World: Vanufas
Status: Inner Circle
“The world of humanity is so much more fragile than humans know.” The voice was cold, sending shivers down Desmond’s spine. It was a slow, oozing voice that seemed to have a physical presence like liquid in the air. It felt like it filled in any gaps around it.
Knowing it wouldn’t help, but feeling better for it anyway, Desmond ducked behind a large stalagmite a little ways away from him. He couldn’t hear if the source of the voice was getting closer to him, but he knew that he couldn’t keep his location a secret from the other entity. Therefore, the position might not have been the most advantageous, but it was still human nature to feel safer with things like walls between one and one’s enemies.
“I know,” Desmond called back. “That’s why I’m here!”
“Poor little human,” the voice echoed around him.
From the shadows on his side of the rock, the entity coalesced and emerged. It appeared as living shadow made solid, but it also looked a little darker than that. Before coming into the cave, Desmond had woven together a floating orb of light from the mystical essence of the multiverse. This orb illuminated the creature’s shape in much the same way that a flame would illuminate the shape of a shadow puppet on the wall behind a hand. The creature was partially humanoid, with a torso, shoulders, two arms and a head. Its lower half did not have legs, but just a solid trunk coming from the darkness in the ground, giving more the appearance of a person wearing a dress. The arms ended in two hands with long sinister-looking claws. On the creature’s head, there were no discolorations, convexes, shapes to make the entity’s facial features. Instead, there were simply gaping holes in the shadow to form its eyes and mouth. The holes could be shaped to portray whatever expression the entity wanted to portray. Right now, that was a sinister smile.
Desmond leapt back over the rock and began to run across the chamber of the cave. Near him was a gap in the cave wall. The edges of metal walls jutted through it, but there was a small open section. Along the metal wall were numerous dials and levers, as well as ancient-looking lights forming a control panel of the oldest technologies.
For his own part, Desmond didn’t look the sort to be mucking about in caves. In truth, he normally wouldn’t be. Normally, he had people that he could send into situations like this for him. He had used other people to get himself to this point. However, now that he was here, it was too important to do things right. And he couldn’t trust anyone else with the secrets of why he was here.
He was built tall and lean, with a long face. At some point, someone had joked that it was as though someone had stretched his body out without bothering to widen it again. That person hadn’t survived very long beyond that point in time. His skin was pale and pristine, showing no scars or bruises, as well as showing very little signs of being outside in the sunlight. The only sign of imperfection that his skin did show were the handful of wrinkles that he had earned in his many years of life. His hair was blonde bordering on colorless white, matching the shading of his eyes which were blue bordering on colorless grey.
His clothes were bright in color, consisting primarily of a purple dress-tunic, and seemed to have very little in the way of functional use. The outfit seemed more like something someone would wear to a low-key dinner party than something for exploring caves in.
As he drew near to the gap, the creature emerged once more before him, a dark laughter filling the cave. The creature had come forth, once more, from the shadows, giving an unnerving feeling as though it were in every shadow.
Desmond knew the truth. To a point, the creature was in, or at least connected to, every shadow. This was to the degree that these shadows were the absence of light. The creature was not actually made of shadow, made material or not. The creature wasn’t made of anything. That was what it was. Nothingness. Void. A pure rift in the world. A gaping hole that could never be filled. There was no stopping the entity, the Void. The ancients had at least been able to contain instances of the Void, but that art had been long since lost.
The creature swung a claw at Desmond, but the human ducked quickly out of the way.
“You cannot outrun me, boy.” the Void said.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Desmond lied.
“Oh no?” the Void asked. Desmond felt its cold fingers upon his shoulder. The creature had somehow moved again without him processing it. The thing was so damn fast. The cold came in upon Desmond as if it were the only thing in the world. He felt like he was freezing from the inside, from the core of his body, and from deeper than that: from the core of his essence.
Desmond ducked out from the Void’s grasp. Turning, he quickly reached into the essence of the universe, magically weaving together strands to form an ethereal wall between himself and the Void. The creature simply emerged on the other side of the wall, continuing to move slowly towards Desmond.
Desmond knew that the creature was playing with him. It didn’t need to approach slowly; it had demonstrated that much already. Still, he hoped that he could use that to his advantage. He slowly backed up and began another weave. This time, four strands of light wrapped themselves around the Void’s arms, tying it to the ground and ceiling.
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The Void laughed again, and Desmond was reminded of the freezing cold he had felt earlier. His weaves burst apart as the Void continued forward.
Desmond dove towards the gap in the metal wall, but was suddenly propelled back by a wall of solid and moving shadow.
“Your mind betrays you to me,” the Void’s voice oozed.
The light in the room was fading. Desmond looked to his orb of light and could see shadows swirling around and within it. Looking deeper, into the essence, he could see the strands of his weave slowly being pulled apart. The Void was still toying with him.
“Yes,” the Void said. “But I grow bored with you. I know what it is that you seek. If I want, as you can see, I can easily prevent you from reaching it. In fact, if I wanted, I could easily consume you and rip you apart before you can use your anchor to return to your ship. I could return you to the void, as I will soon return this world to the void.”
