CHAPTER 11

We emerged from from the dark into the harsh glare of a midday sun. I raised my hand, shading my eyes, and realized I was surprised to see it, to feel it. After all, given everything that’d happened, anyone could’ve been forgiven for thinking that ‘outside’ would have been an alien world.

We stood at the base of a sheer cliff face, having had to squeeze through a tight fissure. Once my eyes had adjusted, I glanced around. We were within a pit that had to be hundreds of meters across. Crushed stone lay in mounds meters tall with larger chucks of rock poking through like dragon’s teeth. Above the edge of the pit, I could make out the telltale triangular tips of firs swaying in the breeze.

So, if we were on an alien planet, then it looked remarkably like the evergreen forests of the western United States.

“Well,” Emma said. “I guess we’re not in space.”

“You really thought so?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I mean, given everything that’s happened...”

“Okay, fair.”

Kree had shifted back into her human form, clothes and all, when I wasn’t looking. Max walked a few meters out into the pit and paused, turning a circle with one hand held at his chin. Somehow, he made the pose look genuine as opposed to trite.

“Wait, hang on,” he said. “I know this place. This is the old Eagle Summit quarry. It’s been abandoned for years.”

“You know where we are?” I asked.

Max nodded. “East of Stonestead. Maybe an hour’s drive away.”

“No way,” Emma replied. “I heard this place was haunted.”

“More or less haunted than that cave?”

“Dude, don’t,” she remarked. “Like, don’t even. My dad and brother say the guys who used to work here have all these stories. All the greatest hits: floating rocks, glowing orbs, electrical items shorting out, weird sounds, Bigfoot..”

“Really?” I asked. “Bigfoot?”

Emma nodded at me, and I had no idea if she was kidding me. I had no idea what anything was right now, I supposed.

“Side effects,” Kree said, hands in her hoodie pockets. “We couldn’t have them digging around up here.”

“But this quarry has been here for, like, a hundred years,” Emma said.

“My father is a Knight-Marshal. The ability to wield Chronos is well within his capabilities.”

The casual implication of time travel sent my head for a spin. Neither of them seemed older than a hundred years, but if their home was underground...

“So, we shouldn’t get on his bad side, is what I’m hearing,” I said.

Kree nodded. “You should not. Now, come. He is waiting for us.”

Kree marched off, in what I was beginning to understand was her default mode—say something, get it done, try to keep up. The three of us fell in behind her and, I realized, we were all the same now.

The Pax had made us equal. The three of us were just ones and zeroes across the board. Emma, Caleb, and Max—gamer, outsider, and monarch. Already, I could see the appeal of the Pax. A level playing field, where power and status went to those who upheld stability and prosperity—not just for themselves, but for the whole of society.

But a part of me insisted that it was too good to be true. What did stability mean on a galactic scale? How did you measure prosperity on such a vast timeline? Was what was good for the goose really good for the gander?

Or the galaxy?

The quarry must have been abandoned in a hurry. There were still excavators and other machines sitting there, waiting for workers who never showed up. We stepped around an outcropping and there, before us, a section of the quarry had been flooded and turned into an artificial lake, the water an odd shade of turquoise.

Maarek stood at the edge of the lake, hands clasped behind his back, perhaps deep in thought. He turned to face us as we approached and he, like Kree, was back in his human disguise. Still, intensity radiated off him. It wasn’t just his wide eyes, his heavy eyebrows, or grizzled appearance—but the long scar that ran down the left side of his face. Like Kree’s visage, the only word I could think of was distinctively odd. Even with the utilitarian flannel, boots and jeans, I would’ve put money on him being an alien in disguise.

Kree bowed to him.

“Initiate,” Maarek said, nodding to her—and then, after moment’s pause, turned his grim gaze toward us. Another moment pass, and he frowned.

“Novitiates, I will excuse your breach of protocol just this once. But in the future, you are to bow upon seeking my audience.” His jaw clenched, relaxed. “Well. I trust Initiate Taal has acclimatized you with your new frame of reference?”

It was a hell of a way to sum up being given irrevocable proof of alien life and a vast civilization on the other side of the galaxy. What had Kree called it—ontological shock? I think I was still lingering in the aftershock. But I nodded and said, “Sure.”

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“Then, it is time to finalize your induction. Usually, there would be more pomp and circumstance, but time is of the essence. Initiate Taal, assume your mantle.”

Kree nodded and that black essence emerged from around and within her, just like it had in the diner, and then the resplendent glowing planes of armor. A spear erupted to life in her hands, and she spun it in a slow arc, a golden plume drifting in the wake of her blade. Then, with a sharp motion, she thrust it into the earth.

“The symbiote has made a connection with your psyche,” Maarek said. “Now, it is time for you to call upon it. The first Semblance of Arche grants you the basic privileges of that symbiosis, an ability to wield the symbiote’s energies and for it to protect you. This mantle is what marks you as a member of the Order of the Singularity Incarnate.”

Kree stood so still that she might as well have been a statue of some victorious warrior. It felt unreal, but a part of me was eager. Perhaps too eager. But how often are cosmic powers thrust into your hands?

“Okay,” I said. “So, how do we begin?”

“Guys,” Max said. “Are we sure about this?”

“You’re not?”

Max shook his head. “Well, no. Not really. I think we should go home and think about this. Maybe talk about it between us. I don’t like the idea of getting driven along and going further with... whatever this is.”

“That is not possible,” Maarek said.

“Excuse me? What the hell do you mean it’s ‘not possible?’”

