Chapter 6: All Skies Afire
With a sound like breaking glass the churning void surrounding Garin shattered, and he found himself once again in the light. A sickly, nauseous feeling flooded through him, and he dropped to his knees, breathing deeply as a red haze clouded his vision. After a few moments the feeling subsided and he rose again to his feet. He stood at the top of a high hill, surrounded by the shattered remains of an ancient kinetorium that overlooked the dull green waters of a long-dead sea. An ancient highway led down the hill a short distance before curving around behind it in a long spiral, its surface fractured by the combined weight of millennia.
Is this Sha-Ka-Ri?
He had traversed the first four conduits easily. Connecting important worlds of the Conclave, these were major transit arteries with only a minimum of gravitic turbulence. He had not even needed to emerge from the kinetoria at each stop, as the next gate often lay right beside the one from which he had emerged. Vanth the golden, Shem-tov of the four moons, Moragoor of the emerald mountains; once he would have reveled in the opportunity to explore each, and if it wasn’t for the haste urged upon him by Kyr he would have done so now. But his mission was clear. He did not know how much time he had before the entrance to the Sovereign Road was lost. Each moment counted.
The next three worlds had much lower populations, giving them the luxury of building their kinetoria at great distances from the main cities. Instead of the ornate gravitic containment domes of emerald and brass needed on the fully urbanized worlds, these were much simpler structures. Bowl-shaped slopes of unadorned imagnite opened heavenward, surrounding a ring of delicate buttresses that supported the central obsidian sphere like white hands holding out an offering. This open architecture afforded a marvelous view of the skies, and on each world Garin had stolen what upward glances his haste would allow.
Shar-apsu had skies of amber in which great swarms of golden-scaled winged wyrms flew among the clouds. The skies of Borag were filled with the planet’s vast silver ring system, an impossible arch of metallic brightness that soared from horizon to horizon. Each world called out for Garin to stay, inviting him to explore its particular richness, but he resolutely maintained his pace.
Despite the openness of the architecture, finding the next three conduits had been difficult. These were anchored by smaller laridian rings set in out of the way locations within the Kinetoria, places far away from the central sphere. Traversing those conduits had been an exercise in fortitude, as the gravitic turbulence increased the further he traveled from the Conclave’s heart. Each transit had left him dizzy and nauseous, a feeling that had often only begun to dissipate before he reached the next conduit.
But the final passage had been the worst. After what seemed like hours of searching he had at last found the anchor point in a utility sub-basement of the Xothian kinetorium. The laridian ring was cracked, in some places so badly that the glowing red mesh of spinning neutronium rings powering the device’s field was visible. The mouth of the conduit was partially obscured by tidal distortions and the telltale jerking movements of advanced gravitic slippage. Unsure that this last gate was traversable by living things, Garin had stared for long moments into the erratically shifting vortex before finally plunging in. It had been, but just barely.
A hot, burning, wind blew against his face, bringing with it the mingled taste of salt and dust. Unsure where to go next, Garin stared out over the lifeless waters of the sea. As he watched their shining green surface pulsing and churning like iridescent poison, something about them began to seem unsettlingly familiar. Then a wave of cold fear surged through his body as understanding dawned. Heart pounding, Garin raised his eyes to the heavens and saw the pulsing viridian wall of the entropy clouds spanning the skies from horizon to horizon. They seemed almost close enough to touch.
I’m standing on a condemned world, thought Garin, and he shivered despite the heat.
“You have arrived. Good.”
The voice startled Garin, and he turned to see Kyr standing beside the laridian ring. Garin opened his mouth to speak, but Kyr silenced him with a gesture.
