by Jacob Holo
Seth felt the Gate weaken him further, straining his ability to draw influx. One of the archangels shut down completely and was swept away by the current. The final archangel managed to reach Seth. He hacked at it with his sword.
The weapon didn’t have much of an edge, but the archangel didn’t have much of a barrier. He chopped into the archangel’s side, and dark fluid poured out.
The archangel thrust with its sword, but its influx was so weak that the blade bounced off his mnemonic skin. Seth stabbed his sword into its chest, then twisted the blade, tearing up internal system. The archangel shuddered, fell lifelessly away, and then incinerated in a suicide explosion.
The Gate pulled Seth closer. Fierce currents smacked him against one of the three remaining anchors. The impact echoed through the seraph as a dull kinetic thunk, but he felt no pain from it. His barrier had failed completely. Chaos feedback no longer passed from the seraph’s exterior to his true body.
Seth forced himself upright, a labored motion given the weak influx leaking through him. He’d landed near the middle of the anchor’s blade-like absorption fin, which practically touched the Gate’s restless surface. With the absorption fin drawing in nearby currents, Gate forces served to hold him against the anchor.
Seth faced the Gate.
Its surface writhed like turbulent waters. Reflections of the anchors and his own seraph shimmered in the Gate. It was larger and more violent than when he’d seen it within Imayirot five years ago.
Seth marched along the absorption fin towards the Gate. It was a long limping walk, and when he reached the end, he didn’t know what to do. He stood there, staring at the Gate.
Apparently someone did have a plan. Or something.
The Gate’s surface calmed, turning mirror-like and shrinking back to a perfect sphere. The Maelstrom behind him roiled with renewed fury, blotting out the stars with a thick, shimmering curtain of energy. He was being sealed in.
The Gate shifted like mercury. It flowed down from the sphere, then straight towards him, forming a long flat path that touched the end of the anchor’s absorption fin.
The Gate’s surface bulged for a moment, and a long thin object sailed smoothly out. It floated above the mercury path, guided by unknown forces. Intricate script wove across its surface, elegant and continuous, covering every part of the object.
It was a perfect match for Veketon’s weapon except for one small section of script near the top.
Seth stared at the lance, dumbfounded. He let go of his ruined chaos sword and reached out. His fingers barely grazed the surface.
The lance awoke. Its script filled with blinding purple light, and Seth felt influx return to him. So sudden was the inrush of power that he gasped.
With the lance in his hand, the Gate no longer affected him. Full power returned to his seraph-body.
Seth felt a massive press of information from the lance, different from his neural link but no less effective. The lance read the dimensional lay of the Gate and its surrounding Maelstrom. Seth found he could quantify and qualify everything from the tiniest eddy to the strongest current. Before, the Maelstrom had been nothing but chaos, but with the lance in hand, it all seemed so very simple.
Seth let this new sense expand within his mind. He perceived the seraphs and thrones as tiny divots against the dimensional fabric. He could feel the power bridges that tied each seraph to its extra-dimensional source of energy.
A voice echoed in his mind, but not like the ones before. A single voice spoke to him, sweet and feminine, yet wise and ancient at the same time.
“Approach, Slayer of the Bane,” the woman said.
Seth turned his attention briefly to a long queue of incoming hypercast messages. Everyone from Tesset to the Choir of Aktenzek called out to him. Around him, the powerful currents of the Maelstrom blotted out the fleet actions with its rushing fury. His comrades had no way of knowing what was happening to him.
Seth perceived the dimensional machinations at work and knew this wall would be very difficult to breach without…
Without this portal lance…
Seth wondered where the name had come from. He pressed the thought aside and looked once more at the Gate to the Homeland. His path was clear. He walked across the gleaming mirror path and into the Gate itself. Its surface flowed aside and engulfed him.
