“Today is a difficult day,” the Duri Master continued. “A tumultuous day.”
The congregation collectively leaned forward. With eight words, he had won their complete attention. Most men and women were afraid even to breathe, and children were afraid to make any sound that might draw the wrath of their parents. Noises in the quiet moments of the service were viewed as shameful, just as failure to sing during the ceremonial utterances was a sin. Entire families would be relegated to the Back Pews in the favor of God at the slightest misstep.
“Today, we acknowledge that we have failed the Divine Infinite.” He cleared his throat and adjusted the hulking red and white robe so his hands were free to point out the failures of individual believers. “You are all sinners. We are all sinners. We have failed, and we must be purged of our iniquities.”
A nervous exhale swept through the congregation. They were always stunned by the direct—though vague—accusations from the pulpit, having only the thrice monthly exposure to it. Nuri was immune to the sting, however. He endured similar condemnations on an hourly basis as the Duri Master attempted to strengthen his faith and resolve.
“How must we be purged?”
His scarred, angular face peered over the edge of the raised platform and he scowled. The tension rose in the room until Nuri was certain someone would let out a nervous cough or a swallow that would necessitate the reassignment of pews, but no one did. Instead, the Duri Master leaned so far over the stone railing that Nuri marveled at his balance, then stabbed a long, bony finger at the huddled masses. “You must purify yourselves through agony to atone for the agony you have inflicted upon the Maker by your disobedience. By your self-servitude. We were not put here to endlessly chase personal pleasure. We were brought into this universe to purify it for the next iteration of the Divine Incarnate.”
Nuri scanned the faces of the Front Pew Pontificates. Most of them hung on every word of the sermon to the point that he considered their attentiveness suspect. There was a difference between listening and straining to assume the expression associated with deep concentration, which appeared closer to the look Nuri adopted while agonizing through a bout of serious intestinal distress than the one he wore while saying his evening prayers in the privacy of his cot. The ones who seemed most engaged often wore blank expressions, he thought, since their minds were filled to the brim with the reality of God’s Eternal Presence. This was not a universal truth, of course, nor was the idea that those closest to the altar were merely looking for the clergy’s approval or a higher social standing.
Still, despite the favors doled out by the Duri Masters themselves, Nuri had his own ideas about who truly absorbed and applied the manufactured message of the sermon to their daily lives and who was merely in it for the status points. And since he heard the Duri Master’s rehearsals of the sermon each night leading up to the ceremony in the cottage they shared, he used the opportunity to inventory the congregation itself, if for no other reason than to prepare himself for the day when he would need to separate truth from distraction in the trials.
The Duri Master had once asked him to report back on what he noticed about the men, women, and children who imbibed his self-congratulatory calls for self-flagellation to offer suffering to God. To be just like him, in other words, and thereby legitimize the radical stupidity of injuring oneself because the Loving Creator of the Universe desired it.
Nuri never felt comfortable relaying such arbitrary judgments based on posture and eye contact, though, so he rarely reported his findings. He never saw how slumped shoulders correlated to a relationship with or belief in the Divine Mystery, the Beginning and End. Besides, the temple worshippers he considered the most suspect and least Godlike were the ones whom the Duri Master chastised him for fingering, and he’d never felt comfortable at all rendering judgment on others while his own faith was in such perpetual turmoil. Casting judgment seemed like a particularly self-indulgent practice. Excusing those in the Back Pews simply because they didn’t exhibit the desire for perceived holiness that those in the Front Pews displayed was dangerously close to the same trap as judging them the other way around. It was a convoluted mess, one for which he saw no reasonable solution, and it only added to the stratification of the people.
But he supposed that was the whole point of these ceremonial gatherings. Not to offer conciliatory wisdom to the downtrodden or to reinvigorate the villagers’ faith, but to remind them of the purging flame while simultaneously marking those whom the order deemed potential heretics and establishing an unspoken social hierarchy in the mountain community. It was less a ceremony and more an inventory. A test. A culling.
A cleansing.
Nuri felt the shudder at the base of his spine again and suppressed the urge to convulse. He wasn’t sure if he could trust the impulse anymore. Surely, God couldn’t be present in such a convoluted mess of political and self-serving aspirations. Surely, the minstrels were not solely performing to glorify God but to glorify themselves, shaming others into action by telling them that you didn’t truly love God unless you accompanied them in song. Surely, God would be more likely to condemn those who mocked true faith by shaping it to suit their individual agendas than those who crouched in shame in the back pews or against the cold, stone walls.
Wouldn’t He?
Nuri still wasn’t sure, and so he remained silent.
Men are the folly of religion, he thought.
It might have been a phrase from The Divine Incendiary or maybe just an idle pseudo-intellectual musing. That was the trouble of being drowned in philosophy and theology every day while considering the effect of each mundane task he performed on his soul. He sacrificed the grace of the moment for the unwavering long view. By eliminating distraction and preference, he could no longer identify the notions that came to him based on experience and a true understanding of his place in the universe versus those he’d merely read in one religious text or another. The metamorphosis of perception had nearly blinded him, to the point that he now wondered if some distraction from the mysteries of the universe—or at least appreciation of them in their physical form—was actually a good thing. If, then, appreciating beauty in his mountain surroundings and in his distant love for his murdered family was itself glorifying the Divine Infinite since He created all things.
