Been a while, hasn't it? Thought I'd drop back in, to the Alternate Jasper, and see how everyone was getting along.
I greatly appreciate all the reviews you guys leave, by the way. It's how I know I'm not flinging my stories into the void, and that people are actually enjoying them.
A Rising Fear
Rest did not come easily to the Seer-Speaker.
In the alcove where Ritter and Louisa had sequestered him, the young man lay with his back to the stone, staring dully down at the flickering of the lanterns in the library. He did feel better for having eaten, and he knew his body required sleep, but he fought it. There was no more time to write what he had seen, and there were no Anta within the library to seek comfort from. His mother was absent, tending to a birth in an Outlier nest - yet another cause for worry, for the Outliers, humans untethered to any strata of Anta, often lived in unprotected clearings and valleys and likely were not altogether prepared for the weather.
Jack Darby pulled his limbs as close as he could manage in his narrow bunk and tried to keep his eyelids from drifting shut. Please don't make me, he silently begged, not really sure who his plea was directed to, I don't want to see it again!
His hopes went unanswered as the exhaustion he'd been trying to ignore finally took its toll. Feeling sleep beginning to blur the edges of his mind, Jack wrapped his arms around himself and pressed his lips tightly together. If he was lucky, he wouldn't scream this time.
The colony is burning.
Gigantic, insectoid figures crawl across the landscape and over each other in writhing masses, gleefully chanting one word over and over: "Eat, eat, eat!"
At the head of the creeping legions is a figure like and yet unlike Blackarachnia of the Draug Anta, rosy optics glowing triumphantly as another of the great trees falls. The trunk of the tree morphs into an hourglass, tipped onto its side so that all movement has halted within it, and then suddenly he is within the glass, desperately pounding his fists into the sides as a massive robed figure that wears his dead father's face turns it upright once more.
His father? Jack hasn't seen his father since he was seven years old, old enough to understand the rivalry between the Raa and the Thoron, but not old enough to commit to memory the circumstances of the man's death. But seeing him now keeps drawing his eyes back to the spider queen upon the field of battle, and something is nagging at the back of his mind, some sense that he has forgotten something important.
"You're running out of time, kiddo," his father says with a sad smile, then turns away as the sand begin to bury Jack, suffocating him.
"Come back, please! Dad, please!" he tries to beg, but the sand flows into his mouth, muffles his words.
As the grains cover his eyes, falling beneath his lids, he still sees: he sees Ar, looking old and tired and broken, walking alone across a scorched landscape. He sees a man that must be Rafael, if the Marks on his hands are anything to go by. This older Rafael stands on Kaivolkalma's shoulder, and his face is closed and bitter: the face of a man who has lost too much. He sees Miko, covered in horrible scars, dead-eyed and standing with her arms wrapped around her two foster-sisters, each grieving something. He sees F'ar, dear F'ar, armor cracked and dulled, curled into a crevice in the rocks and clutching a sightless June Darby and haggard Sierra to her chestplates.
The sands pour into his nose, his ears, his mouth, and everything fades away.
The colony is burning.
The colony is burning.
The Swarm is coming.
Jack shot upright with a choked cry, flailing until one arm was free from the tangled net his blanket had become. Desperately he clawed the cloth away from his face and sucked in deep gulps of air in ragged, sobbing breaths. Three visions in the span of one week was unheard of for him, and he didn't want to think about the possibility of more dreams this violent.
"Jack? Jack! Are you okay?" Rafael's voice drifted up from the base of the ladder.
When Jack found the energy to roll to his side, he caught a glimpse of the teenager staring up at him, face pinched with worry. It was all too similar to the face he'd worn in the dream and Jack felt a surge of nausea. And this time there was actually something in his stomach to come back up. Jack clamped a hand over his mouth and shook his head, knowing that it was futile to lie.
"Knew you shouldn't have eaten so quickly," Raf grumbled under his breath, but scrambled halfway up the ladder all the same. "C'mon, let's get you down. That's it, one step at a time." The boy spoke in a low, soothing voice as he guided the older Speaker's far-too-light frame down the ladder behind him.
Jack kept one hand over his mouth as he let the Healer-Speaker help him down the last few rungs. After fighting down another wave of nausea, he croaked, "I need to talk to Ar."
"He's probably still with Kerythcor and Kaivolkalma, waiting out the storm," Raf said. "Once the gale blows over, I'm sure you can-"
"No. Now." Jack rasped, straightening. "He'll understand."
