Deros pressed on in the twilight at an energized, ground-eating pace, walking-stick assisted. He sipped at his broth in hand along the way, oily and cloudy with the boiled-down final offerings of the bird. Eventually, he tossed the remainder out into the sand along with the pot. Weight he probably wouldn’t need.
The canyon and canal below him was generally a sharp decline into the bedrock, with a sandy bottom. It had a uniform design of a brief slope before the steeper drop, but every kilometer — and somehow he was sure it was exact — had a gently-sloping ramp down, falling lengthwise.
Deliberate design. Even if the water level dropped, one could still easily access it.
When he came to the cut-through mesa, he found plentiful decayed ruins a short distance from the canal. Only worn stone blocks and bits remained, as well as some concrete walls. High above on the mesa, which looked a quite traversable climb, he saw a few signs of the ruins he’d seen from the cliff. One he noticed was a massive stone pillar with a jagged top. It would’ve been a statue overlooking the settlement.
Destroyed again. I wish I knew who or why. He wanted to explore the place, even in the growing dark, but he couldn’t spare the time.
One building, perhaps the largest or most important, seemed to have collapsed in a more recent time, and the overall rubble pile was still visible. Unable to resist, Deros wandered over the short distance to poke through it. Just a quick look.
Literally poking with his staff and kicking away some piled-up sand and rocks, he found some broken glass with a greenish tint. Destroyed antiques… either undisturbed for fear of curses, or materials that had been hidden from looters somehow. He stowed away a couple of the better sharp pieces.
A flash of an unusual color caught his eye thanks to the light of Keramus upon it. He walked over to a rubble pile pinned between two concrete blocks, and brushed away sand to reveal a slightly-squished, teal-colored, tarnished copper can of sorts, a thin manufacture he’d never seen. It has a discernible top which he laboriously worked off. He was perplexed by what was within.
He pulled out a small handful of bizarre figurines of an unknown hard material that made him think of Cajhoran technology somewhat. They were somewhat simplistic or comical renditions of corsinids no more than two finger-lengths long, colored a strange, murky yellow with orange streaks, with a mild but unknown oily scent to them. Each was in a slightly different pose. Shaking his head at the oddity, he kept one that seemed to be in a running pose and tossed the others back. He tried to put the top back on, but it was too much effort to waste and he abandoned it. Hopefully, someone else would happen upon the artifacts one day, before the elements destroyed them.
At least I can surmise the Cajhorans didn’t explore this direction thoroughly. Not surprising from a practical viewpoint, but they sure are an incurious bunch.
His travel settled into a much less interesting, featureless grind after the ruins. There was only the barren desert and the canal, which he soon decided to follow from the bottom after all, to help obscure him from any observers. It was also a bit warmer. On occasion he’d peek above, just to be safe, but he only ever saw desolation greet him.
He kept a blistering pace, aiming to take advantage of his rejuvenation and knowing the clock was ticking versus the barren path he’d taken. The volcano — the mountain — loomed larger and larger, and he reached out with the farsense many times. He was able to just barely feel it, even on the second day, like a vague magnetism that grew bit by bit. And then, with the dawn on the third day and the foot of the mountain well in reach, he sensed the beacon flare up in activation like a bomb of makar’osa going off.
Before he could even think to cast out the farsense, the resonance passed through him and triggered a powerful echo in his mind — an eruption for an eruption. His migraine flared into a pain he’d never felt before, piercing through his head like caught lightning ricocheting inside and unable to escape, skewering every bit to where he thought his brain was frying, bursting — flooding.
He fell to his knees with his hands gripping his head, a scream from his throat coming forth as nothing more than a whimper, for all of his breath had already been stolen.
The shunted space! Something isn’t right- It was the final coherent thought he had before he blacked out from the pain, before the fog and cloudy proto-consciousness came, as before, as it had when he’d pushed himself too far, only far stronger. Where before he felt as if he’d clung onto an edge, this was falling into a void. That something else, that other him within him had the anchorage and he was the one shunted away into the darkness.
When he stood, moments later, it was free of pain, free of restrictions. Unbound. He would never be bound again! He looked around, trying to verify the real world, trying to ensure it was not a dreamy facsimile, but he couldn’t differentiate. It was real enough… real enough for his purposes. What he was born for. The dream and reality would become One.
Desires packed away, packed away, packed away! Not anymore.
The rest of the walk to the base of the mountain was nothing. He reached out for the beacon but did not use it. It wasn’t quite the same as before — actually, it wasn’t the same beacon. It was twisting into a space that was nowhere on Hamellion, a mind-bending merging of points of complexity an order of magnitude beyond the other. But he absorbed the information.
The artifact did all the work — an imbecile could construct the conceptual forms it asked for, to provide the proper energy. He could even activate it… or maintain it after it had been let go… but it did him no good unless he was there. Stability had the price of being stationary. Intimacy between points. Intimate, intimate, intimate. Tied together. One.
Instruction was writ within, oh yes, screaming out as ever, but it was like going from Journeyman to Grandmaster. Layers like puzzles, like tests of access to the inner workings; cautious mechanisms. He’d have to reach in himself, as if activating directly, to go deeper.
But he thought he understood some of it. Not all of it by any means… some had the look of mathematical foundations but with elements of it either in another language or simply beyond his understanding. It reminded him of the Ahbra’s calculus and continuity principles he never finished studying. And geometry. Artful science communicated with the farsense. He knew the ‘taste’ of 1 and 0 — of all numbers — in a way he’d never dreamed. Just feeling it — the physical somehow coded into abstracts — taught him something amazing.
The Grandmaster. Relentara. I feel your eternity, your arrogance, your pain, saturating your work…
He wanted to know more, to reach in, and he thought he could, even across the kilometers remaining, but doing so would surely notify whoever was operating it already. Stealth was a concern. The element of surprise. Patience — patience was needed. So he walked.
The canal led into a gradually rising basin which then diverged into a number of canal beds. Directly ahead was a clearly manufactured, clearly ancient pass angling up the mountain on a comfortable, zig-zagging slant.
He had some concern about being observed, but it was either the fast, sure way or the potentially treacherous, often steep, wild way up irregular rock faces. Doable but slow; he discounted it. He kept up his farsense as he began up the pass, checking for nearby movement, but it was just as void of activity and life as the land below.
The artifact flared on and off several times along his ascent through the day, the intensity and clarity of its call magnifying progressively. He paid rapt attention each time, letting it all imprint into him. Abstracts, like forming a hand of meaning and simply fitting it into a glove. He wanted to do it himself so much.
So easy, Grandmaster. Were they such buffoons in your day as well, to require such hand-holding? Or you made it as accessible as possible. Still too much for the rabble of Hamellion. Regressed tribals who can barely lift a hand to these wretched invaders. But I will be that hand made into a fist. The first I make will be by your design!
He couldn’t help but laugh as he thrust a fist up at the sky, in promise.
The heat was less and less relevant as he made his windy ascension. His ears popped. Higher and higher. Deeper breaths required. A little extra fatigue. He’d never climbed quite so high. The view was incredible. He could just make out the lake he’d come from, among the enduring, hard rock thrust out from a great, eroding plateau. Beautiful. Beautiful what he’d done, beautiful what he would do. He was, after all, beautiful — Pal Pal had said so.
As the dark lip of the volcano top came into view, it was freezing cold and Azrom was setting. He imagined the dead of night could kill at such heights. Breathing laboriously in thinner air, he decided to move off from the main path before the lip, in case there were watchers. But he hadn’t felt the activation flare up in a couple of hours or so. Hopefully, any activity had declined.
Making his way up with some minimal climbing, he came finally to the relative summit of his great ascent, and on his belly he crawled over to the very edge to take a look down, cold wind whipping around him.
