Chapter Ninety-One: I Am That I Am
The cobra warriors couldn't stop staring at me.
I didn't blame them. I looked fucking weird. At least they were keeping to themselves about it.
Fuck, I missed having a human body. I missed having weight, and I missed the comfort of being hugged by gravity. I could remember taking moments every now and then to appreciate little things like having all my limbs and digits, both eyes and ears in working order, skin that wasn't flayed off, or an intact spinal cord. But when had I ever taken a moment to appreciate something so taken-for-granted as simply having a body at all?
Bodies are wonderful, and I really didn't appreciate mine when I had it.
Stupid. Stupid!
I rolled my eyes quickly, breathing through it.
No time right now for another tantrum. The cobra-consorts wouldn't react well to one of my tantrums. Most of them, while interested in me, kept a healthy distance and observed from afar, regarding me with suspicion and distrust. Only a handful of consorts were curious enough to approach as we made our way through camp, and it was to these daring few that Adam introduced me, calling me his friend and companion.
"Little Knight." A hulking, muscular, violet-scaled consort slithered into our path to greet Adam. He was familiar, I recognized him from my memories of Adam's escapades with the Northerners, but I couldn't quite remember his name. The massive broadsword strapped to his back rang a bell, though – that sword was almost as long as I was tall. "We nearly came looking for you. Have you prepared yoursself for battle?"
"Well I've taken a piss already, if that's what you mean. Can't fight on a full bladder, can we?"
The consort gave me a suspicious look. "What creature iss thiss?"
"Don't call him a creature, Inuyyak," Adam said hastily, hoping to cut me off before I could say something less-than-diplomatic, which was a wise move on his part, but also a fruitless one, because at that same moment I chimed in with, "Don't call me a creature, asshole."
Even though Adam hadn't said 'asshole' it still sounded like we'd both just thrown some serious synchronized shade, prompting Inuyyak to take immediate offense. The violet-scaled cobra-consort flared his hood and nostrils in anger, baring his fangs ever so slightly.
"Dude!" Adam glared at me, miming 'cut it out' with his hand across his throat. "Can you shut the hell up and let me do the talking?"
"No," I shot back. "I'm just as much a person as you, and I will not be referred to as a creature."
"Yeah, I get that, and I completely agree, but do you really think now is the best time?"
"I should stand up for myself only at your convenience?"
At this, Adam's frustration reached a critical mass, and much like a whistling tea kettle he screeched, "No, that's not what I said at all! Will you calm the fuck down?!" Then, realizing his profound contradiction, Adam took a quick deep breath and, in a slightly calmer tone, asked, "Can you get through this War Council without losing your shit? Think you can go two minutes in there without trying to kill anyone?"
Fuck. I fought back another urge to punch him. He was just so punchable.
I chose not to respond, physically or verbally.
Inuyyak, meanwhile, was left watching Adam and me go back and forth like fencers, his anger at my earlier insult dissolving into utter confusion towards our absurd spectacle.
"C'mon, you," Adam snapped like Gordon Ramsay, grabbing my wrist and taking advantage of Inuyyak's bewilderment to pull me away. "Before you ruin everything. Again."
Ohh, that motherfucker. Did he seriously want me to hit him? How could he say something like that and not want me to hit him?!
Why do I make myself so angry? Am I this annoying with everyone else?
Maybe we're our own worst critics.
I took deep breaths and focused on calming the hell down as we followed Glimmering Scales on our way to the big Council tipi in the middle of camp. Scales had not even bothered to acknowledge my little spat with Adam and Inuyyak, choosing instead to continue towards the council tipi as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. After his bizarre experience with Adam and me in the woods, I'd say he's become something of a veteran to our antics.
"What're you thinking about?" Adam's voice buzzed in my ear like a damn gnat, prompting me to roll my eyes behind closed eyelids as I tried unsuccessfully to tune him out. It didn't work. I'm hard to ignore. "What was it like to die?"
Really?
"Sartre said Hell is other people," I muttered, earning a frown from Adam. "But he never cloned himself, so what did he really know about Hell?"
"He knew that it was freely chosen, self-created, and self-sustained."
"No, he was a philosopher who thought about those things. He didn't know for sure. And he never had to argue with a living mirror reflection of himself."
"That wouldn't be hell for Sartre."
God damn it, he had a point. I had to salvage this. No way I'm letting him get the verbal drop on me. "What about realizing that you aren't the primary version of yourself?"
