A/N: Chap 35 review responses are in my forums as normal. And now...I give you a brief preview of what's to come, and what has already occurred.
Chapter Thirty-Six: Over Heaven's Rim
"Machine spirit, you have power sufficient to teleport us to my ship, yes?"
Taylor opened her eyes and found herself somewhere else. Somewhere…familiar.
The room held no light, but with her bifrost eyes she saw clearly regardless. It was an oval room, roughly the size of her home in Wolf's Wood. The walls were perfectly smooth and rounded, but her eyes could not penetrate them.
She sat up in a real bed on sheets that crackled. She looked down and saw with disgust that old, dried blood soaked through what looked like a wide, round bed. It was, she realized, where she first woke up on this world. Reborn half-dead and bleeding from the trauma of her battle with Scion.
The air was stale but breathable for now. She had no doubt it was a temporary affair, though. From what she saw the previous day, she was somehow almost a mile deep inside a massive magma chamber.
A slim door stood open that she didn't remember from the first time, decades before. She drifted closer to it, and then through, to find a narrow hall. Immediately to her right was what looked like a bathroom.
A modern bathroom.
There was a toilet, of a sort, that flowed out from the wall with the same bronzed metal as everything else. There was a mirror that partially illuminated the room from the blue glow of her bifrost eyes. Most importantly, the room held a spacious walk-in shower and what looked like bottles of various soaps and shampoos. Curious, she reached in and took one of the bottles. Not glass, not quite plastic, but when she opened it–-she could smell actual, still liquid shampoo within.
"If only you still worked," Taylor muttered.
In answer, a golden glow formed in the roof overhead, and warm water began to spray from the shower nozzle.
Taylor didn't think twice. She stripped out of her travel-stained clothes and climbed into the shower in a second, and washed the grime of weeks at sea from her body. She shampooed her hair with a low moan of pleasure and then found the first good conditioner she'd seen since Brockton Bay. It was a simple, mortal pleasure. She didn't need conditioner; she didn't need shampoo. Her divine nature made both unnecessary.
But she enjoyed both immensely.
When she was finished washing, the water cut out on its own. Taylor didn't even need to ask the spirits to dry her. Something within the stall itself somehow pulled the water from her skin. It left her cool but dry, without frizzing her hair.
She reached down to pull on her travel clothes she'd obtained in Qarth, and to her surprise found that somehow, they were as clean as the day they were made from her. She pulled the linen underclothes on, then the skirt that hung low on her hips and the blouse and vest.
"Thank you," she told the odd room.
Clean in a way only modern facilities could provide for, she stepped out of the bathroom when her bifrost eyes caught the hint of a seam in the wall at the end of the short hall. Curiously, she stepped to it. When it slid back noiselessly, she almost jumped.
The room beyond reminded her of the bridge of a spaceship from Star Trek. Not the old 60s version, but the Earth-Aleph Next Generation series that Taylor's own world never got except through trade.
Partially melted bronzed chairs faced what would likely have been a view screen, if not for the fact that it was shattered by an impossible wall of twisting, glowing lava. She felt no heat from the lava at all-one large, glowing red piece of debris within the lava pushed out, causing the air to shimmer with some strange energy shield.
Taylor saw stations toward the back that she couldn't recognize, but she had guesses. Something that looked like a laser pointed down at a glass surface. Astonishingly, there were still bits of power and gravity still oriented toward the deck of the craft, rather than the world around them.
One of those stations consisted of a deformed, bronze chair facing an alcove. Taylor sat down, and just like the ones in the bedroom it began to mold and repair itself to perfectly fit her form. The alcove formed another monitor, but this time alien text ran across it. It was familiar, though. The same as the most ancient text in Asshai.
"How old are you?" She spoke absently in her native English.
An electronic voice from a hidden speaker suddenly spoke in kind. "Language sample acquired. Nomeric Aglan Dialect A4, Pre-Diaspora, Terra, identified. Please state your name."
"I am Telos."
From the wall, a small beam of light shone briefly on her face. "Anomalous biometric readings detected. Comparing to liturgical record. Better than 85% chance of designation accuracy. Designation Telos accepted provisionally. Stand by."
The monitor changed, and suddenly Taylor sat facing a woman with such clarity it felt like she could reach over and touch her face. She had an odd mix of features-blonde-gray hair, blue-gray eyes but epicanthic folds in the corner of those eyes and a complexion like steeped tea with cream. The combination was both striking and beautiful. She didn't speak or start lecturing like a recording, though. She seemed to be studying Taylor intently.
"Hello, Telos," the face on the screen finally said.
"Are you a computer?"
