Dysphoria: Rise (Hymn of the Multiverse 6)

by Terra Whiteman

  Everyone needed to see this.

  ~*~

  HYMN OF THE MULTIVERSE

  APHORISM II

  Regalis Sarine-375—;

  OUR GREATEST FEAR WAS TIME.

  We feared it more than the repercussions of which the Codemaker had promised should we ever overstep his Law. Not by his hand, but by the hand of causality itself.

  There is a certain balance, you see, that must be kept in order for all operations to run smoothly. Inserting ourselves into a framed universe would undoubtedly connect back to its source. Framed universes existed only for us to observe, never to engage. It was but a thousand years later when a group of Framers, faced with the challenge of mortality once again in light of our slowly-dying universe, to argue the Codemaker’s Law.

  If we are capable of creating it, we lay claim to its space.

  If we are to survive, more space is necessary as time digests everything around us.

  Hundreds of forums were held in debate of these points. There was never a consensus, only mounting tension between the contending sides. Our peaceful society, once governed by individual sovereignty with a unified directive, cracked and crumbled into mortal rubble at the base of our ladder.

  Without any distinctive laws governing us except for the one in question, hundreds of us left and crossed into the framed universe, Simulation-1. But the Codemaker, unbeknownst to any of us, had taken some precautionary measures for such an event.

  1) Those who crossed into framed universes for more than a conscripted amount of time could never return to their source universe. Alpha-Insipia was no longer accessible to them. This wouldn’t have been such a problem if not for—

  2) Framers could no longer frame. Their resonance was weakened by the tension placed on the basewave due to distance from the source. The strain of their existence in places they should not exist barred three-fourths of their capabilities in their natural environment. Still this was not too inconvenient, if not for—

  3) Once a framer crossed into a simulated universe, a timer began. It counted down until the moment that their logic and reasoning were scrambled, something we called the Codebreaker sequence. Because that was what they were—code breakers. The cost of breaking the Codemaker’s Law was to lose all sense of oneself. It was the closest thing to mortality that he could create.

  Upon observing that fatal cypher, all emigration ceased; as to lose one’s sense of existence was to not exist at all.

  XX

  NEUROSIS

  Pariah Andosyni—;

  “SIGHT-SEEING,” SAID ZIRA, coolly. Despite his best attempt, it was apparent our welcome-wagon shook him. We could feel his anxiety. “You’re from the land of the red sun, too. We saw your city. What are you doing here?”

  The antannae’d anthropoid, which attica mysteriously designated Fehe’zin, studied us with its black, sclera-bereft eyes. It wore no expression—at least any that we could interpret. I had some difficulty with the idea that we were from the same world; yet the thrum of their resonance, felt at the base of my chest, attested to this fact.

  “If you’ve been to our city, then you should know that we are ensconced. Have they sent you to finish us? Is that why you’re here?”

  Zira frowned in confusion, and Sapphire picked up his slack. “The Framers didn’t send us. We, like you, are being hunted by them.”

  “What is your race?” asked the Fehe’zin.

  “Vel’Haru.”

  That seemed to resonate with them. Behind the leader, the other Fehe’zin removed their hoods. “How did you find this place?”

  “Same as you, I imagine,” said Sapphire. “By following the molecular footprints of our ancestors.”

  “And what do you seek here?”

  Sapphire hesitated, glancing at Zira. Zira said nothing. It was a weighted question for which we didn’t have an answer. Not entirely, anyway.

  “The Framers took one of ours,” I said. “We’re following clues left by our proxies to find out how to stop them. One of their clues led us here.”

  “How to stop a Framer?” asked the Fehe’zin, amusement in his tone.

  “Did you construct this place?” asked Zira, after a lengthy silence had befallen us.

  “No,” said the Fehe’zin, abruptly turning back toward the door. On cue, the others followed. “We take care of it, and it takes care of us in turn. Please, come in.”

  The three of us stood there, looking between each other. Zira was the first to move.

