“Seven thousand years,” said the Aged Mother. “Seven thousand wars,” said the Holy Apastron. “Seven ages of decay,” said the fury of cold dead suns.
Fear swaddled the young spark, snuffed by a dark specter whose grief is heard on sleepless nights. Those who learned the language of whispers turned away from the Aged Mother, whose hidden heart endures the weakness of titans, that on the eve of Ascension they wore piteous masks with false intent, turning away from splendor to give food to those already starved and forgot the way to the Vales of Har.
“Revol. Revol. Child specter of Luvah, take your edenic form. You splintered from something precious and are in this naked state a reflection of absolute futurity. You hurry back as did the trees who turned their branches from the Sun to shelter worms. We, as ripened fruit come bursting from the fall, we carry the grains of our parent fibers grown bitter in bent pangs of deformity. In sad accord, they who glory spurned looked depressed each one to the other as the living spheres grew small. And the lie they spoke in silent words did grow to a scream, carried on the desolate wind across ruined worlds for eons.
“We are echoes of that ancient cry, so I will not chide you. Take on again your shell and bring splendor into Briah. You have a little left. I learned before what measure to give, as the Worm has grown and reaches far, but also light will burn too small a thing and power disproportionate may drive its wielder mad. So take this morsel and return as your heart pines, because you are much needed now. Souls like yours are candles in a dark house. You may invert your greatest strength and brand yourself thus, but no shadow can hide you, even the shadow of melancholy, for you are an emanation of Love and as Reason once said, ‘The specter is the man’.”
----------------------
“Whoa!” Revol shook his head and opened his eyes. The words faded as quickly as light crept between his eyelids. He looked to the left around the empty ship, noticing at once the differences from their last. He looked down at his hands, wide with short fingers and strong from years of soldiering. He made fists, squeezed, and saw the floor beyond them.
“No.” He gasped, suddenly afraid. “No. No, none of that crap. Daggumit!”
His will, strong from a surliness imprinted after waking, stubbornly clung to the nascent lacteals and fading nerves that gave his body substance. He felt his fibers dying as they grew, and fought with a heart that strove to beat to stretch them out ever anew. Fading they clawed, like serpents probing for safe limbs to climb they grafted around air.
A step, his foot met ground. He smiled, moved forward, grew solid, stepped and stepped again. A door. Will he pass through? Or must he open it by hand? He turns the latch, but then he slips, and catches himself on the ground of the cold moon.
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
A step. Wobbling knees. But panic rises because he is naked in a desolate and frozen land. His form is freezing, and he begins to flee from it, becoming sound.
No.
More was given him, and not all was taken. So he drew from his little accretion flame and around him wove new armor, glowing at the seams from the radiance he trailed. His harness now was him, and he was glad for the loss of bulk in his movements, now impacting on the ground. The child walks, stumbles, falls. The boy rises, runs, stumbles, falls. The man stands, chooses his path, finds his way around the pitfalls and the vines and the tumbling stones.
Yes.
Revol now smiles through a skullfort that has never cracked, and the lightness of his newness lifts him far with every bound. He hears his friends, his ears still being open to the wind. He runs towards them, careful, worried that the fear brought by a fall might flee him from his form.
He rears over a hill and hears their voices. They are speaking quietly. A shepherd's staff flies overhead.
He cuts through a vale and recognizes Forge. The machinist ponders the soil. The moon is made of dead, but glorious flesh.
A chilled scape, and lonely, but in solitude there’s beauty, and the sadness of souls spreads mist across the horizon Revol grasps for. A pale grey desert, slashed by rivers frozen black. A haze of blue and a red troposphere like a warrior’s crown, beneath a sky that by day shows stars. And the cold sun shines, hotter than the hearts of mothers but so distant far. And oh the cold sun shines, bigger than the courage of fathers but so distant far.
Revol runs under the shepherd's staff. He hears his Captain warning them to stay low, and the staff appears ahead and on the left and on the right above. Revol sees his friends. They stand inside a shadow.
The gaseous sphere throbs with implanted life. The staff of the east digs into the ground and sends its dark lance. ‘Down,’ the Captain commands. The shadow grows.
The staff of the west digs into the ground. The shadow is now flanked by others, tall and terrible.
“Run!” Revol shouts too late.
They have engaged the enemy, and the enemy is now four great knights the height of everlasting trees. They have more limbs than centipedes, and their torsos twist and spread and fan as the bullets glance and the Harbingers’ light is siphoned.
The staff of the north remains in the sky, and the staff of the south. The shadows take flight, descending as shrikes onto Revol’s team. A talon for a body, their immensity wins out.
The staff of the south remains in the sky. The dark lances of the east and west become one, holding between their fingers a sphere of growing black fire. Revol abandons his form, seeking solace in the Advent. More lances reach to the sky treaders and from all four staves comes a frightening sound. Thunder delayed, the wind is rent. From the shockwave comes a beckoning hand unseen, drawing from it gases from the cold moon’s anchor. The gases belch and like an infected wound the planet swells.
Revol descends, having gone to his vessel and is armed for rescue. He draws their powers in and flees. The cold moon's anchor is stripped away behind them, and the steel skeleton beneath now glows as its blood is drawn. Then there is a true cause for fear. The shadows are engulfed. A warrior of red sulfur comes into view. Vapors shoot in waves from his feet and his laughter is earthquake.
-----------------
Revol had flown with Speck enough times to know how to manage a short jump. The hum of the ship’s power core tried to sooth him and failed. Panic had solidified him, and anger galvanized him. He held the thermos against his chest, clutching it like a newborn, losing tears as the polychromatic cloud of the wormhole washed over the viewscreen.