Chapter 3: Choir of the Void
To Build, to dream, to make the mind’s image reality.
The calluses on the hands, a would be testament to what one has achieved.
Yet all Songs must continue, moving inexorably on, the denial of an encore.
Time cares not for the effort, not for the passion.
To see what one has built fall, and to know one must participate.
To know if there will be music again, the symphony fades to silence.
To dream again, one must not dally in the nostalgia of memory.
The pain, the grief, the delusion that it is a choice.
Our hands are never clean; mine are never clean.
Heavy crown, laden with thorns. Heavier still, the heart behind what must be done.
"So you are telling me that you found some mushrooms in the forest, and thought they were edible. Not only that, you ate them thinking they were something else, now you are beginning to feel odd. Am I missing anything?" Rythia asked as her acolyte, Issy, sat in front of her. The gentle wind through the trees was making her ears twitch in odd rhythms, setting her chin in her palm.
Her acolyte was growing more restless with each passing moment, sweat beginning to bead on her brow, despite the cool autumnal air. Rythia sighed, voice like the wind through the falling oak and maple leaves. Getting up from her stump, "Raiders, make camp. Tylic, I'm sorry to give orders when we are out in the field, but I'll need to do some medical treatment for my foolish girl."
The raiders smirked at the young priestess in the making. Tylic only shook his head, extricating himself from the trunk of the tree he was leaning against. A quick series of orders was given to the warband, and a perimeter was established. They had been working on more ranged tactics in recent months; the Chief had proven himself quite the engineer, along with his chosen raid leaders, as he called them. Bows were out of the question; the goblins did not have the arm length or the strength to make bows worth using for anything except small game. Which they were used exclusively.
In lieu of bows, Rythia suggested making crossbows, but building them was time-consuming; they had only a few working pieces. The raid leaders had fashioned atlatls instead, mostly because the ammunition could also be used as impromptu spears. Tylic had also established a new doctrine of using the canopy of the forest to increase range; increasingly, they were relying on ambush tactics. Either way, Rythia felt more than secure to treat Issy with a new spell she had devised in her current creation of the song.
"Off with the shirt, Issy. I need skin contact for this." Rythia ordered.
"But all the others are watching," Issy complained as her pupils began to dilate from the effects of the fungus.
"If you wanted to preserve your modesty, you should have thought about that before testing the toxicity of an unknown mushroom. Shirt off. Beyond that, there isn't a single raider here that hasn't seen a woman's chest before; quit your bitching. Would you rather be dead, or embarrassed?" Rythia said as she drew a circle in the dirt around them. A similar symbol that they would have drawn on themselves to allow her to use their sparks.
In a way, this was similar; she had been working on the sympathetic nature of the songs and the Sparks each living thing held. She could connect disparate forces together so long as the thread of life was connected between the two. Or in this case, connecting their songs, bridging gaps as she called it. Rythia shrugged her cloak off her shoulders and laid it down in the center of the circle for Issy.
Though the girl was barely into her adulthood, she removed her shirt with as much confidence as she could manage. Her face beet red, she lay down. "What does it feel like?" Rythia asked her, "The feeling of the toxin?"
"My thoughts are wavy; vision is... colorful. Like I'm having a dream while awake." She sheepishly answered.
"Is there anything unpleasant? Nausea? Muscles tights? Headache?" Rythia set a bare hand on the girl's chest, just over the heart. Issy flinched under her touch; her skin was hot. Too hot.
"I feel cold." She told her.
"Well, at least that makes sense: hot to the touch goes hand in hand with the mental effects. A fever. Potent at that." Rythia thought to herself, leaning back on the old training she had received back in the days of the Quartet as they triaged those on the frontlines of the infection. With a few simple notes, a glow pulsed from her hand into Issy's chest.
This kind of healing needed the power from both parties, which made things difficult if the healer didn't have a larger Spark than the patient. It left both tired, drained, and entirely unable to use magic for hours afterward, as it left the throat raw and dry. She hummed the new set of notes she had made, a slow, monotone timbre, meant to stabilize. Issy's heartbeat still did the lion's share of the work to move the magic through her veins. Slowly, Rythia eased her awareness into the blood, the connection between them in that temporary bridge of physical contact.
A sickly feeling washed over her, notes of her song played at the wrong time. Off-key and out of tune, the toxin was mild, but if left untreated, it would likely begin giving her hallucinations as the fever began burning her up. It didn't feel like the notes had a malicious intent behind them, more that the mushroom had a biological deterrent built into them. She began picking away at the notes that made up Issy's song, and separating them from the toxin's song.
