Majus I’Fon rose from hir squat. “I have seen enough suffering from the hands of the Life Coalition, and we have few other options. If we can make them stop attacking for a moment, we may be able to get far enough away for a portal to open. I will help.”
Majus Caroom’s eyes glowed brightly for a moment as they thought. “One would normally never do such as this, but one was also at Dalhni. One has seen what the Life Coalition, hmmm, does when that group is not pushing for peace. One is also concerned about the effect of this disturbance on the Symphony.”
“That’s a yes?” Majus Ayama asked, and the Benish nodded their head with a snap and a creak.
Now the others looked at Majus Kheena.
“These people, they are my species, though some of them do wrong,” he said, his voice pitched over the dissonance. He snuck a look at the doorway, still filled with dark cloaks and weapons. “They have come forward to talk, even if under strained circumstances. Sabotage, is this method really best? Is there no other option to negotiate?”
“Are you willing to risk your life for a chance to negotiate?” Majus Ayama asked, but Rey’s mentor was already shaking his head.
“Me, I cannot, in good conscience, do this,” he said.
Something swelled up in Rey and he stepped forward. “Then I will. They attacked the Effature. Whoever created all these weapons, they need to be taken down.” He speared a hand at the floating seeds. “Mebbe out of what’s left, will be sommun willin’ to deal. Let’s give ‘em sommat to deal about while we find Enos.” He looked around at the others, daring them to say anything.
“Then will this Drain be that much greater, when it is absorbing all the other Drain seeds?” Majus Cyrysi asked. No one had an answer. “We may need to push with extreme force if the soldiers do not move when the Drain opens.”
“Without the option of a portal, I am willing to engage these troops, if needed,” Majus Kheena offered.
“Good idea,” said Majus Ayama. “Ori, let’s have an escape plan ready for after we start this madness. No diving into it like usual.”
Majus Cyrysi jerked his hand back from a sliver. “That is to be the most sensible course.”
“Uh huh.” Majus Ayama raised an eyebrow. “Those participating in this…thing, stand here. Will the shield hold?”
Hand Dancer said, and turned for the door.
A spear pierced the wall of air and stabbed into the Lobhl’s shoulder. It retracted as fast as it had thrust out.
Hand Dancer made no sound, but fell back, her hands wavering in what was translated as a scream of pain.
Majus Amaya started to her, but Hand Dancer waved her back, cradling her arm close. Pink blood dribbled down her arm.
Majus Ayama gave the Lobhl a terse nod. “Quickly,” was all she said. Majus Kheena went to apply pressure to the wound.
Rey joined the rest of the maji. Even over the commotion in the hall, the interruptions and corruptions in the Symphony were like a swarm of insects buzzing around his head.
“Find the fundamental note of your house,” Majus I’Fon told them, then looked to Majus Cyrysi. “Or houses. That is the note we must connect between the seed and the disruption in the Grand Symphony.”
“We have no way to know how fast the Drain will expand,” Majus Cyrysi added.
“Best hope those soldiers know what a void is,” Rey mumbled. Was it worse to confront an angry mob, or a mob scared because a giant death-sphere was behind you?
There was silence, save for the tortured Symphony. Then, “Ready?” Majus Ayama called.
Rey felt deep within, finding a note from his core matching the high whistle of the Symphony of Potential.
“Ready,” he said to Majus Ayama, as the others did the same.
“Which one, Ori?” she asked, and the Kirian pointed to a sliver near them.
“This one, when it is phasing back in,” Majus Cyrysi shouted as the sliver vanished.
They gathered around, careful not to touch anything else, and waited. The din of weapons bouncing off walls and thickened air drifted to them. Rey swallowed, wondering if he’d made the right choice. Were they any better than the Life Coalition, for starting one of these things up in their stronghold?
