by A. K. DuBoff
“Do you feel time passage?” I asked him.
“I sense time in the way you might dip your hand into the current of a stream. I can direct it and pause its progression for a time, but it will ultimately continue its advance the moment my intervention fails. Therefore, my kind focused on specific moments and experiences. If we wish to capture a moment, we make a dam in the stream. When we are ready to move on, we allow the current to take over once more.”
Maris smiled. “That’s really beautiful.”
“A wonder to you and a simple matter of existence for my kind.”
“I don’t know that I’ll ever get used to this perspective,” Kaiden said.
“Me either.” I shook my head.
“Some matters are beyond our understanding,” Toran murmured in the tone he used when discussing philosophical matters. “And it’s okay for us to accept them as they are.”
“Works for me.” I picked up my pace, realizing that we’d started to lag behind Hoofy.
Eventually, the bridge widened and then split into a multitude of pathways, each branching into new bridges. The forms had an organic quality to them, curving gently around an unseen sphere.
“Are these bending around the planet?” I asked.
“In a sense, but it is not a direct parallel to your physical reality. Think of it as being structured around the natural energies of this world.”
“Where do the rest of your kind live?” I was willing to suspend my disbelief, but I was getting unnerved by everything we’d seen so far. Though the lack of distinct ‘place’ was disconcerting, my more pressing concern was that we hadn’t seen any other creatures since we arrived. Considering that this plane was supposedly Hoofy’s home, I’d expected to see other unicorns by now.
“Yeah, it does feel a little… empty around here,” Kaiden agreed.
“Oh, we are far from alone,” Hoofy replied. He slowed his pace and veered to the right side of the bridge. He extended his horn beyond the boundary of the pathway, and a bright point originating at its tip burned through the diffused light, parting clouds I hadn’t realized were there.
The fog dispersed, revealing a breathtaking pastoral landscape framed by towering, distant peaks and a forest with trees unlike anything I’d ever seen. Their overall forms were similar to trunks and branches as I’d expect, but their makeup and material, rather than being wood and leaves, appeared to be pure energy—white-blue trunks sprouted directly from the ground and morphed into branches, which eventually discharged into the air to create an electrical canopy. The ‘ground’ itself was a welcoming shade of green, though like the filament bridge, it was an apparently solid material floating in near-nothingness. Short, reed-like grasses covered the field, and their bases simply merged into the ambient light.
Three figures in the distant reaches of the field raised their heads while we observed—the unmistakable silhouette of unicorns.
Hoofy stepped back. The opening remained, though the edges began slowly closing in.
“Do you know them?” Maris asked.
“All of our kind are known to each other.”
“Then why aren’t you going to see them? Why can’t you go home after being trapped?” I pressed. Hoofy’s behavior didn’t make any sense, and it was unnerving me even more now that we were relying on him to guide us.
The unicorn bowed his head, taking several moments to reply. “I was not entirely truthful before. When you freed me, I could have gone home, but my choices have made me an outsider.”
Maris’ brow knit. “What do you mean?”
The opening to the serene pasture closed.
“By aligning myself with you, I am no longer welcome among my kind.”
My heart dropped. “Huefneril, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” Using his full name seemed more appropriate in the moment. My gut twisted at the thought of having doubted his intentions when he’d given up his home to help us.
Maris paled. “But why? What does helping us have to do with anything?”
“The truths I led you to are revered and guarded. You are young and untested; others of my kind would deem you unworthy. But I knew from my experience of being trapped, unable to do anything but observe, that you hold rare power and must continue in your quest at any cost. I have no shame in doing what I know to be right, even if the others do not see it that way.”
“Sounds like good riddance to me,” Kaiden muttered.
I shot him a warning glare.
“But being excommunicated sucks any way you look at it,” he hastily added. “And we really owe you for helping us out.”
“Yes, we do,” I agreed. That was assuming Hoofy was telling the truth. The explanation still seemed too simple and didn’t quite add up.
“Come, we are almost to the destination.” Hoofy resumed loping down the bridge.
I took a deep breath. “Lead the way.”
We followed the filament bridge to the left, taking an offshoot which twisted the path so we wound up walking upside down from our original orientation.
“That was a first,” I quipped as soon as we’d completed the transition.
“A scientist could have a field day in here studying the physical laws of this place,” Kaiden said.
“More like multiple lifetimes,” Toran replied.
Maris grinned. “See? Aren’t you glad we came? We’re getting to see something no one else in our lifetime ever may.”
“That is pretty special,” I had to admit.
“Wish the circumstances were a little different,” Kaiden said. “You know, not a desperate attempt to avert certain doom.”
“I think we’ve been able to upgrade from ‘certain’ doom to ‘possible’, given that we now sorta have a plan.” I flashed a playful smile.
“Oh, yeah, we’ve totally got this.”
I brushed my fingertips along his as we walked, happy to steal a moment of clandestine contact while we had the chance. Though we were in extensions of our familiar bodies, I somehow felt even more connected to him through the gentle touch.