It wasn't a taxing spell on the surface, but this was a marathon of a healing spell. Cleansing blood was never an easy task, even back in the old days. Then they had machines and filters to do the work; despite being arcane in nature, this was a manual process. Note by note, she was able to discern the mushroom's properties as she forced the fever to help her work. Issy sweated out the toxin rather than risking her kidneys to do so. A mildly hallucinogenic fungus, though it came with side effects. The fever being chief among them.
Though as she worked, she pulled at Issy's physical strength to sustain the spell. A trick she had picked up from when Bhal had pulled her back from fading: the body craved balance, and with time it would achieve that. With a little magical rerouting inside said body, it was functionally the same. Using the millions of sweat glands was a much larger organ than two small kidneys, much more dilute should anything go wrong. They would need to burn the clothes Issy was wearing, as well as the cloak, but at least it would be out of the body.
She was beginning to understand the toxin better as seconds passed into minutes, and a minute into an hour. Once the mushroom was absorbed into the body, it rapidly began to shed its poison. However, it seemed to need to be waterborne in nature. Rythia wondered if they dried the fungus, it would retain the more pleasant side effects rather than this fever. As the hour turned to two, Issy fell into an odd dream state. Mumbling about dreams between dreams, visions of a war, a dark figure beside her.
Rythia wondered if she was seeing the life she had before becoming a goblin. Or if the toxin was letting her hear the notes of her new song, maybe even the notes of the Infection. Either way, it seemed a potential way to teach her acolytes how to hear the songs in a much more efficient manner.
The sun sank low over the mountains to the west, throwing the forest into a bright skied twilight. They were far from done with Issy's treatment as the first of the wails filled the forest air. Increasingly, there had been spirits rising from the ashen soil, angry things that heeded no physical blow. No, Rythia had to teach them more interesting ways to use their voices, basic magic that barely even touched at the power of the spark. But even light use over an entire lifetime would cause some growth, maybe even enough not to have to worry about magic at all.
The raiders were well prepared to lure the spirits away; Rythia was not ready with her song to try and exercise them into the afterlife. The gateway wasn't even made, only the threshold laid down, let alone a world beyond that threshold. One raider called out to the wails in the forest, throwing his voice. Like a moth to a flame, the aberrant spirit followed the sound until it too was lost in the woods. These wandering spirits, a theory she had in mind.
But she was letting this distract her while Issy's breathing slowed, and her fever broke. Drenched in toxin laced sweat, she continued her arcane induced alchemy. Though by the third hour, Rythia was beginning to flag, feeling the drunken effects of using the songs. She slipped in her control and had to mend the artery she just opened in Issy's leg. She lifted a hand to her head while pressing down harder on her patient's chest.
Already feeling the skull splitting migraine coming on, she wouldn't ask the other raiders for aid from their sparks for this. They were rather busy keeping angry ghosts away from them at the moment. She looked to Issy's spark, a thing she had been nurturing to grow the day she became her acolyte. Being trained in as one of the potential options for the new High Priestess of the Family did have its more immortal benefits.
Slipping into the habit she had formed as a way to keep up appearances, she began to chant her song with another voice. One of three, now two of three. The song seeped into her body from the healing melody, seeking permissions from voices that knew not how to speak. Pushing the infection aside to bear witness to the inherent glory of one's own spark, the touching of two souls. Issy has always been a ready acolyte, perhaps a tad too willing to go along with Rythia's schemes and teachings. Her soul eagerly responded to Rythia's song.
Flooding her with its own power as the connection was made, it made cleansing the rest of her blood an easy task. Yet, she felt Issy just on the edge, felt it in her soul, her bones. Just on the edge of fading, even though she herself hadn't used her magic; the effect was much the same. Using too much of another's power, an outcome Rythia feared as much as doing the same to herself.
Removing her hand from Issy's chest, the sweat drenched skin peeled away from each other. The abrupt stop in magic was something similar to feeling all your booze at once the moment one stood up. Wobbling, she undid the belt around Issy's waist, removing her pants and undergarments. Rolling the unconscious woman to the side, off to the side of the pile of poison soaked clothing. In one swift motion, Rythia threw the clothing and her own cloak into a clearing a few feet away.
With but a single note, a loud snap echoed off the trees as the clothing ignited from the air compression. Nearly instantly, the cloth was nothing but ash, inert, no threat to anything. A few of the other raiders watched the entire event take place; with a weak wave of her hand, Rythia beckoned to Tylic's raiders. "Would any of you be willing to part from some of your clothes?" She slurred with a grin that just begged for someone to make a comment.
