Iri and Siqxhe hurried through a city in tumult, sliding so quickly through the seats, will implacable and undeniable as they walked through the seat of the world, the grand human city that was more than anyone could have ever thought of, and so much less.
Humanity didn’t know how to even face the sibilant. Humanity was so far away from even coming close to understanding… They contented themselves with the weary works of war and peace and politics while above them raged a conflict that was as old as a hundred generations and older.
Still, it was hard to deny, whenever they came to a place where you could see through the buildings or across them, to the grandeur that was three fleets. Deepest blue, verdant green, black, the red of war and pennants that hung over a thousand ships or more, the largest fleet to have ever sailed the seas of the world.
All paling in comparison the the power of even a single sibilant, the power of the sky and tears that could end humanity. So long as they were fast enough… he watched the confrontation, the end of a war he’d started- the sack of Abōeo unborn.
Siqxhe looked out over the ships of three fleets and despite the guilt, the weight of emotion that wrapped itself around him and- he knew. He knew and he didn’t care… there was something more important here. Something infinitely more important, and he knew where.
Finally, finally he knew where. After all this time, this immensity of what could and could not be, an eternity of searching- what it felt like at least, and what it was to Iri. They swept through the streets of the city, all to that one point, that fortress that was no longer a fortress but had rather become something so much more. Where the streets ran crookedly from the first day they’d been set more than a thousand years ago, an order of disorder.
The work of ancient empires, collapsed states and a Great War, insignificant compared to what was beneath them. A city that had attracted the eyes of god more than any other, and though they’d searched it so many times they’d never been able to find it. Never-
Yet it was there. It had to be there… how it could have hidden itself, he couldn’t know, but it was there.
They came to the hill on which the palace stood, on which the first of fortresses, a small fort from which the entire city of Abōeo had sprung up, stood. Siqxhe paid one glance back toward the waters, the waves which glistened and glittered, the skies fiery with morning incandescence, rosy… the very power of what he sought, and he still couldn't’ help but look back on the fleets. The very power of the Eternity Falling and he still could not help but see… deliberately Siqxhe turned his back on the port and the sea beyond, and stalked toward the palace and a place of old stone.
It wasn’t hard to gain admittance to the palace, the place where the clergy of Holy Nolabo laid out their hands on the world, ever- watching, he climbed the steps with Iri close at heel, coming closer to that place, that garden so far away but close.
Each step- an eternity, waiting as they walked in nervous silence. The other sibilant were far away. They had to be… above them they could almost hear confrontation play out among the clouds, black shapes zipping around and making themselves here or there or somewhere that could be. Beyond them were hulking things, black ships that hung within clouds- shapes that nobody below saw, or cared about.
Everyone watched the fleets as they arrived in the waters around Abōeo, watching the works of man as they came to watch them. The guards in the palace shifted uneasily, war as if they were going to have to actually defend the fortress against armies come the end of the battle. It hadn’t happened since shortly after the Great War, but given the size of the enemy fleet it might happen now.
The Nola had a fierce navy, but sheer numbers would beat them where skill would not. Still, that was not the battle. There was no battle but their battle, the only battle that had been fought for a hundred thousand years.
They were the warriors. Since… forever, a year ago and now, they were the warriors. They came at last to the central atrium in the fortress of Abōeo, the original fortress and saw- flowers, gently cared for trees and a beautiful garden. A few clergymen strode through it or looked around, paying little more than a passing glance to them. One waved at Siqxhe, striding over and saying he was glad he’d returned before leaving again.
It was an empty place, a sacred place deep within the heart of Abōeo, where only seventy or so years ago one would have been able to watch the orange fire of eyes, the power of black steel and shadows that rippled impossibly out over the horizon. Darknesses. He shivered at the memory, and the darkness to come as they walked into the center of the courtyard, the park within a palace.Here there was only moss, and a sprinkling of wild flowers. As the legend went, this was the place where the lords of Nolabo had forever been bound into the service of the church…
As Iri’s word went, this was the place where Polarity Light rested.
Iri knelt in the moss, gentle green things bending beneath the steel of a sibilant, flowers reflecting faintly off her glittering skin. White light, sunlight and blue skies, wisps of clouds above as ships darted between them.
So close.
