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Chapter 16

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Jayce screamed, but there was no sound. Rays of white and ivory light broke around him. He spun around, but no matter where he looked, he saw the same long fractals.

His feet touched down with no impact. He stood in a white abyss; the fractal rays dissipated overhead.

“Hello?” His word was muted with nothing to echo off of. There was a tug against him. He turned around, but the tug was always to his back.

“Maru! Anybody!”

His heels sank into the ground, and he took a step back to balance himself. His rear foot sank halfway up to the ankle in broken shards of white glass. He fell forward and pulled his foot out. Both hands hit the ground and the surface broke into tiny pellets that rolled behind him.

Jayce pushed himself up, struggling against the weight of his pack and the growing pull behind him. He took a step forward and the ground held. He kept moving through the blank canvas of the reality all around him.

“What if I break it now?” He touched the anchor band around his upper arm. “No. No, I didn’t come all this way to quit now.” He kept moving, the drag behind him constant no matter how fast he went.

He didn’t know how long the march lasted, but after counting enough steps he realized that he’d walked the distance of the largest flotilla he’d ever visited back on Hemenway. His legs began to ache, and his shoulders burned from the straps and heavy pack.

He bent forward and thrust his legs up to kick the pack higher and reduce some of the strain. When he raised his head, there was something in the distance.

“Hey!” Jayce waved a hand overhead. “Hey, Dastin, is that you?” He broke into a jog. The figure ahead of him was moving toward the direction of the pull, which broke what little Jayce knew of this Between place.

No matter how fast he moved, the figure approached at the same rate.

“Ah, this is eel slime!” He stopped for a second and his feet began sinking again. “Crap. Crap!” He started forward again.

The figure was on a path parallel to him. Jayce made out the same sort of Veil energy armor that Maru wore, but the helmet was different. The other man was about the same size as Jayce but wasn’t carrying anything with him.

“Hello?” Jayce tried to move at an angle toward the other, but the ground began to give way and the pull suddenly got stronger. It felt like he was walking through a headwind as the new Adept came within a few steps of him.

“How can you go that way? What’s behind you?” Jayce asked.

The Adept covered his Veil hilt with one hand and patted his chest twice. They passed each other without another word.

“Why didn’t Maru tell me there’d be others in here? What’s that?” Light blue stumps appeared ahead of him. A path just wide enough for his pack cut through the sudden obstacle. The stumps became posts of varying height as he got closer.

More details on the objects didn’t become clearer until he neared, like ancient ice melting off some long-lost object buried in a glacier.

The first one he could make out clearly was of a man with one hand to his chest, his arm reaching up to the sky. His face was contorted in pain. Jayce kept walking, afraid to touch the statue.

The next was of a woman in fatigues. She was on her knees, a cracked anchor in her hands. Her face was perfect, but her look of pure shock and horror was frozen in time. A cut appeared on one side of her neck, then her entire head fell forward like an axe had severed it.

Jayce cried out and broke into a run through the forest of statues. All were of people in their final moment before death. Emaciated, starving men. Sunken-eyed adventurers with distended bellies and their hands cupped with water at their mouths. Too many had signs of violence on their bodies.

“Maru! Maru, where are you?” Jayce ran down the open path past all the horrors.

Reality blinked several times, like when he’d take a hard blow to the head during Scale bouts, and Jayce fell forward. He landed in blue-green gravel and the pack knocked most of the air from his lungs when it landed on him.

“There he is!” he heard Eabani shout.

Rough hands rolled him onto his side. Dastin and Eabani stood over him, their crossbows in hand.

“Well, did you die?” Dastin asked.

“What in the hell was all that?” Jayce touched the gravel and when his hand didn’t sink into any arcane strangeness, he opted to just lay there and catch his breath.

“The Between. Weird, ain’t it?” Dastin chuckled.

“The statues! The other guy! What was that?” Jayce sucked in cold, moist air.

“Let me see him.” Maru knelt next to him and lifted his chin. “What did you see?”

Jayce gave him the barest of details while he checked his hands and clothes for any glass dust from the Between. Maru listened carefully and nodded.

“Attuned experience things differently when they cross over,” Maru said. “Dastin and Eabani saw nothingness until the Between released them. I saw the dead, same as you. Same as Sarai.”

“Dead? What all those statues were . . .”

“It’s best not to die here,” Maru said. “There is much debate as to what happens to a soul when the vessel ends beyond the Veil, but no certainty.”

“A little more warning would’ve been nice,” Jayce said.