Issy was beginning to shiver in the cooling night air; the fact that her jiggling bits drew the men's eyes was annoying to Rythia. "Boys, enough ogling my priestess. Clothes, now."
"Boys, that sums it up well enough." Tylic's voice brought the hint of a smile to her lips. "Well, boys. Get lost. The adults need to speak."
"What is going on?" Rythia asked, handing her his own cloak. Wrapping it around Issy, more to keep her from shivering herself to death than to keep her modesty, this cloak was thinner. Wrapped around her form like that, it didn't do much to hide her much larger chest.
"The spirits, there are moving in on us too quickly; we need to go." He surprised her by pulling her into a hug. "You push yourself far too hard, Ria. Did you forget that spell you use lets us feel your spark too?"
A genuine smile crossed her lips this time. Holding him tightly, she answered. "I actually didn't know it did that. How come no one told me?"
"It's amazing that you can use so much power; the rest of us can barely use anything without getting spell sickness. But you, you can work miracles! Honest to Bhal, miracles." He said into her ear, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Pulling away, she pecked his lips. "Let's get moving; I swear she is going to make me jealous of all the attention she is going to get if those things fall out of that cloak."
Touching a hand to his lips, he smiled as she bundled up Issy in her arms. The world went sideways, poignantly being reminded that she too was feeling the full effect of spell sickness as well. Tylic caught both of them in his arms, Issy's cloak falling to the ground, while Rythia landed awkwardly. His hand landed right on her chest. "It's been some time since women had thrown themselves at me." He chuckled.
"Oh, with that confidence, I'll get you more." She responded, feeling him flinch as she gave his ass a squeeze. Extricating herself from him, correcting her own dress. After fussing with the cloak, Rythia decided to have Tylic carry her piggyback. Putting the cloak around them both, she would just have to put up with being carried naked on a man's back. His body heat would keep her warm at least.
"Raiders, we're going home! Two of you, assist Mother; she is also unwell." He barked.
Tylic set her down next to the altar in the chapel; her humming filled the cavern as an obscure wall of wind and dust blocked the entrance from any unwanted visitors. Issy had been left in the care of the other acolytes; having stabilized, Rythia was no longer strictly needed. As such, she warned the clan that she was not to be disturbed in the chapel. Practically dragging the Chief by the arm, her magic was like a bolt of lightning in its intensity.
Still reveling in the feeling of their hands on each other. Working the clothing off their bodies was a quick affair, using them as their bedspread. She could not remember the last time she had been with a man; frankly, neither could Tylic remember much of anything before the Dawn. But shaking the dust off was always the fun part, as it were. The claims of an everlasting serpent, however, turned out to be as much as the body was able, where the spirit was willing.
"I believe your claims of endurance may have been exaggerated," Rythia said with a satisfied smile. Curling an arm around his waist, pulling him closer to her.
"Well, the ascension to a divine experience is always as much work as it is a pleasure." He said, resting his hands on hers.
"Divine ascension, ha! I think you've been letting our tension build for a while; you think that? Poetry is not your strong suit, do you know that?" She slipped from him to straddle on top. "However, your effort makes up for you." Her grin warmed his blood once more.
"Well, I don't think I was ever well-spoken. However, you," A thrust from his hips made her lie on top of him. "Have such a way with words that I think I could stand to listen to the other things you might have to say."
"Oh, so you think so?" She said while beginning the ritual again.
"I do; actions speak many volumes!" He said with a grin of his own.
Spent, finally. The wind wall held with the beat of her heart, her own internal song maintaining the spell. The sound of the chapel was filled with nothing but their slow and steady breathing. The weight of his arm around her frame was something she didn't think she had missed. Yet the dreams they shared were warm and comfortable; neither of them cared about the mess they had made.
The steady rise and fall of their chests kept the rhythm of the song, their hearts and minds adding to the symphony they had made. Their vessels, the instruments in which they enjoyed each other's music, Rythia's eyes fluttered open in the calm morning air.
The pale light of the rising sun was just beginning to fill the chapel. Carefully extricating herself from under his arm, she rose and stretched. It was quiet, peaceful; the soft sound of the village just about to rise for the day carried up from below. It took her a long moment before she noticed that none of the dust in the air was moving. Not a single speck. Something felt wrong, like the world was holding its breath for something it did not know.