Desmond thought about going for the anchor, but he had come too far to give up now. Besides, he didn’t think it would be a good idea to call the Void’s bluff.
“No, it would not,” the Void answered his unspoken thought. “I am not human. I do not need to lie.” The Void seemed to pause in contemplation for a moment. “You are just built on lies, aren’t you? It’s very interesting. With all that absence in your life, I think that, was my existence under different circumstances, we could have been friends.”
“You say that you know what I seek,” Desmond answered the creature. “If that is the case, can we make some sort of bargain?”
The creature smiled. “Based on the bargains in your mind, I do not think that you would uphold such a thing. However, what is it that you want, and what is it that you think you can offer me?”
“I would like my life, being able to go my own way physically unharmed and without your influence; the book; and the pendant.”
The creature’s smile didn’t waiver. “And in return I receive?”
“I would argue that you already owe me a debt,” Desmond answered. “After all, I used the control panel and set you free.”
“This you did because the chamber which was confining me blocked your path to the book and the pendant. You viewed me as an allowable cost in your journey. You did not free me for me.”
“Nonetheless, regardless of motive, I did free you. Therefore, you are in my debt.”
“I accept no debt for actions that you performed in the past without establishing said debt before performing them,” the Void answered. “If this was the deal you had wanted to make, then you should have done so before freeing me.”
“Then what would you ask of me?”
“When I have returned this world to the void, I will be adrift within myself,” the Void explained. “Within a world, flitting between shadow and shadow is simple within the rules and allows me to move with nearly unlimited speed. However, within myself, based on your rules, it is much more difficult for me to arrive in new locations quickly. This is illogical, but nonetheless the case.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“Once you have the book and the pendant, you will wait for me in your ship. I will return this world to the void, and then I will join you. You will then take me with you to another world. One of your Sparkling Band worlds.”
“No deal,” Desmond said. “I will take you to another Inner Circle world. I am willing to go further away from this one to give you the benefit of distance. But I will not take you to a world within the Sparkling Band.”
“Then I do not need to allow you to have the book or the pendant,” the Void answered. “After all, if you have your way, you would use these things in ways that run counter to my existence and to my plans. Your worlds are offensive to me, and what you personally plan to do with them is even more so.”
Desmond tried to weigh the risks. If he did not agree to bring the Void to a Sparkling Band world, then the Void would not allow him to have the book or the pendant. However, if the Void destroyed one of these worlds, then the same things Desmond was working towards would be...if not ruined, then incredibly damaged. Bringing the Void to a smaller world still was against Desmond’s own plans, but not as much as allowing it to destroy part of the Sparkling band.
“Very well,” the Void sighed. “In truth, I believe that, despite your goals being directly opposed to mine, your actions to achieve them will prove more to my benefit than to your benefit or to my cost. I will allow you to bring me to another Inner Circle world instead.”
With the bargain made, things were simple beyond that. Desmond took the silver Book of Destiny and the pendant, shaped in the circular pattern of the Winged Flames: a symbol that had been marked on the book as well. From there, he’d gone back to his ship, and he’d set a course for a random Inner Circle world: Batmuzil.
Desmond looked back to the silver book on the desk, trying to refocus and figure out where he had been before he'd gotten sucked back into the memory. That had been about eleven years ago now. He looked around the room and all that he had gathered and accomplished since then. It was a testament to his determination. He put a hand to his chest and felt the pendant hidden beneath his grey robes. The pendant bore the symbol of the Winged Flames: the symbol that was at the center of all of his plans.
A knock resounded from the door. Desmond opened it a small amount and stepped out, not wanting to reveal what was on the other side. The woman who had knocked was wearing grey robes, not unlike his own. He recognized her as Wilda Marsden, who normally worked in Communications.
“High Priest Tindall,” she greeted, bowing in reverence. She came up from the bow very quickly, and he noticed that she seemed to be out of breath.
“Yes, young one, what is it?” He had to keep his voice level and rhythmic, as was expected of him.
“We’ve detected a void ship nearby to one of the worlds where we’ve sent a missionary.”
“There are void ships all over,” Desmond answered. “It’s probably nothing.”
“The ship has an anchor on the same world our missionary is on,” Wilda said.
“Hmm…” Desmond mused. “I suppose that having other outsiders on a world might cause issue with…”
“We think it’s a wolf ship,” Wilda said. “The signature matches one from other local reports.”
The wolves were destroyers of worlds. If this was really the case, then Desmond knew that their missionary was in great danger.
“Which world is this?” Desmond asked. “And who do we have down there?”
“Axpin, Father,” she answered. “And Penuel Clark.”
Desmond wracked his brain to call up the details of Clark or of Axpin. “He was just sent there a day or so ago, was he not?”
“Yes, Father,” she answered.
“Ah, well then, have him use his anchor to return,” Desmond said. There was likely nothing they could do to stop the wolves from destroying Axpin. They might as well save their missionary. Losing worlds was always such a disappointment. Then again, this close to the Calamity, it happened all the time.
“We’ve been trying to reach him,” Wilda said. “But so far we haven’t been able to get through.”
Desmond’s frowned. “You should keep trying. If you cannot get through before the world is destroyed, then hopefully he will use his anchor and return to us.”