“The more one knows about the Between, the more the Between can latch onto thoughts. Some have reported seeing dead loved ones, their very heart’s desires. All meant to slow Pilgrims down as they cross. Hesitation is death in the Between,” Maru said. “If I warned you of any sort of high strangeness that you might encounter, it could have been the end of you. So, I asked Gunny Dastin to give you clear and simple instructions that only a combat-tested Marine can give.”

“I didn’t even have to cuss or bring out the big guns.” Dastin raised a knife hand.

“Where’s Sarai?” Jayce asked.

“Still not through.” Maru looked up.

The sky was an infinite sheet of cracked ice. Light shined through shifting cracks of the frozen river and cast long rays toward the ground in many different spots and at different angles. Tufts of clouds meandered below the high ceiling of the world.

“Whoa. That . . . that doesn’t seem right,” Jayce said.

“Welcome to the Veil, kid. It’s only gonna get weirder from here.” Dastin pulled Jayce to his feet. Behind him was a spinning loop of glistening wire large enough for two people to step through easily. Veil stones were wrapped in the gate like lost gems enveloped by tree roots.

“This is our gate,” Eabani grunted. “Go through and you’ll be dropped back at the Aperture. Return trip’s a lot faster.”

Neff pawed the ground, then sniffed at something. He followed his nose to a sapling and began digging. He came up a moment later, Veil flecks glowing between his small fingers.

“Aren’t those worth a lot of money?” Jayce asked Dastin.

“He’s contracted to lead us to stones. Any flecks or flawed stones we don’t want are his,” Dastin said. “He brings them back to his nest and they feed the next generation.”

“Ah-ha! Good good omens.” Neff swallowed the flecks. “Very valuable.” Neff tapped his stomach.

They were atop a gently sloped hill. The aquamarine pebble field spread across rolling hills. Two more gates spun in the distance.

“What if we go through one of those?” Jayce asked.

“Don’t.” Maru held a palm out to the gate and thin filaments of light appeared connecting his fingertips to the stones. “She’s close. Still moving . . . Every Aperture gate in the galaxy is open right now. Very few of them will lead back to Illara. You step through another gate and you could be ejected to an uncharted planet or a world with no atmosphere.”

“Even if you do end up on Illara, we wouldn’t know where it would be. Most of the gates are camped by Syndicate who’d rob you blind and then kill you,” Dastin said.

“Or eat you. The order they do all that’s up to them.” Eabani hefted his crossbow and looked through optics. “Little early for Sniffers.”

“Don’t antagonize it,” Maru said softly. “We can’t take trophies back. You know that.”

“Probably best.” He lowered the weapon. “Imagine if the Drakes could pass through.”

“Let’s not.” Dastin tapped the stock of his crossbow. “Adept? I’m getting worried about her.”

“Shh . . .” Maru’s eyes closed. “She’s close . . .”

Jayce looked out to the horizon, which was lost to a distant haze all around them. Snow-covered mountains were behind the gate, a turquoise sea to the left and right, but it was far more distant than felt right. He was used to the horizons on Hemenway, but there didn’t seem to be any sort of curve to this planet.

If it even was a planet.

He turned around right as Sarai snapped into existence and fell against him.

She screamed and beat at his chest and pushed him away. Her face was wet with tears and dreadfully pale.

“Whoa! Whoa! We’re all friends here.” Jayce backed away.

“Maru?” She swiped a sleeve across her eyes and dropped her pack. “Maru, where are you?”

“Here.” The Adept grabbed her by the shoulders and held her firmly. She slipped forward and hugged him. “I saw you. I saw you in the graveyard.”

“I haven’t died, little one.” He stroked the back of her head. “I’m just fine. See?”

“Then who . . . ?” She pulled back to look at him again.

“It could have been any Wottan that’s died here. I’m told we look alike,” Maru said.

“You could have warned me better.” She wiped her face and composed herself.

“You got warned?” Jayce flopped his arms against his sides.

“I’ve been preparing for this since I was a child,” she snapped at him. “Have you read the epics of Veddan the Pure? Seen the art hanging in the grand walkway of the Sodality’s Grand Temple?”

“No. But maybe I was better off when I was in the Between knowing next to nothing.” Jayce shrugged.

“Told you.” Dastin handed a small box to Sarai. “Not every secret makes you happy.”

“I’ll take dangerous knowledge over blissful ignorance.” She gave Jayce a dirty look, then flipped open the box.