“Now!” Majus Cyrysi called, and as the sliver reappeared in their midst, Rey leaned in, an aura of brown surrounding his hand. Majus Caroom shone green for the House of Strength, Majus Cyrysi with one hand in yellow for the House of Communication and the other ringed with orange for the House of Power. On Rey’s other side, Majus Ayama held a ball of white light in her hand for the House of Healing, and Majus I’Fon’s fingers had an aura of blue for the House of Grace. The note was pulled hungrily from his being, sucked into the nascent void, joining the chorus of dissonant interruptions in the Grand Symphony.
As the connection formed, the jangling disturbances in the Symphony ceased and Rey groaned in relief.
“Move!” Majus Ayama yelled, but Rey was already heading toward the exit. Even as he wove through the other glimmering slivers, the temperature around him dropped. He made it to the door of the room and chanced a look back. Just as in the Assembly, a ball of putrid substance grew in the center of the room. It would intersect the next sliver in three. Two. One…
The soldiers at the wall were silent, watching, their weapons sagging. They recognized the void.
“Drop the shield,” Majus Ayama said to Majus Cyrysi and Hand Dancer.
Majus Ayama grabbed for Rey’s arm. “We need to leave. It will kill you.”
As she pulled him backwards, the perimeter of the void touched the next sliver, and…bent. The Symphony curdled like old goat milk in his mind.
“Wait,” he said, and jerked his arm free from Majus Ayama. As if in slow motion, the maji were flowing past him, toward the now retreating soldiers, auras flaring. Then Majus Cyrysi stopped too, looking where he did.
“Oh ancestors,” the Kirian said. “That is different.”
“Press them back,” Majus Ayama shouted. She was halfway out of the door, hands up as if ready to tackle all the soldiers by herself. “We must find Enos!”
“There are more Coalitioners coming,” Majus Kheena called from next to her. “We are trapped.”
“We can push through. We can find—,” Majus Ayama started, but Majus Cyrysi waved a robed arm back at her.
“Look at this,” he said. The void intersected a second sliver. The first still resisted the growing sphere, pressing in, like a pin against the skin of a soap bubble. The soldiers shuffled and backed away. A few ran off.
“It’s slowing down,” Rey said. The blob had expanded rapidly until it intersected the first shard. Now it oozed around the restriction. The cold wasn’t as bad as everyone said, either. Hadn’t Sam said he almost froze? This was nothing like that.
Majus I’Fon held hir arms out, ringed with blue, facing down four of the remaining Coalitioners. “They are gathering reinforcements. We have only moments.”
“This Drain is not to be performing as other Drains have,” Majus Cyrysi said. He took a step forward, but Rey grabbed his robe.
“Woah there. Let’s not call yer granddames down on us just yet, eyah?”
With a tiny pop, the void engulfed the first sliver. They winced at the spike of discord that rammed through the Grand Symphony, like a pen slashed through writing paper. The void contacted more slivers, which pressed in like spearpoints poking an overgrown loaf of dough. The place where the first sliver disappeared fractured, wobbling and dividing into
another void, before that was swallowed up, and the void divided again.
Now Majus Ayama came closer, the threat from the soldiers dissipating. “What’s it doing?”
“Nothing that it should be,” Majus Cyrysi said.
“I can tell that because I’m not dying,” Majus Ayama answered. “What does…oh Shiv, that’s not good.” It swallowed another sliver and the void went into permutations. “Can you hear that?”
“So this is not what yer were expecting?” Rey asked. Another sliver absorbed, and the void bubbled and wobbled. He wanted to hold his head. The dissonance had its own dissonance.
“Not at all.” Majus Cyrysi said. There was a creak behind them, as Majus Caroom shouldered a Coalitioner out of the way. They backhanded a lethargic stab with a pike.
“The Symphony is, hmm, becoming unstable,” they said.
“We know,” they all answered.
The thing engulfed another, and then another sliver, and the maji winced. The surface of the void was no longer smooth. It roiled and split, each new sliver adding more chaos to the vista and to the Symphony.
Once again, Rey heard the tromp of boots coming down the corridor. They had wasted their window of surprise.
