Like some otherwordly waterfall, warping red light cascaded before the Icarus fleet. In these falls, the inception of hundreds of stillborn suns could be seen, and the blinding display of numberless supernovas danced as candle flames along its edge. It was incomphrehensible yet beautiful, something that could not be understood, yet could still be perceived in all its wonder. Truly, this astonishing nebula deserved its name.
'The Blazing Curtain,' grumbled Ajax. 'You sure this is the only way through?'
'I'm afraid it encircles an entire abundance of planets and asteroids, and the Well is at the heart of it all. There is no path to the World Tree except through here,' said Gimmy.
'Are you sure the ships will be okay? The radiation is just the start; the scientists are still bamboozled by the kind of crazy-ass phenomena this thing spews out every year.'
'Not only are the shields at maximum, they're being reinforced with Darry's Spiral energy. We are quite safe.'
'What about the Ymir? Surely we should be expecting attacks at any time?'
'As I said. If we can withstand the warping energies of one of the most volatile anomalies in outer space, a smattering of barbarians should pose no threat. I think it is far more reasonable they are waiting for us in the Well itself. After all, that is where their fabled World Tree is.'
'Looks like I still can't fault your logic,' conceded Ajax.
'Nor should you be trying to,' said Gimmy curtly. 'Know your place, Colonel.'
A laugh swelled from Ajax's barrel chest. 'Still the same cold heart. See, I think this is your problem, sir, you need to lighten up!'
'Colonel, would you please go and find something useful to do?'
'Fine, fine, if his majesty wills it. I'll go to the sentry positions, see if I can't spot any nasties looking for a fight.'
Ajax turned and left the bridge of the carrier Grace, making his way to the precipice of a lower deck where junior officers were hard at work organizing lookouts. In this bizarre barrier, visibility was naturally greatly reduced, forcing the ship to move more slowly and cautiously.
The deck was somewhat comfortable, its dark floors coated in synthetic material that eased movement. Here and there thick steel pillars emerged, curving inward before reaching out once again to join the ceiling. Windows as tall as a man and three times as wide lined either side, flooding the entire space with the Blazing Curtain's suffocatingly intense light. Short flights of stairs led down to each window, with lookout points arrayed next to some. It was these points that Ajax scanned for a familiar face.
He soon found someone he recognized; Lieutenant Hector, the zealous rookie officer who always showed rapt attention at every meeting, no matter how tedious the subject matter. What kind of motivation could lead someone to actually consider colonial taxation and the results of the solar census interesting, Ajax would never know. Hector was clearly one of a kind.
He approached the upstanding young officer in his typical jovial manner.
'Stand to attention, Lieutenant! This is an inspection!'
Hector jumped in an instant, standing as tall and straight as humanly possible.
'Ha, good. You're not slacking. Carry on.'
He relaxed as Ajax gave a cheerful wink.
'What brings you here, sir?'
'Not much, really. I have nothing to do now Gimmy's kicked me out of the bridge, so I thought I'd find somewhere to better admire the view.'
'I'm afraid there's not even a view as such, sir. The Curtain apparently exists more to obscure an existing view than to provide its own.'
'Still, there's something entrancing about, isn't there? It's apparently a miracle in terms of the mechanics involved. The educated types seemed pretty excited about it under all their jargon...'
'I suppose so.'
'What about you, Hector? Just here to do your job?'
'I place nothing above my duty, sir.'
'Ahhhh, I'll never understand such serious people... what could possibly have made you like this?'
'I... don't quite understand what you mean, sir.'
Ajax took a place next to Hector, gazing at the glimmering vortex before them. Its shifting patterns were mesmerizing.
'How about it, Hector? Tell me a little about yourself.'
'Hmph. What is there to tell? I was one of those born just before the exodus to the surface. I had the fortune of growing up with the sky above me from the very beginning. I have no defining tragedy to my life, no intricate coming-of-age tale to tell...'
'Sounds like a pretty boring childhood.'
'I don't know. I always did take delight in hearing stories of the Anti-Spiral war. I found something romantic, I suppose, in the ideal of fighting for justice. I wondered once or twice what it would be like for my own name to become legend. After all, I was but a meek child. It can be expected for such a being to aspire to an escape.'
'So, join the army, become a hero, eh? That was your plan?'
Something shifted within Hector. His eyes, suddenly cold and harsh, snapped to Ajax.
'I harbor no such ambition. I fight, I fight because it is the right thing!'
