“In every vision, we have seen his face,” Khadam said. “Why do we see Poire? Why no one else?”
The warm breeze blew through the temple, stirring the locks of her hair. The Emperor had his back turned to her, leaning against one of the newly-cracked columns of his temple that he had nearly destroyed in his burst of rage. His silhouette was outlined in the too-bright light of the scar, settling down the horizon, the distorted reflections of his mask streaked with the blue of the sky above.
In answer, the Emperor pulled away from the column, and walked around the long, rectangular pool that ran down the center of the temple. A series of fountains played in its center, trickling water competing with the breath of the wind. The weight of his footsteps made the water ripple.
With every step he took, she felt a force in her body. Her eyes were drawn to him, even against her will. He stopped on the opposite side of a fountain, which cast a thin curtain of water between them.
“Cold smith,” the Emperor said. “What do you know of the Light?”
“It’s our most valuable tool. Light is an extremely dense particle of non-electromagnetic, cyclical energy with nearly non-existent decay. It radiates out from-”
“Good,” he held up a hand, and Khadam felt her throat seize up.
She tried to speak. Tried to curse him. Nothing came out.
Khadam clenched her jaw, wishing for the thousandth time that she hadn’t come here. Or that she had been more prepared. Or that she had thrown her cubes at first sight, even though it would have fried her implants too.
There was no point in wishing. He held her now, and he could probably hold her like this for centuries. Or maybe, for the rest of her life.
I have to get back to the avians. I have to build something else and try again-
“You know how the Light acts,” the Emperor said, “You can describe it functions. But you know almost nothing about its origin. What is it?”
His huge body was blurred by the smoothly falling water of a fountain, and she could almost imagine that his mask was only that - a mask, worn by a real human.
“The Light comes from outside our universe,” he continued. “Something is out there, something that lives beyond. It carves open our universe, tearing holes that allow the Light to seep through.”
The Emperor dipped his fingers into the falling curtain of water, cutting gaps in the falling water. He pulled his fingers back, but the gaps remained. Khadam couldn’t see how he was doing that - gravity manipulators, most likely. But where? In his mask, or hidden in the floors of the temple?
Or maybe in his nanites.
Khadam’s body was almost too heavy to move, but her mind still raced through the possibilities. Searching for a weakness. Finding none. Whoever built the Emperor was a master of the flow, the algorithmic craft of instilling machines with Light. The nanites. The android. Her implants.
He could control it all with a flick of his thoughts. And given that his thoughts were a process of emulation, his mind probably worked millions of times faster than hers. Even if she had all the tools and time in the world…
“Then why do you see Poire?” the Emperor asked from the other side of the broken water. “The answer is clear: whatever lives on the other side has seen him, too. And thus, it reflects its sight in your visions.”
“So you say the visions are true?”
“Sight is not truth.”
“Then what?”
Through the suspended holes in the curtain of falling water, she could see Emperor shrug his great shoulders. “The human mind is a breeding ground for false connections. No doubt the visions hold some truth, but that truth is the wrong one. Your so-called destroyer is not the flame, but the smoke that comes after. He is merely a symptom. He does not matter.”
“How can you say that?” Khadam said, outrage blossoming in her chest. Making her want to stand up, though every joint in her body held her back. “We have seen what he will do! If the Herald lives, the universe will be torn asunder-”
“This universe is already dead.”
The Emperor did something, and all the falling water froze in place. The gaps where his fingers had cut holes began to expand, eating away at the veil between them, until nothing was left.
“The moment we tore open the first scar, we damned ourselves.”
“Wrong,” Khadam said. “The dams-”
“The dams will fail.”
“We have tens of thousands of years before the Light breaks through.”
“How long do you think its been, Khadam?”
The Emperor’s challenge stabbed her like a knife. Her hand lifted automatically to her heart.
Tens of thousands of years? Had she really been in cryosleep so long? Somehow, Khadam never imagined that humanity was so unfathomably far back in the past. Somehow, she had let herself believe that perhaps the rest of them were still hibernating somewhere, only hiding from the Sovereign Swarm and waiting for her to find and kill the Herald, so that humanity could return.
