Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are also available as an audio podcast from the Southgate Media Group. http://www.southgatemediagroup.com/10000dawnspodcast You can also subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html You can download the latest chapter below in PDF or epub formats:
Chapter 21: The Burden of Solitude“What the hell is this?”
“Er, Atlantis base I just covered that, keep up.” “No, you’re on Titan. With Dogs that should have died literally centuries ago. How.” “How do you know they’re the same dogs?” Heinrich chimed in. “They’re the same dogs.” June and Graelyn said in unison, which seemed to piss both of them off slightly, “The dogs both had a distinctive mark on their left flank, its there.” Heinrich hadn’t been looking, but yes, yes there was. Some letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. “Is it really surprising they’re the same dogs? I mean, you know what’s going on here don’t you?” “I clearly don’t, miss…. Scythes. So I’d appreciate if you’d stop talking down to me.” Graeylin looked disappointed, and ran her hand along her tightly pony-tailed hair, her pin glinting off the bright lights. “Oh. Oh well.” She made a sort of dismissive gesture to no one in particular. “Its pretty obvious we’re not from here though at least? I’m sorry you didn’t figure out we were from the future.” “…What?” Heinrich said. “The future. You know, that time that’s not now but yet.” “I know what the future is.” “Are you sure? Regardless, you got here just in time.” She turned abruptly, and started walking down the silver, gray, and green hallway. “In time for what?” June called. “We’re going to be facing away from the solar system in a moment, and since it’s the year 2227, it should happen again.” “Stop teasing us. What?” “We should encounter another extra-solar object. Only not like any you’ve seen before. Follow me.” They obliged her, what else could they do, “and take off those bulky things this place is airtight with the best fake gravity money can buy, you just look ridiculous.” She pushed her glasses up into the bridge of her nose and kept walking. The man called Archimedes sighed, and squatted down to pet one of the dogs, “Sorry about that, she’s usually pretty snippy when people can’t keep up with her.” June nodded, and followed Graelyn down the hallway, she and Heinrich removing their helmets and gloves as they went. The facility varied between being gray silver and green, or gray silver and blue depending on the area they passed through though neither June nor Heinrich could particularly figure out why. Graelyn kept her eyes forward, with a supreme aura of confidence that moved beyond self esteem and into superiority. Parts of the place looked as though they had been ransacked, with knocked over tables and chairs, smashed computers, and broken mugs and glassware every which way. The walls were sometimes stained with what looked horribly like brown dried blood. Graelyn kept walking till she arrived at an open room with a big table in the middle displaying a very high quality hologram of Titan and the space surrounding it. Floating next to it in the air was a timer, that appeared to be ticking down. The rest of the room was lined with scientific equipment of all varieties, some recognizable (a seismograph, microscopes, flasks and Bunsen burners) and some that were utterly foreign (a strange device that appeared to be a floating silvery orb that shifted into geometric shapes while a panel under the floating orb displayed a seemingly random number with every shift) but the purpose of the room was fairly obvious: it was a lab and command center in one. It was also fairly messy, but in that way a room looks when someone is a clean freak but hasn’t had the time to clean up properly but still forced an effort at it. “You want an explanation to what’s going on? I’ll give you one.” “Aren’t you curious who we are?” Graelyn shook her head to June’s question. “Not in the slightest. I know who you are, because I knew you were going to arrive here. I’m from the future remember? You meet me and write all about it. Though dare I say, you kind of left out some of the awkward bits.” She waved her hand and pulled up a model of their ship. “If I’m correct, you have a WeN-D model AI on board correct?” June nodded, “that’s right.” “Could you patch her through your suit’s speakers? I know she’s already listening in.” Heinrich was surprised June followed the request without question; he really didn’t understand what June was doing. She clearly didn’t trust either of these people, but seemed to be willing to go along with them. Archimedes finally entered, carrying a dog under either arm in an unintentionally condescending show of strength. WeN-D’s voice then crackled in, “Hello?” “WeN-D, welcome to Triton.” “Thank you, Miss Scythes.” “Now WeN-D, you should find the list of codes to jack into this building’s mainframe in the Folder