by Ben van Eijk
Seth needed to know how to get to this temple. Now that he knew where the knowledge of this village originated, he had a direction to go. Already Seth’s mind was starting to come up with plans on how to find it. The stories didn’t paint it as a small structure, and if it was reachable by Evodents it couldn’t be too far, considering their average stride length. The temple was sure to hold plenty of useful knowledge to assist Seth in becoming a better matter manipulator. His plan was fairly simple; he was going to ask Shaun and Linda in which general direction The Wandering Cross lay, then fly as high as he could on his concrete vessel while watching the ground for any cross shapes — or anything, really.
Linda was waiting patiently while Seth stared up at the sky, thinking about his plan to soon be soaring through the air. She cleared her throat somewhat exaggeratedly to get Seth’s attention. He hadn’t spoken for the last ten seconds and it was starting to become awkward. He shook his head as Linda’s throat clearing brought him back to ground level. He looked down at the sad couple and remembered he had also agreed to help these two somehow. Since seeing the strange mini sun-in-a-box, Seth had been thinking of how he could make something similar, but creating a star was most likely not something he could achieve yet. And what exactly would he do with the star? How was it responsible for the melding process?
Linda finally spoke.
“You know we were warned not to associate with you. They said you are, umm, cutting people in half.”
Shaun looked up slightly at hearing this. His complexion paled slightly as he thought about the poor Evodent’s life he had taken. He started instinctively to apologise, but realised he needed to continue writing sentences in the air: “Sorry, it was an accident, I honestly had no idea I was doing it,” wrote Seth. Shaun looked concerned now.
“Umm, honey, I don’t think we should be –“
“Don’t call me honey Shaun, this man is going to help both of us and we won’t have to pretend to like each other anymore — sorry again, but Derek’s confession really changed everything,” Linda snapped brashly, causing Shaun to wince a little. Seth was curious as to what the small homunculus was referring; surely she didn’t think he was going to cut them apart.
“You’re going to cut us apart!” proclaimed Linda loudly, proud of herself for coming up with such an ingenious solution.
Seth almost laughed out loud before he began writing his response in the air: “Are you kidding? Surely that has been tried before? You might die,” he wrote, with a much more serious expression on his face.
“I think it will be different. You are a barrier-builder too. I just know if you did it, it will be alright.” The small female Evodent was practically pleading with him. Seth believed her idea was based on a mistaken belief. “I am not a barrier-builder” he traced out in blue stone. “You might die! I don’t want to kill anyone”. Linda dropped to her knee, pulling Shaun down with her and she held her hand out, palm upwards. Tears were starting to well up in her eyes again.
“Please! If you cannot separate us I don’t want to live anyway! I cannot go through life this way. Why would you be so cruel?”
“I am not cruel; you are being cruel to Shaun. He melded with you!” blue stone materialised along the path Seth’s finger traced. Linda began speaking again before he had finished writing.
“Please Seth! You have to do this. It is the only way for any of us to be happy again!”
Every comment Linda made like this caused Shaun to wince slightly. Seth became angry about how tactless she was being to the Evodent that had willingly given up his freedom for his love for her. “Shut up Linda”, wrote Seth, causing Linda to gasp but she held her tongue and Seth thought quickly about what he would write. “Everything you are doing and saying now hurts Shaun. At this point it would help him more than you.”
Now Linda was looking just as depressed as Shaun. Both of them were still on their knees.
“I don’t want to live either way. Linda, you were my whole life! Without you I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said Shaun, without looking up. Linda started crying too, Seth really wanted to help them. He desperately tried to think of a solution.
“Stop!” he suddenly shouted, then reverted back to his increasingly neat blue stone handwriting: “Stop, I will try.” Linda stopped crying and looked up at Seth.
“R-really? You’ll do it? I just know it will work!”
Seth very much had his doubts, but if he was successful this may be the solution that redeemed him for Chris’ death — either that, or there would be two more dead… Shaun still looked skeptical.