'Okay, okay, calm down! I didn't figure that would tick you off so much. Is there really something wrong with wanting to be famous and powerful? Plenty of people have that kind of dream.'
'I am above such-'
'...Such what?'
Hector sighed. 'I am not a dreamer. Either we make our hopes reality or we fail. We are who we are, and we cannot change that. Even if kicking and struggling and fighting the good fight seems noble, it will accomplish little in the end...'
'Now you can just shut up. Where's all this fatalism coming from? You haven't even lived! You've got decades ahead of you! You can't just quit before you've even begun!'
Hector was silent.
'Listen then,' said Ajax. 'I'll tell you who the hell I am.
I grew up in dangerous times. Beastmen roving everywhere, earthquakes and gunshots every few hours... the places were rough, and so were some of the people. Back then, I thought I'd never live the life I wanted. I held onto a dream, though. I thought there'd be nothing better than to see the world, to find all the really jaw-dropping things in it. But I had a voice in my head telling me I'd never get there. The road ahead was too hard, too cold, too dangerous.
When they came to my village, I thought it was the end. They thought nothing of killing families or children; even though I was only about ten at the time, they never hesitated to try and finish me. When I had nowhere left to run, they forced me to the ground, held me at gunpoint, and told me to give them everything I knew - where they could find more innocents to kill, more supplies to raid.
But by some kind of miracle, I was saved. By a pretty famous guy, at that - Kittan Bachika himself, of the grand old Dai-Gurren Brigade. I'll never forget that day... he demolished those beastmen, told me never to give up, and said that change was right around the corner. Sure, he wasn't the sharpest speaker, but his words meant something.
Not too long after, Teppelin was taken. I decided to hold his words in my heart. I swore to stop backing down... I swore never to give in, even when all the world's cruelties broke my back and spat in my face.
I managed to grasp my dream, and more. I saw the whole world, visited the most amazing places and met the most amazing people... then I joined up here and saw whole other worlds. Let me tell you, no matter what happens to us humans this universe'll always be a crazy, awesome place...
Now, point is, I'm not saying 'you will achieve your dreams'. Can't mak assumptions like that. But you can't do the opposite either. If I'd given up back then, I'd be deader than dead right now. If I'd never had a dream to follow, I'd have led a worthless, empty life without goals or directions. Don't cast aside things like dreams. They're part of what makes you who you are. Part of what makes you... well... human.'
Hector was silent, seemingly disquieted by this challenge to his worldview. Ajax simply sighed and turned to leave.
'Listen, soldier. Keep up with this giving-up schtick and you'll die an ignoble death someday. Go be a hero!
Chase that dream!'
Once more Nakim's lone Grapearl made its way through the void, hovering towards an uncertain future.
But this time he himself was not alone. The curious little child he had found starving in the desert was curled up in the cockpit with him, peaceful and restful. Nakim tried to cast his mind back through the mist of his past. Had he ever been like this? A carefree, innocent child? Or had he been the same person, a seemingly confident man marred by cracks of psychosis?
He shook himself. It was no time to wind himself up in his introspection again; he had an abandoned child to return to his home. He had a job to do, and a destination to reach.
Some way ahead, the eerie shimmering light of the Blazing Curtain warped and bent. It was unearthly, yet it still touched the soul with an alien perfection, like a fine painting of some long-forgotten paradise. How frustrating it was that the answers to mysteries like this still eluded mankind. How frustrating it was that Nakim's own mysteries were indecipherable to himself.
Their destination itself lay just outside the Curtain; a forlorn, abandoned sphere named Nocturne XII. It was curious that Jun could have fond memories of such a place, but a home is, Nakim supposed, a home. What had Nakim's home been like?
Stop it, he chided himself. Slipping again and again into self-pity - was this how decent people lived? Nakim was tormented and conflicted, but even he still held onto a vague idea of human strength and virtue. This egotistical depression would erode that idea, emptying Nakim bit by bit into a nobody, a hollow shell.
Like hell he would let that happen!
He boosted his speed. Enough dilly-dallying, enough procrastination! He would do what he had to do, and do it in style. Even amid his scattered recollections, he remembered one time of clarity; the time before his dismissal, the time when he had followed in the footsteps of giants. He would reclaim those days, starting here and now.
Breaking the atmosphere of Nocturne XII, Nakim prepared to home in on Jun's hidden, obscure homestead. Within minutes of descent, battered by the usual gales and air currents, he had touched down on the dusty, barren surface, sliding through the cool night air towards the grand library where Jun had been raised.