labeled F22 on your G drive, correct?” “That’s… How is that correct?” “Log in, this will make things easier.” Graelyn waved her hand through the hologram, and it shifted again, the colored light shimmering on her cat pin. The hologram showed a team of people in a clothing style that clearly hadn’t been created yet. Graelyn was there, though she looked younger, and more optimistic. “This is the team who worked on Project Atlantis. Officially, we were attempting to build underwater cities in the deep ocean. Unofficially, we were attempting to use the natural high pressure of the deep ocean on earth to facilitate experiments by our CEO, John Aril. He had a theory that there had been experiments in an alternate reality by another version of himself to create and manipulate tears in the fabric of reality in order to travel to or remove things from alternate realities.” June grimaced, “I’d say that’s impossible, but you’re here.” “Well, we’re from an alternate reality, so clearly it can happen. We’ve managed to get into your reality, just in the wrong time… But I’m getting ahead of myself.” Arch set the dogs down, and they walked over to the table and lay down in front of it. Graelyn didn’t pay particular attention. “Unfortunately, as it turned out not only was the experiment on our end not ready, but neither was the one being worked on in the other universe, which by the way did exist and Aril was totally right about. Also, we weren’t the first people to try hopping realities, and there seemed to be a sort of… Inter reality travel regulation group. An image appeared of a man in black robes wearing a ring with an arc emblem on it, or maybe it was just a sideways “C”. “They didn’t react kindly to our jaunting around, and the experiment went even worse than anticipated. We’ve been wandering around alternate realities for a while now, before ending up in our your time stream and… well, getting stuck there to. But this time is different, because in a way I’ve always known I’d meet you, June. I’ve been waiting a long time.” Graelyn pulled off her cat pin, holding it up to the light, and Heinrich noticed the obvious thing he’d been missing all this time: it was the same cat pin June was wearing, and the same one in the hologram. “That isn’t right though, you’re not supposed to have the pin are you?” “Am I? Sorry, its very hard to get the timing on these things right.” June paced around the table, stepping over the sleeping dog. “This has been all ready for so long, all these coincidences, all waiting for this year in this place for both of us to be here.” Graelyn nodded, “I’m afraid on that matter you know more than I do, I only know what was told to me.” Heinrich looked between the two women, they were staring each other down. “Okay, you two clearly are in cahoots somehow, and I want in. You’re keeping stuff from me, you’ve been keeping stuff from me this whole time apparently June, and I’m done with it. Tell me what on Earth is going on.” June sighed, “Heinrich, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Graelyn.” “You’ve met before?” “No, she’s met me. I’ve never met her before.” Graelyn clarified. “But you knew you were going to meet her?” Graelyn nodded again. “God, okay, so…. Time travel is possible… Second question: this base has been here a long time if the dogs have survived, so how have you survived?” Graelyn ran her hand over her hair again, and closed her eyes. She looked like she was listening to a sound only she could hear. “Because for Arch and I we’ve only been here a few days, and this base isn’t always here… It comes and goes.” Arch spoke again, “Yeah, basically this building has been here for a few days a really long time ago, a few days in the 1970’s, and has been here for a few days now.” “That also isn’t possible…” Heinrich muttered. “You’ll see exactly how possible it is very soon. I’m afraid with your arrival, it means the 2227 cycle we’re on is about to reach the point where its going to happen.” Heinrich crossed his arms, “What’s going to happen?” Graelyn lowered her spectacles on her nose. She looked him right in the eyes. She leaned in slightly. The light of the hologram cut into her face, so her eye and cheek swirled with the seas of Neptune. “What’s going to happen,” she began, “is first contact.” There are some things you can say that people instantly know the power of, statements that hold a weight beyond the seeming face of their characters. These are things with implications, bold statements that open up profound weight beyond the echo of their waves of the flow of their ink. This was not only one of those statements, but it was one to which there was no way to immediately respond. The words took up the next few minutes, though there wasn’t anything else said. Anything Heinrich could think of saying didn’t seem appropriate, like slathering jam on a rock. As time ticked on though, the importance of the weight whittled till