by D M Wozniak
And then it falls.
Crashing through the wooden floor, it demolishes everything in its path, an enormous weight that pulls everything down with it.
The tower is falling, and us along with it.
The first thing I do is hold onto Chimeline. She is already in my arms, so I cup one arm around her waist as we begin to tumble away.
I hear everything at once. Her screaming. The snapping of wood. The tumbling of stone. The ringing in my ears. The beating of my heart.
Head over heels, the gray darkness of the stairwell becomes my up, while the sudden sky becomes my down. Lines of light break apart in the darkness all around me, the mortar between the stones opening up.
My voidstone lifts from my chest, still tethered to the gold chain, but it’s weightless now. As am I.
I grab it, as all of the noise is pushed away.
The wind returns.
No. The voices.
I create a sphere of air, instinctively. Similar to when I was underwater with Marine, within the wreck of the ship. This is a wreck of a temple in the making. This is a wreck of a life already destroyed.
The forces are not static. There is nothing except graceful infinite falling. It reminds me of the blue of Xi Bay, but this is a brief illusion. The forces are coming. Nothing is infinite. I must be ready. Trauma from below. Trauma from above.
In the void, I see the light of the living.
Shimmering, unlike anything else.
Past Chimeline, two other bodies fall over us.
Or are they under us?
Their indivisibles shine and move about differently than the dust and dead wood and dead stone. It isn’t necessarily light. There is no light here—only gray. Only indivisibles. But it feels like light.
Blythe. Colu.
I extend the sphere as I fall, enveloping them. Trapping them inside of the cocoon of safety which is about to be hit from all sides.
The floor is coming as surely as death.
It’s time.
I surrender to the voices. All of me. I am the enervated now, and they are my empowered. I scream to them, my voice wrapped up in the wind. It is only a dying wish. Maybe they understand me, because I think I can understand them.
I plead to them—we cannot not let him win. He will not kill my friends. The only ones I have left in this world. I know I am going to die, right now, one way or the other. Either by the thousands of stones which Colu laid years ago, or this singular, black stone in my hand. But only the latter—only voideath—will save my friends.
The choice is easy.
They Believe in You
It’s so dark, I must still be in the void.
Or I’m dead. I should be dead.
No. Despite the absolute black, it’s evident that I’m very much in the world of the living. I hear Chimeline’s soft cries next to me, Blythe’s coughing, and Colu’s heavy groans. Even the flapping of wings. The air is dusty, but breathable.
Air.
My voidance is still in effect. I can feel the membrane, the enervated’s souls tethered to it, a kite on a string.
I grasp my voidstone in the darkness, suddenly seeing the shimmering forms of all three of my companions huddled around me—colorless in the void, and discernible despite the darkness of the real world.
Light doesn’t matter here.
We’re in a tight space around ten-by-ten feet in size. Jagged stones and wooden beams surround us in all directions, forming a rough dome overhead, except for the honed-stone floor of the temple at my feet.
Blythe grasps a fluttering pigeon in his hands, while Colu leans his body against one of the stones, trying desperately to move it, but unsuccessful. And all around us, pushed into every crevasse and angle, is the shield of pressurized air that I created.
At the last moment, before impact, I applied dynamics, because I didn’t expect to live. I remember the overwhelming feeling that this is too much for one to bear. I had accepted voideath as the price for wielding so much power.
But as I curl my fingers in the darkness, I realize that this is not the case. Not only do I live, but there is not even a trace of numbness.
In fact, there are no remnants of what I had done at all. I’m not even cold.
Impossible.
I release the voidstone and reenter the darkness of the real world, as Chimeline’s hands gently touch my bearded face.
“Dem?”
“Yes,” I answer. “I’m right here.” I take her hand in mine and she grabs it tightly, her sobs getting louder.
“Are you alright?” I ask.
“Yes, I think so. Did the tower—”
“Collapse? Yes.” I blink my eyes—my vision is not improving. There is not a sliver of light getting through to us. “We’re buried in the wreckage.”
“Blythe? Colu?” I ask, wanting to ensure that they’re alright. I saw them in the void, but they could be hurt.
A moment later, I hear Colu clear his throat. “I’ll be the fucking Unnamed,” he answers in the darkness. “Don’t feel a scratch on my body.”
“Blythe?” I call out.
Blythe coughs a bit, but doesn’t answer. After a pause, Colu speaks up for him. “He’s right here next to me. Hey!” I hear a smack in the darkness.
“I am alive, helmsman.”
“Are you injured?” Colu asks.
“No.”
“Well you should speak up, then,” Colu replies.
“If I am silent, it is because I am praying.”
He chuckles. “Well, it doesn’t seem to be working.”
“How can you say that? Don’t you realize that we survived because of the Unnamed? My prayers which you interrupted were those of thanks.”
Colu’s laughter dwindles away. “You’re kidding, right? It took us three years to build this fucking temple, and some jackass brings it down in an instant. You think the Unnamed willed that?”
“Yes, I do.”
An awkward silence fills the dark, until Blythe continues. “But the violence is still here, around us. I feel the anger, but I do not succumb to it. It wants to crumble the towers of our beings. But I do not own the dark.”
