Interlude VI
"Sortilege"
The ship rumbles. She presses her cheek against the steel hull and feels it hum, feels its heart beat, its engine growl, feels it burn her skin and down. Her teeth chatter and her beak clack. Cause and effect; the vibrations of the struggling core carry across the entire vessel. It labours to keep them afloat. Struggles to keep them alive. The pressure coils around the sturdy little capsule, tries to crush it up and everyone inside, but it is not to be. Not yet. An echo of impact resounds through the interior chamber, rattling her to her core. The pressure-groan and death-creak abates. She pushes herself up to her feet, gathers up her crumpled robes and staggers towards the airlock. It is foolish. It is misguided. It is a certainty of doom. On her wrist is a bracelet containing a biometric sensor, tied to her heartbeat with a neat little copper bow, flinging tachyon particles in every direction conceivable. With every thump-thump-thump a signal is emitted, bouncing up up up. Let her son and daughter listen. Let her admirals and battle-captains and plate-commanders hear her last moments. They will visit unto her killer the same certain doom the moment it stops. They would boil the moon's dense oceans to steam and lance its metallic core with nuclear fire; they would give her the greatest funerary pyre since Father Sun Himself, her own little radioactive star to mark her passing, to devour her remains, to stand as a timeless monument to her final folly.
The airlock opens. She steps inside. The cleansing agents run slick over her feathers and her energized pressure suit rolls over it, trapping it with her. It is a potent coating; it renders the very air she breathes stale and stuffy and stinking of chlorine. The airlock's doors shut behind her. Another opens ahead. The pressure grasps, tugs her out, crushes-
She is not crushed. She is not dead. In the dark depths she floats, alive despite the urgings of all natural law. There is ground below. Old stone, weathered but not broken down. She allows herself to sink and stand, finding a sure footing. The weight of the ocean presses down on her back, on her shoulders, on the delicate bones in her wings. She should be dead, she thinks. Little more than protein paste for some unintelligent filter-feeder beast to inevitably slurp up, should anything survive the hellfire storm soon to follow. It is dark. Then, inexplicitly, it is not; a red lustrous glow illuminates the immediate area, showing the sheer dimensions of the colossal obsidian platform. The light pulses like a heart, coming from an orb of essence coiled in the ends of red string. The bearer watches her, immaculate and unfettered, masked and veiled, tall and strong, wingless and terrifying.
"Admiral," the figure pleasantly calls out, as if to greet a neighbour on a warm fuzzy morning - as if the heavy water is air. Her voice carries far. Things slither in the space beyond the ebbing light. Things ripple and shudder. Things open their eyes and watch. Ice-moon wyrms. Sub-glacial eels. Leviathans in the dark.
(Brothers and sisters to a queen held dear.)
Oroses'zheferan lifts her head, closes her beak, raises her plumage on end. It is almost instinctual; she cannot be seen as weak, not even here. Not even with her.
There is something in the middle of the platform, trapped by fractal dimensions. A towering tree of glowing white strands, neatly herded into perfect geometric shape. It carries a soft light, softer than the red, and it is static - unliving, frozen in time, utterly forlorn in its timeless solitude. Its prison has cut it away from all it knows and loves, leaving it trapped with elements it does not, cannot, understand. Oroses knows it for what it is. She knows it would kill her were it free. She knows it would tear her flesh and replace it with brass; it would not do so with cruelty, but with an instinctual necessity. She has no intention of allowing it to have her.
The other, the figure, notices her reticence. She understands it too. But she has nothing to fear, so utterly detached from worldly concerns as she is. "It will not harm you," she promises. "Not while I am here."
Oroses approaches. She has come this far. Why not a couple of steps forward? It will mean her death, she is sure. She has known it for some time. Her officers mutter it under their breath when they think she isn't listening. Her son mumbles it in his prayers to the stars. Her daughter says it to her face, charged with anger and resentment. Why do you hate me so, she wants to snap back. I never took your worlds. I never broke the Sun. I'm trying to give those back to you.
(Nevermind that she'd known it had been coming long before. Nevermind that she'd pre-emptively made promises she could not break. Nevermind that she had only ever done that which she had been charged with. Nevermind, nevermind, nevermind!)
But she doesn't. She cannot break form. She is, as ever, fated to fall on a blade of her own making. The foxes had always told her so.
Up close the masked figure is less icon and more flesh. What skin peeks through dark robes is black as night, as glassy and solid as porcelain. Her hooded shawl is white and her mask is a featureless visor. Red string slowly whips around her, as alive as either of them, and it twitches at increasingly irregular intervals. She is taller than Oroses. Taller than most she'd ever encountered, save for foes and queens and ash-begotten fiends.
(She tries not to think too deeply on the connotations thereof. The First Traitor is notoriously sensitive to stray thoughts and it would ill-do to provoke her unwarranted.)
"Are you set on this path?" the other asks, o beautified ruin incarnate. Her very presence radiates the assurance of a lesser thing's end.
Oroses looks up. How can she refuse? "I am," she whispers, her word cutting through the water's weight without reason. She stops by the crystalized tower of solid data. "What do I do?"
"Pluck a thread, see the story it weaves. Follow it closely if you can; they twist and turn at every chance."
Oroses pulls free a dirk laced with Sun-fired runes. There is a needle in the top of the blade, fit for piercing databoards and siphoning the code within. The gem on the end is alive and rife with empty room, ready to convert raw alien data into proper language.
