Time is cruel and relentless. It is in the valleys and on the mountains of the passages of time that memories are lost. Ever ending what came before; time defeats everything. Yet without time the experiences and the moments of a life are meaningless. It is because of time that our fading memories are so precious, but the present is not a memory.
The world of Ruin had called upon a lost champion and fallen further into darkness and death. Two humans, one very old and one very young had pulled themselves from the waters of the Pool Of Time. It was night and it was bitterly cold. They shivered there in their wet clothes.
"I mean what is this place? This is where you come from, but I lived in those caves. How are we here?" Svetlana asked the immortal Desmond.
"You were born in this world. I think that seeing you now as an adult means that some years have passed since the Bloomelator attacks." Desmond surmised shivering.
"I don't remember any of this." Svetlana told him. She had sat up on the white stones that formed a shore for the Pool Of Time. She looked across it at the Temple Of Humanity.
"What is that place?"
"That is the Temple Of Humanity. I am relieved it was not destroyed by the bloom-things." Desmond knew what she was looking at and didn't move from where he lay on his back.
Suddenly a quiet and raspy voice called to them from the shadowy wreckage nearby. Rubble was strewn among bodies and the blown up parts of giant robots that had sat on the ground here for a very long time. The voice was saying:
"Who is there? Who can it be?"
Alerted, the man raised his head up and looked around in the darkness and other shades of midnight. Desmond recognized her voice, although changed and tired-sounding. It was Sarah. He sat up with effort, dripping and cold. He asked, to be certain:
"Sarah, is that you?"
"I was Sarah. There is nobody left to call me that anymore." the immortal Sarah revealed herself. She had somehow aged and grown old. She looked like her body was hunched over and elderly. She moved slowly and painfully.
"We are so cold." Svetlana told Sarah. She felt chilled inside and her teeth were chattering together as she tried to speak.
"Come with me to my shelter. It is very close. I heard you talking out here and the splashing when you came out of the waters." Sarah explained.
She led her freezing guests into a warm shelter that had once housed maybe a dozen people and was assembled of large rocks, beams, random construction material and anything that could be stacked together to form the cave-like structure. It had stood for some time, but now only Sarah remained here in vigilance.
A fire was going and Sarah gave them some ragged clothing to wear instead of their wet clothes. With what privacy they could find the two newcomers put on the dry clothing and came to warm themselves near the fire.
"Everyone else has left or died. The temple is standing but your Bloomelators did something and it doesn't work properly anymore. Now the world is all fear and pain. The plants hunt and prey on the survivors. This is how things have gone for many years. People are becoming old. Time is taking its debt from us immortals and we are aging. Each ages differently. Some people actually died of old age, but most who die are killed by the plants." Sarah narrated.
After awhile, Svetlana said:
"I lived in a cave where other people were there at first. But eventually it was only me and my mother. She taught me how to use magic and how to survive. Then one day I lost her. I cannot remember how, but I am searching for her." Svetlana told her companions.
Then as the fire crackled, Desmond said:
"For me it was only a short time ago, minutes or hours. I left Ruin and found your world. We were in a comic-book in some other dimension. Two-dimensions or the imagination of a child. It is difficult to comprehend. I did not know if we could get back or if the warrior I was seeking would come with us." Desmond explained, mostly to Svetlana. Then he added: "I think you are both she who was the child Svetlana of this world and also the character from the comic-book. Somehow you are both of these and I believe it will give you conflicting memories."
"I feel confused." Svetlana replied, agreeing with this and generally not understanding what Desmond was trying to tell her.
"Our world was on the brink of peril and Desmond went into the Pool Of Time to seek out Silver Swordsman, a banished hero from our past. You lived here too, with your mother. Perhaps in the passages of time and the world of imagination and dreams, you were there as well. When you left you were both Svetlana of Ruin and Svetlana of Elsewhere. Elsewhere is the places outside of our dimension. Like a portal through time and space." Sarah sounded almost like her old-self for a moment as she repeated Desmond's theories in her own words.
After thinking about the two theories, Svetlana told them:
"Some of this I recall. I do remember a man named Ronald. He had done something similar, gotten something from out of time and space. My mother called this magic, but Ronald said it was just technology. It was the Chime Of Tezchapel. The artifact you used to wake up Silver Swordsman." Svetlana felt a memory emerge from the murky fog of amnesia. She felt like she had other memories in there as well, but they were not easy to collect thoughts from.
Desmond nodded and replied:
"This is all a mystery to me. I did notice that a back issue of the comics was mentioned. It is when Ronald gave me the artifact and told me to use it. Somehow he died." Desmond tried to help her as she sat for awhile attempting to get more information from her own mind.