“I’ve no idea what it’s doing either, but I donna trust what’s happenin’” Rey said. He winced as the Symphony howled and dipped in his mind. “Mebbe we should be on our way.” They turned as one to the doorway, but Majus Hand Dancer was upright, one arm dangling as the other hand pointed into the bubbling chaos.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Emergence
- Me, I was given this vision to share with you all, my followers: In a waking dream, I found myself within the holiest of holies—the crater at Thlissen, where the Ideal Form was first revealed. Save here, there was no statue of the Form. Instead, me, I saw a clear box with no entry, surrounding a bulbous globe of white. As dreams go, I was suddenly inside the box, reaching for the pale glow of the sphere. In my hand, there was a knife reflecting strange light, and I parted the skin of it, the edges blackening and curling away. From within, there emerged a golden tablet, inscribed with instructions, which burned themselves into my mind. The tablet, it was the words I give to you. It is the instructions of the others, which show how to bring them to us, with their promise of great power to sustain and heal not only our people, but keep the entire universe from harm.
From the holy revelations of Slithen the Dreamer, paragraph five, first chapter.
The next morning—according to the Nether crystal surrounding the House of Time—Sam rose early to continue his search. They’d had little luck the night before finding references to the House of Matter. Wor Wobniar was deep in study of a scroll when he awoke, as if xy hadn’t moved from xyr spot overnight.
The temple shifted as Sam reached for the oldest scroll he’d seen. It vanished, replaced with a much younger one, just as the lines opened up before him.
“What…?” He stepped back, hardly able to see from the influx of direction and intent clouding his vision. Everywhere, signs connected and crossed, showing actions that would occur soon, or later, or maybe not at all. He spun, but it was as if a plate of glass surrounded him, etched with what would be.
“I see them too,” Wor Wobniar grated from nearby. The colors on xyr head were flashing bright. “The Vloeinkaal is never so intrusive.”
“What does it mean?” Sam asked. The swirling impressions and lines were giving him vertigo and he stumbled back, reaching for a handhold.
“Look for the deepest threads,” Wor Wobniar said. “At their conclusion lies the eventual Dissolution.”
But the Dissolution was supposed to be far off. Sam’s thoughts turned to Enos, stuck with the Life Coalition. Could he see where she was, in the flowing lines?
Wor Wobniar’s jaws closed with a snap like rock breaking. “No!”
“What! What is it?” Sam stared into the lines. The easiest ones to follow showed actions he and Wor Wobniar were doing. Xy must be looking at the fainter, deeper layers.
“This is not the Dissolution, but it hastens its coming!” Wor Wobniar said. “The event unfolds, changing the direction of what is to come.”
“Where?” The lines had never lasted this long. Sam hardly dared blink. The Symphony transitioned in his mind to a higher key, ringing almost supersonic. It was like crystals colliding, buzzing, and shattering. But the rhythms corresponded to the movements of the lines. He couldn’t concentrate on both at once.
“The Symphony,” he began, “I’ve never heard it like this.”
“It is the House of Time,” Wor Wobniar said. “Do not change the notes. It can cause dangerous diversions to the flow of time itself.”
Two Symphonies swirling in concert, creating a gigantic portal in the Dome of the Assembly. He’d manipulated time before.
The Vloeinkaal only grew more intense, and pressure built in Sam’s head. He raised a hand to his temple. “When does it stop?”
“Usually long before this. A massive event swims through the Vloeinkaal to our time.” The Nether added strain to the translation of Wor Wobniar’s words. “It is huge. A disruption so immense—”
The center of the crystalline melody cracked.
Sam put both hands to his head, wincing against the shards of music that stabbed through his brain. If music could have sharp edges, this did. His knees buckled and he leaned against the cool stone of the House of Time.
“Are you sure it’s not the Dissolution?” he shouted over the melody.
“I do not believe so,” Wor Wobniar’s lights flashed bright in response. “Though nothing has ever caused so much disruption. Yet this is localized…somewhere. I cannot tell.”
