by B L Barkey
He shook his head, refocusing on the present. He stepped up to the side of the entryway. He looked up at the red rock, hoping that the creator who had sculpted these caves would be with him now. Gen help me. He breathed one more steady breath before stepping off onto the stage.
The crowd became aware of his presence as idle chatter rose into hesitant cheers. Ammon walked up to the front of the cave mouth, waving to all but looking at none. He searched for the faces of his friends before his anxiety started to spike. He looked down at his guitar and pretended to tune it, though it was tuned already. His hands were trembling, his heart racing. He soothed them with truths. What will be, will be. All will be made right. His hands grew steady. Here we go.
All went still. The silence returned. The silence was his. And because it was his, he broke it.
V
He strummed the opening arrangement of chords. It was as pleasant and simple as a gentle wave. Oftentimes things passed through the gauntlet of complexity before they could reach final simplicity. It was with this simplicity that he played. Hard-earned. Refined.
He continued to strum, weaving the setting for his story, while carrying the crowd with him, to hear and ever-see his story. It isn’t just my story though, he thought. It’s our story.
It remained simple. His palms grew sweaty. After four cycles of the same rhythm, he changed the chord progression, setting the new tone he would use for the lyrics. He brought the lyrics to the forefront of his mind, and then, he began to speak.
He told it in verse. The chorus shifted with the moment, though he still brought them back to a familiar place from time to time. The words were vague if listened to alone. Yet once they were mixed with the resonance and emotion from his guitar, an entirely new meaning was painted. In this way, Ammon began to tell his story. Their story. A story of all people. A young story of old times.
Chapter iX
Song of Stardust
Truth manifests itself, shaping energy into matter. Justice must live for truth, and its creations, to exist.
“Intelligence is light. There are different glories, all emanating from this one central source that reaches through everything. One level of intelligence is but one level of light.
“Every light casts a shadow. This shadow, birthed of light, may be the one that finds itself larger than its creator. The shadow grows when a hardened substance approaches the light. The shadow might then rebel, only to extinguish what brought it into being. And if so, then so it would go, complete darkness would rule.”
He played a quick refrain, finding new comfort upon the stage. He looked up for but a moment, his hands unfaltering. He was not only taking them to a new place. He was going there himself. He was carrying them. He was there. He was free. They were freed. He wondered with lightning thought if he had ever been happier in his life. The exaltation of change.
“Creation began with a single word.”
The guitar strings rang out into the air, reverberating off walls and stretching to an eventual quiet. He spoke again with low resonance.
“This word was a promise, connecting all things. Such a word cannot be recited in any one language. It takes all coming together as one, just as it was in the beginning.
“However, this word can be understood, in part, with a story. This story has never been heard by ears other than one, as well as the ears of the wind itself.”
Chills crept over him. Energy surged through his veins, connecting his hands, his strings, to the air, to the crowd. He could no longer see the faces before him. It was just himself and the word. The first word ever spoken. He believed in it. He loved it. And this made it clear.
“It is time for the word to return. The first word spoken into existence echoed energy into all that we know. This single word spoke to all things. It spoke thus…”
II
A blanket of stardust spun as the purest of whites, a combination of cloak and sandstorm. It shot through the universe of space, stepping over time, leaving particles of dust behind to compress into stars and planets. Energy to matter, a fine matter.
The light was a source in and of itself, shape-shifting as it desired. It obeyed all universal laws within their own spheres, for it sprang forth from truth, and from therein its strength and purpose abided. The law of organized chaos.
Strength of life within this celestial projectile nourished the heavenly bodies, incessantly creating for them brothers and sisters. Dying stars were given new meaning, new life. Planets formed through process, layer upon layer, structured and vitalized, then floated in the expanse of space until adopted by a worthy star.
Stardust jumped through black holes to cross great expanses of space in an instant, rapidly approaching its destination. The more the light source dispersed of itself, the brighter it became. This seemed a transgression of universal law, that equivalent exchange must be had to create one thing from another. This was not so. It obeyed the highest laws. Laws forgotten within the bounds of time.
Alas, the law was obeyed as it stands. Increase as a result of lessening oneself, in order to benefit another, was just. It even had a name. It was abundantly pouring from the heart of creation. It was the secret unkempt.
The blanket of light known as Stardust came to a halt. She suspended herself between the Earth and Sun, limiting her glory as to not destroy the planet. Thoughts formed within Stardust, their pure joy increasing her luster. What a magnificent world this planet is to become, she thought. It is to be the first of her kind.
The planet was predominantly blue from water bounded. Several land masses of green and brown floated within, occasionally obscured by other forms of water called clouds.
The planet was young. Eight days in celestial time, to be exact. Yet she had already seen so much. Her birth was a miracle. The miracle of substance, space, and time all coming together at once.
Her journey from the center to this mortal realm, her current equilibrium within atmosphere, the life already existing and coexisting within her… Her destiny would be the greatest miracle of all. And still, the universal laws were fulfilled. At least, they would be, if all happened as it needed to. And that was the purpose for the expedient, universal journey of Stardust.
