Lily stood on the ruined wall, looking down onto what once was a street. She could see the man in her mind walking through the street below and tried to think of his name. She felt him, faintly, lingering in a back corner of her mind. He had been there since she found the light. How long had she been in the darkness? The surrounding ruins brought back shadowy memories. She had overseen a farm on the outskirts of the city. It had been a human city once, their capital, and then it had been a Shu city. And she had farmed the humans and other livestock. Sometimes, when space was tight, she had mixed some of her humans with the pigs. Population control was hard since all of her animals kept breeding. It may have been the hormones and other pharmaceuticals they used to stimulate them for their evolution.

It usually wasn’t a problem since the Shu empire needed a large supply of food and what didn’t go to the empire was processed and fed back to the livestock. Human, beef, and pork were mixed as needed. Lily tried to remember how she had come to oversee this operation and how, later, she had found herself fighting for her life alongside her Shu followers. She was Shu, wasn’t she? She served Jode. That name had never left her, even during the years of darkness. She shuddered under her filthy shirt. It felt as though she had woken up in these ruins, but knew that was not the case. She had traveled a great distance. She had fought her way to the surface, clawing and tearing through stone and steel until she grasped the source of ONUS and forced her way through the destroyed tunnels to the surface. The blowing sands of a desert met her. The shattered remains of city walls and ruined towers reached through the sand in some places, but she could find nothing left of the place to tell her where it was. How long ago had that been? How long had she walked?

There were villages along the way, filled with the livestock she once raised. The humans were mostly sickly, and none were older than a few decades. She wandered for what felt like years, trying to remember, mystified by the humans that recoiled from her. It took a long time for her to discover the use of her tongue and to understand the human speech. It was something like the old language, but primitive. She took what she needed from the villages. Food, livestock, or when that was not available, the humans themselves. They did not taste as good as beef, but it was better than starving. Human flesh had always been a last resort. Jode consumed her thoughts. He was a dim face that drove her forward toward… what? When her thoughts finally cleared, she felt a bond in the back of her mind, though she could not name the face she saw. She felt the direction of this bond pulling her on. Like an arrow in her mind.

And now, standing among the ruins of another ancient city, she could finally see him in her mind’s eye. He was Shen while she was something more. Something evolved, neither Shu nor Shen. She commanded power beyond anything they dreamed of, if only she could remember how to connect and craft the ONUS source. She could make outlines that used to be foundations and imagined the tall brown grass and sand as the street it used to be.

Saeb, that was his name. He had walked down the middle of this street. He stepped through rubble and around scorched vehicles. She felt a great rage barrel into her, but still, she watched. He kneeled in front of a Shu warrior. A blue-haired Shen woman stood watch over him, her battle cloak strapped tightly around her, blue-tinted blade held at the ready. Abruptly, Saeb straitened, yanking the Shu to his knees by his dark hair. The warrior screamed as Saeb drove his totem blade through his chest. Blood erupted from the mortal wound, and Saeb dropped the body without another thought. This Shen hunts Jode, she thought. He hunts me. But that was long ago in a different world. A world this Shen burned. I remember watching him here, she thought, and I remember the Burn. He may have destroyed the others, but I am still here. And I know where he is. And now I will hunt him.

***

Saeb opened his eyes with a start, still mumbling, words from his dream echoing into the waking world.

“Who’s back?” Tara asked.

“What?” Saeb asked.

“You were dozing in the sun, you said someone was back,” she said.

“Lily’s back,” he said. The words came out of his mouth before he could stop them. The crisp ocean breeze washed over him as he sat up on the blanket. He took a deep breath of salty air, gazing across the Isle of Song at the setting sun. He rose slowly and sat beside Tara on a driftwood log. She rested her bare shoulder against his thin white sleeve. Sitting with Tara came as naturally to him as pulling in that deep breath of ocean air. How many years had passed? He wondered how contaminated the air was now, or the log they rested on. Maybe enough years had gone by for the earth to heal. He doubted it. Reaching for a number in his mind didn’t help. Ten, twenty, or a hundred years. It was all a blur since the Burn. He heard Shen shuffling along the trail behind him, making their way to the Pool of Consciousness. A voice inside of him cautioned that something wasn’t right, that he shouldn’t be here, but he brushed it aside. Surely it was the shock of waking to find Lily’s presence filling the hole she had left.

