Chapter 25
Sarai leaned through the opening of the tube and looked around the chamber beyond. The disc had stopped on its own and her heel stomps against it had no effect. The chamber’s walls across from her were lost in shadow. The only thing in the room was a tall mirror with an ornately carved wooden frame. It was angled away from her, showing only the dark reflection of the curved wall near the tube.
She stepped out and the door closed behind her; the ivory and glass of the tube grew toward a center point. The disc in the tube sank into darkness without a sound.
“Oh no no no!” She slapped a palm against the lift, then ignited her hilt and swept its projected light across the room. She’d stumbled across Maru and the rest of their party a few hours before they all reached the Pinnacle. There’d been an enormous relief when Jayce was not there waiting for them. Maru and Dastin accepted her explanation that he’d been washed ashore before her and she hadn’t seen him since. Dastin was fine with waiting at the base of the Pinnacle to tell Jayce that he’d lost his chance to go any farther as Maru was escorting her inside.
Which suited her just fine. The Pinnacle was her destiny, not his. Though, leaving him behind seemed to have caught up to her now. Maru had warned of trials within the Pinnacle. Being forced to act on her own suited her just fine, as the Pinnacle would find her worthy or not. She didn’t need Maru or anyone else as a crutch.
Sarai braced her saber in front of her and stepped in front of the mirror. It was wide enough to show two people standing shoulder to shoulder and several feet taller than her. But she wasn’t in the mirror; rather, on the other side was an identical chamber. She gave her hilt a waggle, and the light around her and in the reflection shifted.
“What in the Veil is happening?”
The reflection shifted without the mirror moving and came to a stop. There was a man in ornate armor kneeling in prayer on the other side. A Fulcrum formed into a broadsword glowed in front of a bent knee, his head bowed. The man had short, platinum-blond hair and dusky skin. He spoke in a low tone, repeating the same few sentences over and over again. She didn’t recognize his armor or the style of his weapon.
Sarai canted her blade from side to side, and its light washed over the knight. He looked up, steel blue eyes focusing on her.
“Stay back!” She raised her saber. The glow from it both reflected off the mirror and shone through the glass to light up the man’s face.
The knight reached forward and flicked a finger against the glass. It rang like a bell for several seconds. One side of his face was badly scarred. He regarded her with something between surprise and scorn.
“I am safe from you,” he said, his voice raspy.
“Something tells me you can hold your own.” She kept her guard up. “How long have you been in here? Do you know a way out?”
“Time is different here,” he said. “The better question is, which of us is in the future and which is in the past?”
“Why? Why is it like this?” She glanced around.
“They want it this way. It’s all part of their game. They need the Cycle to continue, no matter how much damage it causes,” he said. “No matter how much suffering it causes. But we are stronger than them . . . little one.”
“That’s why you’re here?” she asked. “To stop this Cycle?”
The knight exhaled slowly.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “All alone in this place.”
“Maybe it’s best we don’t share with each other.” Sarai lowered her blade slightly. “If the Pinnacle wants us to see each other, there must be a reason for it.”
“They say if you reach the Pinnacle you can see one of them. Stare a god in the face and demand to know why they have set us into this life just to suffer. We can free ourselves from them. Do you know the myth of the crippled saint?”
“Can’t say I do,” she said.
“Some say she created the Cycle with an iron-hearted demon. They wanted to bring all souls to divinity, but their conflict trapped us all here. Life. Death. Pain. Suffering. Over and over again. All for nothing,” he said. “I must end it. Save us all.”
“Mighty noble of you,” she said. “How’re you going to do that stuck in here?”
“One of the gods wants the Cycle to end. He said I can find the key here . . .”
Sarai swallowed hard. An icy fear grew in her chest.
“How long have you been waiting? How will you know if you find it?”
“I will wait until the stars burn out. What is the price of time when all souls can be saved?” The knight leaned back slightly, and dust fell from his shoulders and arms. “Do you enjoy your suffering?”
“I don’t know who or what you are, but this conversation is over,” She touched the mirror frame and tried to lift it up, but it had solidified with age. In the mirror, light coalesced behind the knight into a humanoid figure. A spear made of light formed in its hand and it readied a strike.
“Look out!” Sarai sidestepped, avoiding the spear out of instinct.
