There was nothing the light did not touch.
With each step down the sides of that great pyramid, Poire could feel it growing stronger. At first, the thrum of the pyramid set his teeth on edge, but now it felt like it was drilling into every bone in his body.
Strangely, there was no pain. Instead, a calmness welled inside him. Perhaps, only because he was sure of his path: get down to the Mirror.
And he could see it.
The pyramid was inverted, its nadir jutting into a Scar, like a knife sticking into a stream. But instead of a metal point, there was an open gap at the bottom of the pyramid, and a glass-and-metal structure was installed over that gap. The structure was all hard metal edges and flat planes of glass (or something like glass), through which Poire could see the furious lightning of the Scar flashing and rolling far below. A white mist leaked out of the base of the glass structure - the Mirror - and though the mist had no form, streaks of prismatic light shone through it, sometimes flickering, sometimes moving slow like swirls of heated magma.
And all the while, the pulse of the Light drew him closer. Even gravity was weak down here, and as the pyramid offered platforms for his feet, Poire simply let himself fall into its depths, leaving a trail of metal platforms in his wake, so the others could follow.
When he stopped to wait for them, Poire noticed he could see his veins through his skin. The veins were glowing. Why? He wondered. But instead of fear, he felt a growing anxiety—an urge to run forward and find out.
Sen will know, he thought.
He hoped.
Before the others could catch up, and ask why his blood was illuminated through his skin, Poire impulsed his armor to thin out and slide over his skin so that it covered everything below his neck.
Eolh landed first, almost floating down with his wings outstretched. He nodded down at the nadir, and the glass polygon. “What is that thing?” Eolh asked.
“It’s a kind of door,” Poire said. “To travel somewhere else.”
“Like a gate?”
“Yes, and no. The gates only fold our universe. That thing down there bridges the divide between universes. It leads to another reality, nothing like ours. Step through, and you’ll find the laws of nature have all changed. Over there, the basic rules of physics don’t apply. Even the geometries might be different.”
“And this thing is, uh, common among your people?” Eolh asked.
Poire shook his head, saying, “It’s hard to explain.”
It wasn’t just hard to explain. It was damn near impossible.
Back in the Conclave, Poire had always taken it for granted that all children had to take the tests. It always began with lying down into the Machine, counting backward from one hundred, and then…
And then, waking up in a world with rules that made no sense. He had taken the test dozens of times and only crossed over seven. The older he got, the more his caretakers asked of him. If he refused, they only waited. And asked again.
But Poire never passed the tests. Never gave them what they wanted. Once, he found himself in a place so incomprehensible, he couldn’t recall anything from his experience, other than sensations of taste and deeply uncomfortable touch. More often, he found himself on a world where distance had no meaning, and a single blade of grass might be as long as a galaxy one moment, and then as small as an atom. The second time he went, his caretakers pulled him out after only a few seconds. Poire woke up with with long, jagged cuts all over his body, covered head-to-toe in his own blood. The caretakers rushed in with towels and medical supplies. He would never forget how the towels all turned red.
Poire knew some of his cohort were more successful. Some of them succeeded in staying for long hours, and had even brought back otherworldly objects from those universes, though Poire had never seen one. Supposedly, they crumbled the moment they were exposed to the air.
But Poire never did. He barely made it past five minutes.
So who was he to say what this Mirror was, or where it led?
“Poire.” The voice sang the walls of the pyramid, from above and below, and from the air itself. And yet none of the others reacted.
“Did you hear her?” Poire said.
“Who?”
“I can see you so clearly. Why?”
“Sen?” Poire said, and raised his voice. “Sen, where are you?”
“It’s almost like you’re right here, standing in front of me. I don’t understand.”
Poire turned his gaze towards the Mirror. The liquid metal on his soles kissed the metal of the pyramid, barely making a sound as he raced down towards the nadir. The pyramid’s interlocking plates flexed and rearranged themselves to become stairs for his feet. There was a wild energy in the Mirror, and as he approached he saw the shapes of another reality, reflected through the glass. Objects that had no meaning, structures that could not be, warped and whispered to the edge of the glass, and pulled away like some hideous, living thing. Held back only by a man-made building, no larger than a house, that had been abandoned thousands of years ago.
Or is it abandoned?
For Sen was even now speaking to him, and though the words only echoed in Poire’s mind, her voice made the whole planet seem to brighten.
“If only I had known how bright you would be. Would I have stayed?”
A weightlessness had overtaken him, making his movements easy and oddly strong. Had Sen changed the gravity at the hollow core of this hollow planet? It felt like, somehow, even the air down here was easier to breathe. He could feel the thrum of the light now, a steady, rising hum that sang louder than his heart could beat.
