“Talk to me, Flea,” said Gilgamesh.
“I’ve got nothin’, Lieutenant.”
Gilgamesh came through the doorway and sat down next to him in the cockpit. “You know, most of my people have this reverential view of Imogen and the Ylias. They believe the Ylias gave us our radiance, and that she gave us our life.”
Then the big man was quiet, and Flea felt a little uncomfortable, so he broke the silence. “You see it different?”
“No. I just see it clearly. If we keep revering the Ylias, then we run the risk of not seeing the Archeus as the enemy.”
“But the Ylias isn’t a person,” Flea replied. “The Ylias is existence. It’s pure meaning, pure potential, pure…”
“Flea, there’s no such thing as magic.”
“You sure? What you guys can do seems pretty magical to my people.”
“Well, when we start switching sides because we forget there was a line, I’m sure you’ll be cured of your delusions.”
“Nothing will cure us of that.”
Gilgamesh was quiet again, then turned to face the pilot. “Wait. Are you Flea?”
“Are you Gilgamesh?”
Flea thought about his reply. It felt strange to hear his own words in another’s ears.
“It’s quiet on here,” Gilgamesh said after a lengthy pause.
“I can play some music.”
“Okay.”
Flea called up his playlists and chose the one he named ‘Sad’.
“Man,” said Gilgamesh, “this is the old stuff.”
“Sure is,” the pilot agreed. “This song came out in 3333.”
“I don’t even recognize these instruments,” said the passenger.
The pilot bobbed his head. “You’re not supposed to recognize the instruments. All you gotta do is feel what they’re saying and move with the beat.”
The passenger bobbed their head. “It’s all about the vibrations.”
“Yeah,” the pilot agreed. “That’s how the daughters breach the Verge. But it won’t work anymore. They need to find a new way now. That’s what will give you time.”
The passenger looked at the pilot with a yearning for his younger years. “Is there any time left?”
The pilot nodded reassuringly. “There’s always time left. You have no reason to fear time, even though you are not yet ascended, and are outside the Constant River’s flow.”
The passenger shook their head. “I can’t even conceive of such things.”
“It’s true,” said the pilot. “It’s beyond even me, and I am far beyond you.”
“And yet you still speak to me.”
“If I don’t, what hope will you have?”
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“Bastion. In Bastion there is hope.”
The pilot smiled. “In? Did you say that deliberately?”
“No. But yes. Where is Bastion?”
“You’ve been there. It’s where your true journey started. You remember. It’s where you honored the dead.”
“I tried to honor them, though I studied them as well. They were given to me. I meant no disrespect.”
“You honored them with your studies as much as with their rites. Would you like to know a secret?”
The passenger nodded, though they were afraid, and they were no longer in their vessel, but looked at a primordial plane of tall, golden grass. A powerful animal stalked with heavy paws into a clearing, and there its breath was taken so that it fell.
“What killed it?” asked the passenger.
“Keep watching,” said the pilot.
The animal lay still in terms of its own power, but as the sun and moon danced its body transmuted, and in time it had become a part of the world beneath.
“Incredible,” said the passenger.
“Do you understand?” asked the pilot.
The passenger nodded. “I do. But I’m still afraid.”
“All of us are,” the pilot replied. “Fear moves us all, as much as love. They are the greatest of all zoas, and one who understands them has the only true power.”
“The power of cause.”
“Yes. Think of cause as you would a guru.”
The passenger looked above the golden grass to the silver stars. “Do they know fear and love?”
The pilot smiled again. “Better than anyone. You see, they’re children, born from the seeds of those they once gave their lifeforce to. What you saw on the grass also happens among the stars, with one difference.”
“What is that difference?”
Then the pilot’s face grew very somber. “All who live inside flesh will be dispersed among the ground, and then the soul, the knowing, is gone. In the stars this is inverted.”
The passenger was stunned by the power of what the pilot revealed. “There can be no more precious gift then, can there?”
“All life is a precious gift, but Ascension is the most special. The sleeper sought to spread it to more people.”
“Did he succeed?”
“Yes.” Then the pilot was sad, and the small, tattooed figure of Flea gave way in full to the creature, heavenly beautiful, who served as a root growing from the deep, though she still saw the heights in waking dreams. “To many. But not to himself.”
“Then he sleeps in death? I’m confused. He sleeps in a pocket dimension, but he did not ascend, and he is not dead?”
“He is the thing that hunts us all, and he is the thing that Haleon still defies.”
A body floated in the cold of space.
Flea’s hands tensed.
“Don’t,” said Gilgamesh.
“It’s the captain again.”
“Don’t. That’s how we lost everyone else.”
“Then why are we here?”
“You know why we’re here.”
Flea slammed his hands on his flight console. “No, I don’t! All I know is why we ain’t there. Because there ain’t there no more. But I honest to Imogen’s ass do not know why we are, of all the places we could be, here.”
Gilgamesh was quiet for a moment, then nodded out the window. “You’re about to find out.”
Space is soundless, but they saw a scream. The fabric of our realm, call it spacetime or Aether or the wellspring or any name you wish, was replaced by a flash that was not made of light. It rippled with harshly saturated colors, and as it flashed it changed so that it was no longer a flash but a gap. The shape of the gap was that of the portal through which women offer their infants to the crucible, and from it a horror was born. He was shrouded by six wings which spread to a full AU as he emerged, and behind him were fleets of ships so thick they blackened the stars behind them.
“No!” shouted the passenger.
Solomon woke covered in sweat and panting. Oak was empty, fortunately. He was not yet ready to appear again. He had to wait and see a little more.
You’re in pain, said Kos. You've been here a long time. You've seen many painful things; your loved ones suffering and belief in falsehoods. And you saw as if you were them.
“I’m fine. I just need some air.”
The Shadow Children kept their tight circle so that Solomon could pass through Albion unseen, then they followed him into space where he was fond of spending days at a stretch in deep thought.