A spear tip made from solid light thrust through the knight and burst through the faux-mirror where she’d just stood. Glass shattered and fell to the floor. The spear held in place as the glass within the mirror disintegrated into dust.
A golem of ensorcelled armor plates kicked the frame away. The armor was hollow; strands of plasma and lightning made up the inside of the armor. The helmet snapped toward her; there were no eyes within, yet Sarai felt a presence that was deeply hostile. The thing had found a way through the mirror and had come for her.
Sarai ducked and rolled under the sword as it swiped at her. She stabbed her saber into the golem’s knee and the plasma strands coalesced around the tip and slapped it away with a snap and a sudden tang of ozone in the air.
The golem raised a foot and stomped at her. Sarai braced the flat of her blade against her hand and caught the stomp. Energy flowed through her saber and the sabaton burst apart in a flash of light.
The golem reared back. It stuck its damaged leg into the floor and chopped at her. Sarai knocked the blade aside and cut through the golem’s arm with a quick back slash. She thrust the saber beneath the chin of the golem’s helmet and twisted hard. Its helm popped off and the plasma roiling through its form died back with snaps and pops.
“What . . . what the hell was that?” Sarai kicked one of the armor plates away. The wood of the mirror frame rotted away before her eyes, filling the chamber with the smell of a deep forest.
She lifted her face to the ceiling lost to the darkness overhead.
“This all part of the test?” she asked. “Send the rest! I’m sick of these games.” Sarai lifted her arms to her side and spun around slowly.
A small point on the lift tube crumbled; the disintegration radiated outward until a portal to a waiting disc appeared.
“More? Yeah? Fine. I will make it to the top.” She shook her saber slightly and deactivated it. “I will finish what my father started. That stone will be mine.”
Sarai hopped onto the disc.
Jayce came out of the stairwell and leaned against the wall, his chest heaving and hands on his thighs. Maru stepped past him, his glaive ignited and ready. The chamber dissolved into darkness. A narrow walkway appeared. It glowed from within and led into the deep night. A doorway of solid light rose in the distance.
“So. Many. Steps,” Jayce said between breaths.
“No excuse to lower your guard,” Maru said. “We’re close to the top . . . I can sense it.”
“Maru . . . what is all this? I don’t like it,” Jayce said.
“The path forward is quite clear. Come.” Maru went toward the beginning of the walkway.
“No!” Jayce straightened up. “I’m sick of being carted around like a hull full of fish. What’s so damn important in here? Why aren’t you telling me everything? Why haven’t we found Leeta yet?”
“No concern for Sarai?” Maru lowered his glaive.
Jayce rolled his eyes. “Her too. I want some answers, Maru. Where are we going and why?”
“As you need to catch your breath after that exertion . . . and as I have not earned your complete trust, then let us discuss the end of all things.” Maru fiddled with his glaive, tapping the flat of his blade against his shin. “Do you believe life is a natural occurrence in the universe?”
“Wow, starting off with the easy questions, huh? I haven’t put a lot of thought into that.” Jayce took a sip from the canteen on his belt.
“Even before the Collapse, records from civilizations—active and extinct—never found any trace of life anywhere in the galaxy before about six and a half million years ago. Despite worlds existing in the golden zone that would support and nurture life for billions of years before that . . . nothing. Not even microbial fossils. Then, for reasons we don’t have a full explanation for, life began all across the galaxy at exactly the same time.”
“I know how to read water, fish, and fight in the Scale pits. I haven’t been through a whole lot of fancy schoolin’ like Sarai, but . . . that doesn’t seem natural.” Jayce swished water around his mouth and swallowed. “Religion back home was all about warning off bad luck. Never got into any deep discussions about where life came from. So how does life just happen everywhere all at once?”
“The chance of that is quite improbable. Some theorize an intelligence from beyond the galaxy seeded the stars for reasons unknown to us. Others believe that the Veil was involved. One glaring problem is that if an intelligence was capable of creating life as we know it, why create so many diverse species? Why design it to end in death?”
“I don’t have answers to that. Been a rough couple of days, Maru.”
“You demanded answers, and I am giving them to you as best I can. The cycle of life and death has been with us for longer than we’ve been able to contemplate it. The Sodality believes the Collapse of the Ancients had something to do with attempts to break the Cycle.”
“Not thinking machines that went rogue?”
