by Tyler Vance
As soon as he tried, Sheikoh could vividly see the Transcendental Artifacts in his mind’s eye. The rune on the Codex’s black leather cover was as sharp as the morning’s first rays of sunrise. He could even make out the little scuff marks along the leather spine and the wrinkled, yellowed pages that made the book seem wider than it was with perfect clarity that even the best memory couldn’t match.
Resting on top of the grizzled tome lay the softly-beaten, silver amulet that Dream had given him. At the chain’s end, the runed pendant hung over the side of the black tome. Sheikoh could see the otherworldly inscription so clearly, that he could have copied each of its individual runes winding around the circle if only he’d had a piece of paper. It was like they were right there in front of him. Sheikoh connected the amulet to the codex inside of his mind.
He and Emili were jerked from the empty white room so fast that, for an instant, Sheikoh thought that his body had been stretched by the speed. He stared at the beautiful face of the sleeping Emili as the two rocketed through the middle of a wild vortex. The rushing storm felt like the kiss of a gentle breeze to the teenager as he flew through the air. The two landed dizzily, knocking up a cloud of dust.
Sheikoh lay on the ground, breathing in the familiar night air. He could feel grass beneath his back as he just lay peacefully in the moment. Strangely, Sheikoh could tell that he wasn’t lying in Sanatous’s house. After everything that had happened though, he wouldn’t have been surprised to have fallen into the middle of the Great Ocean. He opened his eyes and looked around with a feeling of contentment.
He and Emili were in their walled garden, the very one the two of them used to eat lunch together in. The vine crept up the wooden walls around them and nuzzled Sheikoh and Emili in a cocoon of vegetation. The few flower speckled shrubberies slept around a single gnarled tree. The thin grass glistened with dew drops in the moonlight, and even the weeds had broken their fall. Sheikoh lay there for a few moments, gazing at the twinkling stars dotting the black sky above. It looked more beautiful than he’d remembered when he’d been trapped inside the strange Transcendental Plane. Beside him he felt Emili climbing to her feet, so he turned his head over to her.
“Emi, thank god! You’ll never believe…” Sheikoh began before trailing off.
‘No… this can’t be happening…’ Sheikoh mouthed, horrified.
He flicked up onto his feet and flipped back, landing with cat-like silence. Sheikoh stared at Emili’s eyes with numb stupefaction all over his face. Sheikoh watched them leap and dance with a sense of bewilderment. Emili’s eyes flared with the exact same color-rimmed, white flames that had in the Celestial Plane.
“Khryzt..?”
“I apologize for this deception. I need to borrow the girl’s body for a short time,” the Sycrarian told Sheikoh in hard double-voice.
Sheikoh’s muscles blazed with vengeance. His face hardened with a hatred that Indigo would have been proud of. The teenager clenched his fists and advanced on the loathsome creature possessing Emili, but when Sheikoh was close enough to make out her freckles, he hesitated. He didn’t know if he had it in him to attack the body of the girl he loved, even though she was already dead. He gritted his teeth and glared at the Sycrarian’s flaming eyes.
‘Goes to show,’ Sheikoh thought to himself bitterly. ‘When something seems too good to be true, that’s because it is.’
He opened his mouth furiously.
“You piece of sh-“
Emili suddenly moved so fast that her body disappeared into a scream of speed. The teenager felt a bony fist slam deep into the muscles of his half-tensed stomach. The force launched an overwhelmed Sheikoh through the air. His body blasted through the wood of the vine-bound, garden wall and slammed into hard brick. Flying splinters pelted him like hail as he lay there groggily, trying to stay conscious. He’d never in his life been hit so hard.
Before Sheikoh’s vision faded to black, he saw the Sycrarian bend over and pick something up. Then, Khryzt disappeared into the night without a trace. The next second, Sheikoh’s head dropped to his chest. He closed his eyes to the oblivion of unconsciousness.