“I know that there is much you wish to know, but believe me when I tell you that now is not the time for such knowledge. You have no doubt seen the skies of this place. This world is but hours from being consumed. There is no time to…”
Suddenly Kyr was cut off by a shrieking sound that came from behind Garin, a sound like the wailing of a condemned soul. Whipping his head around, Garin’s eyes widened in terror as a serpentine coil of flaring green light uncoiled from the main mass of the entropy clouds and shrieked downward toward the sea. It struck like the tail of a scorpion, a spear of violent force that at once collapsed the sea toward it and blasted it explosively away in a hurricane of vaporized water and rock. Waves churned, and a fountain of water, steam, and magma spurted into the atmosphere out of the void created by the entropy streamer. The clouds above seemed to boil with greater ferocity, as if driven by an unseen purpose, and Garin could not escape the sense that they were closer than they had been.
“He knows,” said Kyr grimly. “He will try to keep us from the gate. We can afford to wait no longer.”
Kyr strode from the Kinetorium, following the ancient road as it curled around the bulk of the great hill. He did not run, but Garin quickly found it difficult to keep up with his pace and soon was out of breath. As they rounded the hill a ruined city, vast and ancient, came into view. It only took Garin moments to realize that this was the city of his dreams. Seconds later another violent shriek sounded somewhere behind him and Garin turned to see the tail of another entropy streamer as it crashed into the sea. A tremor shuddered through the rocks beneath him, as if the streamer were burrowing through the planet’s crust like a worm. Garin looked forward and saw that Kyr was already quite far down the hill; his distraction had already cost him needed time. Breaking into a sprint, Garin finally caught up to the old man as he reached the foot of the hill and together they entered the outskirts of the city.
Abandoned in an age long past, its buildings were gutted shells of shattered glass and twisted steel. Strange, alien black vines clung to the sides of the ruins, their tips covered in curious yellow flowers of a type that Garin had never seen before. They moved further and further into the city’s heart, Kyr blazing a path through the twisting streets and alleys without a moment’s hesitation. The ruins grew taller and closer together, seeming to intertwine into a soaring jungle of twisted steel, fractured concrete, and jagged shadow. Twice more, Garin heard the shrieking wail of entropy streamers in the distance behind him, but he did not stop again. Then a deep, low boom sounded behind them, followed by an actinic flash of blue light. Suddenly Garin felt an odd lurching sensation, as if the planet was shuddering on its axis. Kyr stopped and, without a word, pointed behind them in the direction of the now-distant hill from whence they had come. Garin looked, and saw the fractured remains of the hill transfixed by a writhing spear of wicked green flame. A slowly expanding shell of shadowy gravitic distortion surrounded the fire, lit from within by flashing sparks of deep blue.
“He has destroyed the anchoring ring,” said Kyr, “No time is left to us. We must run! Now!”
Garin understood the implications of Kyr’s words. Without the laridian ring to anchor Sha-Ka-Ri to the Conclave’s gravitic network, the planet would be cast adrift into the entropy clouds. He needed no further urging.
Garin broke out into a run, following Kyr through the twisting boulevards and alleys as the world continued to shudder and lurch around them. More than once Garin fell to his knees as the ground shook with tremors, each one stronger than the last. Above, flashes of viridian light burst and crackled like diseased meteors, and a dull wailing sound seemed to hover at the verge of hearing.
Then the fire-rain began, blazing orbs of flaring green light that fell from the boiling sky like hailstones. Their very touch negated any matter they contacted, explosively driving its subatomic components apart at superlu
minal speed. For a seeming eternity Garin twisted and turned, dodging cracked pavement, crumbing ruins, and the fiery exhalations of the angry heavens as he struggled to follow Kyr. Then the narrow confines of the city streets opened into a wide plaza surrounded by crumbling pillars and walls of decayed masonry that somehow seemed even more ancient than the glass and steel ruins they had left behind. At the far side of the square stood a soaring edifice of brick and dressed stone crowned by two shattered domes of blue tile that flashed a pale turquoise in the surging green light. The plaza was strangely free of the fiery rain, though the boiling energies overhead promised that this was at best a short reprieve.