Colu grunts. “If you don’t mind me saying, I think the dark is the one thing we fucking own right now.”
“It is not a physical darkness.”
“I know that, you hairless ass,” he snaps. “I’m referring to this voider-effulgent. He destroyed this entire tower in order to kill us. But we survived.” He laughs crazily and then grunts loudly in the darkness. He must be pushing upon a stone. “Assuming we can get ourselves out of here, that fucker is gonna get what’s coming to him.”
“There it is,” Blythe says quietly. “The owning of the dark.”
Colu continues straining. “I’m not being dark, I’m being realistic. We’re lucky. Somehow got trapped in a pocket of air on the way down.”
“The Unnamed saved us, soldier,” Blythe replies. “He, the master voider, and the enervated worked together. We are not lucky, as you so crassly put it. We are indebted.”
“Dem, is that true?” Colu calls out.
“Yes,” I answer. I’m not sure about the first part concerning the Unnamed, but I’m too overwhelmed to dispute it.
“So you used voidance to shield us?” Colu asks.
“Yes. Except what I just did expended more energy than anything I have ever done in my life. I should be in voideath right now.”
“Then why aren’t you?” Chimeline asks.
“Because of the enervated,” Blythe says matter-of-factly. “Because they believe in you.”
I turn to him, even though I cannot see him.
“Do you know this to be true?”
“Of course.”
“How?”
“We spoke about you,” he answers.
“When you were in the void?”
“Yes.” After a pause, he continues. “I vouched for you. I told them about the lesson.”
I sigh at his cryptic answer, remem
bering him speaking about a lesson as we left Fiscarlo.
“But there was no need for my vouching,” he adds. “They were already familiar with your presence. They know you. They know your pain. They know that you seek to stop the empowered. So they helped, under the authority bestowed upon them by the Unnamed.”
I hear another deep groan. “Well, can they help you a little more to get us out of here?” Colu asks.
They helped me. Can it be true?
Chimeline presses into me, shaking my arm and whispering, “He might still be around.”
I know who she’s speaking of.
“Has he voidspoken to you again?” I ask.
“No.”
“What about your ears? Are you still bleeding?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No.”
I exhale. “He probably figures that you are dead. That we’re all dead.”
“But what if he’s staying around, just to make sure?”
“Actually, that’s what I hope,” I answer. “Because I intend to kill him.”
I hear her inhale sharply. “Dem, please, he is very dangerous. You don’t know him like I do. What he’s capable of. If he’s waiting out there, he will kill us all.”
I think about what Blythe said. The voices kept me alive.
The idea of being protected from voideath is fascinating. Voideath has always been the consequence of using too much power—it has always kept voiders in check. Without that consequence, the power I can yield is nearly unfathomable.
The possibilities make me dizzy.
I find her face in the darkness, and cup it with my hands.
“It’s he who does not know what I am capable of,” I whisper in her ear. “He can knock down the tallest tower in Winter’s Baiou, but he’s not going to lay a mark on you.”
Then I grab my voidstone and switch my attention to the souls from across the stars.
I need your help one more time.
Within the colorless landscape, I begin to extend the pocket of air.
Since I cannot sense light, nor hear the crumble of rock, it’s hard to gauge progress. But I do see the indivisibles slowly move up and out in all directions. Fine dust, smaller fragments, and larger pieces of wood beams and stone—they all follow the curvature of my membrane. Nothing penetrates the space we inhabit below. I even see the immense bell, lying upside down above us. As the curve of my sphere gradually grows, it is cast aside, is if it were made of gilded paper.
The voices swirl around me. I am in the middle of a cyclone. They tear into me, but the feeling is muted. There is no pain. No numbness.
It feels as if I am being carried.
Thank you.
Once the work is done, I let go of both my stone and the membrane, and am immediately shaken to the ground. There is a loud booming sound, as my eardrums pop and my hearing is momentarily muted. The ground trembles and the sound echoes, like a rolling thunderclap.
I shut my eyes from the light.
The other three are similarly in shock, hands covering their faces while lying on the hewn, stone floor of the former temple. I glance at them when I can, seeing that they are not even covered in dust or grime. Only a little sweat.
Then I look up and around.
A wide ring of debris surrounds us, at least ten feet tall. My vision on all sides is blocked by it. Past the stones and rising dust are the treetops in the park, and the slate rooftops further away. Everything casts deep shadows from the setting sun.
I hear screams. Past the mound, the entire park sounds as if it is in chaos.
“Stay here,” I tell the other three, as I start climbing the ruins, but Blythe scrambles forward to the edge.
“You are going after him,” Blythe says. It is not a question.
“Of course I am.”
“But you are seeing vengeance, not justice.”
I turn back momentarily, about to say that there is no difference between those two—the end result is the same. But he stands at the foot of the rubble, looking down at a fluttering pigeon in his hands.
Suddenly, I am reminded of the reason why we came to this temple in the first place. To send out the message.
We failed.
“That’s the only one left, isn’t it?” I say.
“Yes.”
He unfurls a piece of paper tied to its foot, which is short and weathered.