Tylic's chest wasn't moving when her head whipped around back to him. Putting a hand to his neck, his heart wasn't beating. She spotted that even the birds roosting in the caves were also unmoving; it wasn't just him. Something was exerting control, and she was being excluded. "Can you creatures not have the decency to leave me be?" Rythia spoke to the air, already having an idea of what was happening.
"Such a fleeting thing, happiness is. So swiftly taken, to be beckoned by the melancholic groan of life." A voice answered her; the shadows inside the chapel grew, collecting in the darkness of the pillars and the umbra of the altar.
She took a moment before responding, not knowing if this was a Vestige, or if it was one of the Shadows themselves. "And here stands a family built in death, yet the grisly troupe is more horrible than they seem."
A cackling filled the chapel, coming from everywhere and nowhere, from the air, from the stone, from her own skin. "So it would seem!" The shadows condensed as a mass of tendrils began to form into a vaguely humanoid silhouette. Then she knew what was going on, even before his silver mask formed around his face.
"Balance. Awfully rude of you to come barging in without so much as a knock." She said dispassionately, letting her own song shift to force him to feel her own annoyance.
"Oddly enough, I thought you'd be more interesting naked. Quite the figure; had I been a different being, I might make a pass. However, it seems as if you enjoyed yourself quite well." Xelex responded with a grin that could only be described as condescending at best. "Would you like to clean up? Your legs are still," He coughed, " streaked."
Her expression was blank; blinking, she answered. "Are you telling me that flaccid prick of yours has never been put to use?"
"Now don't tell me you're offering; seems like I'd be the second one to that soiree." He looked her up and down. "I think I'll pass."
Setting her hands on her hips, the annoyance rising in her voice. "What did you want. You wouldn't come here against Bhal's will if there wasn't a very good reason." It wasn't even a question; she just wanted to get to the point. Walking over to their pile of clothes, she cleaned herself off with the hem of her dress.
"You are just no fun," Xelex responded petulantly.
"And you are a tactless boar." She quipped back, slipping Tylic's shirt over her head. It hung low enough to cover everything she needed it to, though just barely.
"Ah, well, you won't be needing those anyway; you'll need to be nude again. I have been given temporary permission to reactivate your shapeshifting ability as a Brownie for a task we have for you." He told her as he watched her cover her lover with most of the clothing.
That got her attention; a jolt of excitement rang through her. A chance to feel Vilorlith's song again? "Why?" The hesitation evident.
"We would prefer you stay alive in the conditions we need to travel to. We need someone who understands the machinery the Fae built; we cannot understand how this infernal thing is still resisting our attempts to destroy it." He paced as he walked.
"Is he dead?" Her question made him stop; a raised brow made it more than evident that he didn't understand the line of questioning.
She waved down to Tylic, a gesture that didn't need to broach any discussion. "Ah, no, I am simply holding time in stasis for a moment; I needed a conversation with you, not anyone else."
"Fine." She felt something click in her mind, like a phantom bone being reset without warning. Pain shot through her body as the infection tried to repel the effects with a fervor that rivaled a wildfire in a midsummer drought. Yet at the heart of it was an elation that she had forgotten. Or she suspected forced to forget, despite what the Shadows had told her about her being the only one to remember.
The thought of her Mother filled the space where pain had been, the form she took when fighting these horrors. A nostalgia that just couldn't be replaced, a feeling of loss too deep to consciously register. Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, going down that path would only be the worst outcome; she couldn't let herself be lost in the emotions of a goddess that was gone. Glancing down at her hands, her fingers elongated into razor claws as a distant song filled her soul. Her tail sprouted from the base of her spine once more, one built for war. Whip-like, each vertebra poking through her skin with a hypodermic point. Skin toughening closer to the density of stone as she shifted her flesh to be more like bone.
Ears widening, flattening to hear the world in all its echoing beauty once more. Her ribs now becoming the defining feature of her form as her internal organs sheltered behind the stony bone armor around her chest. Leaving nothing but her spine visible and available for attack, a far smaller target. Though several other cords of cartilaginous columns protected it. Her legs lengthened and tilted back like a cat's, the muscle becoming dense as iron.
Her eyes shifted between frequencies, seeing the world through several forms of nonvisible light, and several more forms of radiation on top of that. Her mouth having vanished, she stared at Xelex, who was now far smaller than her. "My, oh my. It has been some time since I've witnessed that." He suppressed a shiver while meeting her eyes. "Wonderful job on copying exactly what she looked like as she tore us apart piece by piece. Limb from limb, cell by cell, atom by atom."