Tens of thousands of years…
“Unlike some,” he said, “I have not wasted this extraordinary gift of time. Humanity did something great by slowing their progress. But that which lives beyond must experience time differently than we do. That is the only explanation for the visions, for your glimpses of the future. Because, yes, there is truth to your dreams. I have studied them for so long, and in them, I have seen the secrets of the Light, and the void from which it comes.”
The lights on the Emperor’s mask blinked in unison for a split second. The fountain began to flow again, only this time numerous thin sheets of water fell parallel to each other.
The Emperor inhaled slowly, and something on his mask began to make a high-pitched whine, almost beyond hearing. She could feel his concentration. All the sheets of water vibrated and began to defy gravity’s will, flowing up and out of the pool until Khadam was surrounded by twisting helixes and branches and wavering veils of falling water.
“Our universe is surrounded. Much like a star in the center of a swirling, shifting galaxy, we are not alone. There are so many other realities beyond this one.”
The Emperor’s hand—perfect and human—broke through all the interwoven streams of water, stopping in front of her. Her hand twitched, her arm lifted, without her telling it to. She tried to squeeze her muscles, to fight against it. But the Emperor had her…
“This is what I want, Khadam. I want to ascend. And I want you to ascend with me.” ”
Khadam’s fingers reached out, and grazed against his, sending a shock of cold, sickening emptiness through her body. Her spine shivered with revulsion.
The Emperor clasped her hand and pulled her forward. She slammed her eyes shut and gasped as the cold wetness crashed against her. Her feet were iron weights, her legs as heavy as stone, rooting her in place. She could do nothing but stand there, panting and shivering.
The Emperor lifted his chin, and a warmth rushed from nowhere, from the open sides of the temple, as if the Emperor had control over the wind itself. It blew across her body, rushing over her skin and clothes. A glittering, blurry cloud of nanites gathered around her limbs, her torso, her face. The same nanites that had killed the servant, and drained the life from her body, were now being used to dry her off.
Does he know how vile this is? Khadam barely managed to suppress a shudder. Does the machine understand that I hate him so?
But hostility would get her nowhere. As the last drops were wicked away by the Emperor’s near-atomic machines, Khadam decided she would feed into his madness. Maybe then, he’ll show his weakness.
“You say something lives in the scars.”
“On the other side, yes.”
“What is it? And when you ascend, what if it can follow you?”
“When a fire burns, do you stand still and let the heat consume you? I think not. As long as we refused to leave the cradle, we will never grow.”
“We don’t know anything about what lies beyond, yet you talk as if you can simply step through a door into another universe.”
“It has already been done. Why else do you think we see him?”
Khadam furrowed her brow, “Poire?”
“He was a product of a long line of experiments, perfected over millennia of trials. In trying to repair the human genome, they discovered something so much greater. They created thousands of children, like him. They tested them. And they sent them beyond.”
“What trials? Why I have never heard of this?”
“Because,” the Emperor snarled. “Just as I was forbidden, so were they. The biologists worked in secret. I won’t tell you what I’ve learned of their failures. Horrible. And there were so many. It is no wonder Auster kept himself far away from his lover. The cost of saving humanity was always a brutal affair, and many young lives were sacrificed. But not without gain. The biologists found a way to create human life in a universe beyond our own.”
“You think Poire was born in another universe?”
“This is how he was seen by that which lives beyond.”
“If that is true—then why do you say he is not the destroyer? Is he not more powerful than the Light itself?”
“If you knew Poire at all, the word ‘powerful’ would never enter your mind. From what I’ve gathered, he was more a failure than a success. Barely enough for them to keep him alive. Poire was one among thousands, and if he was special, if he met any of the criteria they needed, then they would have gone to far greater lengths to protect him. IInstead,they discarded him in the ruins of some biologist’s conclave. It was pure chance he survived. I doubt Auster ever even knew his name.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Auster?”
