by Jacob Holo
“You honor me with this offer, but I cannot accept. I am already bound to Aktenzek and the Choir by my oaths.”
“Your answer does not disappoint me, baneling. It tells me I was right about you. Someone whose word is not their bond is unfit of becoming a Keeper. Despite what my fellow Keepers might say, you are worthy of our order.” The gaze of her seraph passed across the assembled Keepers. “And so I must press the question to you more forcefully. You know the strength of the foe we all face. You understand it to a degree we can only guess at. We offer you all the assistance we can give to enable its defeat. Tell me, how best will you serve your masters? By continuing blindly in their service and dying in battle? Or by renouncing your oaths, accepting our aid, and serving our needs?”
Seth looked down at the disc’s surface, his mind swirling with activity. How can I renounce my oaths to the Choir? I can’t do that. I just can’t. I can’t stop being who I am… and yet…
Seth looked up, his eyes drawn to the Keepers and their seraphs, each one of them equipped with a portal lance. Seth knew the kind of help they offered. Here in the Homeland, technology existed that could not be duplicated in his native universe. Why should he turn away from such help? Why should he blindly follow the Choir when greater and more ancient beings now courted his allegiance?
Why should I listen to those who abandoned Quennin?
The thought came suddenly to him, and Seth felt shame at the thought. The Choir was not alone in its guilt for Quennin’s exile. He also bore responsibility there, though none of them could have predicted where events would lead.
Is Quennin the stronger of us? Did her refusal of her oaths come as a result of strength and not weakness? Did my compliance with the Choir come from my own failings? Is my own foolish pride the only thing keeping me from saying yes?
“What is your answer, Slayer?” Haanuphel asked.
Seth searched his soul. There was only one question he wanted answered, only one that truly stopped him from renouncing the Choir. The sum of all their mistakes seemed evident now, and he would be a fool to continue following them.
Seth looked up, still on his knee, and asked the one question that mattered. “If I accept, will you order me to kill Quennin?”
“That one carries the Bane’s own taint, but she is not the Bane. Do you believe you can save her? Does she even wish to be saved?”
Seth’s mind recalled the Renseki, dead and dismembered. He shook the thought from his mind. Quennin was not and never had been his enemy by choice. She served the Eleven. It was that simple. If they could be defeated, then the threads of her oath would be severed.
“I must try,” he said.
“Then do you accept our offer?”
Seth paused for only the shortest of reflection. He stood up and with a loud voice said, “Here and now, with you as my witnesses, I renounce my oaths to the Choir of Aktenzek! I am one of the Forsaken no more!”
“Repeat after me, baneling,” Haanuphel said, and began to speak the oath one line at a time.
“Though my Lance be Splintered
And my Shield be Sundered
Though my Eyes be Blinded
And my Ears be Deafened
Though my Bones be Broken
And my Wings be Torn
Though my Heart be Pierced
And my Chest be Stilled
I Swear to Defend the Homeland
For I am a Keeper of the Gates!”
“I welcome you, our fellow Keeper,” Haanuphel said when the oath was complete. Weapons retracted and disappeared behind closing column façades. The Keeper seraphs dispersed, vanishing back into the white-void beyond the giant columns.
Haanuphel stepped forward, her seraph’s giant hand extending down to the disc’s surface. She rested her open palm in front of Seth.
“Come. We have much to do.”
Seth stepped forward and placed a hand on the seraph’s thumb. The giant digits closed in. Haanuphel lifted him gently off the disc, then spread her wings and took off at great speed down the Gate corridor.
Hundreds of columns flashed by as they sped down the corridor’s incredible length, and Seth realized he had not fully appreciated just how long it was. On and on it stretched, the edges vanishing in a white haze.
“What happens now?” Seth asked.
“We will repair your seraph,” Haanuphel said, speeding on. “Its design is a good one, if perversely mechanical. There is little we can do to improve it. What we can do we will. More importantly, we must remove the lunatic taint from your soul.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
Haanuphel laughed gently at this. “There is nothing to be frightened of, child. All Keepers undergo the procedure often. Our exposure to the Gates necessitates these measures. We have become very good at purging the taint over the millennia.”
The opposite end of the Gate loomed ahead: a mercurial sphere suspended within a mammoth chamber. Haanuphel flew to it. Her portal lance flashed with light, and the Gate enlarged to a size suitable for a seraph. They plunged into the Gate’s surface—
—and emerged in the Homeland.
“Oh my,” Seth whispered.
An endless sky stretched out in all directions, crisp and blue. The air tasted clean and fragrant on this side of the Gate. All around him, massive cities and suspended landmasses floated lazily through the infinite sky. He looked at one to his left. Its surface was intricate with stone and metalwork, yet on a scale that suggested incredible vastness. The surface could have been the size of an entire continent, perhaps even a planet. He found the distance impossible to judge.
More floating continents surrounded him in every direction. Some of their surfaces flowed with lush emerald green landscapes. Others sported towering cities of glass and white stone and silver. Still others, some of the smaller ones, seemed to be bases of a sort. Seth spotted dozens of seraphs flying to and from these floating fortresses.
