by Jacob Holo
“Very true.” Zophiel’s wings quivered, but he quickly stilled them and bottled up his grief. He would not show weakness before Vayl at a moment like this. “My lord?”
I sense many questions stirring within you.
“My lord, you never spoke of your true form. I had expected…”
Something smaller perhaps?
“Yes, my lord.”
Then allow me to share with you one final vision.
Thoughts and images entered Zophiel’s mind, but not in a forced rush of sight and sound. Instead, it came with a gentle nudge. He felt in control of it, as if he could turn the images away if he wished. But instead, he emptied his mind of distractions. The images and sounds whirled within his mind, forming before his closed eyes.
He floated within a crystal blue sky, bodiless, the mighty towers of the Ziggurats rising around him. There were hundreds of them, thousands of them, disappearing above and below into thick white clouds.
These Ziggurats were as varied as they were numerous: huge towers of metal, crystal, or stone of every imaginable variety. Some seemed more energy than matter, and others rose as impossible combinations of the two. But always, across all the varied designs, were the watchful Ziggurat eyes.
Distant shapes moved between the towers in little glints of light. Millions of them—no, billions of them flowed in great causeways across the endless sky.
“What am I seeing?” Zophiel asked.
This is the Lunatic Realm as it was hundreds of thousands of years ago, Vayl said. Long before the Keepers came to power and before the fall of the Ziggurat Builders. I do not know much about them. They were powerful beyond my understanding, but even they could not escape the fate that awaited them. You see, the source of a pilot’s power comes from this realm. Observe now a pilot drawing his or her strength from the Lunatic Realm.
A flare of energy appeared between two towers close to Zophiel. It throbbed and pulsed, growing outward into a great cloud of fire and smoke. The little glints of light scattered from it, fleeing into the towers.
Each pilot draws his or her strength from this realm, but not without a price. And if you have enough pilots over enough time, the result is this.
The image changed, fire consuming all. The once graceful beauty of the perfect blue sky vanished, replaced with an unquenchable inferno.
The Builders of the Ziggurats died, unable to adapt to a realm gone insane with fire and death. Legions of pilots twisted this realm by constantly drawing their strength from it. The laws of order in this universe became the laws of chaos, and all within it died.
Ziggurat towers fell in a continuous rain of stone, crystal, metal, and solid energy. All across the collapsing structures, Ziggurat eyes blinked and twitched in panic. The entire sky became choked with falling fragments from the towers above.
But from this death and destruction, new life formed. We did not evolve, as you understand it. Nor were we born. But the inter-dimensional bridge that powers the seraphs carries with it a certain… consciousness. A piece of pilot and seraph crosses over, and in this realm, consciousness can become physical form.
Zophiel let the images fade from his mind, his breaths coming fast and harsh.
We are the sins of the Keepers made manifest, Vayl continued. We were born of their thirst for power, and some of us, a few of us, remember that which spawned us. The knowledge of the Keepers was mine the moment I became aware, for in that life, I was one of their seraphs.
Vayl spread his arms wide, gesturing to the assembled spawns.
If you seek proof of our origins, you need only look upon the spawns with their twisted regurgitations of humanity. Or gaze upon me, Vayl, one of the generals of Xaet. Look upon us, and witness our tortured existence. Stare across this endless sky of fire and ash! See the genocide of an entire universe!
Accept all of this, and you will understand the true legacy of the seraphs and the Keepers.
“But, my lord? Are you saying that I am part of the problem?”
You are a symptom of a disease that predates even me. You are not to blame.
“But, if what you say is true, then all seraph pilots are… then I am…”
Fear not, young Zophiel.
“But why didn’t you tell me? Why did you hold this back? I deserved to know my own sins!”
Because I want you to first see this realm with your own eyes.
“My lord, I am your humble servant!” Zophiel knelt upon Vayl’s arm. “I will never shun my duty, no matter what! If anything, I will fight even harder with this knowledge!”