“AIs are a particularly dangerous invention. Once given enough power and freedom, they always eclipse what their biological creaters are capable of. Their rate of evolution and advancement are terrifying to behold. Species that unleash AIs quickly go extinct as their creations find them . . . limiting. We’ve seen this happen on planets after the Collapse. The Ancients seem to have kept their AI on a short leash, never giving them full freedom. But, at some point, the Ancients attempted to use their AI to solve the final mystery: death,” Maru said.
“How is a computer supposed to stop things from dying?” Jayce asked.
“The Veil is eternal and unchanging. What we see and experience here is a reflection of our dimension. The Ancients attempted to . . . merge this reality with ours. Create bodies free from the decay of entropy and join their souls with these new constructs that the AI designed for them after enough study of the Veil. They were not afraid of death. Rather, they believed it was their purpose to conquer death after being placed in this universe by . . . whatever created them and us.”
“What? The Ancients aren’t us. Us in ancient times, I mean,” Jayce said.
“The Ancients were a cybernetically enhanced species from what few remains we’ve found. Many species we know—including humans like you—were uplifted to serve them. Whatever species they were originally was lost in the Collapse. The current hypothesis is that the Ancients feared AI, but modified themselves to compete with AIs’ capability. At some point, they decided to unleash the potential of AI and when the AI proposed a way for the Ancients to transfer their souls to vessels drawn from the Veil . . . something catastrophic happened. The more religiously inclined among the Paragons believed they were punished by the Veil for their hubris to escape the inevitability of death.”
“And the more science minded?” Jayce touched the crystalline wall next to the stairwell.
“They postulate that the Ancients made a mistake. One they could correct with enough time and study,” Maru said.
“That sounds stupid. What makes them think they can improve on what a civilization that ruled the entire—They’ve tried, haven’t they?” Jayvce put a hand to his face.
“Perceptive of you. During the Black Chanid Invasion, the man who became the Tyrant found an Ancient codex that laid out the final stages of their attempt. He needed two artifacts to recreate the ritual—or experiment. One was a spirit vessel created by the Ancients, an artificial body that would be immune to entropy once the final prize was obtained. The Sodality defeated him before he could obtain the vessel . . . we assumed.”
“That’s not a good word,” Jayce said.
“The Tyrant seemed quite dead when we left him aboard the Purgation before it exploded. His forces collapsed and the Governance returned, but we still came across the Tyrant’s agents from time to time. They always had a purpose. Most of the time we caught or detected them searching for some bit of esoteric knowledge regarding the Ancients. Always toward the missing piece of the Ancients’ riddle.”
“Which would mean that the Tyrant had the machine or body the Ancients invented,” Jayce said.
Maru nodded. “You are very perceptive. Sarai’s initial impression of you was highly inaccurate. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the Tyrant is still alive, but at the very least, someone is continuing his work.”
“Oh. Oh! Oh no.” Jayce frowned. “And the second artifact they need to repeat what the Ancients tried to do is . . .”
“The Saint’s soul stone”—Maru pointed up—“which lies, according to legend, at the top of the Pinnacle. The Saint has many forms . . . you’ve seen him? The manifestations are different.”
“I believe so.” Jayce looked down the hallway.
“That stone has been sighted, but never claimed since the Collapse. I believe you or Sarai could be the first to claim it, but it needs to be you, Jayce,” Maru said.
One of Jayce’s eyebrows cocked up.
“Me? Me, the Deep-world scum that’s brand new to all this, and not the golden child that’s been raised to do this since birth like Sarai?” Jayce asked.
“Jayce, I have been Sarai’s mentor and instructor for many years. She is not the right person to wield such power. Her intentions are not altruistic. She wants revenge against the Tyrant who killed her father and the Syndicate that she believes has frustrated her mother’s efforts to repair the Governance. She would be an avenger with the Saint’s stone.”
“I’m all for taking down the Tyrant too. Remember? I want to become a Paragon for exactly that,” Jayce said. “Maybe we should just crack our anchors and not let anyone go any farther—”
“Why did you try to help this Leeta person?” Maru asked.
“Because she needed the help. She’ll end up as a slave if I don’t help her.”
“And why did Sarai abandon you after you escaped the hydra? I know what she did. I’m no fool, my boy,” Maru said.
“You’d have to ask her.” Jayce looked aside. “If you know she’s the wrong person, why bring her this far?”
“It is better for her to claim it than any Tyrant’s agent. She’s not lost, she can still be led to the light,” Maru said. “The Sodality does not demand perfection from anyone.”
