“Is every word you speak from the scriptures? When did your thoughts become so pragmatic? You’ve strangled your own creativity. Nothing of your Self remains.”
Nuri ducked into the cave and glared at her. Confronting the apparition was especially irritating given the timing of her arrival. In the morning, he would run his last mission before he undertook the most important trial of his life. “Why waste breath on small talk when I could use the words of the Almighty Himself?”
Again, the apparition laughed. “A noble thought, yet those are not the words of the Almighty.”
“They are the divine revelations spoken to His prophets. Therefore, they are His words.”
She did not argue. Instead, the light gathered from all corners of the cave and assembled into physical form.
“You look the same,” Nuri told her.
“I can take any form I wish. This is only how I looked when you last saw me.”
He studied her closely, crossing to the other side of the cave with his hands clasped behind his back respectfully. “Did you die the day I killed the old man in the village?”
“No.”
On impulse, he reached out and touched her shoulder. He expected his hand to pass through heavy air, but she was just as solid as the cave walls.
“Are you still alive?” he asked, dreading the answer. If she’d survived and still looked as young as she had the day he’d slain the pig farmer in her stead, that meant that she was using a form of dark magic, which could only be learned through direct communication with the Evil One and his Watchmen. On the other hand, if she was dead, then he was speaking to a ghost, and it was also a sin to concern oneself with the afterlife. No matter what, engaging the entity put his soul in considerable distress. It was the last thing he needed before the trials.
“No.”
Nuri drew back and shuddered. He’d known, of course, that there was something supernatural about her ever since she’d appeared to him in his room while the jackals cried and his Duri Master drank and read from the forbidden book. Back then, though, he’d willfully denied her nature because he was so intrigued by the mystery of her existence. Also, if he was honest with himself, because she was as forbidden as The Divine Incendiary, which made her constitution all the more alluring.
“How did you die?”
She moved gracefully towards him. He retreated another step. “Your Duri Master had me killed. They found me on the forbidden mountain while you were purged of the pig farmer’s death and they crucified me for leading you away from Omega.”
Nuri swallowed and averted his eyes. He felt like he was about to retch, and he didn’t want to show how profound an impact her presence had on him. “Why are you here, then? Retribution?”
Her fingertips tapped lightly against his shoulder-blade, sending ripples of numbness down his back before falling away. She glided to the cave entrance and looked out over the mountain. “I’m here because you need me.”
“I don’t need you,” he snapped. “I need to be rid of you. Your presence here is an insult to Holy God.”
“Only Holy God can decide what is an insult to Him and what is merely the childish offense taken by men to having their beliefs questioned. God is God. He cannot be offended. The very cognitive processes you would use to speak against Him are of His making.”
He scowled and tried to step around her, wanting to get as far from her as possible though he knew deep down she would have her say whether he wanted her to or not. “You’re an agent of Tscharia. A distraction. You’ve come here to turn me from the path that God laid out for me as Hidria.”
He carefully negotiated an abrupt drop down the mountain with his legs braced on the rocks.
“Do you know anything about the Hidria?” she asked, drifting easily down the slope beside him.
“I know plenty about them. I’ve devoted my life to studying them so that I can answer the Call and become Hidria myself.”
“How have you studied them?”
“Through Duri texts and the holy scriptures.”
“But those are the words of men. Humans. Hidria are not human. They are another level of being altogether. They inhabit a different reality and therefore cannot possibly be human. Every molecule in their bodies exists under completely separate physical laws than they would in your reality.”
“My reality?” he scoffed. “You say that like it’s mine alone and not the shared space of hundreds of trillions of beings.”
“How do you know that this isn’t your reality alone? If God can create infinite universes and infinite realities, doesn’t it stand to reason that He could possibly have created this reality for you and you alone? Every birth, death, and breath for trillions of years to prepare for you?”
“You wouldn’t be arguing against my beliefs and wellbeing if this were my reality and subject to my desires.”
“Not your desires,” the girl countered. “God’s.”
Nuri sighed and braced himself against a tree branch. They’d reached the final stretch of forest before the waterfalls where he often sat to reflect deep into the night.
“You’re trying to confuse me. To make me question my beliefs.”
“That’s what your Duri Masters believe I am here to do, but they don’t understand my true nature any more than they understand God.”
“The dead are no concern of the living.”
“Again, these are the edicts of men trying to guess the will of the Omega and not His own words.”
“It says so in the scriptures.”
“As I told you, the scriptures were written by men.”
“Under divine influence!”
“But subject to the errors of interpretation universal among men. Humans are sinners by nature. Each person’s capacity for divine comprehension is severely limited by the finite synapses and finite frames of reference stored within their brains.”
The waterfalls and mountain river glowed beneath the mountain peak. Nuri trudged his way to a fallen tree at the edge of the water and sat down, gazing up to the trillions of stars in the dusk sky while the roar of the waterfall cleared his head. The girl sat down beside him and stared into the water, deep in thought.
“I don’t believe you are here solely to question my faith. I have no interest in arguing dogma with a corpse.”