Chapter 15
Hope in Hell
There was a buzzing against Sheikoh’s leg. He swatted at it for a few seconds, half convinced that a purmynx was pawing through his pocket. Then this his instincts kicked in. Sheikoh’s eyes flicked open and he rolled backwards, away from any possible thieves. He flipped into a crouch, rubbing the sharp pain in his ribs. His bleary, black eyes scanned the night for a tense moment, but he quickly realized that it was all clear. The buzzing was coming from his cellpad. In light of everything that’d happened, Sheikoh decided to let the call go. He surveyed the devastation around him.
A gaping hole ripped the wood of the garden’s wall. Splinters jagged an outline around it and tattered vines reached outwards like tongues. The damage was easily apparent even under the light of the full moon. Broken planks of wood and a mess of leaves rested on the piece of dirty road he’d crashed into. Around him, sprigs of plant curled into themselves forlornly. He could see almost all of the flowers and trees through the window that his body had made.
The memory of what’d happened slammed through Sheikoh’s thoughts. The realization that Emili’d possessed body was running around seemed to punch out his breath all over again. Sheikoh had a writhing feeling in his chest that he didn’t like it at all, but underneath the horror and disgust was the fragile hope that Emili might really be alive somewhere deep inside of her body.
His hand crept up to the crux of his neck to finger the cold silver of the Transcendental Amulet, and a shiver traced its way down Sheikoh’s spine. He wrapped a fist around the medallion at the end of that silver chain with a chest full of dread. If the amulet had become solid upon returning to the real world then…
Where was that book?
Sheikoh’s chest sank to his knees. He staggered to his feet and began rifling through the piles of broken wood, but he didn’t really expect to find it here. Khryzt had bent Emili’s body down to pick something up just before he’d lost consciousness. It looked like he knew what the demon was getting. He scanned the dark street without hope, suffocated by the knowledge of who exactly had the Transcendental Codex.
The shock that Khryzt could probably do even more than before lurched through him. The creature inside Emili was probably studying up spells as he stood there, growing deadlier by the moment. His ribs throbbed with pain as if to give its assent to his conjecture.
The punch had blown him through a solid wood wall. Whatever magic the amulet dissipated, it hadn’t touched Emili’s fist. Khryzt had somehow made her inhumanly strong.
Sheikoh didn’t even want to think about what Khryzt could do with whatever dark secrets were hidden in the codex. He turned, kicked a plank out of his way and set off on an aimless trek through the night shadowed streets. His memories ran through everything that had happened to him. He couldn’t believe that just earlier this night, he’d paid a visit to the Celestial Randel Sanatous. So much had happened since that first meeting with Dream.
“I was so close,” Sheikoh cursed bitterly. “Everything would have been perfect again.”
He stared at his shaking hands, riddled with splinters, for a second and then slammed his left fist onto the concrete wall to the side of him. He did it again, trying to hammer some sense into the world. His knuckle split and a trickle of blood wound down one of his fingers. He relaxed his fist and stared at the ruby line for a moment, thinking.
Sheikoh knew that Emili was better off dead then spending her time as the face of some kind of monster. He knew that she would’ve begged him to stop her rampaging body, but the words ‘better off dead’ chilled the teenager to his core. He couldn’t imagine being the one to…
Sheikoh shuddered off the unthinkable thought.
Emili had always made him feel warm and safe, but Khryzt made him feel the exact opposite. Though he’d acted amenable enough when talking to the creature
in the Transcendental Plane, staring into the being’s white flame eyes and hearing its ominous alien double-tone… He couldn’t help feeling cold and wary.
The thought was a peculiar echo of what Emili had always thought of Silence. Emili hadn’t batted an eyelash when he stole, but the second he or Dorothi mentioned ‘Silence’ her face, usually so bright and cheerful, would cloud over with storm. Sheikoh hadn’t understood at the time but he thought that he finally did.
Sheikoh had worn his face over both a dark side and a light side. It was just like how Khryzt, even covered in Emili’s skin, didn’t feel like her at all. Emili had disliked Sheikoh’s perception of Silence fueled on a quiet pride of his criminal exploits rather than the said exploits themselves. She hadn’t cared that Sheikoh had committed the crimes, but she didn’t like the satisfaction that Sheikoh took in his criminal rep.
Sheikoh felt a sense of hollow rightness at the concept, like he’d discovered a serial killer’s stash of rotting fingers in a basement. His face scrunched up at the image.