“I can,” Sam said, with sudden conviction. He was of the House of Matter and the House of Time. If he could locate an event from screeching music and ghostly lines—well, he might be hallucinating, but he would try.
He clenched his hands, finding rhythm in the horrible screech of the music, tracking the lines as they carved its visual interpretation. It was painful to comprehend, but Sam forced against the agony, his molars grinding against each other. It was very far away—not in the Nether, or on Methiem, the only two places he’d been. Was it on another homeworld? There were familiar presences, as if he’d memorized some of the notes.
“It’s Enos,” Sam said, “and Majus Ayama, and Majus Cyrysi. There are others too. Lots of them. I don’t know what’s happening, but I have to get to them. I have to get bac—”
The Vloeinkaal vanished, and the music of Time with it. As if someone had jerked away a crutch he leaned on, Sam pitched forward, sliding down the wall. He grabbed at the stone, fingers gliding down polished marble, past a cubby with ancient parchment. Wor Wobniar tottered on xyr three legs, like a top about to collapse.
No attack. Not now. Push it away. This is a safe place. There’s no need for anxiety.
Sam breathed into his center, sinking to a squat. He closed his eyes and felt his body, existing. He’d been through too many unfamiliar things. He’d stood under an expanding Drain and fought the Life Coalition with music. He’d traveled to a new facet of the Nether. He would survive this.
The shakiness subsided, and Sam swallowed, then pried his hands apart. They were freezing cold and he rubbed them on his shirt. It was a new blue one he’d had the tailor—Hapt—make last ten-day. He looked up to find Wor Wobniar’s head flaps all pointed at him.
“You are well? Such a powerful presence of the Vloeinkaal is hard to recover from.” Xy looked shaky, and put out two of xyr arms to brace on a wall.
Sam pushed to his feet. “I’m used to having attacks like this. But I have to get back.”
“You are used to the stress of the House of Time? How is this?”
“No—I’m used to panic attacks, which you called a ‘defect.’” He realized what he thought was a panic attack was instead caused by seeing the lines, or perhaps from hearing so much of the Symph
ony of Time. He stared defiantly back at Wor Wobniar. “Maybe it’s not such a defect to those of the House of Time.”
The Nostelrahn’s head flaps wavered, then shifted away. Xyr claws clicked in what the Nether told him was embarrassment, mixed with acceptance. “Possible.”
Sam shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. My friends are in danger and I need to be there for them. I think the others found Enos—Inas’ other instance. He’ll come with me.” Sam backed toward the door as the House of Time shifted to blue stone with deep imperfections reflecting the light into a thousand sparkles.
Wor Wobniar held out two of xyr claws to the scrolls around them. “What of our research? You have been here only a few lightenings, and the Dissolution comes, hastened by this new event.”
“It has to wait. This is more important,” Sam said. He almost added ‘I’m sorry,’ but stopped. He wasn’t. His friends were more important. “Can you show me how to pass through the wall again?”
Wor Wobniar bowed xyr head, and xyr lights flashed in acceptance. “If that is your choice, I will show you from the House of Time. The token I gave you will make changes easier within the House of Time.” Xyr head flaps wavered, as if xy expected to find the House in ashes around xyr. “I hope we continue soon. This was not the Dissolution, but sign it progresses even faster than I anticipated. There is much to prepare.”
“I know,” Sam said. The lines flashed through his memory, pathways burned into place. Many of the lines simply stopped. The Dissolution was coming. He closed his hand; the C-shaped ring xy had given him pushing into his skin.
“My friends can help us, and they’ll want to know all about this facet of the Nether.”
Wor Wobniar’s head flaps waved back and forth in resolution. “Yes. With two in the House of Time, both facets may face the Dissolution together.” Xyr three legs drew in, making xyr taller. “The Nether itself shows we must work together, by shifting our facets closer, and ringing the chime to meet. Back to your friends, and we will continue your training soon.” Xy seemed to have made peace with the decision, and scuttled forward.
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