Poire rushed to the side of the pyramid, not daring to touch the glass of the Mirror.
“Does it matter?” Sen was saying, “Nothing will ever change again. We have had our moment between the stars.”
“What do you mean?” Poire said, and his voice sounded so small against the thrum of the Light.
“Is she talking to you?” Eolh said. Somehow, his voice seemed to cut through the noise. He was close behind Poire with the others in tow. Yarsi was hiding in the corvani’s shadow, her eyes wide as she watched Poire with fearful awe. Agraneia was staring up at the Mirror, a strange look on her face. Like she was listening to something.
Poire turned back to Eolh, “Sen can see me. I think she went through the Mirror.”
“Can she see us?” Eolh asked. And then, to find out, he started waving his feathered hand up at the Mirror, as if to say hello. Poire put a hand on his arm, and pulled it down. More afraid that the corvani might touch something he shouldn’t than anything else.
“I don’t think she can see us,” Poire said. “I don’t even know if she can hear me.”
“Oh,” Eolh said, and then took another glance around the Mirror, craning his neck to see the top of the pyramid. “This place isn’t safe, is it?”
Everything about this place spoke to a sense of recklessness, of rushed desperation. As if in creating this place, Sen had thrown all caution to the winds, and had made a world that served only one purpose.
“I don’t think Sen was concerned with safety when she built this place,” Poire said, and quietly added, “Not even for herself.”
The space inside the Mirror did not make sense. As he approached, the mist seemed to clear and he could see across that house-sized structure. Instead of looking through to the other side, it was as if he was standing on a dizzying height, and could see for hundreds of miles. Through the Mirror, there were mountains of mist, surging and crackling with energy, blanketing a whole landscape of shapes and structures that should not exist in such a small place.
Every time he turned his head, the shapes seemed to move, but never in a predictable way. The Scar distorted time and distance, connecting points between universes in ways that Poire’s mind could not accept. His eyes could not focus, and the longer he stared, the louder the thrum of the Light seemed to grow.
Mist curled around Poire’s ankles, his wrists, cold but not wet. Tendrils of clouds wound around his limbs, as if it knew him. Poire reached out, brushed his fingertips on the glass of the Mirror.
Poire could see the mountains and the sky beyond. Only, they weren’t separate. They connected at the gray horizon, which rolled like the waves of an angry ocean. The sky was tinged with red, and spears of rock, or something like rock, grew out of the ground, rising higher and higher before they cracked and fell up into the sky.
And in the shadow of the Horizon, as if she was standing a thousand miles away, there was Sen. Then, she turned to face Poire, and the universe changed shape, until she was standing right before him. She looked old, maybe fifty or sixty years by ancient reckoning, but there was an ancient exhaustion in the way she moved. Recognition lit up her eyes.
“You look nothing like your maker.” The gray light of the sky pulsed with her words. Parallel bands of something (not clouds, but like clouds) rolled slowly overhead.
“Who?” Poire said.
“Auster,” Sen said. “He dreamed of you for so long. And his dream killed him. Oh, but you are beautiful to see, Poire. I haven’t seen a child—a human child—in so many long years. I had forgotten what you looked like.”
Sen’s face was framed with black hair that looked like it had grown out on accident. Age wrinkled the corners of her mouth, which was parted slightly as she awed at Poire, as if she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her body was covered in something that might’ve been a black caftan, or a robe, but it had started to change. Polygon shapes of the fabric were turning the wrong color, or no color at all as they broke down in a universe made up of the wrong rules, and glittering, black veins crawled over the exposed parts of her skin.
There was something like mud that frothed at Sen’s feet, rising weakly up her ankles and falling back down again. Not a living thing, but still moving. And overhead, the parallel bands of ‘clouds’ - now, perfect, jagged chevrons, rolled faster into the distance, covering Sen with flickering shadow and light.
But not Poire.
“We don’t have much time,” Sen said.
“How come I can see you?”
“It’s madness, isn’t it?” Sen said, raising her arms to gesture at everything. A chunk of her left arm wavered in and out of existence, like it hadn’t been fully rendered in this world, but Sen didn’t seem to notice. Or to care. “When I came through, I had hoped it would make sense. That anything would make sense. I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but it’s only getting worse. The longer I look, the less I can see. Except for you.”
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“You know who I am?”
“Oh, is this our first meeting? Forgive me. It’s hard to keep track of these things, over here. Time doesn’t work the same. Yes, I know who you are. The one we all dreamed about, though in our visions you were never so young.”