A beam of particles shot from Stardust towards the planet. The particles converged into a small humanoid as it approached the atmosphere. Her glass humanoid form was unaffected by the gravitational pull of the planet’s mass, as well as the viscous forces from the viscous air.
Winds and atoms, even time, moved to escape her path as she slipped into the laws and space of the sphere. Her glass figure accelerated as it approached a massive cloud of darkness.
Below the cloud was a desolate land drained of nutrients and color, all centered upon a dark abyss. So deep was the abyss that only blackness and despair could exist there. It was far darker than any black hole. It was less than a void. It was deep, saturated darkness.
Ominous clouds hovering above held evaporated nightmares and sorrows of the never-born. Tears of these damned souls rained down on the land, dehydrating and decomposing. The land surrounding the mouth of the abyss slanted in from this supernatural weathering.
Four waterfalls poured endlessly into the abyss, equidistant from one another. The terrestrial garden had already been divided from this land, to be transported and protected until the planet was worthy once more. Gen said the planet would be worthy again. After water, fire, and life. So it would be.
The waterfalls were once four rivers that fed into a place of peace. Their source was still pure, though their paths had become bleak. This dividing of the land through dark rivers was what caused the birth of darkness here, giving it great strength in a short mortal time.
The resilient fragments of light remaining were either swept away by the discreet canals of tears, or disintegrated from absence of purpose. Everything surrounding the abyss was dead. The land, the water. Even the glow that once was light. It was all lifeless.
Dim reflections of the Sun bounced from the planet only
to float about aimlessly, their joyous nature suffocated by drought. The empty husks of light were left alone, to create shadows on the borderlands. To serve the outer darkness. The outside. The source.
This was the doom that Stardust approached. It had to be done. Her glass figure moved without hesitation. As she pierced the dark cloud, her range of light was bound to just inches from her core. Time closed in with suffocating enthusiasm, becoming heavy. She pressed on, determined to reach as deep into the abyss as possible. Her speed was incredible as she passed the skies, the surface of the planet, old roots of murdered trees, and then…
She lost all motion. The abrupt halt was shattering against her will. A power held her in place, conquering the atmosphere surrounding her, bending the space to the will of darkness. Stardust rotated with slow twitches through multiple planes until she was right side up, facing one waterfall. The cascading dead-water turned to mist as it fell, condensing ever so slightly on her figure… and onto another figure. A new presence.
As the water droplets gathered, distinguished features became clear on the new form. It was also humanoid, with four limbs and a head, though it remained crouched, hiding teeth like a bear, or venom like a cobra. It had distorted features in mockery of a man, with hollow eyes that appeared deeper black than the surrounding darkness.
The figure then vanished, never having moved, yet leaving a silhouette of water droplets to rain into the abyss. Darkness compressed upon Stardust, forcing her to hug her knees in a tight ball. The glass surface of her body creaked and moaned. The depth of the abyss echoed from the outside.
A deep voice rumbled in sync with another more shrill. Stardust remained silent. Movement came only from the four waterfalls. “Why have you come? Into the depths of my power. Into the very heart of my land.”
“Nothing.. is yours,” Stardust spoke in between small breaths. “Nothing.. will be yours. You will have.. only nothing.. forever. That was your.. choice.”
“Funny. I remember it differently. We were offered the choice between sacrificing all, or gaining all. You and the others chose to sacrifice. And look at you now. Not even your glass body is your own.”
“For a time. But it will pass. In the end, you will lose all. It will be your fear that destroys you,” said Stardust.
“Ha! Fear? What have I to fear?” asked the dark one.
“You have everything to fear, my fallen brother. The truth is light.”
The darkness pressed in tighter still, tangible like a rock coffin crushing glass bones.
“You creatures of light always speak of this… truth.” The demon spat out the last word as if it were the worst curse. Something so foul even darkness found it distasteful.
“Truth is relative,” the demon continued, as if giving a lecture to lesser darklings. “To you, the truth is that your life will soon come to an end. As will the lives of all those cowards I used to call family. To me, the truth is a glorious future, one of power and pleasure. Paradise.”
“That is what blinds you, my old friend. There is but one truth. One truth that binds our whole existence. One truth that can get us where we need to go. Anyone who promises otherwise is a deceiver, and speaks not of this truth, but only of desire.”
“Look before you. Look at me,” the dark one commanded, wielding his hands in an arc.
Stardust could see it now. The dark one. The embodied demon. It appeared on her right side, as if it had been standing there the whole time, though she had only just noticed it. It was neither male nor female. It was both. It was none. It was many. It was confused. It flexed its muscles, showing definition and grandeur, but no veins. No blood. No sinews. No bones. No birth. Unreal emotion covered its face. It was just a husk, an imitation. It was missing the little details of a real body. It was difficult to pinpoint what else was missing exactly, but even without the light, it was clearly unlike the body of the creator.
And then she saw it through the truth of her own light. The demon’s hands and arms were made up of dead roots and decaying corpses stolen from infant animals. Its body appeared moist, as if still bleeding from the kill. Yet the blood from the creatures had dried. What she saw was damp, vile desire. Seeping. Spewing. Creeping.