The girl turned to him and smiled, her blue-white teeth sparkling beside the water in the moonlight. “I admire how far you’ve come in your faith since the last time I saw you, even if it is misguided. And it is misguided. The Duri Masters do not know as much as they think they know or else they would be the ones who became Hidria.”
“That’s false logic. They train the Called so that we can become Hidria, and the Called who pass the trials do become Hidria, so their teachings are correct.”
“How do you know the Called who disappear after the ritual become Hidria? Have you ever seen a Hidria before? Are there any testimonies of those who’ve passed the trials in all your Duri texts?”
Nuri leaned forward and ran his fingers through the cold water. He didn’t respond. Everyone knew the Hidria were never heard from again once they passed through the trials. The Duri attributed mass cleansings to them here and there, perhaps to nurture belief in their existence, but their movements in and out of the human dimension were so sporadic and unverifiable that no one could truly be sure.
“Could it be, then, that the Hidria do not become the same warriors of Divine Justice that the Duri claim them to be?”
“I suppose it’s a matter of faith,” Nuri replied. “I believe that the Called become Hidria.”
“Because that’s what the Duri scriptures tell you. Along with thousands upon thousands of nonsensical proverbs which achieve little more than muddling the truth.”
“And what do you define as truth?” he asked, genuinely curious.
The girl smiled at him. “If your human mind could comprehend it, then God would have already revealed it to you. I can’t explain the fundamental truth of l
ife in words. You have to see it for yourself.”
“Through the trials.”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. The trials are one way to see it.”
“Then that means that the trials are sacred, and those who don’t return have truly been granted a divine revelation from Omega.”
The girl shrugged noncommittally and dipped her toes in the water. When the liquid touched her luminescent skin, a pleasant, cinnamon-tinged aroma drifted across the wind to Nuri. He inhaled deeply, ignoring for the moment the Duri warnings against sensuous pleasures, and closed his eyes.
“Those who experience the fullness of the trials see Prime,” she answered, watching him carefully. “They are the ones you call Hidria.”
“And what becomes of them?”
She rose from the fallen tree and stepped into the shallows. “If God wanted you to know that, He would have revealed it to you already.”
Nuri snorted. “That’s not an answer and it doesn’t make any sense. If you believe that we can only learn a thing by God zapping the information directly to our brains rather than through study and observation, then what would be the point of living or experiencing anything at all? God might as well have skipped creating the universe in that case.”
The girl ignored his response and began to walk a circle through the water, her eyes locked on the thundering waterfalls spraying just beyond her reach. She seemed captivated by the natural beauty of it, and that struck Nuri as especially peculiar since she was a dead thing who could seemingly come and go as she pleased and visit anywhere in the universe.
“What was the target of your last cleansing mission?” she asked.
He watched her wade in the moonlight with the spray arcing up behind her. He’d never seen anything so beautiful, and it had nothing to do with attraction. It was simply the best representation of God in the universe he could imagine in that moment.
“A space station,” he said, clearing his throat. “It housed a news agency that incited rebellion against the Duri order.”
“How did they incite rebellion?” she asked innocently as her eyes blazed through him.
“They were investigating the cleansings and speaking heresy against God.”
She eased her body into the water until only her head was showing. “What have they said against God?”
Nuri stood and stepped into the shallows himself, terrified for a moment that she was about to disappear. “They claimed that the Duri are warmongers and a scourge to the galaxy.”
“Then it sounds like they insulted the Duri. Not God.”
Nuri stepped a little further into the shallows, determined not to take the bait she’d lain for him.
“So you killed all of them for dissent?” she continued.
“It wasn’t up to me,” Nuri replied, kneeling into the water with a hitch in his breath as the cold pressed against his skin. “God mandates what must be done to unbelievers.”
“Not God,” she pointed out. “The Duri tribunal.”
“Which receives its revelations from God.”
She waded beside him and frowned. “I don’t think you truly believe that. You’re too smart not to recognize the difference. If there was a perfect law from God, it would not be subject to the politics of the Duri tribunal, nor would it change over time based on progressive ideology. The Divine Infinite sees all things at once—past, present, and future—and therefore would know which edicts were necessary to decree for all generations, assuming any existed. He would not allow them to be idly cast aside by the Duri simply for political gains or due to the socio-economic climate of the galaxy.”
Nuri turned abruptly for the riverbank, exhaling in frustration. “You’re trying to shake my beliefs just as you did when I was younger. Forcing me to question myself and my Duri Master. You’re an agent of the Evil One. I won’t listen to your blasphemy anymore.”
He stomped angrily away, ringing out his shirtsleeves as he walked, until suddenly she stood before him again. “Leave me, witch,” he snarled. “You’re a queen of lies. Go back to Tscharia.”
“The Divine Infinite is not concerned with the arbitrary laws of a corrupt religious order. The trials were not created by the Duri Masters. They merely stumbled upon them.”