For the briefest of moments, Rafael felt an uncharacteristic flash of jealousy. Jack's role as Seer-Speaker placed him in contact with Ar enough that he understood the leader of the Anta in a way few other humans likely could. Living as go-betweens for humans and titans had not been an easy adjustment for any of the Speakers - especially Rafael and his older siblings, suddenly finding themselves under the legal guardianship of Ar - but Jack had taken to it best, likely due to whatever his father had taught him before dying.
And although Jack was really closer to F'ar and sometimes Halya, Rafael almost wished they could have exchanged places so that perhaps he could converse so easily with the titan that was supposed to be something like a foster-parent to the Esquivel siblings. Perhaps Ar would seem less grand and unapproachable to Raf if he too could see the future.
But as soon as the thought came to him, Raf felt guilty. Ar was a semi-mythic figure that more than one group of humans practically worshipped. No one had forced him to take the Esquivels under his guardianship, he had chosen to look out for them the moment he'd learned what had happened to Maria-Therese and Robert. He was often distant, true, but a little human teenager could scarcely expect an Anta king to drop everything because he was feeling a little insecure, now could he?
Maybe his relationship with Ar wasn't always the smoothest, and maybe his siblings seemed to almost secretly resent him for their parents' deaths, but Raf decided he'd rather have that than the loneliness that he suspected the visions left Jack with. Seeing things that no one else could had to be demoralizing when one was in need of reassurance. If it happened to be Ar or F'ar who were best suited to provide that reassurance, Rafael wouldn't stand in the way.
"Jack," he settled for saying, "The hail may have stopped, but those are still at least 50 mph winds plus rain out there!"
Jack rounded on the younger male and seized his shoulders with a wild look about him. "I am running out of time, atsk'a. I put off telling Ar too long already."
Raf sighed. He thought this sounded like a terrible idea, but short of physically restraining Jack, he didn't see a way to stop him. He shrugged off Jack's hands and stepped back, frowning.
"Fine. I'll stay here and look after the scriptorium. But I hope you know that if anything happens to you and your mom finds out I let you go without trying to stop you, she's probably gonna commit voxicide. I like living, Jack. And it would mess up the treaty if I died." Raf grumbled.
The other smiled ruefully, and gratitude eased the deep shadows around his eyes. "I suppose we can't have that," he joked. "I'll just have to do my best to stay in one piece out there." Then, stopping to accept a small bag of vegetables at Ritter's insistence, Jack made for the door.
The wind screamed against the heavy wood, making it a group effort to keep it from slamming all the way open. Jack offered a playful salute to his fellows, then slipped through the opening and into the storm.
Rafael was right: the hail had stopped, but the rain still slashed at him like freezing needles as Jack struggled from one tree-shelter to the next. He could barely make out the silhouette of the market through the gloom. Many of the stalls had been knocked over, and ruined goods bounced across the aisles as the wind tore through the clearing. Trees and branches thrashed and bent like the limbs of maenads in the wind, filling the air with a creaking roar over the hiss of the water.
Jack stumbled and slid in the mud, hoping the combination of the storm and his rather poor health wouldn't upset his sense of direction. As far as he knew, the standing stones where Anta leaders met was ten minutes' walk from the Archives. For a moment, the Seer-Speaker considered just knocking on the nearest door and sheltering at least until the branches overhead stopped creaking so dangerously. But before he could give the idea more serious thought, the memory of sand filling his lungs while ugly voices crowed over destruction hit him with the force of a thunderclap. Jack stood again, blinking rainwater out of his eyes, and slogged forward.
If he had been Cybertronian, he would've been able to pinpoint with a fair degree of accuracy the positions of the Anta in the colony. But Jack was human, and the most his connection with the aliens could do was make him aware that they were present. In fact, he hadn't the slightest idea that one was approaching him until a broad hand descended out of the darkness and pulled him out of the way of a falling limb.
"Fool boy! What do you think you're doing?"
It was Alkare, scarcely visible save for his optics and the lights of the hyperflux cannon that made up his left arm. He scowled down at the human, alternating between casting concerned glances at the surrounding trees and the clouds. "Did you not hear the shelter call, Speaker? This is no time to be outdoors!"
Jack huddled in his palm, shivering, and tried not to provoke the stern mech.
