“Guess that’s how they got here,” Mack observed. “Terrible parking job.”
“The conduit is not … on the ship, is it?” Chari asked, clearly perturbed by the clustered growths. “I mean, I suppose I could try shooting it off …” She began looking around for some metal that wasn’t caked in barnacles or rust.
“No, it’s not,” Flynn confirmed to an audible collective sigh of relief. The gateway’s pull was somewhere beyond a wall before him. His back to the tides, he studied the area carefully. After the confusion back on the surface, he wouldn’t be fooled again. Realizing the trick, he beckoned the others to the wall, where shadows fell so black that the recess within was all but perfectly concealed. The four inched through a tight passage that wrapped around before opening up in a hollow alcove that looked as though it had been cut suddenly, raw. Before they’d even stepped inside, the passage from Sechal opened. Mack started to move for it, but Flynn stopped him.
“This one feels … different.”
“Yeah?” Jean asked. “How’s that?”
Where to start?
“All the passages we’ve seen have been in open spaces, or places that once were. This one is hidden, concealed. Almost …” Realizing then, Flynn returned with the others to the gaping alcove, stopping short in the shadowed recess. One could see the ship perfectly from here and, with little effort, avoid being spotted.
“Almost as if someone came here not to be seen,” Flynn said. “Just to see.”
“The hell’s so important about this boat?”
“There aren’t enough people in that village to handle a vessel like this,” Chari concluded. “It would have taken many more to sail here. They’ve been dying off for generations.”
“Y’know, the mainland wasn’t exactly crowded either,” Mack commented. “I mean, I know we’re all thinking it, but these guys were probably the last ones when they landed here.”
“All human life, come to this,” Flynn considered the possibility. “Just fading quietly into the night.”
“Probably better than having a big fuckin’ nuke dropped on ya,” Jean countered.
“Possibly,” Flynn replied, though he wasn’t certain he agreed. “Let’s go. Maybe the other side of this conduit will have answers to all this.”
Returning to the alcove, they left Sechal with little fanfare.
Following last, Flynn hoped he wasn’t bringing them to a world more hostile than those they’d yet visited. Stronger than that fear, however, was the want for answers to all they’d been seeing. Questions were mounting, from the travelers mentioned by the skinner in Noria Peak, to these passages and Flynn’s own connection to them. Too much had become strange and awry since the first time he had found the way from Earth, before he’d known what it was or dared to pass through. He had no plans to revert to the man he once was, but he burned to know why he was here, as he was, now.
Chapter Nine: A Crash upon Sacred Spaces
Flynn touched down on steady ground, stumbling but keeping his footing this time. The others had arrived safely, but for the transition from the dark and concealed recess of a forgotten cavern, their destination could not have been starker.
There was no sun. No stars. No moon, nor clouds in the sky. In a fashion, there was no sky. The world they had come upon had neither day nor night and as they turned to get their bearings, it was more apparent that wherever they had landed was not a world at all.
“Okay … the hell?” came Jean’s bewilderment.
“Where have we come to?” Chari followed. “I am uncertain if this is categorically normal.”
“Oh no, it is,” Mack assured. “It’s just you.”
Peering as far along the edge as he could, Flynn realized they were standing atop a massive disc of arranged stones, floating alone in an oblivion of purple and black auroras. Rising readily behind them and obscuring the full visible scope of all that lay ahead was a temple. Consuming the entire space of the discus and extending for miles, its spires loomed and its inward passages delved deep. Each stone had an inner glow as intense as a field of fireflies, and these were the only reason they weren’t stumbling hopelessly in absolute pitch.
“It doesn’t seem to rotate or orbit anything,” Flynn observed, crossing to the ledge and kneeling to look down. There was no visible end to the abyss. “It just … is.”
“Purple,” Mack commented, looking down. He looked up, “Purple,” and then ahead, “Purple,” and finally, at the ground, “Rock.”
“We’re in agreement on that then.” Flynn stood back up.
“I think this is some sort of holy place,” Chari observed.
“That some kinda priestess-y intuition?” Jean asked.
“No, just …” Chari glanced back at the edifice behind them. “What else would you build a temple like this for?”
There were no answers. For a moment, they watched the expanse, trying to see if something waited in the distant beyond. It became increasingly clear, however, that they had come upon the sole beacon in a vast and vacant microcosm.
“I’d make it my house,” Mack finally decided. “Like, if there was a zombie invasion or something? This is where I’d hole up.”
“A what-be?” Chari asked.
“This place doesn’t seem very defensible,” Flynn observed, cracking his stiffening neck, feeling around with his sixth sense. “It’s perhaps bigger than the island we came from, but there are several routes in … and out.”
Following his meaning, Jean grinned. “Options, yeah?”
It wasn’t just the conduits. Something more tugged at Flynn, something altogether removed from the passages the others wished eagerly to explore. Faint though it was, it reminded him of Scytha, the Reaper he had met back on Sechal. Yet as reminiscent as the sensation was, it was also very different.
