by Kyle West
“How is that possible?”
“The Hyperfold exists here as well, right?” I asked. At Mia’s nod, I continued. “In the real world…the real past…the city of Hyperborea was destroyed. It was the Shen, as you and Elder Marius thought, but it only came after the Sea was irrevocably damaged. The war caused the Sea to lose the last of its ichor, and in the present day, all that is left of the Sea, what little it manages to generate, goes into feeding this place. This reality.”
Mia looked to Isaru and Shara, both of whom nodded.
“It’s true,” Isaru said. “All of it is true.”
Mia blinked. She looked completely stunned and at a loss for words.
“I told myself I’d accept whatever you said as the truth. But this…I never imagined this. Of course, with the creation of the Hyperfold, many people speculated whether it was possible that we lived in our own simulation, but we had no way of testing it.” She looked at me again. “And you’re saying it’s true?”
“It has to be,” Isandru said. “She has seen inside it from the outside, like looking through a window. It’s possible for someone to speak into the future. That is how prophecy works. But speaking into the past…that is impossible. The only conclusion is that we are in the same time period as they are. We are a world within a world.”
“What’s more,” I said, “Shal spoke to me while I was outside this place.”
“Shal?” Mia asked. “What did he have to say?”
“He said that he was the one who saved everyone in Hyperborea from certain doom at the hands of the Shen. He had hoped to preserve everyone’s memories and re-create them within the Sea of Creation. The tragedy lay in the fact that to keep the Hyperfold active, the Sea couldn’t replenish itself to regrow. So it exists today, but only just. The Red Wild is rotting from the inside out. Within a few years, it will most likely be uninhabitable.”
Mia’s eyes were still unbelieving, and her features demonstrated that there was an internal war waging within her.
“We’ve seen the ruins,” Shara said, quietly. “Broken towers. Collapsed bridges. Stones that have not been stirred for decades. The forest remains, but it’s not as it was in this place. The city is a wasteland, and the only thing somewhat intact is the Tower of Shal itself…and of course, the Thought Dome.”
“Then it is according to my prophecy,” Mia said. “I would never have imagined…”
“In my vision,” I continued, “Shal expressed regret that he couldn’t save everyone. That he had made a mistake. He also said I was the only one who could forge a link between this place and the Xenofold. With this link…everyone trapped here can join the Xenofold.”
“Because in the real world…we are dead.”
Mia’s face lowered. The sight was heart-wrenching, to the point where I was wondering whether I had made a terrible mistake in telling them all this. Maybe it would have been better to not tell them the truth at all.
At the same time, I did need their help. If I was going to be confronting Shal, I needed it.
“As strange as it sounds,” Isandru said, “it does make perfect sense. I could say that you are not who you say you are, but that is obviously not true. There is no way that you could have known Mia’s dreams to the extent that you do, not unless you yourself have met Elder Marius and extorted the information from him.”
“She knew things even he wouldn’t have known,” Mia said. “She is telling the truth. I hate it, but she is.”
“It is an opportunity to right a wrong that has occurred for one hundred and fifty years,” Shara said. “I am not Elekai, but you will return to the Xenofold if this can be done. If Shanti can form a link between this place and the Xenofold.”
“The Tower of Shal was designed as such,” Mia said. “But it is also something else. My prophecies have mentioned that it is also a Beacon.”
“What kind of Beacon?” Isaru asked.
“To something dark and evil,” Mia said. “That is the extent of my knowledge.”
My mind returned to the vision I had received in the reversion, what seemed so long ago. The Wanderer had spoken of the Radaskim, of Askala. Of Xenofall.
“I think I might have an idea?” Everyone turned to look at me. “It’s Xenofall. Xenofall and the Second Darkness are the same thing. The Radaskim are returning, and that Beacon must be communicating with them…their return marks the event that will cause the Second Darkness. That is exactly it. And…”
My mind raced. Memories were returning to me like a flood.
“She’s remembering,” Isaru said, wonderingly. “You’re remembering, right?”
Shara gestured to shush him, but none of that mattered. I had it. The full truth.
“The Ragnarok War happened almost four hundred years ago, in our time. And that’s just it. Four hundred years.”
“Four hundred years. If it’s been nearly that long since the war, then that gives us two years until the Radaskim will return. Give or take a few months. I…remember that. That was Anna’s Prophecy. She wanted people to remember when this would happen, and was afraid that people would forget about it. So, she wrote it down. She told the Seekers to guard it.”
“But the Seekers don’t have it,” Isaru said. “The Shen do, probably.”
“No, not the Shen,” I said. “The real Seekers have it.”
“The real Seekers? What are you talking about? You mean the Seekers in this time period?”
“No, the Priesthood of the Sphere. In the Ruins.”
Isaru was lost. “How do you figure that?”
Everyone else was lost, too, but I was too excited to stop talking. “Don’t you see? The Seekers were tasked to await Anna’s return. I remember her doing that. Do the Seekers of the Sanctum take such a charge seriously, or have they somehow forgotten it?”
“Elder…” Isaru had almost said “Elder Isandru,” but caught himself just in time.
