For the next four days, Amara sat before the dresser in Mattias’s vault, trying without success to destroy it from the inside out. No matter what she did, no matter how long she stared at it or how hard she tried to feel the flames, the insides of the dresser remained invisible to all her senses beyond smell. The act of sitting before the dresser for more than twelve hours every day rapidly became a struggle for patience. It was terminally boring, and every little thing she did to resolve some of that boredom, no matter how insignificant, would be pounced upon by Mattias. She often wondered at how he was able to muster the tremendous amount of patience it must’ve taken to watch her so attentively. He was always there, always paying attention, always ready with a sharp word to put a stop to any tiny thing she did that wasn’t staring at the dresser.
Hell isn’t getting bullied or going hungry, she soon realized. Hell is boredom you can’t escape from.
The only breaks Mattias allowed her to take were for meals. The daily gatherings for breakfast, lunch, and dinner became her only escape from the vault beyond sleep, and before long she found herself fixating on the next mealtime. She had to force herself to hide just how happy the gatherings made her, despite the awkwardness between Mattias and Evander which was always present at the table. Surprisingly, Mattias seemed to have taken her earlier criticism to heart and demurred each time Evander aimed a pointed barb at him, which was fairly often. The implication that she’d been right about that felt intensely gratifying, and she thought about it often, especially when Mattias would chastise her for not paying close enough attention to the object of her boredom.
As though physically sitting in front of the dresser all day weren’t enough torture, she also began to do it in her sleep. In her dreams odd things would happen around her as she sat before the dresser, still and silent as a stone. In one instance she heard an argument taking place between Mattias and her mother, one that made no sense and left her feeling frustrated upon waking up. Sleep soon began to act as a second drain on her already waning resolve.
It was around the middle of the fifth day when her patience finally ran out. After several hours of sitting before the dresser, negative thoughts that she simply couldn’t ignore anymore swirled in her mind like vexing insects. The idea that she was wasting her precious time, that Mattias wanted her to do something which was literally impossible, and that her mother was going to starve to death if she didn’t do something all became inescapable.
An involuntary, deeply frustrated growl suddenly left her and Mattias, who’d been standing somewhere behind her, instantly chastised her for it.
“Are you a dog or a person? Be quiet, focus.”
In response she sprung to her feet, whipping about to face him while shouting: “I don’t have time for this bullshit! This is completely fucking pointless!!! You need to actually help me or get the hell out of my way!!!”
Mattias was entirely unaffected by her outburst, which only added to her anger.
“How do you expect to succeed against Shabboleth without proper preparation?” he said. “He’s known as the Invincible for a reason.”
“So what?! How the hell is staring at a dresser supposed to help me do anything?!”
“His skin is literally as strong as steel. Flame alone will do almost nothing to him, especially if you go in unprepared. Your second power is the only way to defeat him.”
“I have absolutely no idea what it is!” she said, bringing both hands up to harshly rub her face. “I don’t feel anything when I stare at that fucking dresser! The only thing this has done for me is drive me insane!”
Mattias went silent, and when Amara finally looked up she could see that something about his demeanor had changed. There was a new, troublesome glint in his eyes.
“Perhaps you’re right,” he eventually said. “Perhaps what you need is a new perspective. I think it’s time for us to take a trip.”
He then turned about, walking at a brisk pace towards the stairwell. Amara hurried after him, so overjoyed at the prospect of not having to stare at the dresser all day that she had no intention of questioning him until they were well away from the vault. They climbed the stairs in silence, and only after they’d entered the guest wing did she finally decide to speak up.
“Where are we going?”
“To the one place in the world where you can get some genuine perspective on yourself.”
Frustration instantly flared up within her, and she came to a sudden stop. Mattias heard this and also stopped, turning to level a questioning gaze on her.
“...Please. Just this once. Can you please just be straight with me?”
A mild frown crossed his face, but to her surprise he actually complied.
“We’re going to see the Maw.”
“The Maw?”
“It defies easy description. You won’t believe me if you don’t see it with your own eyes.”
He then turned away, resuming his pace towards the kitchen. Amara reluctantly followed along, frustrated at how it now felt like she couldn’t ask anything else without seeming impatient. Whatever the Maw was, she’d certainly never heard of it before, not in the Seeker’s stories or in the scriptures.
It was oppressively hot and dry when they finally stepped through the wall door to the outside, easily the hottest the desert had felt since she’d arrived at Raven’s Roost. The sun’s exhausting warmth felt like an oppressive blanket laid all across her face, hair and skin, and even the occasional gust of wind rolling up towards them along the footpath did little to cool her down. Mattias didn’t seem to mind the heat at all, despite his heavy black robes which looked to be unbearably hot, and silently led Amara down the path towards the sand dunes below.