“Look at my body,” the demon croaked. “I created it myself, the way I want it to be. And I did it without all the confining laws of that Gen who seeks to imprison us all. Look on my power. This is only the beginning.”
“Your body is a mockery, brother. It is empty,” she said with true sorrow. “Do you think I cannot see that even now? Even with all the lights turned out? It is not the same, and it will end. It must be. The laws demand it, forgotten or remembered. The ones you drag through the dirt with your choices. Your new master is not a father. He is a slaver. A puppeteer whose strings are false promises to come. You are his puppet. Brother, if you could only see the lies the greedy Morningstar has…”
“I will not have you speak of Morning like that.” The dark one closed its fist, causing Stardust to whimper. “And I am not your family. Not anymore.”
The dark voice no longer wore a mask. Its murderous intent was palpable. Stardust hung in rotating suspension. A sudden vice tightened on her throat, constricting her further. A fracture line shot down her glass body.
“He was once your brother, and mine. But he rose above. As will I,” said the dark one, looking at his open hand. “He is the greatest of us all.” His tone was reverent. Endearing. Worshipful. “He has only grown stronger since entering his dominion on this planet, within this sphere of power.”
It looked at Stardust then, its eye sockets seeming to hold pity. “Don’t you realize? Gen banished Morning and his followers to this planet, thinking to make us weaker. Why else would he do it? But it didn’t make us weaker. It made us stronger.
“Gen was wrong. He is wrong about everything.” He looked around, beholding the sight around him as if it were full of a color unseen. “Morning entered a realm that your father fears. My father dared to conquer the darkness. He has mastered it. He wields it. Just as he said he would.”
The cracking of her glass body grew louder with a crescendo of pain. It screeched as an ominous symphony of tornadoes, spun and composed of innocent screams. Her glass casing became more defined, as if clothes of purity were being torn from her. To leave her naked and bare to the ravaging darkness. The whirling sands within her showed contrasting shades as the particles spun furiously.
Pressure increased evermore, building tension within her glass body. The amount of energy in Stardust was now so concentrated within one point of time and space that the reality of the mortal realm began to distort for hundreds of miles in every direction. A new source of gravitational pull was centered on her, pulling in waterfall droplets and causing dead roots to reach out like fingers of the planet, forlorn at the happenings within its own body, within its own atmosphere, within its own breath.
“This is my land now,” the dark one declared, “and thou art unwelcome. Mindless follower. Colorless flower. Fallen star. Slave.”
Boulders broke from the walls, falling towards the center where Stardust was floating. Water from the rivers above spewed further, roaring ever louder like a den of tortured, starving lions.
“We will save the children, all of them. Except those most loyal to Gen. Like you,” said the dark one.
Stardust could not physically be constricted any further, yet the darkness continued to push with even greater fervor. Like the weight of a planet placed on an infant skull. The light within her diminished as her contrasting lights swirled frantically.
The dark one cackled. “You are weak. Your ideas and your so-called knowledge are pathetic. And most of all, your love is an ancient thing, making you vulnerable to his power. I cannot fathom why Morning has let you continue on for this long. Soon, your purpose and source will be destroyed, as will your drive to fight and exist.”
The darkness crushed in towards her centerpoint. A feeling of tangible pleasure pulsed from the dark one, as the sw
eetest victory of darkness was death to light.
Suddenly, all motion and sound ceased within the abyss. A few moments went by in the sphere of time. Stardust twitched. Once. Twice. Then she slowly unfurled with the careful, deliberate speed of eternal patience, like a blooming lily or receding tide. A variant shade reappeared within her glass body, which formed facial features in her glass skull. Her expression was one of disappointment and sorrow.
“I had hoped you would be more penitent after being cast out with the others, Lucille.”
The dark one hissed. Its right leg crumbled into dirt and fell away. The dark one stumbled, no longer able to ignore the true state of things.
The light one shed two tears at once. “It appears the opposite is true. Oh, how quickly you have forgotten. How far you have fallen.”
The dark one faltered in emotion and form as it crumbled to inanimate pieces. It then gathered its focus and parts, and reappeared within the abyss. Stardust identified how the body was forming. The demon was controlling millions of threads of dead matter, hiding them within the dead earth surrounding them.
It reached out, bringing together what looked like thousands of long worms and roots, recreating its husk of a body. Vain attempts were made to create organs and arteries. It failed with audible curses. Stardust felt pain in her heart for her estranged brother.
The dark one suspended ten feet in front of the light one, with an umbilical cord leading back to the jagged walls of the abyss. A deep disturbance occurred in the surrounding atmosphere, focusing on the light. The facial features within the light body flickered for just a moment.
The light one spoke. “You are the one who is weak. Upon your fall from light, you gave up your celestial potential for the promise of this world. You have been given an illusion of greater strength, when in fact you have fallen in more ways than one.”
The dark figure arched backward, its mouth gaping open to reveal horrible, putrid fangs. Its hands and feet stretched out from its body as if to escape.