She spoke directly to his mind as the tendrils of her hair billowed out around her, catching the light in a way that made the darkness in the room so much more pronounced. "You wanted me to have a form that would survive the vacuum of space, correct? This will do nicely, a body that could survive without the need for much else."
Her choice was twofold: one to remind this Shadow exactly what she was, a Child of Vilorlith, their enemy no matter how much peace they offered her. It was all a false clemency; they only wanted her docile enough to work with them and not much beyond that. This was a not-so-subtle reminder that she was still more than capable of hurting them, killing them. The second was that, given the opportunity, she would do so.
"Yes, the theatrics are noted, Rythia." The fear in his voice was still there; he couldn't hide it from her now that she could hear again. Hear in the way she was used to, to listen to the universe as it was, not what the Shadows were trying to fool the world into believing. "You may kill me if you wish; I won't even stop you. Simply, I'm coming to understand that we deserve it."
She cocked her head at that, though the motion was far more jarring to Xelex as she took up most of the cave entrance now. "Do you now? What an... unexpected thing to say. Have you suddenly grown a conscience now that you are tired of having killed and killed and killed?"
He pulled something from his chest, and her eyes went wide. A small, slowly swirling galaxy of countless motes of light, each small dot a note in a song. Just like the one she was crafting in secret, just like the ones she had seen the Quartet create. "This, this is Alnya's song. Well, part of it. After I took it from here while she was fleeing, I understood."
Rythia retracted her claws, shrinking herself, though keeping much of the physiology she would need to survive outside the atmosphere. Merely miniaturizing herself, "Do you really understand what has happened? Because I understand the entirety of that immensely precious thing you hold. The gift of creation, the gift of destruction, reconstruction, and unmaking. The keys to the facets of this reality, or at least the facets that Alnya had made. You have it in your hands."
She put her hands around the small galaxy, knowing full well the potential in it. Knowing now that it was fading without Alnya constantly using her eternal Spark to fuel it. "Yet," Rythia spoke softly, trying not to provoke him. "This beautiful thing that was made to be eternal, this wonderful experience that was to be the legacy of this universe in a void that dreamed the Quartet into being. Is now being fueled by me, fueled by the souls of those who were meant to live this song."
Her fingers brushed against the stars; Xelex didn't even react; he could have dismissed it at any time. But something seemed to her: he was trying to understand it, drinking in the magnitude of what she was referencing. "Put this away, Xelex." She whispered softly, forcing herself not to try and take it for herself. She could if she thought she could overpower the Shadow, but that would invite a war that she had no chance of surviving.
The memory of the past washed over her like a wave cresting the coast. Through countless lifetimes, through endless journeys and unknowable depths of understanding the world and how it truly operated. Just as she had first heard Vilorlith's song, calling her down from the ether of the heavens, she sang the music of the other gods. A cosmic conversation, a whisper to the firmament, a word spoken to the edge of creation and the abyss.
She had walked the footsteps of her other fledgling lords, just as they walked hers. She wondered, if not for the first time, if that was the point: to walk the paths others had taken just to understand the magnitude of the world they resided. The beauty in the plain, the logic in the chaos, the music in the silence, and the restlessness in the patient game of life. A world of contraries where the ordinary brushed against the lives of all who lived.
It was on this world, the Cradle, where she had learned the full breadth of the song her own creator had sung. The distant moons of the outer solar system, when she had learned the potency of the song of light and fire of Syn. Those cold and distant continents that she sang warmth into for the first of her civilization's colonies to make a new home.
The edge of their own galaxy where she stared into the empty space in the vast, unfathomable distance between swirling lights and the knowledge that she was seeing the far distant past. The light that reached her eyes was an ancient thing, yet there she understood the logic of that song. Of Alnya's song. That for causality to create stability where entropy wished to shred, she sang that song as well.
While first developing the portal nexuses that spanned the seeming gap in space and time, she understood the seemingly final song of this world. Kyln and his subtle hum of patience, where the others brought a facet of reality to bear, his song tied it together like the drumbeat of the cosmos. When she had sang his music to the endless expanse of Namix, she understood. Her spark had grown with might and power, one that rivaled her creators. On the pillars of creation with her other lords, she saw for the first time that this was the point.
For the Quartet had wanted them all to ascend the way they did; they wanted their Children to live and learn all the boundlessness of the world they had built for them. "Put it away, learn that song, just as I did." She whispered to Xelex as she closed his fingers around the swirling galaxy in his hands.
