The Twelve Chapters of the Infinite Night, page 22
I open my mouth to reply, but the sight of an imperial guard close-by distracts me. There are many as it turns out - we are surrounded. I stand, lifting Rhaiyche to standing beside me.
‘I told you that you could not trust Ashoka.’ She whacks my stomach with the back of her hand, but her resentment towards me is lessening as her strikes contain less venom.
These are the emperor’s guards, but it was the viceroy Saras who appeared in command of this lot. ‘His Majesty said I had until dawn to make my decision.’
‘There is no decision to be made here.’ Saras informs. ‘His Majesty is bound by his vows to the Gods to be generous, but I am not so bound, and I cannot allow such a security risk as yourself to simply walk free. I shall report to the emperor that you rode off with your men never to be seen again.’
‘Oh dear Gods…’ Rhaiyche grabs hold of the golden jug on the table, drinking several gulps, then flings the object at Saras and hits him in the forehead with it. ‘You are such a boring little prat.’ As the viceroy falls, Rhaiyche retrieves the jug and smashes the closest guard. Once in possession of his sword, she begins fighting back the onslaught.
A guard lunges at me.
I sidestep, grab his wrist, snatch the sword from his possession, and plant my knee into his gut. An open hand strike to the back of his neck sends him to the ground.
‘Retrieve the commander!’ Hamza and the Sangdil join the battle, which is swiftly won by my hardened warriors.
Dead bodies lay everywhere, save one - the viceroy, who is starting to come round. ‘Bring him.’ I instruct.
The closest of my men to the eunuch drag him to his feet. Saras moans, still only semi-conscious at best, and starts mumbling inaudible threats.
‘Looking good, Rhaiyche.’ Hamza has recognised my wife and is eyeing her over.
‘Hamza.’ She smiles and directs his attention my way.
‘Do you want to die?’
‘No lord.’ He attempts to lose a little of his cheer, well used to hearing death threats from me. ‘I am only thrilled for my lord’s amazing and extremely fetching, good fortune.’
Now we are both suppressing smiles. ‘You have had your eye on Saras.’
‘Of course.’ He was serious now.
‘Do you know if the emperor sanctioned this ambush?’ I drop my tone to ask, and Rhaiyche joins our huddle.
Hamza purses his mouth and with a shake of his head, shrugs. ‘If he did, it was before we got here.’
‘Better to be safe than sorry.’ I decide. ‘I need to retrieve my stone.’
‘You took it off?’ Hamza is stunned.
‘What stone?’ Rhaiyche asks.
‘I’ll explain later.’ I make a move in the direction of the fountain, but my bondsman blocks my path.
‘If by some miracle you have been parted from that thing, you should keep it that way.’
‘What is he talking about?’ My wife is in my face, and then she turns to Hamza. ‘Tell me why you are so alarmed?’
‘The stone is part of the creature,’ he said and Rhaiyche gasped. ‘It makes the wearer part of the creature.’
Mouth gaping in horror, Rhaiyche is glaring at me.
I should skin Hamza alive for saying so, yet he is acting out of duty to protect me. ‘We do not have time to debate this. Move aside, that’s an order.’
Both Hamza and Rhaiyche stand their ground.
‘I do not have to touch it to retrieve it.’ I explain.
‘Why do we need it at all?’ Hamza demanded to know.
‘Because we both know how dangerous it is! We can bury it somewhere it won’t be found, but we can’t just leave it to possess someone else, least of all the emperor.’
Finally Hamza nods and joins me in a sprint towards the fountain, with the Sangdil and Rhaiyche trailing behind us.
I hear my wife’s protests, but I am inwardly driven to retrieve the stone; though whether my intentions are truly for the good of all or my own selfish ends, I cannot rightly say.
At the fountain we are met by another large array of royal guards, but all their weapons are holstered save one. The exception has his sword dipped in the water of the pool. The emperor is standing alongside the guard doing the fishing, with a very concerned look on his face. ‘Why have you attacked my viceroy?’ He asks, his face completely deadpan.
