by D M Wozniak
“You are the voider,” he says. “The one who was in the tower when it collapsed.”
I look down, and see my necklace still hanging about my neck.
So much for anonymity.
But it doesn’t matter now, anyway. We’ve lost the element of surprise.
“Yes,” I say, annoyed that he’s here asking questions and that I have to look up at him. Underneath his open-faced helmet, I see a large mustache and fat nose. “I am Master Voider Democryos.”
He leans back slightly in shock, and then nods.
“Do you know what happened?” he asks me. “People are saying it was a Xian voider that brought down the tower.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “He wasn’t Xian.”
“So, a northerner, then?”
“Not quite.”
His kind is from another world.
As he narrows his eyes, I am stuck between wanting to tell the soldier the truth to aid me in my search, and knowing that his comprehension is an unattainable goal. Any further discussion on the matter will be time wasted. How am I supposed to explain the concept of a voider-effulgent to this soldier when I barely understand it myself?
“Where is my submaster?” I reply. “There are complexities in this attack that demand his immediate attention.”
“Submaster?”
“Mander,” I say, raising my voice.
“He’s probably meeting with Commander Reddles at the Union.”
“The Union?”
“The city center.”
“I don’t understand. Your commander is having a conversation while his city falls apart?
He straightens his shoulders and the leather on his saddle creaks. “I do not presume to speak for either my Commander Reddles or your submaster Mander.”
I can feel my temper getting the better of me as I realize that the tragedy in this park is a microcosm of what has happened over years.
“I will speak for my submaster. There should be a dozen voiders here, tending to the wounded,” I say, pointing to the ones in the distance. “But where are they? All out to sea, most likely, doing something with that massive voidstone underneath the bay. And Mander is as spineless as the fish he studies, prioritizing what Reddles wants over the safety of these people. This is madness.”
The soldier seems to weigh his words carefully.
“I'm sure this attack is horrific to you,” he replies. “But our city has seen enough violence for several lifetimes, and its people have been through many hardships. Today is no different.”
“No,” I say, taking a step toward him. “Today is different.”
He blinks rapidly underneath his open-faced helmet.
“Go now,” I continue. “Put that horse to work and find my submaster.”
For a moment, his eyes narrow. Then, as if he’s either taunting me or still in deliberation, he aimlessly guides his horse around me, as more clip clops echo out. The other soldiers helping the wounded briefly look up from their patients.
Without a word, he makes up his mind, straightening his course and leaving the square through a narrow street bordered by darkened shops. I watch him go.
“We never ate dinner,” Blythe says by my side. I almost jump in place.
“I’m not hungry,” I mumble without even thinking if it’s true.
“The others might be. They have been exerting themselves and may need sustenance. Sometimes a full stomach calms the nerves.”
After a moment, I nod. “Actually, I could eat. But I don’t want to leave the square until Mander gets here.”
“You are angry at him.”
“Yes. He’s not doing his job.”
“How so?” Blythe asks.
“Because he’s nowhere to be found when this city needs him the most.”
“And why is that?”
“He’s easily swayed.”
“We’re all easily swayed, master voider. Just by different things.”
I utter a groan of agreement.
Chimeline and Colu have joined the soldiers in taking care of the wounded. Colu tears a bandage into two with his teeth. Chimeline sits nearby, next to a child. She gives him a wide, genuine smile while gently combing his hair with her fingers.
There is a kindness in her heart that is unequaled. I could never see Marine doing this. She would think it below her. She would be more concerned about wiping the dust from her face, or preventing the hem of her dress from being soiled.
“We should be taking all of them to the hospital,” I say. “But it’s destroyed.”
“I heard one of the soldiers mention that more of their ranks are coming with stretchers. There is a temporary hospital setup on the other side of the city.”
“Good.”
“In the meantime, may I have a word with you?” Blythe asks, pointing to the intact remains of his temple.
I turn to him, but cannot discern much in the dimness. Just that he seems more somber than usual.
I acquiesce, following him around the rubble. There’s a lit torch on the ground, which Blythe picks up.
A few feet later, we enter underneath the remains of the sanctuary. A short span of vaulted ceiling is still intact, the edges of it exposed like the ribcage of a whale. On the walls are two anchored candle stands, which Blythe lights from the flame in his hand.
The half-room is cast in it flickering shades.
I sit down on one of the few benches, which is covered in a thick layer of dust. Both it and I let out a deep groan—I am far more tired than I believed. Almost deliriously so.
Blythe throws his torch back into the rubble and sits down next to me, as I crane my neck and look up. The vaulted ceiling ends in jagged shards directly above me, the candle-lit wood giving way to the deep-blue star-studded sky.
“How many fragments do you carry?” he asks me.
I look back at him. “What?”
“Fragments of axion.” With a puckered expression, he adds, “Voidstones.”