he could finally espouse something, even if it was totally unbefitting of the weight of it all. “So… Aliens?” “Yes. Well, sort of. More like a probe. I can’t tell you much about the future, but I can tell you that this won’t be the last contact with Extra-solar beings we’ll have. Of course, no one knows about this in the future. It’s all locked away in the files of Heirum J. Whitehead’s 'the Pilgrimage' group who you’ll be reporting back to. But what we do here is still going to be important, and its going to influence the future in huge ways.” “And you knew about this, June?” She shook her head, “I didn’t know all of that...” She looked at the hologram, “So what do we have to do?” “Keep your spacesuits on. I’ll be getting mine on in a second. Arch is fine as he is.” * * * * * They met Arch and Graelyn at the airlock. She looked kind of awkward in a spacesuit, the way people who weren’t used to space do, bumping into corners, and expecting their reflexes to be faster. Arch looked just as imposing as always. “I’m still not sure of a lot of this… They haven’t explained everything well, like why the building disappears and reappears as they claim it does.” “I know. And the only way we’re going to learn is if we stick by them. I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Be patient. We’ll get our answers.” WeN-D piped into their comms, “Er, hello, hi. I’m sensing some really weird things from space. You’ve almost rotated into a full-darkside position from Neptune. I checked, you’re on the equator, so you’ll be on the furthest point on the farthest place in our solar system. Whatever that means. “Thank you WeN-D. Keep monitoring everything, we need someone who can analyze all the data we’re getting.” “I’m on the job.” “Great.” Graelyn pushed the button to open the airlock, and the four of them stepped in, leaving the two dogs whimpering behind them. The airlock shut, decompressed, and opened up into what was both the darkest and most brilliantly colored sky they had ever seen. With the light from the sun absent, it was darker than you can imagine, but the stars were bountiful in a way they had never seen. It wasn’t that much further out as the scale of the universe goes, but it was enough. Above them a cathedral ceiling of light lit their path, the dust they kicked up incense, the arbitrary point they walked towards their labyrinthian center. WeN-D said the readings were increasing, and as the moon turned, the darkness and lights grew more and more, till where they stood was it, the farthest place and the furthest. And they knew it was, somehow. In their bones and in their blood they felt so distant and so put away from anything they had known. It was then in that distance that the sky opened up in a tear of fantastic blue and white, literally. For a moment they felt it wash over them, felt that there was something wrong with reality, that it was wounded, and from that wound shot out a silvery white ball, rocketing downward like a meteor. It should have impacted the moon, and tore up the ground, sending the four humans flying like bowling pins, or crushed them under dirt, rock, and ice. But instead it stopped 1.23 meters off the ground and hovered there for a moment. Its skin was silvery blue and crystalline, with white and faint black designs on it. The ball began moving, slowly this way and that way, always maintaining its height of 1.23 meters. Any noises it made were intransible in the near vacuum. The ball was, according to the measurements WeN-D took from the visual data, also 1.23 meters in diameter, and according to the same visuals was moving in the shape of an asterisk. It moved, out in one direction, and back in towards its center landing point. It did this over and over again, while the four (or five, depending on who you count as living) watched it. “Should we attempt to communicate with it?”Heinrich asked. June shook her head, “How on Eart- how could we?” Graelyn was focused on it with a fixed stare. “Is it from the Council Incursion?” Archimedes asked. Graelyn nodded, “It’s some sort of probe. A scout.” “Council Incursion?”Heinrich didn’t take his eyes off of the orb. “Its in the future, don’t worry about it.” “You mean there are more of these things?” “No. There are it’s creators. That’s why this is important. This is the first shot, and whatever we do here is going to reverberate through history... A lot of histories, actually. Maybe we’ll capture it and gain a technical edge. Maybe it will report back on us and they’ll have plenty of tactical data in order to begin their assaults. Maybe it will just explode or something. I don’t know. But what I do know is its up to us, right at this moment to decide that with our actions.” The ball stopped moving in an asterisk. “This isn’t your first time seeing something like this then. Tell us what to do.” Graelyn tried to ignore the clammy feeling she had as the bead of sweat rolled down her face, and