  “You guys coming?” he called.

  “Be careful,” murmured Sapphire, following.

  “Of what?” asked Zira, incredulous.

  “Something is off here,” she said, a quiver in her voice. Zira acknowledged her warning with a dire look.

  I took a final sensory-capture of the spires before descending into Halcyon with the others.

  *

  Within Halcyon was a cave-like system, its winding paths lit by mounted torches of emerald, copper-sulfate flames. One of the paths eventually led to an open cavern alit with a dozen or so torches.

  The leader—or at least the one I thought was the leader, although the distinction was never made clear—introduced himself as Arigul. The others remained silent and dispersed upon arrival into the cavern; some to work on an already expansive mural covering the entirety of the wall, the rest through another passage, fading from the green phosphorescence of torchlight.

  We stood silently in awe as the scenery unfolded. Arigul gathered a bowl of crushed grubs and mites near his sculpting tools and offered them to us.

  “You look hungry,” he said, nodding to the bowl when none of us volunteered to take it.

  Not that hungry, I thought, but Zira surprised us all by grabbing a handful of the insect mush and absorbed it in an enclosed fist. We followed suit, and never before was I so delighted by not having to eat our food.

  Arigul watched us replenish. If that had shocked him, we’d have never known it. “I’d offer drink, but it doesn’t seem that you need it.”

  “We’re good, thank you,” said Zira. His eyes trailed to the group of Fehe’zin chiseling away at the wall. “What are they doing?”

  “Transcribing the relic’s stories,” said Arigul. “Such is the debt for our shelter.”

  Zira and Sapphire cast each other quizzical looks. I slowly ventured to the wall to investigate. A portion of the mural depicted a group of people standing over others who knelt at their feet, seemingly in praise. The subordinate group was strikingly familiar. Long, thin appendages with scythe-like claws. Rhazekan. The dominant group was foreign to me. Slender in stature, appearing more like us. Little color had been added to the mural, but the Fehe’zin had taken the time to make their hair chrome. All of them.

  “Hey,” I said. “Come and look at this.”

  Zira and Sapphire sidled with me, studying the image. They, too, recognized the Rhazekan almost immediately; and they, too, couldn’t identify the other group of silver-haired beings.

  Beside us the nameless Fehe’zin artists silently chipped away at the wall, disregarding our presence. They seemed tired, wary—yet robotic. Sapphire had been right; something was definitely off.

  Arigul appeared behind us, and it was the first time that I saw him smile. His teeth were raptorial in appearance; long, sharp canines and an absence of molars. “The Metamorphosis. One of my personal favorites.”

  “Who are they?” asked Sapphire, pointing to the silver-haired group.

  Arigul hesitated, his gaze shifting between the mural and us. “You came to stop the Framers, yet you don’t even know what they look like?”

  Our attention darted back to the wall. I made sure to get a vis-capture of this. If these were the Framers, then why—?

  “I don’t understand,” murmured Sapphire, aghast. “What does this represent? What does this mean?”

  “It means the Rhazekan and Framers were friends,” breathed Zira. He gave Arigul a skeptical frown. “According to your kin. I don’t suppose yo
u have anything other than drawings to support this?”

  Arigul sighed, waving us forward as he moved toward another passage across the room. “It seems we have much to discuss.”

  “Hooray, story-time,” muttered Zira, following reluctantly.

  Sapphire and I took one final glance at the mural. “Adrial is going to soil his pants at this,” I whispered.

  “I’ve no doubt they’ve been watching ever since we met Arigul,” said Sapphire.

  She and I followed Zira through the passage, eager for answers, the unsettling feeling all but gone.

  ***

  Yahweh Telei—;

  At precisely the moment when Pariah entered Halcyon, the vis-capture flat-lined. We were left in yearning, seeing only darkness. Concentrating any further on the cast sent tremors through the base of my neck—and the others’ too, judging by their expressions—and so we shut it down.