The endless chasms of Vayl’s eyes glowed brighter, and the black sinews of his flayed visage loosened. It was difficult to read such an unusual face, but Zophiel thought his words pleased Vayl immensely.
Ah, you are indeed a worthy disciple. It gladdens my heart to hear such certainty from you.
“Thank you, my lord.”
Even now, a device within the Necropolis calls out to the new Gate. It will cause immense damage when it strikes, but the device will rein in the Gate and permanently secure it. Once that is complete, I will move my armies through into your universe. Our war will soon begin.
But I can see that you are weary from battle. Vayl gestured towards the brass structures atop the fallen Ziggurat fragments. Please, rest now. Mourn for your fallen sister and gather your strength. We have made accommodations for you. I must leave you for a time, since the Necropolis device requires my attention.
Zophiel and Othaniel bowed and lifted off. Vayl returned the bow and descended into the Ziggurat tunnel.
A single chaos spawn approached the two Disciples and hovered before them.
… please follow me, mighty disciples…
They followed the spawn to a thin brass spire rising from the edge of the sprawling structure. A Ziggurat eye opened near the top, which the spawn gestured towards with its sword. The eye’s iris opened, and the two seraphs flew into a small landing bay. Zophiel noted how the spire looked newly grown, as if the brass material had recently formed this new shape.
He landed in a bay perfectly sized for his seraph. The iris closed behind them, gravity reduced to a comfortable level, and a breathable atmosphere filled the interior. Small bridges extruded from a brass ledge, meeting with the seraphs’ cockpits.
Zophiel stepped out and walked across the bridge. He saw Othaniel walking out of her own seraph. The ledge was almost completely empty.
Almost.
Black chaos spawns roughly the size of humans walked or slithered or floated towards them, whatever their varied anatomies allowed. One of the more humanoid spawns approached. It had three arms, five tentacles, two legs, several dozen eyes, and no head.
… please let me know if you require anything, mighty disciple…
Zophiel nodded towards the creature and joined Othaniel in front of her seraph.
“This is all a bit overwhelming,” she said.
“Yes, he is definitely not what I expected.” Zophiel grinned suddenly. “But isn’t it exciting? Look at what we’ve accomplished. We’ve done it! We’ve opened the way!”
“Brother, you don’t have to hide it.”
“What are you talking about? I’m not hiding anything.”
“Brother, please. I know how you must feel.”
Zophiel shook his head and turned away from her.
Othaniel put a hand on his arm, but Zophiel pulled it away.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”
Othaniel hugged him from behind. She softly rested her head in the crook of his neck.
“I said I’m fine.”
“You’re not fooling anyone.”
Suddenly it all started to come out. All the emotions buried beneath the battle’s intensity flooded forward in one mad rush. He didn’t even realize he was crying until the first tear dropped off his cheek.
“I can’t believe she’s really gone,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
Othaniel held him close. “Neither can I.�
�
Chapter 18
Realm of Fire and Death
Jack folded into an unnamed system. He flared his wings and sped towards the pale sphere of a desolate ice planet. A patchwork of darker lines traced across its smooth off-white surface.
“Goodbye, planet,” Jack said. “I hardly knew you.”
Ten Alliance seraphs and two thrones folded space behind him. Veketon’s white throne fell into formation next to Seth, a portal lance in his hand. Jack grimaced at the sight of that weapon.
Tesset says he’s changed, he thought. I suppose if I’m going to trust anyone, it should be her. I just need to keep telling myself that.
“The Disciple Gate is approaching rapidly,” Seth said. “Once it strikes the planet, Veketon and I will secure it. Stay close. We’ll pass through as soon as it’s secure. Veketon will lead the way through, and I’ll nullify the Gate effect until everyone passes. Understood?”
The seraphs and thrones chorused their understanding and approval.
“Incoming,” Jared said. “We’ve got Disciple warships launching from the planet.”
“Ignore them,” Seth said. “We only have a few—”
“Here it comes!” Veketon said.