Suddenly Sheikoh remembered his cellpad’s vibration. He might as well get things over with. He rifled through his pocket, searching for the battered metal of the Trinity. His hand glanced on a plastic octagon. A chill climbed up his arm. He’d completely forgotten that he was still carrying the Deputy Century Badge that Dekla had given to him, back in different lifetime. He pulled the badge out, reading the words with repugnance. He thought back to his interview with the Centaurai, remembering the man’s threats. How he’d somehow frozen Sheikoh’s body, and held that silver, crescent blade to his throat...
His thoughts stuttered on the word ‘crescent’. For a few seconds, the teenager stared at the century badge without really seeing it, deep in thought. Sheikoh’s mind flashed through Khryzt’s obsession with the Celestial Crescent. He wondered why the creature had been so desperate to be forgiven, only to follow him to the ‘Outworld’, and leave the crescent behind. Sanatous had said that Camillio had stolen the amulet from him. He already had the codex, what if…
Furious, Sheikoh threw the octagonal badge as far as he could. It soared over the roofs of the many factories and disappeared into the night.
Sheikoh reached back into his pocket and extracted his Trinity from the mess of weapons and lock picks. The teenager flipped it open and the screen informed him that he had five missed calls from ‘Dream’ and three more from Ghost.
How long had he been out? He checked the date on the Trinity and was relieved to see that it was still the same night. The time at the corner of the screen said 4:16. But he’d already known that it was the same night. If it hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have had anything in his pockets.
Sheikoh knew that if he’d lain unconscious through the day he wouldn’t have his cellpad, or anything else in his pockets, for that matter. With a yawn, Sheikoh keyed redial. A bold word ‘Dream’ along with the number that the Celestial had given him popped up onto the flickering screen. He held the device up to his ear.
“Silence, where are you?!” the cellpad snapped sharply.
Sheikoh rubbed his temples, massaging the beginnings of a throbbing headache.
“Dream, that you? What have you been up to, old bean?” Sheikoh tiredly asked the Celestial.
“Silence, what the hell happened? Where did you go? Were you pursued?” Tyche asked in a voice as hard as blacksteel.
Sheikoh opened his mouth to answer, but he didn’t know what exactly to say. He wasn’t sure if Camillio Tyche had said anything about putting the amulet into the codex’s indent. Sheikoh was too tired to get into it with the Celestial. Luckily Tyche went on without waiting for reply.
“Never mind that, were you able to obtain the codex?” the Celestial demanded in a strained voice. “The leather book from Spanius’s that is,” assuming that Sheikoh had never heard it called the Transcendental Codex.
“Hmm… define obtain. Are we talking past tense or present only here?” Sheikoh asked Tyche slowly. On the other end, Tyche cursed explosively.
“You idiot, what the hell were you doing when you tore Sanatous’s house apart?!” the Celestial spat over the line. Sheikoh bristled.
“Yeah, Dream, for your information, that wasn’t me! You forgot to mention the three other Celestial that Sanatous was hiding in there! They took the dude’s roof down! I barely made it out alive!” Sheikoh shot back, indignant.
“Celestial..? Again..? Hmm…” Sheikoh heard the man on the other end of the line say contemplatively. After a long pause, Dream finally said;
“You weren’t the only one to fail your task. You might as well flee Interium. Hidden inside of the codex was our only hope of surviving the Imperial Army’s impending siege,” Tyche went on in a frustrated voice.
“Wait, what?!” Sheikoh half-choked into the receiver, shocked.
“Ghost and Indigo managed to take care of the Coascendant, but they failed to eliminate the Supreme Centaurai. As they describe it Centaurai Vest was cornered, but when they advanced on him they found themselves unable to move,” the Celestial explained with mild annoyance, like a mosquito had dodged his swatter.
Sheikoh felt a jolt, remembering the Centaurai. He opened his mouth to explain how the Centaurai had controlled his body back in the Solitarium, but Dream went on without pausing. His tone changed into one of interested speculation.
