“What?” Hawk whispered.

“I suspect you wouldn’t notice, seeing as how you say there is no magic in your world…” and then he trailed off, seeing the color drain from Hawk’s face.

Because she was thinking about a field of beige grass. Multiple fields of beige grass, which had also been filled with multiple beige human bodies. She turned to Kaiser. “You were at the briefings with the general, right?”

“Well, yes…”

“Did the Bittermoss and Bronx Events move faster than the others?” She seemed to remember some pretty horrific doomsday numbers coming out of the television set, but that might have just been the usual hyperbole. Kaiser would have access to the real numbers. He’d know how bad it really was.

“What do you mean?”

“The two events that we know had Archetypes in the Prisms. Did their Glass Lines advance faster than the line in Arizona?”

Kaiser was nodding, “And the other Events we know of. Yes. They are. But those events were exponentially larger.” Kaiser said. Then paused.

“What. That look. What is it?” She said.

“…There were a few whispers about the events not quite scaling up correctly. Some of my numbers people chattering. I didn’t pay too much attention. They know when to show me their work and when to leave it alone. But the chatter was…something was off, and it was more off with Bittermoss than the Bronx.”

“So the numbers didn’t scale right. It’s higher. Way higher than it ought to have been, isn’t it?” Hawk had her teaching tone.

“I know exactly Jack and Shit about the Bittermoss Line,” Kaiser said. “Largely because we’re fucking inside it, Doc.” And he pumped the mockery into that Doc.

“But the Bronx Zoo line?” She said. She wasn’t going to back down from this.

“Would you mind very much explaining?” Came the smooth and dangerous voice of the Shadowmaster.

She glanced from face to face. Most of them looked at her expectantly. The nominal God with her husband’s face looked bored. Henry Dyson suddenly looked like he’d eaten sour meat.

“This world should not be here. There isn’t enough energy in the system for it to be a viable ecosystem on its own. We’ve got sunlight, we’ve got some nutrition, but it’s not nearly enough to support an entire forest.” She pointed up. “Up there, back home, this universe formed as a sort of pocket, a universe inside our larger one. Life requires energy. I think that the event fractures or stresses the laws of physics to the point that you can leach the energy you need to sustain organic life in here from the organic life out there.” Pause. “Back home. The Glass isn’t a side effect of the energy signature. It’s the direct cause. Life going from out there to in here.”

Silence as each of the earth-siders remembered the spreading fields of beige colored grasses, life leaching out of soil and flesh cell by cell. And now they had the other side of it.

“So the Rifts aren’t emitting Glass energy.” Dyson said.

“They’re absorbing it. It’s coming from organic life. We’re detecting life itself coming out of the ground, and we thought it came from the Rift. It didn’t. It’s our energy. Our life. And it’s going down the Event holes to sustain whatever is in the pocket universe. In this case—”

“The descendants of the Bittermoss students, the plants, the bunny rabbits, and whatever else they had at the Bittermoss 4H club.” Em said.

“Which is why the Boston event is so huge.” Hawk said. “It has to support basically an entire population. Plus however much energy the Archetypes’ little display burned through.”

“Archetype?” the Archon said.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

She actively felt the circuits blow as she explained herself. “I am not calling them Gods. I refuse. Point blank refuse. Do what you want. Inflate their egos all you want, but they don’t deserve that kind of honor. Not after what I saw in that pavilion.”

“I wouldn’t even call them archetypes,” Em said. “They didn’t endure a Prism for their power. They took it.”

There were soft sounds around them, an incomplete silence. These were the shuffling of small rodents. Mice, Hawk thought, those would have been all throughout Bittermoss school. Birds, too. She could hear the rustling of night wings, the distant chirps of something feathered flitting from white leafed tree to white tree. And the idea, lingering and horrible, began to rise. She considered letting it go; Kaiser’s eyes were flitting between her and the Shadowmaster too rapidly. He was going to figure something out, and start testing circuit breakers. Was there love? Was there like? Did this creature have any compassion? How could Kaiser use him to get what he wants? No. She had to ask it, had to keep him from making his own important connections.