With the teachings she had learned from Kyln and his song, she resisted the pull to take that Song for herself; it took nearly everything for her to do so. She thought of the clan and how they would suffer if she gave in. She thought of Tylic and his look of shock, of the look of disappointment if she waged a war that would sacrifice them all for such a selfish end. That was what was in principle, what the Quartet had done in the end. So steadfast they were in their dogged pursuit to end the Shadows that they sacrificed their entire universe to earn such a paltry existence for the survivors of their wrath.
A slew of emotion washed over her as the Shadow in front of her placed a steadying hand on her shoulder. And yet again, this enemy was being kind by doing so. A thought that never would have occurred to even the most lenient of the Children during the war. "Are you alright, Rythia? You look as if you are going to be ill." He spoke through that silver mask.
"What machine did you want assistance with?" She asked, desperate to shift her swirling thoughts.
He was quiet for a longer moment, allowing her the time to recompose herself. "He is simply asleep at the moment." He spoke, thinking that she was upset by Tylic. "I am sorry, I should have simply stated that the cave was in stasis."
"The machine, Balance." She glared up at him.
"I believe it was called a Dyson Sphere. It has been proving to be difficult to reconcile as we are trying to have this planet flourish with life once more. The decrease in light output has been limiting our efforts to do so. We do not understand how this damned thing was supposed to be providing the Cradle and the other settled planets in this system with energy." He explained quickly; as intelligent as Balance was, he was unaccustomed to dealing with anything except his own thralls and siblings. Seemingly dragging out the encounter with Rythia simply because he enjoyed speaking with her.
"But there is a sun in the sky; it isn't as bright as I remember it being, but I thought that was because of the ash still loitering in the upper atmosphere." She responded.
"The machine is incandescing as it has nowhere to vent the energy it is still collecting. We fear that if it isn't vented in some way soon, it will ignite into a pseudo-fusion reaction and fall back into the star. I am unsure of the effect that would have; however, I cannot imagine the damage that would cause." His explanation did hold a certain weight as he put the Song back in his chest; it was then did she realize the faint chiming of the song had been silenced. Leaving only an empty space that she had not expected, a space that refused to be filled by anything else.
Desperately, she wanted to ask him to play that song for her again, to hear anything but the fading echoes of this world, to hear the original pieces once more, looking off to the side, forcing her self-control to overrule her emotions. Xelex had misinterpreted her reaction, however. "I understand that hearing the world that you helped build is being systematically disassembled may be troubling mentally. But you will outlive nearly everything on this planet. You can always start again."
The way he said it, her ears twitching at the unspoken words, almost hearing the words without them being spoken. As if he would be willing to help her build again, whatever that may entail. For better or worse. Yet as she stared up at him, the moment washed passed his awareness for all his intelligence. "I am sorry for what happened to them."
"Save it." She snapped, the air in the cave filled with a hum that made their teeth rattle. Her spark ignited in her chest, pouring from her eyes in the same purple flames Vilorlith's had done. "I don't need to hear you apologize. It won't change anything, nor will it make me forgive you. I am not immortal; neither are you. We both may be gods, yet you and your kind proved that even the gods can die."
She stepped forward as he stepped back. "There is nothing you can do to redeem the amount of life your kind had reaped. There is no amount of words that can undo the loss of information and knowledge that burned away at the end of all this."
He stumbled over a rock as he backed away from her, only for two of her tails to catch him by the arms, holding him there. "I do not care what you have planned; I care only for those that survive, and am trying to bring them all some small amount of peace in this nightmare you Shadows have made."
That grin returned to his face, but it was as false as his own claim to divinity. "Then you and I share a goal." He began as she set him gently down on the stone floor, still maintaining the form that she killed thousands in. Those claws that killed and killed and killed; he gulped at the memory of feeling those claws in his own throat. "We understand that this is the only planet left, that our actions left scars that are still as raw as they are numerous. We want to fix that."
"Open a portal. You wanted me to have a form that could survive a vacuum. I can't maintain a form like that inside an atmosphere. I'm assuming you also want to be able to move inside that vacuum as well." Her eyes never left his, though he thought she was watching even the eyes under his mask as well.
He had the decorum to keep his mouth shut about anything else. Picking up that she only wanted to get this moving, probably correctly assuming that they would want their tithe at the end of this as well. "There is one last thing." Her stare was his only answer. "Syn was rather thorough when she burned away every last thing on Namix. Subsequently, we will give you the time to understand the darkness."