"Well…" Adam wrinkled his nose as he thought about it. "Yeah, that could be scary." He relaxed, glancing at me inquisitively, and I noticed some of the hard edges in his gaze had softened. "Is that really what you think of yourself? That you're just a secondary Adam?"
"Doesn't matter what I think. It's the truth."
"Dude, that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard myself say."
"Fuck you."
"No, no, look at me." Adam planted himself in front of me, cutting me off and preventing me from moving around him. "It doesn't matter what your body looks like, dude, you're here and alive." I returned his gaze and looked Adam in the eye, and he said to me, "You're no knockoff."
I blinked in surprise, touched by what he'd said. My eyes even stung a bit.
Oh god. Crying? No. Not here. Nope.
"Thank you," was all I could manage in reply.
We resumed our walk. Within the next minute, we reached the Council tipi and were greeted by the warriors standing guard outside the entrance flaps. I was surprised to recognize the white-scaled consort in charge of those guards as the temperamental Sand Dweller warrior who'd captured me once upon a time in the LORAR desert.
Xolotl.
There's a name I wouldn't forget anytime soon. I wondered how he was doing. Last I'd seen Xolotl, he'd been recovering from the mind-numbingly horrifying trip through time Anna and I had forced him to take. Holy crap, I hadn't thought about that in a while. Remember that? What a weird and fucked up time that was. I had to watch the poor guy suffer in a Dersite concentration camp, where he lost his sobriety, his family, and very nearly his sanity.
It wasn't my fault! It was Anna's idea, and she hadn't exactly asked me before whisking us three hundred years into the past. Without Xolotl sparking the Great Liberation, the Sand Dwellers would never have survived those camps and would not be here today.
"Xolotl," Scales greeted the white-scaled cobra-consort in charge of the guards. "Iss my father sstill here?"
"Insside," Xolotl replied, nodding to the entrance flaps behind him, narrowing his eyes at Adam and me. "The clan leaderss are expecting you, Knight, but your creature musst remain-"
"Not a creature!" Adam interrupted more quickly than last time, before I had an opportunity to insult Xolotl too. "He's my spirit friend, and he's coming with me."
"He iss not entering thiss War Council without permission," Xolotl growled. The white-scaled sand-dweller turned his glare directly onto me. "You will wait outsside with me. One falsse move, and you are dead. Any problem with that?"
"Do I have a problem with you threatening to kill me based on completely arbitrary-"
"He has no problem with that whatsoever," Adam cut me off, which was probably wise. "He'll wait here patiently, and he won't be an asshole. C'mon Scales, let's get this over with." And with that, Adam and Glimmering Scales passed through the tipi's entrance flaps, ducking inside, leaving me out here with Xolotl.
The white-scaled cobra-consort continued to glare at me.
"Something you wanna say?" I asked him.
"To the Knight, yess," Xolotl replied. "You are not the Knight. I have nothing to ssay to you."
"Oh c'mon, are you serious?" The nerve of this cobra. "You sure are glaring at me like I'm the Knight. I haven't been here in a long time, so you need to remind me if we have beef."
"Beef?" Xolotl had no idea what I meant. No one in the incipisphere understood Earth slang, and it was really frustrating.
"Unresolved grievances," I clarified. "You know. Beef."
"Yess." Understanding gleamed in Xolotl's eyes. "There may be grievancess. I aim to find out."
"Well, what did Adam do? Is this about your family?"
"Family?" Taken aback, Xolotl narrowed his eyes at me and hissed, "I told no one of my family. Were you and the SSeer watching me? How much did you ssee?"
Fuck me, I probably shouldn't have told him that. Why do I ever talk?
"Did you watch my family die?" Xolotl pressed. "Did you watch and do nothing?"
He had me there.
Thankfully, before I could decide whether to cobble together a shitty lie, or admit the volatile truth, the tension in the air was interrupted by the swish of the council tipi's entrance flaps being flung open.
Adam emerged, holding the entrance flaps open and gesturing for me to join him inside. "C'mon, everyone's ready to meet you," he said to me, ignoring Xolotl's glare. "The clan leaders won't let you participate in the battle until they meet you. Please behave. I told them not to call you creature. They're learning. Don't try to incinerate any of them if they mess up."
"They're more than welcome to reject me." I glanced around Adam into the spacious interior of the massive tipi, glimpsing a small council fire within, around which roughly thirty consorts from all three tribes sat in a circle, murmuring amongst themselves. What did they want with me? "This whole 'Storm the Keep' idea of yours is gonna get us killed."