“We cannot let you leave,” Maarek said, and it was clear that the we included Kree. “To unleash three symbiotes upon this planet—untrained, unmastered, unknowing—would be a gross mistake. One that we would have to correct.”

Which meant, I figured, the type of correction that involved a permanent end.

Max threw his arms out wide. “See what I mean?”

“Come on, Max,” Emma murmured. “It won’t be so bad.”

“I don’t care how bad it will be or won’t be! I didn’t ask for this! My girlfriend’s already breathing down my neck! I’m not interested!”

“Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing,” Maarek intoned solemnly. “One of the first tenets of our order.” In the corner of my vision, I spotted Emma’s brow furrowing.

“But after this, once you are completely initiated, if you truly wish to walk your own path,” he continued, “then we will not stop you.”

“Truly?” Max asked.

“Upon my honor as a Knight-Marshal.”

I watched Max’s jaw clench and unclench.

“Okay,” he said. “Fine.”

I understood, intellectually, the reasons for Max’s outburst. The guy had everything he ever wanted, and his whole life planned out for him. What did cosmic knowledge offer him beyond screwing all that up? And yet, there was a part of me that felt only scorn. How could anything on Earth possibly matter now? You’ve got the mysteries of the universe at your fingertips, and you’re worried about what your girlfriend thinks?

“Then let’s begin,” Maarek said. “The mantle is the truest expression of your power. It allows you to utilize your Triadic abilities with ease, as well as protecting you from harm.”

Then, faster than I could blink, the tesseract—

Incarnate Mantle

Trait (Arche I)

The Mantle is the most distinctive feature of the members of the Order of the Singularity Incarnate. When assuming their Mantle, the Incarnate is healed completely and gains Resistance to all forms of mundane damage. Additionally, their Quintessent Points are restored and the Incarnate can utilize Semblances of their base level or lower without expending QP. Assuming the Incarnate Mantle is a prerequisite of summoning an Incarnate Weapon. When girded in their mantle, the Incarnate adds their Arche level to any and all contests.

“Dude,” Emma said. “That sounds wicked.”

“Really?” I asked. The words were already gone, but I could still picture them. “Because I think I understood about half of it.”

“That’s, uh, half more than me,” Max said. “What was that?”

“An excerpt from the Total Codex,” Maarek said. “You will be instructed in its use. For now, focus. To call your Mantle, you just need to speak a single word—synergize.”

The word had power. I felt a subtle pull, like my brain shifted ever so slightly. I thought back to the fight in the diner, and how Kree had said it. But I said, “Like, anytime we say that word, or...?”

Maarek glanced at me. “The symbiote is part of you now, and you of it. It can sense intent. So, no, not any time you say that word.”

“The first time can be difficult,” Kree said. “You’ve made the connection, but you just need to find it. So, you might need to focus.”

“Silence, Initiate,” Maarek said. “Now, the three of you—listen to me. The Third Order aspect of Arche is the contradiction at the heart of our abilities: entropy yet order, life yet death, foundation yet capstone. It is the first ability you will practice, and the last you will master.

“You have seen what my daughter can do. Your connection with the Others shall allow you to do the same, to shape their energetic essence into a protective barrier. Visualize the armor within your mind, and let it become an extension of your will: let no weapon hinder your intercession, let no armor impede it. Now, call it.”

The three of us stood there for a few moments. I wondered if Max and Emma felt as awkward as I did. Then, I knew it, because we all took a few seconds to glance at each other.

“Screw it,” Max said, sighing. “Synergize.”

The shadow fell across and out of him like it had with Kree, and the solid darkness overcame him. Max raised his hands, flexing them, eyeless visage focused on the infinite depths there.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

“Focus, Novitiate,” Maarek said firmly. “You’re almost there. Focus on the thought of protection, of resilience, of fortitude—and visualize.”

Glimmering light sparkled in Max’s darkness-body, and it erupted in a golden flash. When my eyes had recovered, Max was still there. His armor of hardlight looked much like Kree’s, but it was different. The shoulders were heavier, and his helmet was—

Emma whistled. “Someone looks like he’s about to play space gridiron.”

Max laughed. “Hah! Well, hell yeah! Put me on the team, Coach!”

Emma clapped her hands. “Okay, I think I’ve got it. Just let me... And, synergize!”

And her body was eclipsed, and then, in a bright cobalt flash, she was armored, too. She turned her visored head left and right, then looked down at her cuirass and her pleated knee-length skirt, her knee-high sabatons.

“Dude, what the heck? Am I some sort of Sailor Scout?”

“There are no scouts within the Order of the Singularity Incarnate,” Maarek replied. “There are three classes of warrior within our order. Your friend, Maxwell, has been granted one of them: the Intercessor, the warriors who intercede when the Pax requires direct intervention against those events and beings who would harm it, masters of Forces and Matter. You, Emerson, are now an Arbitrator—one of those who solves disputes upon the worlds of the League and guides and protects their populations, masters of Mind and Matter.”

Maarek turned to me. “Which means your friend here should be a Monitor.”

I frowned. “I feel like I got the dorkiest one.”

“The Monitors are the scholars and investigators, yes” Maarek said, which didn’t make me feel as if I was wrong. “But they are also the first to know of any threats, the sentries at the threshold. Custodians of knowledge who walk at the edges of the League, the masters of Forces and Mind. Novitiate Cross—your mantle,” he added, gesturing.

“Okay,” I said, and took a breath. It was now or never.

“Synergize.”