The face smiled at her. "As you would understand things, yes. Prior to her death, Pythia Sabbatina XV, head of the Consolidated Neo-Telosian Church of our Savior, downloaded a neural map of herself into the ship's navigational AI matrix. This was in part to hold off the corruption that was impacting AIs across human space, and also in the event her dream came true, and that another aspect of her goddess once again walked among us. It is a good thing that I am only a quantum matrix reflection of her. Otherwise I would be a weeping mess."
Taylor understood only within the context of the science fiction she'd read over the years. What she understood was that she was looking at the last head of her church came from a time that made Star Trek look primitive. New Telosian Church.
Her church.
"Do you know what happened to Sarah? The…first Pythia?"
The computerized face placed simulated hands together as if in prayer. "And thus garbed in the love and righteousness of Telos on High, and with the voice of Hope Manifest, Saint Pythia I, Most Beloved of our Goddess Everlasting, built the stones upon which the faith will shine for all time."
For a long moment, Taylor sat and remembered the freckled blonde with the mischievous grin and the bottle green eyes. She blinked, wishing once again she could weep. "Did she have a good life?"
"Much has been lost to time, but the earliest annals confirm that Pythia I led the Church for over a century during a time when such a lifespan was unusual, and it was by her hand that the first foundational canon of the church came into being. We know she had children because, at the time the colonization of this world occurred, her descendants were still alive on Terra. From that, I choose to believe that yes, Pythia I had a good life."
Taylor continued to sit, thinking about all those she lost. "It hurts. I know it shouldn't–I've been on this world for longer than I was alive on Earth itself. But I had so little time with her, or Marie and Shaquelle, or Kurt and Lacy. Just months, really. I wish I could have watched them grow, and share their joys and hurts with them."
"A part of you was. The living person I used to be had the honor of meeting your mortal reflection. The reborn saint, Taylor Hebert. For twenty thousand years, she helped guide the Church through hardship and strife, until she came to me with news that we had to flee the earth."
Split. "Three of us, with the same face, but different facets of our divinity." She spoke the words that the Old One had told her, back on Leng.
The computerized woman nodded, a beatific smile on her pixilated face. "Just so. The holy trinity–the Olympian, the Vanir, and the Mortal. Strength, spirit and humanity. We never knew where the Olympian aspect of yourself was, but the mortal lingered. Lifetime after lifetime. It helps to have faith when that faith is so richly rewarded."
There were so many questions Taylor had; questions she'd been carrying around in her head for decades. She started with the most simple. "Do you know where we are?"
"The planetary designation, at the time, was AG664-ZB24-2. In terms of its relative position to Terra, AG664-Zb24-2 is in the outer rim of the Segmentum Pacificus region of the galaxy, galactic west of Terra. It was officially named Utopia Telosia IV, being the fourth planet from its primary, and the intended heart of the Neo-Telosian Church. Apparently, things went wrong."
It dawned on Taylor that the machine might not know everything she wanted to find out. "Apparently. What do you know?"
"I know that Terra was quickly collapsing into anarchy as AI systems across the planet turned on their creators. That Warp travel was becoming dangerous and unsteady. My progenitor pooled what funds she could to steal a colony ship and flee the earth."
"Do you know what happened here after she arrived?"
"I do not possess sufficient data to be able to answer beyond supposition, but my suppositions are better than most. This is what I believe happened:
"Because of the strength of my progenitor's personality and faith, I was not corrupted by the astrometric phenomenon that so adversely impacted warp travel . But the colonial template constructor was. Like all other AIs following the Warp anomaly, it turned against the colony it was supposed to support. My last communication was the Colonial AI challenging my craft in orbit, and then firing on me. It was my progenitor who saved the colony by, ironically, destroying it. Doing so cost her life when the ship crash-landed half a world away from the Primus colony site."
Taylor found herself staring at her hands. The shattered spell of Baldur still lined her arms and darkened her finger tips in the runes and cant symbols of her mother's people. "Do you know what happened to my father?"
"The Biblia Telosia, Book 12, The Songs of Orothea, Verse 245: 'I see the Father grieving for the daughter lost; I see the god craving for the paradise beyond. Lo, and behold he walks to the End of Days. From his loins came the death of the old gods; from his loins the birth of the new. And from his loins the end of all gods to come.' He was there, my goddess, when we fled earth. He saved us. So, at least as of twenty thousand years after your sundering, Lord Kratos lived."
Taylor couldn't help but smile, even as her eyes burned with a desire to weep that her Bifrost eyes would not allow.
The face on the screen smiled. "It is a shame the real Sabbatina could not meet you. She always felt that you were a kind god, but also a personable one. Your mortal self was shaped by her many lives, and herself spoke often of who Telos the goddess was. Sabbatina often had dreams of you hugging her, and speaking kindly to her. Her son, whom she lost, could hear your spirit through the trees. It would bring her joy to know that you were just as the first Pythia described."
The words were nice enough, but there was no animus in the computer. She felt no soul, only the imitation of a human mind. And yet, there was intelligence.