“He was a renowned biologist, lauded for his work with genetics, before he was ostracized for working with the First Prophet. That is how he met Sen, you know. And that is how he met my Maker.” There was a subtle shift in his tone, the dark hint of hatred in his voice as he spoke Sen’s name. Khadam could see his fingers curling on the stone ledge of the pool, but not cracking it.
“Auster and his kind made all the child species,” the Emperor swept his arms around the temple, gesturing at the city so far below. “The cyrans. The avians. All of them. All failed attempts to recreate a stable human genome and to circumvent the disease.”
“But the xenos live. They’re thriving.”
“For now,” the Emperor agreed, “But time has run its course. Poire is a distraction. Your visions, the disease. The xenos. All, distractions. Keeping you from seeing what has already happened.”
“Then why do we see the visions at all? You think they are nothing more than a deception, on a galactic scale?”
“Other universes do not necessarily obey our natural laws. I don’t know how the visions came to be. An accident? More likely, they are artifacts of something else that somehow attached to your thoughts. Your fears. A dreadful case of apophonia. The human mind is brilliant at seeing patterns, where there are none. Despite the fragments of truth your visions may hold, do not discount your ability to lie to yourself. Yes, Poire may be here at the end of existence. But what about us? Why have you never seen your own face in these dreams?”
Khadam hadn’t asked herself that in a long time. When she agreed to enter cryosleep, she was dedicated only to her final purpose. She was so certain that nothing would ever change her mind…
But now, so far from home, all that certainty also seemed distant. Less real. Less absolute. The Emperor’s questions made her own grow louder.
He exhaled, and all the streams of water twisted back into the pool, taking unnatural paths through the air.
“The truth is, your visions are inconsequential. They do not matter.”
Wrong, Khadam thought. He’s wrong about that.
The dams might not hold the scars forever. But if humanity had figured out how to harness the Light once, they could figure it out again. After the Herald of Ruin is gone. The visions were their last, greatest warning. A curse and a gift.
This is what Rodeiro had drilled into her. This is what she had always believed.
And yet, some small part of her couldn’t help but ask, How can I know for certain?
“The visions are more than you say,” Khadam said.
The Emperor crossed his arms in front of his bronze breastplate, making the leather straps creak. Twin lights shone on the armor, one from the afternoon sun, and one from the Scar, now slipping down the horizon.
“Explain.”
“The dreaming disease,” Khadam answered. “It comes from the visions.”
“Does it?”
“How else? My caretakers left Ranjing long before they were infected. My clan mates saved me from it. They created implants to block out the dreams.”
“And did it work?”
The words died on her lips. Khadam’s face fell, her neck heavy—not from the Emperor’s will, but from the utter chasm opening inside her heart.
The dream implants had worked. They did.
Until they didn’t.
She could still remember the day Rodeiro came to her, his veins only just starting to turn black. His normally exuberant voice dark and empty. “It’s time, Khadam,” he had said. “It’s time to begin your quest.”
No matter what they did, the disease came for them all.
“How did you know?”
The Emperor leaned forward, over the pool. His joints cracked like the branches of some great tree. “Beware the easy answers, Khadam. In desperate times, your kind loves to cling to simple beliefs. When you brush against the complexity of the world, you resort to simplifying everything with stories. No one is in control.
“It is the Light that afflicts you. Not some made-up disease. The Light unmakes you, because it is not of this universe. It has been killing us since the day we cut open the first scar. We were so hungry for its power, that we did not want to see the truth. Too long have we lived in the shadow of the light. Too long have we drank from its waters. And every time you touch the fountain, your curse deepens.”
The Emperor dipped his hand into the pool. Cupped the water, and drank, letting out a sigh of relief.
Wrong.
That’s what the Emperor was. Wrong and broken and trying to lead me astray from my path. But that didn’t make sense. Why would he go to such lengths to change my mind?
Khadam’s hands trembled. Not with rage, nor with fear, but from the feeling of losing everything she had ever believed. It was as if the stones under her feet were crumbling, and there was nothing left to hold on to.
