Echo from the Void (Lunar Lives Book 2), page 27
When he saw Lina’s face, he temporarily forgot his exhaustion, shaking, nausea, and pounding headache. She had really done it. She had defeated the Sacrosanct’s flesh golem on the Chancel side. He couldn’t believe he had destroyed the Galvanizer. He’d known they had to try, but he wasn’t sure how much he believed they would both succeed.
Lina dropped to the ground and rushed over, throwing her arms around him. She smelled like sulfur and rot, but he didn’t care. His singed fur didn’t exactly smell like Breaking season flowers in bloom either. She squeezed against his injured shoulder and he grimaced, but she didn’t even notice in her enthusiasm. They were alive, and he couldn’t believe his joy . . . and relief.
He hugged her and felt her warm tears against his neck.
“We . . . did . . . it,” she whispered in his ear, slow and deliberate.
“I am so proud of you. I’ve lived for thousands of cycles, but you and Tomf? Kids. Kids who slayed a monster! Where’s Tomf?” he asked.
She stiffened in his arms. He felt her searching for the words. The man who had followed her down joined them.
“The young man, Tomf, was killed in battle against the Reproacher. His first life ended in an honorable embrace of his task,” the man said in a reverent tone.
Esrit felt like he’d been kneed in the gut. He couldn’t believe Tomf had died. The boy may be in his lunar life now, but that provided no solace to Esrit, who was living out his own lunar life on a completely different moon.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Lina. She buried her face in the fur at his neck. He felt her repress the sob that welled there. She then stepped back and met his eyes. She pointed to her companions.
“I’m Krift, leader of the Embracers,” the serious man said.
“Krift, you are very hurt,” Esrit said, pointing to his wounded stomach.
Krift managed a pained smile. “Sometimes it costs us much to embrace our tasks.”
“I’m Marjaa,” said the small girl with the curly hair. “I’m, uh, Rin’za’s daughter.”
The story of the messiah had happened long after Esrit resurrected on Echo, but many younger Bexlan-Ansibites had told the others of the man who saved Chancel from destruction. He couldn’t figure out how to make sense of meeting Rin’za’s daughter. Why was she here? He was surprised she wasn’t cloistered in some kind of royal palace.
“I’m Esrit. Is there a . . . title I am supposed to address you with?”
She looked at the floor. “Just Marjaa,” she said quietly.
Esrit shifted his weight, unsure how to proceed. He felt suddenly conscious of the itching sensation under his fur, especially behind his neck. He couldn’t help but start scratching, and his teeth started chattering again.
Lina looked at him quizzically.
“I’ve been like this since I killed the Galvanizer and lost the lightning. I don’t know how long it will last. It might be getting a little better.” He felt another wave of nausea hit his stomach. “Maybe.”
Marjaa looked around at the dangling veins in the cavern. Her eyes followed them to the tree that plunged upward and downward through the open area at the center of the cave. “What . . . what is this?”
Lina wrung her hands in frustration, clearly irritated by not being able to communicate with her gesture system.
Esrit met her eyes, and she nodded. He began talking, slowly and clearly, trying to articulate what he did know despite the many things he did not know. “It is a cave, but we think it is also the Void, which is the space between first life and lunar life or something akin to that. Maybe that’s not quite right. It is an . . . absence of space produced by the Sacrosanct. His body seems to have carved out this spot in the ground. You see all the . . . veins, I guess you would call them . . . that have spread all throughout the cave? They connected to Chancel and were pumping up that fluid to the surface. From what Lina and Tomf had explained it was a protection of some kind against the wrong people getting in.”
He shivered, a wave of exhaustion coming over him again. “Is it okay if I sit down?”
Marjaa and Lina helped him to the ground. He propped himself up against the cavern wall. Krift sat next to him, lowering himself by simply sitting down into a position of crossed legs without using his hands. It struck Esrit as an oddly powerful act of will and bodily control. Particularly for a guy with a very deep wound in his abdomen.
He continued, “I found a hand—a right hand, I think—inside the Galvanizer. It was pulling a bunch of strings inside the golem. The Galvanizer had never really been alive. It was just a flesh puppet.”