So she said, very loudly, “Kaiser…how long did you and Naomi Studdard use Bittermoss School as a livestock program?”

Ah, yes. Thank God for incomplete silence. The clearing of throat. The strangling of breath in the larynx. She supposed if her hearing were good enough she could hear the stutter stop of his heartbeat, the sound of his eye muscles, rectus and obliques, struggling to look from side to side without giving away the game. Oh, this must be what Alex felt when he was manipulating a mark, and it felt good.

“What on earth do you mean?” He finally managed.

“I don’t think it was always meant to go down the way it did. I don’t think you even thought of it at all, triggering a Glass event. I don’t think you’ve got the guts to become an Archetype. Not after all the shit we just saw. But this all panned out real well for Naomi Studdard, didn’t it? I’ll bet her only regret is that she didn’t have the balls to put herself in the Prism. It must stick in your craw that you set all this up and other people are reaping the rewards.” She said it all very, very softly.

He stared at her, finally naked. This was the real Kaiser. She’d dug down to his raw and nasty little core. “Bet you think you figured something out, don’t you?”

“Was it going to be a colony on Mars?” She said.

“Nah. Everyone agrees that’s a no-hoper. Unless you want to give everybody a good show. No. Best minds figured we had just enough time to put together a golden parachute for the human race. It was a pick between life in a missile silo or a floating city. But we needed the best minds, better than what we had, to make it work. So yes. Bittermoss was a part of Ararat. It was supposed to be our way of training the saviors of mankind.”

The worst part, she thought, was that he said it as if he actually believed it.

“What does Naomi Studdard want?” Hawk said.

Kaiser sighed. “Naomi? She wanted her family to have a guaranteed seat at Ararat’s table, including the dying kid. She thought there’d be salvation until the very last minute. But the kid died. Edgar did what he did. And before your sarcastic ass points it out, yes, I had a hand in what Edgar did. I took the money he had earmarked for an investment and used it to build Ararat bigger and better, and I came closer to making Amelie Studdard’s dreams come true than anything her daddy ever did. I was looking out for the human race, Doc. That’s all I’ve ever done.” He sighed. “As for what she wants now…you got me, kid.”

“She wants the God-world,” Shadow said, and then smiled as both of them turned to him. “Did you forget I was here? How delightful. She’s made no secret about it. She aims to reclaim it in Her name. Nasheth, who I assume is this ‘Naomi’ you’ve discussed. Of course, she has to wait until the Temple of Light draws nearer the Nexus and the source of light. She has to be able to reach it, after all. And right now she won’t do it.” He glanced around. “Now. They should be ready to chase you lot down. I’d best be going to liven things up a bit. Mattias—”

“You know that I—” The Archon said.

“—have surrendered your name and live in service to the Master of Light, who is deader than a doorknob and unworthy of you. You need to take them to a Cove. You should know where the nearest is. Travel with light. You’re more noticeable without it.”

And then he was gone with a twist of violent shadow, and there was the sound of great panther-feet racing away from where they stood.

“Shadowbeasts,” she whispered.

“Aye. They’re his constructs. Some of them are real—most of them, I’d say. But tonight it’s all ghosts and smoke and mirrors and flame. Not intended to be a real bloodletting.” The Archon—did she dare call him Mattias?—began walking through the trees. He paused for a moment in the growing darkness before summoning his own cold light with a twist of his fingers. It was a gentle, homey sort of light.

“He didn’t hesitate to burn the people Nasheth turned into trees,” Em said.

“They were already dead. Or if not dead, not anything like living people anymore. It is said that those Nasheth changes to trees are still aware. It is also said that those still aware are screaming and that every moment is a torment. I do know that only one person ever became a tree and then became a person again…and that person was like a child.”

“You mean they were silly and naval gazing?” Kaiser said. “Maybe played with their own shit?”

“I mean that he soiled himself and began screaming immediately. He did not stop until an acolyte, on orders of Nasheth herself, smothered him with a pillow.”

Kaiser, mercifully, shut up.

“Shall we?” The Archon said, and they all ventured into the night.