"Maybe Speaker Nakadai is right," Alkare muttered, "Perhaps you do have a death wish."
"I- what? No! I don't have a death wish!" Jack spluttered.
"No, of course you don't," Alkare sounded rather sarcastic as he made for an outcropping of stone at the edge of the colony, seeking shelter. "That's why you go for days without eating or sleeping, and then hunt with the Draug at half-capacity."
Jack opened his mouth to protest that Alkare knew nothing about it, as the periods of sleeplessness and poor nutrition were usually the result of unsettling visions, but quickly thought better of it. He had become so accustomed to the way F'ar and Ar let him talk to them that he sometimes forgot that one could not simply answer back to any Anta they had a mind to.
He tried to keep his teeth from chattering with the cold and switched to using Cybertronian as a show of respect. "Thank you for saving me from the branch, Alkare. By your leave, I need to know where Ar is. Will you tell me?"
Alkare settled back into the low overhang and shook the water from his helm with a brisk motion. If the Seer-Speaker was out in this weather looking for Ar, it would have to mean he'd seen something particularly disturbing. That had been happening much more frequently of late, and it reminded Alkare too much of the way their last Speaker, Reul, had behaved before his murder at the hands of Magistrate Tulle.
"He should still be at the standing stones with Kerythcor," he answered in English, not bothering to mask the distaste in his voice when he mentioned the latter name. He noted that the human shuddered at the name and wrapped his soaked overshirt a little tighter around him.
"You do not trust him either." It was a statement rather than a question. When Jack met his gaze, Alkare nodded approvingly. "That is wise. The way things stand between you, it would be foolish to grow accustomed to his presence."
Jack blinked. "The way things stand between us? What do you mean? I've done nothing to Kerythcor."
"But your father was once an advance scout for the People of the Lion before he was an Archivist, and the reason that the Raptors lost many warriors, and Kerythcor will not soon forget that," Alkare cautioned, "To say nothing of what was done in another life."
"In another…?" Thoroughly puzzled, Jack turned his attention to wringing water from his shirt in a vain attempt to dry off.
"You are missing the memories of your fifteenth and sixteenth year of life until the morning you awoke in F'ar's arms in the forest," Alkare said pointedly.
Jack paled. "Nobody will ever speak about those two years when I ask, not even my mother," he said. "F'ar can't remember, nor Andram, nor Fallaner or Iirt or Raf or Miko. Ar acts as though he knows, but always tells me not to seek the "might have beens". What did I do in those two years that would make Kerythcor notice my existence at all?"
"Ar does know, because I told him," Alkare answered simply. "You know at the least that there was an obstruction in the flow of time, do you not?"
"Fallaner said something about it to Raf once," Jack said slowly.
Alkare noticed that the boy was shivering and instinctively pulled him closer to his spark, hoping the heat would serve to rectify the situation somewhat. Until the wind slowed, he had no intention of leaving this little alcove to find Ar.
"Aye," he said, "Time split into two streams, I think you would say. The Raa Anta and Speakers of one stream merged with the Raa Anta and Speakers of another briefly, and I found myself privy to thoughts and memories of a history that never was. But I am growing fearful that I was not the only one to hear such things."
"I don't understand what this has to do with Kerythcor," Jack tilted his head up, trying to see Alkare's optics from his angle. "Halya told me once that in the Missing Years, F'ar told him that I was almost as close to Ar as Raf is now, but that can't be it, can it?"
"It may be." The stoic commander shifted position as the wind changed directions, flinging the rain into their shelter, He turned his back to it to keep the human dry. "What I say to you now, you are forbidden to repeat without Ar's leave, human. Do I make myself clear?"
Jack gulped. "Yes sir."
With a nod, Alkare continued. "In the other stream, in another life, if you will, you were a threat to Kerythcor. Ar once entrusted you with a precious relic of our race, and I cannot help but think the hour must have been dark indeed for him to knowingly condemn you to take up his legacy in the event that he fell in battle."
Jack could barely wrap his head around the fact that there was a parallel timeline, let alone that Alkare had knowledge of it. If not for the fact that he had dreamlike visions of the future, he would not have believed it at all. "Why do you say condemned?" he asked nervously.
Something like sadness radiated from the usually irritable mech, catching the boy off guard. "The mantle of the Last Prime is a heavy burden, little Speaker, whether you were to wear it or choose another who could" he rasped.