Chapter 16
Ascension
Seth emerged from the Gate. He floated, suspended within a great spherical chamber that measured hundreds of kilometers across, the Gate nothing but the merest pinprick within its vastness. On one side of the chamber, a long corridor stretched away, vanishing into distant whiteness.
The corridor’s mouth measured ten kilometers square, impressive in its size and length, but what truly struck Seth was the beauty of it all. High fluted columns that dwarfed him lined the corridor, stretching from ground to ceiling. Curving silver scrollwork danced across the bases and within their fluted grooves.
The spherical chamber was decorated with similar flourishes. Curved half-columns flowed up along the walls, segmenting it like a globe. Everything was shades of white and silver with occasional accents of gold.
Seth noticed his once overwhelming pain had dulled to a distant ache. He opened his medical diagnostics and reviewed the raw data. His wounds were mending at a fantastic rate, far quicker than even the finest Aktenai medical wards could manage. He felt alive and energized.
His charred flesh turned pink and reformed. Broken bones set themselves and mended. Soon, the pain was completely gone. His i-suit’s nano-cilia retreated in the face of such swift regeneration.
Seth flew across the gargantuan Gate chamber and approached the lip of the long corridor. He landed, feeling the gentle tug of gravity.
Seth walked forward, slow and cautious. He drank in his surroundings and sensed something concealed behind the columns. The corridor extended beyond the twin rows of columns, but all that appeared to either side and at the end of the tunnel was a white void. It filled the corridor with light.
Is this the Homeland? he wondered, marching on.
Seth became aware of another change. His chaos influx was far, far higher than it should have been. Even in his seraph’s dilapidated state, he felt the power bridge pulse through him at massive levels.
Seth switched his chaos scanner to maximum gain. Even with the blinding white-void swallowing everything, he could just barely detect the influx signatures of other seraphs.
There. To either side. I am not alone.
Seth halted and waited. He thought there might be two or three other seraphs beyond the columns (or perhaps something similar, he reflected). The truth shocked him.
All at once, the columned corridor filled with hundreds of seraphs, each an elegant white machine with smooth organic curves. They spilled out from between the columns, spreading their six wings and fanning out. Their bodies were more human than humanoid, similar to the thrones, yet retaining the six wings of a seraph.
But these were not the crude biomechanical constructs of Aktenzek. These seraphs moved with the birdlike grace of living creatures. Their wings bent and flexed. Powerful muscles rippled underneath armored skin. Strange sigils decorated their bodies in interlacing patterns of black against the purity of their white armor. Shunts adorned their bodies, many stylized as unusual flowing script.
Every seraph had a white chaos frequency.
And every last one of them carried a portal lance.
Dozens of columns broke apart along curving seams, falling or rising away to unknown chambers. Beneath their ornate outer surfaces were machines that swiveled sharply, as beautiful and ornate as everything else in this strange land, but possessing the universal menace of weapons. Every cannon aimed directly at him.
If those cannons are similar to Alliance weaponry, then this is enough firepower to raze a planet.
One seraph landed in front of Seth and stepped forward. A complex pattern of black triangles traced up its forearms, legs, and al
ong its six wings. The seraph spoke into his mind, even though he detected no transmissions.
“You are required to dismount,” the seraph’s pilot said, her voice the same sweetly feminine one Seth had heard outside the Gate.
A line traced out a circle along the corridor floor just in front of Seth. When it finished outlining the circle, a section of the floor lifted up and stopped, suspended above the ground at just the right level for his true body to disembark.
Seth hesitated.
Is my life in danger? His chaos scanner passed from one white seraph to the next, cataloguing data. When finished, the result unfolded in his mind. None of these strange seraphs were as strong as he was. None were even close.
They fear me, then, Seth thought. But if they planned to kill me, they would have done so by now.
He walked up to the circular platform.
Mnemonic torso skin split and peeled away. The cockpit hatch descended, and its lip rested lightly on the wide raised disc. Seth broke his connection from the seraph and opened his eyes from within the cockpit. He licked his lips, tasting blood from earlier, and rose out of the pilot alcove.