"Don't you remember how I convinced all the different clans to work together?" Adam asked me, speaking in a hushed whisper-shout to avoid being overheard by Xolotl, or any of the consorts within. "I promised them blood, and they're going to collect. Take that away, and suddenly you have nothing but quarreling clans at each other's throats. Now will you come on?" Adam grabbed my wrist again and pulled me inside. "I couldn't stop this battle even if I wanted to."
All was quiet in the core of the Obsidian Moon, far from the chaos on the surface, and Anna Carrero was sick and tired of flying her dead friends to their quest beds.
It was thankless work.
Cass's body hung limp in Anna's aching arms. Barely a minute ago, Anna felt Cass's heart stop. No pulse. Anna flew as quickly as she could, eager to reach her destination before Cass's corpse decided to do something awful like emptying its bladder and bowels.
After flying through miles of labyrinthine subterranean tunnels, Anna found herself bursting into a massive cavern, spacious enough to contain a small town. In the center of the cavern-space, floating weightlessly, impossibly, in mid-air, hovered four slabs of dimly glowing stone. They were small, no more than seven by three feet, each emanating a different color – orange, yellow, blue, and violet. Engraved upon the surface of each slab was a symbol representing an Aspect.
Anna approached the violet quest slab marked by the spiral symbol of Death, eager to lay Cass's body down before its final evacuation took place. "Don't poop on me, Cass, alright?" Anna took a moment to lay Cass's body onto the slab. "Just hold it in for a hot sec, okay? You're almost there, and you're doing great. Hear me, Cass? You're beautiful."
Anna couldn't help but wonder at the state of her mental health. She felt fine right now, but wasn't that a problem?
Shouldn't the sight of a dead friend be upsetting, even if the death was temporary?
I'm getting too used to this place, Anna thought, frowning at how she'd left Cass sprawled unceremoniously on the quest slab. She took a moment to neaten Cass's posture by straightening her arms and legs, and folding her hands neatly over her stomach. Then a quick caress across Cass's forehead to straighten her bangs.
There. Much more dignified.
Anna brushed a hand over Cass's unseeing eyes, closing them.
Time to go, before the magic and fireworks began.
Anna took a deep breath and floated away from the slab. She imagined standing at the edge of a pool, holding her nose, and falling backwards into the water. Anna found the visualization helped make the experience of time travel smoother, and as she plunged more than an hour into the past, there were no headaches or nausea.
The council fire burned brightly, filling the interior of the massive tipi with an energizing warmth. The wood crackled every few seconds, and the smoke curled gently into the air, rising quickly to the opening at the top of the tipi, where the wind whisked the smoke away, keeping the interior well-ventilated.
Surrounding the fire were the leaders of every clan of the three tribes, each bearing the distinct symbol of their clan, and up until a moment ago they'd all been sitting elegantly coiled in some kind of ceremonial posture.
Then I entered the tipi and everyone grew a little less harmonious. No less than half of the assembled clan chiefs snarled some variation of, "What iss thiss creature?"
Adam executed a flawless facepalm as his advice to the clan chiefs to avoid calling me a creature flew out the top of the tipi with the smoke. He then looked at me with pleading eyes, beseeching me silently to let it slide.
Fine. Just this once.
Adam did try…
"Will everyone calm the hell down?" I asked at a normal speaking volume, making no effort to be heard over the exclamations of the more startled clan leaders. "It's okay to be transparent, feathered, and weightless. I like me. And I'll wait for you to stop acting like fuckfaces."
Northerners had the most clans, at least twenty, and many of the leaders of those clans were only meeting Adam for the second time, and these less-familiar clan leaders were the loudest voices of dissent. Burning Dusk of Clan Nathair, having known Adam the longest, rose from his position in the circle and called for calm, and the five other Treefolk clan leaders followed his example.
The seven Sand Dweller clan leaders had not seemed particularly bothered by me, but that did not stop them from rising to argue with the Treefolk clan leaders. It was not long before insults began to fly. Sand Dwellers and Treefolk shared a centuries-old distaste for each other, thanks to the Dersite occupation which forced the Sand Dwellers into labor camps and the Treefolk into hiding. Sand Dwellers widely believed they had been abandoned to their fate in the labor camps by the Treefolk, who never mounted any effort to liberate them, while the Treefolk widely believed they would have been effortlessly exterminated by the technologically superior Dersite military had they not retreated deep into their forests and remained hidden.