“Then God meant for them to find the trials. As you say, He is the Divine Infinite. The Simultaneous Ubiquity. He would know that the Duri would find the trials and allow the transfiguration of their holy, purified warriors. If they were not worthy, He would have orchestrated history to ensure they never found the trials. In fact, He never would have allowed the Duri order to exist in the first place. He created them. He created all of us. The Called and Hidria. If what you say is true, God would be culpable for any mistakes made by the Duri.”
For a moment, her eyes lit up so brightly that Nuri had to shield himself from the vision. When she spoke, her voice brimmed with excitement. He couldn’t understand why. “If you follow that logic to its conclusion, then God also created all sin and even the Evil One, yet that doesn’t implicate Him in all sins throughout the realities. He doesn’t espouse sin any more than the Duri profess to tolerate it.”
Nuri eyed her skeptically. He understood her point to an extent, but believed that it undermined all the previous points she’d made, as well. If God created sin then He was responsible for all sin, and that made both of their arguments moot. It made God evil by nature, and Nuri couldn’t wrap his head around something so radically heretical.
However, the girl persisted. “Don’t you see now that you cannot possibly understand this paradox as a human? How Omega can know something is evil or will eventually lead to evil and still create it? Still allow it to follow its path?”
Nuri frowned and rubbed at his eyes. “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t understand it. I can’t. You’re deliberately confusing me so I’ll fail the trials. So I won’t be able to destroy you and all of your agents in Tscharia.”
The girl reached out and touched his palm. “Hidria are great warriors, but they destroy men who claim they know God and speak for Him, not just emissaries of Tscharia. Hidria are warriors against murder and injustice.”
“Exactly!” Nuri exclaimed.
She shook her head and let his hand fall. “You still don’t understand. The Duri are the men who claim to know God’s mind, and that is impossible for any human. No human can know the Divine Infinite. That is the point. Your brains are not built for it.”
Gripping her cold shoulders, Nuri looked her in the eye and nodded. “Exactly,” he said softly. “I will not be human after the trials, though. I will be transformed. I will be Hidria.”
As he spoke, her form began to dissipate into blue-white smoke. Her features distorted in the autumn wind. “If you learn that there is no such thing as distraction, only the evil and confused heart of man, then you might become Hidria. But cleansing another colony of innocents tomorrow won’t bring anyone closer to God save your victims, and you are actively carving out a hovel in Tscharia with each precious life you take.”
Before he could counter the argument, she disappeared beneath his fingertips, swept away by the wind over the valley to shower the people below.
Nuri stared at the physical space she’d occupied, outraged by her audacity yet more outraged because her points made just enough sense to rattle his foundation for belief, and that was a very dangerous animal so near the trials.
What if I fail now? he wondered.
Her voice echoed through his head unbidden. Then it will be because you’re not worthy to be called Hidria, not because I dared to challenge Duri doctrine and it sparked a healthy seed of doubt in you.
Distraught and confused, he returned to the riverbank and listened to the roar of the waterfalls until the first whisper of dawn touched over the water. By the hour he reached the cottage he shared with his Duri Master, it was time to depart for his final mission as a member of the Called. One way or another, it would be the last.
And throughout the cleansing, the girl�
�s words echoed through his head.
“If you learn that there is no such thing as distraction, only the evil and confused heart of man, then you might become Hidria.”
The thought haunted him into the morning and every night thereafter.
17
Nuri rolled onto his side and stared up at the stars through the massive hole at the rear of the alien ship. He wasn’t certain how long he’d been pinned beneath the control panel. Long enough for flames to swarm the entire vessel and promptly die on the surface of the desert planet as the oxygen dissipated. He supposed that sufficiently answered his question about the onboard life-support systems and whether he could have breathed prior to his physical transformation, but it didn’t seem all that important anymore.
I’m alive, he thought with considerable relief. I’m still alive.
Are you surprised? Colt asked.
He craned his neck to see if she’d reappeared now that he was grounded but her physical form was nowhere to be found.
“No,” he whispered, and winced at the sound of his own voice. He may not have felt any pain from the violent impact but his throat had still been damaged. He had difficulty forcing out even that solitary word of negation.
You are here, Colt said cryptically.
I know that I’m somewhere. But where is ‘here’?
He waited a while for a response before deciding she had left to attend more pressing issues. He couldn’t imagine what they might be, but as with the life-support question, the answer no longer seemed a matter of great import.
Easing his leg out from under a collapsed steel pillar, he pulled himself to a seated position and surveyed his surroundings. The ship had taken a beating running the atmosphere. In fact, he estimated that the transition from space to the planet’s skyline had done more damage to the integrity of the vessel than the crash itself. If Nuri hadn’t secured himself in a service tube adjacent to the bridge and buckled in for impact, his body would have been pulverized.
And then what would have become of me? he wondered.
Colt had already established that he couldn’t be killed outright by conventional weapons while he was transforming from human to Hidria, but if his body was completely destroyed, how would he be able to carry out his mission? If he couldn’t even move his lips to speak, he thought, then he may as well have been dead for all the good it would do him in the trials. And now that his eyes had been opened to the nature of the Duri Order, he knew there was no way he could resume his life as a Called soldier if he failed.
Colt: The Cosmic Prayer (Hidria Book 1) Page 20
