Ziedra drew a breath and let it out slow. “Sure. You know, I’ve never tried something this big before.”
“You never had a body like that.”
“True.”
They backed off as the ascendant of magic began the incantation. Ziedra pushed her long dark hair over her shoulders, squared herself on the platform and worked her shoulders left to right. She brought her hands together in a clap and hummed. Closing her eyes she tilted her head back and swung her arms up and began to chant deep in her chest, uttering harsh guttural sounds.
Loric tilted his head, brow furrowing. “It appears to be a tenth order version of T’a‘fugit, there are some differences of course.”
“A spirit binder?” Cassandra said. “Well, I suppose that makes sense.”
“Spirit binder?” Marna wondered aloud.
The three Kriar watched in rapt fascination as Ziedra continued to cast.
Bannor watched as the magic evolved, primal threads of incredible power stretched out between the body and the sphere containing Gaea’s essence. There were other spells that insinuated themselves in the green mother’s waiting body, making subtle changes in its structure.
By the time Ziedra began to slow her motions, to Bannor’s nola sight, the dais was all but obscured by a complex web of threads and balanced energies. To his normal sight, the area pulsed with a silvery light, and motes of red, blue, and green light danced around the cylinder.
Ziedra dropped her hands to her sides and staggered. Wren lunged forward and caught her shoulders.
“Whew,” the ascendant of magic said. “That—that was a lot—even for this body.”
“Well done, Daughter Ziedra,” Gaea commended. “It appears that you did everything perfectly.”
Octavia had her arms folded as she stared at the case with a furrowed brow.
“Octavia,” Gaea said. “Loric is going to strike my essence cage. When he does so, Ziedra will invoke the binding. When she claps her hands, please start the body processes.”
Octavia nodded. “Understood.”
“Children,” Gaea said. “Let us hope this is successful. It is the last time I may communicate with you from this chamber, as when the vessel is destroyed so will my contact with the artifices that allow communication. Do please stay back away from the case while the binding takes place. It will create quite a tempest I am sure. Zee, I recommend invoking the binding from several steps up.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“Loric, are you ready?”
He frowned. He chanted a few words and his body left the ground and floated up to where he was within arm’s reach of Gaea’s essence cage. With a rasp, he drew Mon’istiaga out of its magically concealed case. The blade of the destroyer sparked and flared with reddish light, the material shimmering like the surface of water illuminated by a bright sun.
“Ready,” the elder said.
Below, they had backed well away from the case. Bannor’s heart was thumping. They were going to witness something truly unique.
“When you strike,” Gaea said. “I would get back a fair distance.” There was a pause. “I am prepared. Go when you are ready.”
Loric looked down to Ziedra. “Ready Zee?”
“Yes,” the ascendant of magic said, leaning on her gold husband.
“Ready Octavia?”
“I am prepared.”
“Okay, here we go.”
Loric gestured and a sheen of golden light swelled around his limbs, then another dimmer light seemed to fold around that, and then a series of dimmer illuminations layered themselves overtop those. After that was done he landed on the upper side of the globe, and took hold of the thick support that held it in place, and braced himself. He took a couple of test swings, getting the path he wanted. Bannor noticed he was bracing his feet not only to get leverage to make the attack but lunge away from the construct as well.
“On three, two, one!” The elder drew back the weapon of the first ones, focused, and brought Mon’istiaga’s edge shrieking down on the side of the sphere.
Bannor had been expecting a big impact but the whole room shook with the power of the blow. Apparently, Loric had known exactly how sturdy that sphere was, even with the tremendous force the elder put behind it, Mon’istiaga only knocked out a small chunk.
Loric leaped away as a burst of darkness erupted from the opening, causing the whole room to shudder and fluctuate. The cloud of lightlessness swirled around the sphere, energy arcing and crackling.
Ziedra yelled a single indescribable word, something beyond sound but less than thought. It hit the air like a hammer ringing a gong. She clapped her hands.
Octavia gestured and the case flashed.
The air in the room roared to a howl as the cloud of darkness around Gaea’s communing sphere spiraled down toward the case with growing speed. Tongues of magic and heat flicked out into the lower bleachers with crashes that made the whole room quiver with their force.
Threads of truly unfathomable depth and reach began to gather around the goddess; strands of reality so primal that they made Bannor’s eyes ache to look on them.
A fountain of golden light fanned out from where the darkness touched Gaea’s waiting body. The case top melted and fragments of the cylinder itself sheared away into the maelstrom of titanic forces boring downward into the green-skinned form.
Bannor glanced toward Marna, her daughter, and Octavia, the three of them stood on the steps, fists clenched and bodies twitching as each roll of thunder and flash of energy smote the room.
“Lords,” Sarai breathed next to him. “That’s her life force?”
“Creation incarnate,” someone murmured.
With a last crack that died into to silence, the light and darkness winked out.
It felt to Bannor like his heart stopped along with the display. Smoke and vapor obscured the whole dais, so it was impossible to tell if the body even held together under the massive onslaught of the all-mother’s life force.