Marjaa looked at him very seriously. “We found the same thing in the Reproacher. I think it was the Sacrosanct’s left hand. I . . . I stabbed it.” She shuddered.
“Now we have taken out his influence in our homes. Do we have to confront him? Do you think we can just leave him be and go about our lives? I mean, I feel pretty lucky to be alive, and don’t really want to face this . . . abandoned god,” Esrit said.
Krift spoke up. “I think we must embrace the conflict. I would guess he will recover from the wounds we have inflicted and will have new golems, in time. He will not give up.”
“That’s probably true. But we don’t know that,” Esrit said.
“We can’t bet the fate of our worlds on it not being true. We have a responsibility to embrace our task,” Krift intoned calmly.
Marjaa picked at hardened mud on her forearm. “And he may not ever be weaker than he is right now. Because we hurt him, in his hands I mean.”
“Okay, but what is our plan?” Esrit asked.
Lina pulled out a plumbata and pointed to Krift’s strange roped blade weapon.
Esrit shrugged. “Do we know we can even hurt him with those?”
Lina shook her head, looking dejected.
Krift looked thoughtful for a moment and then said, “I think we confront him in a different way.”
“You might be right. We did battle with our bodies against his hands, but I think we will have to use our minds against him now.” Esrit closed his eyes and sat on his shaking hands, reflecting on his discussion with Bexlan-Ansibe. His shoulder throbbed, sending signals of misery with each heartbeat. Blood seeped from the place he had been scratching on his neck. He wanted desperately to keep scratching, but he kept his hands pinned underneath himself.
“But how?” asked Marjaa.
They sat silently for a moment, pondering. Lina spoke up in her slow, deliberate voice. “Does . . . know . . . we . . . here?”
Esrit clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering and drew his lips back to speak through his closed teeth as clearly as possible. “Well if he knows and he could, I assume he would have already tried to kill us. So either he doesn’t know or he can’t reach us up here.”
Marjaa stood slowly. “Where is he, exactly? In the hole?”
Esrit thought back to his first time in the cave. “Yeah. His . . . mouth, I guess you would call it, is down below. I haven’t seen it myself.”
“We know so little. How can we stop him?” Marjaa said.
Krift stood. “I can only think about what we have, in our minds, and in our hearts, that he doesn’t have. That is it.”
Esrit stood. His legs shook, and not just from his body missing the lightning, but from fear. The purpose he had felt ever since he started to resist the Galvanizer with Presade burned inside him, but the cold waters of resignation and fatalism circled the flame, surrounding it on all sides. What did he have that kept the fire burning? What flame did he possess that the Sacrosanct did not?
Without needing to say anything, they all walked in unison, together, toward the edge of the hole.
As they approached, Esrit could hear the babbling of the Sacrosanct, just below a register he could understand. He saw Marjaa shiver and clutch her satchel tighter. The girl couldn’t be more than thirteen or fourteen cycles. Yet here she was, facing down a god, or at least an abomination that was godlike. He wondered if the heroics from her father and mother ran in her blood, or if she’d learned courage by experience. Maybe the stoic man holding his stomach was right: she was just embracing her task.
As they reached the edge of the hole, the chilling eek-eek-eek sound of the veinlike tubes rubbing together issued from below. Esrit remembered the collection of veins in the shape of a hand that had squeaked its way to the edge of the hole when Jarval and Seevah had been here to deliver the conduits. He couldn’t imagine they would be welcomed in the same way.
Yet a loose collection of the tightly wound tubes approached them slowly, looking like the ragged end of a wrist with no hand. It came to rest right next to them at the edge. The voice rose to a level their could hear.
—half-self killers hand-takers come to replace half-selves come new instruments new instruments for big-making—
Lina looked at Esrit, brow knitted in concern. Esrit shrugged. The Sacrosanct’s words troubled him, but they couldn’t do much of anything from up here. He stepped forward, his foot landing on the spongy surface of collected veins.