"Do you know what that giant–Sennecherib–was? Was he a god?"
"More supposition. Sennecherib was a trans-human, a product of genetic engineering unlike anything that was legal at the time I left Terra. The powers he displayed, though, were not known to be associated with humanity. There were some alien species that displayed powerful psychic abilities such as that, but no humans that I have record of. He was not, as far as I know, a god."
"So he didn't come…from the same place you did."
"Place? Perhaps. But not time. This ship employed an interphasic shield array as a means of safer, faster warp travel. However, when we were struck by the STC unit, the temporal suppression system failed. The ship fell out of time, Telos. From what I was able to discern from Sennecherib, it has been many thousands of years since I crashed."
Taylor's breath caught. She knew just from her time in the world that humanity could count at least fifteen thousand years on the planet. But for another twenty thousand years to have passed before even then left her speechless. Thirty-five thousand years since she last saw her father. That was longer than the written history of humanity when she was born. It was longer than actual human civilization, at least that they knew of.
How had humanity changed in thirty-five thousand years?
With some effort, Taylor took a deep breath. "I wish I'd had this conversation with you twenty years ago."
"Me too," the computer said with a wry smile. "I'd have had more power."
"Was it you who saved me from Sennecherib?"
"Of course. It was clear that he was a dangerous man who meant you harm. It was simple enough to teleport him into stone."
"Thank you. I'm assuming you teleported me here. Can you return me?"
"It will be the last thing I do, but yes. I have just enough power for that."
A thought suddenly came to her, one both chilling and yet necessary. "Could you teleport me to his ship?"
The face in the computer studied her a moment before nodding somberly.
Just like Star Trek. "Thank you," Taylor said. "I need to see Senecherib's ship. I just…I'm sorry that I never got to meet Sabbatina. She seemed to be exactly the kind of person I would have loved."
"It was a core belief of the Telosian Church that while you lost your physical form in saving humanity, your spiritual divinity and the paradise you crafted remained in the golden boughs of the Mound. The two trees were still there when we left, and it is my belief they remain there still. If that is the case, then the part of you that is spirit alone has welcomed her into your own Heavenly Field."
"I like that," Taylor said. "Thank you."
"Before you go, there is something you need to have. A stasis cube is stored beneath this console. I never understood why I put it there during my lifetime, not until now."
Taylor reached under the console until she felt a hard cube the size of her palm. She pulled it out and stared at a single golden acorn in it. "What is this?"
"The future, and the past. Perhaps a path forward. It is one of only two acorns the Trees ever produced."
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
This time, Taylor was awake for the teleportation. She felt a ripping sensation, a tearing sound in her ears and her mind, and then a violent jerk as if a giant hand had wrested her from the ground and moved her three feet to the left.
When the white faded, she suddenly sank down to her knees in snow. If not for her bifrost eyes, she'd have been blinded by the solid white glare of the blizzard blasting around her. After the heat and humidity of Valyria, the cold briefly shocked her.
Even with her vision, there was little enough to see. A rock formation rose from the snow just ahead of her, but behind was nothing but an endless plain of snow and ice. Pushing her vision further, she saw mountains many miles away to the south; pushing further and further her magical vision…she realized she was in the lands of always winter, hundreds of miles north of her home.
A surge of will lifted her body from the snow and let her bare feet walk unencumbered on the frozen surface. She moved toward the rock formation; as she approached she saw out a wide, high arc of stone that buttressed a massive cavern. Though sheltered from the worst of the storm, snow still covered the floor.
No…she focused through the snow and ice to see a spaceship buried under thirty of snow.
She flicked her fingers, and at her command the cold spirits of the wind blasted the cavern free of snow. As it moved, she further compacted it with her will, forming a windbreak from the tons of packed snow.
The ship was roughly the size of a Boeing 737, at least in length. Its wings were not swept back, or even connected in the middle of the wide, blocky fuselage. Rather, they seemed to be connected at the top of the ship on either side and tilted downward, each with large engine pods attached.
It didn't look like any spaceship Taylor ever imagined–rather, it looked like a US air force Warthog violated a shipping container and produced this ungodly monstrosity of a ship. Even buried in snow and ice for four centuries, it looked dangerous an brutal.
The entrance was easy enough to find, though it took an application of will and magic to force it open. Shattered ice sprayed from its edges as the ramp lowered. The air that flowed out smelled ancient, stale and carried a rotted stench to it. When she stepped in, she discovered why.
Though she was only with Sennecherib for a short time, she remembered the techno-zombies he had with him. He'd left at least one on his ship. The centuries and the cold had reduced the fell abomination to a mummy wrapped in wires and metal. Taylor summed an intense fire within the body, both to warm the ship and to eliminate the atrocity.
