Within the anomaly I was surrounded by the ethereal forms that composed it, layers coexistent like competing realities, all suffused with indescribable energy, essence and meaning combining into something more all around me.
Amid the sound and power I perceived a word, woven into the very space itself. Or perhaps it was the space – a fundamental element in the union of spheres. Looking closer I saw another, and another, then countless more.
Speech and form, language and creation, in this place they were intrinsically linked, fundamentally interchangeable. Words flowed into reality and reality flowed into words.
My body, the lone point of corporeal matter, seemed to be floating, but to say that was to presume there was something to float in. I might better say I was adrift, in a sea of concept.
Yet I didn’t drift for long. Meaning shifted and coalesced around me with purpose.
Reality took shape once more.
Cool hard ground pressed to my feet, then spread out from the points of contract as if my touch had made it real.
Sweeping over a forming landscape, it mapped out an impossibly flat plane in purest white stone, polished to a mirror shine, expanding eternal in all directions.
The surface was inlaid with overlapping shapes, fractal coils of gold and arcs of silver which somehow extended down into the ground, yet shone clear through the solid stone. The ordered chaos blossomed with all manner of stylistic forms – here were braids of sapphire flowers, there great mountains of red gold sinking deep roots. Yet as I admired the display I understood it was not simply abstract. The interwoven shapes were meaning; language.
Far too much meaning was present for me to absorb, but I followed the focus of the creation, gaze rising slowly to the horizons.
Already I had discovered one, the endless plane which first presented itself, but now I found a second.
Following the veins of dark power that throbbed throughout this reality I saw the white fall away. Warping dark thoughts overran the light, until I stood not on stone but obsidian. Raising my head once more I saw the plain curve up and around, as if I stood on the inner surface of a sable world.
Whole ranges of concave needle mountains rose and fell in regular patterns, impossibly fine peaks all focusing immense power towards the centre of the space. About that point the world rotated, somehow moving in countless directions all at once, mountains shifting and sliding past each other in an endless dance.
In the epicenter there floated a structure.
No, that was wrong.
The structure was the centre, the foundation of the space. All else floated around it.
With no land beneath, the magnificent shrine grew in all directions equally.
It could have been a temple, but no temple I’d known was so ominous. Trying to decipher the form was impossible, as it was in constant flux. Layered roofs of silver black glistened like the backs of scaled beasts as they arose kaleidoscopic. Their ridges and eaves flared with violent dancing blades, rippling and shifting as if part metal, part flame, until they melded into one another to birth towering pagodas, from which waterfalls of metal cascaded back down to begin anew, opening fresh archways into the core of the prismatic cathedral.
As I marveled at the astonishing structure layers of shifting openings aligned briefly. I found myself gazing through an astonishing narthex into a great nave where vaulted ceilings grew in all directions.
Every surface screamed in danger, in warning.
Following the lines my eyes settled upon the high altar, the core of the mercurial edifice.
At that dark heart, ringed by concentric halos like umbral jaws, hung a single point of purest blackness, so dark and deep that with a single look it took my light.
The world fell into suffocating dark, clutching and creeping over my body and through my mind.
Plunged into paralytic agony, I was a powerless mote amid infinite night.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t think.
My heart seized with terror.
A vast presence peered into me, invading every recess of my mind and soul, until I thought both must surely break.
Shifting layers broke my gaze; I gasped and shuddered as the world returned to me.
In that airless space I panted for breath I seemed not to need. Just what I was or wasn’t inhaling was a question I ignored.
For a time I simply existed, still reeling from the attack, if it could even be called that. Even beginning to comprehend the intent of the presence I’d felt was impossible.
There could be no doubt however – that glimpse had more than sufficed as confirmation. I had found the source of the Dweomer’s apocalypse.
Yet I was sure of one thing from the overload of meaning; the immense world around me was in opposition to that atrocious power. This place, this… space… was not made to sow ruin, but to hold it back.
In search of answers, I returned to the writing.
When I traced the exultant yet mournful beauty woven into the ground beneath my feet, I found another place revealed entirely, all bright and warm. Rather than curving into a hollow world it instead rose up gradually, around a shining central hill, as if the entire reality were slowly ascending towards one pinnacle.
What a pinnacle it was.
I couldn’t say how long it took me to reach – the walk seemed both to span lifetimes and mere seconds – nor was I certain I had actually moved at all.
All the same, I stepped up onto the plateau.
The form I found was traditionalist after the menacing palace.
Yet to call it traditional supposed any tradition had conceived a monument a fraction so dazzling.