“I think there’s someone else here,” Flynn said, going ahead into the temple. Knowing they’d follow, he didn’t spare a glance back.
*
As they drew deeper and deeper in, toward the temple’s heart, they passed through walls and sections in a series of concurrent rings. As the hours mounted and they seemed to get no closer to a journey’s end, it became overwhelmingly apparent that life here would be impossible. Stone walls all around offered security, but from what? There were no far off lands, no promises of a world apart invading the one they found themselves in. There was only this one terrestrial body unto itself, and even if some hostile party did come, there was nothing to take.
There was no food, no water. Gutters ran along the pathways, but if anything had ever flowed through, it had dried up long ago. There were planters too, and the garden that could have once have grown there would have dazzled the eyes and provided such an Eden that the four could have lived here for the rest of their days. All that remained was dust and rot, too far decayed to even leave a scent.
Miles of stone passed without event, and during the long walk, they shared what remnant food they had carried from Sechal. Their remaining water drained all too quickly, all while progressing farther from any safe way to fall back. At last, though, they came to the deepest ring of the forgotten temple. A great chamber opened before them, and the numerous pathways all around told that their route had been only one of many.
Ten chairs encircled an altar in the center of the room. Ten chairs cut from precious stone, each of a different hue and frame. Two were shattered, their backs all but collapsed, their seats in upheaval. The altar in the center supported a luminescent glass orb that seemed to contain a universe within. The numerous galaxies inside were divided by a spider web of cracks and fragments, yet despite this damage, the whole of it held together without binding. An unshielded expanse above served to remind them of the strangeness of their situation.
For all the bizarreness that they had seen so far—overt and subtle—it was this at last that lay out of Flynn’s depth. He’d thus far rationalized everything—from landing on Sechal to encountering Chari—within the confines of reason. “Wha
t is this place that we’ve come to?”
“I’d hoped you better equipped to enlighten me,” Chari said. “This room—is it a place of conference or communion?”
“Maybe it’s both,” Mack suggested. “Maybe people just sorta showed up and worshiped each other.”
“That would be simply narcissistic—”
A book slammed shut above. The act was swift and loud, and called their collective attention to the balcony overhead. From this distance, there was little to see save the edges of numerous cabinets that could very well be bookshelves. Jean’s hand tightened around the grip of her mace.
Footsteps, deliberate and barefoot, rang out against the stone above.
Chari readied an empty rifle, counting on intimidation. Flynn glanced at Mack, who stood unarmed and idle.
“I can ball up my hands and club my opponent repeatedly,” he offered weakly.
Flynn’s fingers tensed involuntarily, ready to let forth his claws if needed. Uncertain that any of them could take something dwelling in a place such as this, he hoped that whatever was coming, he could talk his way through it.
It was then that he saw her. The woman in red approached the balcony and gazed down upon them with such presence that she could have stood among thousands and still been impossible to overlook. Her skin was a rich tan that complimented her divine beauty; her hair a dark red, affixed in a bun by twin paintbrushes, each stained a prism of colors. Her scarlet robes hung in such a way that they seemed themselves painted, as patterns in the cloth moved as though stroked upon her skin, characterized with sharp white patches intermittently scattered. For a moment, she just watched them as they watched her, neither side at first saying anything. When at last a voice filled the air, it was hers and she was brief.
“Ephemeral. Mortal.” The woman in red spoke in soft disappointment, but the acoustics of the chamber assured that her words reached them. She turned away without another glance. “Abandon whatever artifact brought you here, and leave the way you came in. I’ll forgive this trespass.”
“Just like that, huh?” Jean said to the others, her arm lowering. “Eh, no big loss.”
Chari slackened her hold on her weapon too, but seemed dissatisfied. The mysterious woman vanished from sight as Flynn realized it was her he’d been sensing. Although they had been given the latitude to go their own way, and could have easily settled for that, it wasn’t enough for Flynn. Answers were here, maybe going back to the medical facility on Earth—the first conduit that he’d opened, and everything since then.
“I thought I had prepared myself for the strange,” Chari said. “I hadn’t even begun.”
“Maybe this is the place we start?” Mack suggested. “I mean, come on, floating rock disc in space? That’s gotta be worth something.”
“We’ve got an out,” Jean argued, “and no reason to stay, so why stick? Let’s just take it and move on. We ain’t gonna find any good here.”
To stay or depart. There is always a price, as much for ignorance as knowledge. Despite what cost they might incur, Flynn could not make a decision without knowing. Stepping forward, he cupped his hands around his mouth. The room could carry even soft murmurs across, but he wanted no doubt she would hear him.
“I opened the way!” he called out. She had assumed there must be some key, and thought leaving it would settle the matter. “There’s no artifact. No key.” His hands dropped, but Flynn delivered one final stroke. “Only me.”
She returned with hurried steps to look upon them once more, showing Flynn particular interest. From across the chamber, his eyes connected with hers, ensuring she would know he was something apart from his peers. Whatever the woman in red saw, she did not withdraw again. Four broad pillars held the interior lip of the library, and from each one a spiral of stone planks jutted out, forming stairs bridging below and above. The woman took the steps nearest, moving in a way so fluid that she seemed apart from humanity. Her every step was perfect, as though placed a thousand times before.