“Lily is back,” he paused for a moment and inhaled the salty air once again, “I can feel her. I saw her in the ruins of Baindel, the human capital. Some structures still cling to their forms there.” He did not mention her memory of him, of his killing during the last days of the Origin War. “She is looking for me.” Hunting me, he thought.

“But she’s been dead for years. Dead after the Burn. How could she come back?”

“I don’t know.” Saeb turned to Tara and looked at her smooth skin. She was a survivor, like him. A Shen who still possessed all her abilities, who did not die in the Burn or the aftermath. Survivors were becoming rare. The humans living in the wastelands beyond the Isle of Song know her as the goddess of compassion. They pray to her. He had even heard some newborn Shen describe the primitive temples they built to honor her, the goddess of compassion.

Her song of compassion stretched across the earth as she sang beside the Pool of Consciousness. And she had forgiven him, despite losing her bonded in the war. There was no other Shen like Ann. He closed his eyes and sighed. Tara, he thought, not Ann.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“I am.”

Are they the same Shen, a voice whispered to him. Voices again, surely this was a sign of Lily’s return. She infected him with her madness. He had not slept soundly for days and had not known why until this moment. The sleep he managed to get was filled with fever dreams. Darean and glimpses of faces and places he did not know. Of battles, he had not fought. Or had he? The voice whispered again. He looked around, but only Tara was close to him. The other Shen walked along the dirt path toward or away from the Pool of Consciousness at the heart of the Isle. He could still picture where the research campus buildings had been, but the contour lines in the thick palm trees and vegetation were disappearing more every year.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“I think she was trapped in her underground compound outside of Kaedara,” Saeb said, staring out over the ocean once again. He remembered the streets of the Shu capital and the bloody siege his forces had laid on the great city before the Burn. “The floods must have washed over it, that is why I could not sense her. The water must have been deep to block our bond. But now, the waters are receding and she must have discovered a way out. I think she survived off the flesh of her followers.” He shut his eyes, imagining Lily, his Lily, as she fed on the flesh of her Nostshi followers. It was more than imagination, he knew, and he recoiled from the memories he saw through their bond. Her dark hair matted with blood and her rose-colored eyes feverish with hunger as she groped through the darkness.

“And she clawed her way up to the surface?” Tara asked.

“She must have, I see fragmented memories and thoughts, but they’re not coherent.” Except for the memory of him in Baindel, making his way down the street as they took the city. He said, “I think her madness is even worse.”

“Can you imagine surviving underground all these years?” Tara said.

Saeb shook his head, unable to speak. The whisper in his mind was growing louder, proclaiming that this wasn’t right. Lily’s madness must be worse if he was already grappling with his own mind. He would not let her drag him back into the darkness. He shuddered at the thought of Lily operating the human farms around Baindel, and he grieved for his lost time and the cruelty he had dealt others. Even with Sarathen and Braiden on that boat, he thought he would never come out of the darkness to reclaim himself. He studied Tara’s face, bright yellow eyes, and perfect skin. The image of a red-headed woman with freckles and green eyes sprang to mind. Ann, he thought. Is this Ann?

“Where is she now?” Tara asked.

“I don’t know,” Saeb said, shaking his head to clear his thoughts, “but she’s searching for me. She can feel our bond. I’m putting everyone in danger on the Isle.”

Tara looked at him sharply then. “What are you saying?”

“I have to leave.”

“You can’t leave. We’re just figuring out how to live. We just discovered Haven. And Shen are being reborn. The newborns need our help. We don’t know why their abilities are fractured. Why can women only touch thought and men only emotion? And why do they go insane when they are young? How do we save them? We’re learning Saeb. We’re singing the world back into existence and calling the Shen to us. You’re doing good here.”

Saeb clenched his jaw, thinking about the Burn. Millions dead, millions more later. Violence and blood lust. His power to channel the source code was overwhelming. Other wars came to mind and his vision blurred. He closed his eyes again. A hot pain pierced his skull as primitive weapons, swords, axes, and armor fluttered across his eyelids. After that, projectile weapons instead of energy. So many lives lived and so much pain. He was born, he fought, and he died. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth.

“Not my thoughts. Not mine,” he said.

“What?” Tara leaned in close. “Saeb, are you ok? What is it? Is it Lily?” She put her arm around his shoulders to steady him before he slid from the log into the sand.