‘Forgive me, Majesty…’ I note how my wife is frowning at my diplomatic approach. ‘But I was about to ask you, why your viceroy and many of the imperial guard just attempted to murder us? Did you not hear the skirmish?’ He must have known.
Rhaiyche smiles at my conclusion and looks to the emperor to hear his response.
‘No. I have only just arrived. But, I believe I understand what has happened here.’ Ashoka motions to a pair of guards, who come forth and claim the emperor’s viceroy from my men. ‘Saras gets a little overzealous at times. He is not yet a Buddhist, and does not yet understand Dharma.’
‘And what do you get for locking someone up for twenty years?’ Rhaiyche is right to be angry, but I fear she will end up in the emperor’s hell-prison.
‘It is not about what I get for your suffering, it is about what you get.’ The emperor motions to me.
‘I already had him. And you took him for half my lifetime!’
‘But now you have my protection, and protection for wherever you choose to go from here.’
‘And we are most grateful to be in Your Majesty’s good graces.’ I cut in.
Rhaiyche turns and serves me a hate face, but beyond her the sword is raised from the fountain and I see it has hooked a chain to one of the dark crystal necklaces. As it is raised up higher, it becomes clear that the two dark stones have united whilst in the pool - the other chain hangs from the opposite side of the cojoined stone.
‘Oh no.’ I utter. ‘That’s bad.’
‘What is it?’ Rhaiyche looks to the source of my concern, but does not understand the significance.
‘The clusters know about each other.’ I give voice to the fact, yet only the emperor and I have any idea what that might mean.
The emperor nods to agree with my summation. ‘But you have done as I asked, so my offers still stand,’ he assures. ‘Are you to be the next Governor of Minnagara?’
I hear all the men at my back gasp with delight at that suggestion, and Rhaiyche is nodding too.
‘Or will you take your dark stone, once we pry them apart, and return to Kambuja?’
There is a low rumble from behind me at that suggestion.
Rhaiyche is slowly shaking her head.
‘We both know what this event might mean.’ The emperor motions to the connected necklaces, still hanging from the sword tip.
The emperor’s desires for my future had clearly altered now. If the more aggressive cluster of liquid darkness in Kambuja decided to seek out its more passive cousin cluster here, it would cut a path of destruction and horror all the way in between.
‘But I am a man of my word,’ Ashoka states, ‘and I will not order you to go back there.’
The emperor did not wish to be responsible for any further damage I might cause his neighbours, but if I could mend some of the damage we’d done there, then all the more Dharma for him - or so Ashoka believed.
My sights turn to my troops and wife, all shaking their heads, yet I know they will follow me whatever I decide. I didn’t want to return to that godforsaken place any more than they did, but if the creature went on a rampage, sooner or later our people would be forced to deal with it too. I close my eyes and my earlier vision of the great mother fills my mind. What will you do given liberty, Destroyer?
Chapter 8
Agartha 4105 AD Shankara - The Creator
With every molecule buzzing inside the spiralling stream of luminosity, my essence is ejected in a thunderous flash from the vortex of my own invention. As my body reconstitutes, consciousness rushes over me, and in a flood of awareness I remember who I am and that I have arrived.
I am Shankara of Agartha, head of DoT and the Seeker program, or at least I will be after today. I have dwelt in the inner world since the fall of Atlantis. Throughout all the ages, Agartha and its physical world counterpart city, Shamballa have been a safe haven for humans between evolutionary epochs, but not anymore.
The cool, soft moss covering my laboratory floor cushions my landing. I know I have made my destination as there is light, colour, and life here.
As Agartha and Shamballa occupy the same space on different dimensions, my lab and indeed the Ancient WisdomSchool exists in both dimensions. However, the Gate of Days exists only in the physical world as that is the only dimension from which time and earth history can be accessed.