“Were you sent?” she demanded. “Did someone seek you out, send you my way? Are you pittance?”
“We just kinda came here,” Mack said. “Flynn-o here just opened the way and we all sorta—” Mack swung his arms by his sides and made a small jump for emphasis, “—hopped through.”
At Mack’s display, her pace slowed. Whatever urgency drove her had been undone. Stopping short at one of the broken chairs, she set her hands upon what remained of its backside.
“I waited over three hundred years for the courage of gods to come to my aid,” she said. “All I have to call upon is the dull blundering of humans.”
“Gods?” Chari asked, looking to Flynn for answers. He shook his head, having none to give.
“I know it’s a staggering prospect, priestess,” the woman in red spoke sharply, “to have your homogenized world view thrown to such upheaval. But I survived when the proposition was more world changing than it is now.”
Furrowing her brow, Chari almost let the jibe pass. “I can cope fine at the prospect of things which are not. Who are you, to talk to us this way?”
The woman in red looked at the four and took a breath, calming herself. “If you were indeed sent by one of my contemporaries, I would find great offense that you did not know Airia Rousow’s name.” Closing her eyes, she bowed her head apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’ve waited so long for hope to come, and you unwittingly dashed it twice within minutes.”
Hostilities cooling, Flynn approached Airia. She raised her head, gazing into his eyes. Her brown irises radiated with a blue light, and they did not even flinch at meeting his slitten orbs. Something told Flynn she had seen many worse things than he.
“You’re from Earth.” She sounded almost amused. Looking to Mack and Jean, she added, “As are you two, though that I grasped more readily.”
“Yeah, so?” Jean rebutted, not even a little impressed.
“TseTsu,” Airia said dismissively of Chari. “As if the robes don’t give the Saryu away.”
“So if I dressed like that—?” Mack started to posit.
“I would still know.”
“Right on all counts,” Flynn told her, though she needed no confirmation.
Airia slid past, moving to another chair in the circle. She ignored several closer seats and took one in particular as though it was hers by right, and had only ever been.
“Please, sit,” she invited them. “I’ve not had the pleasure of company for a little more than three hundred years. I may as well indulge a while longer.”
Mack and Chari looked to one another and, in mutual agreement, moved for two nearby chairs. Jean chose one of the cracked and broken seats, settling in across it and laying her mace against its side. If it was her intention to make a statement, she had picked one loud and boisterous.
Rather than settle for something apparent and obvious, Flynn paid their new host more careful mind. Airia’s glances were fleeting, but there was one seat that held her transfixed for the briefest moments, among those yet unbroken. In contrast to Jean’s blunt-force message, Flynn’s was calculated, settling in a seat that Airia looked upon as though it represented some unfinished business. His expression made it clear that, despite the circumstances of their arrival, he was not in the habit of engaging in accidental gestures.
Introductions were made, that Airia might know just who she was dealing with. The same tales shared the day before were reiterated—with brevity, as the ideas were not so new to her—leading up their arrival in her chambers.
“First Sechal … now Earth,” Airia thought on the news. She rubbed an eye for a moment, then stood up. “An entire world’s people consigned to diminish and decay, their connection to the gods of old faded to the ocean’s fog.”
“No chance of that happenin’ on Earth,” Jean smirked. “Too many folks at each other’s throats half the time for any one of us to give up and quit.”
“That is so different from you?” Airia asked. “What do you see when you look a
t humanity? Or at your friends? Or in yourself? Do you still see hope and optimism? Or does a more desperate hand reach out, your better emotions secondary to hatred and malice? To emptiness?” Her voice softened. “To apathy?”
“Those … those things are part of everyday life,” Chari replied uncomfortably.
“They are facets, yes,” Airia nodded. “But these things do not flourish when we prosper. Only when we’re at our lowest. Only when we’re dying.” Rising, she approached the great glass orb of the universe that rested above the altar. She reached up, placing a hand upon it. “Things have been out of sorts for a long time,” she told them. “Four centuries now, I count. Better years spent here, trapped and unable to affect the worlds beyond. Waiting. I …” Airia seemed hurt to even think it. “I thought I’d been forgotten. It has been so long.”
“Well, why … why don’t ya just leave?” Mack asked.
“I did, once, to watch the last great ship beach itself on the Isle of Vianmas,” she replied, “That was three hundred and twenty years ago. I had made a terrible enemy eighty years before that, one whom many have sworn fealty to. All eyes would be upon me if I left, and I would not last long outside this haven.”
“Three hundred … eighty …” Jean ran a few numbers through her head. She sat up and leaned forward on one arm while the other rested in her lap. “Yo, Airia? How old are ya?”
“Before the ships, before my fall? I stood legion with two gods for a thousand years.”
“Geez …” Floored, Jean nestled back into her seat.
“Where are these gods now?” Flynn asked. “How did you fall from them?”
Outcasts of the Worlds Page 20
