Entropy's Heralds: Pilgrims Path Book 3

by Vic Davis

  The news of the decision to risk the Hidden Node rippled like a wave throughout the surrounding encampments of followers; none expressed dissent or dismay. Those who had reservations, The Old Alchemist, Grivil and Block, most of all, made no effort to voice them. The choice was clear: either follow the captain into the Hidden Node or risk starvation trying to return to settled, civilized nodes.

  Within a cycle they had relocated to the proposed formation of flow pillars; these formed a pentagon in the bottom: a bowl of shiny flow that fascinated the Old Alchemist to no end.

  Ten volunteers were selected from the ‘rabble’, now increasingly resembling more of an organized army with each passing cycle. They were led to positions and told to settle into recovery states within the circle on either side of each jutting pillar. The remainder of the army formed up smartly into several columns placed strategically on the lip of the depression. Each would take its turn moving into the portal. They would also attempt to bring the wagons that formed their vital supply train. Voor had helped Xodd one last time to perform the miracle of calling the source down from the ether. Xodd no longer felt any exhilaration in doing so; the whole ritual now bordered on the ridiculous, garnering the contempt any huckster eventually acquires for one of its tricks or cons, the more often it is performed.

  Finally, the moment of truth came. Codex executed its dominations on the ten volunteers one by one: reluctantly at first, then with more gusto. Xodd thought to detect a perverse enjoyment visible on the creature’s form walls as it made its rounds within the circle of flow pillars. It was as if a long-deferred pleasure was being savored and relished with an alarmingly growing lack of restraint. As each pair succumbed to the domination, the pillar they guarded began to glow. Free information began to leak into or out of the ether. Xodd could not be sure of the direction. Suddenly after the last domination in the pentagonal sequence was finished, there was an incandescent glow: a sizzling, crackling, disturbance, followed by a pop; a glowing orb now manifested itself above the center of the depression at an elevation above the tops of the flow pillars; a portal formed directly beneath it.

  Voor seemed pleased. “It worked. Now we must move expeditiously, Captain Xodd.”

  Xodd hefted its heavy flow war club with one of its tendrils, then cradling it, shifted itself into its battle form. Voor chuckled. “Captain, you will not need that for your journey. Nor will you need it within the Hidden Node.”

  Xodd scowled on its form walls. “You travel your way, and I will travel mine, Pilgrim Voor.” With that Xodd hovered through the portal and disappeared.

  The transition was nothing like Xodd had experienced before. It had once commanded a cadre of Council Channelers who could create translational gates for Xodd’s use. Normally the journey was instantaneous; this time it was not. Xodd hovered forward down a seemingly endless corridor of opaque diffuse energy. On several occasions it attempted to will itself to stop but could not. Something was pulling it forward: a gentle but firm force such as one might experience during a fall from a tower or elevated platform. How long this lasted, Xodd could not discern. Without any warning the sense of motion stopped, the tunnel of light evaporated, and Xodd was deposited on a firm surface.

  Xodd had expected to experience the disorientation that such gate traversals always precipitated but nothing of the sort happened; in fact, the opposite was true: a sense of revitalization and renewal suffused Xodd’s entire being.

  “Well, that was interesting,” came the scratchy signal of the Old Alchemist. “I have never experienced anything like that in all my many cycles.”

  “Where in the Hidden Nodes are we?” signaled Block in a state of complete wonderment. “What is this place?”

  Xodd turned its transom to the source of the signals and saw the entirety of its company and indeed the entire column of its army now strung out behind it in a perfect marching order. They had not exited from a gate but rather had somehow simply materialized en masse. The node seemed to stretch out to infinity, devoid of any terrain features like a normal flowscape: sterile, vacuous, lonely.

  Malador and Groz were nearby. Both looked with concern out onto completely empty surroundings. “There is nothing here,” ventured Groz. “I can sense some strange energy in the ether. I think it is the ether.”