“Good news for me, then,” Jayce said. “But what happens if the Tyrant gets the stone?”
“There may be another intervention from the Saint. The Ancients tried to break the Cycle, they wanted to end death. When they came too close to breaking the natural order, their empire was cast down. Reduced the galaxy to base survival. Another Collapse would be cataclysmic, Jayce. The Sodality exists to prevent this.”
“That’s why you’ve brought me this far? To stop this disaster that might happen?” Jayce looked down at himself, then at Maru.
“You’ve accomplished a great deal on your own, young one. Do not doubt yourself. The Veil influences our reality. I do not believe our meeting was by accident or happenstance,” Maru said.
“But why?” Jayce raised his voice. “Why would some superpowerful intelligence create life and then just leave the way to wreck it all just laying around?”
“Jayce, are there no sayings about tempting fate on your world?” Maru used the rather loose joints in his hands to wrap two fingers around each other in what Jayce assumed was a gesture to ward off evil.
“It’s been a long day and I’m running out of patience,” Jayce said.
“What brought life to the galaxy may not have been able to do it by simple command. There is a saying that the Sodality has uncovered through our quest, in many places and in many different languages. We do not know who originated it, but it says, ‘As above, so below.’ There is a reciprocal relationship between our reality and the Veil. One we do not fully understand. But we know what the Ancients did before they were cast down. We know what the Tyrant attempted. And what he may still be after. As such, I suggest we tarry no longer.”
“This is a lot to take in,” Jayce said.
“You asked.”
“Then what—what do we do? We get the Pinnacle stone and then what?”
Maru tapped a claw tip on the empty ring on Jayce’s harness.
“Let us get you to the stones before others can. Then get you back to the Sodality and keep it safe from the Tyrant,” Maru said.
“You can’t expect me to do this! F-find Sarai. She’s the important one, not me. I don’t know how to deal with all of this.” Jayce edged back toward the stairs.
Maru put a hand on his shoulder.
“Power and authority are dangerous things in the wrong hands. The Tyrant nearly destroyed the galaxy because he was entrusted with too much by the old Governance. You would not have come this far if you were the wrong person, but we need to continue on. You’ve been given a gift, Jayce; you can find out exactly what you’re capable of in here. Not many get that chance,” Maru said.
“I’m starting to realize that working a trawler and taking Scale dives for the Syndicate may not have been that bad—Wait, did you say ‘stones’ earlier? How many are there?”
“Did I?” Maru got a faraway look to his eyes, then focused back on Jayce. “I must have misspoken. Stay close to me on the path, Jayce. There’s something in the darkness watching us.”
Maru stepped onto the glowing stone. Faint musical notes sounded with each footfall. The glow intensified around the edge of his boots each time he took a step.
“Ahs sodame ko dahl . . . tad arima na egur methar . . .” Jayce sang softly along as they walked toward the distant door of light.
“I do not recommend looking down,” Maru said.
“Why?” Jayce peeked over the side. There was nothing but pure darkness below. “Nope. Mistake.” Jayce fought a moment of vertigo.
“Young humans never listen. I wonder if it is genetic.” Maru readied his glaive and moved with his feet in a combat stance. They continued on until the stairwell and the starting platform were lost to darkness.
“Jayce?” a voice sounded from the darkness.
Jayce froze.
“Jayce! Help me!” The voice was closer now. A woman’s voice.
“Mom?” Jayce lowered his sword. “Mom, is that you?”
“No, Jayce, no—”
Jayce ignored Maru’s warning and turned around. Behind him, a woman in tattered clothes clung to the edge of the glowing pathway.
“Mom!” Jayce ran to her and slid feetfirst to stop in front of her. Her eyes were the same auburn, full of terror from the last moment he saw her years ago. She grabbed him by the wrist and her feet swayed like they were underwater. Her touch was cold and slimy, like anything dredged off the ocean floor on Hemenway.
“Don’t leave me again, please!” she pleaded.
“Mom . . .” An icy mote formed in his chest; old grief spread through his spirit. “I saw you go under. How can you be here if I lost you . . . but not Dad too?”
“He’s not here. You should come to the depths with me,” she said. “The dark welcomes everyone. You can be with me forever,” Her face changed to a waterlogged and decayed gray. One eye sank back into her skull and her hair thinned and fell out. Her hands sprouted claws, the flesh decaying swiftly to expose bones.
