Chapter 70: Elvedon

My realities are now blending. I am weilding the Stylus in the topmost facility of Clarion, and it's interior architecture is almost identical to the shrine I woke up in. Turk was sitting next to me on a chair with severely worn cushioning. His face looked more somber than I had ever seen. There was a pouch made of some glossy material I had never seen. Turk twisted a tab on the top of the pouch and told me to drink it before standing, then removed my headdress. 

"Did I dream?" I asked, lifting only my head, as my limbs were still bound.

"All who come here do."

"Then, is Elvedon real?"

"You lie within its most sacred hall."

"I want to stand."

Turk unfastened my bonds, which were much like those on the bed in the small room I felt so at home in. I sat up, slowly, and drank from the pouch, then laid back down. My head was reeling.

"I have something to tend to," Turk said before leaving abruptly.

When the room stopped spinning, I was able to observe the ceiling in detail, and chose to do so before standing. It was high above me, and in both spectrums I saw a great many grooves in the stone, branching outward from the center, so that I felt like a dactyl looking down on the crown of a tree from the old world. There were trees like this in Victor 0's memories. Only these branches did not bow and bend, but grew in straight lines that curved and twisted on themselves at hard angles, like they'd been forced to grow in rigid furrows carved by some strangely obsessed mason.

I rose in stages, remaining propped on one elbow at first, then sitting, then standing, each phase a focused rendering of the chamber in base and then advanced sight. The bier I laid on was of a substance akin to both metal and stone, with a thin pad that rose on spider's legs to curve with my spine. When I was no longer upon it, the legs vanished, and the pad lay prone in wait. 

I was not alone. I stood in an outer ring of biers like mine. Most were empty, but on some were bodies. I walked the wide circle of that outer ring, running my fingers over the cold, grey brows of those who lay upon the biers. They wore the same headdresses, had the same bonds, and as I imagine mine must have, their eyes darted about beneath their lids; this was the only sign that they were still alive. The entire shrine was filled with them, these dreaming cadavers. Ring after ring, spiraling to the center of the room, where a round pillar emerged between all things from the floor, expanding again as it blended into the ceiling. Translucent vines ran down the pillar and spat their viscous bile into a circular trough about the pillar. I kneeled down to look at the fluid, then bent down further and dipped my tongue beneath its brim. It tasted of salt.

I walked through a corridor that seemed to grow ahead of me, curving through the temple at my whim, but subtly guiding me to what I sought. I was reminded of the compound in which I slew the good doctor. After some time, during which my thoughts wandered through the dream I'd just woken from, I found Turk in a small room filled with cobwebs. He sat on a small, uncomfortable looking chair, bent over a bare desk with a small square of glass that glowed faintly through a membrane of caked dust. There was an object somehow imprinted on the glass, almost as they are shown by the djinn, though flat and uninspired.

It looked like a centipede. There were bits of what looked like flesh between the pincers on both jaws and tail, and thin tendrils sprouted from its many feet, which were raised and moved as if submerged in a current.

"What is this place?" I asked. 

"Where all things began." Turk spoke as if he'd been ready for my question.

"All things?"

"So far as you and I are concerned."

I stood in the doorway for what felt to be a long time. Turk did not move. Finally I broke the silence. "Who are those people?".

"Heroes."

"Are they your ancestors? You said the Cataphracts all hail from here. And the Angels and Devils as well. I saw no one like Regis or Blitzkrieg laying on the biers."

Then Turk lifted his head, and I saw that he had changed. Gone was the frost around his scalp and beard, and his hair was all cropped short as well. He looked like a man between youth and age who was ready to dine with a comely crowd. I wondered if I looked any different, and then I felt the long, silken hair over my shoulders.

Turk must have saw me looking at my hair, for he said "It will fade soon."

"I don't understand."

  "I saw V while I slept. He's not as pure as you, but he is you."

I was even more baffled than I was before Turk spoke, an emotion that surely painted my face.

"Sometimes the dreams linger after waking." Turk laughed, and I found the sound comforting. "I once imagined that Goth was a girl, just so we could all have a laugh. You should have seen his face when he woke. That may have been the one time I saw Abdiel smile."