A massive, shallow bowl with an overall flat bottom stretched perhaps five kilometers in diameter. The lip was irregular and hill-like more than mountainous. In the center of the rough disk of land was a walled, multi-layered fortress. Three forts of taller walls were arrayed within, spaced evenly from each other forming a kind of triangle. There were many stone or brick buildings with a look of new construction scattered between, particularly in the dead center. On the tops of most roofs were… gardens, from the look. The hint of strange plants.
The residue and echo left over told him which walled fort hid the artifact that had been used over and over through the day. He was certain the other two housed the artifacts designed to traverse to elsewhere on Hamellion, one of which he’d crudely imitated so many days ago. Neither had been used recently.
He spent some choice minutes simply observing, but he saw not so much as a moving light. No sentries, no guards, no echoing sounds. Not a single sign of activity. He cast his farsense over each area in case it was helpful, and there was nary a vibration except the thick remainder of the device’s use, with a slight, fading indication of the operator’s echoing makar’osa use. It vexed him somewhat.
Have they all left, to a man? Why? I could be missing something. No matter. I’m going to follow them and I’m going to save Pal Pal.
With an absolute confidence, he made his way down from the ledge via a nearby slope, and out across the remaining kilometers to the walls. There were five watchtowers that he avoided as best he could, though he doubted anyone was in them. His boots crunched on the dark, fine basalt dust. He suspected some part of the universal flatness was engineered that way. It was all slightly too perfect, age and erosion casting only a thin veneer of contrast.
When he came to the wall, he considered the height. Three meters. Perfectly jumpable for him. He began tossing over certain odds and ends to not have to deal with their bulk or weight, such as his digging tool and the staff. Sling rocks. Once satisfied, he made a brief running start to take the leap, rising high and getting his hands over the lip of rough brick on his first try. He lifted himself until he got a leg over, at which point he had no trouble cresting his whole body over it.
Nothing answered his racket but silence. Beyond the wall something like a small town splayed out, the most prominent things being the three fortresses with their too-high walls and wide gates of that dark, alien material. But everything was structured and organized, brick buildings connected by roads of pure, hard concrete of some sort. He saw one unusual building that he had to marvel at — it was made all of glass seemingly, and see-through, practically bursting with the greenery of plants. A nursery of some kind.
They aim to maintain it. To return, sooner or later. He’d much rather they didn’t.
Because the fortress walls were obscenely high, Deros began going through buildings looking for rope and something to serve as a grapple. Many were not locked, and he found various supplies. He found some water in a jug on a table, which he opportunistically drank deeply of. He saw some thick blankets that his survivor’s mind forced him to note, though he left them. He chanced upon a lone arrow laying on a shelf in a storage room full of pottery, so he took it. It had an obsidian arrowhead. He shoved it under his belt.
Finally, he found a great heap of dark cording, and without much further searching, found some garden hooks to bind tightly together with smaller cords and then tie the end to the long rope, to make a reasonable grapple. Four evenly-spaced hooks, as Ryza had taught him.
When he came to the fort, he found the walls to have protruding reinforcements of brick at the top which made climbing significantly more annoying and was a difficult throw. Fortunately, such design was on the presumption of the walls being manned rather than abandoned. Two-thirds of the way up were open murder windows that would have to be his target. A narrow shot, but an easier climb.
He took off most of his gear, intent on opening the gate on the other side to retrieve it. He almost left his tool but hesitated in setting it down. He’d grown rather attached to the strange item, so he secured it back on his belt.
Lowering his goggles to hang at his neck, he took up the rope and began whirling it in preparation for an underhand throw aided by the farsense. Three errant tosses clanked against the wall and back down as he gauged the target, before finally he made it in on the fourth. He pulled the rope over into the corner until it seemed caught then pulled down hard to make the hooks dig in. He jerked it a few times to ensure it was stable, though always maintaining pressure. Good enough. Hopefully.
With his gloves on, he made the dangerous ascent, moving as fluidly and fast as possible without getting into a rush. The surface of the brick wall was not smooth but had no good footholds, so he had to rely primarily on his arm and hand strength. Just as he came within two meters of the window, his body strained on the edge of giving out.
I’ve pushed these traitorous muscles too much, and this altitude... For a moment he hung there, the ground too many meters below and his body aching to quit. Perhaps he could drop back down rapidly without killing himself…
Instead, he pushed one last time upward by sheer willpower, muscles shaking. Finally, his hands curled on the inside of the window lip — unable to rely on his fingers, he pulled himself over by cramped-up wrists and palms until his belly was sliding in, then flopped over onto the floor.
Gasping for breath from exertion, he nonetheless laughed. Exulted. He’d made it! When he looked at the grapple, only one hook was dug tenuously into the mortar between bricks, the others worked into an uneven jumble — bindings weakened from the impacts of the failed throws, most likely. It only made him laugh more.
He began to make his way out of the darkness of the fortifications and down the many steps, but he froze when his eyes were drawn down to the center of it all, a courtyard between the great walls, with only an open pavilion of sorts as a roof. Under it was what could only be the device. The artifact, well-lit by still-burning lamp posts positioned all around it.
It was a massive, perfectly circular arch, the inner space of it being perhaps ten meters in diameter, making it wide and tall, reaching almost the height of the walls themselves. The arch was perhaps a meter thick and ended in a tapered, triangular edge on the inside except where it became flush with the bottom portion, which appeared to be a spherical cavity at the top of a platform, as if a ball was supposed to rest within. The platform had gently sloping ramps leading from both sides.
The ramps, which led up to perhaps the bottom fourth or fifth fraction of the arch’s height, extended up from a disk level with the ground. The entirety of it seemed all of one piece and covered a gigantic surface area taking up the majority of the fortress’s space. It was made of a strange, milky, light blue stone — no: crystal. It gleamed in the light, untouched and immune to time. Not a chip; not one imperfection.
Perfect.
Inexorably, he was drawn to it, to the promises held within. There were five runes — of slightly darker blue — etched into the crystal arch, spaced evenly around. They were foreign, yet he knew them all the same, knew the meanings underlying them far more intimately than mere visual symbology could represent. He knew them in the farsense. Five points of the glove. Simplifications.
‘Shift to the unseen angle.’ ‘Curving, swirling, inverting.’ ‘Binding, bonding of points/trajectory.’ ‘Tunneling, looping, maintaining.’ ‘Transmutation of matter.’
Wall, gate, and gear forgotten, he reached out immediately for the artifact with the farsense and then makar’osa, forming each simplified concept as the instruction demanded. Abstracted, like the intent behind the physical, brought almost to the physical, like painting a tumble of shapes in the air at each rune, meant to mean and reflect something. But with each form, the rune absorbed it, channeled it, and one had to keep doing it, the continuous blend of ritualized foci fueling and directing the device, which… stirred.
An opening; an unlocking.
He did not fully activate it immediately, which required significant ramped-up energy to complete… a continuously harder and harder ‘push’ to make those not-physical things a reality.
There was an inner call within it, reaching out likewise for him: a layer of puzzles. The first layers were not that much different than the runic abstracts, just requiring additional flexibility based on the same thing. ‘Twisting and linking.’ ‘Oneness of space.’ ‘Piercing, reinforcing, bridging.’ All too easy, like simply taking ‘the other hand’ of artful constructs and sticking it in another glove.
The first thing he became aware of was a conceptual, perhaps nonsensical emblem of sorts that formed as all the components synthesized together: a red citrus fruit with a little sprouting leaf on top. Bizarre, but information then burst out like the juice of that ripe fruit.
It ‘tasted’ like ritualization formed of a one-time hope clouded and fogged over with despair. The Grandmaster had done this so many times. So many times and few if any had made it even so far.
The first thing he noticed filled him with some dismay. Someone had damaged the inner workings, had tried to sabotage the device seemingly, what felt like long ago because it was asking to be fixed, deep, deep within the layers of access. The Grandmaster had designed fail-safes to prevent the total breakdown of operation. It sealed itself for five hundred years after the incident.