“Is this place somewhere nearby?” Amara asked. “I’m not looking forward to a long walk in this heat.”
“We won’t be walking,” Mattias said dryly.
“...You know, you constantly do this thing where you sound condescending even when you obviously don’t mean to be.”
“What makes you think I didn’t mean to sound condescending?”
Amara instantly scoffed, but let the matter drop. She was simply grateful to be out of the vault and outside under the sun for once, uncomfortable though it was.
Descending down the footpath to the sand below went much faster than ascending, and before long Amara was following Mattias through the dunes. He didn’t appear to be heading anywhere in particular until he reached the top of a small dune well away from Raven’s Roost and finally came to a stop.
“Shield your vision,” was all he said before an intensely bright light began to form and coalesce all across his body. Amara raised a hand up to protect her eyes, and took a few steps backwards for good measure. When the light diminished moments later, Amara lowered her hand and saw that Mattias had changed into his gigantic raven form, the same one he’d assumed back when he’d rescued Evander.
He settled down onto his haunches and extended a massive wing out across the sand. His eye was the size of a dinner table, and she found herself shrinking a little underneath his gaze.
Climb aboard. Don’t worry, I won’t let you fall.
Hesitation briefly stayed her feet before she crossed the sand towards him. Something about the prospect of going for a ride was undeniably frightening, but the promise of actually getting to fly was so exciting that she quickly forgot her fear.
After taking a moment to search his wing for handholds she began to slowly clamber up, climbing carefully along his person-length feathers. She soon discovered that the feather itself wasn’t quite thick enough to act as a proper handhold, and used the stems to shimmy up instead.
There’s no need for you to climb so slowly, Mattias said. You won’t hurt me.
“You try climbing a giant bird,” she said back, panting. “And see how easy it is for you.”
…Fair enough.
After a decent amount of effort she reached a spot on his back just behind his neck where she could sit in relative comfort while also maintaining a decent grip on a few nearby stems. Before she could even give him the go-ahead, Mattias flexed his wings and spread them out in anticipation for flight.
Hold on, was the only warning he gave before abruptly lifting off, leaping into the air while flapping his enormous wings to gain lift. Amara gripped his feathers for dear life as he rapidly ascended into the blue sky.
Below and behind them, the rocky crag which held Raven’s Roost in its bosom already seemed tiny, and the strong wind whipping past as Mattias continued to ascend was surprisingly refreshing and cool. The sun was still powerful, but its overbearing intensity was dulled by the cooling wind.
Hang tight, Mattias said. It’s a decent-ways flight to the Maw.
Amara barely registered his words. She could hardly believe just how wonderful it felt to fly, the sheer freedom in being so far above the rest of the world.
This should’ve been my power, she thought ruefully. Not control of fire. I would give anything to be able to do this whenever I wanted.
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A scrolling kaleidoscope of earth tones passed beneath them for the next several hours, and Amara watched it all with an eagerness she’d hardly ever felt before. The desert was by no means uniform in color, despite what the terrain around Raven’s Roost had implied. New and interesting shades of earth appeared and disappeared at random, the most curious of which was a long stretch of black-gray sand that looked oddly smooth, at least from the sky. Even more interesting were the rare, tiny patches of green that appeared on occasion, points of hardy plant life somehow carrying on with the business of living in spite of their sun-blasted environment. Rocky crags similar to Raven’s Roost were also not uncommon, standing out like small, independent island-castles from the frozen sea of sand which surrounded them.
There was a tremendous sense of power in being able to see the world from the sky, one which almost surpassed the feeling of controlling fire. Amara was so engrossed in enjoying the view that she was taken completely off guard when Mattias suddenly flew into a gray-white cloud.
The world disappeared into blurry wetness, and water rapidly accumulated across Mattias’s feathers even as his speed caused it to fly off of him in thin, stringlike arcs. Amara’s hair and clothing became soaked almost instantly, but she didn’t mind at all. She sat up and spread her arms out wide, enjoying the sudden blast of cold wetness, and surprised herself by letting out a peal of giddy laughter. Compared to the powerful sun and the dry wind which had been whipping past her, the coolness of the cloud’s moisture felt utterly amazing, and she was openly disappointed when they passed out of the cloud moments later.
“You’re really lucky to be able to do this whenever you want,” she said aloud. “If I were you I would probably never do anything else.”
Hm! Well, I’m glad you seem to be enjoying this. As for myself, flight does lose some of its luster when you’ve been doing it for as long as I have.