“I heard your voice,” Poire said. “I’ve been listening to you for a long time.”
“Oh, have you?”
“But I don’t know anything about you.”
“Auster never mentioned me?” She said, sounding hurt.
“I never knew him. I saw him, I think, talking to Director Yovan.”
“But he never came to you. No, he wouldn’t. Auster always believed in secrecy. It kept him safe, until it didn’t.” Another rushing sigh, as she summoned the will to explain herself. “My name is Sen. Or at least, I was called Sen back when there were still people to call me things. I specialized in gravitational architecture, before I met Emorynn.”
“You knew the First Prophet?”
“She had a vision. I am the one who brought it to life. Emorynn dreamed of the first gate, and no one listened to her. But then she found me, and she showed me her, ah, scribbling. And I realized she was right. Tell me, Poire, do they really teach you so little in that Conclave of yours? How did you fair after you left?”
“I never left,” Poire said. “I was too young.”
“So you never saw anything beyond your home? They didn’t tell you anything?”
An old, painful anger rose to Poire’s lips. He pressed his lips together.
Sen breathed in long, ragged breath, and nodded as if she understood. “Fine. Then I will do it. We owe you this much, at least, though you deserve so much more.”
The distant horizon had changed its shape—no longer a flat line, but sloping into a gentle, upward curve. Sen’s eyes lifted up to the sky, where the spears of rock raced towards the sky, and where they touched the bands of clouds, the rock exploded and hung in the sky, shattering into fractal patterns that seemed to ebb and flow. Like debris on the surface of a windswept lake.
Sen returned her attention to Poire.
“We knew the Scars were opening. We knew it was the end of all things. You should know, Poire, that Emorynn did everything she could. She listened, day and night, and I wonder if it was the Scars that drove her mad, or the desperate hope that we could do something about it. She said she could hear something on the other side. So, we built the Mirror.”
“This Mirror?”
“The very same. We weren’t sure if it would work. But we were desperate. The core worlds were gone and the Swarm was growing. But Emorynn went through, against all our advice. And she never came back. With Emorynn gone, the hope was lost, and unity began to dissolve. But Auster never gave up. I kept the dams running because of him, because he thought he saw a way to save humanity.”
“From the Swarm?”
“The Swarm! What do I care about the Swarm? We created the Swarm.”
“Then what?”
“The Light. It was gathering its strength. It carved the Scars, Poire. It infected us with this disease,” she gestured at herself, her arm still flickering in and out of existence, her clothes more tattered and broken than before. Poire could see the black veins running down her torso. “The Light hungers eternal. I tried to close the Scars. To reverse them. But the laws of reality were against me. And Auster... He never stopped working. His passion burned brighter than any star. I saw him less and less over the years after Emorynn left.”
“Did you ever hear from her again?”
“Those who go over never come back,” Sen said, a note of bitterness in her voice.
Poire knew that wasn’t true. Not entirely. He himself had been over, but never very far. And his caretakers watched him, every step of the way, waiting to pull him back in. He couldn’t imagine being the first to go through. How lost she must have been. How painful her end…
“I worked in vain. I waited, in vain. I lived, not to save humanity, but in the hope that Auster would see the truth. And that he would come back to me. He did, more than once. I made this world a paradise—the last paradise. And he gave me these alien progeny of his, to keep me company. It was his promise that he would return. So, I upheld this world, that Auster and I might at least be together while everything else fell apart. But even after all these years, when the dams began to fall, he refused to give up. And thus, you.”
She didn’t spit it, but Poire could feel her hatred. A burning, fiery anger that had smoldered for thousands of years. He winced, but did not look away.
And then, she let it out in one long, aching sigh. “I do not hate you, Poire. I have shouldered this burden for millenia, knowing that I was the last of my kind. You didn’t ask for this. Neither did I. I held on for so long. Hoping that I was wrong. Time eats you in places you didn’t know even existed. Even my children, all these xenos and their rough scales and beautiful minds, even they could not hold back the endless crush of time. I do not hate you. I pity you. Because now it is your turn.”
“My turn?”
“You will run from death. Just like I did. And you will wait for nothing. One day, you might decide that you can wait no longer. When that day came for me, I went to the Old Grid. I turned it on, for the first time in ten thousand years. I knew it would attract the Sovereign’s attention. I knew it would be my end. But I had to find him. Auster. I saw his body floating through the void. Cold, and alone, just like me. I did not weep, for I have forgotten how. Instead, I shut down the Grid, and I came home. And I turned on the Mirror. I knew it would damn this world, and all of my xeno children. But what other reason did I have? Why should I hold on to nothing? I wanted to see what destroyed us. I wanted to know. So I threw myself into the other side. And though I have been here only a moment, you suddenly reveal yourself.”