Once inside, she saw immediately that the craft had been designed to carry soldiers equal in size to Sennacherib himself. Inhumanly large cradles lined each side of the hull, with a clear central passage for quick deployment. The back of the cargo space was taken up by a huge, intimidating-looking machine that she suspected was a teleporter.
She moved to the front of the ship; it had two Sennecherib-sized seats in the front, but also third seat behind the first two that faced what looked like a computer console. It had none of the elegance of what she just left.
She could feel the lingering presence of the sorcerer there. Moving with deliberate calm, she sank into the oversized seat. The moment she did, the four-century frozen ship somehow came to life.
Not all at once, but when she sat a red light began to blink on the console before her and new the craft functioned still. It had an input pad, like a keyboard, but she didn't recognize any of the letters. Then the console before her hummed as it began to boot up. While it did so, she looked around the station until she spotted a thick, leather-bound book slid between components.
The moment she touched it, she felt the slimy magic she remembered from the symbols on Sennecherib's staff. She forced herself to push through it, and just as she learned in Asshai, she took the entire book in with a touch, only to then have to fight back an urge to wretch.
The hand-written book contained the detailed notes of Sennecherib's search for her, yes. But it also contained spell diagrams and enchantments that harnessed what he called the Warp, or Immaterium in some places. It was magic, yes, but a magic drawn from an infinitely corrupted fount. A dark magic, from a dark dimension. It was not the magic of life, but of death and the psyche.
If nothing else, though, it gave her his language for when the ship's computer finally started. It took almost an hour to figure anything about the strange system because it seemed so completely foreign to the computers she knew back in Brockton Bay.
Finally, though, she read enough of the prompts in the strange language called Gothic to find what she was looking for. The first, and most important item was Sennecherib's teleportation device. It was how he so easily convinced the early priesthood of R'hllor that he was their god. The computer told her it still worked, and gave her instructions on how to aim it so that she could return to Valyria.
The second thing, though, was in its way even more important. At her spoken command, the history of the galaxy began to play before her eyes, from as far back as they could record, to the final years before Sennecherib came to this world.
Taylor could not cry; she no longer had tear ducts to moisten her crystalline eyes. So her wretched sobs were dry as she watched the galaxy burn for thousands years.
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
No one said anything to her when she re-appeared on the top of the exposed dragon tower. Thoros gave her long, confused glances, but didn't say anything. Gerion was too busy overseeing the loading of treasure into his ship to care.
Taylor said nothing about her absence. She didn't even come down at first–she remained atop the dragon tower and shaped her claimed Valyrian armor with her power. While she absently worked, she looked north across the miles at the continent of Essos. It was only one of many continents in the world, most of which were unknown to the humans here. She turned her bifrost eyes to the heavens, searching for the ship she saw there the last time she looked. It was gone. She tried searching for it, but it was gone.
Likely gone for more.
It was on that third day on Valyria, as Ser Gerion looted a long-dead dragonlord's home and the children played tag or took lessons in the sunlight, that the quiet summons she sent east earlier bore fruit.
Min was the first to see the vast shadow passing over the sky. She looked up and froze, her golden eyes wide in elemental terror. The children screamed and scattered for the ruins, while the sailors wo had been loading things scrambled for whatever paltry weapon they could hold.
None of it mattered.
Voxtchtatrcka, the Death of Dragons, shaded the peninsula as he descended from the skies. Taylor watched him and smiled, whispering a welcome as she stood. She walked down into the level just below her and fetched the enchanted eggs. When she emerged, the dragon came in with swooping wings and landed.
The tower she stood on was designed to hold a full-grown dragon. Voxtchtatrcka was so huge that even with his legs on the ground, his massive head rose above the tower top. She knew as a divine creature he could adjust his own size, but in this form he could no more fit on the tower than Taylor could have stood on the point of a sword. He stared down at her with flecks of flame curling from nostrils larger than her head.
I heard your words, Telos-sister. What have you found that you would gift to me?
She placed the dragon eggs on the edge of the tower, and with a touch stripped the enchantment from them. "Your children, my brother. I found these eggs within this tower, held in slumber by human magic. They live free now. They are yours, with my thanks and affection."
The huge head lumbered down until one huge golden eye studied the eggs. He sniffed them and then reared back. Truly, the youngkin live. They will hatch, and they will bear more young. I will not be alone?
"No, my brother. You will not be alone. Take them back to your mountains and let them live. Let their fires burn free and fierce."
The dragon's head was almost as large as Ser Gerion's ship. And yet he moved with such gentleness that he grabbed the three eggs with his massive teeth and took them, one at a time, into his mouth. A fine gift, Telos-kin. One that will not long be forgotten. Fare thee well, my sister!
He reared back, his black scales blotting out the light, and then flapped massive wings and he leapt into the air. The wind from his wings pushed her so hard she had to brace herself with the spirits. In moments the dragon god rose back up into the sky and flew back east.