“Kid.” Eabani held up a similar box and gave it a shake. “This is your other insurance policy. It points back to this gate, but it’s offset for a bit more security.”

“Like a compass?” He flipped the box open, and a needle spun several tens of degrees away from the gate.

“Sorta. It’ll point back here in case you lose your anchor. But the needle is offset by nineteen degrees. That means—”

“So, it’s like a declination off magnetic north from true north.” He held the compass in front of him and turned toward the gate.

“You know the offset. Don’t tell anyone. Keeps anyone who might get it from following it back to our gate,” Eabani said.

“Are you going to tell me how it works?” Jayce asked.

“No. Governance military secret. Which means we spent entirely too much money for the tech, and we don’t want looters across the galaxy having an easier way out. Keeps competition down.”

“Won’t that mean more people will die in here?” Jayce asked.

“Someone chooses to come through, it’s on them. Governance can’t save everyone all the time,” Eabani said. “No one in here but us is your friend, you get me? We’re not here to save anyone. We get you two the shinies you need, then we bounce out. Understand?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Jayce said.

“Neff, are you ready to scry?” Maru asked.

The Docent paced around the party on all fours, pausing to shake pebbles from his paws. He sniffed at the air, then sneezed.

“Bad bad air here. We need to go move. Something is different this time. Something is wrong,” Neff said.

“Let me scry for a moment.” Maru clapped his hands together. He kept his pointer fingers together and threaded the rest of his digits together. Tiny motes appeared and spun around his fingertips. The spinning grew faster and faster as Maru murmured.

A song rose in the distance. Jayce cocked an ear up and leaned toward the sound. The words were strange but felt familiar and were sung along with long notes of bells and chimes.

“Ahs sodame ko dahl . . . tad arima na egur methar . . .”

“Stop!” Maru’s command jolted Jayce out of his reverie. The Adept drew his hilt and ignited the blade with a quick motion. “How do you know the words?”

“What? I don’t—I was just listening and—”

“You were singing.” Dastin lowered his crossbow. “So was Sarai.”

“I was?” She looked as confused as Jayce.

“Oh no . . . no no no!” Neff ran for the portal. He leapt toward the opening but Maru caught him by the tail and threw him back. Neff tumbled through the pebbles, then curled into a ball with only his snout and eyes sticking out.

“Omens! I must tell the clan.” The Docent snuggled into the rocks.

“If it’s true, then we must remain here,” Maru said. “Your mother was right . . . I should never have doubted her.” The Adept retracted his blade with a snap and returned the hilt to his belt.

“What is that?” Sarai pointed to a distant plain of ice-white reeds.

Jayce peered at the horizon. A solitary mountain peak formed just above the far horizon. The cliffs looked like stretched glass, glowing with silver and gold from within. The peak was shorn off and perfectly flat. Starlight pulsed irregularly from the top.

“Why why do they have to see it? Send me back, full refund!” Neff began shivering.

“If they can see it, so can everyone else,” Maru said. “Which way?”

Sarai and Jayce pointed to the peak as it faded away.

“Sir?” Dastin stepped between the two Attuned. “Sir, this isn’t like our last trip.”

“There may be . . . a complication.” Maru’s face scrunched for a moment. “The Pinnacle is never in the same place. It’s been seen before, but that doesn’t mean we can reach it. It may just be an afterimage.”

“Go back now?” Neff perked his ears up.

“No!” Maru snapped. “My apologies. It may mean nothing.”

“Or . . . ?” Jayce raised a hand.

“Or we dare not leave. Not when the Pinnacle has manifested,” Maru said. “We need to move deeper into the Veil . . . then we’ll know more.”

Maru started down the hill.

Jayce looked at Sarai. They both shrugged and followed the Paragon.

“What’s the ‘Pinnacle’?” he whispered to her.

“A myth from the first Adepts,” she said. “It’s supposed to be the very edge of the Veil where an object of great power is located. Something that can destroy the balance between our reality and the Veil.”

“How many Adepts have been there?” Jayce asked.

“None. But enough have felt its presence. Maru never gave me a straight answer when I’ve asked about it. Neither did any of the other Paragons on Primus. They told me, ‘You’ll understand when you’re older,’ or words to that effect,” she said. “They don’t tell baby Paragons everything, Jayce.”

“Why don’t we ask him now?” Jayce lengthened his stride to catch up with Maru.

The Wottan flicked a hand up and a root sprang from the ground and nearly tripped Jayce. He fell back and matched pace with Sarai.

“Maybe later.”


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