Still more of the journey remained. He wove his way through narrow crags and outcrops, ducking and weaving through nooks and crannies. He bridged chasms and scrambled up hills, until he came upon the relieving sight of an ancient-looking building that his scanners indicated to be the library.
Opening the cockpit and slinging Jun over his shoulder, he clambered carefully down the Grapearl's chassis and traipsed towards the library's elevated entrance. His footsteps raised haunting echoes in the silence of the near-dead planet. The door he emerged before was as old and thick with dust as anywhere else in this lonely world, and evidently not locked - a simple push caused it to swing slowly inwards with a soft creak.
The interior was devoid of light. Dark shapes loomed ahead of Nakim, which he could only guess formed a maze of towering bookcase. Ghostly and quiet, the library struck him as an unfortunate site for a fragile child to live and grow in. He picked his way through the rows and rows of shelves, repeatedly stumbling in the dark. He began to feel lost, even scared, the fear of the unknown tugging at his heart.
But he carried on, determined to find Jun's home.
Nakim had no idea how long he had been picking his way through the spectral corridors of the library. He suspected it had been hours. The jarring possibility that he might become lost forever was becoming increasingly likely as he descended into the library's heart. He finally decided to stop and rest, sitting and leaning against a stack of shelves. Jun was still in contented slumber, his breathing slow and soft.
As his body began to relax, the nervousness washed away, supplanted by resignation and apathy. The darkness around him began to shift and melt, surreal and dreamlike. The forces of sleep crept over him.
A sudden noise jerked Nakim to his senses. A faint light had appeared from a source around the corner of the shelf he had dozed against. Straining his ears, he made out the slight rustle of slow, deliberate footsteps. It was umistakeable. Someone or something was coming. As the light began to grow brighter, Nakim tensed himself, shielding Jun from the approaching menace. His heart beat faster, and the footsteps became ever closer.
The light could only be a few metres away now. He clenched his fists, cursing his foolishness for dropping off in such an unfamiliar place.
The light was almost upon him. Seconds slipped by until at last its bearer turned the corner.
With a yell, Nakim tackled the figure, observing its features in a split second. It had the metallic skin tone and slender frame of the Ymir, his sworn enemy, a ferocious and aggressive people - but then, hadn't Nakim learned that they weren't quite all such monsters? He hesitated, allowing the alien to react and throw him backwards, landing painfully on the sandy floorboards some distance away.
'Wait... Jun?' said the alien, in a low, calm voice. It had recognized the toddler now asleep a little in front of Nakim's prone corpus. Nakim checked over the alien again. It was identical to an Ymir, alright, but at the same time it was completely opposed - the hues were all wrong. The pale silver of its skin was in fact a golden, solar sheen. Its hair, rather than the cold greys and voidlike blacks of the Ymir, was a warm, earthy brown.
Nakim realized that he might just be face to face with the Keeper.
'Who...?' he panted, as the curious not-Ymir crouched to gently lift Jun from the hard floor.
'I,' stated the alien emphatically, 'am this child's caretaker. My title is Keeper, but you may call me Oor, so long as you cease your brazen attacks.'
'Ah, er, sorry 'bout that... I thought you were, ah, you know, stalking or hunting us or something along those lines...'
'Well, that is not so, although perhaps you should not be quick to trust me in any case. Still, as you were looking after Jun, I can see you are not a person worthy of harm right now.'
'Yyyyeah, you might have to rethink that one at some point,' said Nakim wryly. 'I've done some pretty crazy shit.'
'There is a better time for these words,' remarked Oor. 'Come with me.'
Nakim followed Oor with haste through a labrynthine series of gaps and walkways, to a great wall with a series of alcoves set into it. Oor tapped a rhythm on the inside of one of these alcoves, producing a doorway from nowhere, and led Nakim through it.
The room on the other side was a far cry from the still, heartless library. It was warm, well-lit, and comfortably furnished with soft circular seats and what Nakim guessed was some sort of coffee table. Nakim and Oor each took a seat, with Jun laid to rest atop another.
'As you can see, the library is not our actual residence, but rather a convenient hiding place which happens to be a great, if puzzlingly complex, repository of information.'
'And just as well. I'd hate to live in a den like that.'
'Enough about my homestead. Who are you, and why is Jun here?'
'I'm former Private Nakim of the Icarus Corps, and I'm here because this is where Jun told me his home was.'
'Ah, a human soldier?'
'Well, sort of, maybe.'
'You are involved, then, in the struggle with the Ymir?'
'See, I was about to ask you about that...'
'I shall tell you then. But first, I think Jun has slept long enough.'
