All the people of Cyre stared up at the sky. Crowds stopped in the streets, people threw open their windows, and dockworkers dropped their ropes and cargo, transfixed by the scar.
It was the size of a moon, stretched thin across the late afternoon sky. Rays of light speared out from the scar, stabbing out like tendrils of vines. Jagged and shimmering.
The sun was brighter, but it was unchanged. Only the scar - which had always been there, rising and falling over the horizons, barely changing its shape - now became something else. This was no slow change. The scar warped itself in flashes of light, and each flash revealed that it was growing larger. Tendrils of light spidering out, and cracking the void.
Astraticians in their high observatories worked themselves into a frenzy, attempting to draw and re-draw the scar according to their ancient charts and meticulous calculations. But the scar was changing too quickly. Even the fastest hand would miss the new details, flashing into being. Hairline fractures that rippled and glowed and suddenly became more.
What was the scar doing? What could this mean?
In this matter, even the most accomplished astratician, equipped with an array of delicate lenses and scopes and a horde of scholars-aspirants, could only guess.
The on-lookers, the scholars, the nobles and peasants, cyran and xeno, all stopped to stare up. Only the droids moved, unbothered by the change of light.
One lone cart sped through the avenues, and up the Via, dodging around onlookers and droids and xenos and pack animals who clogged up the roads.
Laykis sat in the middle, holding the reins in her hands. She maneuvered the device and all its tangled wires, as if she had done this a thousand times. Her fingers made dozens of slight movements, clicking and tapping and turning ever so gently over the controls, spurring the drudge onward.
Kirine was on her left, holding on to the edge of the cart. Everytime he spared a glance up at the sky, his face darkened with concern. And Poire was on the right, the mask hanging around his neck. Forgotten. Why should he wear it now? Nobody was looking at him.
It was hard to talk, with all the wind in their faces, for this cart had no top. It was a short cart, little more than a bench on gravity rails, yoked to a long-legged drudge. The whole contraption creaked noisily as they curved around buildings and through the uneven alleys.
Kirine gave directions by hand. Pointing ahead, or to the left, or up some side passage that would take them out of the undersides of the city.
Finally, they crossed a bridge, the drudge’s hooves clopping like gunshots on the hard stones. There were crowds of people leaning leaning at the bridge’s brick-and-mortar railing, as if they might get a better view of the sky from there. Parts of the scar flashed like lightning, but where lightning disappears, the scar left ghostly imprints of itself against the sky.
They passed by an ancient stone wall that must’ve wrapped around the whole city. Pieces of it were so overgrown with vines, it almost seemed like part of the land itself.
Then, the road smoothed out and the hills did too. There were fences here, and trees growing through the fences. Squares of acreage, with short, white houses and red-tile roofs sitting on each plot of land. Grape farms, mostly, with hundreds of lanes of vines growing over the gently sloping landscape.
“There!” Kirine shouted, pointing at one tall cast-iron gate that marked the entrance to some plot of land. Two flags rustled high in the breeze over the gate, both emblazoned with the symbol of the Cyran Empire.
There were guards standing by the gate, and they barely glanced at the cart as it powered through. They, too, were absorbed the flashing in the sky. It had nearly doubled in size.
Poire saw the first tent. Drab in color, though it was emblazoned with another symbol of the Empire. There were more of them, maybe hundreds more, marching alongside the road. Each of them, the same color, bearing that same symbol.
Soldiers stood outside, necks craned up at the sky. Even the officers and the sergeants of drill were staring, when they should’ve been shouting at the soldiers to get back to work.
“Has this happened before?” Poire shouted over the wind and the thunderous hooves of the drudge.
“No!” Kirine shouted back, “Not even since the founding of Cyre.”
He turned to Laykis. He wanted to ask her, if I leave Cyre, will it stop?
But how could she know?
Not even the Emperor knew what the scars were.
Beyond the tents, Poire could just make out the outlines of ships, resting in an open airfield. Human-made metal gleamed in the sunlight and the light from the scar. A haphazard mix of drones and larger frigates and, yes, another barge. This last one was dormant, the gleaming slopes rising like a small hill of human-made metal. The deeper they rode into the camp, the larger that hill seemed to grow.
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In the center of the camp, there was a gate. It sat on a huge pedestal of stone, and four concrete ramps rode up the pedestal, ending at the edges of the gate. Poire wondered briefly if the gate had been somehow moved out here somehow. No protective shell, and no pylons. Like all the others he had seen. The twin metal semicircles at the top of the gate were motionless.
At the bottom of the pedestal, a crowd of soldiers were standing around. Jostling, and yelling and shouting at each other.
An officer was standing at the center, shouting again and again, “Get back! Get back! We’re not going anywhere! Get back to your posts!”
As the cart slowed, Kirine stood up. His face was hard with disappointment. “They were supposed to tell them we were coming. Why isn’t it ready?”
Laykis slowed the cart, but Kirine told her to bring it through the middle of the crowd. At first, they yelled and refused to move, but slowly the soldiers turned around. Their eyes went first to the an-droid. Then to Kirine.
And then to Poire.
One by one, the crowd turned. And looked at him. And went silent. Their faces, painted with that same disbelieving awe.
