to pry a book from any shelves with how thick they expanded. She was perplexed to find people lingering and watching her as she made her way up the street. Admittedly, not many, but enough to make her aware that it was still inhabited.
She felt the poverty was her fault. She had taken many of the farmers and citizens with her when she had become the Zemilia’s vessel, and because of her, the towns of her people were left to fend for themselves. Only the devout stayed behind. She was impressed that a remnant remained. She found a woman close to her.
“Miss!” she called, and the woman turned almost fearfully towards her, with eyes wide and white. A group of what Blossum could only imagine was her children appeared around her, snatching at her skirt, enamored by Blossum. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone who still lived here. If it isn’t too much to ask, I would like to enter the temple. I have something I must offer to the Throne.”
“The Throne?” the woman said, her voice quiet with awe. “So, you too believe in the Great Beyond?”
“I-I am here on behalf of someone who did,” she said, unable to give a straight answer. The truth was she didn’t know.
The woman nodded, almost disappointed, and she pointed her finger towards the bridge. “We are descendants of Eurruk. We are the last priests. We have kept the temple in order for those who wish to visit. It is not an easy life, but what life is? We had hoped…” She seemed to choke on her words, and Blossum looked at the marveled eyes of the children. She could see it flickering in their eyes. “At least you are innocent enough to honor someone else.” Blossum gave her a curious look, but the woman pointed quietly up the road, a hint of sadness tied in her eyes. “No one will bother you in there, but please, honor the sanctity. The Empty Throne is quite old.”
Blossum thanked them and continued along the road. She dismounted on the far side of the bridge and grabbed Estra’s axe from the side of the horse. She bit her lip.
It’s time you rest, Estra.
&nbs
p; She entered the temple, no different from when she had entered it with her aunt for the first time so long ago. Her heart fluttered as she looked up at the massive throne, where she saw nothing, but it seemed to hold a presence thick within the cavern. She found a tiny altar that sat before the moat of fire, and though she didn’t remember it, she knew it was used mainly for those who wished to pray to the Beyond. She knelt before it, placing Estra’s axe upon it.
“At the foot of the Throne,” she whispered. “That was always where you wanted to be. You served your Lord well.”
She felt a wash of emotions shake across her shoulders. The stone altar felt more like a butcher block to her, but after those thousands of years, she had a chance to lay all of the horrid past behind her.
“So, you’ve returned, Blossum,” came a voice, booming off the cavern’s walls.
Startled to hear her name, Blossum whipped her head sharply up, where she immediately found the Throne no longer empty. There sat a being, with armor she could make little sense of, shining as though it emanated light. Along the shapes and contours ran ripples of vibrant blues, like lightning trapped in the immaculate plates. In his hands he held a sword that instantly reminded her of Andar’s, and in some way, she almost thought it was him. She removed the thought from her mind, trying to look through the aura covering his face, but the ring of light made it impossible to find any detail trapped inside. Even as he moved, the ring clung to his head, and he leaned towards her, his sword sheathing along his arm.
“I-I suppose so,” she responded, finding her lips dry. “Who are you?”
“You’ve heard so much but have listened little,” the being said, but he was without chastisement. “I have been around you for some time. I wonder why you cannot name me?” She looked towards the gleam of light where the shaped aura formed a pale corona around the edge of the face. It was queer to her how she felt not even a hint of disappointment coming from the being. “Still you wonder?”
“Yes,” she said airily, unable to maintain the flutters in her heart.
“Perhaps it will come,” he said finely, as though he were a mother teaching her child a proper lesson. “You see, it is similar to that of a shadow, though this is, in fact, the polar opposite.”
“I don’t know how far I follow the idea,” Blossum responded, her confusion constricting the muscles in her face.
The being seemed to chuckle, and short coils of light streamed from the center of his face with each tinkling ring of his laugh. “Isn’t a shadow just the imprint of a shape? The outline that may tell you the essence of something? A shadow is but light removed. Darkness only ever imitates light, that is why it takes shape of the form but never gives more than the essence of a thing. It wants to fool you that it has become exactly what it echoes, without having to truly take it up.” He rose from the throne, his stature now showing all of his glory. “And to your realm, this dimension of flesh and bone, I am merely the brightest of shadows that can come into your eye. I am without that dullness, the furthest from the deepest shadow that collapses in the dimensions beneath. I am the beginning glow of light without casting shadow. I reveal and dismiss falsehoods. Do I make sense to you now?”
Blossum could distinguish his eyes—she was sure to see the almond shapes burning within the pulse of glowing white—observing her, waiting patiently for her thoughts to manifest a response. “If what you are coming to is at all possible to be true, then I could not imagine beyond what I see.” She felt the tremble that came from his wake, as if the air hummed at him being. “I don’t know why I am here, nor why I see you. It is stark against myself!”
“Your path seems rather clear to me, then,” the being replied, sitting thoughtfully back on the throne.
“I hardly knew I was set to anything of the sort,” Blossum cocked her head. “And if that were so, how is it I do not know of any path other than the one I had set myself on to bring me to this destination? If there was any horizon I had set out for, it was to turn away from the past.”