"I wasn't aware I was in a story." Svetlana said quietly after a long time sitting there staring into the fire.
"In a way you were not. You were also here, in the real world, where the story came from." Sarah sounded sure of this.
"Did Ronald die here?" Desmond asked her.
"Yes. He was killed when he and some others tried to get into Cryonicle. The marauding plants were not alone in the slaughter. The whole world was still starving and people were dying. It was a hope that if we could get Cryonicle up-and-running we could produce food again and in feeding people we could organize some sort of defense." Sarah told how Ronald had died.
"You can't show me what happened?" Desmond already knew the answer.
"That is all gone. We live in primitive ways now. Caves and shelters. We eat whatever each of us can grow or forage. I have eaten whatever I had to eat to remain alive." Sarah had a sad gleam in here eyes.
"Is there no hope then?" Desmond begged.
"Cryonicle was our last hope. A very desperate hope, a last hope. It turned out to be the worst of all. It does make food and everyone who is still alive has eaten of this. It is not something good. It isn't really food." Sarah apologized.
"It is recycling...people?" Desmond figured it out and asked.
Sarah had tears running down her cheeks and nodded. She didn't want to say any more.
Desmond looked at Svetlana and saw the dawning horror on the young woman's expression. There was nothing he could do for her. This world of Ruin was her world and her inheritance. A living nightmare.
Desmond stood and went to one of the cots and lay down to get some rest. Eventually after a long time of silence the old woman did the same. This left Svetlana alone as the fire died down. She kept it going and then looked up and noticed light from outside. She went out and found that under the gray blanket across the sky the sun was rising on the horizon. It would soon vanish above the clouds.
She walked to the Pool Of Time with her ragged clothes and a blanket wrapped around herself. She could see her breath and this still amused her in a childish way. She looked out over the waters and saw only a gray smooth surface. It didn't even look like water in a strange way. It was as if she was looking at something else entirely. 'Not water at all, but the absence of everything else that isn't water'. This is what she knew about it.
Yet in that serene moment and in that precise light she saw something there beneath the surface. It was suspended there where she and Desmond had clambered out onto the rocks. Whatever property or force of this large pond had released them had left something else there as well. She removed her socks and wrapped blanket and waded calf-deep to retrieve it. She lifted it from the water gleaming so brightly she could not see what she was holding. It was as though it were made of light, as if her hands held nothing but an illusion. It was like a bubble of nothing shining in her hand. A dream that if she stared at it too closely might wink out of existence. She got back to the shore and took back of her blanket and hid it to her breast, feeling it become a solid object as she carried it away in one hand under the blanket, her other hand retrieving her discarded socks.
Back in the shelter she sat on her cot and placed the object on her lap while she covered her feet to the chill air.
It was like a plastic doll or an action figure. Some kind of effigy of Silver Swordsman. The longer she stared at it the more detail it had. But it was made of synthetic lightweight material like a toy. It was not Silver Swordsman at all. And yet in some strange way it was.
"What is that?" Desmond had awoke and walked over to see what she was doing. She had not noticed this until she heard him speak.
"I think it is Silver Swordsman." Svetlana explained. As she said the words she began to believe what she was saying. She had heard herself say what she was contemplating and somehow, expressing her idea out loud had made it even more real.
"How can that be Unit Three Sixteen? It was a giant robot, an empathical Machinekind. The last of its species. How can something so pathetic be our champion?" Desmond felt his own thoughts slipping out of a crack in his mind in the air as he spoke them. His doubts only made Svetlana want to believe even more and she argued:
"It is Silver Swordsman. It is." she insisted. With a disgruntled scoffing noise, Desmond walked away. He could not put faith in some child's plaything. Humankind stood on extinction's threshold and knew what was in abode.
"Where did you find it?" Sarah had replaced Desmond by Svetlana's side. She sound impartial.
"In the Pool Of Time. That is how I can be certain." Svetlana held up the doll and showed it to her.
Before her very eyes, as she blinked, the object seemed to change and take on even more detail. It felt heavier and its glow was gone. As its third observer stared at it the masked face of the model of an empathical seemed to absorb her impression of it. Like it had a mind of its own, a will of its own, existed because it wanted to exist, needed to. Indeed there was a terrifyingly simple presence to it, as if it were imbued with otherworldly properties.
"If Ronald were here, he would say to throw it back into the water." Desmond urged the two women to reconsider their feelings about Silver Swordsman.