Oor gently shook his young ward awake. Jun gave a characteristic drawn-out blink and slowly gained his bearings.
Oor smiled. 'It has been a long time, little one.'
'Oor!' Jun's face shone as he was reunited with his mentor.
For some time Oor and Jun talked, laughed and caught up on the weeks lost since Jun's departure. At the end of this reunion, Oor and Nakim finally got down to business. Nakim opened with his most urgent question.
'Oor, what exactly are you?'
'A pertinent question. My wife Freya and I are Mimir, a genetic variant extremely similar to the Ymir but with a profoundly different society, culture and outlook. We are a scattered people, dedicated to charting the annals of history, which was for so long preoccupied with the Anti-Spiral war... in some corners of the galaxy, we had our own ancient cities, but those are gone by now. In the meantime, the Ymir have risen again, and the situation has become grave.
We and the Ymir are both descendants of the Aesir, the people of Odin. Where we were content with the present as long as the past was set in words and stone, the Ymir craved for a status quo, for Odin's heyday of warfare and eternal glory. It is both a noble and barbaric aspiration, one that has led to the recent wars on the part of the Ymir.'
'Yeah, from what I've heard from other soldiers back on Ithaca, the Ymir are fixated on myths and legends - they have these ancestral tales, and I think, something to do with a... World Tree?'
'Ah, of course. The Tree and the Wolf. They lie at the heart of this sordid affair.'
'Could you please explain what these guys have been yammering on about?'
'I wish I could, but alas, even my information is incomplete in this regard. They are sources of great power for the Ymir, and relics of the Aesir age, that much is known. But as to their true nature... I suggest you hear it from the mouths of the Ymir themselves... or even simply find the World Tree. Your questions would surely be answered then.'
'There was another thing, that thing Jun had...'
'Dain,' offered Jun.
'Yeah, a couple of guys just showed up to randomly take it, it was weird. How does that statuette figure into all this?'
'Dain is quite useless. It is an obselete tool to amplify spiral power, which is, I believe, required in great amounts to access the old Aesir relics. But with the power Tyr wields... it is unnecessary as befits its apparently anticlimactic retrieval.'
'Tyr?'
'The dread emperor of the Ymir. I would call him a wicked, vile blackguard, but in truth even he is pursuing his own twisted interpretation of what is best for the universe. Still, he is one to be feared. He has fought on par with Lordgenome, human spiral knight of old, and his burning will gives him truly chilling levels of spiral power. Be wary of him, Nakim.'
'Sounds like a scary guy.'
'It cannot be overstated that he is a threat. Perhaps your army's leadership would be able to challenge him - but if he manages to access even more of the Aesir leaders' power, he may well achieve his crazed dreams of fire and slaughter.'
'This really sounds like stuff that needs stopping. Where do I find the World Tree?'
'I believe your army is heading towards it as we speak. It lies at the heart of our home system, the Mimir's Well, now as ruined as much of our civilization. The Anti-Spiral wars were not kind to us.'
'So I've got to head through the Curtain?'
'I am afraid so. But do not despair. Spiral power can easily overcome even such a barrier as the one our forefathers created to protect us. Even the Blazing Curtain is not impenetrable.'
'So I guess I have work to do...'
'I am sorry.'
'Don't be. It's a man's duty to kick ass in the name of humanity!'
'I think you'll have no trouble. Just make sure you get there in time.'
'I'll get going right now. Only problem is,' he said turning to Jun, 'I'll have to say goodbye to this little guy.'
'Ah...' said Jun softly, his voice wobbling a little. 'Nakim...'
'Don't worry,' said Nakim, giving Jun a gentle pat on the head. 'It's far from a goodbye. I'll be back to visit as soon as I can, 'kay?'
Jun nodded, doing his best to smile.
'So this is it, then,' Nakim sighed. 'Time for me to actually get something done for a change!'
Oor nodded. 'We will be watching. Remember, all your questions will be answered... I can only warn you that you may not like the answers.'
'Huh?'
'You know what I refer to. There are mysteries in your life other than alien myths.'
'You're a crazy guy, you know!' Nakim chuckled. 'I'm not afraid. I'm going to go out there, give it my all, and kick reasn to the curb! Yeah!'
The corner's of Oor's mouth twitched. 'In that case, I will show you to your transport. Good luck with your task.'
'You know, we've barely known each other for a couple of hours, but you seem like a pretty swell guy. I'll leave Jun in your hands without a worry!'
'As you should. Godspeed, child of man.'