So close… Iri let a hand, fingers with their sharpness and impossibility run so softly through the moss. “Here… I remember.” She sounded sad, almost. Afraid, almost. “I came here, and the Eternity Falling saw… they saw that I knew, even though if they had waited just a few moments they would have had it. I would have had their word…” Sadness, then. Sadness for sure. She put her head next to the ground and was for a long moment, still. “It’s there. Just as it was last time.”
“Polarity Light lies with the dead…” Siqxhe watched her as she sat, wondering- what she was doing, how long humanity would live. It was a good thing that they’d made it here first, a good thing that they’d managed to avoid Arctic for so long.
The ground began to shift.
Iri rose, the very form of her being contentment. And the shaking only grew worse. The very land beneath them seemed to tear asunder, until it did, clergymen scurrying away as the very stone beneath their feet shifted and buckled, rising into a dome before crashing down. All around them it was the same, stone breaking, things torn asunder.
Works of destruction. A fortress quivered as their courtyard inverted itself, silver teardrops rising out from under the ground under the power of great orange eyes, engines that scoured the ground and made things together. Half of them were shattered- no- It was all one thing. Fused together, ten or maybe twenty small ships wrought into a single lump of steel that could barely fly.
Iri laughed. Iri laughed and laughed and kept laughing, a powerful, tinkling noise that watched the ship settle down on a courtyard destroyed. It was beauty, it was destruction. Iri strode over, saying something in a language he couldn’t hear, kicking in a door and stepping into the darkness of hope.
A second.
Two seconds, quiet even as people began to peer back out at the courtyard.
Three seconds-
Four, and Iri stepped out of the ship, eyes triumphant as she held a golden globe of purest light and sound, the universe in her hands.
………
Polarity Arctic glanced up from where he walked through the streets of Abōeo, hearing- that tone. He froze, feeling- all feelings, regret and hope and utmost desire. Laeo beside him walked a few more steps before looking back at him, confused as humans would always be.
He couldn’t understand. This is what he lived for, lived and died- he broke out into a run, grabbing Laeo’s hand and pulling him forward. “We need to go. Now…”
Over the eyes of the world, unnoticed as two figures slipping through the tumult, the ships of the sibilant readied for battle in truth.
……….
Two fleets came together, four fleets, one more powerful than the other and above them all a conflict for the years. The weight of what had been and what ended here, beneath the tone and the glimmers of light.
Two fleets came together, below the confrontation of sibilant as they twirled, lances of light only warning shots, power itself slamming into the water unnoticeably but also so powerfully. Two fleets came together, two fleets made of three peoples, enemies and enemies made through friendship. The whole world torn asunder, half through the work of the sibilant above, half through the work of humanity below.
Cannonfire, the roar of light, a faint tone that only so few people could hear- and two fleets came together.
………
Tsqalmōubo stood solidly on the side, watching solemnly at the enemy as they fired. Great drifting seas of smoke, white fire remnants and the crash as cannons shuddered, ships shuddered and the very work of men came together. He liked to think, as the cannons beneath him roared and the walls of Abōeo sent their fire in turn, that it would be a close confrontation.
It wouldn’t obviously- they’d destroy them, destroy the batteries through the sheer strength of their numbers and storm the city of Abōeo for the first time in so long. The only thing he contented himself with was that he wouldn’t be alive long enough to see it happen-
Cannons, shuddering, white tongues of flames licking out and the death of so many things. What could be… the thought of a future for Abōeo, his children, the children of the world- running, hoping and looking and staring so solidly out at a fleet like the waves, descending so inexorably toward a castle of sand.
He watched, and cannons boomed.
………
Iri held in her hand, for one- moment, second, breadth of all time and eternity- atop that hill, atop that city of humanity that had hid that target for so long. It made sense. Everything made sense atop that final monument, in that shattered courtyard.
Between one moment and the next, she felt all of everything. Power- the tone, the beautiful, beautiful tone…
………
Light, sun powered and with all the force of a hundred thousand fires, the power of that orb blasted out at Siqxhe as he shielded his eyes against it. It was something incredible, magnificent beyond all other possibilities.