All the while, both Sand Dwellers and Treefolk regarded Northerners with disdain because the Northerners, despite having the largest and most powerful fighting force, capitulated to the Dersite military within days, before either of the other two tribes could send assistance, leaving Treefolk and Sand Dwellers vulnerable and exposed to Dersite aggression.
In the three hundred years since the Great Liberation sparked by Xolotl, Sand Dwellers discreetly helped Northerners remain organized while under Dersite oppression, which had rekindled some goodwill, but this was not extended to the Treefolk, who never made an effort to connect with or help their northern neighbors, focusing instead on their own survival in the forests.
Good god, I've spent too much time on this planet. When will any of this knowledge be useful?
The only Northern clan leaders to stand in support of me were Aumanil of Clan Unagwe and Onartuk of Clan Inokksuk, whose respect I'd earned after we'd successfully sieged and stormed a Dersite military outpost together.
No, it was Adam. Adam won their respect and did those things. I did not.
Right?
I'm not Adam.
But I am.
Am I?
"Shut up," I groaned, only realizing that I'd spoken aloud after the words flew out of my mouth.
Adam gave me a look, no doubt wondering if I was losing it again. Was he wrong?
Fortunately, I hadn't been loud enough for any of the agitated clan leaders to hear me over their own caterwauling.
Seriously, they were still going at it.
I'm so tired of this.
Fuck it.
Sorry Adam, we tried it your way.
"EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I thundered, bringing an abrupt and tense silence to the entire council. "Look, I get it, okay? I look strange. Now can we move past that and focus on something real for a change? I've been dragged through too many dimensions to take this bullshit from you, so listen up-"
"Yes, listen up everyone!" Adam cut me off, which was probably for the best. He took center stage, placing himself between me and the bulk of the Northern clan leaders. "I have already proven myself to you. As for him," he pointed at me, holding the gazes of all the clan leaders, "I am personally vouching for him. If you do not accept him, then you do not accept me, in which case, good luck storming Hyperion's Palace without me."
"You sspeak of abandoning uss?" asked one of the Northerner clan leaders.
Adam was quick to shut that down. "You were disrespecting and insulting my guest. I didn't think I'd have to deal with this bullshit in a council meeting. How would you like to be treated as a freak? My responsibility was to bring all of you together, but it's your choice whether or not you want to keep it that way."
I was mute. And quite puzzled.
Why was Adam defending me? Didn't he dislike me? This was very inconsistent with how I remember feeling towards myself when I was him. Perhaps he learned something from our conversation?
I looked at myself anew.
"Consider how you were defeated by the Dersites in the first place," Adam continued. "They succeeded in dividing you. They came here because they feared what you could accomplish as a united people."
"The Knight sspeakss the truth." Burning Dusk rose from his place in the circle of clan leaders, joining Adam and me by the fire. "We should not be arguing on the eve of battle. Not while the real enemy, our only enemy, waitss for uss in Hyperion'ss Palace. We have acted shamefully, and should immediately accept the Knight'ss companion, who hass offered to join our fight."
"What do Treefolk know of shame?!" exclaimed a particularly indignant Sand Dweller clan leader. "You cowered in your treess for centuriess while we sstarved in the labor campss, yet now you shamelessly-"
"Why have you come here, if not to be free?" I asked the outspoken clan leader. "Can't you see how you've been played against each other? You can't be free all by yourself."
"Look," said Adam, "we don't all need to love each other, we just need to not kill each other for a while. There's a huge middle ground between love and murder which is worth exploring."
Anna sniffed her hands, wondering if the odor of Cass's death still lingered on her fingers. Some of Cass's blood had gotten onto her shirt. Was it hard to wash blood from clothing?
Easier than washing it from the mind, Anna thought.
She should change her shirt soon.
Through the only window in the small room, Anna saw carnage in the street below. Like, corpse-carpet blood-dripping-through-all-the-cobblestones carnage to the max. Carapacians were killing each other. With laser guns. Anna watched as well-organized commandos slowly advanced towards the ragged impromptu defensive positions held by the dissenters. The air was filled with so many energy bolts that the battle, viewed from afar, might have been mistaken for a spectacular light show.
The dissenters were hanging on by a thread, huddling behind piles of debris to shelter themselves from the withering firepower of the Dersite military.
Geez. It was brutal down there. These Dersites sure knew how to throw together a civil war. Wherever Anna looked, she saw someone die, and so she quickly decided to stop looking. She leaned back against the wall next to the window and allowed herself to slide slowly down to the floor, resting her head in her hands, massaging her temporalis muscles.