Haanuphel headed towards one such base. Unlike the floating continents, these fortresses towered vertically, an intricate silver lattice of platforms and structures with seraphs coming and going from every level. Haanuphel closed with the fortress, then pulled up. Glass and silver and stone flashed by, and the Keeper seraph reached the fortress’s pinnacle.
An expansive city sprawled atop the Keeper fortress, its towers and parks bustling with motion. Haanuphel landed on the roof of a tower near the city’s outskirts. Seth spotted several figures standing around the roof’s perimeter, mere silhouettes to his eyes. He expected Haanuphel to set him down, but she did not.
“The procedure is not a comfortable one,” she said. “It would be best if you were unconscious for it. Do I have your permission?”
Seth glanced at the figures waiting along the roof’s perimeter and guessed at the other reason. These people feared him, despite whatever oaths he might have given.
But their fear no longer mattered. They needed him, and because of that, they would give him what he needed.
“Go ahead,” he said.
Something slammed into him from behind, short and nearly painless, a brief moment of intense pressure. Haanuphel wielded her barrier with artistic skill, and Seth’s body went slack, buoyed gently down to her seraph’s palm.
Chapter 17
Keeper of the Gates
Seth awoke naked, staring up at the sky.
He sat up and got his bearings.
The room had a decidedly medical feel to it, with beds and machines arranged about him in an orderly fashion. The beds were quite strange: large, rounded, and bowled in the center. The machines all looked overly stylized. Most seemed attached to the walls or floor, growing out of them like strange sculptures of polished stone and metal. There was no ceiling.
The walls rose high, three stories up on all sides with ledges extending out from them. Seth found no stairs or ladders or gravity lifts for transport between the levels. He was the only occupant.
Seth pulled himself out of the bed clumsily
, not accustomed to the furniture’s strange curves, and stepped onto the stone floor. He’d expected it to be cold against his bare feet, but instead found a soothing warmth rising up from it.
Seth stretched his arms and drew in a deep breath of air. He didn’t know how long he’d slept, but his body felt no grogginess or fatigue. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever feeling healthier, more alive. It was as if vitality poured into him from the very air.
Seth looked around, trying to find his i-suit. Surely the Keepers didn’t mean for him to walk around without clothes. He found a low plinth next to the bed with new clothes on top. He walked over and started dressing.
Seth stopped once he had the pants on. He picked up and looked at the jacket suspiciously. The clothing was predominantly white, but with a black pattern tracing up the sleeves. Seth held up one sleeve and recognized the complex sequence of different sized triangles locking together.
“I give you my heraldry, young Keeper,” Haanuphel said. “It is yours to carry into battle.”
Seth sensed the direction of the voice and turned around. No one was there. He slipped the jacket on and finished dressing. The clothes made him look like one of the Eleven, a thought he found unsettling.
“Is my seraph ready?” he asked.
“Yes. We have finished our repairs while you recuperated.”
“Then I should change into my i-suit.”
Haanuphel gave him a motherly laugh. “Child, you no longer need such barbaric devices. We made a few changes to your seraph and correct that horrendous flaw.”
“But how do you handle the feedback damage to your bodies?” Seth asked.
“Seraph and pilot are bound in the service of one another. For this we have more precisely attuned your seraph. Feedback through your barrier will no longer manifest physically on your true body. Your seraph will shield you from those wounds. If you wish to learn more, feel free to consult your neural link.”
“My link?” Seth hadn’t accessed his neural link since waking. He did so now and found extensive libraries of new data awaiting his perusal. This included a linguistics database. He opened the Keeper lexicon and fed the raw data into his link’s translation matrix.
Seth looked at the engraved text on the walls. He could now read it with his neural link actively translating the symbols. Wordy, almost poetic, text covered the surfaces but appeared to have little significance beyond artistry.
Seth closed his eyes and skimmed over the headings of the Keeper database: Gate locations known and suspected, countless expeditions into foreign realms, the catalogued traits of those realms, and so much more. Seth cycled his link past more raw knowledge than he could possibly absorb in a lifetime: data on seraphs, the lances, Gates, and the Homeland itself. There was history on the great war between the Keepers and a group called the Seekers, on the Exile that followed, and everything before and after.
Seth felt overwhelmed. He closed the neural link. If he needed something, he knew where to start looking.
“If you are ready, young Keeper, we shall depart.”
A wall peeled open in three directions. Seth walked outside to an intersection with building rising up on all sides. He suspected they also lacked roofs. A small orb detached itself from the stone path, flashed three times, then zipped to the left. He followed the orb past the buildings, walking along a stone path.
“Is it always this empty?” Seth asked.
“Forgive their rudeness, but they are shy around outsiders.”
“You mean they’re afraid of me.”
“That, too.”
The orb led him to a platform where Haanuphel waited within her seraph.
Next to it…
Seth gazed up at his seraph. It was whole again, a comforting sight amongst all this strangeness, but the Keepers had made some unexpected changes. His seraph still had the same black angular body, but the thin gray scars (his record of past battle damage) were no longer present.