“Uhhh, I don’t think this is the best idea. Maybe we should do this with a Domestic present.”
Despite Shaun saying how little he cared to live, he had made a very valid, possibly life-saving point. So the three of them decided to give it a proper try. If Linda’s plan didn’t work at least they would have someone with medical knowledge nearby to prevent too much damage. Shaun and Linda knew how to contact a Domestic easily. It took about five minutes for them to reach him: the Domestic was at home inside his dry mud hut when they found him. Apparently he had no more meldings to perform today and was free to help with this “demelding”. The Domestic had his doubts about it, which he repeatedly mentioned, but Linda’s conviction and persistence made him acquiesce. The Domestic also agreed that if this was going to happen either way, it would be better if he were present.
They assembled just outside his home, and Seth tried creating a small tornado. He hoped he wouldn’t need to create one as high as the tornado that had been slicing up the Evodent’s houses and carrying him across the barren landscape of the world. A tiny grey cone appeared about two metres above the ground in front of Seth, its surface rippling as the wind in the miniature tornado spun rapidly. A small grey line extended down towards the ground — and then the tornado disappeared.
Seth looked a little disappointed and tried again. He created five more tornados until finally he was able to maintain a stable one. Just like the wind that supported his home high above the planet’s surface, the lowest part of the tornado was invisible to the naked eye. Hopefully it was stable enough to stay spinning while Linda and Shaun passed under it. There was a lot of dust flying in the air and Seth could hear it crunching in his mouth as he brought his teeth together. Linda and Shaun were staring towards their impending separation, either from each other or from the living world. The Domestic was sweating, unnerved by the idea of the serious injuries he assumed he would soon have to attempt to repair.
Seth looked at Linda and Shaun. No one had really spoken for a while, all of them lost in their thoughts: Linda thought of her incipient freedom from Shaun, Shaun thought about his impending release from sorrow, and Seth was thinking about how much death he had seen since he started his journey.
Seth materialised a horizontal rod of dried mud about fifty centimetres long and caught it with one had. He then threw the dried mud towards the mini whirlwind; the rod was cut with a perfectly straight incision by an unseen force. Everyone gasped as they saw how easily the mud had been sliced. Shaun and Linda’s skin was quite pale to begin with, but they seemed to lose what little colour they had when they saw this and the reality of what they were about to do. However scared the freshly melded pair looked they still had the bravery to start walking forwards. Even though the tornado was tiny it was still stirring up enough wind to make it difficult for Shaun and Linda to progress. Linda held up her hand trying to shield her eyes from the dust flying through the air, the two were visibly leaning forward now. Shaun had lifted his hand up to stop the dust ruining his vision too. Seth easily maintained the small tornado — he been manipulating one at least fifty times this size the past month — but he was holding his breath wondering what would happen. The bottom half of the column of wind was invisible, but the Evodents could see where it was: a subtle dot of coning dirt appeared in the ground where the tornado bore into the ground. Everyone was now holding their breath as Linda and Shaun approached
the whirlwind.
The cut was so small no one had noticed it happening, but suddenly Shaun and Linda were moving further and further apart; it looked like it had actually worked. Blood spilled out from Linda’s fresh wound, but Shaun had very little blood to show for the mini operation that had just been performed. The Domestic quickly hopped over to Linda and began applying a dressing to her wound. Shaun attempted to help; the string of wind must have cut more into Linda’s tiny body than Shaun’s.
The Domestic stood up and looked at Seth after he had stopped Linda’s bleeding.
“I cannot believe that actually worked. You really are a barrier-builder. This has never been done before!”
Seth was completely speechless. There was no way that should have worked — if it was that easy surely the Evodents would have done this already.
“The incision was so clean it barely ruptured any veins or arteries, and maybe since their melding was so fresh they hadn’t really created any vital pathways yet. This is a huge step in Evodent technology,” said the Domestic to Seth excitedly.