Shouldn’t distraction be considered a blessing from God—a grace—rather than a willful corruption from the Evil One?
No, he quickly responded. Distraction glorifies self, not the Divine.
Another phrase from another book. Another layer added to the ever-thickening veil between the Living All and theology. Where did the thread between the two begin and end?
In God, the river girl’s voice assured him.
He frowned and shifted against the wall, too frightened by his own blasphemous, circular thoughts to scan the temple. He might lock eyes with someone in the congregation if he did that, and then they would know that he wasn’t hanging on every word of the sermon. He was a fake. His relationship with God was nothing more than illusion.
So, like the Front Pew Pontificates, he turned his gaze back to the Duri Master and squinted his eyes in a show of fervent concentration.
You are a fool, the river girl admonished him. You grow further from the truth each day. This isn’t God. This is politics.
He clenched his teeth and forced her from his thoughts.
Years passed before he felt the chill at the base of his spine again. He never noticed the difference.
15
Nuri awoke face-down in an alley between two tall buildings.
Juriaq again? he wondered. The air was heavier than before and lacked the ubiquitous sea-salt smell for which the floating city was famous, but the skyscrapers alone were enough to give him pause. After gathering his bearings and closely inspecting the architecture, however, he determined that despite the similarities, it wasn’t Juriaq after all. In fact, he had no idea where he was.
His legs were unsteady from the fa
ll and he felt more than a little disoriented by the constantly shifting worlds beneath his feet, but he managed to stagger out of the alley onto a wide avenue. A wave of smoke immediately enveloped him. He coughed until his eyes watered and stomach ached.
If you’d truly learned surrender, you wouldn’t need to suffer this transformation on each new world, Colt admonished.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw in fervent concentration, willing the smoke from his lungs along with the biological imperative for pure oxygen. Now that he was familiar with the process, it was only a matter of moments before he could breathe again (or at least ignore his lack of breath), and then the root of his cough switched from smoke inhalation to the grating exhalations of his damaged throat.
I am Hidria, he told himself.
Even in his head, he uttered the words with a newfound reverence. The simple declaration had become a prayer, an acknowledgment of the truth of God in the universe and his power to overcome the distractions of the Evil One.
I am Hidria.
Once the final wave of coughs sputtered out and his vision settled, he turned his attention back to the street.
Almighty God, he thought as he surveyed the area. What happened to this place?
The city block was pure carnage. The sidewalk platforms were filled with overturned vehicles. Debris from the scorched buildings and corpses from two alien races were sprawled over top of them. Now that his transition fugue had lifted, Nuri recognized the sound of blaster fire in the distance along with the heavier pound of artillery tearing chunks from the skyscrapers. High powered ordnance, too, by the sound of it.
Where am I? he asked Colt and his Duri Master.
He didn’t recognize either alien species and his suit was too battered to research its database even if the action had been permitted in the trials.
I’m not here to satisfy your curiosities, Colt replied coldly. I’m here to make you question your faith until you either arrive at an answer or you don’t.
Does it matter what creatures these are or what planet this is? his Duri Master said. Your only objective is to reach Prime and learn the nature of the Divine Infinite. Investigating planet names and alien species are trivial distractions. They have nothing to do with the fundamental truths of Creator God. Leave this place as quickly as you can and trouble no more over such insignificant details.
Nuri stared at the bodies uncertainly. A sickness welled in the pit of his stomach at the sight of so much death and destruction. Unlike the cleansings, this operation lacked precision and cleanliness. Alien blood and guts were splattered everywhere. The dark clouds overhead and the smoke rising from the scorched streets only added to the macabre scene.
Is this Tscharia? he wondered.
The dead and mutilated corpses made it seem possible, yet he couldn’t imagine being transported to the isolated universe of Tscharia without feeling the fracture in his mind. Tscharia, after all, was said to afflict each of its miserable inhabitants with insanity by the complete removal of all realities containing God before the bodily torture even began. It was difficult to say with any certainty, but he didn’t believe he’d fallen quite that far.
Yet.
It seemed strange that both ends of the spectrum—Hidria and Watchmen—involved a descent into lunacy, but it also made a poetic sense. The weight of reality was simply too much to bear.
Distraction.
He stepped carefully between the bodies and attempted to make sense of the peculiar native technology. The buildings were connected by retractable walkways with glowing green lights and blue surfaces. He spotted figures moving along them high above and an occasional blaster bolt illuminated the darkening sky, but they were both too far off for him to properly assess. Curious, he stooped and examined the uniforms of two warriors who’d died with blasters pointed at each other’s throats.
Must have fired at the same time, he thought.
The nearest alien was an arachnid of some sort with a long, curved snout, a massive mouth, and tiny eyes buried behind cheekbones as sturdy as any combat armor. Its exoskeleton was slimy and red, its actual armor an odd mixture of webbing and the bones of fallen enemies.