As the sounds of battle continued, Anna started to feel the usual nausea returning. She breathed deeply and gently, inhaling and exhaling, trying to ignore the quivering in her hands by keeping them busy with the massaging. More than once, the floor rumbled, and bright fiery light blazed in the window Anna was no longer looking through.
For a moment, Anna caught herself fantasizing about her old flask, and the even older friend within the flask. Then the nausea returned, stronger than before, and Anna quickly found herself crawling on all fours to the furthest corner of the room, where she vomited the remnants of the stale uncooked poptarts she'd eaten a few hours ago.
Trembling, spitting out the last of the throwup, Anna remembered the feeling of home and safety she'd enjoyed while throwing up aboard the White Shadow, where Tami would kneel with her and keep Anna's hair away from the jet-stream of vomit. And then sometimes Tami would play music to calm her down.
Tami was more of a friend than the flask.
The chaos on the street quieted down, and the sudden absence of constant weaponsfire was almost jarring. Anna left her vomit behind and crawled back over to the window, getting up on her knees and peeking outside once more.
Anna's breath caught in her throat when she saw Cass in the near distance, emerging from behind the lines of the Dersite military, which had ceased its advance.
Cass was alive and well, and quite blissfully unaware that she was about to die. Anna teased the thought of forgetting about the principles of time travel, flying out there and sparing Cass her bloody experience with the Draconian Dignitary. Wouldn't that be a nice thing to do?
Anna stayed put.
Outside, Cass steadily traversed the smoking pockmarked no-man's-land separating the two opposing forces. She soon reached the dissenter lines, where she was greeted by the Wrathful Veteran. They exchanged brief messages, Cass gave the Veteran her phone, and then they parted ways - Cass returning to the military position, and the Veteran back to his headquarters, which was located on the ground floor beneath Anna.
After another minute, Anna heard a commotion downstairs in the Wrathful Veteran's command post. Yours truly had just arrived, and everyone downstairs was freaking the fuck out, until the Wrathful Veteran ordered everyone outside.
Almost time.
Anna stood up and opened the door of the small room, cracking it slightly, allowing her to see the hallway and stairwell beyond. Soon she heard footsteps ascending the stairwell.
A completely identical Anna emerged from downstairs, stopping on the landing between the first and second floors, where a window offered her a view of the blood-soaked corpse-littered road. Although she was technically a past version of Anna, she'd actually time-jumped to this moment from roughly an hour in the timeline's future, from the Frog Temple transportalizer room.
Anna pressed three fingers to a twinge of pain above her left eyebrow, unsure if the headache was due to her ongoing withdrawal, or merely a side effect of having to think of time in nonlinear terms. It was dizzying, moving past the old idea of one moment coming after the next in a neat line.
Okay, let's do this.
Anna gently poked the door of her little room, opening it and stepping through the hallway into the stairwell. "Hey," she said to Past Anna, startling her.
Past Anna jumped in surprise as she whipped around, hearing the sound of her own voice. "Aw geez, not again…" she said, realizing immediately what was happening.
"Yes, again," Anna replied quickly, before the conversation could get off-track. "Look, this should be the last one, I promise."
"We can't keep doing this! It's gonna fry my brain or something. Is my nose bleeding?"
"It's just one more loop," Anna said, sticking to what she remembered of this brief conversation.
"I think it's becoming another addiction," Past Anna murmured, and Present Anna couldn't help but agree, but there was no room for improvisation here. Now was the time to bring this conversation to a close.
"No, no, it's just one last teeny tiny lil' loop!" Anna quickly explained the situation to her doppelganger from the past, how Cass would require airlifting from the battle which was about to reignite, and once that crucial information was conveyed, Anna bid farewell with a hearty, "Auf wiedersehen!"
Once more, Anna closed her eyes and imagined she was falling gently backwards into the timestream. It was second nature, by now. Using visualization as a guide, Anna focused intently on the time when she'd parted ways with Tami and Cruz, reaching through all the myriad probabilities and tangents towards that moment.
Anna rematerialized within the basement of the Frog Temple, right in between the two transportalizer pads to Prospit and Derse. The room was empty, but there was a flight of stone steps which led upstairs to the main chamber of the temple, from which Anna could hear the sound of muted voices.
Perfect timing, as always. Anna smirked to herself as she climbed the stairs.
"Who's there?!" Tami hollered from upstairs, having heard Anna's footsteps. "I'm not fucking around! Who's there?!"