Evidently, a sealed… Gateway… was impervious to physical destruction, in terms of its outer layer, which also stretched and anchored deep under the stone like crystalline tree roots. It was only by runic access that makar’osa could reach in. Even the farsense did not penetrate the inner workings without activation.
The inner workings could even ‘heal’ essential portions, but the device was more or less crying about a non-essential function damaged, an oversight in the self-repair mechanisms. ‘Clarity.’ He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, the formulated meaning meant for the Grandmaster.
He tried to go deeper into the access, but he couldn’t get through the mathematical aspects, and the instructions weren’t included. Upon failure, another test puzzle presented itself… but it made no sense to him, seemed blurred and impossible to conceptualize. He quickly tired of it, and otherwise ached to activate the primary function — to activate the Gateway.
It’s time.
It was a simple matter to ramp up the intensity of the makar’osa forms anchored to the runes, though the act would’ve been impossible if his ‘knots’ of before hadn’t been broken open. Someone such as Eklásia would likely find it child’s play, and he was no exception any longer.
The fueled abstracts were like mixing-together power sources for the sophisticated engine within, a recipe cooked up with precision formulae. It did the work, which was mind-bendingly bizarre and wondrous to his poorly processing senses. It did not reach out across whatever vast distance was between the two Gateways: it enshrouded space then bent it ‘inward’ — for lack of a conceptual true equivalent — from one connected/merged point to another…
It was through some other realm, along some other axis, almost certainly by similar means that one opened the lenseye itself and altered reality. It was so very familiar to him, but like deja vu, like dreams merging together, still somehow paradoxically alien. Spooky action.
It began as a pinprick of that merging, right in the center, under a shroud of containment and vast shunted energy. It was always an orb, a sphere, an equal radial reference from a point, replicating outward bit by bit. It got easier and easier to fuel as it grew in size, feeding on itself seemingly, and once it was large enough to appear like a bubble, the exponential growth was soon flaring to its maximum.
A perfect spherical bubble fitting perfectly into its cup. But it was also a cloudy implosion of distortion, which seemed off.
Cloudy. To do with clarity. This is the damage done. It’s supposed to be clear.
He was aware of the containment expanding outward, gradually weakening, forming a vast gradient as it changed. He realized it had to do with the equalization of pressure from one ‘side’ to the other. He was fairly certain it dropped slightly around him, gently, gradually.
There was no real violent sound or light, which was by design, but the distortion was utterly disorienting to observe as images mixed together in a madhouse of twisted, indiscernible reflections, with the outermost edge of it spinning continuously. Garbled noises filtered out as well, as if from a distant tunnel. There might’ve been voices.
Briefly, he walked a few steps around it, watching as the images became even more mind-bending, but his eyes could verify its bubble-like spherical form just slightly, while staring directly could hypnotize one into seeing it like a disk.
Shaking his head, he began up the platform. Approached the bubble: the Gateway. Another world awaited him, and he could not sit and deliberate when there was so much information hidden on the other side.
I don’t have my staff. My gear. It was a too-late realization, so he shrugged and plunged ahead. He’d manage.
Walking through was just as disorienting as he imagined, like being absorbed into a kaleidoscope of the Ahbra — his eyes caught on nothing that could anchor him and gravity fell away, though he felt like he was falling forward. Possibly walking.
As he thought to lift his hand up, he couldn't verify he succeeded. Distorted images of himself twisted around and back, mingled with a sky, a roof, stone walls, greenery. He felt wrapped up in that bubble of force, charged air saturated with so much farsense input it was like syrup.
Somehow, he was calm despite it all. Somehow, he trusted the genius of its design and maintained his focus. He was still powering it, but he could laugh because even that was accounted for by the design. If he released it, he’d still have perhaps a minute to get clear, as it stayed powered, and the trip was only moments.
There was a transition as he felt gravity return, albeit lessened. The temperature warmed somewhat. Disorientation only got worse, along with a sinking feeling in his gut. A spinning sensation made his heart begin to race. Shapes began to form out of the mass and mess, and before he could process much more than a blurry half-lit smudge of sights and sounds he was planted mid-step, and almost immediately he stumbled and went to one knee on a familiar blue crystalline ramp, resisting the urge to puke.
Nothing could have prepared him for the alien strangeness of Cajhor. The air cloyed and clung at him even in his lungs, a foggy moisture with a tinge of a unique, musty scent he had no description for.
His eyes were drawn first to the hazy, murky sky of bronze-gold, redder at the too-close horizon, and thick with clouds like deeper eddies of the atmosphere, only a small smattering of stars shining through what seemed a glowing twilight. But then he noticed a small, bright star gleaming through it all, high above. Too bright, yet too small, like a tiny child of Azrom.
Before he could even process it his eyes were swallowed by another sight suspended above the horizon and shining through the murky depths. Like a fat orb with a great ring wrapping it almost north to south, the sphere within lit up in one crescent by the star, the rest covered in shadow, seemingly suspended in the air — No. It was a planet.
I’ve done it, Ahbra! A moon. I’m on a moon orbiting a giant.
It was his last thought of the environment itself, as he soon became aware of a great slurry of activity splayed out in front of him, arranged a respectful distance from the Gateway. A bonfire raged to his far left, and he caught the whiff of its burning wood. It felt like a party.
Pale, red-skinned folk were all around in the haze as though caught by surprise, dozens of them, too-skinny and gaunt but with strong, wiry muscle, all of them male and female clad only in short white skirts and sandals, the women bare-chested with varying but generally small breasts. Some were ambiguous and androgynous in appearance, at least at first glance. Frequent dark tattooing in sparse patterns etched across their skin, usually in the likenesses of beasts.
Their reactions to his existence were greatly mixed. Some were terrified, training hastily-hefted guns in his direction, while others looked bewildered, confused, or uncertain. One group — positioned atop and around a wagon bed and scattered barrels — was laughing raucously, usually with drinks in hand. Drunk.
Then his eyes caught sight of the empty enõìve suits, suspended and half-flopped standing up, split down the middle, down a continuous seam, like serpent skins they’d simply slid out of, still wet and slimy with some inner gleam. Not just skin, but everything else. Guts left behind, almost turned inside out.
Ironbloods. They’re all Ironbloods. They look so small…
Some inner part of him screamed to flee immediately, back the way he came, back to the familiarity and safety of home — of Hamellion. But it was the clawing desperation of a drowned-out voice with no control. The shunted aside, the waking obsolescence, who’d had his turn.
Amused, he chuckled as he shakily stood up on the new world — stood upright to face it.
There’s no pinching yourself to wake from this dream, partner! For every action, a reaction; for every reactioner, an actioner! Or how would the spring have come forth? But we’re One, now, and fear is banished.
He became aware of voices resounding in the strange air. All too normal ones.
“... damn you, Mónierr! Did you nokieun open it or not?!”
One was grinning as he watched, his sharp, narrow face making it almost a scowl at the same time. He swayed slightly as he took a few steps and gestured drunkenly with a hand. “Come on, you nokheads! The primitive is laughing already! Mónierr with some kessa le parta prank of his! Nok you, Mónierr! And your pet savage!”
Scattered laughter erupted together with curses, and some of the tension relented, though the more sober minds were unconvinced.
A muscular woman with short hair was still pointing her gun at the unwelcome visitor, keeping a hard gaze on him. “Drop to the ground, tribal! Hands behind your back!” She had to shout to be heard.
A loud guffaw came from the wagon back, from an unusual young man sitting there, face a smiling red template of drunkenness that bordered on unconsciousness, one arm around an equally-inebriated young woman and the other hand around a cup. Unlike the others, he had on dark pants, though his less-toned chest was bare. The red of his face was somewhat off, more a reddening from the pale reddish magenta of his skin. It was a shock to see that hint of violet, but it was clear immediately who he was: the one that had operated the Gateway with a seemingly middling ability. He was a prime-user.