“How long is that?” she asked, adding: “Did you get a choice of powers, or was it like me?”
It’s been two thousand years or so since the Cataclysm, and no, choice was never involved. The process of discovering my powers happened slowly over time, in fact it was much slower than the other Seraphim. For a time I thought I alone hadn’t received any powers, that is until I began to wake up covered in odd patches of fur or feathers or bone—sometimes all three. Quite an alarming experience for me at the time.
“So you were kind of like me, then. It just happened?”
Yes.
“Have you really never spoken to God?”
You mean the Pattern—and no, never. Neither have the other Seraphim, despite what some of the more colorful stories in the scriptures claim.
“I don’t know if I believe you about that. Can you prove that it isn’t God?”
I have exactly as much verifiable proof that the Pattern isn’t God as you do that it is. Look there.
Mattias turned his head towards something off in the distance ahead of him, and Amara followed his gaze. Something unimaginably huge was gradually advancing towards them on the horizon, a blue-green mass containing an uncountable amount of thin white wisps. She stared at it with growing trepidation, and soon realized with no small amount of horror that there was motion occurring within it. The whisps seemed to be disappearing and reappearing at random.
“What is that?” she asked warily.
The ocean, of course. You should count yourself lucky, very few people get to see their first ocean from the sky.
“...How big is it?”
Oh, very. And it’s miles deep in some places. But it’s nothing for you to be concerned about, we won’t be flying over it. Just near it.
The ocean stretched on and on into the distance until it melted into a thin blue-gray blur on the horizon. Something about it was so intrinsically frightening that she found herself looking away, instead scanning the scrolling desert below. There was noticeably more green in the landscape now, along with occasional patches of blue.
Do you see it?
“I’m trying not to.”
Not the ocean. Look directly ahead of us, where the water meets the earth.
An involuntary shudder left her when she looked up again, but she forgot her fear once she’d spotted what Mattias had been talking about. What looked to be a brown, dusty cloud seemed to be hovering over a point on the beach ahead of them. Something intensely dark swirled within the thick cloud, the sight of which caused an odd feeling within her. It was similar to the strangeness she’d felt when she looked at the wolf, an alarming sort of buzzing in the brain.
Mattias silently began to descend towards it, and Amara watched with morbid fascination as the blackness within the cloud deepened. For a moment it looked as though it was moving about, but she soon realized that it was merely a trick of the light being played by the cloud of swirling dust. As they drew closer the dark shape within the dust gradually solidified. Before long she could see that the shape was in fact a perfect sphere, and so astonishingly black that it made Mattias’s feathers look gray and muted in comparison.
Welcome to the world’s navel, Amara.
The ocean had been frightening, but the sight of the sphere caused a feeling close to panic to wash over her. There was something deeply, inexplicably ominous about it, but at the same time she couldn’t bring herself to tear her gaze away.
“What the hell is it…?”
The wellspring of the Pattern. Two thousand years ago we thirteen were meant to study it. At the time we simply called it the singularity, but after the Cataclysm the others agreed to give it a new name.
“You mean—”
Rejoice, Amara, he said, his thought-voice dripping with sarcasm. You’re looking upon the face of God.
Her mouth fell open with shock, and she scanned the sphere even more intensely, searching for any detail that might refute what he’d just said. The strange feeling she got when looking at it was the only indication that something was seriously off about it, beyond the obvious. Her eyes searched it up and down, but it remained exactly what it was no matter where she looked.
“That isn’t God,” she said, trying to convince herself. “It can’t be, it’s just a creepy black circle. How can it be like this?”
How exactly did you picture God?
As a man, she nearly said. But something about that felt undeniably wrong.
Is it the color that confuses you? It’s perfectly black because it swallows everything that comes too close, absolutely everything. Even light itself can’t escape from it. What you’re looking at is an absence of color, a shield covering a concentration of mass smaller than a grain of sand that has simply refused to obey the rules which govern reality.
“But why?” she asked urgently.
That really is the question, isn’t it? I’ve spent the last two thousand years searching for the answer.
He seemed to pause, and she watched as his head craned up towards the sky above. Evening had come, and the first stars were just beginning to appear in the darkening sky overhead.
Did you know that the stars used to be permanently locked into their positions?
“...What?”
Oh, yes. Instead of seeing new ones every night, all of humanity would look up and see the same constellations they’d seen the previous night, more or less. As the year progressed the constellations would gradually change, but they would always eventually return with the turning of the seasons. They were so consistent that we integrated them into our myths, and over time we even learned how to use them for navigation across vast distances.