Anna ascended the final stretch of stairs, entering the main chamber. The Lotus time capsule stood in the center of the room, and just to the left of it was Tami, wielding her bow with an arrow nocked and ready to loose, forehead creased with her adorable stressed-out frown, which relaxed slightly upon Tami's recognition of Anna…only to return in full force when Tami fully processed what she was looking at.
Past Anna emerged from behind the Lotus, followed closely by Cruz, who looked like he was wondering if he'd taken a long and crazy dive off the deep end. Witnessing two living pieces of the timeline of one person standing in the same room with each other tended to have that effect.
"Ahh, shit," Past Anna swore, knowing she was in for something dizzying even without yet knowing the details. She passed Tami and approached Present Anna. "One sec, I gotta take this," Past Anna said to Tami and Cruz. "No one say a word!"
Tami wasn't having it. "What the actual fuck-?"
"Tam!" Past Anna exclaimed. "Shh!" She joined Present Anna at the top of the stairs and, speaking quietly so that Tami and Cruz could not overhear, said, "Tam has a point, though, like, what the actual fuck?"
"We need to keep this brief," Anna replied. "You gotta jump back an hour into the timeline's past and use the transportalizer downstairs to get to the Obsidian Moon." Anna quickly described the battle which was taking place at that time, giving Past Anna directions to find the Wrathful Veteran's headquarters. "And make sure you have the right guy, he's called the Wrathful Veteran. He has a message from Cass which you need to see. Don't say another word to the others – you need to jump right now."
Past Anna started to protest, but Present Anna interjected before she had the chance to speak.
"C'mon, just jump," Anna said. "You'll be me in no time. Trust me. Which is to say, trust yourself."
"Fine. But this better be the last one," Past Anna begrudgingly said before closing her eyes and disappearing.
"Fuck." Now Tami was swiftly approaching her breaking point. "Where the fuck-?"
"She just hopped an hour back in time," Anna answered the glaring question Tami was struggling to articulate. "She has errands to run on Derse before she can become me and have this conversation with you."
"How…?" Cruz started to say something, but in the interest of keeping the conversation simple, Anna quickly interrupted him.
"Stable time loop, Cruz, we've already gone over this," she said. "Stable time loop."
Cruz tried to speak again, but Anna brushed past him and took Tami by the hand. She told Tami about the transportalizers downstairs and, without informing them of the battle currently raging on Prospit, instructed them to return to the Golden Moon and find Adam's dream self.
Tami didn't seem like she was fully comprehending what was happening. And that was fair. This was a lot to take in.
Anna wanted very much to stay with her friends, in this Now, but she knew that was not possible. Not yet. There were still a few things which needed to be taken care of. Things which required time travel, but hopefully no more self-recursive loops. The next thing had to do with Adam, and through the Lotus capsule Anna knew of a way to quickly get to the Land of Rain and Rivers.
But that meant saying goodbye to Tami.
"After the alcohol poisoning, the time we spent on the White Shadow up until now," said Anna, "it's the longest I've ever gone without time traveling since we left home. You helped me appreciate the present moment enough to pick one and stick with it. Adam's sister was right. You've got so much moxie."
Then Anna kissed Tami on the cheek, and her heart fluttered.
Time to go.
If Anna didn't go now, she never would.
Fuck.
Sorry, Tam.
Anna turned away from Tami and hopped into the Lotus capsule. She was dimly cognizant of a pleasant hum and a swell of warm white light as the great petals of the Lotus capsule closed around her, cocooning Anna in a blissful haze, through which her mind, like water flowing through a quiet sieve, now a gentle creek, wandered and meandered, stilled in ceaseless time, out of a star and around its planets, through the millions of passing years, universe humming, all a daydream with no beginning and no ending— - -
The petals opened.
Anna staggered out of the Lotus capsule, feeling as though she were awakening from a long dream, and yet still as if no time at all had passed. Soft morning sunlight shined through the arched stone entrance into the Frog Temple's main chamber, and in the near distance Anna could hear many different choruses of overlapping birdsong.
Before leaving, Anna withdrew both of her Sburb game disks, client and server. She regarded the two disks for a moment. Humanity had been destroyed by these innocent-looking disks. And now it was time to pass them along, to facilitate Humanity being destroyed by these innocent-looking disks.
Anna didn't dwell on it. Why bother dwelling on it? If Anna and company hadn't made it into the Medium, surely some other group of friends would have. For the first time, Anna wondered if anyone else had managed to successfully complete Sburb's intro phase before the meteors destroyed everything. Could parallel Mediums exist?