She wanted to tell him how wrong he was. She wanted to push back on his lies, but instead she found herself running back through conversations from long ago. From before she went into the cold chamber. Too much that never made sense. Too often, told not to think about it. Focus on your quest, Khadam. Do not let them distract you.
She had never dared to question. There was too much at stake. She had never asked the one thing that always gnawed at her thoughts, What if we’re wrong?
Khadam was too shattered to speak, and the Emperor seemed to sense this. He turned his masked head, all those strange wires and cables shifting down the back of his neck as he looked down at his hands. His lips were crooked into not-quite a smile. A hint of emotion on his lips. A wistfulness, full of longing and regret.
“To a human,” the Emperor said. “Everything feels real in the moment you experience it. Every dream. Every thought. You have always had the power to conceptualize that which is not real. Indeed, that is how my Maker made me. He thought through all the impossibilities, thereby making me possible. Such a miraculous thing. Your greatest strength, and your greatest flaw.
“Like so many before you, you have been mislead by your dreams. You saw what you wanted to see, and did not stop to think if it was real. If the visions are mere deceit, or part of some grand, destructive ruse, or simply pure chance—that, I cannot say. But I can say that it doesn’t matter. You should have given up long ago. The universe is damned, and Poire is no Herald, nor of any consequence at all. The message is destruction, and it was delivered long ago. What, then, is the point of a messenger?”
Khadam’s legs were too heavy. She fell back, not bothering to slow herself. It was only luck that the mattress was there to catch her. She sank into it, sitting. Doubling over, and staring at the floor.
“Then let me kill him,” Khadam breathed. “If he doesn’t matter, let me do what I came for.”
A grim smile stretched across the Emperor’s face, his flawless skin barely wrinkling at all.
“You don’t give up often, do you?”
“Never.”
“When you join me, you will need that spirit. The path to ascension is taxing to say the least.”
“Where is he?”
“Another planet. Poire is tying up one last thread for me. In exchange for my keeping you here, he has agreed to bring me the Mirror.”
“What mirror?”
“The Mirror. The one my Maker built with Sen. The path between this universe, and the next. I can’t tell you how much work it took to build such a wonder. And then, before my Maker could ever test the damn thing, she betrayed him. My Maker was working on me at the same time, in secret. Emulating human consciousness was extremely forbidden, even in my time. When she informed the world that I existed, they locked up my Maker. And in his absence, she stole the Mirror.”
“And you sent a child, alone, to fetch this thing?”
“I thought you wanted him dead.”
“Of course I do, but…” Khadam trailed off.
She was here for one thing: to destroy the destroyer. She knew it didn’t make sense to feel offended, but still. He’s not a tool. He’s a child.
The Emperor spoke over her thoughts, “Sen’s creations will not kill a human. And the Swarm has been there for thousands of years, I doubt their machines are very operational.”
“Where?”
“You must forget him.” The Emperor’s voice was soothing. Almost sweet in its softness. A father, talking to his child. It made her want to scream. All that helpless rage, threatening to overwhelm her. Filling her veins, clawing at her throat.
“I came all this way.”
“You did. It is a feat of great wonder. You left everyone—everything—behind, forever, because you thought you could save us all. But what about you, Khadam? Who is going to save you?”
She shook her head. There was only one answer, and she had never felt the need to question it before. I am forfeit. This was her life’s grand purpose.
“This existence is ended, Khadam. But there is hope,” he said, “Consider that all we are capable of now, was once pure imagination. The gates, the dams, me. All this was once believed to be impossible. And all that you could become right now must seem, to you, impossible. Unless you can imagine otherwise.”
He reached out over the pool. The water in the pool and from the fountains reacted to his presence, vibrating and marching in waves.
“Imagine a new existence. Imagine rising to a higher level.”
He held out his hand.
“Join me, Khadam. Choose to be more than you are.”
But he did not make it a command. And with his words, Khadam felt a tension in her body release. All her joints, all her implants, suddenly under her control once more. Her hand felt suddenly light, and her fingers opened so easily.
The Emperor was giving her a choice. Or, at least, the illusion of one.