the suit’s automatic systems blasted cold air there and began to absorb the moisture. The ball suddenly and silently dropped to the ground. “Huh.” She muttered. “First step, lets start running.” Archimedes said. “I don’t see why Arch it hasn’t-“ Four legs popped out of the orb, right where some of the patterns on the shell had been. Its sharp feet pierced the icy ground as it barreled towards them. “Oh dear.” “Run- move move MOVE!” “Why is it running with legs when it could float?” “Don’t question the alien robot’s motivations Grae!” “WeN-D we might need a pick up or something.” “No! We need to trap it. It wants to learn from us, we have to sto-“ she tripped on a rock, and just as swiftly was pulled up by Archimedes large hand. “-p it from leaving here and we’re the best bait there is. Back to the base.” They ran from it at breakneck speak, bounding and leaping in the low gravity. The orb seemed like it should have caught up with them, and June looked at Graelyn across the dark plain with a look of indignation. Graelyn looked back, maybe her curiosity got the better of her, maybe despite her cool demeanor she was as terrified as she should have been. Whatever the reason her head turned, and her attention lifted up off the ground and floated to the charging orb kicking up moon dust. That was when she tripped a second time. It wasn’t a graceful trip, like you’d see in the cinema, she didn’t fall straight towards the dirt with a stunned expression on her face, arms ready for the fall: her ankle spun around more than it should have, and in the low gravity she not only fell but corkscrewed. As she spun her face came into view every other moment which gave her the effect of a cheap animation as her face became more and more shocked with every rotation. She hit the ground head first, and bounced. A hand reached out above her, and gently kept her from floating off. Instead she hovered there, face down, sinking slowly. The other hand attached to the person stabilizing her reached out the other direction, towards the charging orb. It stopped, inches away from him. A single leg lifted up, and seemed to gently poke him in the chest. It wasn’t so innocuous for very long, as from under the curved fore part of the leg, silvery white tendrils that looked wound like rope slithered out, and began feeling around his chest. Archimedes tensed (it was him, of course it was). June and Heinrich grabbed Graelyn and slid her into a standing position. The orb and Arch stared off, or something like starting each other off. If there had been sound, it probably would have been humming in an ominous pulsing way, but it was inappropriately silent instead. June pulled on Graelyn’s hand, but she remained rooted in place, her eyes fixed on Archimedes. “Arch?” She whimpered. She whimpered? She never whimpered. “Uh, Grae?” “Just hold still, you’ll be okay.” She said firmly, as though her resolve had never been shaken in her life. June took a hold of Graelyn’s shoulder, and shook her head. “How are you sure?” “Trust me. I have your pin right?” Graelyn looked back at Arch, the tendrils were wrapping around his chest. “They’re trying to get inside my carapace Grae.” “Damn it.” She tried to wipe her brow instinctively, but there was a helmet in between. “Cut it. Cut the probes.” “What if that sets it off and it goes berserk?” “Arch we’ll deal with that, get free.” “We need to get back to the building.” “I’m not leaving Arch. I told him to get in front of it.” “I’ll hold it off Graelyn, go.” “I’m not leaving you.” “Heinrich, grab her.” June and Heinrich took Graelyn by the arms and pulled her back. She tensed at first, letting them pull her with light resistance as Arch became enveloped by the cables. Then something clicked inside her like a watch mechanism, and she turned with them, and moved as quickly as she could, hiding the wince in her breath as her twisted ankle hit the ground. “WeN-D we need a pick up. Now.” June basically yelled it into her comlink. “Not the base?” “Not the base.” She told Heinrich. Graelyn tried not to look back at Arch. She had never been the greatest partner to him, and she knew that. Her concern was generally beyond people, beyond things. If there was a clock, she could try to work out the things inside it by how it moved and sounded. She visualized the insides of people to, made guesses about what was going on inside them by any outer clues she could get. Where some people undressed people with their eyes, she skinned them. Today though, she could imagine the cords wrapping around him, squeezing his outer shell till the squishy bits inside burst. This image though wasn’t fascinating, it made her stomach churn, and Graelyn tried to push back everything she’d been told as a child. ...Is Arch gunna be okay? What will Graelyn do... and what is she pushing back? Find out next week on 10,000 Dawns! Same Dawn time, same Dawn place!