Linda was now unconscious. Shaun was looking at her with concern on his face, something Seth personally could not understand, considering what Linda had been saying and doing in the past hours. The Domestic reassured Seth that she would be ok; her blood loss was minimal, and Evodent red blood cell production was very efficient. Soon she would be back to her pale green colour once more. Shaun looked relieved that she was going to be ok. Seth thought that if he was Shaun, he would be happy to see her gone — but then, he had never loved anyone so much that he wanted to be physically attached to them for the rest of his life. Shaun was going to have some trouble adjusting, Seth was sure, but it would certainly be much easier to move on without Linda attached to him.
Chapter 12
Seth was back in the air, cruising above the empty dirt landscape that was now his home. He had traced a very specific course as he had left the network of villages where the Evodents resided. Despite the tragic instances that occurred while he was there (and his multiple run-ins with the authorities) he was a little sorry to go. The people of Stique had mixed feelings about Seth now too. He had killed someone — which was made public — and had refused to accept the normal punishment — which was also made public. But he had ended up greatly helping Evodent society; introducing demelding meant great changes for the Evodents. Some people did not even want to make eye contact with a murderer, while other Stique citizens wanted to shake his hand for allowing them to finally separate from their irritating significant others.
It felt like a hollow victory; despite Seth’s inexperience with the phenomenon of love, he understood that someone could make a mistake with his discovery, but it seemed like even the possibility of demelding had gotten a lot of Evodents excited. Now there would be less love within the Evodent society. Seth was happy to provide them with the choice, however. Melding was already quite a drastic move, even without being permanent; he completely understood any Evodents that would want to return to unipedal locomotion.
Linda had completely lost her hearing during the demelding, while Shaun’s was greatly reduced, but he was still able to communicate the old-fashioned way. Shaun told Seth the correct heading to find The Wandering Cross and Seth returned to his segment to begin his flight.
The small tornado he had summoned (nicknamed ‘The Demelder’) maintained itself easily without Seth: the atoms he had agitated to spin the tiny tornado stayed that way, even when he wasn’t actively using his matter manipulation. After seeing the small star the Domestic was using, Seth was sure he could find a way to make his miniature whirlwind permanent. The answer was surprisingly simple: just leave it alone. Whenever Seth had docked his concrete ship he had always consciously willed the whirlwind to be still. He was always afraid that if he did let the tornado continue without his supervision, his segment would be smashed into the ground.
Seth flew along at a brisk pace, making sure that there was nothing below him that could be accidentally cut in half. While travelling, he tried to think of a new method of flying that stopped him from having to worry about such problems. He travelled east; according to Shaun he would find the Temple in this direction, if it wasn’t destroyed by the shockwave. Seth assumed he would at the very least find some remains, since it was supposed to be a creation from Jacobus and Iselle —- or Faust and Trikala. Either way, it was definitely made by someone with extremely impressive matter manipulation skills.
The sky was clear and blue; just a few wisps of condensed water could be seen far off in the distance. The light brown dirt beneath Seth’s segment stretched out beyond the horizon, occasionally broken up with the grey colour of stone. There seemed to be tiny dots of green scattered across the ground nowadays. The world was recovering from the great shockwave that had decimated its surface. Seth thought about how resilient a planet must be. Just one month ago there was no trace of life anywhere apart from the Evodents, yet small signs of life poked through the dusty brown soil everywhere. Right now the regolith was mainly inert soil, but where there was the even slightest bit of nutrition to be found, life grabbed hold and exploited it to its full advantage.
Red had told Seth that a planet should be treated as a living thing. Like everything, it was also made up of smaller parts, and a planet being so monumental in size made the smaller parts that contrived the gigantic ball of life much more apparent. Even Seth played a role in the make-up of the planet he was now floating above. If only his role were removed, it would not be so detrimental; like on the planets making up the elementals, one person less would not affect the ultimate outcome. His mind drifted back to the cyclical logic he had ascertained about the universe while existing at sub-atomic size. The particles making up the world of Estever, the sub-atoms, seemed to have a different mode of existence, more like the orbit of a system of planets.