He’d never thought he’d see something he’d be able to call objectively beautiful but there was a way that that orb called out to him, made him desire, a twisting deep within the roots of his form and a possibility that pulled at his very being. The possibilities, endless, woven to bring him here-
He felt the power of power itself, the light of Polarity Light, and basked in its warmth. For a long moment Iri just stood still, in complete and total bliss, arms holding onto what appeared to be the slick glass surface of something that could not have been made of glass. “It was shielded. The escape vehicle’s very construction kept it hidden from outside eyes.”
“Beautifully done. So beautifully done.” The voice was deeper, sonorous and all too obviously sibilant. The sound of stone skittering, the sound of vows broken and conflict that was older than all other across the surface of the world… the sound of Arctic as he stepped into the courtyard, one hand bloody, the other dragging Laeo behind him. “You… you actually found it. That tone- I remember it so well.”
“You will not have it, Arctic. I won’t let you.” Iri’s voice was solid, as steady as the air as it whipped around them, as the stone as it shattered, the darkness behind the stars. “A hundred thousand years I have searched for Polarity Light, always a step ahead of you and you will not have it now.”
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
A step, forward, toward conflict. True conflict. “I will have Polarity Light!” His voice sounded strained as he dropped Laeo’s and fell into a fighting position. “I will have it no matter what you say. I am more powerful than you, more powerful by far.”
Iri let Polarity Light slide carefully into Siqxhe’s hands, golden hot fire, touching his skin, cool glass, warmth. As he felt the very essence of power and universes, time and how it bent to this little point in space and space tied itself in knots. As he felt, he felt he felt he felt-
And-
He.
Felt.
In a second they were together locked, deadly struggle, a million myriad movements all working toward a single goal, beauty in combat. He saw the sibilant dance, a deathly dance as they tried to destroy one another. He saw metal glitter, saw- facets, in the light so brightly.
He saw…
He didn’t see, light, the power of the universe. In that moment he was all of existence, fire beneath his skin and his eyes, he was power. Planets melted beneath his gaze and stars ignited and extinguished and the very universe marched to coldness and then flowered, as he held, in his hand, the very power of the cosmos and impossibility. Infinite power, energy without bounds no matter what.
Endless. He held the sea, more than the sea more than the stars more than every star in all of all things, he held power.
He held possibility.
Then he was facing Laeo, the two once companions, once enemies staring at each other and not quite remembering what they were. “I won’t… I won’t…” His voice was giddy, a smile that he couldn’t wipe out of his face. In his hands Polarity Light was useless, but he could feel the power. He could feel the tone, a pure sound that echoed beneath his skin and in his bones and was him. A truer version of him.
“I don’t want to take it. I don’t want to kill you.” Still Laeo fell into a fighting stance, knife held out in front of him with the clear intent to kill. Power. He had power of a different sort- power over a single man, a single moment but through that power he held power over the true essence of strength itself.
He held power over infinity. Siqxhe took a step back, afraid. “Don’t… you don’t know what would happen if the Eternity Falling would leave. Do you think that we wouldn’t destroy ourselves, that we’re somehow better than the sibilant?” If anything the sibilant were infinitely better than they could ever be. “Humanity needs a guardian and a caretaker and a ruler. To protect it.”
“Humanity needs to be whole.” Laeo breathed in a half breath, and another step forward- “Arctic… Arctic says that there was more to the universe once, than a single planet. We could be one of something so much better.” It a moment he was next to Siqxhe, foot behind his leg and a knife to his throat, tears on his face. “Give it! Give it to me! Give it to me and I won’t have to kill you…”
Siqxhe was… calm. He looked at Laeo’s eyes, eyes that were death, and smiled. “Arctic just wants to go home. Arctic just wants to go home and Iri just wants to be happy.” Laeo stumbled back as if struck, hand- falling, knife falling to sundered stone with a clatter. Horror, and joy, and the incredulity of someone who’d heard something so obvious…
A crash, and twenty feet away from them a battle neared its end. Polarity Arctic lay on the ground in front of Polarity Iridescence, sister and brother brought to blows. Arctic knelt, head down, eyes blazing with fury that shivered through his body so incandescently wrathful. Iri stood over him, so faintly exhausted but still so imperiously beautiful. She looked… strong. Not like he’d ever seen her before. “You could never win against me in a fair fight, Arctic. Give in. Give in and I won’t destroy you.”