Seth exited the cockpit with a confident stride and walked to the disc’s center. His i-suit analyzed the atmosphere and found it to be an ideal mix for humans, free of any impurities. He snapped open the seals along his neck and pulled the helmet off. After a moment of hesitation, he took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. The air tasted cool and fresh.
Two white seraphs dropped down behind him. One removed the portal lance from his seraph’s hand. The other wrapped its arms around the dilapidated machine. They flew up and away, disappearing from Seth’s sight.
“I must apologize for your treatment, but this is for the good of all,” the same woman said, addressing Seth in no way his neural link could detect. “My name is Haanuphel, and I serve the Keepers of the Gates. In your language, my name means ‘guardian.’ Since you came to us with your body and seraph injured, you perhaps do not yet realize how powerful you are in this realm. For the comfort of my companions, you must remain disarmed. We welcome you, Slayer of the Bane.”
“Is this the Homeland?” Seth asked.
“No. We are still inside the Gate between your realm and ours,” Haanuphel said. “This is our last line of defense against intruders.”
“Haanuphel, I must protest,” said a male Keeper. His voice had a slight musical quality. “This baneling is no less dangerous than the creature it killed. We cannot trust it.”
“Haanuphel, listen to our council,” said another woman. “How can we trust one of the Forsaken? It is reckless to rely on one such as him.”
“Your concerns have been voiced before and noted,” Haanuphel said. “But we must take action in these extraordinary times. We cannot sit idly by and let Veketon do as he wishes with impunity. Action is necessary. The time for debates is over.”
“You were the ones trying to communicate with me,” Seth said. “Why?”
“Our ability to observe your realm has been limited for many ages,” Haanuphel said. “The Eleven sealed the Gate away deep within the heart of a planet and shrouded it with their machines, effectively shutting us out just as we shut them out. We could not monitor your realm and all of our incursions ended in failure. These new anchors you constructed are poor imitations of Veketon’s original designs.
“Much changed when you killed the Bane. We witnessed you slay that infernal creature, just as we witnessed the Gate’s release into your realm. We have probed your realm many times since then, and the recent past has been very informative.”
“But you summoned me here,” Seth said. “Yes? That was your intent from the beginning, to call me to the Gate and allow me to pass through. Why? Why am I here?”
One of the other Keepers spoke up, another woman but with a youthful and agitated voice. “I can sense the lunatic taint on this abomination, Haanuphel. I feel sullied just being this close to him. How can you propose to trust a creature as twisted as this?”
“And yet we witnessed him kill the Bane, did we not?” Haanuphel said calmly. “Does that not make him worthy of contact? This man rid us of that evil with the assistance of the other male. It is a shame both did not respond to our summons.”
“But that one is even more dangerous!”
“We can leave that discussion for another time,” Haanuphel said. “Let us deal with the one who came.”
“I urge caution, Haanuphel,” said yet another, his voice quiet and ancient. “He is a mere child with powers far beyond any of ours. He is unruly, undisciplined. He does not think like we do, but only in the stunted terms of their short lives.”
“Your wise council is graciously accepted as always. But I must disagree with you. We have long been complacent with only keeping the way shut, never acknowledging that we might be called upon to intervene.”
Haanuphel’s seraph gazed down at Seth.
“You asked why we summoned you here. The reason is simple, wingless child. We, the Keepers of the Gates, cannot survive long in the realm you were born in. That place is anathema to us. We exiled the Aktenai to that realm not to survive, not to be redeemed, but to die. Yet your ancestors proved hardy and resilient. They adapted, growing stronger with each generation. Soon, they will return, made invincible by their hardships. We need your help, child, if the Homeland is to survive.”
“But what can I do?” Seth held his arms out to either side. “I have already been defeated by their thrones.”