"B-but that wasn't me!" Jack protested, "That was someone else!"
"But Ar has attempted to rebuild the trust that he had with you in the alternate stream nonetheless, Seer-Speaker, for the very reason I just told you. That is why he insists you come to him with every vision that troubles you; that is why he has on occasion confided in you." Alkare said sternly. "You know things, boy, and that makes you a strategic piece to capture in this neverending game between the Thoron and the Raa."
The winds began to slow and the mech set Jack down on the ground again with a final warning.
"Do not be surprised if yours is the next betrothal the Thoron begin clamoring for. Kerythcor is quite adept at maneuvering potential enemies to be well within his political control."
"Like Raf?" Jack asked, voicing a five-year fear.
"A diplomat and healer by Mark," Alkare pointed out, "An asset to any Anta, wouldn't you agree?"
Jack left the alcove shaken. While it was no secret that Alkare was a vocal opponent of the truce with the Thoron Anta, and the betrothal between Rafael and Speaker Greene's daughter, Jack found he could not dismiss all the mech's words as conspiracy theorists. Now, more than ever, he needed Ar's counsel.
The rain lightened into a steady drizzle, and Jack picked his way through the debris towards the standing stones, hoping against hope that Ar would be there alone. A ghostly figure moved along the edge of the trees, almost too dark to see, and dashed his hopes. If Kaivolkalma was present, so was Kerythcor. Jack steeled his nerves and made his way into the circle.
"T'o't?" he asked in a nervous squeak, trying to ignore the Thorons' reaction to his casual address.
"By the Allspark, my young friend, what are you doing here?" Ar appeared out of the fading light from under one of the arched stones and crouched. "Soaked to the skin," he shook his helm. "You didn't bring the others with you, I hope?"
Jack hunched his shoulders, a little self-conscious. "No, sir. Raf tried to talk me out of coming until the storm had passed."
Ar looked satisfied and murmured something that sounded like "he does listen to me after all!", then turned his attention back to the young man in the center of the ring.
"What did you see, Jack?" he asked gently, "Was it different than the vision you spoke of yesterday?"
Jack stole a glance back at Kerythcor and Kaivolkalma, who looked interested but not unecessarily so. Then he took a deep breath.
"I saw the Elee-Ure Anta again, a swarm," he began. Kerythcor cursed loudly behind him, making him jump. Once his heart had settled back to a mostly normal tattoo, Jack picked up where he'd left off. "They were led by a spider-woman of sorts. Like Blackarachnia of the Draug, but undoubtedly someone different. They're coming to destroy everything, and I think it's going to be before the year is out. I saw an hourglass, tipped on its side in front of a withering field. And-" he stopped, trying to puzzle through the nightmare to decide what was dream and what was vision.
"Do not stop there, Speaker," Kerythcor growled, "This matter concerns us all!"
"He is well aware, Kerythcor," Ar returned in a low voice, "Your input is not required."
He turned back to Jack with a compassionate frown. "Tell us the rest, if you can," he said in English. "At the very least it is better than holding it in your own mind to endure alone."
Seeming to sense the Speaker's distress, Ar held out a hand for the human. Jack only hesitated for a moment before climbing up, and soon found himself being held close to the titanic being's spark, just as he had with Alkare.
"I saw what happens if we fail to stop the swarm," he said hoarsely. "The colony will burn and…" he swallowed hard. "...and I think the spider-queen kills me."
Ar's hands tightened around the human and he shot a pointed look at his temporary ally.
'Kerythcor, where is Ungwë?' he demanded over a private comm signal.
'In the wastelands, in exile for mutiny, not that it's any of your concern,' Kerythcor replied tersely. 'Surely you don't think-?'
Aloud, the Thoron leader murmured to Kaivolkalma, "Fly to the wastes. Monitor Ungwë and report her doings to me. After all, she has killed little lions before and she may do so again if she were to gather a swarm."
Jack felt Ar bristle at the casual mention of humans killed in the past. He placed a hand on the servo closest to him, catching the mech's attention.
"T'o't, I need to know," he whispered, "Are these things that will be, or things that may be only?"
Ar shook his helm with a grave expression. "I am sorry, little one. Kaivolkalma's findings and your visions both support the conclusion that the Elee-Ure Anta are coming to Earth. But know this: we will fight to protect our people. All of our people."
It was not as reassuring as he might have hoped.
To be continued…