Mónierr gestured at the scene, laughing. “Look here,” he slurred, “Pasce is getting kinky! Take him to a wagon, then — I know you’re shy!”
“Damn your face to the hells, Mónierr!” The exchange had a majority laughing in inebriated glee. “This is one of your pontsekú clown plays, isn’t it?! You can’t just pull this parta with a Waygate!”
“Did I? How should I know? Maybe it opened itself!” Mónierr laughed this time without many sharing in the amusement. Such statements clearly made them uncomfortable.
“Gateway,” the invading Hamaleen before them declared. Corrected, as he stared at Pasce. “That is what it is supposed to be called.”
“Hey!” One of them had stood up from a tree stump he was sitting on, pointing. “I know him. He’s the one that nok Raetmus wanted to kill. One Ball Deros! He’s an escapee.”
There was a dangerous silence from the greater majority. Even Mónierr seemed to be studying him, squinting as if trying to bring something blurry into focus.
Feeling threatened, the one called One Ball found that the arrow was in his hand. He looked down at it and shook his head. It would not be enough, clearly. More. Some of his potential was bound up in maintaining the Gateway, but hardly all. How long could he do so? Indefinitely? It seemed like it. His access had triggered some other thing too, some distant, shy echo, but he had to push it to the back of his mind. Later.
He took the significant remainder of makar’osa focus left to him and arced something out well in front of him, slinging forth chaos with intent and improvising its refinement.
So it bled and flowed out into Cajhor, tainting it in a vast radius.
Straining himself subtly but significantly to accomplish it, muscles tensing, he grasped the air, his imagination leading him to invent something like a pulled bowstring. Suspended tension, but without the right material, so it was more like two forces pushing against one another. If he released one side suddenly it would… yes. Crude, wasteful, but perhaps it would work. He kept it ready to amplify and unleash. Perhaps it could even stop bullets? That was unclear.
One Ball shifted his eyes calmly over the gathered, all of them held spellbound by the oddity and uncertainty. “Where is Pal Pal? Tell me, and I’ll be on my way.”
“You aren’t going anywh-”
“I bet he means his girl! I think Pala-something is the name of the pretty one in the robes. Tattoo on her face.”
Mónierr laughed in an unmistakably salacious way. “Oh, et! Et! That is the one I plan to buy. Palamera. She’s going to be fun, fun, fun…”
Anger shot up through the Hamaleen. He pointed his arrow dead at Mónierr. “Watch your foul mouth, you drunken scum rag! You’ll not lay a finger on her, nor will you so much as speak her name again, or I will kill you.”
There were some snickers and laughs at that, while the one pointing the gun at him had a look he recognized as that of someone staring at a madman. She wasn’t the only one.
However, Mónierr’s young face reddened even more, in answering offense and anger. He shot all the way up onto his feet, almost knocking over the girl on his arm as he directed a sneer at his insulter. “You stupid tribal! Do you have any idea who I am?! I’m a Wayguide, I’m Ordení! Your master! I’ll do more than lay a finger, quari. As soon as I return to Al Pendrós, I’ll buy your Pal Pal and nok her extra hard and deep. Just for you!”
There was no hesitation in the Hamaleen Azakan facing a score of Ironbloods. He let the rage boil into him and overflow, let it channel right into the poised pressure in a wave before him like he was clenching a fist. Or pulling back the bowstring. Force against force, straining with everything he had — and more besides. Pressure, pressure, pressure, the air vibrating and shimmering with contained power, until one side had to give, to burst, all of his energy thrown into it. He ensured it was their side.
“Allow me to make a counteroffer.”
With a piercing crack like a thunderbolt loud enough to deafen, a violent explosion erupted out, a wave of force, the cascade blasting away everything in its path like a giant’s arm had swept down and away. Ironbloods were tossed and tumbled, erect suits were knocked and thrown, barrels were burst in sprays of wood and liquid, and even the wagon toppled, all in a great cloud of dust.
He heard — he felt — spines and bones snapping, chests caving in, guns splintered into pieces. Destruction and death.
Unfortunately, he was not entirely spared, as the force rebounded back at him with a runaway strength he hadn’t anticipated once unleashed. He tried to push and divert it up and over, and he just kept it from murdering him as the greater force flew overhead, but the trailing ‘wind’ of concussion still blew over him and knocked him on his ass, right onto the hard crystal ramp.
Meanwhile, there was a mild ‘thrum’ as the concussive wave uselessly hit the Gateway, not so much as budging it.
Bullets also did not fail to rip from guns, something he barely noticed at first. There was not a single splatshot, only the whizzing of lead. One blew in and out of his leg as he fell, and such was his state he barely felt it. Was he invincible?
But another ripped through the bridge of his nose and grazed his eye on its path to ride along the skin at the far edge and away: it blurred his vision with damage, the splatter of blood, or both. It hardly mattered.
He arose, laughing at how he’d defied death. Laughing at the chaos oozing in every direction, making everything feel farsensically like it was vibrating along that queer, unseen trajectory. Something he felt attuned to, a part of, One with. He wheezed in laughter, and it turned into a cough within the dust cloud. He felt fatigued, actually. Lightheaded; a little sick. And there was a ringing in his ears, his hearing muted. But he pushed on.
He stalked, stumbled, limped — he was limping — across the yellow rocky soil across dark green, strange weeds, over toward the demolished wagon and beer-soaked ground, hearing various moans, screams, and gurgling sounds as various Ironbloods were dying or suffering. He was sure that one woman was drowning in her own blood from internal wounds. Burst organs. A terrible anti-symphony of retribution.
“Who is the insect now, false giants? Hmm? Who’s crushed underfoot?”
An Ironblood that was lying on the ground suddenly pointed a rifle at him, and he was not quick enough in his reaction to keep a shot from ringing out, which blew through his arm. He formed a reduced ‘blast’ or explosion like a big, violent push. It more or less dug a hole in the ground and blew soil everywhere, as it also blew the Ironblood off spinning away, the rifle and an arm flying even further. He was ready for the ‘blowback’, diverting it even as he made the killing stroke, successfully directing it away from him at an angle.
Overall, a success: the Ironblood was limp and still.
The effort almost brought him completely under, however, as he swayed and half blacked out on his feet. But he held on, body shaking in protest. Aside from the arm. It hung limply. And bled.
I’m getting tired of this body. It isn’t cooperating.
Vexed, he nonetheless dragged himself over to the form of Mónierr, trying to crawl away on the ground, to hide behind rubble, all purely by his hands due to legs that weren’t responding. He was bruised and beaten, with a cut on his forehead painting his whole face bloody. A body had been between him and the impact wave, saving him from death. Temporarily.
Mónierr turned immediately when his assaulter approached, croaking out hoarsely, “No! Help! Somebo- no, please!”
The one called One Ball laughed in derision as he stood over the pathetic, begging idiot and pointed the arrow in his hand at him once more. “No, what? No finishing you off? I told you I’d kill you. I keep my promises. Is it really any less than you deserve?”
After a last desperate, half-screamed ‘no,’ Mónierr found himself squeezed out of breath by a force crushing down on his chest cavity. Slowly. Too slowly; not snapping. Eyes rolled back as unconsciousness came, but still…
Pushing, pushing, pushing, but it was the absolute last of the Hamaleen’s strength giving out, all the strain squeezing on something utterly spent. He pushed himself right into delirium and felt exhaustion take over, felt it seize the insufficiency of the flesh and begin dragging him down into darkness.
No! It would end! It can’t!
He reached out to grab hold of and anchor himself to the ambient chaos, for a lack of any other solution — take up the energy saturating the zone of his arrival and wrap it around him into something new, hoping to preserve it all, to preserve his purpose, to preserve himself and keep going. But he felt a tremendous sense of loss in the attempt, there in those final moments.
I don’t want this dream to end. Can we still be One, Deros?
Please?