How curious. My past self rounds the control module of the time-gate we’ve designed to approach the shivering pile on the floor. I’ve not figured out who has just landed in my lab.
A time-gate is in essence what our invention truly is. We choose to call it the ‘Gate of Days’ as not everyone in Agartha, especially the higher ups, completely understand the concept of time - being fifth-dimensional beings and beyond. To them, time and space are merely forms of ideas that express the cyclic activity of an entity. They do understand day and night, however, from observing surface earth. Here in the inner earth our central sun, Sophia, is more akin to liquid light than fire, and shines with the intensity of light through water, resulting in a constant state of what a surface dweller might consider as twilight. That is until the day that I had just left - it had been the darkest day Agartha will ever see, both actually and metaphorically.
I roll over to reveal my identity to myself.
Heavens! My past self is momentarily taken aback to see me. I built this gate to seek out other great minds, not my own. This event will not bode well for my presentation today.
My reconstitution complete, I rise to standing; a fifth-dimensional state of being is more easily re-embodied than those forms of a denser nature. Nothing will bode well with your presentation today. The Council of Sophia will reject our proposal.
Sophia is also the extra-terrestrial name for the consciousness of our planet, as it was the great mother who formed the earth around herself in order to nurture the consciousness of humanity.
Well, that rather takes the gloss off our effort and aspirations. My past self is deflated, but I don’t disclose that even to myself. You travelled back through time to tell me this?
No. I travelled back in time because this invention of ours is Agartha’s last hope to defeat the Archons.
The Archons! I am horrified by the mere mention and recoil a little.
We … you, myself, us … are this civilisation’s last hope.
Surely you jest. This invention is a reconnaissance device to collect the DNA of the enlightened ones of humanity, and extinct species of animal and plant-
I know what it is. I built it. I know the plan, and I can assure you it has changed.
How can it possibly be the last hope for Agartha when our fair home requires no defence, as no hostile is advanced enough to enter this dimension?
That will not always be the case. The Archons are developing their own time travel devices -
That’s impossible, as to fold time you have to move through the fifth dimension-
My nod brought the hypothesis to an end as my naive self gasped. Not only have they been feeding on human light excretions, they have been harvesting souls to power their technologies-
No.
Of course, I don’t want to entertain such an awful thought. Yes. I know what I am thinking and I am right to be shocked. Can you imagine such a destructive consciousness loose here? Merge with me and you will know all that I know. I suggest too soon.
Why should I believe you? My past self backs up. You may be Archon, they are masters of replication.
Then you would not be able to merge with me. Archons can only imitate; they cannot actually become their subject and you can only ever merge with yourself, no other.
How could you know, unless you have merged with us before?
You think that we would not have tested this plan before executing it? Of course I have merged with us before, at a time in closer proximity to the forthcoming Archon disaster and so we were more inclined to understand the urgency of this experiment.
I will have you … me know that I am very inclined towards experimentation. We know that is our nature and purpose.
Good. Because I can promise you, if you do that pitch today without the knowledge I possess, this project will never get off the ground. It will sit in this lab collecting dust until I use it to escape our dying world. I inform honestly. Is our project and entire way of life not worth a little risk? That’s put me in my place; my younger self appears reluctantly beguiled, or perhaps even a little ridiculous?
She moves towards me and holds out her hand. I am a scientist, and therefore most curious.
Brace yourself, I warn before making contact. Some of my recent memories are fairly disturbing. I’ll try and put them to the back of my mind for the time being - we’ll just keep the focus on our presentation this afternoon.
My past self nods to concur and I reach out, placing my right hand on top of her right hand. Coming up close beside her, we observe our hands merge then our forearms and arms, before our forms completely meld into each other. I am now the me I was, with the memory of who I am now.
That wasn’t so bad now, was it? I am happy to admit; but post-merge I know I lied about having melded with myself before. If I could lie so convincingly, perhaps my brush with the Archons has affected me more than I imagine?