Without breaking stride, Kyr ran across the plaza and entered the building through an arched gateway. Garin followed close behind, and soon they had threaded their way through the dark entrance foyer and stood in a great hall. Here soaring pillars framed intricately carved statues and ornate frescoes, the fractured images depicting ancient men with golden light resting upon their heads, their hands raised in silent benediction. At the end of the hall, a yawning archway opened into a vast rotunda that flickered with green light. Within this rotunda stood a smaller structure of carved stone festooned with gold and silver, its architecture strangely different from the greater building. A single, low door opened in its side, and moments later Kyr and Garin stood before that door, gazing at a weathered slab of cold stone that lay within. Kyr studied the slab intently for a moment, his eyes narrowed in thought, and then looked up through the shattered dome at the whirling maelstrom of destruction seething above. A single tear trickled down his face.
Garin stretched out his hand, touching Kyr’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort. He did not know the source of Kyr’s emotion, and could only surmise that some event of great import in his life had transpired here.
But surely this ancient city, this even more ancient building, came from eras immeasurably older than Kyr…
As Garin pondered this his mind was filled with a mixture of fear and wonder, and he realized how very little he knew of the one whom he had followed to this place.
Then Kyr stepped forward, entered the structure and stood before the slab of stone.
“At this site,” he said sternly, “millennia ago, a great tragedy took place that brought hope to the cosmos. Here is the center of all worlds, the beginning of all true roads. The entranceway to the Sovereign Road lies before you. Now I ask you, son of man, do you trust me?”
Garin opened his mouth to speak and then hesitated as fear rose within him. Could he trust Kyr? How could he be certain? Then again, Kyr seemed to know so much about him. He had followed him this far. Could he even turn back if he wanted to? Another violent tremor shook the ground, and Garin jumped as tiles the size of dinner plates plummeted to the floor from the shattered dome above with an echoing crash. He had no choice, he had to decide now.
“I think so, yes,” he said, his voice quavering with uncertainly.
Kyr stared at him for a moment, his eyes transfixing him with their piercing gaze as if he was somehow looking into the depths of Garin’s soul. Then he nodded.
“It is enough.”
Turning swiftly, Kyr knelt on the cold floor of the chamber, his hands raised skyward. Then he took a deep breath, opened his mouth wide, and began to sing.
The song erupted from his throat like a golden wave, its harmonies telling of a gleaming time long past when the morning stars cried out for joy and newborn worlds danced in their light. It rose in a vast crescendo, its power filling the low structure in which Kyr knelt with an almost palpable presence. Then the song surged outward in a great rush, bursting the structure apart before soaring upward into the tortured skies above the shattered dome of the rotunda. As the song ascended the light filtering downward through the shattered dome changed, the once furious green hue replaced with a soft silver gleam. In wonder Garin looked up and saw a velvet sky strewn with stars, nebulae, and wheeling galaxies. The beauty of the sight smote Garin to the core, and he found himself on his knees weeping for what the worlds had lost. As in his dream, that sky descended around him in a soft silver rain of starlight and blackness, its substance changing and hardening into a pavement for him to walk on, the Sovereign Road.
Garin’s eyes followed the road as it stretched toward the walls of the rotunda, and he realized that he could still see the road even when it traveled beyond them. It was as if the road was somehow more real than the matter of the buildings around him.
“Take my hand, young one, if you truly trust me,” said Kyr as he rose to his feet. “If we hesitate longer, we will yet be lost. Only on the road will we be shielded from the entropy storms. Now run! Sha-Ka-Ri is lost!”
As if to punctuate his words the planet shuddered. Great cracks shivered through the stone of the floor, and a roar followed by a flash of green light blasted downward through the broken dome. Garin risked a quick glance upward. His eyes widened as he saw the death of worlds bearing down upon them, and without hesitation he took Kyr’s hand and set off down the road.
As he approached the wall of the rotunda his body passed through it as if the stones were nothing but mist. With each step the tumult lessened. Around him the endless rain of green fire continued, dissolving ruins, stones, and the very air in its relentless onslaught, yet here he was safe, and the streamers of green fire seemed insubstantial as they passed through the flesh of his hands.