“Oh,” I say. “Three. Mine, Anaxarchis’, and Cleanthes’.”
He seems lost in thought. Flames reflect in the curves of his eyes.
“Why do you ask?” I say.
“They wanted me to try something with you, but I am not sure that you will be receptive to it. And I am not sure if this is the right time.”
I lean in. “What is their idea?”
“It’s called eleutheria,” he says.
My brow furrows as I repeat the word. “You’ve mentioned it before. But I don’t understand. What does it mean?”
He turns to me. “Liberty.”
I swallow.
Suddenly, without any further explanation on his part, I understand perfectly what he means.
And, in some way, this idea—this fear—has always existed in the back of my mind, from the very first moment I learned about the true nature of voidance.
If voidance is built upon the backs of trapped souls, its end is centered upon their freedom.
“You know what I speak of,” he says. “I can see it in your eyes.”
I nod. “How?” I ask, turning to him. “How do we free the souls?”
He takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure.”
“You’re not sure?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Eleutheria has always been somewhat of a mystery. Part of our writings, handed down, century after century.”
“But the souls told you, didn’t they?”
“Yes,” he says. “They did.”
“And?”
He purses his lips, as if he’s recollecting a memory. “It must be done one fragment at a time. We would need to work together, like before.”
“You mean, in contact with one another.”
“Yes.”
“And?” I ask.
He squints. “This is hard for me to explain. They said to enter the fragment itself.”
I think upon his words, but they don’t make sense. He seems to see the confusion on my face.
“It is what I fe
ared. I will have to talk you through it. When we have left this world, together.”
I dig my hand into my cloak pocket and fish out one of the extra stones, grabbing it tightly by its gold setting. It feels heavy in my hand.
Raw power.
“What will happen?” I ask.
“To the fragment?” Blythe answers. “It will enter stasis, I imagine.”
“Useless, you mean.”
He nods. “As it should be.”
I look down at the voidstone in my hands, and think upon his words. I cannot contest them, even though I want to.
“What you speak of—it is the end of voidance,” I say weakly.
“Yes.”
All I can think of, is how priceless the object is in my hand. When poor farmers bring us fragments half this size, we give them more gold than what they would earn in a lifetime. And when a voider dies, we take their stone from them before burial. It is an elaborate ceremony. Beautiful, even. The voidstone has served a voider, and it will serve another in the future. This stone happens to be Cleanthes’. It was a different voider’s before him. And before that, another’s.
After centuries of use, the thought of turning it into something useless is impossible for me to fathom.
But then I think of what’s inside of it.
“Look at your hands.”
“What?” I turn to him as he pulls me out of my thoughts. He motions with his head. “Look at your hands.”
I look down.
“They are closed so tightly.”
He’s right. Cleanthes’ stone is clutched in my right hand, which is encircled by my left. My knuckles are white.
“That is your problem, master voider. You approach life with clutched hands. Always taking. Always using. Always objectifying. You’ve done it with your profession, and you’ve done it with the one whom you’ve proclaimed that you loved.”
I remain silent.
“Even since we’ve met, I’ve heard you repeatedly talk about your wife. You speak about her as if she’s one of your stones. As if she is something beautiful that you clutch in the night.”
“You need to let go. Of her, of the black arcana. You need to let go of everything you know.”
“The tighter you grasp, the lesser the chance that you receive.”
“Receive what?” I ask.
“Gifts from the Unnamed.”
I open my hands, seeing the black stone in my upturned palm, which does not reflect anything. And for a long time, I only stare at it, recalling a life which may not reflect anything either.
I think about Cleanthes, his lifeless body resting upon his piano, abandoned by me. I think of the poor souls I cannot even see. I think of black sand. What Aphelime called tephra, the love of destruction.
Liberty. From all of it.
Placing Cleanthes’ voidstone in my left hand, I extend my right to Blythe. “This isn’t an end,” I say. “This is a beginning.”
The last thing I see in this world is his eager yet guarded smile.
The Weight of a Soul
Look down at your fragment.
It’s Blythe. Over the muted and wispy voices of the enervated, he’s speaking to me in the void. I call out to him.
Are you here with me? Do you see what I see?
Yes, master voider. We are one.
Instinctively, I look in all directions. Colorless indivisibles are everywhere. There he is, sitting next to me on the bench in his destroyed sanctuary, shimmering. I can tell from his shape that he’s facing forward, and his body is perfectly still, except for the blood coursing through his veins and the air filling his lungs.
I look down at myself, and then back to him.
Everything is in unison. The pumping of our hearts, the cadence of our breathing. Two orchestras playing the same symphony.
Look down at your axion fragment.
I do as he says, after noticing that his lips are not moving.
It looks the same as in the real world. Only voidstones have that quality. Black and seamless. Everything else is colorless and made of indivisibles.
Closer!