Frowning at that, she motioned for him to rise from the floor. Dusting himself off, he opened a portal in the air. The surface shimmered like liquid silver, a lesser portal as the Quartet would have called it. Incapable of truly bridging distances like the portals they could open, these portals simply bridged two notes in distance with a skip, whereas Greater portals connected the points by making the two different notes in space and time the same note. His functioned more like a wormhole; Greater Portals made distance irrelevant as they made that place in space the same thing, regardless of distance.
Form shifting as she stepped through, she became nothing to the sight of men. A form that ceased to have physicality, one that was more dark matter as it was light. To the Brownies, their bodies were a vague concept at best. While many choose to have one that they could interact with the world in, that was simply not the case. Her mind and spark were still there, but the body was never needed. What she witnessed as she came to the end of the portal made her mind reel.
Darkness, an endless void. Not a single star left in the heavens, not a warm body left to orbit anything. The vastness of the universe she had known, now encased in a lightless expanse, as if every last star had died and the heat death of existence was now hovering over them like the headman's axe. An abyss came to mind, a primal fear of what lurked beyond the unknown, of what lurked in the known as well. She couldn't pull her attention away from the nothing; she had a sudden understanding as to why the Quartet wanted to fill the world with something, anything. This void was... she had no words for it. Perhaps eternal, perhaps lonely.
Something touched her mind, requesting a response. "Turn around." It took far too much to pry her eyes away from the darkness, or what served as her eyes, so to speak. When she did, both heartbreak and relief washed over her. Before her were only two things, the Cradle and the sun. A single point of light in an endless sea of inky darkness. How a formless entity could shiver, Rythia did not know, yet she did. There was nothing left. "The machine. How do we operate it?"
"You can't." Her own voice sounded distant in her mind as the weight of their war crashed over her. The prize the Shadows had won. "There isn't any of the infrastructure to funnel it back to the system."
Xelex waded through space to sit next to Rythia, using a form that she had once feared; now the thought "What does it fucking matter?" Popped into her head, as the implications of what Syn and the others had done finally began to hit her. He said nothing as the sensations washed over her: the horror, the dread, the understanding of why the Shadows were suddenly all too willing to deal with her.
He was a small mass of writhing tendrils, eyes tipped on each one. A cluster of them at his center, watching in every direction, learning. The few that stared at her were trying to glean as much as they could about the form she had taken. Yet they all blinked at once when she spoke again. "Why are there stars in the sky on the Cradle?"
"An illusion, one we made over the entire planet. We felt that being confronted with the endless dark that is now reality would be too much for life. There is a bright side, however." He said to her mind.
"What could possibly be bright about this?" She barked back.
"Matter isn't gone. While everything was dispersed, the stars were destroyed, and the planets were burned, that material wasn't lost. It simply hasn't had the time yet to fall back into itself; light will be born again, though, as you have guessed, much of the energy in Namix is gone. It will simply take our tending and time."
"Hundreds of thousands of years of darkness, and you want me to be happy to know there will never be the same amount of light there once was? Do you realize that this machine around our sun was siphoning away energy faster than the star was creating it? How long before this star uses up its fuel and consumes the Cradle? I know, and it is less time than that!"
"For what it's worth, the power you are giving us is being used for many things. One of which is forcibly condensing stellar nebulas so that star formation will occur. Your hundreds of thousands of years estimate would be correct if we weren't; there will be stars again in hundreds of years, not thousands." He told her with the confidence of the god he claimed he was.
Again, struck again with this feeling. That war in her mind that screamed at her to attack, to kill, to eradicate the Shadows, was being tempered by their actions. Xelex seemed genuinely concerned about the longevity of this world; it stood in stark opposition to the Shadows she had known. The one that she watched change a world into infection riddled monstrosities that defied belief. The Shadow that savaged a universe filled with life, but now was bereft of light save for a single point, which was to be their ultimate prize. Was the Quartet wrong?
"The connections between the solar plates need to be broken. The sphere falling into the star will cause a massive flare of discharge, but with most of the electronic and quantum technologies nonexistent on the Cradle, the EMP that will wash over the planet won't do much to organic life." She told him without looking away from the dim star.
"I didn't even compel you to tell me that." Xelex turned to her, or what served as her. "What connections?"
"There are linkages; think of them as locks, holding the sphere together. The machine is using some of the energy it takes to power itself as well as many of its fail safe systems. The linkages are likely to be the only systems left operational, as the other network systems now have no endpoint to transfer energy to."
He stared at her; it struck her just how fitting it was. A creature born of this void, silent, waiting for answers from another born of that same place. She wondered at just how similar the Quartet and the Shadows actually were, then again, knowing what they came from, it seemed far more appropriate. These eight self-styled gods were once one, before her own Mother tore them apart countless eons ago.