The road continued to double back, rising swiftly into the skies until the entire planet could be seen. Here the true size of the entropy clouds became apparent, a vast wall of destruction larger than a million stars. He watched as Sha-Ka-Ri was inexorably drawn into the chaos, the planet slowly losing cohesion as its base matter dissolved.
“The death of a world is a thing of great sorrow,” said Kyr as great tears rolled down his face. “It was never meant to be this way, you know. He tried with all his might to come against us this time.”
“Who?” Garin asked. “Who is it that you’re talking about?”
“The Shadow,” said Kyr. He paused for a moment before adding, “if only he would come home…”
A few steps more down the road and the whole of the material cosmos receded from them like an ebbing tide. Soon Garin sensed the crossing of an unseen gate, a portal in some vast shell that surrounded the universe. Then they were through into the space beyond, climbing an endless switchback on a mountain made of stars and darkness, the folded surface of penultimate time and space.
The road was sometimes difficult to see against this backdrop, its course only discernible by the marked contrast between the dimmer red stars that formed the bulk of its substance and the brighter blue and white stars of the mountain itself. After a time that seemed both longer than an aeon and shorter than the pause between heartbeats a crystal sphere appeared in the distance. With each step it grew exponentially larger, until at last its gleaming walls loomed before them like ramparts of diamond.
One final step and they were through. The walls fell away, and all around them was strangeness.
Book Two: The World, and the Seed of Its Desecration…
Chapter 7: Pawns of the Emptiness
The Omegahedron soared above the city of Scintillus. Grown from a single crystal of perfect obsidian blackness, the immense tower stabbed skyward from the surface of Latis like a sacrificial blade, its tip pointed at the three suns as if poised to eviscerate the heart of the cosmos. Within its highest pinnacle stood the throne room of the Five Heirophants, the rulers of the Conclave of Ten Thousand Worlds. Each throne was carved from a single gem, its color chosen to reflect the identity of the hierophant for which it had been made.
The thrones were arranged in a wide circle further surrounded by the ring of angular black pillars that supported the obsidian dome crowning the throne room. The pillars, floors, and walls were intricately interwoven with crystalline emission fibers extending from the Omegahedron’s forty core infochrysts, transforming each surface into a three-dimensional display that could, at
a gesture, spring to life with any sort of information or imagery that the Heirophants needed for their deliberations. Within the ring of thrones stood a low mass of amethyst crystal that shone with a strange writhing light, as if a network of living fire burned just beneath its surface. This was the Great Psychochryst, a device empowered by the Conclave noeticists with the ability to instantly read and interpret the movements, expression, and thoughts of those who occupied the thrones, transferring them to the infochrysts below.
Gedron had always hated the psychochryst. It somehow left him feeling violated whenever he used it, as if he could not keep even the smallest thought to himself. But such was the price of being a hierophant.
With swift strides Gedron entered the chamber, dressed in the full regalia of a High Gravitist. His chest was adorned with a breastplate of blue crystal, shaped like a manifold of hyperbolic curvature, the symbolic representation of the spacetime of the Conclave. His arms and legs were swathed in deep purple robes, and on his head sat the Miter of Hawking surrounded by a clear crystal torus, a stylized model of a laridian ring. He ascended a throne of purest sapphire carved with the myriad equations that defined the force of gravity and all its perturbations.
Named after the fundamental force of gravity, the High Gravitist was responsible for the laridian ring system that made interworld transportation possible, bound the worlds of the Conclave together in one immense yet stable system of interlocking orbits, and allowed for large-scale planetary engineering. Given the importance of the laridian ring system, the High Gravitist was often seen as the most powerful member of the Conclave, and Gedron had longed for the position ever since he learned of his particular gifting in the gravitic sciences as a youth. The ladder of power and success in the Conclave was both high and broad; all citizens could aspire to the highest office, but few had the intellect, skill, and tenacity to ascend its full length.
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