  Something had jammed attica’s feed. The only one intuitive to this was Leid.

  “They’ve gone to the right place,” she concluded.

  “How do you know?” asked Adrial.

  “It’s the same trick the proxies used here,” said Leid. She shrugged in annoyance of his ignorance. Her annoyance was unfair; Adrial couldn’t feel what she did. “There’s a shield—probably one that manipulates time.”

  “Hence the road,” I said, noting to let Pariah know about this later on, considering he’d been so adamant on finding out how it was maintained.

  “What are they doing there? The Fehe’zin?” asked Aela. It was a rhetorical question, though her eyes shifted to Leid in meager hope that she might have some inclination.

  “Hiding,” I said, surprising everyone. “The shield around Enigmus was what kept the Framers from knowing we’re here. Whatever Halcyon is, whatever it was intended for, keeps the Fehe’zin safe from detection. You heard it: ensconced.”

  We mulled over this in silence for a while. There weren’t any updates to the Niaphali fragment; either they weren’t aware we could no longer watch them, or any flow of information was blocked. Then, another thought crossed my mind. “How old are the Fehe’zin?”

  Leid’s expression darkened. “Too old.”

  Adrial let out an exasperated sigh. “Is no one else wondering where the fuck all the Altrians are?”

  ***

  Pariah Andosyni—;

  “We’ve been here a long time,” said Arigul, almost in a sigh. “So long that I don’t know how many Exodian years have passed since we fled Vaizera.”

  Vaizera being the name of their home, I surmised, and quickly added that to attica’s map. No longer was that dot labeled Fehe’zin Ruins.

  Arigul had led us down further into the tunnel system of Halcyon, where the walls were not decorated in murals and instead shimmered against the torchlight like emerald slabs. “We managed to escape before they turned off our gateways,” he continued. “Twenty-two of us, though nearly half died along our journey to safety.”

  “Do you know why they destroyed your home?” asked Sapphire. They being the hunters, obviously. But that was our name for them; we had no idea who they really were.

  “Not back then, but I do now.” There was a long pause from Arigul, and just when I thought he’d say no more on the matter, he continued, “They are conscripted by the Framers to search Exo’daius for cross-breeds. They have your entire world under surveillance by obelisks in cloud-cover, screening for any life.”

  That sent a shiver down my spine. “But why? And how?” And… what were cross-breeds?

  “Exo’daius is a trap in disguise of a world. It’s a prison. No one from Alpha-Insipia lives there.” Arigul regarded us with a withering gaze, as if it hurt him to impart this information. “They’ve opened a tear that only our kind can cross, as bait. Their goal is to exterminate us.”

  “Our kind?” repeated Sapphire, shaken.

  “Cross-breeds,” said Arigul. “Those with the ability to cross universes, specifically into Alpha-Insipia. Anyone capable of making it into Exo’daius is an infraction of their law.”

  “What law?” I asked.

  Arigul shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “So how do you know everything else?” demanded Zira. “Why would you live there at all if you knew?”

  Arigul’s black eyes slid to him. “Like I said, I didn’t know back then. I know now because it tells us.”

  It.

  And then I felt it.

  A throb, like a heartbeat—or a toothache—invaded my senses, growing more intense the deeper we descended. Zira and Sapphire could feel it too, as they began to grimace in discomfort. The emerald walls of the cavern were now streaked with crimson; irregularities in the rock, yet oddly resembling smears of bloody handprints. That gnawing, unsettling feeling returned full-force.

  “Ah, you feel it,” said Arigul, observing our uneasiness with a smile. “As did we. It called to us through the void, like a beacon.”

  “And… what is it?” I dared to ask.

  “I’ll show you,” he said, quickening his pace. “Just a little further now.”

  I didn’t like the way he said that. It had been quiet, regretful. Sapphire had caught his tone as well, and slowed. Zira did not slow, but clenched a fist at his side. All of our eyes settled on the back of Arigul’s head. He may have known it, too, since he was somewhat like us. His antennae twitched, but nothing else.