  “If it were not ether, we could not exist,” assured Grivil. “But this is some strange variant no doubt. In all my channeling I have never encountered anything like it. The patterns are— simply marvelous.”

  “Enough of this dawdling,” barked Xodd with a sharp rebuke. “Where is Voor and its little friend?”

  Voor’s group of Pilgrims were only now making their way to the front of the long line that was Xodd’s little army. They hovered with deliberate effort at a steady clip to reach the front as if they were late for some meeting or social engagement. The Codex trailed not far behind.

  Xodd noticed an unease beginning to set in amongst the troops. “Sergeant Block: take some of our core company members and assign them to lead smaller groups. I fear they are growing restless. We don’t want anybody wandering off or getting lost. We will need every able fighter once we reach our destination.”

  Block struggled to contain a smile on its form walls. “Already done captain. Malador and I have split them up into roughly equal platoons. Promoted them all to sergeants. I’m a Master Sergeant now. I think. Never was very good with ranks.”

  “I see,” replied Xodd uncertain whether it should be angry at the sergeant’s impudence to act on its own or impressed with its motivation and initiative. It could not hurt to encourage them perhaps. “Good work then.” The sergeant seemed to beam with pride. Malador looked equally as pleased.

  “My apologies captain,” signaled Voor as it arrived. “We thought it best to be that last through the portal and the Codex wished to dampen the harmonics and say one last goodbye.”

  “Yes, whatever. Now that we are all here. Where do we go?”

  Voor mused on the question. “Well, the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line. More importantly, it is not always the most interesting either.” Voor turned to the Codex. “Is this not so?”

  “This is indeed the case in such an unusual geometrical space like the one that we currently inhabit. I will perform the calculations,” replied Codex.

  The wait was not long. Without a signal Codex started forward and the little army followed behind. They traveled for some time; Xodd grew impatient but held its grievances in check. After what seemed like an interminable period of time hovering across the featureless plane, Voor raised a tendril and announced: “We should rest for a period and those who need to do so should refresh their source.”

  Xodd bristled at the presumption of authority but let the infraction pass. It would give its pathfinder some leeway. There were more important things to discuss. “Grivil. You are a Channeler: how long have we been marching across this emptiness?”

  The former singleton master Channeler to the Hegemon seemed to pause and taste the thin ether of the Hidden Node. “I can’t be certain how long. It’s the funniest thing but the rise and fall of the field strength is— different. In which ways, I cannot discern. But there is something else even more disturbing.”

  “And what is that?” asked Xodd annoyed at the Channeler’s inability or maybe even refusal to come straight to the point.

  “The surface that we hover upon. It is not flow. I assumed it was, but it is not.”

  “Yes, you are right,” chimed in the Old Alchemist. “I have been puzzled about this as well. Even tried to break off a piece with my little tool here, which you can see is made of flow. We have brought copious amounts of flow here with us, but there seems to be no indigenous flow here.”

  “Then what in fact, do we hover over right now?” wondered Xodd aloud.

  Codex seemed amused. “A boundary limit: as some variable approaches infinity to be more or less precise. A crude approximation of the concept but valid none the less.”
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  There followed a discussion of geometric surfaces, boundary values and other oddities in which Xodd had no interest. Block was ordered to pursue more practical matters: prolonging their supplies. The source-rations were distributed and consumed in conservative amounts; the meagre portions prompted muted complaints from the rank and file, who were still more worried about their bizarre surroundings.

  Xodd found the problem of conserving source troublesome, since they had no way to accurately measure the passage of time; they also did not know how long they would be trapped within this prison. When asked how long until the exit portal was reached, Voor was annoyingly vague with phrases like: “We shall see,” or “We must follow the Codex.” Xodd’s patience was quickly running out.

  They traveled on through the never-never land in a perfectly straight line for an indeterminate period of time, making several stops to replenish their source. Or perhaps it was a hundred. The number seemed lost in a haze. The one observable metric of fact that they possessed was the dwindling stock of their source, stored in the supply train of wagons that trailed their column.