“This bird is trained to fly to Fiscarlo,” he says without looking up. “I was saying a prayer before I released him. That prayer saved his life.”
“Fiscarlo?” I say. “That’s your temple.”
He shakes his head. “It was never my temple, master voider. One does not own a temple.”
I roll my eyes, and begin to turn away. But Blythe interjects.
“My daughter is the effulgent now.”
I’m too shocked to reply, but Blythe doesn’t seem to be waiting for one. He opens his hands, and the pigeon immediately flies up and to the north. I follow it as far as I can through the pink and orange sky, until it’s blocked by the gray rooftops.
“Master voider, please, do not own the dark.”
I lower my gaze back down to Blythe.
“And what would you have me do?” I ask. “Just let him continue doing what he is doing? Ask him to stop?”
“No. You can bring about justice, or you can bring about vengeance. Only one is on the way of unwanting.”
Pressing my lips together, I turn from him and resume climbing.
“Do not own the dark!” he replies to my back.
Soon, I reach the crest, and the madness becomes apparent.
In the center of the park, the stage is torn apart—painted murals and fabric banners ripped to pieces. The massive tent, further away, is lopsided, as if a pole or two have been knocked away. People are running everywhere, into the corners of the large square, but the alleys weren’t designed for this much foot-traffic. Bottlenecks have formed, while soldiers on horseback ride in, attempting to regain control and prevent a stampede.
Much closer, a few bystanders are covered in grime and tears. One woman kneels, leaning over the body of a small child who must have been hit by a stray stone. His body is lying motionless within a pool of blood.
Rage rise within me as I look around in all directions. All I can think of, besides finding the bastard who did this, is how Blythe is so impossibly wrong. He thinks that somehow having a natural reaction to this attack legitimizes it. That anger spreads the violence, makes it stronger. Fulfills it, even.
No. Anger ends it. Right here and right now.
There. A patch of white.
I stop turning in place as something catches my eye.
It’s him.
The bright effulgency cloak is not the only thing that gives him away. It’s his absolute stillness. He’s the only one standing on the grass within a flurry of people going in every which way. He’s the eye of a hurricane.
Underneath a white hood, he’s looking at me with a slightly open mouth, his hands at his sides.
For a moment, all I can do is look upon him in awe.
The man behind the veil.
Somehow, he looks familiar.
All this time, he’s been a blur. Cast from something which I don’t even know. My own heartbreak, my own regret, my own failures. And only now has the blur taken on the form of flesh.
A blur I cannot kill. But a man? Yes. That I can do.
He turns and runs, his white hood lowering.
“Not so fast,” I say, as I grab my voidstone and float above the rubble, descending with both grace and speed.
A Walk in the Park
I voidsprint, as hypocrisy fills me. But I push it back down.
What I’m doing is a trick that many young voiders inevitably attempt at the university. The faculty, under my guidance, have always frowned upon voidsprinting, even instilling disciplinary action when it was witnessed. The reason for that is it is wasteful.
&n
bsp; Generations of voiders have taught us to respect the craft and apply it only when needed. If my gifted students begin using it to run faster, then when will it end? Create a brighter light. Reach a higher shelf. Clean the room faster.
Voidance is not an excuse for laziness. A philosophy of overuse is a road to addiction, which leads to voideath. This was a tenant, even before we knew about the enervated.
But this is not laziness. This is necessity.
I grasp my stone every other instant, letting a torrent of air push me forward as my feet touch the stones every few feet. It requires dexterity, being able to quickly switch from the twilight skies into colorless forms, back and forth, time and again. I need to see where I am headed, in ways the void cannot offer me.
In this manner, I cover over fifty yards of the courtyard in an instant.
But soon I step off of the stones and onto the soft grass of the park. The crowd becomes dense further away from the wreckage of the temple. I’ve halved the distance between the voider-effulgent and me, but now I am reduced to simply walking again, pushing people aside and weaving in-between them. I step over blankets and plates of discarded food and bottles of wine.
He’s only twenty yards away, stuck within the same mess as me. Actually, it seems even worse for him. Many strangers, seeing that he is an effulgent, have come near, pulling upon his robes with tear-streaked faces. They’re seeking the Unnamed’s intervention, or simply solace and reassurance.
He gives them neither, as everyone surrounding him are pushed outward and to the ground.
He cranes his neck backward and sees me. His browless eyes go wide. There is no mistaking it.
He’s afraid.
Turning forward again, he presses on, stepping over the ones seeking his help, his cloak a white beacon that I follow through the madness.
We’re getting deeper into the shade of the park, underneath the tallest of trees. I cannot see the dusk-lit sky. In front of me is a multi-tiered stone fountain, at least ten feet high. The voider-effulgent rounds it, and for a moment I lose track of him in the shadows. I swear, pushing around a much larger man and jumping over the body of an elderly woman cowering on the grass.
As I near the fountain, the voider-effulgent reaches its other side.
Suddenly, he comes to a standstill, facing me while grabbing a voidstone in his lowered, fisted hand. His head is angled slightly downward, and his face is taught, teeth showing. Tendons protrude above the V-shaped neckline of his cloak.