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Audio version will be a little late this week as I've been sick. -Jim Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are also available as an audio podcast from the Southgate Media Group. http://www.southgatemediagroup.com/10000dawnspodcast You can also subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html Chapter 17: Necessary DinosaursHer fingers ran through the blades of grass like they were on the back of a beloved pet, her eyes closed, her cheek against the same grass, glasses carelessly askew. She could fall asleep here, but it occurred to her she had in fact just woken up, and perhaps she should at least pretend she wanted to do something other than sleep today. Rolling over, she slowly pushed herself up and brushed the grass off her face. Arch was a few meters away, either asleep or staring at the liquid clouds above them.
“Good Morning.” Arch said, and Graelyn wondered exactly how long she had slept. She pushed her glasses up and rubbed her eyes. She ha that weird feeling you get when you sleep the night in your clothes, the feeling that you need to change them, like they've absorbed just too much of your sweat and they've settled somewhat wrong around your body. “Did I sleep the night on this hill?” She said, and Arch nodded. “Apparently a lot of people do that here. There were tons of those Dawn folks just sleeping out here under the stars last night. The ground here is really comfortable, whatever that means.” She looked up at the sky, and watched someone in swim trunks jump from a floating island into one of the liquid clouds. Their friends were already swimming in it. “How do they get down from the cloud-things without hurting themselves? How do the islands and clouds float like that?” She mused. “Always curious.” “Always skeptical as well. But clearly it works, I just don't know how.” “Don't think too hard about it.” John Vice said suddenly from behind her. “Bwah!?” Graelyn said as she bolted up in surprise and stumbled a few steps down the hill. “Er, sorry.” Johnathan said, holding out a plate of breakfast food and two milk packages. “I uh, thought you'd like breakfast.” “Breakfasts are not meant to make me fall down hills!” “Touche. Well, anyways here's some food. The plate was stacked up with enough food for the two of them, though Arch found it awkward to stuff it in his mouth under his mask. He seemed not entirely at ease with the concept of chewing either. “Why don't you just take your mask off?” Johnathan asked. “Its considered rude to show your face where I come from. Faces are private things. You don't share them with anyone but your closest loved ones.” He nodded, and reached for one of Graelyn's grapes, and she pushed his hand away. “Okay, my turn.” Graelyn said, “How do the cloud-swimming pools and islands float?” “The simplest way to explain it is the laws of reality are different here. There are different rules about how objects interact with each other. Gravity has different rules, for instance. What exactly those rules are is beyond me, but they're a thing.” “Okay, so if the laws of reality are so different here, are there some vastly different native species to it? Really alien things?” Vice looked a bit uncomfortable. “Er, did Kinan really not tell you how Spiral came about? Jesus that woman is either totally terse or giving you the longest speech...” Graelyn and Arch shook their heads. “Was she supposed to tell us something?” She asked. “Er, yes. Spiral isn't a natural plane of reality. Kinan made it.” Graelyn dropped her milk carton, and it spilled over her lap. She cursed and stood up, trying to wipe it up. “Ugh, damn it. Okay, I must have misheard you. I thought you said she made this place. Do you mean she ordered the construction of the buildings or...?” “No, I mean she made it. You'd have to ask her how she did it, but I know she doesn’t think she could do it again. Kinan has had a hard life, harder than she'll tell you. If I was her I'd have just retired here and let the rest of the Universe go about its business, but she isn't that kind of person.” Arch finished chewing a muffin, and joined in, “When you say she had a hard life, does that have something to do with the way she talks?” Johnathan nodded. “She got some sort of brain damage when she was much younger. Don't ask her about that though. She doesn't like remembering it. She lost a lot of the muscle control in her face, and it slowed her speech and slurred it... I never knew her before it happened, that's just how Kinan has always been, but she used to be a beautiful singer, or so I'm told.” In the distance, a group of hoodied figures moved towards a crystals circle in the ground. “Does she know you're telling us all this?” Arch asked, concerned. “Of course. I'm not into outing people's personal lives. Its my job to tell new recruits this stuff so they don't bother her with it. You'd be surprised how many people want to ask her dumb