“Halt!” the officer shouted at Laykis, “You’re not supposed to be here!”
Kirine’s face was a mask. He stood tall, with his scales glittering in the brightness of the sun and the scar. When he spoke, his voice mirrored the commanding tone of the officer’s.
“Why isn’t the gate open? Do you not see who I carry?”
The officer looked at Poire. Her eyes went wide. She spoke, without taking her eyes off Poire.
“But we don’t have orders to open the gate. Consul Vorpei’s not expecting anyone.”
A look flitted across Kirine’s face. A smile? Poire thought. But it was gone before it formed, and the Tribune was as rigid as a commanding officer. His hands were folded behind his back, and he spoke as if he expected to be obeyed.
“I have orders from the Emperor himself. Open the gate, soldier, or get me an officer who will.”
The officer, not knowing what else to do, snapped a salute, and ran up the ramp of the pedestal. There, they could see here communicating with the priests who were waiting up there, who had also been staring up at the scar.
“Get back!” Kirine shouted at the rest of the soldiers. And they did, forming a wide circle around the cart. All, staring. Kirine turned to Poire and said, “You don’t know how much power you have, until you’re about to lose it. I should have done this years ago.”
“You’re still going to go?”
“The signs could not be more obvious.” He gestured up at the sky. “Its as if the sky itself is telling me to go. Though I suspect the signs speak more to you, than to me.”
“Do you still think she’ll try to kill you?”
“I am certain. But I hoped, maybe, your presence would soften the attempt.”
Poire looked down at his hands. He could feel the pressure of Kirine’s unasked question weighing heavily on him. “I don’t know that I’ll be able to help you.”
He barked a laugh at that. “So it’s true what the poets say then. ‘Alone, I go, without the gods, before the world to stand. What need have I to fear great death? When mine is now at hand.’ Or something like that.”
“If he was here...”
“Your avian friend? Savior Divine, I must apologize. I didn’t mean to drive a wedge between you. I fear this is my fault, for asking too much. For having hope that my death might yet be, ah, delayed. But we should not wish to change the world, only ourselves.”
“There is no wedge,” Poire sniffed, “He has his task, and I have mine.
“Then what is Eolh doing on Cyre, exactly, then? If he’s going to try to talk to the Venerate about some kind of deal with Gaiam, well… I wish him luck. But even if Fortunae herself descended from the heavens and blessed him, I doubt it would help him.”
“Why is that?”
“We have been fed the tales of our conquests since birth. We have been poisoned by our own glory. When your great, great grandfather was the grand champion, what must you be then? It is hard not to think yourself somehow better. And when you paint your enemies in foul stereotypes, it’s even harder to wash that paint away. Old Cyre is heavy-handed with the paint, if you understand me.”
“But they’re just people. All of you, all the avians. Why go to war, when you could have peace?”
“Some might agree with you, Divine One. But I fear we are a rare breed, and some of us are about to become even rarer,” He smiled, gesturing at himself.
“Besides, the commonfolk love a good stereotype. A simple message, easily swallowed. We are better than them. Wouldn’t you prefer to hear that? Isn’t that so much easier than trying, and failing, and trying again, to actually better yourself?”
It was Nuwa had said, too. There are no shortcuts, Poire. It doesn’t matter where you stand, even if you stand in last place. As long as you keep trying… How many night had he dreamed that he didn’t have to try?
Even when he first woke up, on Gaiam. His first instinct had been to find someone else to do the trying for him.
The officer was running back. Behind her, the priests had taken up their positions, and the gate was starting to hum into motion.
Kirine intercepted the Officer, who bowed before him, begging his apologies. “We’ll have the gate up and running in a moment, Tribune.” She said. “Any idea what’s happening in the sky?”
Kirine was shaking hands with the Officer, telling her, “It’s alright. There’s nothing to worry about. Stand at your duty.” His words seemed to inspire the soldiers. Was he always this way? Or was that just the mark of death, boosting his life at the very last moment?
As Kirine talked to the soldiers, Laykis climbed out of the cart, and offered her hand to Poire. He almost didn’t take it.
“What’s wrong, Child of the Stars?”
Poire bit his lip, thinking hard. “Why didn’t he come with us?”
“The Unfinished Book speaks of guardians that come and go.”
“Do you think he’ll be safe? What if the scar… what if something happens?”
She cast a glance up at the sky. As if calculating something about the scar.
“I fear the longer you stay here, the less safe it becomes for all of us. Come, Child. They’re waiting for us.”
Laykis ushered him onto the gate, where Kirine was already waiting.
Now, there were more priests surrounding the gate. They looked identical to the ones he had seen up at the Emperor’s Statue. They stood at the corners, off the edge of that great metal disc, chanting their holy words. Somewhere in all that droning, Poire recognized the command words, spoken again and again.
The arms of the gate began to rise. They made their first slow circle, and then another, and another. Gaining in speed, that whooping hum turning into a high-pitched whine.
Poire could hear one of the priests, a withered, old cyran, chanting a series of numbers and letters and symbols, beneath all the other voices.
Coordinates.
Poire made sure his wrist implant recorded all of it.
And then, the gate took them.