Lina, Krift, and Marjaa joined him, and they rode down to the lower level together. Esrit stared around in awe and horror.
The lower chamber looked like a hollowed-out cavern with smears of light in seemingly random patterns on the walls. A moat of the noxious yellow fluid, which Esrit thought of as bile, flowed around the edges of the cavern. Veins covered the entire floor of the lower cavern like densely collected mangrove roots. In the center, the roots narrowed to what looked like the trunk of the tree, which also connected into the branching veins that filled the upper chamber. In the center of the trunk, jutting out from the veins yet seemingly also made of a knotty, dense collection of the veins, was a figure of a man. His body, clearly embedded in the tree or even possibly the source from which the tree grew, hung upside down, his arms stretched straight out, his feet straight upward, crossed over at the ankles. Where his hands should have been, ragged stumps hung, dripping a dark substance on the roots below. His face looked lumpy, half-formed, like a clay bust abandoned halfway through the task of detailing the features. His mouth moved as he continued to babble.
—new-selves new instruments replace half-selves better for the big-making for the un-forgetting the un-seen to be the now-seen—
Marjaa whispered to him, “What . . . what does he mean? Is it nonsense?”
Esrit moved her slightly behind him. “I don’t know exactly. I think he believes we are here to . . . replace his golems or something.”
Esrit looked at the strange mess of light on the walls around him. Some understanding tugged at his consciousness when he looked at them, like there was a pattern but he just couldn’t understand it. He narrowed his eyes and gasped when he saw a bristled appendage sticking out of one of the smeared lights.
The lights were smashed cave guides, the giant insect-like bats that inhabited the cave system underneath Inivo’s Spine Mountains on Chancel. Bexlan-Ansibe had recreated the same creatures on their moon, and they’d provided the light on the Indulgent side of the sanctum. But how had the Sacrosanct gotten thousands of cave guides down here? And how could they still be alight after being smashed against the cavern wall? Either the Sacrosanct had caught them somewhere in his own cave or his minions had brought them in—by the thousands. The smashing seemed intricate and precise in a way Esrit couldn’t quite understand. Perhaps it used the alien logic of a monster he would never be able to comprehend.
—planet-child to gather instruments for big-making moon-beast. to gather instruments for big-making to make first-formed most-formed un-seen to now-seen—
Marjaa and Lina looked at him. He felt no grand inspiration on what to do. The Sacrosanct’s mouth moved, and he heard the voice speaking the strange language and then the other voice overlayed in words he understood. Did the Sacrosanct speak a different tongue and his mind interpreted what he heard? As he stared at the figure embedded in the giant vine tree he felt small, unequipped, and hopeless. Talking to Bexlan-Ansibe had been strange, but their warmth had made their otherness a bridge he could cross. No such bridge existed with the Sacrosanct. He cleared his throat. “We defeated your golems. You have no power to impact our worlds now. If you don’t give up . . . whatever it is you are trying to do, we will be forced to stop you.”
He felt like a fool. Not only did he lack understanding of the Sacrosanct’s motivations, he had no clue if this creature could even understand him.
The Sacrosanct’s babbling continued, but it seemed directed at him.
—moon-beast words small specks against big-making moon-beast no god-hand moon-beast not yet instrument moon-beast serves abandoner and imposters of abandoner un-seen soon to be now-seen moon-beast swallowed up by now-seen moon—
Esrit measured his approach. “We’ve hobbled you, Sacrosanct. You can’t reach into the other worlds anymore. You are isolated down in this hole, so you are in a position where you have to negotiate with us.”
—new instruments for big-making hand-takers to become half-selves better half-selves for big-making—
Frustration seeped into Esrit’s mind. How could he reason with this creature? Madness didn’t respond to reason. He didn’t know how to destroy the Sacrosanct, but he felt like they were going to have to. “Do you think we can’t stop you? We destroyed the Reproacher and the Galvanizer. And we will finish our—”
Something changed in the Sacrosanct’s babbling. It got quicker, more forceful as it seemed like, for the first time, he was focusing a larger portion of his attention on the group. Esrit didn’t like it.