SpoilerSky of Cajhor with the giant:
[collapse]
Deros pressed on in the twilight at an energized, ground-eating pace, walking-stick assisted. He sipped at his broth in hand along the way, oily and cloudy with the boiled-down final offerings of the bird. Eventually, he tossed the remainder out into the sand along with the pot. Weight he probably wouldn’t need.
The canyon and canal below him was generally a sharp decline into the bedrock, with a sandy bottom. It had a uniform design of a brief slope before the steeper drop, but every kilometer — and somehow he was sure it was exact — had a gently-sloping ramp down, falling lengthwise.
Deliberate design. Even if the water level dropped, one could still easily access it.
When he came to the cut-through mesa, he found plentiful decayed ruins a short distance from the canal. Only worn stone blocks and bits remained, as well as some concrete walls. High above on the mesa, which looked a quite traversable climb, he saw a few signs of the ruins he’d seen from the cliff. One he noticed was a massive stone pillar with a jagged top. It would’ve been a statue overlooking the settlement.
Destroyed again. I wish I knew who or why. He wanted to explore the place, even in the growing dark, but he couldn’t spare the time.
One building, perhaps the largest or most important, seemed to have collapsed in a more recent time, and the overall rubble pile was still visible. Unable to resist, Deros wandered over the short distance to poke through it. Just a quick look.
Literally poking with his staff and kicking away some piled-up sand and rocks, he found some broken glass with a greenish tint. Destroyed antiques… either undisturbed for fear of curses, or materials that had been hidden from looters somehow. He stowed away a couple of the better sharp pieces.
A flash of an unusual color caught his eye thanks to the light of Keramus upon it. He walked over to a rubble pile pinned between two concrete blocks, and brushed away sand to reveal a slightly-squished, teal-colored, tarnished copper can of sorts, a thin manufacture he’d never seen. It has a discernible top which he laboriously worked off. He was perplexed by what was within.
He pulled out a small handful of bizarre figurines of an unknown hard material that made him think of Cajhoran technology somewhat. They were somewhat simplistic or comical renditions of corsinids no more than two finger-lengths long, colored a strange, murky yellow with orange streaks, with a mild but unknown oily scent to them. Each was in a slightly different pose. Shaking his head at the oddity, he kept one that seemed to be in a running pose and tossed the others back. He tried to put the top back on, but it was too much effort to waste and he abandoned it. Hopefully, someone else would happen upon the artifacts one day, before the elements destroyed them.
At least I can surmise the Cajhorans didn’t explore this direction thoroughly. Not surprising from a practical viewpoint, but they sure are an incurious bunch.
His travel settled into a much less interesting, featureless grind after the ruins. There was only the barren desert and the canal, which he soon decided to follow from the bottom after all, to help obscure him from any observers. It was also a bit warmer. On occasion he’d peek above, just to be safe, but he only ever saw desolation greet him.
He kept a blistering pace, aiming to take advantage of his rejuvenation and knowing the clock was ticking versus the barren path he’d taken. The volcano — the mountain — loomed larger and larger, and he reached out with the farsense many times. He was able to just barely feel it, even on the second day, like a vague magnetism that grew bit by bit. And then, with the dawn on the third day and the foot of the mountain well in reach, he sensed the beacon flare up in activation like a bomb of makar’osa going off.
Before he could even think to cast out the farsense, the resonance passed through him and triggered a powerful echo in his mind — an eruption for an eruption. His migraine flared into a pain he’d never felt before, piercing through his head like caught lightning ricocheting inside and unable to escape, skewering every bit to where he thought his brain was frying, bursting — flooding.
He fell to his knees with his hands gripping his head, a scream from his throat coming forth as nothing more than a whimper, for all of his breath had already been stolen.
The shunted space! Something isn’t right- It was the final coherent thought he had before he blacked out from the pain, before the fog and cloudy proto-consciousness came, as before, as it had when he’d pushed himself too far, only far stronger. Where before he felt as if he’d clung onto an edge, this was falling into a void. That something else, that other him within him had the anchorage and he was the one shunted away into the darkness.
When he stood, moments later, it was free of pain, free of restrictions. Unbound. He would never be bound again! He looked around, trying to verify the real world, trying to ensure it was not a dreamy facsimile, but he couldn’t differentiate. It was real enough… real enough for his purposes. What he was born for. The dream and reality would become One.
Desires packed away, packed away, packed away! Not anymore.
The rest of the walk to the base of the mountain was nothing. He reached out for the beacon but did not use it. It wasn’t quite the same as before — actually, it wasn’t the same beacon. It was twisting into a space that was nowhere on Hamellion, a mind-bending merging of points of complexity an order of magnitude beyond the other. But he absorbed the information.
The artifact did all the work — an imbecile could construct the conceptual forms it asked for, to provide the proper energy. He could even activate it… or maintain it after it had been let go… but it did him no good unless he was there. Stability had the price of being stationary. Intimacy between points. Intimate, intimate, intimate. Tied together. One.
Instruction was writ within, oh yes, screaming out as ever, but it was like going from Journeyman to Grandmaster. Layers like puzzles, like tests of access to the inner workings; cautious mechanisms. He’d have to reach in himself, as if activating directly, to go deeper.
But he thought he understood some of it. Not all of it by any means… some had the look of mathematical foundations but with elements of it either in another language or simply beyond his understanding. It reminded him of the Ahbra’s calculus and continuity principles he never finished studying. And geometry. Artful science communicated with the farsense. He knew the ‘taste’ of 1 and 0 — of all numbers — in a way he’d never dreamed. Just feeling it — the physical somehow coded into abstracts — taught him something amazing.
The Grandmaster. Relentara. I feel your eternity, your arrogance, your pain, saturating your work…
He wanted to know more, to reach in, and he thought he could, even across the kilometers remaining, but doing so would surely notify whoever was operating it already. Stealth was a concern. The element of surprise. Patience — patience was needed. So he walked.
The canal led into a gradually rising basin which then diverged into a number of canal beds. Directly ahead was a clearly manufactured, clearly ancient pass angling up the mountain on a comfortable, zig-zagging slant.
He had some concern about being observed, but it was either the fast, sure way or the potentially treacherous, often steep, wild way up irregular rock faces. Doable but slow; he discounted it. He kept up his farsense as he began up the pass, checking for nearby movement, but it was just as void of activity and life as the land below.
The artifact flared on and off several times along his ascent through the day, the intensity and clarity of its call magnifying progressively. He paid rapt attention each time, letting it all imprint into him. Abstracts, like forming a hand of meaning and simply fitting it into a glove. He wanted to do it himself so much.
So easy, Grandmaster. Were they such buffoons in your day as well, to require such hand-holding? Or you made it as accessible as possible. Still too much for the rabble of Hamellion. Regressed tribals who can barely lift a hand to these wretched invaders. But I will be that hand made into a fist. The first I make will be by your design!
He couldn’t help but laugh as he thrust a fist up at the sky, in promise.
The heat was less and less relevant as he made his windy ascension. His ears popped. Higher and higher. Deeper breaths required. A little extra fatigue. He’d never climbed quite so high. The view was incredible. He could just make out the lake he’d come from, among the enduring, hard rock thrust out from a great, eroding plateau. Beautiful. Beautiful what he’d done, beautiful what he would do. He was, after all, beautiful — Pal Pal had said so.
As the dark lip of the volcano top came into view, it was freezing cold and Azrom was setting. He imagined the dead of night could kill at such heights. Breathing laboriously in thinner air, he decided to move off from the main path before the lip, in case there were watchers. But he hadn’t felt the activation flare up in a couple of hours or so. Hopefully, any activity had declined.
Making his way up with some minimal climbing, he came finally to the relative summit of his great ascent, and on his belly he crawled over to the very edge to take a look down, cold wind whipping around him.