  Suddenly Codex came to an abrupt stop; it hovered motionless as if lost in contemplation. The entire column ground to a halt and waited. Codex stirred, formed a guide tendril, and raised it into the ether; Xodd thought it must be trying to determine the correct direction, or worse yet, choose a random one. A second tendril was formed, and the same bizarre performance continued in duplicate.

  “This is ridiculous,” signaled Xodd. “Must we really put up with this whole charade? I presume that we are lost. Voor! What do you have to say?”

  Voor seemed unperturbed. “Patience, captain. The Codex is simply performing the necessary calculations. Our escape from this Hidden Node to the target node that we have chosen is— path dependent. At least that is how the Codex has described it. We were never mathematicians. But do not fear. The Codex will find the correct way.”

  “Path dependent? What does that mean? I see nothing but— well nothing. How can one navigate a featureless plane? Even Grivil can make no sense of the ether here.”

  Voor sighed. “I can’t edify you dear captain. I do not understand it myself. But if we follow the Codex precisely, we will eventually find ourselves again and at precisely the correct location to finish our journey. This is the way the geometry here works.”

  Over the course of another indeterminate amount of time, they made several more course corrections, each preceded by the same comical act on the part of Codex. Their raw source rations dwindled to an alarmingly low level.

  Sergeant Block had retreated to the rear of the column; Xodd suspected that it felt it could not keep its complaints in check and sought to avoid provoking its captain. But perhaps it wanted to keep a tight control on the supplies, which would be key to their survival if they did not leave this featureless prison soon.

  After yet another stop to consume source rations, the sergeant appeared with grim news. “Sir, I did a personnel count on a whim because I noticed the last round of source consumption was not as large as the previous one. The fact of the matter is that we have somehow lost some of our recruits: twenty-four to be precise.”

  Xodd fought back its first impulse to be unconcerned. A few soldiers wandering off would only mean more source rations for the rest of them. But this was alarming; desertion on a large scale was not acceptable. In a way, it was a rejection of Xodd. “What do you mean lost? Has no one reported observing them leave the column?”

  “Not a single sighting. Although the march is monotonous, and I must confess that I myself have been hovering forth in a stupor merely following the soldier in front of me. I’ve been focused on conserving our rations as well since we do not have a proper Quartermaster.”

  “My Lord Captain,” signaled Malador. “We should do a roll call for each of the individual squads after every stop. If this continues, we will have no soldiers left to fight when we arrive.”

  “Good idea Malador. See to it. Brief each squad leader to be on the lookout for deserters.”

  They started up again following Codex on a seemingly endless and agonizingly aimless journey. Groz had been withdrawn and reclusive since the loss of Mong to the Omega during the battle in the warehouse. Xodd began to worry that it might decide to wander off into the node in some irrational act of grief. Perhaps it would help to signal some sentiments of comfort? Xodd hovered over to the young Telzra and sought to cheer it up. “Groz, you will have your opportunity to avenge Mong. We are marching now to strike a blow against the Endarchs, who have taken everything from us both.”

  Groz signaled nothing in return. Instead, it simply locked transoms with Xodd, and the cold anger was such that Xodd nearly recoiled in response. Never before had it seen such ferocious hatred: a burning fanaticism to settle the score.

  It was fortunate that Malador had gone back to watch for deserters. Grivil and the Old Alchemist were presently arguing some arcane point about the true nature of the flow. Voor’s pilgrims were nowhere to be seen. Careful not to be overheard, Xodd signaled in the lowest amplitude that it could and still be understood. “You must stay close to me Groz. When we reach the core nodes of the council, they will no doubt have ample reserves to confront our little army even if the majority of their forces are forward fighting in the Free Cities and against the Hegemon.

  “There will most likely come a time when just you and I must make our way on our own to Instrumentality. You are a Telzra source slayer, and I am Xodd. Together we will infiltrate our way into their citadel and decohere them all.”