The other, the stranger, the Traitor, the Last of First regards her studiously. "As you wish," she says.
Other entities, those suckled on the raw dreamstuffs of primordial quantum foam, shiver and hiss from beyond the edge of the platform. They know their favourite word well enough, no matter what shape it takes. Its dangerous to give them a hollow promise.
(Or is it? Is there nothing she would wish for? Oroses misses so much. If there were any way to return to the old way of things-
But no. That was tried already. Look how well that had turned out. At least she was alive. At least two of her brood were alive. At least fifty-six capital warships had survived, with enough armour and flight-craft between them to level three whole star systems in a day.)
Oroses presses her knife against the frozen datalattice and pushes it in. It's hard to pierce the veil of crystalline will, but not impossible, and with the last embers of the lost Sun it runs it through.
She almost wishes it hadn't. Almost. The disappointment of those watching is palpable.
Pure, unadulterated information runs along the blade's length like a spark of fire down a stick of kindling. The brain fluid does not take kindly to the intrusion, nor the theft of ill-earned predictions, but it is helpless to stop it. Flashes of lightning enter the waters all around them, a network waking up, but there is too much at work, too much for the machines to fight, too much to simulate and too much they simply cannot comprehend. The constructs are born lifeless and half-eager, swiftly snapped up by shifting, formless jaws. Red string circles around the platform, shadowed and heavy with loss, heavy with memories of worlds burned and peoples slaughtered.
Oroses pulls her knife free and holds it up, pommel first.
"What do you see?" the other gently asks.
Oroses'zheferan:Arch-Admiral:Gulfraven:widow:mother:survivor
1. The Divide lies empty:Cybertron cracks:brother fights brother:the Emperor is found:we pull glass from stone:red pools:the Emperor howls:Emperors at war:the athenaeum burns:the witch laughs:the wayfarer is lost:the sword is taken:the necromancer is staked:the subjugator takes the Earth-
2. The Divide closes:Cybertron burns:steel rusts:the Emperor is stillborn:glass cuts our palms:the Emperor cheers:red is loyal:the remnant is scattered:the athenaeum opens:the witch slinks away:the wayfarer is dead:the sword is destroyed:the necromancer is hunted:the subjugator razes the Earth-
3. The Divide was stolen:Cybertron alights:shadows lurk behind every flame:the Emperor is hidden:glass shatters:the Emperor chokes on wine:red washes over all:the remnant is pressed into service:the athenaeum is forgotten:the witch watches:the wayfarer is taken:the sword is misplaced:the necromancer is strangled:the subjugator conquers the Earth-
4. The Divide manifests:Cybertron swarms:they are overrun:the Emperor is devoured:glass overcomes us:the Emperor flees:red locks shields:the remnant is converted:the athenaeum grows:the witch wields strings:the wayfarer drowns:the sword is dominated:the necromancer fades:the subjugator imprisons the Earth-
5. The Divide is found:Cybertron is abandoned:poison seeps inside:the Emperor is reborn:we break the glass:the Emperor is driven away:red quashes the goldtusk:the remnant recovers:the athenaeum is scoured:the witch surrenders:the wayfarer rises:the sword is reconfigured:the necromancer lives:the subjugator is cut off from the Earth-
6. The Divide grows:Cybertron is subsumed:fiends feast:the Emperor is extinguished:glass traps us:the Emperor is overjoyed:red is never to be:the remnant suffocates:the athenaeum is stolen:the witch is not here:the wayfarer is sacrificed:the sword remains shackled:the necromancer is drawn into her web:the subjugator chases her to Earth-
7. The Divide is infected:Cybertron becomes the bulwark:demons shriek:the Emperor is alone:glass dulls:the Emperor cries out:red is thrown to the black:the remnant starves:the athenaeum grows dark:the witch searches:the wayfarer hides away:the sword snaps:where is the necromancer:the subjugator rules the Earth-
Oroses'zheferan:Surrogate-Regent:Gulfraven:paramour:matriarch:conqueror
"False promises," she croaks. "Hopes and hopelessness in inequal measure."
"Dauntless promises of events coming to pass," the stranger hums. She sings a discordant, melancholic tune. It is enchanting. "You cannot turn them away, only hedge your bets."
"Is it wrong?"
"Yes. No. What is it you want to hear?"
Oroses looks at her. "To know I'm on the right path."
"There's no paved roads where you walk. No one's walked this way before."
"Would this define us as wayfarers?" Oroses tests.
The other tilts her head. "What do you think?"
"... No."
"You know, then."
"Yes."
"You were trusted. You were complicit."
"Not in this."
"Yes, in all of this. You were. You are. You will be. Your path is yours to walk. You have decided as much."
"I could turn back."
"You surely could. It is a choice. But the wrong choice. Your values drive you to live. Your hope drives you to persist. If you can only decide between extinction now and extinction later, you need to find another way."
"Will we walk it alone?"
"A precedent has already been set," the Varanid utters. "Entrenched in the unorthodox. Follow it as far as you dare. I won't guide you."
She isn't dead. She hasn't been killed. She hasn't been converted into a shrieking bronze kill agent. Oroses rises and kicks her way back to the submersible shuttle. The red light fades. When she looks back, her former guide is gone and the wyrms race to claim what is left. The airlock closes on the sight of fathomless serpents tearing the very platform apart, devouring it stone and all. Even they grow hungry in the void of the Brachian Divide.
For what is there to eat in the emptiness but worlds too young to dream?