I move through the void, slowly descending into Cleanthes’ stone. I see the shimmering indivisibles of my thumb—where it’s connected to the pores and crevasses of my skin, ripples like wind-battered dunes.
Go inside of it.
The black expands.
I move down through my thumb until I am surrounded in blackness. Quite literally, I am inside the voidstone while using the voidstone.
No.
Blythe, this isn’t going to work.
Why do you say that?
It’s a dead end.
How would you know?
This is called Delving, and its practice is strictly forbidden. Men and women have lost their minds trying to penetrate the voidstone by using voidance. There is nothing but endless emptiness in here!
Trust in the enervated.
I am silent.
Have they not proven themselves to you?
Yes.
Then push on, master voider. Against all reason, follow them.
It’s impossible to tell from my vision that we’re even moving. But, like walking through a perfectly dark room, I can feel it, similar to the sensation of a passing breeze.
And then I stop.
What’s wrong?
This is dangerous.
Why do you say that?
I spin in place, seeing where we came from. Far away, the colorless indivisibles are in the shape of an oval. My stone has become a doorway.
We will get lost in here.
No, we won’t. The enervated are giving me direction.
But the way back—
Let go of your doubt, master voider.
I pause. What Blythe is asking for is much more difficult than he understands.
We must keep going. They are relying on us.
Alright.
I turn around until Blythe tells me to stop, and then I begin moving again through the absolute blackness.
My fear rises the further we go. It is pure irony, the master voider scared of being in the void, clinging to the faith of an effulgent. I have never experienced anything like this. I am surrounded by nothingness. Pure nothingness. I will never find my way back.
This place is evil.
You are doing fine.
I’m not fine, Blythe. This is not right. It feels wrong, like we should not be here. Maybe we should turn back and try another—
Look!
Up ahead, I see something. The tiniest pinprick of light.
It’s radiant.
The black will become white.
You remember.
What is it?
The inner place. It’s where they’re being held. We’re close, now.
I stop a second time, the white barely larger than when it first appeared. Larger than the brightest star, yet smaller than the moon.
We’re going to become trapped here, like the rest of them.
No, master voider. I will not let that happen, and neither will the enervated. We are all in this together.
The most intense urge comes over me. I want to run away from the light, but I know that if I turn around, I will no longer see the way we came, and this makes me even more afraid. The doorway back to the indivisibles is gone, I am sure of it. I will be trapped here, forever.
Let go, Democryos! Do not fear!
I wish I could shut my eyes, but there are no eyes here. Nothing to hide behind.
Even in the void, you grasp onto things. Your mind is clenched like your fists were. How can you expect to free the enervated, if you are not even free yourself?
I try my hardest.
Good.
I move toward the light.
Soon it grows, so much so that the black is now in my periphery. There are things moving in the white. Floating, clear circles. It is a room. Three walls, a floor and ceiling, all perfectly white. We are the fourth wall.
Stop here!
I d
o as he says.
Why?
If you go inside, we’ll be trapped.
You see!? I was right. We need to—
Relax, master voider. I am here with you. Just let them come through us.
You mean to us, right?
Not exactly.
They look like glass spheres, perfect in every way. Except there is no reflection on their curved surfaces. No place the light is coming from. It is everywhere and nowhere.
The spheres are coming toward me.
Are these the souls, Blythe?
Yes.
There are hundreds of them.
I know.
Good Unnamed.
The first one rises up as it floats into my vision, coming closer until it fills everything.
It passes right through me.
Color.
I feel struck down.
There is no breath here, but it is knocked out of me anyway. No legs, but I stumble to the ground.
Then, the visions come.
A child playing on the beach. Two suns over the horizon. Her mother laughing, a red pail in her hands.
In an instant, the image is gone.
Blythe, what is happening? Did you see—
Before I have a chance to react, another clear glass sphere passes through me, following the first.
Green trees, pillars rising above the clouds. A strong man swinging from one to another, a girl with orange eyes laughing in his arms.
Do not be afraid. They are introducing themselves to you.
And then, another.
Damp streets. Driven rain. An older woman carrying a loaf of bread pulling open a metal grate. A man covered in silver looms in the distance behind her. His visor is blue light.
Flash upon flash of these images hit me, building into a stream. I cannot keep up. There is one for every sphere.
A memory from each life?
As quickly as it began, it ends. Before I even know what is happening, the spheres have entirely passed through me. The room in front of me is empty.
Master voider, can you hear me?
Yes.
We can go now. But be careful. Back up slowly.
I do as he says. The white shrinks in front of me, the corners becoming rounded, resembling a circle again.
Turn around.
Part of me doesn’t want to, since I know what I’ll see. Pure blackness.
But I steel myself and do it, nonetheless. I don’t see the spheres anymore, but I know that they are here, floating all around me. I can feel them sing. I can hear their silence.