“A laughing Celestial woman swooped in and spirited the Supreme Centaurai away. According to the two, the Celestial had ‘burning white eyes’,” Dream mused over the line. “In all of my life I’ve never even heard of any Celestial’s heartlight bearing that color…”
Sheikoh almost dropped his cellpad in shock. He knew exactly who the ‘Celestial woman’ was. Only it wasn’t a Celestial. And it wasn’t a woman either.
What did Khryzt want with the Arch Centaurai?
He thought that he knew.
Sheikoh had no idea how it had happened, but, somehow, Supreme Centaurai Cylium Vest had gotten his hands on the Celestial Crescent. He had no idea what that meant, but he didn’t much want to find out. Tyche’s running away idea didn’t sound so bad to him at the moment. The Celestial’s next question startled him from his speculation.
“By any chance do you know anything about this?” Camillio Tyche asked Sheikoh shrewdly.
“Well…” Sheikoh murmured slowly. “I have good news and bad news. Good news is we probably don’t have to worry about that ‘Celestial’ going to tell on us. The bad news… well I think that’s something we’d better discuss in person.”
“From the offices of the Supreme Centaurai, Ghost was able to secure the phone lines and take control of Interium’s intranet. Possible eavesdroppers are of no concern,” Dream replied archly.
“Still, mate. This is a big one,” Sheikoh murmured into the cellpad.
There was a sigh on the other end of the line.
“Okay, Silence. You’re in the East Side, of course?” Tyche asked reluctantly.
“West,” Sheikoh replied. Tyche didn’t ask any questions.
“Then we’ll meet in the house that we met in yesterday. Be there within the next quarter hour.” Tyche ordered over the line.
The connection broke. Sheikoh flipped the trinity shut and shoved it in his pocket. Then he ran through the streets. He had a ways to go in only fifteen minutes.
The dirty street looked exactly the same as it had last time. There might have been one or two more bums than before, but Sheikoh didn’t have time for a head count. He trotted up the Celestial’s rotting porch, opened the door, and walked into the dreamlike, blue lights of the house. In the flickering blue of the room, Sheikoh was surprised to see that both Indigo and Ghost were there, as well as Camillio Tyche.
The shadowy Celestial sat at the head of the blue-gleaming table, radiating disapproval. To his right, was a wary, defeated- looking Indigo, and to his left was a hard-eyed Ghost. Sheikoh noticed that both of them sat farther from Tyche than they had at their last meeting.
Sheikoh took the same seat
he had before and launched into the unabridged story of everything that had happened to him since meeting the Centaurai Aide. While explaining what had occurred after he’d killed the four Celestial and fitted the amulet into the Codex, Ghost and Indigo’s eyes blasted him with their disbelief, but Tyche listened to Sheikoh intently, with an interested expression. Then when Sheikoh described his encounter with the Sycrarian, Khryzt, three pairs of eyes widened. He finished to the sound of stunned silence until Tyche cleared his throat.
“The creature called Khryzt… Are you sure it said Sycrarian?” the Celestial asked Sheikoh, who nodded.
“Khryzt said something about being exiled from a dark moon,” Sheikoh said slowly, his brow crinkling. He didn’t want to leave anything out this time.
“The Black Moon, you mean?” Tyche asked him with barely suppressed excitement.
“Yeah,” Sheikoh responded. He watched Tyche curiously.
“Records allude to the Black Moon as the home of the Sycrarian, or Demon kind. They are an unbelievably powerful sect of entity,” the Celestial explained quickly, before gesturing for Sheikoh to continue.
“Khryzt went on and on about something called the Celestial Crescent, and from what I’ve gathered, I think that our beloved Centaurai somehow managed to get his hands on it. Do you know anything about that?” Sheikoh asked Tyche.
“Hmm…” Tyche rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard of this Celestial Crescent. Could it mean that the Centaurai controls this Khryzt..? But if so, why would Vest decline to have the creature finish off his two would be assassins..?”
The Celestial gestured at Indigo and Ghost carelessly. Sheikoh saw Indigo’s jaw tighten with anger at Tyche’s dismissive tone.
“Especially if one of the two held control of Interium’s communication,” Ghost threatened the Celestial in a steel voice.