While Rythia knew the whys, knew the heavily doctored version the fledgling lords were told, the vast majority of the Children did not. The waiting in the dark, the endless expanse of seemingly nothing; she wondered what they dreamed into reality. What their voices sang into the dark, what they wished to be the world rather than the one they were given. Their hard fought burden, their prize.
Having missed his question the first time, he repeated himself a bit more forcefully. "How do we disable these locks, Rythia?"
"We are going to need more power than you, and I can manage on our own." She responded distantly, still lost in her own memories.
In a blink, the others were there, specters of the nightmares they were. Angry, unknowable gods. Each of them a unique entity, yet side by side there was a certain humor to them. As if their existence wished to be one once more, as if the pieces of a puzzle had a mind of their own. One by one they turned to her. Bhal, a formless mist that threatened to suffocate reality around him.
Azu, an absence of light that refused to be called darkness, like a black hole that pulled all else toward her. Welkford was a pinpoint of ambient light that was as much liminal as it was expansive. Vilroeth appeared as a mass of connections that branched out endlessly, grasping at everything and nothing. Azulu was a quiet, empty space, so easily forgotten. Kinlith was a warmth that wished to be more, spreading out to surround the other Shadows. Koroth defied to be called a thing, a nothing, an everything.
"It has been quite some time since we've seen a Brownie use her power again. It would seem the gods are not yet gone." With all of them so near, it was difficult to discern who had actually spoken. Was it one, or several?
She directed her question to Xelex, "What exactly is your consciousness? You all seem to know everything everyone else already knows, yet respond individually."
Again, the voice that answered her came from Xelex, but it was difficult to tell if it was him speaking or all of them. "A not quite hivemind. We share the same origin, the same death, the same rebirth. Our minds are linked, yet remain separate entities."
If she had lungs right then and there, she would have sighed for how much that information would have helped them in the War. They really were being far more open with her than she would have expected. Maybe they felt safe knowing a piece of their darkness was inside her; the infection was a multilayer thing after all. Maybe they felt that they truly did need a piece of the Quartet to continue to keep reality alive. "Let us begin."
It took some time to arrange the Shadows in position, to give the orders. Having their power seep into the dimensional linkages holding the machine together. The connective components existed on several layers of reality, fail safes the Fae had called them. Should the Sphere be compromised, it would never be completely destroyed. As the control points existed outside this plane of reality, it needed the correct notes to the song to even see them.
One by one, the Shadows sang the notes in unison, untethering the grand vestige of the world. System after system finally shut down after all this time; like an eclipse, the sun was blotted out by the rapidly cooling plates of the machine. With the gravity repulsion going offline sector by sector, the gaps in the light shrank. Like closing a fist around a fire, the sun became sealed in a shell of metal, wire, and arcane works that were the height of her civilization.
The brief panic she witnessed from the Shadows as their forms fluttered and pulsed with worry dissipated quickly as the shell began to buckle from its own weight. Just as an eclipse was temporary, the light that was left in the darkness died. The universe experienced, for the first time since its birth, the true darkness of the void that the gods were born from. For but the briefest moment, she felt that horror, until she heard the shell give way.
Like a match being struck on a starless night, the light was dim. As the flame touched the wick of the candle, it grew brighter as the shell fell into the star. Glowing fissures of plasma boiled, vaporizing the material as the corona consumed the greatest piece of technology she had ever had the privilege to witness. A new dawn rose in the darkness, the same red she remembered on countless morning skies as the star grew in brightness.
The holy light of Syn and her gift of sunshine to the unknowable number of worlds the Quartet had made bathed the Cradle as the bright white star it was always meant to be. But, as the new dawn broke throughout the darkness, Rythia only felt empty. Opening a portal back on her own, she returned to the planet as the Shadows stared in awe as the machine was consumed by the ultimate symbol of Syn. They didn't even notice her as she did so.
Stepping through the vision of a happier life, shifting her form back to the one she used while with the Family. Her tail gone, her skin green, her eyes the deepest purple of the clear night sky, hair trailing behind her, dragging on the ground. Tylic was just beginning to rise from the now much brighter sunrise than anyone was used to; she wrapped her arms around him.
He didn't say anything as her shoulders began to shake. Burying her face into his embrace, the tears fell with compunction that spiked down to her core. They stayed that way until the sun was high in the sky. Another falsehood that she was now aware of, an illusion to make them all feel more at home, just another lie.