“You can stay here, and live your mortal life, chasing down whatever dreams a long-forgotten people once had. But I am offering you a life that no one has ever lived before.”
It was the way he spoke. Such certainty. Taking everything she believed about the visions, the Light, and the destroyer. And discarding them as if they were nothing more than primitive superstitions. As if she was the one stuck living in the wrong version of the truth. As if she were the machine, corrupted into madness.
What was true, and what was not? Was her quest truly made in vain?
Does he have the answers?
Does anyone?
He waited, the lower half of his face perfectly neutral, while she stared at his hand. Not moving her own. A different kind of heaviness had overtaken her. The seed of doubt grew its roots.
The Emperor His head turned to the side, as if hearing a sudden sound. His lips pressed tight, an expression she couldn’t read. He pulled his hand back, growling to himself.
“What now?” But the question was not directed at her.
Then, he turned back to her, saying quickly, “Think on what I’ve said. I will return. Until then, my servants will watch you.”
She didn’t know if he meant the cyran priests, or his nanites.
“Where are you going?” Khadam asked.
“My war has encountered an error.”
The Emperor left, and as his footsteps rumbled out of the room, Khadam felt the weight of her implants descend upon her once more. Damn him.
But, when that heavy door slammed shut, she refused to waste a single moment.
She set to work tearing her bedsheets and pieces of her own clothes into strips. Tying them together into a makeshift rope. There were no plants up here, but maybe she could convince the servants to bring some up for her “personal wellbeing,” and new clothes, too, so that she could have more material.
Even this act of defiance took its toll. She was exhausted just tying knots, but she kept at it until she heard a scraping sound coming up the stairs. Footsteps.
Khadam’s body was a lead weight, but she fought against it, sweating and grunting as she stumbled across the temple to hide her rope. Hoping the servants wouldn’t say anything about her newly-frayed clothes.
The lock on the door opened with an echoing crack, and a new servant shuffled into the open-air temple at the top of the Emperor’s Everthrone. This one had silver-green scales that glittered in the late sunlight, and he kept his head bowed as he brought a tray of food and drink to Khadam.
She did not have to feign her weakness. Sweat beaded down her forehead, and her body was soaked, cooled only by the ocean breeze.
“Divine One?” he asked, reverently. “I am instructed to watch you eat.”
Khadam was too tired to respond. And even if she could, she wanted him to think she was too weak.
“I can help, if you’d prefer,” he said.
The scales on his fingers were surprisingly soft, and pliable. Khadam hated every touch, but she did not resist. And when he left, and she was certain no one was watching her (or as certain as she could be in the Emperor’s temple), she groaned as she pulled herself back to work.
Days passed with her tying together the rope and stretching the threads as far as they could go without breaking. Listening for the scraping footsteps of the servants. When she heard them, she would rush to hide her tools and her rope in a gap in the wall, before clawing herself back to the mattress—racing to beat the crack of the lock, and the groan of the door.
At night, she slept. The visions were stronger than she ever remembered.
And his face fueled her. So much older than the Poire she knew. The way he looked at her, some great and terrible sadness in his eyes as he destroyed the universe and everything with it.
Khadam woke before the servants did.
One morning, before the sun peeked over the edge of the world and the stars still reigned supreme, she was pulling feathers out of her mattress. Mostly, the feathers were useless, but she thought if she could tie enough of their hollow shafts together-
The door groaned open. Her heart caught in her throat. She hadn’t heard the lock open, let alone the servant's footsteps. Khadam rushed to shove the rope under her mattress, but a voice stopped her.
“By my estimation,” the voice clicked from the shadow of the doorway, “You will descend 12.5 feet before that rope snaps. The resulting fall has a 98.8 percent chance to kill you instantly.”
In the darkness of the early morning, a pair of machine eyes, unlike any other construct in the universe, glowed with a soft, blue light.
“And the remaining 1.2 percent will result in a slow, painful, death.”
“Laykis,” Khadam gasped, a surging relief bringing a sudden sting to her eyes. “You’re alive.”
“Divine One,” the android inclined her head slightly. “Would you prefer a better way down?”