When Seth was on Estever, he found the sub-atoms were not susceptible to any kind of matter manipulation. Evidently, something about the planet-beings, the elementals, was providing him with his power. He had also noticed the strange strands of lightning connecting the enormous atoms where the elementals lived; its shape reminded him of how certain columns of matter would manifest themselves. Maybe it was that lightning, bonding the atoms together, which was the main source of Seth’s power… although it did not explain why the molten metal essence he had captured earlier in his adventure had influenced his physical size. Now, after seeing a tiny star kept in a small box by strange creatures, Seth realised there was a lot about matter manipulation he didn’t understand. Red had said that Jacobus and Iselle had referred to their powers as element binding; maybe this was because of the role the elementals played in matter manipulation. Seth still insisted on calling it matter manipulation, although he was beginning to believe that element binding might actually be a more accurate term... something with ‘elements’ anyway. Maybe his discoveries at The Wandering Cross would reveal a decisive reason to call it ‘element binding’ — but Seth decided there were more important things to worry about.
The people now floating in Seth’s old home city of Swevender were probably struggling by now. Everyone was able to fit on the central segment without too much trouble, but without their homes and gardens, they would have to hope that their surplus harvests would last long enough. They could even start growing new vegetables and fruit if they wanted, but the livestock had most likely floated down to the surface, trapped on their segments. They were probably starving, or lost in the endless dirt sea. Seth had heard stories of people going on adventures before, although they mostly were confined to a setting similar to Swevender. The people there had never seen any other way to exist, so their creativity was hindered somewhat. Seth knew now that they had all been greatly romanticised; his journey was filled with death and sadness. Some parts had been great, yes, but his travels had given him memories he would love to instantly forget. It was almost overwhelming how much bigger the world was than just Swevender, and discovering the good also m
eant discovering the bad.
Seth still liked to use the waterscope while standing at the bow of his floating concrete ship. As usual, it revealed a featureless dirt plain as far as he could see. Seth scanned carefully from left to right. Sometimes he would pull the water scope away from his eye to inspect the landscape for any anomalies that his tunnel vision might have missed. Seth was frequently disappointed.
He had expected the distance an Evodent could travel on foot wouldn’t be any further than he could fly in a day, but the blue sky had started to darken and Seth was feeling tired. He felt that his tornado was descending slowly as he gradually lost the focus required to maintain his ship’s normal altitude. Seth decided he should give the unipedal creatures a bit more credit and get some rest. He had not even been travelling a full day and he was already feeling tired — and this pilgrimage was referred to as long and perilous. Seth performed his usual evening rituals. He sat down just outside the small rainforest he still liked to maintain manually. His seat was manipulated from vines and was surprisingly soft. With a full belly, Seth’s neck let his head fall limply forward… his body jerked suddenly as he woke from his half-second slumber. He stood up and made his way to bed, the ship docked on its usual column of dirt. His mind insisted on showing him the usual disturbing images that would keep him awake for the next hour while he lay in bed.
***
The next morning brought another sunny, cloudless day. Seth had a sudden epiphany as he got out of bed: he could try his water propeller to elevate his segment to Swevender’s altitude. It was strange that he hadn’t thought of it before, but Seth had been so wrapped up in his new abilities to control new kinds of matter he had forgotten the obvious solution. He quickly ate some sweet fruits for breakfast, then walked to the edge of his segment. He inspected the landscape further east through his water scope and saw a complete lack of anything significant. It was time to elevate his home higher than he ever had before. The solid column of dirt beneath his segment started to crumble as spinning blades of water manifested themselves inside of it and began spinning faster and faster. The blades had begun poking out of the cylinder of dirt but were already spinning so fast they were just a blur. Seth dramatically raised both his hands, palms up, as he willed his segment skywards. He wondered exactly why he needed to pose like that — there was no one around to watch him, and even without his dramatic posture what he was doing would have impressed onlookers anyway. Slowly, the small specks of green in the dirt below dwindled away and became part of the brown ground as the segment rose.