stuff like if she's fit to be the leader here because of that. Its good to clear it up.” “We wouldn't ask her something like that.” Arch said. Graelyn snapped in Arch's direction and nodded. “Glad to hear it. Still, now you know what you know.” The figures in the distance got close to the circle, and a blue swirl erupted from it. “What's going on down there?” Graelyn asked. Vice grabbed one of her grapes while she was distracted, and popped it in his mouth. “Looks like we have visitors.” “Returning people from missions or something?” He shook his head. “No, doesn't look like that.” Figures began to step out of the portal, and Graelyn saw that Kinan, Miranda, and Jenny the woman in the poodle skirt with the katana were all in the greeting party. The first people to step out were all dressed in what looked like coats from the American Revolution, but Green. They were even wearing the appropriate foot and leg wear, but also had some strange gauntlets covered in crystals on one arm, and eye wear that seemed to contain some needless gears and gizmos. The gauntlets were aesthetically similar, and it all gave the impression they had raided a clock shop on their way over. Following them were a group of people in black robes, similar to the robes that man who'd shown up in Atlantis base with Ares wore. Arch and Graelyn both got much more interested when they came through, but were also sort of confused. Without asking for any explanation, it was fairly obvious they were some sort of cultural branch off. Though what that meant was anyone's guess, really. They also were wearing the gauntlets, but theirs were aesthetically different, less cobbled together, more sleek, the crystals carefully cut to fit carefully shaped settings. The three groups walked to meet each other, and began a triangular conversion. “Who are they?” She asked John. “They're some of our rivals. Members of some of the less powerful groups trying to influence the universes.” “Are they here to ask you for help? Since you're more powerful?” He laughed, and pulled his knees up to his chest. “Powerful? We're definitely not that.” “You took down the government of Earth.” “We gave some people with an army the tools to take down the government of one Earth. We enabled some people who already would have been doing what we helped them to do, just shortened the time scale.” Graelyn looked over at Arch and frowned. She wished she could read his face for reassurance. “You talk so casually about this, like the power to do what you did on Songbird's world isn't... Massive. You changed the fate of a whole universe.” “Well yeah, but its just one universe.” Scale. Its a fairly important thing. The scale of how you perceive the world affects everything about you understand it, after all. Lets say you grew up in a small town, the kind of super tiny place where nearly everyone is the same ethnicity and no buildings are higher than two stories, then you go to a city, a big multicultural metropolis full of skyscrapers and more people in your sight passing randomly down the street than you'd seen before in your life. This would naturally change your view of the scale of the universe. In same way, if someone who had just helped violently overthrow the government of an entire planet, interfered in its history, and then extracted you from that planet by threatening its government told you that the group he worked for “wasn't powerful” and then told you it was “just one universe”, this might change your sense of scale. If you were Graelyn, you might sit there wide eyed, your jaw loose, staring. If you were Arch, you might shake your head, and say something like: “You can't be so cavalier about lives. Just because there are a lot of universes doesn't mean each person there isn't still a person.” If you were Graelyn, you might then awkwardly point at Arch as if to say “yeah, what he said!” and if you were Johnathan Vice, you might frown, and reply, “I'm not being Cavalier about it...” “Oh, but you are. Do you think people are replaceable?” Johnathan scratched his head, “Er, well, they are.” “No, they aren't.” “No, let me explain...” He took a breath, “They are literally replaceable. As in, we've replaced people before.” “...Go on.” Vice stood up, and looked down at the triangle of talkers. A man in robes seemed to be yelling at Kinan, a woman in robes behind him looked awkward. Both Kinan and a man in a colonial Green coat stood placidly. Jenny was being physically held back by Miranda. “We were trying to influence a world very similar to the one you were on. It was a bit different though, the Revolution wasn't communist it was... Socialist? Honestly I can't really remember. It all blurs together. But those people you met, Alice and her gang? They died in a vtol crash. The parts failed and the pilot wasn't paying attention. We checked forward in history, and saw with them dead the whole movement fell apart. We tried changing