Light of the Veil, page 25
“I couldn’t help Kay,” Jayce said. “I feel guilty enough for losing a friend. I’d rather not lose anyone else if I can help it.”
“Sarai didn’t need you when she fell into the river?” Maru asked.
“Well, that . . . that shouldn’t count.”
“It certainly mattered to her. And me. And countless others across the Governance,” Maru said. “Many Attuned lack your essential humanity, Jayce. You will become a great Paragon one day and I will be honored to continue your training. Now, I fear for both Sarai and this Leeta person right now. We need to find them.”
“And we do that by . . .”
“We continue the ascent. The Pinnacle is the domain of the Sainted One. I suspect he is the intelligence that tests everyone who enters. The soul stones he protects are of particular importance,” Maru said.
“They have something to do with the Cycle?”
“That is the assumption, but no one has ever made it this far before,” Maru said.
“I’m honored. Hold on, what was that vision with Taras and the Tyrant that I had?” Jayce asked. “Did that really happen?”
“It was not a vision. You stepped into the past,” Maru said. “Marshall Tulkan and I were gravely injured during the initial fight with the Tyrant. Tulkan, he is a Borasti. Downy fur. Arm. Leg?” Maru touched himself where Jayce had seen the other alien injured.
“That’s him,” Jayce said.
“You were definitely shown the past. Sarai’s father struck down the Tyrant and stopped him from reaching the . . . It isn’t relevant. We need to find Sarai before she’s tested beyond her abilities.”
“No, no! I want to know everything, Maru. Why are you hiding things from me? Is this a Paragon trait or a you thing?”
“Not every secret will make you happy, Jayce. You know as much as Sarai at the moment, and if we dither here, she is at risk. Do you want to have a tantrum or do you want to find her?”
“Tantrum? I wasn’t—Let’s keep moving, then.” Jayce looked away, embarrassed.
“Then to that stairwell.” Maru pointed to a corner at the end of the statuary hall and an opening to stairs leading upward.
“Where did that—You know what? I don’t need to understand everything. Let’s keep going. Leeta and Sarai need me. Us. Mostly you.”
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.”