Seawater gurgled out of her mouth, and she reached for the back of Jayce’s head.
Maru’s glaive severed her forearm. His strike continued to the mother’s other wrist. She fell into the abyss, her body returned to the last living moments Jayce remembered of her. Her amputated limbs dissolved into motes of light and rose into the air.
“No!” Jayce thrust an arm down, but she was gone.
Maru pinned his shoulder to the walkway.
“You’re being tested,” Maru whispered into his ear. “Do not give up. Do not falter. You’re meant to be here.”
Tears streamed down Jayce’s face. He slapped Maru’s hand away and rolled to his back. He crawled backward, his countenance dark with rage.
“She . . . she was right there!” he shouted.
“She was not.” Maru shook his head. “You could not save her when she died, Jayce. You were a child. She died to save you, didn’t she?”
Jayce stopped. He wiped his nose and spat over the side of the walkway.
“I could have done something,” he said. “She didn’t have to die.”
“What?” Maru squatted down to look him straight in the eyes. “What could a child have done in a storm like that?”
“Anything!” Jayce beat a fist against the walkway. “Three days! Three days I clung to a piece of wood that kept me from drowning before I was rescued. You think I didn’t—didn’t . . .”
Maru extended a hand to him.
Jayce swiped at it. Maru took the hit and kept his hand in the same place. Jayce choked down his emotions and accepted it. Maru helped him up, then hugged him.
“You have no guilt to carry, Jayce. She died so you may live. There is no greater love.”
“I became a river rat to save people.” Jayce wiped another tear away. “So no one else would lose someone like I did.”
“Then you are a good man and—” Maru raised his chin suddenly, then pushed Jayce back slightly. “Something’s coming. We fight back-to-back.”
Howls sounded in the darkness. Death cries from dozens of people. Jayce pressed his back against Maru’s and the two readied their weapons.
“When I give you the signal, you run for the door. Do not stop for anything, you understand me?” Maru said.
“What about you?” Jayce asked.
“I don’t matter now. Only you do. Claim a stone. Break your anchor and get back to the Sodality on Cadorra. The High Paragons will know what to do,” Maru said. “Up high!”
Maru thrust his glaive straight up and speared an apparition through a gossamer burial shroud that flowed like it was underwater.
An alien skull with a thick jawbone and three eye sockets clattered over the side of the pathway. Bits of flesh still clung to its bones as it crawled toward Jayce. He cracked the skull with a downward swipe. The skeleton collapsed into individual bones and rolled around the pathway.
More apparitions swooped in and out of the darkness.
“Stay close, move with me.” Maru swatted another ghostly attacker away. Jayce slid his feet back, bumping into Maru’s back as the undead came for them. Howls swirled around them as gale-force wind whipped into a funnel around them. They stood in the eye of a storm as rotting visages cried out against them for living.
Jayce parried a stinger from a bleached white scorpion and twisted his sword around the length of small bones and severed the end with a flick of his wrist. He put a hand on the pommel and thrust the blade to his left blind, felt the tip crack bones, then readied the blade parallel to just below his chin and split a skull of some reptilian apparition between the eyes.
The laments of the dead grew louder. Above, hundreds more descended toward them, flowing down the whirlpool.
“Jayce!” Maru grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him in front of him. “Run!”
“I’m not leaving you!” he yelled.
“I will be one step behind you. Run. Run!”
Jayce sprinted toward the bright light of the exit. He vaulted over an apparition that swung a bone scythe at his knees and pulled away from grasping hands that tugged at his arms and legs.
The pathway ended in the same polished stone as the plaza outside the pinnacle. Jayce slid to a stop and turned back. Maru was well behind him. The Paragon leapt and spun through the growing swarm of undead, his glaive tearing through them and keeping most at bay.
“Maru!” Jayce gripped the edge of the doorway and reached out to Maru.
The Wottan faltered as he stepped onto the polished stones and fell forward, out of Jayce’s reach.
The dead piled onto Maru, tearing at his clothes and biting at his exposed flesh.
Jayce felt the ghost of his mother and their final moments together on the sinking ship so many years ago. He abandoned the doorway and swung his blade in a wide arc, dispelling the spirits into evanescent howls, and seized Maru by the collar. He hauled them both backward and fell through the doorway.