  Groz perked up at the idea. There was a deadly gleam visible on its form walls: something powerful and brutal lurking beneath the surface. Xodd was relieved as the Librarian seemed to actively endorse the plan. It promised to offer what help it could, even if it had no firsthand knowledge of Instrumentality or its citadel stored in its vast data banks. Defeating the Endarchs and keeping the artifact prison intact was the top priority. Xodd wondered if the Librarian would sacrifice Voor to help accomplish this goal but gave no signal to the thought. If the parasite could read such musings or sense them it gave no indication that it objected to the concept.

  “I have in mind a scenario,” continued Xodd softly. “My memories of Instrumentality and the core nodes are solid. I cannot believe otherwise. Other memories are more suspect and perplexing. Why fabricate so much detail? It seems a waste of effort. Why fabricate a story of a friendly sergeant named Groz who taught me how to fight? My creators’ motivations elude me.

  “Who was this Groz? Did you name me after it?”

  “Yes, exactly so. I trained at the academy, or perhaps it was the barracks. I can’t recall actually, which gives me cause for concern but somehow, I acquired the skills to fight, to lead and most importantly to win. Groz was a grizzled veteran and master of the war club. There were others who taught me strategy, tactics, and discipline but my favorite was Groz. We would spend countless cycles sparring in the pits. It toughened me up as well.

  “I do not remember when my lessons stopped. I recall finally being judged competent. But this is the problem that I face. My very creation is riddled with falsehoods and fabrications: some even of my own making perhaps. Lies I have told myself to cope with reality.”

  Groz seemed puzzled. “Captain, I do not understand.”

  “Nor do I fully. It would seem that I was cloned in a lab from a powerful prototype designed specifically to lead the council’s armies. Or at least that is what this parasite alleges.” Xodd paused to let the Librarian comment on the statement. There was no response. “I was under the strong impression that I was special: a type of elite aristocrat chosen by the council to do its righteous work. But I am just another inert anamorph slave like all the others. Worse, the very information of my core has been twisted and tampered with. There are lies embedded into my self-conception that are difficult if not impossible to unentangle.”

  “How does the parasite know all this?” asked Groz with a look of disbelief
on its form walls.

  “It claims to have information gathered over the course of the foundation of the council’s rise to power. Apparently, its previous owner Crovus of Limonur sought any and all knowledge about the council. It had informants in some of the core nodes around Instrumentality before they fell. It sent mercenary units to help the resistance and eventually the Hegemon. The ascent of the Endarchs was rapid but still contested. I should know. I lead armies against many of the city states: Wollt, Fomral, Izua. First, we softened them up by infiltrating their ruling councils and bureaucracies. Often, we marched in unopposed, invited to rule even. Once the Hegemon showed up, we had to fight almost every time.

  “Do you believe this?” signaled Groz earnestly.

  Xodd thought for a moment. The parasite would hear everything but what did it matter? “Yes, some of it. There is more though that is hard to believe. Claims of interdimensional or extradimensional or some type of alien super intelligences that made war with each other and fight even now. Absurd assertions about the true origin and nature of source. Imprisoned evils that are the foundation of the Endarchs’ power. Tales that seem ridiculous and fantastical. Something the old geezer might have in one of its ancient manuscripts.”

  “I don’t care what we are up against. I want to decohere every last one of them. I will follow you anywhere, captain. You are the only one in this entire world who has always been true with me. Besides Mong that is.”

  Xodd grimaced internally. The idea of explaining how Groz had come to be was unthinkable and unnecessary. Xodd vowed to be true to Groz from this point forward to the very end. Besides, thought Xodd, it was Telvar who had captured Groz’s progenitor and brought it back to Timathur. If the Mesmer had had its way, Groz would be a plaything for the Endarchs in their laboratories.

  “We will have our revenge Groz. I promise you that. Even if we have to—”

  The Codex halted just up ahead and began to vibrate. Xodd could think of no other description for the strange performance: a violent shaking of intense frequency but constrained amplitude. Voor seemed to appear from nowhere hovering near its friend with a concerned expression on its form walls.