The Gate decelerated, approaching the planet like an out-of-control comet of mercury. The thin streak of silver slammed against the planet’s surface and sank into the interior. Ice and rock compressed and bowed inward at the impact point, forming a huge funnel into the planet’s depths.
Seth and Veketon orbited the planet at high speeds, and the rest of the Alliance seraphs struggled to keep up.
The Gate exploded out the other side, slowing down. Huge cracks formed along the ice planet’s once-smooth surface, and molten lava jetted out from the core. The cracks spread, and soon the entire planet broke apart. Giant fragments spun away in all directions. A continent-sized chunk of ice crashed through the Disciple warships, dispatching them in a brief string of explosions.
Seth and Veketon dove towards the Gate, and the Alliance seraphs followed. A tumbling rock the size of a city flew by overhead, and then two more underneath. The seraphs darted recklessly deeper into the thickening debris field.
The Gate pulsed below like a throbbing heart of liquid silver.
“Now!” Seth pointed his lance at the Gate.
Veketon aimed his own lance. “I have it!”
The Gate’s surface smoothed out and shrank, becoming a sphere of mercury. It fell inward with little spits of silver pluming out, and every few seconds the entire surface convulsed in an erratic spasm.
“It won’t get much more stable than this!” Veketon said.
“Right,” Seth said. “Everyone through!”
Veketon splashed into the half-calmed Gate, liquid silver engulfing his throne. Jack followed him through and found himself in the Gate tunnel.
Or, at least, what he thought was the Gate tunnel.
Jack pulled away from a blob of undulating mercury centered within a roughly spherical chamber. The chamber glowed with hot energies in whites and fierce purples, its walls writhing in and out in different directions, almost like the vast chamber was pulling itself apart.
“What the hell is this?” Jack asked.
More seraphs emerged behind him.
“The Gate tunnel,” Veketon said. “It appears quite unstable.”
“Is it safe?”
“No. I believe the other end is… this way. Stay close!”
Jack followed Veketon through a crack in the chamber’s side and into a long tunnel. The tunnel twisted and changed from one moment to the next, almost like the gut of a panicking snake. Brass brackets shored up the walls at wide intervals. Some had melted or broken free, but others watched them with open eyes.
“This doesn’t look anything like the Earth Gate tunnel,” Jack said.
“I have never seen one this unstable,” Veketon said. “We need to get out of here.”
The line of seraphs and thrones proceeded through the shifting tunnel, past dozens of floating spawn corpses.
“There!” Veketon said. “Directly ahead.”
The tunnel widened into another somewhat spherical chamber. Jack could just make out thin brass buttressing along the chamber walls. At its heart was another Gate, its surface quaking violently.
Veketon held out his lance, and the Gate gradually calmed. The undulations never died completely. Bits of silver sputtered and boiled out of its surface, but the Gate looked passably safe.
“This is as calm as I can make it,” Veketon said.
“Then we head through!” Seth said.
Veketon steadied his lance with both hands and dove in.
Jack followed him through, emerging alone within a suffocating cloud of purplish smoke. Crushing gravity latched onto his seraph and pulled him down. He flared his wings and fired his drive shunts, holding position.
Jack spun around, scanning his surroundings, looking for any sort of geographic feature other than the endless clouds of ash. He found none.
“Hey, where is everyone?” Jack asked. “And where’d the Gate go?”
Jack switched his chaos scanner on—
“Ah, damn it!”
—and immediately shut it down.
“What the hell was that?”
In the cockpit, Jack’s eyes watered. He turned his chaos scanner on again at one percent gain, but it was still like staring into the sun. He lowered the scanner to one tenth of one percent, and the feed into his mind finally became bearable.
With his chaos scanner set low, Jack finally saw the distant shape rising through the gloom.
“The Ziggurat…” he said. “Hey, guys? I think I know where we are.”
“Status report,” Seth said.