"But you do not endorse that. You know better, Desmond. Why don't you accept that this is Silver Swordsman? Don't you want to rely on faith anymore? How could you have changed your heart so quickly? For you it was only hours ago that we last saw each other. You were the most faithful and brave man I had ever seen as you went to find our champion." Sarah chastised him. The way she spoke to him, it was obvious she had loved him in his absence all-of-these-years.
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Desmond felt ashamed. He had felt himself aging quickly ever since he had come home and now he felt ashamed to be spoken to in such a way. Her words cut deep and after awhile he sighed.
"Because now I am afraid. Seeing this, I don't understand. I am scared." Desmond admitted.
Both women were staring at him. He was crying, sincerely terrified. He no longer had faith enough to stumble blindly forward. This is where he had tripped and fallen. Now he didn''t know to get up and keep trying. What was left to do?
"We should take this to Cryonicle. See what happens." Svetlana had an idea.
Sarah nodded.
Desmond sniffed and wiped his own tears and said: "I will go with you. You might be killed there. I must be there in case I can make a difference."
"Then come with me. I don't know how to get there anyway."
Sarah offered: "I have a vehicle."
"A carpet?" Desmond nearly chuckled as she shook her head. "A sedan or a sled?"
"Nothing like that. It is something someone put together. A combustion engine that runs on fuel we distilled. An automobile. It has steel traction wheels and a spring mounted carriage."
"I can drive that. We had those. I remember driving." Svetlana sounded confident.
They prepared for their journey and it turned out she was a competent driver of the primitive ground vehicle.
"Next we shall have to built wooden carts and have animals pull them." Desmond mumbled as he climbed into his seat.
"How the mighty have wept." Sarah quoted the poet Arvil. This might have gone unresponded-to, but Svetlana knew one poem, one song and it was Argosy by Arvil. She stopped the brakes and looked at where the old woman stood and said the whole poem, almost singing it:
"See now this plain of spoil,
Where cowed all Mans' toil,
To sit bemused without,
Thoughts belabored in drought,
So forth she clings to East,
Or North she turns to least,
But never strays her heart,
Not fallen since the start,
And plants her seed of truth,
The sun rises as proof,
Sacred words she has kept,
How the mighty have wept."
Svetlana somehow knew Argosy in its entirety. In that light and as she spoke it all became clear to Sarah. Arvil was Svetlana's biological father. The same man who had led the Cyclists to their doom. Now she was trying to reverse the damage and save the world. Sarah recognized the girl's features and knew why she would know this poem. The girl's mother must have been a Cyclist. She had stayed behind to raise their daughter and kept her relationship with Arvil a secret. Sarah was an ancient creature and discovering secrets so easily was her talent.
Before the old woman could decide what to say to the girl she was suddenly face down and getting dragged away. She tried to scream but the wind was knocked out of her and she could barely breath.
Desmond and Svetlana were soon chasing after her with carbines in their hands from the vehicle. They ran around the corner and beheld in the mists a towering and surreptitious predatory plant. It was smaller than the Bloomelators, a bloom-thing budded from the originals. Sarah finally screamed.
It had her by her ankles and held her aloft, dangling her as it aimed her towards one of its hideous and toothy maws. Inside was a throat leading down inside it where she would be digested in powerful enzymes alive. She would drown in the corrosive juices in a painful and horrible death.
With Sarah screaming and the popping gunshots of the carbines the plant continued to lower her into itself. It thrived especially on pain and fear. These were the nutrients the evil entity wanted. Devouring human flesh was an end to get to the cruel horror it fed upon. Its elators snaked out to try to get the other two but they evaded it while it was focused on its captive prey.
Seeing no other choice and retreating helplessly, Desmond shot his friend twice. She was dead before she splashed into the dissolving fluids inside the monster's stomach. This was like angering the plant, if anger is what it was feeling. It was certainly deprived of the nutrition of its meal. It came bearing after them. As it crashed around the corner of the shelter they were already in the vehicle and driving away.
Svetlana was swearing and shouting in rage, fear and grief all mixed chaotically. Panic was setting in as the bloom-thing began to catch up. It was closing the distance and she was travelling at the top speed of the offroad vehicle. Up ahead she recognized the long flat ground of an antiquated highway. She swerved onto this and threw up clods of dirt and a cloud of dust.
The relentless creature turned also, barely slowing to do so.
For a moment Desmond was somehow still hearing the enchanted way this young woman was speaking just moments ago, now tearing the air apart with blasphemies. Then he realized he had killed Sarah. Then he realized they too were about to die.