“Dark,” Marna muttered. “I—” The always articulate matriarch stumbled, apparently at a lack for words.
Loric floated down to land on the steps next to Cassandra and Desiray. He rubbed at his arms. “Damn, I got a sun-tan right through my shields.” He sheathed Mon’istiaga with a clank and looked toward the dais. “Did it work?”
“I can’t tell,” Cassandra breathed.
Wren drew a breath and started down the steps.
Ziedra followed close behind, hands laced and held to her lips.
He swallowed and started down, Sarai held onto his hand and followed. The platform was devoid of threads. It looked—dead. The thought made his stomach twist. He looked up to the sphere overhead. The massive outpouring of Gaea’s essence had pealed the globe open like the petals of a flower.
Why couldn’t he detect that monstrously powerful life force? All that energy had just vanished like it never was.
They reached the bottom step. Nothing remained of the Kriar transformation cylinder. Bannor felt the heat of the floor of the conference circle through his boots. The metal and crystal had been literally boiled away by the gigantic forces of the merging. A burned caustic smell hung in the air. Gaea’s body lay on its side in a melted crater of stone several paces across, long black hair lying across her torso and the floor like strands of shadow.
Octavia, who was behind them, made an incoherent choking sound. No doubt, she, like the rest of them, had not anticipated anything nearly so violent.
“How did her body even remain intact?” Cassandra wondered. “Damn, it’s hot.”
Wren ventured into the still smoking crater, her aura flickering brighter as she dissipated the energy away from herself. “Mother?” She bent down and touched Gaea’s shoulder. “Mother?”
The goddess didn’t move.
The other savants looked on from a short distance away.
Wren bent down and scooped Gaea up in her arms. Grimacing, with the effort, she wobbled over and deposited still form on the lo
west intact tier and pressed her ear to all-mother’s chest.
The Kel’varan made a moaning sound. “No, she’s—”
The goddess gasped, her back arching and legs twitching. Her flailing arms found Wren and clutched her tight.
The goddess’ body, dormant of threads and energy, sparked and came alive. Like the light from a lantern being slowly unhooded, the life force of Gaea grew brighter and brighter until her green skin turned luminescent with the brilliance of her tao.
The all-mother took long shuddering gasps of air. Her dark eyes fluttered. She continued to take deep heaving breaths. She moaned and after a few moments her eyes opened fully.
“Ah,” Gaea groaned. “So—this is what it’s like to be—alive.”
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* * *
Chapter Three
In truth, the Jyril scared me. They did
things that were then, and still are,
impossible to Kriar science even after
hundreds of eons. Their legacy, creatures
like the Baronians and Gaea, make me
uneasy no matter how pretty a face they wear…
—Vatraena Marna Solaris,
Fabrista Supreme Counsel
Gaea writhed on the padded tier. Her naked green body glowing with potential now covered with beads of perspiration. The great communing chamber had gone cold. The great gems that once pulsed with energy were dead and a dark. The mists which rolled along the floor had dissipated. As Bannor watched, the goddess they once feared stillborn was growing stronger, the life energy in her burning brighter and brighter.
“Dang,” Wren breathed. “We thought you didn’t make it.”
Gaea coughed and smiled. She raised a trembling hand to Wren’s face. “Not—” Her throat worked. “Not—easy.”
Bannor glanced to Octavia and Marna who were glancing back and forth to one another and looking uncomfortable. Dulcere too seemed uneasy. Something had not gone according to their plans. Of course, he doubted anyone expected the creation chamber to be turned to slag and a big hole melted in the dais.
He noticed Loric and Cassandra also had worried expressions.
“She’s beautiful,” Sarai murmured. “A goddess has been born.” She swallowed. “And I got to watch it.”
Loric turned back to Bannor. He and Cassandra came over to him. “Bannor can you come over here with us?” Loric pointed to the other side of the audience circle.
The four of them walked until they were out of earshot of Wren and the other savants. Loric lowered his voice. He glanced toward where the blonde savant was drawing a cloak over Gaea’s nakedness and cradling her head in her lap.
The man raised gray eyes to fix on Bannor. “Bannor, I know you can see amazing things. Does that look like any avatar you’ve ever seen?”
He glanced to Gaea. He frowned. “I’ve never seen one that strong, that’s for sure.”
“She’s got enough demi-urge for a thousand avatars,” Cassandra murmured.
Bannor looked back. Gaea’s energy was still getting stronger. He wasn’t even sure how that body was holding all that potential.
“Do you see any kind of external connection?” Loric asked him. “Something that would be tying her back her original body?”
He focused on Gaea again and the hundreds of primal threads that whirled and spun around her. If she had a host thread, he sure couldn’t see it. Loric was right, and being as powerful as Gaea was, that control thread would be something not easily concealed—especially not from him—the threads of eternity were the clearest of all to his sight.
Bannor pushed out his lip. “If there’s a control thread, I sure don’t see it. It’s crazy, as I’m watching—she’s still getting stronger.”
Cassandra’s black black eyes widened. “Lords, did she…”
Desiray came sauntering over. She blinked at them with green eyes and flipped her white hair. “What’s got you four over here whispering? This new Gaea got you scared? Marna looks like someone has a crossbow pointed at her head.”