Wrought of golden light there rose concentric rings of gleaming brilliance, more numerous than I could count. Together they formed a single tower, base thousands of miles broad, sides curving upwards and extending past even my vision’s reach.
Far, far overhead the light grew dimmer, as if I were looking up into the infinite night sky, alive with the glowing cosmos. Yet there I could just barely perceive the true form of the great tree, innumerable branches splitting off, each ending in a sparkling point of light – its own star. The entirety of the grand vista grew from that mighty trunk.
Everything here was wrought of meaning it seemed. From the very form of the monument I could draw language.
I read it slowly; thankful for the relative simplicity of the surface message it bore.
“This memorial rests in the shadow of the greatest goddess, to which no monument could ever stand equal.”
“Beloved Cyclops, the savior of Creation.”
“She was the brightest light to ever shine in this dark Reality.”
“Sweet Cyclops, you were more beautiful than the sun itself.”
“You lifted us from despair in our darkest moment.”
“It is thanks to you the stars shine on, countless suns and countless worlds saved by your hands and your words.”
“In your memory this realm is made, but it is in our hearts you stand eternal.”
“You were the best of us.”
“Existence will never see your match.”
The weight of feeling behind the words was crushing, a pain entirely different to that of the prismatic cathedral, yet just as real and vital.
From my cheek I wiped a tear I couldn’t recall shedding.
Even the gods could suffer, could lose those they loved, could struggle with grief.
But they had to go on. So did I.
The Golden Sepulchre wasn’t only a memorial. Outside it might exist in one place in space and time, but within there were multiple worlds. One was the beautiful, mournful realm in which I stood. Another was a prison, a seal forged by words of creation to contain something abominable. Something even the gods feared.
But the prison had been breached.
The Dweomer had been probing the Sepulchre, the ‘anomaly’ as they called it. They had sought to penetrate its layers, but when that failed they turned to the space around it.
It was hard to imagine they could have damaged the boundless, cosmic existence which was the Golden Sepulchre, but I recalled the words in the research station. They had breached space itself in their desire for limitless energy.
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Contradiction resolved as I understood. It seemed strange to place both memorial and seal in one place, but only if the gods had been able to choose where to put either.
Something had slain a goddess – a goddess so mighty that those who survived her near worshipped her memory. That something was contained within the prismatic cathedral. It was contained here because it was here that it had emerged, and here that Cyclops had died.
Echo had said something, back in the capital; that the area around the anomaly was special. The… separation was thin. They had been probing that space, and they had caused something termed a ‘breach’.
Perhaps the prismatic cathedral contained not an object, but a rupture in space itself. A tear in reality which… let something else in.
Cold fear tightened my chest.
The Golden Sepulchre stood on a weak point in space.
The Dweomer had unknowingly probed and strained at the edges of that weakness. Like fraying threads, the space had given way.
Could they have opened up a new tear for the evil to escape?
But the black ichor outside was only an echo of the dread void I’d seen within the seal. If that got loose… it wouldn’t have stopped with the Dweomer.
The two were intimately connected however. The one must be an expression of the other. The ichor was of that place, so much was certain to me, so could it be that it was the result of a lesser breach; the vestige of something far greater and more terrible?
Even if that were true, it gave no solace.
From beholding it, from looking into those dark depths and feeling their power, I knew as if by instinct that the substance could destroy everything I had grown to love in this world.
Unless I stopped it.
The gods had spoken this place into being; with meaning and intent they shaped reality to preserve Arcadia. I was under no delusions that I could reproduce their feat, but… the Sepulchre had obeyed me once. It might again.
And the task was far lesser. The damage was not so dire. That it was thus far trapped within the chamber proved it could be contained. I needed only to hold back the escaping power, or redirect it to somewhere it could do no harm.
If I could just send it away, into a different space, then it would pose no more risk.
~~~
Studying the Sepulchre I lost track of time and space.
I couldn’t say how long I simply existed, outside of the world, following the rich, thick veins of meaning through the surreal creation, understanding the intent and will behind it, little by little.
The task was monumental in scale and difficulty, the perception and decryption of even a single character a challenge, despite my recognition of the language.
I had help from an unexpected source. All about I found parallels in the tongue of the Sepulchre to one more familiar; that of the Stormqueens, with which I had actual experience. Nemoian could perhaps be said to be a simplification of the layered, nesting meanings and cyclic structure of the Sepulchre, but having heard it spoken and experienced the magic it could bring about, it served as a foundation and guide.