Hoofy stopped. “This is the place.”
“Where is it, exactly?” Kaiden asked.
“This corresponds to a central location in the Overlord’s domain,” Hoofy explained, reverting to his term for them, I noted. “Transitioning here will place you at the entry—the properties of the place make it too risky to go directly inside.”
I sighed. “Sounds like we’ll be walking right into the middle of a nightmare.”
“The Overlords will not expect you, and that will make you difficult to see. More importantly, you have something they do not—the ability to transition out of their plane at will.”
“We were wondering about that!” I said. “One of them attacked us before we met you, and we couldn’t figure out why more of them didn’t come to help.”
“They must use these trans-dimensional gateways to make the transition, such as the viewing-spheres,” Hoofy explained. “Even then, they must be charged to make the transition and maintain their abilities. They have been seeking a more efficient way to remain on your plane.”
“Okay, that explains why we weren’t overrun,” Kaiden said.
“What is this ‘charging’?” Toran asked.
“You will see,” Hoofy assured us. “If you run into difficulty, I will direct you back to here as I did before.”
Maris bit her lip. “If you’re staying here, how do we get… down there?” She gestured vaguely at the ground.
“More of an ‘over there’, I think?” I made an equally vague swirling motion with my hard around me.
“Whatever, you know what I mean.” She cast an imploring gaze toward Hoofy.
“I will guide you, but I can only stay a moment. They must not know any of my kind are aiding you.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“It would upset the balance.”
I wanted to question the cryptic response, but Hoofy had st
arted to fade from my vision. “Do not use your artifacts. They will sense them.”
“Don’t we need them to change planes?” I asked.
“Your higher-dimensional constructs are restricted to one plane at a time. You are now saturated with enough Duzies to transition to adjacent planes without your artifacts, but larger transitions will still require the use of your artifacts,” Hoofy replied. His presence filled my mind even as he continued to fade from my vision. “Trust, Elle. This is not a time for doubt.” I could tell the words were meant for me alone.
“I’ll try,” I replied telepathically, doing my best to embrace the words as truth. Reservations or not, I needed to do whatever was necessary to make it to the next phase of our mission.
Holding Hoofy’s presence in my mind, I followed him as he reached toward the lower plane. The bridge and light faded around me, replaced by blackness.
Subtle shapes came into focus—a black wall rising eight meters, several three-meter-tall columns, distant towers. I could barely distinguish the shapes from the surrounding darkness. After a moment, I realized the only source of light was Hoofy’s soft glow.
“You are here. I will be watching and waiting to guide you back when your task is complete.” The unicorn disappeared.
“Why is it so dark?” I whispered.
Percussive clicks sounded in the darkness from a dozen meters away, and one of the forms I’d taken to be a column moved. Eyes wide, I realized that it was actually a sentry.
“Shit,” Kaiden swore under his breath, backing away next to me.
I kept my voice at a low whisper, “So much for a stealth approach.” I reached for my sword.
“Wait.” Toran held us his hand, stilling us.
The clicks ceased and the sentry shifted its position. Then, they returned to stoic stillness.
Toran pressed behind his ear, and I hear a chirp in my own ear as the comms activated. “I don’t think they can see us,” he said at the barely audible level the devices were designed to facilitate. “We need to find a secure vantage point.” He pointed backward away from the sentries.
I turned my attention to the matter at hand. “They can’t ‘see us’—meaning they can’t visually see, or they haven’t spotted us?”
“We’ll need to test that,” Toran replied. “I don’t want to do that here.”
“He’s right. Come on.” Kaiden formed a dim orb in his palm to provide just enough light for us to find a path leading away from the guards.
The ground was covered in the same fibrous, mossy substance we’d encountered on the alien ship, and I noticed several vines snaking across the dark landscape. I could just make out the path of some of the vines leading into nearby structures, which I’d first mistaken for natural hills.
“Over here.” Maris motioned us toward an alcove between two of the structures. Protected on three sides, we could get our bearings without having to watch our backs too closely.
“Okay, this is exactly what I should have expected, but it still seems strange,” I said once we were in the relative safety of the alcove.
“It really does bear a striking resemblance to the infected worlds,” Toran agreed.
Kaiden nodded. “Definitely supports our original hypothesis about the Darkness being for bio-optimization.”
“Guess they wanted to spread the love and share all this… greatness.” I looked around with distaste at the bleak surroundings.
“Regarding the light,” Kaiden went on, “I seem to recall that the creatures on the Valor world didn’t have eyes—or that the eyes were black.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” I confirmed. “The thing I saw on the ship had red eyes, though, and it definitely saw us.”
He pursed his lips pensively. “That may have been modified. For that matter, the thing we encountered on this planet in the chamber after the labyrinth had eyes, too.”
“It would make sense that they’d be blind, being in an environment like this,” I said.
Toran sighed. “But not having sight, their other senses are no doubt enhanced—possibly even senses we can’t fathom.”