A thought struck me, and I felt an elation, having just solved a mystery, before learning that the killer was in fact still at large. I looked at Turk's coal black hair and rejuvenated features. "Does Elvedon heal the tyflochs' rot?"

"No," Turk said, and I felt both sad and relieved.

"Then how does Abdiel evade it? Is it because he rarely flies?". Precious reader, know that I have told you of every time I saw him do so, leaving out the many days I spent with him aground, and the many times he scowled when I tried to goad him into taking flight for my pleasure.

Turk stood, and slowly took something out of his pocket. The cadavers on the biers all wore white gowns, but Turk and I were in our travel leathers, though somehow they had been cleaned. I still remember nothing of our arrival.

I noticed with a start that my hair was gone, then looked at Turk's hand. He held three frozen teardrops in his palm, each with a single sapphire glow in its core.

"Goth, Zulu and Qatar," he said. "The rest of us are spent. Come with me. I'll show you."

The corridor moved much more dutifully for Turk. Rather than winding like a vein through an unformed embryo, it took us steeply straight and down, and ended in a door so narrow we both had to turn sideways to pass through. Beyond that door was a chamber that would have been large and spacious, if not for what it contained. A labyrinth of walls sprouted from the floor, each rising over twenty feet high, just shigh of the tall ceiling. Along the walls were panels of glass, scratched and blasted by the centuries since the Fall. Turk led me through the labyrinth, stopping at a wall marked as military. He wiped a panel with his forearm, and I peered inside, using again both spectrums to see. There were small cradles within the glass, each a score deep, with the names of the Cataphracts inscribed on the shelf the cradles rested on. For my friend, there were two; Turk, and A. Turk.

"Which Turk are you?"

He shrugged. "I've never extracted my own sample. That was done by the Founders, until my last life began. Then your fathers gave me gifts to keep me alive."

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"Gifts like mine?". I asked him about his eyes, his age, and his resilience from grievous wounds.

"I draw nutrients from the soil, where they exist to be drawn, and that gives my body the power to knit itself back together. Gaia's Kiss, they call it." He showed me his brand. "And yes, I can see where there is little light, though I see the heat made from a beating heart, not the ink marks of creation, as you do."

"But you know of my sight. What else do you know of me?"

Turk sighed. "Only fragments of what I did. I know the Batch was originally birthed somewhere far below here, but was moved to the continent a long time ago. We all thought Victor 33 was the last, and were frightened by the man he grew to be. When he became a figure of worship to the people of the capitol, renaming the city after himself, we felt that all hope was lost. Then I heard that another had been shipped to the sanctum, landing first at Haven, and I went to see you. But the Dolomites did not wake you for a long time. You weren't finished, according to some of them. Those who disagreed tried to steal you. They refused the mechanical adaptations your fathers embraced, and so they were not strong enough to defend themselves when the Dolomites came to win you back."

"The Erudites."

Turk nodded, and I felt relieved to know that I had not fully lied to Eris.

"The name 'Dolomite' was given them by Neophilus. But the Erudites thought themselves wiser, and chose their own name, and their own fate."

"Who is Neophilus, and why have I dreamt of him?"

Turk had little to say, so I made this guess, that in the shared mind of the Batch, we have created our own vison of our unnatural Genesis, and lacking the time to fully suss the matter out, I left it at that. 

"Do you know who rings the bells?"

Turk's face made an expression I could not interpret. I think he may have been worried, and I think he may have been relieved.

"Already?" he said.

"For some time now."

           "Have you seen them, or only heard them?"

           "Both. There was a little boy named Astus, and in the sea outside Haven I saw two lights that seemed as large as our own world, but somehow contained within a smaller space. They tried to pull me down under the sea."

Then Turk began to shake, and sweat, and I was afraid he might attack me. But he leaned against the wall of Cataphracts and wept for a moment, then wiped away his tears and spoke.

"Perhaps, you should have gone with them."

"But I had to save you and Eris."

Turk laughed, and his words cut deep, for ultimately I had not saved Eris, and he desired to go on living about as much as I.