“Suddenly? It’s been 2000 years since you disabled the Grid.”
“Is that so? Everything is so wrong over here. I have been in this universe only a brief moment. And already,” she lifted a hand to her face, and for a moment both blinked out of existence, and Poire could see the jagged tears of her neck, as if something had ripped her head off her body. There was no blood, only a glittering blackness and ash that crumbled up into the air. Her hand passed, and her head flickered back into being, “It is pure agony.”
Poire understood all too well. He pushed away the memories of his childhood, and all those tests. Even the best test takers in his cohort agreed: to go over was worse than death.
“But if you are here,” Sen said, “Then my world must still stand.”
“There are machines here. They’re caught in your light.”
“My light?” she said.
“You saved us. You saved your people.”
“Hm,” she said. “I have heard whispers. Prayers made, in my name. Perhaps…”
Her attention was brought up. The bands of clouds had morphed into something else now, had separated into thousands of black specks, moving like staticy clouds of insects. Mesmerizing as they covered the sky in ever-shifting patterns. And high above them, a hundred miles, or a hundred lightyears away (impossible to tell), something was descending from the sky. It almost looked like a city, or a fortress, hanging upside down.
It glowed with a dull, gray light.
“Why was I born?” Poire asked.
Sen slowly lowered her gaze back to him. Her eyes flashed, almost vibrating like some odd glitch from a poorly-designed virtual sim.
“The Light is alive,” Sen said. “Did you know that? All that mist. Some think even the disease is a part of that life, like roots on a tree. Emorynn said that it used to speak to us.”
“The Light?”
“Yes. In visions, it showed her things. It showed all of us things that it could not know. Death. Destruction. Our future. We were so addicted to its power, we couldn’t think of any other way to save ourselves. Emorynn was poisoned by these dreams. She thought, because she could see the future, she could also find the way out. And my sweet Auster, even he couldn’t let it go. To use the Light against itself, that was his grand idea. Perhaps, he thought, that if he could create you the Light might recognize you as its own.”
“Wait,” Poire said. “I am made of the Light?”
“You were born of it. Look,” she gestured at Poire.
Only, when he looked down at his body, he was startled to see nothing, but a glowing brightness. Only the faintest shape of his hands were visible.
“Building blocks from another universe. Can you imagine how difficult that was? But Auster found a way. He was truly beyond brilliance. I can’t guess how long it took him to figure out how to recreate our genome using only the Light. Tens of thousands of biologists helped him, across hundreds of hidden facilities. Conclaves, he called them. How many died before they ever tasted life? But here you are. Alive.”
“Wait. Does that mean I am made of Light?”
Then, what does that make me? Poire wondered. Am I human?
“You were the answer to all our prayers,” Sen said. “You and your cohorts were so precious, and so fragile, you could not be born in our existence. Your womb was the place where this universe touches another. A chasm. Auster told me he liked to guide each and every one of your births, so that you would not be alone.”
“What happened to him?”
“The same thing that happened to all who grow careless. His projects, his Conclaves were hidden. But Auster would not heed the signs that the Sovereign was watching. We built it, the Sovereign, to help us you know. To save the universe,” she said with such caustic spite that her whole body flickered, becoming all at once a set of slender, black lines, an oversized image of herself, and a collection of colors that Poire couldn’t interpret, before she flickered back into her body.
“The Sovereign went awry, to put it simply. It still thinks it is saving the universe… by cleansing it of every last human. That’s why I hid the Mirror inside my planet, that the Swarm might never find it.”
“How do I stop it? The Swarm, the Light, the Scars. How do I save everyone?”
“Save everyone?” Sen, taken aback, moved away from Poire. High above, the gray light far above the clouds (or insects or whatever they were) thundered and rolled with all the majesty of the heavens. “You think you can save anyone? Don’t ask me.”
“But-”
“I’m afraid, Poire, that I am more lost than you. Perhaps you shouldn’t have come here at all.”
“You are the only one who knows. You are the last one.”
“I came here to die, Poire. When I found Auster, frozen and lifeless, my life ended. I loved him, not just because he was mine, but because he was all I had left. I went through the Mirror, not because I saw hope, but because I sought release from this endless torment. Now, no one remains but you, Poire.”
“No.”
“No? Do not tell me that machine is still around-”
“The Emperor?.”
