Transcendence and Rebellion Read online

  An image flashed through his mind, Karen and Gram’s bodies, torn and mangled into almost unrecognizable lumps of flesh. She didn’t go to the dungeon, he realized. She had gone to help Gram instead, and the increased resistance in that area had lent weight to the machine’s decision on which part of the walls to target.

  Ignoring the warning of his danger sense, he sent the blade back toward the tortus that was about to fire on the castle. If he could hit one of its legs, he could spoil the shot—but it would be close. As he did, he created an impromptu shield to protect his back, pouring his strength into it and hoping it would be enough.

  The spinning blade tore through the tortus’s leg just as its railgun fired. Part of the castle wall exploded into rock and dust, and then Matthew felt the gatling gun of the one he had ignored open up on his shielded back.

  He was thrown forward by the force of hundreds of impacts against his shield. When he hit the ground, the staff that controlled the Fool’s Tesseract flew from his hand, and as the other three tortuses opened fire, he felt his concentration begin to falter. He was taking fire from four gatling guns now, and even his impressive strength could only take so much.

  I need to go down, he thought. Creating a hole to shelter within was the only way to survive the withering onslaught, but he couldn’t spare the strength and concentration to attempt it. Redirecting even a fraction of his power would result in near instant annihilation. Instead, he redoubled his efforts to maintain his shield while directing his dimensional blades toward his attackers.

  One down, two, three… He was so close. Just a few seconds longer. The last tortus was still firing when he felt his power fail. His mind shattered into painful fragments as his shield collapsed, and the agony was so great that he almost didn’t feel the impacts as the gatling gun’s bullets tore into his body.

  The world dissolved into streaks of red and black.

  Chapter 3

  I floated above a city of shining metal. Well, ‘city’ might not have been the best term for it. ANSIS didn’t really create cities. If Karen were here she probably would have called it a factory. Whatever it was called, it was impressive. It stretched for ten miles in every direction, producing who knew what sorts of monstrosities.

  How fast do they build these things? I wondered. This was the third one I had found since my moment of transcendence.

  Transcendence was what I had decided to call my transformation. It sounded a lot better than ‘descent into corruption.’ I honestly had no idea what to think of my current state. I had become a living paradox, or perhaps an unliving paradox—either term was applicable. Possessed of unthinkable amounts of aythar, the stuff of life itself, I was nevertheless riddled with the dark power of the void. I was living fire, bound in chains of death.

  Unlike my first transformation years ago, when I had been trapped as a shiggreth, this one was different. To begin with, I was truly myself, at least in the sense that my soul wasn’t trapped within a prison, watching a simulacrum of my mind pretend to be me. My emotions were still present, but my perspective was skewed.

  Very little seemed important to me. I still felt things—anger, love, hatred, even guilt—but they were more distant. The world—no the universe—was huge, and my place in it was much larger than before. The small problems of my previous existence seemed somewhat petty.

  At some level, I tried to act according to my former priorities. ANSIS certainly seemed like an important problem. But then again, what was one world when there was an infinity of worlds? The cycle of life and death played out on all of them. In some, the void won; in others the living heart of aythar, the soul of awareness, the Illeniel, came out on top.

  I was neither, and both, and it didn’t matter. No matter which side I chose, nothing would change. The void was greater, an endless backdrop of night that made the brilliant stars of living worlds seem small, but even if I chose to snuff out the light, there would always be more. By the same token, eliminating the endless march of death and entropy was also impossible.

  I could choose a victor here or there, but in the grand scheme of things, the battle would go on for eternity. There could be no ultimate victory for either side.

  There was no point to it all.

  The world exploded around me, again. ANSIS was well aware of my presence, and they were continuing their usual efforts to put a stop to my meddling. They had used something new this time, causing my body to disperse into a cloud of burning particles. I would have laughed, if I’d had lungs—or a throat.

  Instead I descended, letting the diffuse plasma that currently constituted my body float downward. My first instinct was to reform myself, but I quickly changed my mind. Sometimes being big is more fun, so I spread myself even farther, making myself into a tenuous cloud so vast that it covered the entire ANSIS facility. Then I began to increase my temperature, slowly.

  I could have done it faster, but I was bored and had no idea what I would do with myself once I was done playing here, so I dragged it out. Fifteen minutes later, and the heat had become so intense that things began to melt. Some of the buildings were putting out plumes of toxic smoke as their more flammable portions burst into flame. Eventually, the temperature got so hot that even the smoke began to burn as it was driven to still more energetic reactions with the atmosphere.

  All of this cost me an enormous amount of aythar, enough to make me notice, at least, but aythar wasn’t a real problem anymore. Once everything had been reduced to burning slag, I reversed the process; instead of pumping more energy into the system, I began removing it, letting the void drink its fill of the chaos and entropy I had created.

  Everything cooled, until the temperature was so low that cracks and fissures formed in what few structures were left. I didn’t stop, though. In the past I had thought the void only affected living creatures, and in a sense that was partly true. It affected living things more strongly, but all things have order and entropy within them, whether they are living or inanimate.