its history, but well, there actually is only so much you can do unless you're some sort of lord of time. We couldn't prevent their deaths. But Kinan realized that no one actually saw them die, the vtol crashed in an empty field somewhere. So... What if we cleaned up the bodies, made sure no one found them, and just... Popped in a different Alice MacLeod?” “You can't be serious.” “I'm serious. This is a war, and Kinan is an interdimenstional warlord. She has an army, and I'm in it. So Jenny, Miranda, Joseph, he's the Pottawatomie guy, and I all slipped into a reality where the revolution was losing, losing badly, but where all of them were still alive. We talked to the versions of them there, and convinced them to abandon their reality for a new one. There was no hope there, they couldn't do any good there but die an inglorious death. We dropped the charred bodies off of their doubles into their reality, and shipped them over to the new one. They took over where the others had left off, and liberated Earth for their cause.” “Didn't they miss their home? The people they'd abandoned?” Arch asked. Vice shrugged. “I never asked.” “You should have asked.” There was something off about this whole thing, something that didn't make sense to Graelyn, she tried to put the pieces together. The man in robes pointed at Kinan angrily, she said something back to him, and then to green coat, who nodded. They began to move back from each other. “We saved billions of people by what we did. I don't have any regrets.” “They were still different people, people thought they were the same, sure, but they weren't.” “They thought they were, isn't that all that matters.” Arch's coating reddened. “No.” “Hold up,” Graelyn cut in, “If you guys don't care about whether or not the Revolution wins, what exactly is your criteria for changing history?” “Kinan showed you a fallen world, didn't she?” Graelyn nodded. “Anytime a world develops the ability to link to other realities, two things happen: they begin to synch up with the prime reality they are attached to, and they open themselves up for invasion by the Council. If we break the chain of history, diverge the narrative of that universe enough, it stops... Synching up. It becomes harder to mount a large scale invasion. We chose who wins based on who is least likely to want to build inter reality travel.” Graelyn stood up to face him, she clenched a fist, she'd expected so much more, “That's it? That's it?!? You don't have any higher purpose, no ideal you're fighting for? Its just... A cold practical decision?” “Our principle is saving the 10,000 Dawns. Our principle is saving the most lives possible.” “Guys, I think you might want to watch this.” Arch said softly. They turned back to the grass field below where Kinan had her sword drawn, and was spinning it. Jenny and the woman in the robe, where standing to the side. The man in robes had his gauntleted arm extended, and energy was swirling around it. “What are they doing?” “They're going to duel.” Kinan moved into several positions, flexing and stretching, going through the motions. She made every movement look so fluid and natural, you'd think that it was second nature to every human till you tried to do it yourself. Then she stopped, and turned to Jenny. Her mouth moved, and then Jenny shook her head. The man in the black robes and the woman in black did the same. “What are they doing?” “Jenny is Kinan's second, just like in old duels you read about in school. She and Lawrencia were trying to negotiate a truce, clearly it didn't work. Now they're going to fight.” “Is she going to kill him?” Graelyn asked. “You don't wonder if he'll kill her?” Graelyn shuddered. “I don't really want to wonder either.” Kinan gave a final flourish of her sword, and stepped forward, as the man in the hood did. They began to circle each other. The man in green counted down, they could tell because he held up fingers. When they reached 0, they sprung. Kinan launched herself in the air as hoods held up his arm to unleash a streak of green lightning through the sky. Kinan twisted through the air and spun around it, pushing her foot out to land a kick on the man's shoulder, then as they both fell she drew her sword across his chest to sever him in two, but he put his gauntlet between the sword and his chest, causing a clang that could be heard from all the way up the hill. Kinan moved inhumanly quick, using the push back from the blocked blow she spun in the air to land on her feet and began charging at hoods, who began to shoot lighting at her, but she leapt to the left and right perfectly out of range of the electricity, never losing a step as she landed. The man began to back up as she encroached on him, and Kinan moved her sword into a thrusting position. Hoods dodged, barely, throwing his left arm up in the air and sidestepping the blow. Kinan didn't hesitate, she turned her wrists and brought the sword