A massive, shallow bowl with an overall flat bottom stretched perhaps five kilometers in diameter. The lip was irregular and hill-like more than mountainous. In the center of the rough disk of land was a walled, multi-layered fortress. Three forts of taller walls were arrayed within, spaced evenly from each other forming a kind of triangle. There were many stone or brick buildings with a look of new construction scattered between, particularly in the dead center. On the tops of most roofs were… gardens, from the look. The hint of strange plants.
The residue and echo left over told him which walled fort hid the artifact that had been used over and over through the day. He was certain the other two housed the artifacts designed to traverse to elsewhere on Hamellion, one of which he’d crudely imitated so many days ago. Neither had been used recently.
He spent some choice minutes simply observing, but he saw not so much as a moving light. No sentries, no guards, no echoing sounds. Not a single sign of activity. He cast his farsense over each area in case it was helpful, and there was nary a vibration except the thick remainder of the device’s use, with a slight, fading indication of the operator’s echoing makar’osa use. It vexed him somewhat.
Have they all left, to a man? Why? I could be missing something. No matter. I’m going to follow them and I’m going to save Pal Pal.
With an absolute confidence, he made his way down from the ledge via a nearby slope, and out across the remaining kilometers to the walls. There were five watchtowers that he avoided as best he could, though he doubted anyone was in them. His boots crunched on the dark, fine basalt dust. He suspected some part of the universal flatness was engineered that way. It was all slightly too perfect, age and erosion casting only a thin veneer of contrast.
When he came to the wall, he considered the height. Three meters. Perfectly jumpable for him. He began tossing over certain odds and ends to not have to deal with their bulk or weight, such as his digging tool and the staff. Sling rocks. Once satisfied, he made a brief running start to take the leap, rising high and getting his hands over the lip of rough brick on his first try. He lifted himself until he got a leg over, at which point he had no trouble cresting his whole body over it.
Nothing answered his racket but silence. Beyond the wall something like a small town splayed out, the most prominent things being the three fortresses with their too-high walls and wide gates of that dark, alien material. But everything was structured and organized, brick buildings connected by roads of pure, hard concrete of some sort. He saw one unusual building that he had to marvel at — it was made all of glass seemingly, and see-through, practically bursting with the greenery of plants. A nursery of some kind.
They aim to maintain it. To return, sooner or later. He’d much rather they didn’t.
Because the fortress walls were obscenely high, Deros began going through buildings looking for rope and something to serve as a grapple. Many were not locked, and he found various supplies. He found some water in a jug on a table, which he opportunistically drank deeply of. He saw some thick blankets that his survivor’s mind forced him to note, though he left them. He chanced upon a lone arrow laying on a shelf in a storage room full of pottery, so he took it. It had an obsidian arrowhead. He shoved it under his belt.
Finally, he found a great heap of dark cording, and without much further searching, found some garden hooks to bind tightly together with smaller cords and then tie the end to the long rope, to make a reasonable grapple. Four evenly-spaced hooks, as Ryza had taught him.
When he came to the fort, he found the walls to have protruding reinforcements of brick at the top which made climbing significantly more annoying and was a difficult throw. Fortunately, such design was on the presumption of the walls being manned rather than abandoned. Two-thirds of the way up were open murder windows that would have to be his target. A narrow shot, but an easier climb.
He took off most of his gear, intent on opening the gate on the other side to retrieve it. He almost left his tool but hesitated in setting it down. He’d grown rather attached to the strange item, so he secured it back on his belt.
Lowering his goggles to hang at his neck, he took up the rope and began whirling it in preparation for an underhand throw aided by the farsense. Three errant tosses clanked against the wall and back down as he gauged the target, before finally he made it in on the fourth. He pulled the rope over into the corner until it seemed caught then pulled down hard to make the hooks dig in. He jerked it a few times to ensure it was stable, though always maintaining pressure. Good enough. Hopefully.
With his gloves on, he made the dangerous ascent, moving as fluidly and fast as possible without getting into a rush. The surface of the brick wall was not smooth but had no good footholds, so he had to rely primarily on his arm and hand strength. Just as he came within two meters of the window, his body strained on the edge of giving out.
I’ve pushed these traitorous muscles too much, and this altitude... For a moment he hung there, the ground too many meters below and his body aching to quit. Perhaps he could drop back down rapidly without killing himself…
Instead, he pushed one last time upward by sheer willpower, muscles shaking. Finally, his hands curled on the inside of the window lip — unable to rely on his fingers, he pulled himself over by cramped-up wrists and palms until his belly was sliding in, then flopped over onto the floor.
Gasping for breath from exertion, he nonetheless laughed. Exulted. He’d made it! When he looked at the grapple, only one hook was dug tenuously into the mortar between bricks, the others worked into an uneven jumble — bindings weakened from the impacts of the failed throws, most likely. It only made him laugh more.
He began to make his way out of the darkness of the fortifications and down the many steps, but he froze when his eyes were drawn down to the center of it all, a courtyard between the great walls, with only an open pavilion of sorts as a roof. Under it was what could only be the device. The artifact, well-lit by still-burning lamp posts positioned all around it.
It was a massive, perfectly circular arch, the inner space of it being perhaps ten meters in diameter, making it wide and tall, reaching almost the height of the walls themselves. The arch was perhaps a meter thick and ended in a tapered, triangular edge on the inside except where it became flush with the bottom portion, which appeared to be a spherical cavity at the top of a platform, as if a ball was supposed to rest within. The platform had gently sloping ramps leading from both sides.
The ramps, which led up to perhaps the bottom fourth or fifth fraction of the arch’s height, extended up from a disk level with the ground. The entirety of it seemed all of one piece and covered a gigantic surface area taking up the majority of the fortress’s space. It was made of a strange, milky, light blue stone — no: crystal. It gleamed in the light, untouched and immune to time. Not a chip; not one imperfection.
Perfect.
Inexorably, he was drawn to it, to the promises held within. There were five runes — of slightly darker blue — etched into the crystal arch, spaced evenly around. They were foreign, yet he knew them all the same, knew the meanings underlying them far more intimately than mere visual symbology could represent. He knew them in the farsense. Five points of the glove. Simplifications.
‘Shift to the unseen angle.’ ‘Curving, swirling, inverting.’ ‘Binding, bonding of points/trajectory.’ ‘Tunneling, looping, maintaining.’ ‘Transmutation of matter.’
Wall, gate, and gear forgotten, he reached out immediately for the artifact with the farsense and then makar’osa, forming each simplified concept as the instruction demanded. Abstracted, like the intent behind the physical, brought almost to the physical, like painting a tumble of shapes in the air at each rune, meant to mean and reflect something. But with each form, the rune absorbed it, channeled it, and one had to keep doing it, the continuous blend of ritualized foci fueling and directing the device, which… stirred.
An opening; an unlocking.
He did not fully activate it immediately, which required significant ramped-up energy to complete… a continuously harder and harder ‘push’ to make those not-physical things a reality.
There was an inner call within it, reaching out likewise for him: a layer of puzzles. The first layers were not that much different than the runic abstracts, just requiring additional flexibility based on the same thing. ‘Twisting and linking.’ ‘Oneness of space.’ ‘Piercing, reinforcing, bridging.’ All too easy, like simply taking ‘the other hand’ of artful constructs and sticking it in another glove.
The first thing he became aware of was a conceptual, perhaps nonsensical emblem of sorts that formed as all the components synthesized together: a red citrus fruit with a little sprouting leaf on top. Bizarre, but information then burst out like the juice of that ripe fruit.
It ‘tasted’ like ritualization formed of a one-time hope clouded and fogged over with despair. The Grandmaster had done this so many times. So many times and few if any had made it even so far.
The first thing he noticed filled him with some dismay. Someone had damaged the inner workings, had tried to sabotage the device seemingly, what felt like long ago because it was asking to be fixed, deep, deep within the layers of access. The Grandmaster had designed fail-safes to prevent the total breakdown of operation. It sealed itself for five hundred years after the incident.