After the disks were dropped into the Lotus time capsule, the petals closed with a flash of light, and the Lotus clock displayed a countdown of forty-nine hours and forty-nine minutes. When that countdown reached zero, the Lotus would reopen, and Gino Caiazzo would receive his unasked-for Sburb disks.
Anna retrieved her journal and turned to the last page, which displayed her temporal things-to-do list, and she crossed out the item marked "Get Gino some game disks". With that done, Anna dropped her journal back into her sylladex. She then retrieved Cass's phone, turning it on and waiting for the home screen to appear. When it did, the timestamp said 7:31am Fri. April 10.
Anna exited the Frog Temple's main chamber, passing under the stone entrance arch. The moment she stepped outside and felt the sunshine on her face, Anna knew she was home. That was realsunshine, not skaialight, and Anna hadn't realized until now how much she'd missed it.
Had sunshine always felt this incredible?
Why the fuck hadn't Anna gone outside more?
Anna Carrero remained at the top of the Frog Temple a while longer, basking in the sun and the view, gazing across the waters of the surrounding temple lake to the shore, where she saw her old friends: the fragrant pines of southeast Pennsylvania.
"I love pine trees," Anna sniffled, wiping her eyes as she began to cry. "Pine trees are amazing."
My first reaction upon glimpsing Hyperion's Palace for the first time was that it wasn't what I expected. But then, I'm not exactly sure what I'd been expecting. Maybe something like Barad-dûr? Or Helm's Deep?
Okay, I guess I expected it to look like something straight out of Lord of the Rings, for all the buildup it was getting. Or Dante's Inferno. Something grand and epic, which faced down the entire sky, as if to say I am as great as you, perhaps greater.
But the real Hyperion's Palace didn't really deliver. It was smaller than I thought it'd be. And not as evil-looking as I'd imagined. There were no black spires, no jagged turrets, no razor edges, not even any ominous mist.
The most imposing part of Hyperion's Palace were the three mountains whose cliffs it was carved into, towering several thousand feet into the sky. The tallest peak was in the middle, its summit enshrouded in the rain clouds, and the two smaller mountains on either side appeared like they were growing out of the taller mountain's slopes.
Nestled within the small valley at the base of where the steep inner slopes of those three mountains converged was the Palace itself, and I couldn't even see most of it. I could only see the upper reaches of the Palace, which consisted of basic domiciles and towers of glittering gray-and-gold stone, carved directly into the mountainsides in the style of ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings.
Most of the Palace was obscured by a looming wall of dark stone, barring any path into the valley within the three mountains. Anyone who wanted to visit Hyperion's Palace would have to either pass through that wall's massive iron gate, find a way to climb over those treacherous-looking mountains, or fly.
Door number three seemed to be the option we were going with. Even from my current vantage point, roughly two miles away, I could see several dozen Dersite soldiers standing watch on the battlements of the massive outer wall. They were only acting as sentries. They weren't even members of the elite commando units.
From my time with Theo on the Battlefield, I'd learned the difference between Dersite regulars and commandos – Dersite regulars seemed like they had lives outside of war, while Dersite commandos were Dersite commandos. I honestly wondered what commandos did with themselves during their free time. Did any of them masturbate?
Regardless, even though Dersite Army regulars weren't as deadly as the commandos, they and their energy rifles were still more than capable of bringing the story of these amazing Cobras to a swift and premature conclusion. They were not to be underestimated.
Thankfully for the Cobras, the approach to Hyperion's Palace was broken up by sparse vegetation and woods, dotted with denser groves of trees, which would at least offer Burning Dusk some cover as he advanced with the bulk of the army. We would not be mounting anymore frontal assaults across open fields. Fuck that.
"Our approach iss favorable," Burning Dusk agreed with me even though I hadn't yet said anything. Adam and I had joined Burning Dusk, Xolotl, and Aumanil on a lofty tree-covered knoll with a reasonable view of the approach to Hyperion's Palace. We were to agree upon our final strategy for the upcoming dawn battle. Burning Dusk went on to remark, "Your approach iss not."
He was right. It wasn't. The sky above Hyperion's Palace was terribly exposed. I wasn't sure how we would be able to survive a successful landing while hundreds of Dersite soldiers were doing their level best to shoot us out of the sky.
"So the plan is for me to fly you and some friends over that wall?" I asked Adam. "Wall flyover, hard landfall on the other side, then we bust open that gate? I'll be honest, dude, I think that's suicide."