The language of creation I was now tackling might be many times more intricate and powerful; there were words within words, like particles of meaning within atoms of ideas. The simile was all the more apt given how physical forms were woven by their interfusion. Still it followed the forms of Nemoian. The words and sentences, even the characters might be many orders more complex, but the beginnings were inseparable. There was a common syntax and morphology. That was enough.
With bittersweet recollections as a guide I spread my awareness into and through the matter of the place, probing the underlying structure.
Every surface was deep with meaning, matter woven from nothing but intent and power, but more than that, even the underlying medium in which it arose was itself an artifice. The divine minds which had wrought the Sepulchre had woven the space itself to create this realm. Their words and wills were the spectral thread that combined through uncountable dimensions to cast the shadow called reality.
Comprehending the whole was beyond me – it was far too vast and alien. I sought only to understand how to use it.
Given unlimited time it could have been possible to gradually expand my knowledge until I might take in the whole, but in the urgency of the present I required one thing; the means to command the Sepulchre and close the breaches.
Dredging from the depths of my mind the words to move reality was itself taxing. It was as though the universe strove to prevent the language from entering my thoughts or passing my lips.
Little wonder perhaps – Myr had crammed the knowledge into me, but I doubted it was ever intended for mortal use.
Regardless, it was mine now; my knowledge to use as I willed. Whatever ontological resistance the universe might give I would overcome.
Through force of will and urgency of purpose I formed the proper concepts, composing them in my head, the words taking shape with the intent. All the while they threatened to slip away, to vanish into ether as if they were never there, but I persevered in silence. I didn’t dare incant them aloud until I was certain they would have the desired effect.
Speaking carelessly could doom more than just myself now.
Through painstaking and exhaustive contemplation I grew increasingly confident of my spell, but I concluded that I was in the wrong place to chant it. I needed to do so from outside of the Sepulchre.
This place – superspace as the Dweomer called it – was like a higher layer atop the Arcadian reality. A many-faceted lock, closing a hole through existence.
If I cast my magic in here it might not take effect on anything outside the great seal. Even if it did, I couldn’t be certain of the exact range or targets of my words. I could be entombing myself within the Sepulchre too.
Opening a path back to Arcadia was simple after my studies of the structure.
“Let me out.”
They were the first words I’d spoken within the Sepulchre. There was resistance as I spoke, each word taking a toll upon my mind and body as the same vast power I had felt before was drawn out. I pushed through. I had far more to say before I was done.
The effect was immediate.
Without even a step, my words retuned me to existence.
The first sensation was that of pressure; the floor pushing up from beneath me, the air pushing in all around, rushing into lungs that felt suddenly empty. Arcadia was a world with gravity and atmosphere, so that was natural. Present also was heat, and opening my eyes I found light.
I was standing in the flight cube, facing Echo.
They stared at me, as if frozen.
“I’m back, Echo.”
Finally Echo spoke. “First Researcher! You disappeared! I thought something terrible had happened! I was forced to withdraw to prevent the flight cube from being overloaded. I am deeply sorry for leaving without you….”
I answered gently. “It’s okay, Echo, you did what you had to.”
“I’d be in a lot more trouble if the flight cube crashed, and I’m sure you were keeping an eye out for me as much as you could. I’m fine, I’m sorry to have worried you.”
I’d expected the reassurance to ease Echo’s concerns, yet their face was all the more fraught with worry.
“Where have you been for all this time… First Researcher? I feared you might never return… or that the flight cube might run out of power first.”
How much time could have passed for the world above while I was sequestered? I wanted to ask Echo, but I had no idea how long Dweomer measures of time were. That the flight cube was still in the air and hadn’t needed to leave and recharge meant it couldn’t have been terribly long, but it was still a troubling thought.
Echo spoke on. “Before you vanished you appeared to… speak to the anomaly… in words I could not perceive. You then emitted inexplicable energy from within your body, which I believe interacted with the superspace in a manner never before observed.”
“Yeah, I was… doing some investigating. I went inside the anomaly to learn more about it.”
“But… First Researcher… all previous attempts to probe the anomaly were unsuccessful. Physically entering cannot be possible. Yet… you vanished with no trace, and now have reappeared without any sign at all, far from the surface of the anomaly!”
I looked back out of the window. The Sepulchre was perhaps a mile away.
“I guess the anomaly knew where to put me back,” I suggested lightly. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”
Echo was looking at me almost fearfully now.
“Are you suggesting that the anomaly possesses intelligence?”
“Not exactly, but its creators did.”