“I don’t care if I’m destroyed.” A desperate cast fell onto the sibilant’s shivering. “I don’t care about anything, anything except for Polarity-”
“You want to go home. You want to go to Crown, and see friends, and remember old times. You have to accept that we need the Eternity Falling here. Just a little longer. A few thousand more years.” Iri reached out with a hand but Arctic stood on his own, unsteady… eyes, gleaming, focused on only one thing. One orb of incandescent light.
“I have… I…” Arctic shook his head, and the world seemed to freeze in that glare. “Polarity Light will survive me. It… you committed everything, Iri. You could never hold back, but I did and it will happen as I will. The world will burn, but Polarity Light will be mine.” He laughed, a sad laugh. “All things eventually die, but Polarity Light survives for eternity.” He laughed, and the sky bled fire.
………
Tsqalmōubo first heard the cannons falter. That was his first clue that the world was ending… he gazed up with an almost wondrous gaze at the sky. A million, a hundred million little specks of light across the sky, falling from the heavens. The stars descended on the earth and the very earth would burn.
A prophesied end. He remembered this… he didn’t even pay any attention to commanding his ship, letting it drift out of line as the sky bled fire and the world became light. Incandescent brightness, a million sparks becoming one single bonfire. All together.
The world ended, and he just closed his eyes.
………
In a moment-
A ship across the horizon, a ship across eternity. In that moment it could sense, what it couldn’t sense before but now knew. They fought-
Anger.
Anger and only the faintest memories of what had destroyed, and could again-
………
In a moment-
It was still.
Once, there were blue skies over Abōeo, clouds that gleamed- tears against the descending brightness. In a moment, the whole world shuddered, the very of fabric of space tearing itself asunder against the power of something that was so much greater than itself.
Ships made to cross the void. Ships made to spread the reach of empire through the very expanses of the universe, and above Abōeo there was darkness.
Darkness and the orange-brightness of a hundred thousand engines, a sweeping expanse of ship that placed itself between the wrath of the sibilant and the skin of the world. Between humanity and itself, a God, and the sky exploded in brilliant light, beautiful iridescence as an attack that could humble worlds broke off the back of something greater.
God hovered over Abōeo, and the war was silent. Everyone was silent…
………
Tsqalmōubo stared up at God, eternity… tears ran down his face. Cannons were silent… sails shifted, people whispered, but he cried. He wouldn’t end. The world would not end.
………
Siqxhe found himself elsewhere. One second before he’d been standing on shattered stone, clutching Polarity Light to his chest and thinking- certain of death, and now he was… here. Wherever here was.
It was somewhere impossible. A single flat plane, glassy blue-black off to eternity, a black sky in every direction. He glanced down in sudden fear but he still saw it, that orb of bright-light, incandescent brilliance. Only that impossibility’s light cut through the darkness, black skies and impossible glass-
He stepped forward, and it was different.
Siqxhe stood on a cliff, a spire of clear glass over a sunrise pink sea of eternity, skies that went on forever. He clutched onto Polarity Light, watching-
“Human.” He whirled, and standing against the sunlight was a vague silhouette of darkness. Something implacable. Impossible. “You have it. After so long, you have it.”
“What are you? What’s- what’s happening.” He clutched onto Polarity Light as if it were his only lifeline in a sea of storms, an impossible realm that was and couldn’t… “What’s happening? What are you doing?”
“Humans are machines. Just like the sibilant. All sibilant bow against power. Humanity is little better.” The figure stepped toward him, and then he was in a different place, a forest of glass spires and implacable lights that seemed to emanate from nothing at all. “Give me Polarity Light.”
“Not until… not until you promise to save them. Not until you promise to help them.”
“Staying is pointless.” Step, and the world shifted, all remade in the very image of that figure of shadows, blue inversion and an impossibility. The world changed. Forests and plains and mountains and deserts and things that were none of those and all of them, seas of light and endless ranges of cloth and crumbling glass, all smooth and brought to that mirror-finish. “Remember your ancestors.” And he remembered, the weight of all memory, what felt like the end of eternity and the very measure of his bones written away into nothingness and ground into a pale imitation of humanity.
He remembered-
Walking, beneath shadows…
Seeing.