  I removed all the energy I could, and then I continued, removing the order that naturally results from such a low entropy state. When I had finished, even the remains of the metal that had melted and cooled dissolved into a fine dust that settled to the ground.

  Nothing remained of the factory, city—whatever you might want to call it. It was gone. A plain of unremarkable grey ash extended for fifteen miles in every direction, flat and featureless. My body had reformed, and the power within me was greater than ever. I gazed at the wasteland, studying what I had wrought, and it was good.

  My reverie was interrupted by a flash, an image in my mind. Matthew. He was fighting somewhere, and his death was imminent.

  Unfortunately, despite my premonition, I still had no idea in which direction Lancaster lay. I would have to search the world to find it, a task that would take me a considerable length of time. But then again, time, in a certain sense, is a product of entropy. Removing most of the entropy from the world was one possible solution, but it might be difficult given my current size. It would also have a host of undesirable effects for the world itself.

  Far easier would be increasing my own entropy, increasing my own speed and causing the world to seem slower in comparison. Rising into the air, my body began to darken; the white flames that formed my body became grey, and then went from grey to black as I transformed into a creature of almost pure void. Then I began to move, and even light could no longer touch me.

  ***

  By the time Tyrion reached the Wester Isle, he was feeling much worse. Everything ached, his joints, muscles, even his teeth hurt, and whenever he ran his hand over his head, it came away with a scattering of hair between his fingers. Death was only hours away.

  I almost feel sorry for the krytek, he thought wryly. Three months of perfect health only to fall apart in less than a day.

  He dismounted from the dormon and walked toward the new Illeniel Grove. It now consisted of nearly ten trees, his, Lyralliantha’s, and eight saplings that wer
e so new they stood barely ten feet in height. His tree was the largest of course, stretching several hundred feet into the air, but Lyralliantha’s was slowly beginning to catch up. Her body stretched up nearly seventy feet in height, though her main trunk was still relatively slender, and her limbs and branches were still similarly lithe and small.

  The other eight were technically adults by She’Har standards, though they had spent less than a day as ‘children’ before taking root. It would be at least a year before they could contribute anything to his efforts, but Tyrion had hope for them in the future.

  In less than a hundred years, we could replace every human and cover the world with our forests—if I were so inclined, he thought smugly.

  That wasn’t his plan, of course. If anything, in the past he would have preferred to wipe out every one of the remaining She’Har, including himself if that was necessary. He had changed over the past four thousand years, however. He no longer desired the utter annihilation of the She’Har, or any other race for that matter.

  Just let me settle the problems of the present so I can go back to sleep, he thought. After that, the world could do whatever the hell it pleased. And if anything else goes wrong in the future, I’ll decide then whether I care enough to sort it out for them. It was entirely possible that after another several thousand years, he might not care enough to do anything, even if they came to burn his own tree.

  He entered the grove, but didn’t walk toward his own tree; he headed instead for that of Lyralliantha. Wake, he commanded, putting his hand against her trunk. Wake.

  Nothing happened for several minutes, but eventually he felt a faint response. Her mind was aware of him, but it was still moving far too slowly to communicate with him. Wake! he commanded once more, sending a painful jolt of aythar into her.

  Several more minutes passed before he received the beginning of a response from her, My love…

  I have no time, he sent to her. Rouse yourself, now!

  It’s difficult, she replied slowly.

  Do it, or I’ll set fire to your branches to hasten the process, he insisted.

  It was almost half an hour before she managed to bring her thought processes up to a speed close to that of humans. What need is there for such haste? she asked.

  This body is almost done, he informed her. A few more hours and I would be dead.

  You could have rejoined your tree, she thought back to him, somewhat sourly. There was no need for threats.

  I need to return right away. Events move quickly in the human realm. I couldn’t afford to spend weeks talking to you in the usual way, he returned. Is the child ready?

  Yes, she replied. But if you were in such a hurry you could have used another krytek body.

  They’re inferior, he argued. I’m sick of replacing them.

  You will need to eat calmuth regularly with this new body, she cautioned. Otherwise it will take root and you will wind up in dire straits.

  Better than having to replace it every three months, he told her. I’ll store plenty of your fruit in stasis to take back with me.

  Take some for Lynaralla as well, suggested Lyralliantha. She hasn’t returned for some time. She must be running low by now.

  If I can even find her, said Tyrion. She has gone into hiding with the majority of Mordecai’s rebellious children.

  They talked for a short while longer, and then he went to the massive pod hanging from one of Lyralliantha’s lowest hanging branches. It was so heavy that the bottom rested against the ground. He waited beside it for several minutes, until Lyralliantha’s will caused its exterior to split and release her latest offspring.

  Within was the lean, muscular figure of what appeared to be a human male with silver hair. It was covered in a viscous, sap-like fluid that coated Tyrion’s hands as he pulled it free and stretched it out on the ground. Normally when a She’Har child was born, they woke up right after the pod split open, but this one remained comatose.