I pounded my fist on the wall where all the Goths had been stored. "If only I knew what was expected of me! This confusion is maddening. Clearly I'm meant to fulfill some purpose, but what? Can no one tell me plainly?!"

In his fatherly way, Turk put his hands on my shoulders and embraced me. We then stood facing each other, searching each other's motionless eyes while Turk spoke soothingly.

"Now you see the true darkness of our world, Victor. So much has been lost, and we who care to set things right must guess at more than half of what we hope we know. Please, Victor, understand that after a lifetime of watching Lord V grow more and more delusional, and having seen so many others of the Batch go astray, one more of that broken hope was a frightening prospect for us who have been fighting for centuries. And when I looked on you after you'd been active for several years, I saw a childish little boy who knew nothing of what he contained. When I looked on you again, you had grown only in body, wanting to hide from the ills of our world with a pretty girl while the rest of us toiled, fighting and bleeding against those who'd plagued us for so long. 

"How was I to trust you then? And when you did enlist, it was because you sought distraction from your grief. Don't complain to me for not revealing all my truths to you sooner. I only do so now because..." he looked sadly at the empty cradles that once held his brethren, "what have I got left? The Devils are destroyed, and by my hand long ago their masters were slain as well. I am done, Victor. I now have only Elvedon to look after, and my answer to that is one that I will keep to myself. Your way is yours. Stay here and help me tend to those who sacrificed everything, or go find another Eris. I am your captain no more."

I held back my anger and tears, and, not being ready to part company with Turk, I asked if I could see where Angels were born. 

In the center of the labyrinth was a cloister of curved walls that formed a tight circle, the open spaces between them being offset in the manner of a fortress wall, with an emblem of a sword marking the way inward. In the center of the cloister was a grand basin, a vessel for lords, covered in thick glass that had been broken open long ago.

"This vessel once radiated with light and heat," Turk said.

"And where are Devils born?"

"They were born here, but were lured to places far below, where the real enemy once dwelled. There they were made into animals; flayed in a way that never healed, and driven to slaughter by pain and constant want."

"And who were these real enemies?"

"The world's old masters. The ones who struck the sky. The ongoing poison in our air was their doing. Once I learned their tactics, I turned the poison back on them."

"How could you be sure you'd won?"

"Because the Devils stayed. Had the well not been poisoned, they would have kept drinking from it. But they kept close to the surface, winning agents with terror and corruption so they could find what they needed to survive from the surface."

Then I asked Turk to tell me of the Fall, but he said that having dreamt of it, I knew more than he, so we put our knowledge together, and I know now that the mother of Kendra's namesake, whose blood too was once a small blue star within a frozen teardrop, worked closely with, though against, those who plotted evil, and the poor girl was spirited away as my namesake was, while our mothers and fathers were burned at the stake for their heretical attempts to avert disaster. And we discovered more as we spoke in the weeks that followed, as I elected to stay for a time and tend to that living grave along with Turk. We kept the nourishing sap flowing down the vines of the tree in the center of the shrine, and washed the bodies of the sleepers. And as we deliberated on what we learned when we would take short rests and ourselves dream, we determined that many took part in the Fall, along with those who fought to prevent it, and in the end it was brought on by that common turmoil, for all tempests are made of such prime materials as this; that ire begets ire.

When I left Elvedon, it was agreed that I should try to succeed where all the Batch had failed, and though I begged Turk to come with me, he had very compelling reasons why he should stay. Those entombed in bliss in Elvedon's central shrine had earned their long rest, and Turk, far too tired to fight another war, felt he owed a personal debt to those who gave him life before they gave their minds to the womb that birthed the djinn; they being the one time guardians of knowledge and power before they grew rampant and were shackled. The other argument was that I alone was made of the stuff needed to pass between the wards guarding the holy place of death shown to me by the Nelumbo. And of death, Turk had had his share. He said there was one more life for him to take, but not until the proper time, and between then and now he would find his solace in Elvedon. So I geared myself for my own war, and rode on Northwind to Thirty-Third Day.

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