Immense windows, stars-
Blazing light, forests, the cold of metal-
Small rooms.
Immensities, orange brightness, and all of it paled in comparison to Polarity Light. No matter the impossibilities, no matter what, he couldn’t do anything but cling onto that orb of brightness that was so much infinitely more than anything… The Eternity Falling laid a hand on his shoulder, cold and hot and blisteringly frigid, and for the breadth of a moment he felt what it was to be like that ship!
Cold. Immense, hovering over the world, waiting so lonely, watching and not quite interfering, cold. Cold without the tone… he shivered as the worlds flickered between a thousand myriad variations, each completely unique. “You must… you must!” Siqxhe stood a bit straighter, a simple movement and faced God themselves in the heart of that darkness. Silhouettes onto nothing flashed, eyes bright, and he glared. “You must protect them!” A conflict a hundred thousand years old and he would not let it end as if it’d never happened. They must…
Step. Forward, a momentary- blurring, powerful wheeling as if the whole of the universe swung around him and embraced him with infinite sweetness, incredible depth, a shallow lake breaking into a billion pieces that were each of themselves seas as far as the eyes can see. Raging seas, and he was embraced by the very essence of God.
Everything was blackness, and when god whispered it was a whisper and a shout and a breath and the roar of cannons. “A COMPROMISE. COMPACT FAIRLY GIVEN.” How could he have ever doubted that- not human. Not like the sibilant were human. Something more, true essence of humanity and something that transcended flesh.
“What… please. I won’t give it to you. I won’t.” And he realized, connected to the Eternity Falling as he was, that they couldn’t take it. An ancient failsafe, the remnants of a bygone era. Anything else was completely within their power. To destroy planets, make worlds, bring life itself to a lifeless rock- everything- wasn’t. This wasn’t… it wasn't an ancient failsafe, but even he wept at the power brought against him. “Humanity needs… guidance. Broken-” They were broken bodies, and they needed to be mended. The cannons of war must be silenced. Humans would break themselves and then be made new in the knowledge of the sibilant. “Please. Please… I won’t give it to you, unless you say.”
“A COMPROMISE.” Voice like thunder, star-fire and the empty void of space. Empty blackness, the whole of his vision a sea of eternity. “COMPACT FAIRLY GIVEN. THOSE WHO WISH WILL STAY. THOSE WHO WISH WILL GO.” He clung onto Polarity Light, a single mote of brilliance in a maelstrom, something beyond a maelstrom, a storm that stretched across the cosmos. He…
It made sense.
Iri… He thought of the terms. Iri would be happy. Iri would be happy, and Arctic would be home. “I… I agree.” And Polarity Light shone like the sun, the darkness, rushing, torrential winds blowing and the whole of world universe space and time life experience death touch and love crashed down on him.
“A compromise.” He stood on the first field of blueish black, with its sky of infinite darkness. Against the fury of their previous speech, this seemed almost soft… sadness, the weight of a hundred thousand years all absolved in a moment, darkness radiant… the shadow held Polarity Light, and was happy. “Compact fairly given.”
Siqxhe tumbled to the ground, watching with confusion as incandescent light exploded off of Polarity Light and faded in a few instants. That had been days… no. No time at all. He looked down at his hands, but he knew before he saw them that Polarity Light was no longer there. Nothing had come to take it from him, but as surely as the Eternity Falling flew over Abōeo it was gone.
A compromise. “Iri! Iri…” Iri wasn’t even looking at him as he stumbled toward her, falling to knees beside them, stone shattered and the dust of eons past. “Compact… fairly given.” She glanced up at him barely, then slowly, sadly nodded. Faint happiness gleamed in her eyes for the briefest of moments as she turned back to Arctic, stroking his sobbing form with a single metal hand.
Beneath the shadow of God, a brother and a sister comforted each other against the end of conflict.
Beneath the shadow of God, engines seeming just a bit more powerful, lights a bit brighter, the whole of the Eternity Falling more alive.
Beneath the shadow of God, a metal hand stroked a cold face, a sibilant whisper reassuring- everything would be made well. The end of an eternity… and everything would work out. Soft, a whisper against sobs. Everything would be well.
Beneath the shadow of God, darkness and an end to darkness.
Beneath the shadow of God.