“Well, they haven’t been able to track us well in the past,” I pointed out. “So, at least there’s that.”
“But we’ve also never been on their home turf,” Kaiden countered.
“We came here to learn about them, so we should do that rather than speculate,” Maris urged.
I peeked out the alcove, finding no visible creatures nearby. “You’re right. Staying in a hidey-hole won’t get us anywhere. I say we try to test out our detection theories first, but not on those sentries. Let’s see if we can find somewhere a little less prominent.”
“Hoofy, can you hear us?” Maris asked at a slightly higher volume. “Do you know where we can find one of the Overlords on their own?” Several anxious seconds passed with no reply. “Hoofy’?” she repeated.
“I am searching,” the unicorn said at last. “There are not as many inside this facility as in the rest of the city.”
“What is this place?” I asked. “Saying ‘facility’ makes it sound like some sort of industrial complex.”
“Yes, think of it as the outer yard of a power station. I will return.”
While we waited for Hoofy’s report, I took another peek outside the alcove to further orient myself. My vision had acclimated somewhat to the dark, so objects were easier to make out. It wasn’t pitch black, as originally had seemed the case, but rather there were tiny pinpoints of light throughout each of the vines; they had probably been there all along on the other planets, but the brighter surroundings had hidden the detail. The pinpoints of light pulsed gently in a rippling wave.
“They’re alive,” I whispered to Kaiden, directing his attention toward one of the vines near us, a larger one nearly a meter in diameter.
His brow drew together. “You know, if this place is a power station, then these are likely power conduits.”
“I have found what you requested,” Hoofy cut in. “Leave this hiding place, and I will lead you to an Overlord that you can study.”
Maris frowned. “I suddenly don’t like this plan.”
“We either proceed or go back to the Evangiel with nothing,” I replied. “Gotta push forward.”
She took a steadying breath. “I know.”
17
We crept from our hiding place and picked our way through the vines to the right, following Hoofy’s telepathic directions. After what felt like several minutes, Hoofy’s instructions abruptly stopped.
“I cannot follow along with you further. Any closer and they may detect our communications.”
I started. “They can sense telepathy?”
“They can do much more than that.”
Toran’s eye widened. “Why didn’t you tell us this sooner?”
“I have already interfered more than I intended. Some things you must discover on your own as part of your path. I am only here to point you in the right direction.” Leave it to a unicorn to make a declarative stance on what extent it’s okay to meddle with the future.
“Where do we go from here?” I asked.
“Continue in this direction. You’re almost there.” He paused. “I have already spent too much time here—they can sense me. I will be waiting for you when you complete your mission.”
“Wait!” Maris cried, but I could detect that Hoofy was no longer linked with our minds.
“Come on, nothing we can do about it now.” I forged ahead.
We soon encountered what Hoofy had undoubtedly intended for us to find.
“Stars…” Kaiden gulped.
This creature almost fit the embodiment of the ‘Overlord’ moniker. Standing three meters tall, it sat atop a bench made of dark vines. The ends of the vines were embedded in its flesh, with pulsing light emanating from each of the connection points. The resulting effect was both regal and terrifying. It had the same flexible body and smooth skin that we’d seen
on others of its kind, with tendrils parted and draped along its torso where the vine-like cables connected.
“What’s it doing?” Maris whispered through our comms, terror evident in her tone.
“It’s almost like it’s… charging,” Kaiden said, his face twisted with disgusted awe. “Is that what Hoofy meant before when he was talking about them needing to ‘charge’ in order to transition between dimensional planes?”
Maris scrunched her nose. “But what’s the power source?”
“Very curious,” Toran murmured.
I evaluated the scene. “So, I’m guessing these vines are for more than decoration.”
“Their purpose as some sort of energy transmission medium is different than I imagined,” Toran replied. “I wouldn’t have expected the creatures themselves to draw directly from it.”
“Might not be just energy,” Kaiden pointed out. “Could have an information component, or something else.”
I considered the suggestion. “Maybe not all of them interface like this. I mean, that doesn’t seem very practical. What if this one is… special?”
“You think that’s why Hoofy took so long to locate it?” Maris questioned.
“I’d be nice if he’d stuck around for us to ask him,” I muttered.
“Hey, he’s putting himself at risk to help us,” she shot back.
“Hardly as much as the risk we’re taking, ourselves.” I took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter. We need to make the most of the situation.”
“Right, checking their perception of us,” Kaiden said.
Toran pensively examined the alien being. “Despite Hoofy’s intentions, this might not be a good subject. Though it’s alone, since it seems to be connected to a network, disturbing it may immediately trigger an alarm if it spots us.”
“Should we wait for it to disconnect?” I asked.
“If they’re telepathic, do hardwire connections even matter?” Kaiden countered.
Toran frowned. “I don’t like the idea of waiting here for an indeterminate amount of time, but I also don’t like the idea of sneaking into their fortress without having a sense of what we can get away with.”