“They’ve forgotten, but the Priesthood hasn’t,” I said. “Remember Markas saying that they and the Seekers had similar roots?”
Isaru nodded. “You know…you might be right. But what’s the point of the Prophecy if you can remember what’s in it?”
“I can just remember that one detail,” I said. “As far as the actual contents…”
“Wait,” Isaru said. “So basically, what you’re telling me is all we had to do was go to the Ruins, for you to reveal who you really were…Markas was practically begging you to say it…and we could have turned around and gone back to Colonia?” Despite himself, Isaru laughed. “We could have been done with this weeks ago!”
“I…could be wrong. But yeah. Probably.”
Mia and Isandru were just staring at us, completely mystified. If the Priesthood and Seekers split sometime during their time period, they might know something about it.
“Have there been any rifts in the Seekerhood of late?” I asked.
Mia shook her head. “No. Nothing at all. Perhaps…perhaps that comes later?”
Maybe she was right. In any case, it was pointless to speculate on that.
“Wait…” she said. “Elder Marius was exiled not just from Hyperborea, but from the Seekers themselves. Even so, he still has quite a following among the Prophets, so perhaps that is the beginning of it.”
“It could very well be,” Isaru said.
“Although, he wouldn’t be too happy to know that the Priest uses Aether, even in a limited way.”
“We’re getting off track,” Shara said. She looked at me. “Tell us what you know of the Prophecy.”
“Right,” I said. “I remember speaking to Quietus, long ago…when Quietus was still Radaskim.”
“What do you mean?” Mia asked. “How could an Elder Dragon be Radaskim?”
“They all were, during the War,” I said. “Alex changed that.”
“Alex?”
Just saying that name seemed to trigger everything…absolutely everything. I couldn’t stop the memories from flooding back, to the point where I didn’t
even know who I was anymore.
“It’s…it’s all too much,” I said. I had to get it out of my mouth, despite my own emotions. “Quietus said the Radaskim will return to Earth every four hundred years. Four hundred years from that day…would be two years from now.”
“Are you sure?” Isaru asked. “If that’s true, then we don’t have a lot of time.
“What is Xenofall, and the Radaskim?” Shara asked.
“I’ll…have to explain that later.”
“The Tower is a Beacon, then, to the Radaskim?” Mia asked.
“Yes. It has to be. You said it was yourself.”
“I said it was a Beacon, but saying it’s to the Radaskim…”
“We have to ask the one who created it, then,” Isandru said.
Rakhim Shal. If he had created the Tower, then he had to know who it was communicating with. If the Tower had also been created to merge the Xenofold and the Hyperfold…
“Perhaps this is their way in,” I said. “Perhaps this is the attempt of the Radaskim to control the Xenofold…through the Hyperfold. If the two are fused into one, or if there is some link created between them…it could destroy the Xenofold as we know it.”
But that meant Mia and Isandru could never return to the Xenofold, if what Shal had said about the link was true. No one here could.
“Then the Hyperfold must be destroyed,” Isandru said.
“That would mean we would no longer exist,” Mia said. “Not even as memories. Not even in the Xenofold.”
What was worse, if all of this was true, then Shal was the only means of escape.
“Shal told me that if I gave him the Orb, he would give me the Prophecy.”
“Where is this Orb?” Isandru asked.
“It’s in my cloak,” I said.
“I don’t know what that Orb is,” Isandru said, “not exactly. But I do know Shal is trying to develop an easier means of passage between this world and the Hyperfold.” He paused. “Or I suppose, to the Hyperfold within this world.” He looked at me. “It’s possible that the Orb is developed in our future, but it was already available in your world.”
I hardly knew what to make of that. “What does it mean?”
“If you have the Orb with you, then it should be possible for all three of you to travel back whenever you wish. You don’t need Shal.”
“He’s tricking you,” Mia said.
The truth was, Mia and Isandru couldn’t stay here in this false reality. They deserved to be in the Xenofold, and if it was possible, to come back to the real world. Even if we could leave right now and get the Prophecy, it wasn’t right to leave them here, especially now that they knew the truth.
If there was a way to get them out, too, we needed to find it.
The problem was, they didn’t have bodies to return to.
But even with all that…we needed to learn the truth from Shal. If he was trying to merge the Xenofold and Hyperfold, then he had to be stopped. For all I knew, the second I used the Orb in this place, it would seal the connection.
So, I told the others my thoughts. In the end, they agreed that confronting Shal was necessary, as hard as that would be.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“SHAL IS FAR MORE DANGEROUS than I ever believed,” Mia said.
“We have to face him,” I said.
“The only reason he has such a position of power is because of Aether, and what he’s done to get everyone addicted to it. Because of that, he practically rules the city.”
“Even without that, he would rule this place,” Shara said. “He does rule it.”
“I think we have more power here than we realize,” I said.
“What do we do, then?” Isandru asked. “How do we confront Shal when he holds all the cards?”
It was a good question, and one I didn’t have an answer to. He had to have a weakness, but I had no idea what. The only thing that made any sort of sense was that I could be his weakness, somehow. After all, Shal had needed me to come here for some reason, saying that I was the only one who could reverse his mistake.