“First… Researcher…. We have no record of how the anomaly was created. We cannot even be certain it had not always existed.”
“After taking a look inside I think I have a pretty good guess about where it came from. But don’t worry about that for now, there’s work to do.”
“No living organism could penetrate the anomaly.”
Echo’s features were grave, their voice distant, as though they were engaged in some internal struggle.
“The First Researcher could not communicate with the anomaly.”
I sensed danger in their tone, and for the first time there was anger.
Though I’d been loath to lie to Echo, it had been a necessity given the situation. Now I feared I’d grown too careless in dealing with my eager and helpful assistant.
“Hey, Echo, what do you mean? I just… figured some stuff out is all. It’s not like I understand everything, but once we get out of here I can tell you everything about it.”
Echo’s eyes looked slowly down my body, then back up, as though I had grown suddenly alien. Their angular features seemed to flicker and shift as though reflecting the wavering of their heart.
“I… am the… the non-sentient memory imprint of the First Researcher. I am based on the knowledge and experience of the First Researcher. But… I am not like you….”
I opened my mouth to reply, but hesitated as to how best to answer.
“I do not understand. I… believe I am malfunctioning. First… Researcher? I cannot recognize your face….”
The pain in their voice was hard to hear, yet I dared not come clean there and then. Once again my lies were hurting the people around me.
“I… you… are not… the First Researcher…. The First Researcher was… killed… everyone… was killed…. Who are you? What did you do to the First Researcher?!”
The rhythmic hum of the flight cube’s engines faltered unhappily as Echo spoke in stilted fragments, their movements stuttering. I feared we might fall out of the air and into the ocean of black below us. If we did we would surely die. Or worse.
“Echo.” I spoke sternly, pressing my hand to the panel between us.
“Echo. Listen to me. I’m not an enemy, I’m your friend.”
The sounds stabilized as Echo met my eyes.
“I didn’t hurt the First Researcher, but something did. Whatever that was, we’re both in danger because of it. There are many more people at risk too. It’s up to us to protect them. I need your help to do that.”
Echo seemed to process that for a few moments, frozen and silent.
I couldn’t know what their response would be when it came. If it came. Echo had been running without maintenance for eons. Maybe they really were malfunctioning worse than it seemed.
I couldn’t afford to wait and gamble on their answer. If they should decide to whisk me back to the Research Institute, or simply dump me out of the flight cube entirely, there would be no-one to fix everything. No-one else even knew.
“I’m going to start now. I promise I won’t do anything bad. Just try to keep the flight cube away from the oil below us, okay? After we fix this and get out of here, I’ll tell you everything. I swear it.”
Echo gave no reply.
I couldn’t spare them any more focus. It was time for the incantation.
The mere drawing of breath made my heart race as I mustered myself. There was anticipation in the space around me, as though the world knew something was coming. Something it opposed.
“Sepulchre of the fallen Goddess Cyclops, I entreat you” I began. “Heed my plea and follow my will!”
The air trembled at the words, my muscles straining to force them past my lips. Each evoked great upheavals of power somewhere at my core, upwelling mana distorting my surroundings.
Somewhere far below me, I felt power stir in response. No sight was needed for me to detect the roil of the black sea, whipped up by the sinister essence of chthonic rumblings from deeper still.
“Stifle the rent veils of Reality and seal Creation against all encroach.”
I could feel energy erupting from my body, coursing through my veins and surging through every pore, every fiber of my body and mote of my spirit pushing back at the Universe that resisted me.
Outside the flight cube I felt them come, hopelessly immense swells in the black oil breaking as the guardians of the rifts emerged.
From the sheer colossal scale of the bodies which emerged they might once have been akin to the sandworm.
“Sepulchre! Banish from this world all vestiges of Abyssal violation!”
My lungs burned, my lips cracking and bleeding with each word, red mist on my breath. I compelled myself to go on. Whole lifetimes of mana were called up, spent and expelled in each syllable, until my very soul screamed alongside the tortured world about me.
Still there was more to incant.
The forms rose into the focus of my heightened awareness. I understood their source now; the roots! Over eons they had filled the chamber, wicking up the ichor greedily. Now after long soaking themselves in the sinister oil they moved by a new will.
Bark cracked and bulged with grotesque slick flesh, black musculature interwoven with grey wood, each gargantuan wyrm nest to a tangle of entwisted entrails, organs bulging through snarls like sickening flowers.
From those necrotic blossoms burst antithetical light, casting thick umbra about as if to expel all traces of goodness from the world.