“A fool who calls himself king. He counts for so little. More lost than his creator.”
“There’s someone else. A coldsmith. She was in cryostasis.”
“Alive?”
“Alive,” Poire said.
“Incred-” Sen started to say, and then flickered out of existence. All the ground beneath her feet changed, becoming a black, rushing tide streaked with stars. The tide pulled out, revealing a hard, obsidian surface, perfect and flat and infinite.
“Sen?” Poire said.
No response.
His breath quickened. Poire, alone, shouted, “Sen?”
He looked up, and saw the clouds of insects stretching up into the sky, leaving behind trails like smears of ink falling in reverse. Millions of them, racing towards that grim, gray light in the sky. The fortress city in all its majesty loomed larger than any sun or nearby moon, and only now could Poire see all its intricate detail. Parapets and towers and columns lined the walls that dotted the mazes of its ramparts. The walls, the buildings (are those buildings or something else?) were carved with myriad lines that made endless geometric patterns on every surface. Only, the lines refused to stay still. And the longer he stared-
“-always continue to amaze me,” Sen’s voice suddenly cut back in. The ground flickered into shape, bringing Sen with it. She was missing her right arm, and half her head was gone, but she spoke as if she didn’t notice. “The sheer force of will alone. Incredible.”
Poire shook himself, willing himself back into the moment. What was that?
And sen was asking about Khadam. “What does this new human think of you?”
“Oh. She says…” Poire hesitated.
“Time is short, Poire,” Sen said.
“She says I am the Herald of Ruin,” Poire blurted. “That I am sent to destroy everything.”
“Ah.”
“But I don’t want to destroy anything. I… There are others who say the opposite. They call me Savior, and they think I’m a god.”
“The xenos? Superstitious people, heed them not. The xenos get so wrapped up in their myths. A desire becomes a story becomes a prophecy, this is the way for all sapient beings. And the xenos tell such wonderful stories , but they are just that—stories.”
“Not just the xenos. There is a construct who says it too. She was made by a human.”
“Oh?” Sen said, doubtfully, “Which human?”
Poire wracked his thoughts. Trying to remember what Laykis had told him. “He was called Tython.”
The silence went on for so long that Poire thought he had lost Sen once more. But she was still standing there, pensive and dark.
At length, Sen said,“There is a name I have not heard in a long time.”
“You know him?”
“It changes nothing. You were created to save us. And Auster came so close. But the Light is beyond our reach. It is connected in ways we cannot fathom. And it still tears at the fabric of our universe. You are too late.”
“Maybe we can stop it. If I am made of the Light-”
“No,” she said viciously, “You don’t understand. Turn back. Leave me to my death.”
But Poire would not back down. He was stronger than this. He had come this far, and he had left so much death in his wake. Sen could give up, but he wouldn’t. He gripped his hands into fists, and his heart hammered in his chest.
“Help me,” Poire said. “Tell me what you know.”
Slowly, Sen said, “Are you sure?”
“I want nothing more.”
“When the Sovereign decided to destroy humankind, it did not do so without reason. The Light from the Scars is more destructive than anything humanity could create. And who were the only beings with the power to harness that destruction?”
“Us.”
“Us,” Sen agreed. “The Sovereign sought to prevent a deeper catastrophe by obliterating us. And, in a way, it was right to do so. We built this Mirror, and it can cause only grief. It contains a Scar within, and yet, one day this Mirror will fail. And the Scar, contained for so long, will expand far more rapidly than ever before. But we made a more dangerous creation than even this. The Light lives in you. It has been growing, all these long, forgotten years. Even while you slept, its hunger grew. Contained only by your life. And one day, that hunger will escape…”
“What are you saying?”
“The visions have only ever shown us the truth. Your death will bring ruin to everything.”
“No,” Poire shook his head. “No, there must be a way to undo this. You have to help me-”
“I can only help you accept what fate has given you,” she said. “For it has given you ruin. And there is nothing you can do.”
“No!” Poire shouted, and the whole universe seemed to shake. He caught a glimpse of Sen snapping her head up to look at the sky, where the city fortress erupted with flashes of light. Becoming a steady brilliant light. A gray-white line shot down from the heavens, slicing down through the ground, through this planet and on, forever, across the universe.
Everything went white.
Then, reality snapped back into focus. Poire was standing at the nadir of the pyramid, his hands pulling away from the glass. He felt outrageously alive, as if he was living all his life in a single moment. And then, it subsided, leaving a hungering emptiness in his core.
“Fledge?” Eolh was saying, as if time had not passed at all. “Fledge, where did you go?”