“I have to talk to him,” I said.
“Not alone,” Shara said. “You’ll need us to have your back and I’m not taking no for an answer.”
“Whatever Shal says, whatever he’s planning…I believe he needs me for it. If he needs me, he can’t kill me.”
“Until he’s done with whatever he’s planning,” Isandru said.
“There’s no way around it. It’s something I have to face.”
“Shal is powerful,” Isandru said. “Even not counting everything you’ve told us about him running this…” Isandru trailed off, still not wanting to admit the truth. “This place. He is strong and skilled with the blade.”
“So am I,” I said.
“I don’t doubt it,” Isandru said. “But Aether makes him something else. Everyone refuses to challenge him in tournaments. Aether has an effect on him that goes beyond what anyone else is capable of.”
“He becomes like a man possessed,” Mia said. “I’m sure he’s killed before.”
“Most powerful men have,” Shara said.
“All the same…” I said, “I have to face him.”
“I know I can’t stop you,” Mia said. “All I can tell you is to be careful. Within him is an indefinable darkness. What you were saying about the Beacon and the Radaskim – he is the one behind that. He is lost, and all he desires is power at any cost.”
I nodded, knowing just how serious Mia was being.
I stood, and with that movement, everyone else followed. Mia and Isandru were both looking at me – it was hard to tell if they were conveying respect, sorrow, or even fear. Maybe all three.
“What will happen if this all ends?” Isandru asked. “Will we truly be gone, forever?”
There was only one honest answer.
“I don’t know, Isandru. I don’t know whether you will be reborn, or whether you’ll go to the Xenofold. But whatever it is, it will be better than this.”
Mia nodded, accepting that much at least. “I can speak to the Xenofold, even in this place. I consider that much a miracle. Perhaps…perhaps you were that connection. Even if I’m one of the rare ones who can sense it, I know that something about this world isn’t right. I’ve felt it all my life.”
I swallowed the lump that forced its way to my throat. I didn’t want Mia making me emotional, not when I still had work to do.
“Both of you need to stay here,” I said. “I promise to do everything I can to make things right.”
Mia wiped her eyes, even as Isandru looked at us with steely determination. “I’ll keep my sister safe,” he said. “Go. Do what you need to do. I…don’t think it’s possible, to be honest. But if there’s anyone who can stop the evil Rakhim has done…it is you.”
With Isandru saying that, it was impossible not to feel the pressure. Where I had been at least somewhat confident before, now my heart was throbbing with fear. At that moment, Shara touched my arm.
“I’ll be right there with you,” she said. “Even if things go back to how they were, should we get out of this, I want you to know that I’m still there. I was lying. There is still hope.”
I nodded. “I knew that, Shara. And if you are back to how you were, I promise not to give up on you. Not ever.”
“I’ve got your back, too,” Isaru said. “As I always do.”
“All right, stop it. I need to focus here.”
Mia offered a smile. “I will be praying for you. Remember that the Xenofold can reach even here. Draw on its power. That is something even Shal cannot deny you.”
“I’ll do that,” I said.
With a final look, I turned and walked away, with Shara and Isaru by my side.
I didn’t let myself look back.
* * *
The journey back to the trail and through the rock tunnel was a long one. I felt almost exactly as I had when I was marched out to Red Cliff to be dashed on Traitors’ Rock.
Goin
g up the endless flights of stairs wasn’t easy; even if this was the Hyperfold, it still had the physical limitations of real life. At least, this version of the Hyperfold did. We paused for breath every few minutes before continuing on, until we found ourselves in the lower reaches of the Cloud Palace. It was quiet here, and even as we ascended, passing windows revealing the towers of the city – first the bottoms of them, and then the tops, it remained forebodingly empty.
“Something’s not right,” Shara said.
I had to agree. Given the Cloud Palace’s size, we should have seen someone by now.
But then, unbidden in my mind, came a premonition. An image of the throne room came into my head, empty save for Shal, who stood facing the doors.
“He knows we’re coming,” I said. “He’s in the throne room.”
“How do you know that?” Isaru asked.
“I can sense him. And he can sense me.”
I led the way, simply guided by feeling. The corridors were completely empty, of nobles, of guards, and even of servants, despite the fact it was early evening. Shara was definitely correct in that something wasn’t right. And still, there was a strange tension in the air, a heavy sense of foreboding.
Before long, we found ourselves at the top of a long, marble stairway – the final steps until the doors of the throne room. Those doors were closed now, where before they had been wide open.
I stepped forward and pressed softly on the door. To my surprise, it swung open easily. The throne room was completely empty save for its rich trappings – the red carpet stretching all the way to the ichorstone thrones, shining under the brightness of the dazzling xen chandeliers. Those thrones were empty, and of Shal himself, there was no sign. Only dead silence.
“Show yourself, Shal,” I called out. To my surprise, my voice was loud and commanding. I felt anything but that.
Shara and Isaru both unsheathed their blades, but I decided not to do the same.
“Welcome to Hyperborea,” a sonorous tone called. It seemed to come from every direction at once. I looked in every direction, but there was nothing.