“I don’t feel well,” he said, raising his palms to his closed eyes. “The light is so bright.” Spots danced in his vision. “I have to find Darean, he has Ann.”

“Darean is dead and gone along with Jode, we’ve discussed this. Do you think they’re reborn? Do Shu go to Haven?”

“I don’t know, I need to lie down, I—”

“Who is Ann?”

Jack lowered his hands as Saeb’s consciousness became his. Saeb’s thoughts fell to a murmur in the back of his mind, but the words that escaped his lips still came of their own accord.

“I can’t put you in danger,” Jack said, with Saeb’s voice. He remembered this conversation now. Not exactly what was said, but he remembered the dread. Talking about Lily was hard, but with Tara, it was nearly impossible for him to find words. Part of him wanted to flee without telling her, to keep her safe. At least, that’s what he told himself. Jack wondered if this was part of the journal trials. Did he have to navigate this conversation? Or make better decisions this time?

“I can’t put anyone in danger,” he said. “Never again. I burned the world for what they did to Lily.”

The horror filled him, finally becoming real. His stomach clenched, and he felt like he was going to be sick. The annihilation as it reigned down from the satellites above was too much to comprehend. How could he go on when so many had perished? How could he justify any part of his life? But if he ended it now, he would go to Haven. He didn’t deserve a second chance. He closed his eyes and met the glare of the dead as their twisted corpses floated, floodwaters sweeping them out of the city and into the newly formed seas.

“It wasn’t just you,” Tara said. “It took many people to fight that war.”

“But it only took one to start the Burn,” he croaked, sliding from the log to kneel in the sand. He felt Tara’s hand on his shoulder and didn’t pull away. Tara was the only one that had been kind to him, even though her bonded died in the war, maybe even the Burn. He didn’t deserve kindness. He studied her from the corner of his eye. Was Tara Ann? It could be. But where Tara was gentle, Ann was stern. But living another life surely changed you. Saeb screamed inside of him at the thought of rebirth. He didn’t deserve to be reborn, didn’t deserve another life. The only thing he deserved was annihilation.

“You can’t run,” Tara said.

“But she’ll destroy the island.” He remembered saying that the first time.

Tara regarded him and then let her gaze sweep across the island and the subdued Shen around them, walking through the sand. They were two Shen of a handful that had survived the Burn. The others here were reborn. They bore the scars of a new life, with only half their power and the impending madness pressing down upon them. They heard the call of those who sang the world and made their way across the ruined landscape to find the Isle of Song. Most of them had no recollection of what they once were in another life.

When Tara and Saeb realized that Shen were being reborn, they sang the location of the island into the consciousness of the world. They had to help these newborn Shen. It wasn’t touching ONUS’s source code that drove them mad, Saeb was sure. It had to be their ability to sense only the thoughts or emotions of others. Their ability was unbalanced and volatile. Thought without emotion was empty, and the thoughts of thousands without sentiment were overwhelming. This onslaught of thought often drove the females mad, and the males found the same fate through the onslaught of emotions breaking like waves into their awareness.

There was no bond and awakening yet, Jack thought. They had no way to fend off the Shen madness, to balance each other out. He remembered Saeb trying to shield those newborns from the thoughts and emotions of those around them. It was an odd thing to remember one’s self in a different body. It was both alien and familiar. When the first pair finally bonded, he remembered feeling wonder as they awakened to their past lives and true selves. And they always seemed to connect with fragments of their first life, no matter how many they had lived since.

“The awakened went into the world to find other newborns,” Jack said, with Saeb’s voice. “We stayed on the Isle.”

“What are you talking about?” Tara asked. She looked at him suspiciously, as if he were already losing his grip on reality.

“I have to leave the Isle, for everyone’s sake.”

“If you leave, I’m coming with you.”

“You can’t Tara, you don’t know what it’s like out there.”

“I know as much as you do.”

“But I have Lily’s connection now, and I can see some of her thoughts. It’s so much worse out there than we knew. The waters may be receding, but… it’s a wasteland. Humans cling to life in small bands and villages. A few generations have passed, I can see. Yet scavengers still seek the old technology, a practice passed down by their elders and the first generation of survivors before them. But most fear it. I have to—”

“What? What are you going to do alone, Saeb?”

“I don’t know,” he said. But, he thought, no matter what Saeb did in the past, he’s not me, not now, because my name is Jack.