He took up one of the large glass jars of fuel and removed the lid. He stuffed a sweater into the wide opening and tilted it so that it became soaked in fuel. Then with an ever-spark from the survival kit he lit it on fire. He stood in the open top of the vehicle holding on as they accelerated on the flat ground. He lobbed the crude firebomb at their pursuer.
The flames covered the road for a few seconds before one elator of the plant actually stumbled to avoid the burning obstacle. It barely slowed it down. Desmond fired a few more shots from his reloaded carbine before he realized they were out of ammunition already. He looked for Svetlana's gun except she had dropped hers as they fled for the car.
Then one of the steel tires screeched loudly as something happened to it at those speeds. The vehicle had thrown off one of its wheels and it spun away violently. Then they were rolling and Desmond knew he was flying through the air, catapulted free of the car.
He had lost consciousness as he hit the ground and was sent toppling and somersaulting into a pile of old rusted debris. He looked up and saw the bloom-thing was lifting Svetlana to eat her next. It kept shaking her, trying to wake her up. She moaned slightly as blood dripped from her face. It was holding her upside down be her ankle and with blurry vision she saw the ground beneath her.
After a moment she realized where she was and what had happened and what was about to happen. She didn't scream or struggle. Desmond watched, staring in horrified fascination. There was nothing he could do. He tried to move and his body wouldn't respond. Nor could he make a sound. He felt no pain and wasn't even sure if he was still alive or not.
He could only observe.
Svetlana reached into the fold of her tunic to the inside belt and brought the toy-doll out from there. She held it up, letting it see the enemy.
At first nothing happened. Desmond wanted it to suddenly become Silver Swordsman and battle the plant. If that was even possible. He wasn't sure if a toy-doll could do that.
But the bloom-thing did react to it. It hesitated from its feeding and lowered her to the ground. Once she was laying there beneath it, the bloom-thing left. It galloped away as if it was afraid. Svetlana watched this happen and looked again at the toy-doll. The effigy of the Silver Swordsman. She got up and felt herself all over for injuries. Only her head was injured, a small cut on her forehead that was bleeding profusely. She went to the wreck and got out a first aid kit and wrapped a bandage around her head.
She stood there unsteadily for a moment and then she started looking for Desmond. She expected to find him dead. Instead he was laying there in a crumpled heap, not quite dead.
"Can you, uh feel anything?" she asked him.
Desmond just blinked twice. He couldn't speak either. He was only conscious for a few more minutes before he faded out.
Svetlana was all alone after that. She found a shovel and dug a grave for him by the side of the road. By nightfall he had no pulse. She was worried he might still be alive and waited until morning to bury him. By then there were some bugs crawling on him, no pulse, no breath and his body was getting cold. She was sure he was dead and buried Desmond there. She spoke Argosy over his grave and then she took the backpack she had prepared and set out on foot.
As she carried the effigy of Silver Swordsman she could not stop thinking about the effect it had on the monster that had tried to eat her. She had believed it would protect her and it had. Somehow her faith had acted as a shield. She wondered if it could also be a weapon.
Can faith become a weapon?
She hoped so because she had no other weapons or ways to defend herself. She was walking across barren and open country, unsure where she was going and with few supplies and water. Worry could be her way, but she was not worried.
She knew she would find Cryonicle and defeat it and set the world on a better path. Somehow.
She believed this at first. Every step she took her doubts grew. As her thirst became a problem she stopped where she thought there would be water. The bridge was extremely ancient and no water had gone under it for a very long time. The bodies of dozens who had fled to here now lay scattered all around. They were reduced mostly to skeletons now and their ribcages held the growing plants that looked like horsetails. She spotted some amber crumbled to powder and knew the bloom-things had killed here with their waste. The stuff gave off toxic clouds as it decomposed and these people had fled to this low place and suffocated on it. Probably retreating from a plant on the road above.
She took what she could of their supplies and apologized to the dead for stealing from them.
As she continued she had water and kits and a carbine still in its plastic container. She got the gun out, checked its action and loaded it. Ready-for-use, she determined. She set out on her journey.
Every night when she camped she was so tired she just fell asleep, wrapped in a blanket. After awhile she lost track of how many nights she had slept in this world. Loneliness was not a new thing for her, but being scared of the horizon was. The stress of watching always for an inescapable foe had taken a toll from her. Even though she had escaped once she did not know if she could do it again. She wasn't even sure of the first time. Her memory after the accident was no longer clear. She knew she had buried Desmond yet wasn't sure how she had gotten away.
She stopped and looked around. Every direction she turned was flat and gray wasteland. She took out the effigy of Silver Swordsman and examined it. Then she spoke to it and said:
"Are we going to Cryonicle, you and I? Are you going to become a shining knight and besiege the castle of evil? What is this journey?"