Evidently, a sealed… Gateway… was impervious to physical destruction, in terms of its outer layer, which also stretched and anchored deep under the stone like crystalline tree roots. It was only by runic access that makar’osa could reach in. Even the farsense did not penetrate the inner workings without activation.
The inner workings could even ‘heal’ essential portions, but the device was more or less crying about a non-essential function damaged, an oversight in the self-repair mechanisms. ‘Clarity.’ He wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, the formulated meaning meant for the Grandmaster.
He tried to go deeper into the access, but he couldn’t get through the mathematical aspects, and the instructions weren’t included. Upon failure, another test puzzle presented itself… but it made no sense to him, seemed blurred and impossible to conceptualize. He quickly tired of it, and otherwise ached to activate the primary function — to activate the Gateway.
It’s time.
It was a simple matter to ramp up the intensity of the makar’osa forms anchored to the runes, though the act would’ve been impossible if his ‘knots’ of before hadn’t been broken open. Someone such as Eklásia would likely find it child’s play, and he was no exception any longer.
The fueled abstracts were like mixing-together power sources for the sophisticated engine within, a recipe cooked up with precision formulae. It did the work, which was mind-bendingly bizarre and wondrous to his poorly processing senses. It did not reach out across whatever vast distance was between the two Gateways: it enshrouded space then bent it ‘inward’ — for lack of a conceptual true equivalent — from one connected/merged point to another…
It was through some other realm, along some other axis, almost certainly by similar means that one opened the lenseye itself and altered reality. It was so very familiar to him, but like deja vu, like dreams merging together, still somehow paradoxically alien. Spooky action.
It began as a pinprick of that merging, right in the center, under a shroud of containment and vast shunted energy. It was always an orb, a sphere, an equal radial reference from a point, replicating outward bit by bit. It got easier and easier to fuel as it grew in size, feeding on itself seemingly, and once it was large enough to appear like a bubble, the exponential growth was soon flaring to its maximum.
A perfect spherical bubble fitting perfectly into its cup. But it was also a cloudy implosion of distortion, which seemed off.
Cloudy. To do with clarity. This is the damage done. It’s supposed to be clear.
He was aware of the containment expanding outward, gradually weakening, forming a vast gradient as it changed. He realized it had to do with the equalization of pressure from one ‘side’ to the other. He was fairly certain it dropped slightly around him, gently, gradually.
There was no real violent sound or light, which was by design, but the distortion was utterly disorienting to observe as images mixed together in a madhouse of twisted, indiscernible reflections, with the outermost edge of it spinning continuously. Garbled noises filtered out as well, as if from a distant tunnel. There might’ve been voices.
Briefly, he walked a few steps around it, watching as the images became even more mind-bending, but his eyes could verify its bubble-like spherical form just slightly, while staring directly could hypnotize one into seeing it like a disk.
Shaking his head, he began up the platform. Approached the bubble: the Gateway. Another world awaited him, and he could not sit and deliberate when there was so much information hidden on the other side.
I don’t have my staff. My gear. It was a too-late realization, so he shrugged and plunged ahead. He’d manage.
Walking through was just as disorienting as he imagined, like being absorbed into a kaleidoscope of the Ahbra — his eyes caught on nothing that could anchor him and gravity fell away, though he felt like he was falling forward. Possibly walking.
As he thought to lift his hand up, he couldn't verify he succeeded. Distorted images of himself twisted around and back, mingled with a sky, a roof, stone walls, greenery. He felt wrapped up in that bubble of force, charged air saturated with so much farsense input it was like syrup.
Somehow, he was calm despite it all. Somehow, he trusted the genius of its design and maintained his focus. He was still powering it, but he could laugh because even that was accounted for by the design. If he released it, he’d still have perhaps a minute to get clear, as it stayed powered, and the trip was only moments.
There was a transition as he felt gravity return, albeit lessened. The temperature warmed somewhat. Disorientation only got worse, along with a sinking feeling in his gut. A spinning sensation made his heart begin to race. Shapes began to form out of the mass and mess, and before he could process much more than a blurry half-lit smudge of sights and sounds he was planted mid-step, and almost immediately he stumbled and went to one knee on a familiar blue crystalline ramp, resisting the urge to puke.
Nothing could have prepared him for the alien strangeness of Cajhor. The air cloyed and clung at him even in his lungs, a foggy moisture with a tinge of a unique, musty scent he had no description for.
His eyes were drawn first to the hazy, murky sky of bronze-gold, redder at the too-close horizon, and thick with clouds like deeper eddies of the atmosphere, only a small smattering of stars shining through what seemed a glowing twilight. But then he noticed a small, bright star gleaming through it all, high above. Too bright, yet too small, like a tiny child of Azrom.
Before he could even process it his eyes were swallowed by another sight suspended above the horizon and shining through the murky depths. Like a fat orb with a great ring wrapping it almost north to south, the sphere within lit up in one crescent by the star, the rest covered in shadow, seemingly suspended in the air — No. It was a planet.
I’ve done it, Ahbra! A moon. I’m on a moon orbiting a giant.
It was his last thought of the environment itself, as he soon became aware of a great slurry of activity splayed out in front of him, arranged a respectful distance from the Gateway. A bonfire raged to his far left, and he caught the whiff of its burning wood. It felt like a party.
Pale, red-skinned folk were all around in the haze as though caught by surprise, dozens of them, too-skinny and gaunt but with strong, wiry muscle, all of them male and female clad only in short white skirts and sandals, the women bare-chested with varying but generally small breasts. Some were ambiguous and androgynous in appearance, at least at first glance. Frequent dark tattooing in sparse patterns etched across their skin, usually in the likenesses of beasts.
Their reactions to his existence were greatly mixed. Some were terrified, training hastily-hefted guns in his direction, while others looked bewildered, confused, or uncertain. One group — positioned atop and around a wagon bed and scattered barrels — was laughing raucously, usually with drinks in hand. Drunk.
Then his eyes caught sight of the empty enõìve suits, suspended and half-flopped standing up, split down the middle, down a continuous seam, like serpent skins they’d simply slid out of, still wet and slimy with some inner gleam. Not just skin, but everything else. Guts left behind, almost turned inside out.
Ironbloods. They’re all Ironbloods. They look so small…
Some inner part of him screamed to flee immediately, back the way he came, back to the familiarity and safety of home — of Hamellion. But it was the clawing desperation of a drowned-out voice with no control. The shunted aside, the waking obsolescence, who’d had his turn.
Amused, he chuckled as he shakily stood up on the new world — stood upright to face it.
There’s no pinching yourself to wake from this dream, partner! For every action, a reaction; for every reactioner, an actioner! Or how would the spring have come forth? But we’re One, now, and fear is banished.
He became aware of voices resounding in the strange air. All too normal ones.
“... damn you, Mónierr! Did you nokieun open it or not?!”
One was grinning as he watched, his sharp, narrow face making it almost a scowl at the same time. He swayed slightly as he took a few steps and gestured drunkenly with a hand. “Come on, you nokheads! The primitive is laughing already! Mónierr with some kessa le parta prank of his! Nok you, Mónierr! And your pet savage!”
Scattered laughter erupted together with curses, and some of the tension relented, though the more sober minds were unconvinced.
A muscular woman with short hair was still pointing her gun at the unwelcome visitor, keeping a hard gaze on him. “Drop to the ground, tribal! Hands behind your back!” She had to shout to be heard.
A loud guffaw came from the wagon back, from an unusual young man sitting there, face a smiling red template of drunkenness that bordered on unconsciousness, one arm around an equally-inebriated young woman and the other hand around a cup. Unlike the others, he had on dark pants, though his less-toned chest was bare. The red of his face was somewhat off, more a reddening from the pale reddish magenta of his skin. It was a shock to see that hint of violet, but it was clear immediately who he was: the one that had operated the Gateway with a seemingly middling ability. He was a prime-user.