The shunts had also been changed. Instead of the sharp-edged Aktenai characters declaring the Litany of the Mission, flowing Keeper script now adorned his seraph. It recited the Keeper’s Oath.
Seth cracked a smile. These were indeed welcome changes. His seraph looked magnificent: the physical manifestation of his new beginning. Its black armor shone in the sunlight.
“We have removed some of the cruder aspects and replaced them with items of our manufacture,” Haanuphel said. “There should be a small increase in overall performance, though nothing substantial. This was never intended to grant you the strength needed to defeat Veketon. The portal lance and knowledge we provide will serve that purpose.”
Seth noted the portal lance docked against the seraph’s right wing cluster. “I thank you. I will use it well.”
“It normally takes a Keeper some five hundred years, by your rigid method of counting, before he or she receives a portal lance. We are breaking a great many rules with you today.”
“Five hundred years?” Seth asked, stunned by the timeframe.
“And even then, the Keepers are immature striplings who show little respect for their seniors. So, you must understand, some of their rudeness stems from jealousy.”
“I see…” Seth said, though he truly didn’t. He looked around for a way to board his seraph. Again, he saw no stairs or lifts to ascend the height.
How do Keepers get around? he wondered.
“Pardon me,” Haanuphel said. “It is easy to forget the limits of your kind.”
Haanuphel lowered her seraph’s hand to the ground. Seth stepped on, and she raised him level with his seraph’s open cockpit. He entered the cockpit and sank into the alcove, letting the chamber close in around him.
Seth pushed the concerns of his small body aside, opened his eyes, and became the seraph. Power surged through his body, sudden and potent. His arterial pump jerked into motion, and his shunts ignited with light. He flared his wings out and rose off the ground.
Seth raised his arms and studied the glowing script on them. His chaos frequency had changed from purple to white.
“Does this have something to do with being in the Homeland?” Seth asked.
“No. This change is natural for someone cleansed of the lunatic taint. Just as the woman who carries the Bane’s taint will be able to command Lunatic Ziggurat, you will find yourself able to control the lance.”
“Then how can Veketon control his?”
Haanuphel somehow sent the impression of a smile, like a parent speaking to an inquisitive child. “Did I not say that we Keepers are often subjected to the taint and must be regularly purged of it? The weapon is optimized for a specific frequency, like the Eleven’s laboratory within Lunatic Ziggurat, but is not as restricted. We Keepers often operate abroad for long periods of time, returning when we can.”
“Then I will be able to wield the lance more effectively than Veketon?”
“We believe so, yes.”
Haanuphel lifted away from the Keeper fortress, spread her wings, and took off towards the Gate complex. Seth followed her to the large spherical structure, resembling a great lidless eye of silver and white stone. The iris opened, admitting the two seraphs into its interior. The Gate floated in its center, an orb of mercury that could fit in his hand.
“Use the portal lance to enlarge the Gate,” Haanuphel said. “You will find its operations very intuitive, given your strength.”
Seth reached for his portal lance. His fingers grazed the surface, and he felt the weapon’s intense pull. His barrier funneled into the lance, fueling its appetite for power. The flowing runes across its surface blazed with a blinding glow.
Seth brought it around and pointed it at the Gate. Through the lance, he probed the Gate’s structure, felt the lay of its field lines and dimensional nodules. It seemed so simple, so obvious. He touched it with the lance’s power here and there, and the Gate began to enlarge.
It reached the size Seth required. He stopped, locked the field lines in place, and then passed through
with Haanuphel.
The Gate corridor stretched ahead of him. Seth powered his way across it, and they quickly reached the opposite chamber.
“We part here, young Keeper,” Haanuphel said. “I look forward to your return.”
“Thank you. I will not fail.”
Seth turned his portal lance on the Gate at this end, teased it open, and passed through. He appeared in the Gate Maelstrom amidst a splash of mercury. The Keepers had done their work well, thickening the Maelstrom’s currents and looping them around the Gate to protect it. No Alliance or Outcast ships had penetrated.
But now I’m here, Seth thought. These defenses are no longer needed.
Seth fed power into the lance and directed it at the Gate. Its surface became turbulent and violent, and it thrashed about. Waves of force, outlined by the particles they pushed aside, smashed into the Gate anchors. At his command, the Gate tore the three remaining anchors apart.
The outer shield surrounding the Gate died away, and power poured back into its gleaming mercurial body. At last, all seven Gate anchors lay in ruins, and the Maelstrom’s currents had all been absorbed. The Gate floated within a gently expanding sea of wreckage and ice, a dot of silver only a few meters across.
Seth worked the lance again, entangling the Gate with its own forces, looping it around tighter and tighter, sealing it away. Mercury danced, breaking off into long streamers that wove and twirled about the Gate until it was lost within its own tangled knots. The Gate now looked like a tightly wound ball of silver thread.
Seth paused, wondering why he had just done that. Before, there’d been a sense of wrongness about the Gate. Now with it locked and sealed by a Keeper, Seth felt the rightness of it all. This was the way a Gate should be left, subdued and sealed beneath a Keeper’s lock.
I am a Keeper now, and the Gates are my responsibility.