“The real danger does not rest in these thrones, but in where Veketon leads his armies,” Haanuphel said. “We believe he means to return to Lunatic Ziggurat, their last bastion of strength before they were exiled. The Aktenai sealed it away from us, destroying the Gate that led to the Lunatic Realm. But we have long suspected the existence of a second Gate. There is another way to reach Lunatic Ziggurat, and we now believe that the Gate exists in your realm.”
“We should never have let them live,” a female Keeper said, young and energetic. “This only demonstrates the error of that decision. If we had killed them all and been done with it, none of this would have happened.”
“You were not there, young one,” Haanuphel said. “The decision to execute so many of our former comrades was not easily made. And you forget. Veketon was a great leader in life. His death would have martyred him and possibly led to a second war. Perhaps exile was the wrong choice, but it was the choice we all made. We must live with its consequences.”
Seth felt adrift in arguments he didn’t understand, awash in events and contexts he couldn’t grasp. He fought for something to latch onto, some key that would help him understand what the Keepers were discussing.
“What is this Lunatic Ziggurat you mentioned?” he asked.
“It is a great fortress and laboratory the Eleven constructed before their exile,” Haanuphel said. “Vierj, the Bane, was born there. Her remarkable powers were crafted there. Veketon seeks the ancient devices held safe within the Ziggurat’s walls. With the knowledge he has gained through the ages combined with devices of such terrible potential he could construct an invincible army of banes.
“You know of the pieces better than we do. We have seen only glimpses and merely surmise the rest. The technology to copy souls as he has done with his new body. The technology to create immortal vessels for those souls even in the ravages of your realm. These thrones, as he calls them. And the reawakening of Vierj’s powers in another.”
“Why is that last part so important?” Seth asked.
“Because chaos influx is necessary to power Lunatic Ziggurat, and not just any influx. It must be incredibly potent and of the right frequency. When the Eleven died, only Vierj remained with the power to activate the Ziggurat. Now that Vierj has been reawakened in this new form, there exists someone loyal to Veketon who can perform the task.”
“But you said there was a way to Lunatic Ziggurat from our universe.” Seth gestured behind him to the Gate. “And yet, there is only this
one Gate. We know of no other.”
“Are you so sure, child? Banelings are so common throughout your realm that surely another Gate must exist. Can you not think of the place? In the shadows of the Gates where the Keepers and Seekers granted their powers. Is there no such place in your realm?”
In the shadow of the Gates…
Sudden realization hit Seth.
All pilots have a single common ancestry regardless of where they now live or how many generations they are separated from that origin. Now I know why! Now it makes sense!
“Earth! The second Gate is hidden within the Earth!”
“We need your help, baneling. But we are willing to give you help in return.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wish for you to accept the mantle of a Keeper,” Haanuphel said.
Seth couldn’t believe what he was hearing. All his life, he’d known of the Keepers, these guardians of the Gate, but only in an abstract sense. Now, they stood around him, resplendent in their white seraphs, and requested he join their order. It was an honor beyond anything he had ever imagined, and he found himself falling to a knee without thought.
“I am not worthy of such an honor.” He bowed his head towards Haanuphel’s seraph.
“But, Haanuphel, he is tainted!” a Keeper protested.
“We cannot accept him!”
“To do so would make a mockery of our order. How can we accept the service of one so defiled?”
“I will hear your arguments,” Haanuphel’s voice developed a cool edge. “If, and only if, one of you volunteers to venture beyond the Gate and stop the Eleven yourself.”
Seth sensed embarrassment in the following silence. Some of the seraphs backed away, wings flexing to partially cover them from the front. They felt shame in relying on him, but they could offer no alternatives.
“No one? No one at all?” Haanuphel asked. “Then it seems I am left with no choice. What do you say to my offer, Slayer of the Bane? Will you swear the oaths of a Keeper before your future peers?”
Wings quivered amongst the assembled Keepers. The word “peers” seemed to rattle some, but Seth ignored them. Haanuphel was clearly the leader, and so she was the only person he concerned himself with.