Amara didn’t respond, baffled into silence. Mattias didn’t seem terribly concerned about her reaction, continuing on as if what he was saying were not some of the strangest words she’d ever heard spoken.
In time, we managed to travel to all of the stars in our night sky, even turned some of them into new homes for us. There were moons on some of our planets, did you know that? Picture this, if you can: massive spheres composed of rock and dust, sailing through the sky high above us, brightening the night like glimmering, colorful beacons. Some planets even had multiple moons! No human who was born after the Cataclysm has ever seen a moon, but I remember.
At this, she shook her head. “No. I’m not stupid enough to believe any of this. You’re trying to trick me again. How can any of that be possible?”
Amara, you can control fire, and you’re riding a giant shapeshifting bird who is talking to you by transmitting his thoughts directly into your mind.
“...Okay, I see your point.”
This world is defined by its contradictions. In fact, look directly above us. Do you see the constellation that looks a bit like a ring with a protruding gemstone? The one with seven points?
She leaned back to look, searching the emerging stars for what he’d been talking about. At length she found it, seven dimly glowing points of light arranged like a wedding band, just like he’d said.
“I see it.”
That’s you. It’s a constellation which first appeared on the night you were born. The shape of the band and the luminosity of the stars varies, but it’s always seven stars, and always roughly in that shape. It doesn't appear every night, of course. If one could figure out why it appears when it does you'd probably be well on your way to unlocking the secrets of this world.
“...That’s really supposed to be me?”
Yes.
“I mean…are you sure? How can you possibly know that?”
I’m as sure as one can be. I’ve been a student of the night sky since the very first night after the Cataclysm. There’s no other way to gain insight into the Pattern’s real intentions.
She shook her head with disbelief, and a disturbing thought occurred to her. It felt very much like he was trying to overwhelm her with information again.
But to what end? she asked herself.
“Why would I be in the stars?”
Well, you’re not the only one with a dedicated sign. I’ve spotted symbols which represent Shabboleth and the other Seraphim. I’ve also found one for myself—I’m usually represented as a bird of varying size and shape.
She looked down again, at the black, spherical mass hovering on the beach below. “What’s the point, though? Is it trying to talk with us?”
It’s difficult to say, but I’ve never had the sense that it’s actively attempting communication through the stars. For a time I was afraid that it meant we were all merely a dream of the singularity.
After taking a moment to consider it, Amara found herself rejecting that idea.
“No. That can’t be it.”
I did say for a time. However, there are a few things that make it impossible to rule out completely. For example, do you think if I tried to fly towards any one of those stars that we would ever arrive there, even if I flew for a million years?
“...No?”
No. There’s an invisible ceiling above us, one which can’t be surpassed. Believe me when I say I’ve tried. We’re close to it now, in fact.
A frown crossed Amara's face, and she searched the sky again. “...I don’t see anything.”
I said it's invisible. It’s a limitation imposed on us by the Pattern. Try as hard as we might, we’ll never surpass it. The stars are permanently out of reach for us.
He'd been gliding ahead while they were talking, but now his wings began to flap once more. She felt him start to angle himself up towards the sky.
See for yourself. Hold tight.
"Wait—"
At some point she'd stopped holding on to him, distracted by all the sights and the strange conversation. She reached out to grab on to his feathers just in time to prevent herself from immediately sliding off his back, but didn't manage to get a solid grip. Within moments Mattias was flying almost straight upwards, beating his wings so quickly and so powerfully that she could barely hang on. The violent motion of his flight bounced her against his body again and again, knocking some of the air out of her lungs with each collision. Her grip on his feathers began to loosen.
She was terrified, wanted to scream at him to stop but had no breath with which to do it. Her strength began to fail, and despite her desperate effort his feathers slipped between her fingers one by one. And she fell.
Amara?!
The wind whistled harshly in her ears as she descended uncontrollably towards the Maw below. Dust filled her nose as she entered the cloud which surrounded it, felt stinging pain all across her skin where she collided with the floating sand. The world began to shrink away, lensing into a thin, bright crescent above the sphere’s enlarging blackness. As she fell, she caught glimpses of another person falling somewhere nearby, and quickly realized it was herself. She recognized her black hair and her clothing, saw how the motions of her falling body directly correlated to her other self’s movement.
The buzzing in her brain became louder and louder until it drowned out all her senses. Out of the buzzing emerged something new, something so massive it entirely eclipsed her mind. An intense hunger, frustration, yearning. It wanted something she simply didn’t have. Then the crescent of light disappeared, plunging the world into perfect darkness.