“I was about to say to Bannor, I think Gaea changed the plan at the last instant.”
“Changed it how?”
“I think that’s her—the whole Gaea,” he said.
“You mean the whole ‘the universe blows up if she dies’ Gaea?”
He pressed his lips to a line and nodded.
“Darling, I can believe a lot of stuff. You’re not going to say an entire universe just got squeezed into that little teeny body.”
“Have you ever seen that much magic?” he said in a dark tone. “Even Idun in full battle mode is just barely a little more than what she’s putting out now. She’s just lying there.” He pointed to Sarai’s shaladen blade. “She’s carrying around a thousandth of the universe’s total energy output on her hip. How in hades did they do that?”
Sarai looked down to the sword on her hip and gripped it. Bannor’s wife-to-be’s eyes widened, their violet glows cast illumination of her cheeks. “What?”
Loric looked to Sarai. “You didn’t know? I thought you understood how powerful that thing was.”
“That’s ridiculous. I can’t have that much magic—can I?”
“Of course. The shaladen’s energy is effectively infinite. Being flesh and blood though, you can only draw as much of that power as your physical and psychic abilities can withstand. That is why when you first pick up a shaladen it transforms your body so that the weapon’s idle energy doesn’t burn you up.” He let out a breath. “If you’ve ever seen someone touch a shaladen that wasn’t themselves a Shael Dal, or someone becoming a wielder—very messy.” He glanced back to where Gaea lay with her followers gathered around her reclined body. “I don’t know what we do now.”
“I don’t understand,” Bannor said. “What has you worried?”
“Bannor, kill an avatar, the god makes another one—the chance of killing the host is miniscule. If that’s really her—and she dies—what happens?”
He rubbed the back of his head. “But this body isn’t built into universe. If it dies—I mean what does that form have to do with those subpaths Marna talked about?”
Loric frowned. “I don’t know—maybe nothing—maybe everything. What we don’t know can hurt us. It’s possible that this is now the host, and the vast form occupying Eternity’s subpaths is now the avatar. Avatars can feed their hosts energy. Avatars often die when their host expires.”
“Damn, that’s scary,” Cassandra said.
“I wouldn’t be so scared myself,” Loric said. “Except that I’m concerned that body won’t hold together.”
Bannor looked over. The amount of energy coming from Gaea was worrisome. It was possible that she could get control of it, but would she do so before something ugly and awkward happened.
Marna, Dulcere, and Octavia tore themselves away from the sight of Gaea and came across to the side of the circle where they were having their private conversation.
“I take it you have the same concerns as we do?” Marna said to Loric.
Loric nodded. “Octavia, is that body going to hold together?”
The mecha woman scrubbed both hands in her red hair in gesture of dismay. “I have never seen such a high energy level in an organic. I am glad I designed three times over spec, or she would have already failed.”
“No,” Loric confirmed. “Bannor says he sees no control thread. We’re speculating now what happens if this form dies?”
“It is possible nothing happens,” Octavia said with a furrowed brow. “Consider for a moment that she did a tao transfer as the savants have done. Moving her entire energy form from the form in subspace to this one.”
“That would leave her subpath body dormant, unoccupied. Our bodies die if
we’re not in them.”
“A creature as she must be is not a single entity, but a huge colony of entities working in unison.”
“But how can something like that have a personality?” Sarai wanted to know.
“How can you have a personality? You yourself are thousands of adapted colony organisms working together,” Octavia explained, continuing to fuss with her red hair. The mecha’s rainbow colored eyes flicked through the darker colors of the spectrum. “Most forms of organic life work on this principle. She is simply something working on a larger scale—something only possible in the timelessness of subspace where organic material does not decay as it does in normal space.”
She looked over toward Gaea and sighed. “Good, the energy spikes have leveled out. I think the body will adapt to the thresholds. I was worried it wouldn’t have time to modify itself to handle the load.”
“Her body can modify itself?” Cassandra said looking over.
“Well, all creatures have adaptive bodies. It’s just that I knew I would be dealing with a high load, so I designed replicates into the form that would increase the density and durability of the heterotrophic elements of her microstructure when needed. I had no idea it would have to adapt to so much so quickly.”
“Wizard,” Cassandra said with a nod. “As long as she’s not going to explode.”
“I believe we are through the scary part,” Octavia said.
“Loric, Marna,” Bannor said. “Even if it really is Gaea, there’s nothing we can do about it. The chimera is out of its cave and we collapsed the cave behind it.” He pointed to the sphere overhead. “We have to pretend that if she dies the universe goes with her, even if that’s not the case, at least until we know for certain one way or the other.”
“She’s not going to let us lock her up and hide her away,” Sarai said. “This is the first time she’s ever been outside. She is going to want to see, hear, smell, taste and touch everything.”
Cassandra nodded. “Sarai is right, once she gets going, holding that woman still is going to be a trial. She’ll want to experience everything including watching fights.”
Reality's Plaything 5: The Infinity Annihilator Page 4