Mónierr gestured at the scene, laughing. “Look here,” he slurred, “Pasce is getting kinky! Take him to a wagon, then — I know you’re shy!”
“Damn your face to the hells, Mónierr!” The exchange had a majority laughing in inebriated glee. “This is one of your pontsekú clown plays, isn’t it?! You can’t just pull this parta with a Waygate!”
“Did I? How should I know? Maybe it opened itself!” Mónierr laughed this time without many sharing in the amusement. Such statements clearly made them uncomfortable.
“Gateway,” the invading Hamaleen before them declared. Corrected, as he stared at Pasce. “That is what it is supposed to be called.”
“Hey!” One of them had stood up from a tree stump he was sitting on, pointing. “I know him. He’s the one that nok Raetmus wanted to kill. One Ball Deros! He’s an escapee.”
There was a dangerous silence from the greater majority. Even Mónierr seemed to be studying him, squinting as if trying to bring something blurry into focus.
Feeling threatened, the one called One Ball found that the arrow was in his hand. He looked down at it and shook his head. It would not be enough, clearly. More. Some of his potential was bound up in maintaining the Gateway, but hardly all. How long could he do so? Indefinitely? It seemed like it. His access had triggered some other thing too, some distant, shy echo, but he had to push it to the back of his mind. Later.
He took the significant remainder of makar’osa focus left to him and arced something out well in front of him, slinging forth chaos with intent and improvising its refinement.
So it bled and flowed out into Cajhor, tainting it in a vast radius.
Straining himself subtly but significantly to accomplish it, muscles tensing, he grasped the air, his imagination leading him to invent something like a pulled bowstring. Suspended tension, but without the right material, so it was more like two forces pushing against one another. If he released one side suddenly it would… yes. Crude, wasteful, but perhaps it would work. He kept it ready to amplify and unleash. Perhaps it could even stop bullets? That was unclear.
One Ball shifted his eyes calmly over the gathered, all of them held spellbound by the oddity and uncertainty. “Where is Pal Pal? Tell me, and I’ll be on my way.”
“You aren’t going anywh-”
“I bet he means his girl! I think Pala-something is the name of the pretty one in the robes. Tattoo on her face.”
Mónierr laughed in an unmistakably salacious way. “Oh, et! Et! That is the one I plan to buy. Palamera. She’s going to be fun, fun, fun…”
Anger shot up through the Hamaleen. He pointed his arrow dead at Mónierr. “Watch your foul mouth, you drunken scum rag! You’ll not lay a finger on her, nor will you so much as speak her name again, or I will kill you.”
There were some snickers and laughs at that, while the one pointing the gun at him had a look he recognized as that of someone staring at a madman. She wasn’t the only one.
However, Mónierr’s young face reddened even more, in answering offense and anger. He shot all the way up onto his feet, almost knocking over the girl on his arm as he directed a sneer at his insulter. “You stupid tribal! Do you have any idea who I am?! I’m a Wayguide, I’m Ordení! Your master! I’ll do more than lay a finger, quari. As soon as I return to Al Pendrós, I’ll buy your Pal Pal and nok her extra hard and deep. Just for you!”
There was no hesitation in the Hamaleen Azakan facing a score of Ironbloods. He let the rage boil into him and overflow, let it channel right into the poised pressure in a wave before him like he was clenching a fist. Or pulling back the bowstring. Force against force, straining with everything he had — and more besides. Pressure, pressure, pressure, the air vibrating and shimmering with contained power, until one side had to give, to burst, all of his energy thrown into it. He ensured it was their side.
“Allow me to make a counteroffer.”
With a piercing crack like a thunderbolt loud enough to deafen, a violent explosion erupted out, a wave of force, the cascade blasting away everything in its path like a giant’s arm had swept down and away. Ironbloods were tossed and tumbled, erect suits were knocked and thrown, barrels were burst in sprays of wood and liquid, and even the wagon toppled, all in a great cloud of dust.
He heard — he felt — spines and bones snapping, chests caving in, guns splintered into pieces. Destruction and death.
Unfortunately, he was not entirely spared, as the force rebounded back at him with a runaway strength he hadn’t anticipated once unleashed. He tried to push and divert it up and over, and he just kept it from murdering him as the greater force flew overhead, but the trailing ‘wind’ of concussion still blew over him and knocked him on his ass, right onto the hard crystal ramp.
Meanwhile, there was a mild ‘thrum’ as the concussive wave uselessly hit the Gateway, not so much as budging it.
Bullets also did not fail to rip from guns, something he barely noticed at first. There was not a single splatshot, only the whizzing of lead. One blew in and out of his leg as he fell, and such was his state he barely felt it. Was he invincible?
But another ripped through the bridge of his nose and grazed his eye on its path to ride along the skin at the far edge and away: it blurred his vision with damage, the splatter of blood, or both. It hardly mattered.
He arose, laughing at how he’d defied death. Laughing at the chaos oozing in every direction, making everything feel farsensically like it was vibrating along that queer, unseen trajectory. Something he felt attuned to, a part of, One with. He wheezed in laughter, and it turned into a cough within the dust cloud. He felt fatigued, actually. Lightheaded; a little sick. And there was a ringing in his ears, his hearing muted. But he pushed on.
He stalked, stumbled, limped — he was limping — across the yellow rocky soil across dark green, strange weeds, over toward the demolished wagon and beer-soaked ground, hearing various moans, screams, and gurgling sounds as various Ironbloods were dying or suffering. He was sure that one woman was drowning in her own blood from internal wounds. Burst organs. A terrible anti-symphony of retribution.
“Who is the insect now, false giants? Hmm? Who’s crushed underfoot?”
An Ironblood that was lying on the ground suddenly pointed a rifle at him, and he was not quick enough in his reaction to keep a shot from ringing out, which blew through his arm. He formed a reduced ‘blast’ or explosion like a big, violent push. It more or less dug a hole in the ground and blew soil everywhere, as it also blew the Ironblood off spinning away, the rifle and an arm flying even further. He was ready for the ‘blowback’, diverting it even as he made the killing stroke, successfully directing it away from him at an angle.
Overall, a success: the Ironblood was limp and still.
The effort almost brought him completely under, however, as he swayed and half blacked out on his feet. But he held on, body shaking in protest. Aside from the arm. It hung limply. And bled.
I’m getting tired of this body. It isn’t cooperating.
Vexed, he nonetheless dragged himself over to the form of Mónierr, trying to crawl away on the ground, to hide behind rubble, all purely by his hands due to legs that weren’t responding. He was bruised and beaten, with a cut on his forehead painting his whole face bloody. A body had been between him and the impact wave, saving him from death. Temporarily.
Mónierr turned immediately when his assaulter approached, croaking out hoarsely, “No! Help! Somebo- no, please!”
The one called One Ball laughed in derision as he stood over the pathetic, begging idiot and pointed the arrow in his hand at him once more. “No, what? No finishing you off? I told you I’d kill you. I keep my promises. Is it really any less than you deserve?”
After a last desperate, half-screamed ‘no,’ Mónierr found himself squeezed out of breath by a force crushing down on his chest cavity. Slowly. Too slowly; not snapping. Eyes rolled back as unconsciousness came, but still…
Pushing, pushing, pushing, but it was the absolute last of the Hamaleen’s strength giving out, all the strain squeezing on something utterly spent. He pushed himself right into delirium and felt exhaustion take over, felt it seize the insufficiency of the flesh and begin dragging him down into darkness.
No! It would end! It can’t!
He reached out to grab hold of and anchor himself to the ambient chaos, for a lack of any other solution — take up the energy saturating the zone of his arrival and wrap it around him into something new, hoping to preserve it all, to preserve his purpose, to preserve himself and keep going. But he felt a tremendous sense of loss in the attempt, there in those final moments.
I don’t want this dream to end. Can we still be One, Deros?
Please?
SpoilerSky of Cajhor with the giant:
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