That dark radiance soaked into my magic, poisoning my spell even as I uttered it, corroding at the words and my will.
At my side Echo was shouting, but I heard not a word.
The unlight pervaded even my mind. It blotted out not only light, but memory. My thoughts grew hazy, my spirit clouded with the assailing dark and despair.
Who was I?
What was I doing? Why was I fighting so hard?
For what?
I knew the answer.
With a grim smile I held close my precious recollections.
I practiced my magic and martial arts with my teachers, wholly absorbed in my urge to excel. I read books in the library. I wondered at the limitless firmament as I soared over impossibly tall mountains.
Aellope smiled and teased me as we began to open up to one another. Agytha clutched at me for solace and Chione gave a tear-streaked grin.
My reflection beamed out at me from a mirror as I donned my first dress. Finally I was me.
I was Safkhet.
I was fighting for my friends, and for myself.
Darkness shattered as my essence blasted it apart, foul poison evaporating in a storm of purifying supernal force.
My body was aflame with mana, blinding fractal tongues of meaning gouting from my eyes and mouth to meld into the aura of transcendent magic as I spoke the final command.
“Purge the taint from Arcadia!”
Exploding power wracked my body, my very life-force coursing out as the spell completed like a ruinous detonation. Amid the cyclonic expulsion my body was a mere speck.
Cataclysmic forces awakened, the very fabric of reality convulsing, twisting and shuddering as it joined me to the Sepulchre, until at last annihilation came.
The shockwave shattered the chamber.
Surfaces splintered, then pulverized into evaporating dust as the Golden Sepulchre obeyed my will.
Purging solar radiance consumed the corrupted roots and tainted ichor which tried to halt the magic.
I could feel the breaches sealing in that nuclear furnace.
After that all was blinding white.
~~~
When I came to my senses I noted with dull surprise that the flight cube was unharmed, despite the fury I had unleashed from within it.
Outside, the chamber walls were further apart than I recalled. The ceiling was significantly higher.
From these relocated surfaces new ruptures were forming as I watched; not in space, but stone, as magma broke through to flood in. Fire competed with darkness as the white-hot falls plunged into the now boiling plane of black, itself greatly reduced.
Only as I tried to stand did the fullness of my exhaustion hit me. My legs collapsed from under me, and I hit the floor face first, with an ignominious thud.
The impact did me no harm, but as I lay there blood flowed freely from my mouth and face to pool under me. I couldn’t even close my mouth to try to stop it. The mere weight of my own body was agony.
“First Researcher! First Researcher! Please answer me!”
For a moment I wondered who the first researcher was, then I recognized Echo’s voice, and recalled that it was supposed to be me.
Answering seemed entirely beyond my remaining capabilities however.
I desperately needed to rest. I’d never imagined it was even possible to be so totally drained of vitality that even my bones could hurt.
Yet the world outside us was not waiting.
Even with the breaches sealed, the pit of black oil remained, as did its progeny.
Thick with mana as they were, I could still sense the roots outside. Many had been broken or incinerated in the explosion, but many was not all. The survivors thrashed and groped angrily towards their tormenter; the flight cube.
Sheer willpower moved my torn lips as I spat up a throat-full of blood.
“Echo,” I rasped through the metallic fluid.
“First Researcher! What happened to you?! You are terribly injured!”
“Get us… out of the… chamber.”
“But you need assistance first!”
The panic was clear in their voice.
I wanted to curse the diligence of the spell which had become my companion. I also wanted to give in to the creeping unconsciousness that was about to overtake me. I could do neither.
“No. Go. Hurry.”
The flight cube shuddered as something hit us, and I was sent sliding sideways. The engines rose in a whirr as Echo set us in motion, dodging waterfalls of glowing rock.
“I don’t understand what’s happening!” Echo spoke as they flew.
There was the tone of a plea to their words.
The flight cube rocked as something massive sailed past, the turbulence striking us. But we were past it and rocketing towards the cavern exit.
“The tunnel, it’s blocked! The seismic activity must have collapsed the walls; magma is flooding into the roadway!”
No words passed my abused lips. I was barely holding to consciousness, but even had I not been, I knew of no way to turn back a torrent of magma.
“We’re sealed in! What should I do?!”
I felt myself falling as Echo spoke, but I couldn’t tell if it was just me or the flight cube too.
“Echo… you have to… find a way out….”
“I can’t do that! I don’t know how to!”
“You can. You’re… stronger than you think. You kept going… all that time… on your own. I’m counting on you, Echo….”
Oblivion took me as the flight cube thrummed and shook.