"Cowardice iss besst left unexpressed," Xolotl grunted. "Unless you have a viable alternative?"
What an asshole.
"I didn't say not to attack, asshole," I shot back, "but attacking in that specific way is suicide. So we should attack in a different way. This isn't rocket science."
Xolotl began to ask, "What iss-"
"Don't worry about what rockets are," Adam interrupted. "Doesn't matter. I mean, don't get me wrong, they're awesome, but you should really be more concerned about what'll get us to that gate without getting shot at the entire way."
Xolotl seemed to relent, but there was clearly something eating away at him. And I didn't like how quickly he'd jumped to calling me a coward, almost like he'd simply encountered an opportunity in our conversation to give voice to a belief he already held for deeper reasons.
God damn it, was this because of what I'd said about his family? After the battle was over, assuming we won, Xolotl and Adam would probably need to sit down and have a chat about what really happened three hundred years ago and why.
Or maybe we'd just lose the battle and death would render everything deliciously moot. At least my wounds from Gino wouldn't hurt, anymore. The muddy discoloration in my side, where I'd gotten blasted by dark fire, almost looked like it was spreading. Never got the opportunity to rest or seek any kind of treatment for these wounds, and now they seemed to be getting worse…
"What of the mountainss?" Aumanil suggested. The Unagwe chieftain had been quiet up until now, scrutinizing the three dark peaks forming the foundation of Hyperion's Palace. "They are too ssteep for an army to climb, but a ssmall party could manage it. From the high slopes you could simply glide over Hyperion's Palace and sstraight to the gate, right up from behind the defenderss, where few of them will be watching."
Burning Dusk hummed in approval. "At dawn, we march on thosse wallss. We shall ssound our drumss, every lasst one of them, to herald our arrival. Let that be your ssignal to prepare. Wait until we to get closse enough to Hyperion'ss sscum for them to engage uss, Knight, then it will be your moment to act."
"How many warriors, in addition to the Knight, could you carry with you over the mountain?" Aumanil asked me directly, which l appreciated.
"I could probably handle up to three, if everyone coiled around me," I replied.
"Three. Good. One from each of our peopless," said Burning Dusk. "You should be the one to choose, Knight."
"I volunteer," Xolotl declared to Adam. "I will help you open that gate. I've more than earned the right to be with you in thiss crucial moment."
I frowned at that. Why the flipflop? But Adam didn't seem to mind.
"I'd say you have," Adam agreed. "Glimmering Scales and Inuyyak will join us as well, if they are willing."
"Get ready to leave, then," said Burning Dusk. "You're going to have to circumvent the wallss and reach the back of thosse mountainss by foot, and you will need to leave very ssoon if you are to be in possition by dawn."
Xolotl and Aumanil both took their leave, the latter telling Adam he would send him Inuyyak, leaving us alone for a moment with Burning Dusk.
"You have grown in the time we have known each other," Burning Dusk said to Adam. "I never would have thought the Knight would be sso very ssimilar to how we are."
"He is rather venomous when he wants to be," I remarked about Adam.
Burning Dusk now included me in his attention. "You are Two," he said to us, "and yet you are One. How iss thiss possible?"
Oh goodness, where to even start?
"Well, see, it's like this," Adam began. "I had two bodies, then one died and came back to life and tried to kill me-"
"Two tree limbs share an entire trunk up until their point of divergence," I interrupted. Adam was getting bogged down in the minutia. "But once you're past that point? Completely different branches. No one ever looks at two limbs of the same tree and wonders which one is the tree and which one might not be. It's just a damn tree with lots of branches."
"Limbs?" asked Adam. "Or branches? Which is it?"
"Adam, stop getting bogged down in the minutia, you know perfectly well what I'm saying."
"I don't think anyone knows what you're saying," Adam retorted. "Hey Dusk, do you know what he's saying?"
Burning Dusk would have made a solid diplomat, for instead of choosing either of our sides, he chose that moment to thank Adam and me for the enlightening conversation, and then he took his leave to find Glimmering Scales and send him to me. He was more adept than most at evading our antics.
Now it was down to just Adam and me, once again.
We looked at each other, more comfortable in each other's presence than ever before, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that. How could this go on? We were going to be living mirror reflections of each other for the rest of our lives?
Now there was a thought.
The "rest of our lives".
What an interesting thought.
When was the last time I'd thought about the rest of my life?
I couldn't remember.