The presentation. I must focus; the high council will be here at any moment and I must be ready to deliver a harsh serve of reality.
You are more than when we last met, Shankara. You have amalgamated, observes Saegoi, the White.
They belonged to a more spiritually evolved cast of those lower astral entities known as Greys. TheWhites are genderless and convey messages from causal beings existing on planes beyond our existence, who they refer to as the Watchers.Saegoi relays their guidance to the council, as a human channel would not be able to withstand the high vibrational frequencies of causal entities; at least, that is what the Whites claim. Saegoi’s observation is certainly accurate in this instance.
I have merged with my future self to bring you the grave news of Agartha’s destruction. I motion to the Gate of Days. I used my invention to return here, although this council forbade me to use it until it was approved.
Lady Zili, co-ruler of Agartha, is perplexed by my words.
She is of the tall, fair-skinned Pleiadian race, who have been the babysitters of mankind through two near complete extinction events - the demise of Atlantis and the demise of all organic life on surface earth.
When did we forbid your project? The lady had no recollection of this, for how could she?
Today. This project is never approved. The fact hurts, but it will be a short-lived reality this time around. However, I believe it is now our last hope of saving the Shamballa and Agarthan nations, so I implore you to reconsider.
Thrasceon, Lord of Shamballa, is clearly not convinced of the danger of our imminent demise. But then as a human immortal, hailing from a time when the Nefilim exploited this planet, time meant nothing to him. Is amalgamation between present and future selves even possible? Lord Thrasceon poses the query to his assistant, Achiever - a transhuman IT sensitive who came to Shamballa with our last intake of human surface dwellers rescued before the most recent end of days. Thrasceon, along with most everyone in Shamballa, adored Achiever. Having lived so long, the lord's mind overflowed with information and the cyborg aided to jog his memory with events, names, places, and the chronological order of things. However, we all had our reasons for putting Achiever on a pedestal and I fear this will be our downfall.
I have always rather appreciated Achiever’s frank and intelligent manner, but I saw him betray us; what’s uncertain is if he did so voluntarily. He isn’t the only cyborg dwelling in Shamballa, where we are gathered at present, but he is unquestionably the cyborg with the greatest influence and access to the extraterrestrial technology that runs Shamballa and Agartha. Achiever has benefited from the best of what Pleiadian technology has to offer, which is why the war hero is still alive and kicking thousands of years after his arrival - and another reason why he was the perfect assistant for Lord Thrasceon. Achiever appears completely human, but many believe he ceased being human long before we ever met. I see a spirit within him, but he fears this is an illusion caused by his Pleiadian upgrades, which incorporate etheric alien hardware with a liquid light core. Not even Achiever knows whether his spirit still resides in him or not. Cyborgs fear deactivation, as what if their spirit fled long ago and all that they are now is lost? Better just to upgrade and keep going.
‘Spirit is constantly merging with itself, Lord, so theoretically it is entirely possible.’ Achiever advises, and the verbalisation that I once would have found pleasurable, now rather grates on my nerves. He knows how to say exactly the right thing - more human than human.
Any transhuman is incapable of telepathy with tech-less humans, although transhumans can plug into any other artificial intelligence and mutely converse in code and data. So although Achiever cannot telepathically converse with those of us who are etheric beings, he has sensors that tune into the frequency of our telepathic projections, and these turn our thoughts into data that he can compute - this is how he can follow our conversation. He is also highly sensitive to body language and can pick up on the stray thoughts of those around him if you get mentally lazy in his presence. As I wear no tech add-ons, I cannot pick up on Achiever’s data driven telepathic projections.
I want to roll my eyes at the divergence in topic, but refrain.
My Lord Thrasceon, I suspect the message is rather more important than the messenger’s means of delivery. Magnar Yeddais points out. He is the last member of the council that is present today, and I am most grateful for his focus. This descendant of Hyperion is here representing the interests of the Titans, who have their own lands in the interior world of this planet.