—moon-beast makes threats to big-making says he can stop un-seen from becoming now-seen unworthy to be instrument unworthytobehalf-selfmoon-beastneedsbending—
A rumble vibrated underfoot and before Esrit could do anything, four veins snaked up his legs. He felt the perverse warmth of the bile running through the veins through his fur as they wrapped around his legs like constricting snakes. He yelped in surprise, and in reaction Lina threw her plumbata. It whistled through the air, reflecting the glowing light of the smashed cave guides. The plumbata hit the figure in the side, making a small cut, but the Sacrosanct didn’t seem to notice. It fell from his body, the cut dribbling inky liquid darkness up the torso of the upside-down figure.
“No! This isn’t the way!” shouted Krift over the rumbling and squeaking of the taut veins moving over one another below. He stumbled on the shifting ground, grimacing as he clutched his wounded stomach.
—new instruments need bending bending from forgotten to become un-forgotten new instruments to learn to un-forget—
The veins wrapped around Esrit and Lina, easily yanking them to the root floor, binding them there under a dozen tethers. Esrit saw Krift swing his roped blade at one of the veins, but another rose up and batted it away as he released it. He too was dragged down and bound to the floor. Esrit heard Marjaa crying.
—bending for the instruments planet-child planet-child has already un-forgotten planet-child will help with the big-making—
Marjaa looked at her companions, crying, clutching her satchel. Yet the veins hadn’t grasped her.
As the veins dragged Esrit down, he craned his neck to see the lights all around him. They were tickling a memory at the edge of his consciousness, something that felt very important. He blinked, remembering his time with Bexlan-Ansibe, and suddenly he realized what the cave guides represented.
“Marjaa!” Esrit yelled. “Don’t fight him!” One of the veins pulled on his injured shoulder and he cried out, stars and dark spaces flashing in his vision as he nearly passed out. “The lights are the key, Marjaa! The lights are—mmmrph!” The vein wrapped around his mouth and eyes, pulling him downward into darkness.
Chapter 16
Marjaa watched in helpless terror as her friends were wrapped up and pulled into the collection of veins they were all standing on. She waited, knowing the veins would soon wrap around her, too. She heard Esrit yell something about the lights and then a vein covered his mouth and pulled his head down. Her mind couldn’t comprehend the fear; it felt too large and unwieldy to cope with, so she stood, frozen, hands clutching her satchel, and shut her eyes.
—planet-child un-sleep now help with the big-making make un-seen now-seen—
She took a long, slow, steadying breath like Krift had showed her, feeling the dank air filtering through her nose, into her lungs, and then expelled what she didn’t need in a slow exhalation. She opened her eyes.
The lights. She marveled at the babbling, abandoned god surrounded by his cavern of smashed bioluminescent creatures in some kind of intricate pattern—some close together, others far apart. Some of the creatures were smeared in a cluster, or even a vague shape, others looked small and isolated. The light varied from purplish to yellow. Shadows covered the Sacrosanct’s pitiable half-formed face. The flat protrusion of a nose had one small slit for a nostril and a small indentation for the other nostril. A toothless mouth made of the same material as the veins flapped open and closed, speaking in a language she didn’t understand, accompanied by another voice interpreting the words in her mind. His sightless eyes with no pupils looked filmy and incomplete.
She felt scared but also . . . curious. She decided to commit herself to the curiousness. “What happened to you?”
—first-formed first-child before next-formed next-formed are false-big imposters true-child is first-child first-formed un-seen but soon now-seen now-seen with planet-child being new instrument—
She listened intently, trying to discern the meaning through his scattered ideas and malformed terms. “Are the other gods the ‘next-formed’?”
She felt a rumbling under her feet and worried she’d angered him and would suffer the same fate as her friends. But the veins only slid against each other in agitation.
—next-formed non-gods imposters false-big false-gods—
Ideas bobbed in the ocean of her consciousness and she tried to draw lines to connect what they meant. Despite his alien reasoning and bizarre lexicon, she felt a picture of the Sacrosanct’s view rounding into form. “If you are the first-formed, who formed you?”
