Byzantium appears all around you and then starts to shrink and fade. After a moment you realize it's receding through time, factories vanishing, medieval walls rising up and disappearing, crude settlements spreading across the shore and then flickering into nonexistence…

You're going back in time. The calm voices of the controllers as they make adjustments to the machinery only add to the surreal experience.

"Dawn of time in thirty-three seconds," a controller announces. The chronometer spins, counting backward.

"Oh, good," Alexius says with false cheer, his face pale as a radiance like dawn—gold and pink—replaces the flickering world outside.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"There they are," Stralchus says as something enormous and geometric appears in the sky. The Icons are at work. Certain previously abstract philosophical notions become suddenly concrete in your thoughts. More and more of the shapes gather, paying the Specular no mind.

But one appears to notice you. Gray and misshapen, the symbol in its center like a lopsided snarl, it peers out around a curtain of other Icons. Then, like a feral dog seeing its chance at freedom, it rushes your vessel!

"Calculation error," the nearest controller calmly reports. Half a second later, the misshapen icon smashes into the Specular. The impact rips the controller to pieces and hurls you painfully to the deck. Another impact ruptures a generator and flames momentarily blind you.

"Error. Error."

You lie stunned, people scream, and the Specular tumbles through the void.

Next