Svetlana realized she was only asking it questions and tried a different approach:
"You and I will find Cryonicle together. You are my shining hero and we will bring down the fortress of oppression."
That night she dreamed of Desmond. He was standing there on the road and wanted to talk so she went to him. When she awoke she remembered that part of the dream and could not recall what was said or discussed. She walked to the road like in her dream and tried to remember. Nothing.
Later that day there was a blue tower on the horizon. White and blue and shades of azure it stood as many towers. Between these were massive domes. As she got closer and closer the size and details became more and more abundant. The domes were surrounded by huge spheres. Pipes of all sizes and directions ran all across it like a bramble. Only a simple chainlink fence with barbed wire across its top slowed her progress.
There was debris all around it and she found a board. This she used to dig under the fence and by nightfall she was crawling under it. Once on the other side she became the subject of lazy searchlights that she easily avoided.
She could hear Desmond lecturing her about it:
"It will know you are coming. It is a robot and an insane one. It used to recycle food for us and now it has begun to recycle humans. It is insane though it has native intelligence. It was a brilliant facility once. I don't know how it gets its victims. It probably has all sorts of defenses and it must have retrofitted those to patrol, to raid, to take people. Somehow it gets the dead and evidently some of the living. Be careful."
But the man wasn't there. She just knew his words, knew what he wanted her to know. This she nodded to and kept going forward towards it. She could hear it grinding and pumping. The ground was vibrating from the force of so much heavy machinery. The facility was processing raw corpses into synthetic protein bars. Enough to feed all who were still alive. It also had some means to distribute all the food it was making.
She reached a set of doors that looked regularly used. A robot sentry was there, a sort of mechanical worker with armor and a carbine of its own. It lacked the ability to think about her and seemed instead to be under control from Cryonicle. Cryonicle spoke through it and said so, saying:
"I am Cryonicle. Welcome. If you are here to donate just wait and an attendant will be with you shortly. Otherwise please remain detained until an attendant can process you. You may not leave. Thank you for your cooperation."
"Wait a moment. I have some questions." Svetlana demanded.
She had come too far to be treated like she didn't matter. As though she could be spoken to like anyone else this thing had gotten to. It was wrong about her. She was here to challenge Cryonicle. She felt fear wash over her and let the sensation pass. Her faith warmed her back up and she felt the weight of the effigy of Silver Swordsman at her side.
The mechanized guard repeated itself.
Svetlana was tempted to shoot it. She doubted her carbine would do any damage unless she shot at vital places. She wasn't sure where those places might be and it would shoot back with a butcher's knowledge of her anatomy. It wasn't a fair fight to begin with. That and she was surrounded by all the defenses she had walked past. Now she knew why it let her in so easily. It expected her to just stand there helplessly.
The doors began to open and two more guards came outside with another mechanical monster. This one was equipped to process her. It had meat hooks and a fixed-bolt gun and other menacing tools on its multiple limbs as it hovered limply towards her.
On instinct she raised her gun to it, holding her fire. She couldn't win. It was gonna get her and chop her up. She had come all this way to become a batch of candy-bars.
Svetlana fell to her knees and dropped the weapon. She brought out the effigy of Silver Swordsman that had saved her before and the fiends of Machinekind halted as they saw it. Like the plant they were afraid of it for some reason. She really believed that they were.
She stood, holding it against them and driving them back into their fortress, step after step. Soon she was inside and the cold industrial guts seemed to pull away from her as she went. She was praying out-loud the chant she knew to make monsters sleep as she held it. She wasn't sure when she had started to speak or why.
She was walking all around inside Cryonicle. Everywhere she went things were going wrong. Pumps stopped working and lights flickered off and the gears of machinery were grinding to a halt. Then after some time of this negative impact she had caused enough of a disruption that somewhere a surge or an overload had started a chain reaction. Emergency lighting came on and an alarm started to blare. She noted that the facility still had such systems despite being fully automated. Probably some part of its make-up it couldn't or hadn't discarded.
She followed the arrows meant to evacuate personnel and found herself outside and angled to escape the compound. She just kept walking, ignored by the external defenses.
After awhile she turned around and beheld that smoke was escaping from several places all over the city-sized Cryonicle. She could not hear the alarms at the distance she was at but soon saw a bright flash on the far side. This was followed by a wind and thunderous boom a moment later. Then a mushroom cloud spiraled up from the point of collapse.
She knew then that Cryonicle was dead.
Svetlana looked at the toy-doll in her hands and said to it with a smile of familiarity:
"Silver Swordsman...we won..."