“Sir, we’ve come out in heavily dispersed positions,” Jared said. “Looks like our positions form a rough semi-circle in order of who passed through the Gate.”
“The Gate on this side must be looping around a central axis at incredible speeds,” Veketon said. “We traversed the last boundary in a very short time span.”
“Seth, our first priority should be to gather our forces,” Jack said. “My fold engines are off line. Can you form an intra-gate?”
“One moment… no, the properties of this realm are preventing it from forming.”
“Seth, we need to link up first. Who knows what’s waiting for us out here.”
“That is not strictly necessary,” Veketon said. “Something is clearly attracting the Gate towards a central location. Something artificial, I suspect.”
“So, we should meet there,” Seth said.
“That is one possibility,” Veketon said. “Though I expect whatever is drawing in the Gate will be well defended. Perhaps Bane Donolon’s suggestion is not without merit.”
Jack checked the positions of his fellow seraphs. Tactical data flowed between the various craft and fleshed out his understanding of their surroundings. Some seraphs were near what looked like a giant slope of Ziggurat fragments. Others were lower than him and close to some sort of ocean of liquid energy.
Jack overlapped the environmental data with coordinates from his chaos scanner. The strongest signature was almost perfectly centered on their rendezvous point.
“Seth, there’s something big near our rendezvous, and I don’t know what it is.”
“Possibly a chaos fiend,” Veketon said. “Regrettable, but our highest priority must be to reach the Gate first.”
“Agreed,” Seth said. “Okay, here’s the plan. Pick someone close to you and link up. No one travels alone. Converge on the rendezvous and avoid confrontations where possible. I don’t want anyone getting bogged down in a fight until we’ve joined up.”
Jack checked who the nearest ally was. He grimaced when he saw the name.
Veketon. Of course. It just had to be him.
Jack opened a private channel.
“Okay, Jackass. It’s just you and me. Head straight this way, and I’ll meet you in the middle.”
“Understood,” Veketon said dryly.
The seraph was silent.
“Pfft! Like I have a reason to be nice.”
“Did you just say something?” Veketon asked.
“Nope.”
Jack met Veketon near Lunatic Ziggurat. Eyes opened and watched them with what might have been mild curiosity before closing again.
“Heads up!” Jack said. “Incoming spawns!”
“I see them.”
Thirteen chaos spawns flew towards them, rising along one of the Ziggurat’s eight diagonal supports. Their bodies were as varied as they were numerous. Jack ignited his chaos sword and charged.
Brass swords and shields gleamed in their wriggling appendages or uncomfortably human hands. A few of the spawns opened huge human eyes. Jack summoned his shield and rocketed in with a burst of sudden speed. He flew underneath the lead spawn and sliced it in half with his sword.
To his side, Veketon raked the tip of his portal lance across two spawns. Both exploded into gooey displays of dark gore.
More spawns rushed the two pilots, one slashing down with twin brass axes. Jack deflected the attack with his shield and stabbed through the spawn’s belly. Its limbs shuddered, and its body shriveled up. Jack kicked it free and let it plummet into the ash clouds below.
Another spawn came at him from behind, its five boneless limbs tipped with humanoid hands, sometimes with the wrong number of fingers. It grabbed hold of Jack’s wings. The black folds of its sickening body parted, and a mouth full of human molars gaped wide.
“Ha! Not likely!”
Jack fired his drive shunts so hard the spawn disintegrated into fleshy chunks. Two more came at him, and he slashed his sword through one and then the other. Another dropped down from above, and he backed up and cleaved the spawn in half as it passed.
Nearby, Veketon struggled to dislodge a spawn coiling its limbs around his halo-wings. Blue energy burned the spawn wherever it touched the wing edges, but somehow it held. With a human arm, it raised a Ziggurat sword high over Veketon’s head.
Jack dashed in, cleaved the arm off, and stabbed the creature in its screaming mouth. Veketon broke free and splattered another two spawns with his lance.