  He stared at its features. What a handsome devil I am, he thought silently. Then he bent down and put his arms beneath its head and knees. He used his power to strengthen his back, legs, and arms, making the weight of the body easy for him to lift, but his joints still complained. Then he carried it back to his own tree. When he reached it, he opened his mind and listened, letting his self expand. After a few seconds, he walked forward and his body merged with that of his tree.

  Silence fell over the grove then, broken only by the sound of the wind as it played in the branches. An hour passed before he stepped back out of the Father-tree that was his true body, and when he emerged, he was no longer carrying another body. Tyrion was alone.

  He stood in the sunlight, stretching and getting used to his new flesh. “This is much better,” he said aloud. Once he was done becoming accustomed to his new body, he went to a large root that had sprung up from the ground while he was within the tree. It possessed a large, rectangular knob of wood at the top. It was the size of a large footlocker, and when his hand came in contact, it broke away. Using his power, he lifted it and set it to one side, then opened it. Now it just needs the appropriate enchantment, he thought.

  A stasis enchantment would take hours to craft, though. Tyrion smiled, then stretched out his hand. With a thought, magic grew from his fingers in a vine-like protrusion that stretched out to surround the wooden box before sinking into it. Spellweaving certainly has its advantages, he thought.

  That done, he went to collect calmuth from Lyralliantha’s branches.

  Chapter 4

  My search took what might have been days or even weeks of subjective time. It was hard to say; my sense of time was distorted to such a degree that was impossible to guess. The important reality, though, was that only a few seconds of time passed for the rest of the world.

  Lancaster had definitely seen better days. The landscape around it was torn and littered with old corpses and more recently destroyed machines. The castle was missing a large section of one of its walls but was otherwise intact.

  None of that mattered to me, though. On the western side, close to the trees, my son was stretched out face-down across a dark portion of torn earth, his blood just beginning to soak into the soil. There were pieces of what had once been deadly war machines strewn all about, testimony to what must have been an impressive battle.

  One machine was still functional, a tortus with its gatling gun still trained on my son’s body. Pieces of metal flew from it in slow motion, making their way toward Matthew’s collapsed form. The easiest solution was simply to destroy the machine and the projectiles that were still in the air, but using that sort of concentrated aythar or its counterpart, entropy, might be lethal to Matthew, simply because of his proximity.

  Instead I erected a simple shield around him, to protect him from further attacks—as well as my presence—then I moved closer. As I approached, I increased the power of the shield, for even the power that emanated passively from my body was such that a normal shield wasn’t enough to keep him safe.

  The tortus collapsed by the time I had gotten with fifty feet, though I hadn’t taken any overt action against it.

  My son was still alive. Only three bullets had struck him before I arrived, but the damage they had done would probably be fatal if something wasn’t done quickly. The question is what to do? I couldn’t risk trying to heal him directly, as I would have done before my transformation. Just being this close to him without a shield would kill him; attempting to do something directly would be much worse.

  But I could feel a connection between us, a thin, silver thread of something familiar. It reminded me of Kion. I thought about it for some time, while a leaf drifted toward the ground in my peripheral vision, moving so slowly it felt as though it would take all day before it came to rest on the earth. The Illeniel gift? Maybe that was what I sensed, though I couldn’t be sure.

  Regardless, I had to do something, so I tried gently drawing some of the entropy from his body, enough to slow the progress of his death.
Then another thought came to me. I could make him like me. Threads of black and white drifted in the air above my hand as I considered it.

  Wrap him in chains of fire and void, I thought. Then I wouldn’t be alone. He could be a god. Even Penny would agree it’s better than letting him die…

  No! The answer cut through my mind, a shout of denial so loud I couldn’t ignore it, and it sounded like Penny’s voice.

  The hand I was staring at changed, becoming human flesh for a moment. I recognized it as Penny’s hand, though it disappeared almost as soon as it appeared, burning away into ash, replaced by my living flame. Flesh was too fragile to persist in such close proximity, even if it was my own, or hers.

  I felt her inside me, struggling to assume control, but her body burned to dust as soon as it started to appear, while her voice screamed in pain within my mind. You can’t do this! she silently cried at me.

  “Fine,” I said aloud, in a voice that caused the nearest trees, already dead and dry from my nearness, to splinter and crack. Relax, I replied mentally. You’re killing yourself. I couldn’t be sure what Penny’s struggle was costing her, but I suspected it wasn’t something she could replace.

  A feeling of sorrow washed over me. I didn’t want to lose what was left of her, but at the same time I didn’t want to lose my son, either. I studied him once more. It would take considerable time for his body to resume its normal course of dying. My other children were not far away; they could heal him. There was plenty of time for them to find him.

  Backing away from my son, I decided to let them handle it. I spent the next second or two eliminating the remaining ANSIS machines in the area, a period of time that subjectively felt like hours for me, then I left.

  ***

  Irene was on the wall when it happened. Tired beyond belief, she had put her back against one of the merlons to rest. The attack on her portion of the wall had ended, and she didn’t have the strength left to help anyone else, though she had seen Karen appear across the yard and take Cyhan and Alyssa somewhere to help with what was probably a crisis elsewhere.