“Indeed,” the being said, head throbbing with a sudden plume of light. It seemed that he found her thoughts running towards his point. “That dream that compelled your legs to move brought you towards the first of many horizons.”
“But I no longer see one.”
“Are you sure?”
Blossum stared at him, gnawing at a response to the question. “Why do you speak as though your meaning is in riddles?”
“Why then is it that you struggle so hard to dive into the search to find the answer, if you have gleaned that much from me?” he said as a ball burst into his hand, iridescent light spinning across its surface. “How do you find the roundness in a sphere without finding its center? If you cannot find the center, you know little of the sphere. You cannot define it, but had you not asked the question, you would be none the wiser for it, yet still be fooled by the lie of an ellipse. Likewise, to say you’re no longer on some journey is just as foolish as saying the circle is round when you are looking towards a square. A journey requires a distance between points. What better example of this than time?”
“Time?”
“Of course!” he boomed, sending his voice through the cavern like cracks of thunder. “The proof lies in the memories captured along the way. The milestones that point back from where you came. They direct you towards a path, called to which fork to pick, ingrained in your head, and which stones to keep yourself from overturning. The sad fact of the races is not that they must trudge forward, but they forget to even go at all. They stare at the mountains and whisper how beautiful it must be to see things from up there, but never have they attempted to find the summit. Therein is the flaw. What perspective is gained from imagination of what you could have seen to what is seen? What the journey gives you along the way expresses further the glory of the road and comfort in the destination. The destination is where you can finally dwell on the moment, to culminate the milestones you reached to get to the peak and look out across the vastness of how far you came to travel. But lo, another peak rests in the sky. Turning your eye around, what stories can be told when you come home?” He steepled his fingers across the majestic plates, coursing blue light, studying her expression.
She knew at once to thrust the question from her mind. “And what is to be said of home? Here is the closest I have come to sense one, but other than a reflection of what one ought to be, I can’t say I have even made one.”
“You would be right,” he agreed. “Understanding home is like understanding the center of the circle. You cannot know the truth of it without stability of where it came from.”
“Then how is one to gain footing on soil if we hardly know it exists beneath our feet?”
“To know what is within and what is without gives the first revelation, or the shadow, the semblance towards knowing.” The being touched the orb, and the colors peeled away, turning to a white globe. With his other hand, he now swirled his finger, and a violent tail of water flustered around it. “You heard the debate of ‘the unstoppable force and immovable object?’ Do you think you can give an answer to the conundrum?”
She dwelled on the thought. “I think it would be hard to argue in either direction. Wouldn’t it depend on what you hope for?”
“When one overtakes the other, the defeated becomes what it is not,” he replied, and the water smashed against the white circle, billowing around the shape with a turbulent rage. “If the force is stopped, then how could it be named truthfully? Likewise, how could the other be immovable if the force tears it asunder? The debate will burn onward with little headway towards a proper answer. In the shadow of this question lies deeper value, something rather valuable to the races.”
“In what way?” she asked rather perplexed.
“The debate only circles the question,” he responded leaning further towards her. The gleam of his face filled her pupils, as though urging to bleach her eyes. “As I had said before, the circumference does not find the circle sound, the center does. In th
is, the debate must turn to paradox. If the unstoppable force is also the immovable object, neither can be found as a liar, but now we prove that it is sound. We prove it possible, stepping from the sides, and setting in the paradox, which is to all beings where the home of truth resides. The paradox breaks the circle, while being firmly at its center but also capable of growing, unable to go anywhere else but out. From the shade of this example, can you read between what I am saying? Can you find the meaning of the words unused to gain a picture better than the shadow so easily ignored?”
“Why are you telling me this?” Blossum queried.
“I have a request, should you choose to take it,” the being stated, brushing the objects out of existence. She blinked at his firmness, as he set his hands against his knees and leaned forward. “But it cannot be known without a commitment first. No journey is taken without the faith stitched to the dream. I ask for your faith, and you can begin to find home.”
She could not reconcile thoughts. She felt the being had not said anything false, but her reservations gripped her from lurching forward. “What if I find, when the door is opened, that I’d rather close it up?”
“If it opens to proving you were wrong, would you admit that so you could go on, or would it cause you to turn back around?”
“I think that I could go on,” Blossum whispered. The being nodded and suddenly moved, shrinking to her size, standing valiantly before her.
“Then if it be by your will, and you accept what I say, I offer the Oath,” he said quietly, and touched the center of her chest. She felt the ping of his finger, shudders waving across her skin as he pulled it away, and she felt a searing pain bubbling through her bones. Harder the tremors quaked, as beads of black surfaced at her pores. They grew in size, as though unwilling to be drawn out of her skin, clumping together. They finally quivered and snapped off, drifting out to an invisible core in front of her. The tiny black pearls swirled and fused around the growing mass of tar, whirling a sphere of shadow. She could not fend off the pain, until it finally ended, and the final drop collapsed into the orb. She stared into the void, seeing nothing but how far her fears really went, feeling her heart now stuck in her throat.