  And then we walked into the heart of Halcyon.

  It was vast and circular—as circular as rock formation could achieve, although this was not a natural cave system—without any torchlight yet more illuminated than any place we’d been so far. I squinted until my eyes adjusted, and then I wished they hadn’t.

  There were bodies arranged around the room, attached to the rock in some cases, others encased in large crimson geode-looking formations trapped forever in silent screams. A quick scan counted two dozen, but there were more than that. The walls had somehow swallowed some, as only gnarled, decayed limbs reached from the stone—hands, feet, even a head—and while a few corpses were unidentifiable in attica, most of them were Altrian.

  This was where the journey on the road to Halcyon had led them.

  I felt sick.

  Sapphire staggered back toward the entrance with a hand over her mouth. Zira released a scythe, a snarl curling his lips.

  But Arigul didn’t flinch and only proceeded slowly toward the center of the room. He paid no mind to the bodies, obviously having seen them trillions of times before—most likely the one who had put them here—and stopped several paces from an obelisk that looked identical to the ones at Enigmus.

  It was our obelisk.

  Except it felt different, pulsing raw energy that left my heart in my throat and made it difficult to swallow. Or breathe.

  Above the obelisk floated an electric red sphere, bobbing up and down rhythmically, each movement sending another pulse through the room. Each pulse sent a series of whispers, though they were too distorted for me to discern. It felt like warm breath against my ears, as if someone was standing right behind me.

  Arigul turned, facing our disgust and horror with a sad smile. “Don’t you understand yet? Can’t you feel its call? You are Framers. We are Framers. Those that built this place housed this secret. They protect this secret, and they protect us from those who wish to eradicate us.”

  I barely heard him, unable to see through my growing fury. “Why did you kill these people?”

  “It needs to feed,” said Arigul, matter-of-factly. “Without an energy source, its voice withers and dies. Its shield fails. We had to protect it, so it could protect us.”

  “You’re insane,” Sapphire said through clenched teeth. “You’ve expired and you don’t even know it. You sacrificed hundreds, and for what? To continue with your cave drawings?”

  Arigul’s sad smile faded. Now he was angry, defensive. “If the shield failed then the Framers would have found Halcyon and destroyed it long before you came here. It was
here to be discovered by you, their kin. You took too long to find us. This is your fault, not ours.”

  Zira actually laughed, but it was hardly in amusement. “Do you know what we did to the ones who made this place?” He asked, tilting his head and taking another step forward. His orange eyes gleamed, feral. “We killed them and threw their corpses off the Enigmus gorge, because they were vicious and crazy and only vicious and crazy beings would ever adopt and exact their charge.” He looked at me, nodding. I nodded back, a silent agreement that what was about to happen was the right thing to do. Then his callous gaze fell back on Arigul. “Thank you for preserving this proxy relic for us, but now I must relieve you from your duty. Sapphire, please put down the others while Pariah and I procure the obelisk.”

  Sapphire nodded solemnly, slipping out of the room.

  In the end, Arigul had not begged for his life, which was a noble feat—and confusing one, if he’d been willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives to preserve his own for so long. Perhaps he’d known there was no protection against us. For the Fehe’zin in Halcyon, the Framers had always been a lesser threat, whether they’d known it or not.

  It was the first time I’d released a scythe and killed someone; Zira had allowed me the honor, knowing I’d been more affected by this than him. When Arigul fell and solidified, I almost smiled. It had hurt to release my scythe, but the subsequent use of it had given me pleasure. That didn’t seem right.

  But what came next quelled my internal struggle. The stone floor liquefied around Arigul’s effigy and it sank below the surface. The obelisk flashed, its pulse intensified, and my head began to throb. Zira sank to his knees and groaned in pain. Wow.

  That was all I could think at the moment. Wow.

  The sphere above the obelisk cracked, then shattered, and the room filled with blinding light.

  I couldn’t remember what happened next.