Judging by the tread-wear on the second alien’s combat boots and the heavy pack it carried, Nuri figured it was part of an invasion force. Its gray-brown tentacles hung beneath a wide nose and bald head, but unlike the arachnid creature, it had humanoid arms and legs. Its armor looked like it had been forged from Durakian steel, though it hadn’t done much to stop a giant shard of glass from piercing the invader’s chest. Judging by the breather attached to its nose, its body wasn’t accustomed to the atmosphere, either.
I wonder why they’re killing each other, he thought.
Each would probably say it’s for a god or a communal ideal, Colt said.
He found the suggestion unlikely given that most arachnoid species that humanity had encountered beyond Earth’s solar system so far were atheists, ascribing only to the worship of their Queen Mother or an elected official within their planet’s political hierarchy.
Perhaps atheism is what caused this, then. Perhaps it is considered an insult to the god of the invading species, or an edict from their spiritual leaders spurred these creatures to conquer as many planets as possible and forcefully convert the inhabitants to their faith.
Nuri was familiar with the idea of forced conversion, having participated in dozens of cleansings himself. In fact, it was difficult to consider any other possibility when it was all he knew of political and faith-based conquest.
How can you suggest that Omega is behind such senseless violence and destruction?
Not Omega. The men who pretend to know His mind.
Nuri was about to argue the point when a blaster bolt caught him in the back and flung him into a heap of alien corpses. Another flurry of energy blasts erupted a moment later from the opposite direction, followed by fearsome shouts in two distinct languages.
It looks like the battle has come to me, he thought, casting aside his human revulsion to delve deeper into the pile of bodies for cover. His armor had blunted the severity of the blaster bolt to nothing more than a painful bruise but his head was wholly unprotected. He knew the battered plating on his torso couldn’t sustain much more abuse.
What now?
The shooting around him quickly intensified. The ground shook as both armies charged toward each other in a heavy cloud of blaster fire. The stench of charred corpses and alien guts became sickening. Nuri had to meditate yet again just to avoid vomiting, and the melted-conduit smell of the overheating blasters did little to blunt the urge’s potency.
Wheels groaned as heavy tanks crushed bodies on their way to the enemy line. A steady din of battle cries resounded between the two armies, all unintelligible to Nuri.
This world isn’t a part of my galaxy, he realized. I’m a long, long way from the ancient temple.
Only in terms of the physical dimension, Colt said.
Nuri groaned and began to dig his way out from the bodies, realizing stealth wouldn’t do him much good if he was trampled before either army had a chance to shoot him. His only hope was to take refuge in a building where he could collect his thoughts and plot his next course of action, assuming he survived long enough to reach one.
As soon as his head was exposed to the smoky air, however, the front lines of both armies slowed as did the volleys of blaster bolts. They didn’t die off altogether—they never quite did—but enough soldiers were confused by the appearance of the small, ugly alien emerging from the pile of corpses and rubble that their attention was momentarily drawn from the task at hand.
Kill these horrible creatures! his Duri Master shouted. They will destroy you if you don’t! They do not know God!
Desperate for cover, Nuri scrambled overtop an abandoned vehicle that resembled a military-grade hoverspeeder. When he turned his attention from one army to the other, he noticed a few soldiers on each side had already trained their blasters on him and we
re hurling taunts in their native tongues.
Trapped, he thought.
On a whim, he leapt through the roof of the speeder and dropped into the control seat. Blaster bolts pinged off the armor covering the controls as soon as he hit the leathery pilot’s chair. He didn’t waste time searching for operating instructions. Instead, he punched the speeder’s control panel as hard as he could, then clicked and flipped every button and switch he could find until the engine whined to life with a nasally drone.
On instinct alone, he managed to kick the throttle and send the vehicle hurtling at breakneck speed for a full three seconds before he crashed through the side of a building and was violently catapulted against a rubbery wall, which flexed to catch him and then lowered his body to the floor. He didn’t witness the deployment of its technology, though, and wasn’t aware of the crash’s immediate aftermath until he rolled to a stop on the cold ground. He tasted blood and singed hair from his beard, but most of the pain pulsed along the back of his head and into his neck.
Whiplash.
Considering the velocity of his impact with the building, it was a miracle that his injuries seemed relatively minor, yet that was a small consolation as he struggled to one knee and felt the ensuing waves of pain envelop his body.
“AAAAGGGHHH!” he shouted.
The furious thunder of war machines raged outside the broken windows, but it was the booted footsteps approaching over the blaster bolts and the heavy, repeating artillery rounds that concerned him.
They were coming for him.
Who? he wondered.
He raised his neck to peer out, gasping in pain with each hard-won centimeter of movement. A dozen tentacle-faced soldiers from the invading army began to storm through the hole he’d opened in the building’s exterior.
This will not end well, he realized.
At least they were content with capturing him for the time being, he thought, rather than shooting him on sight the way he suspected the locals might if they caught him in the alleyways. The defending army would inevitably suspect he was an enemy spy since he was fairly certain a human fell well outside the scope of known species in this particular galaxy, wherever it happened to be.
Colt: The Cosmic Prayer (Hidria Book 1) Page 17