up into the man's armpit. The man looked shocked, as the blood started trickling down her sword. She didn't stop. She pulled the sword back, and put her foot forward, and around the back of his knee, while she brought the sword around, and down on the other arm in a carefully controlled blow that cut the straps holding the heavy gauntlet in place, and pushed it down off his arm, leaving a bloody scrape where the blade took of some of his skin on the way off. She pulled her foot back at the same time, while shoving the man. He dropped to the ground, bloody and dazed. A person in black robes began administering medical aid while Jenny yelled something and the woman in black robes made a clear and broad gesture: they yield. “Is this how you solve all your disputes? Bloodshed?” “He'll be fine. Greggor is a moron, this isn't the first time Kinan's had to kick his ass.” Kinan looked up like she'd heard them, and nodded, wiping the blood off her sword onto a cloth Jenny had handed her. “You didn't answer my question.” He sighed. “No, this isn't how we settle all our problems, but like I said, this is a war. Its better we solve some of these things in duels than waste time killing lots of each other.” “I suppose if she dies, you'd just get another Kinan then.” Vice smiled, and Graelyn felt a bit patronized. “There's only one Kinan. But now that she's finished down there, she'd like me to take you guys to her. She has something to show you.” Kinan was waiting for them on the top of a hill, watching a bubble of water filled with swimmers pass by. A few people on a floating island waved down to the swimmers from it, and a few leapt down to join in the fun, splashing into the floating bubble of water. Graelyn, Arch and John climbed the hill, and stood behind her, expecting her to say something, after a moment, Graelyn coughed loudly. Kinan didn't look behind her, just patted the grass next to her. Taking the hint, they took a seat. “So, your mission.” She began abruptly. “We've found a universe we're fairly certain has a back door cut into the labyrinth where you can access a special bifrost into the prime reality. It will be on the edge of the 10,000 Dawns, so expect things to be different there. Very different. I can't follow you, none of us can, for fear someone will notice. Part of the reason you'll be able to get in is no one is looking for you, but as I said before even if no one would notice me I couldn't enter that path. Its blocked from me.” Graelyn pushed her feet into the dirt gently so she left the impressions of her heels in it. “Kinan, if this is a war, then are people going to try to kill us? Duel us?” Kinan stared off at the sky. “Not duel you, no. In all likelihood attempts to stop you will be more subtle than that. But I can't predict what they'll be.” “I don't think you've been entirely honest with us.” Arch said, “About what you're doing.” Kinan sighed, and looked at Arch. “You're right. Because the truth is a bit odd.” “We can take it.” She held his gaze. “The truth is, Arch, that all reality is is a story. This war, the dawns, its all fiction.” Arch took in what she said, and laughed, his skin lighting up in yellow smiley faces laughing along with him. “We're flesh and blood, or flesh and oil and blood, we're not a story.” Kinan pulled out a a fist full of grass and threw it into the breeze. “What happens when you die, Arch?” “You go to the underworld.” Kinan's eye twitched, whatever that meant. “What do you think Graelyn?” She shrugged. Kinan continued: “When you die, people talk about you. You stop being who you were, you become just what people think about you. Your good intentions, your dreams, the things you did alone, they vanish. You become a two dimensional caricature of who you were. You become a story. We have the unfortunate case of becoming stories while we're still alive.” Kinan snapped her fingers, and a gentle rumble began from the distance, as a shape began moving towards them. “When the prime reality changes... It changes us. It rewrites us. My job is to make different worlds so different from the prime reality that... You can't reconcile them. The differences are too pronounced, the changes can't occur. If the changes are small enough, they can get smoothed over, and the story can form part of the prime reality's structure. I'm fighting a war for control of our own narrative, our own story. The prime reality is the biblical canon, we need to be its apocrypha.” “We need to be Tubol-Cain...” Arch said. “What?” “Its something Graelyn said.” “Yeah, its a story that's not in the Bible: this guy named Tubol-Cain hung out on Noah's ark, hidden on it. He survived the great flood by being extraneous.” “Then yes, we need to be Tubol-Cain.” The shape on the horizon grew closer. It had legs. “When you break into the Prime reality, it will change everything for us.” “If we do.” Graelyn pessimised. “Yes, if. But if you make it, we'll be influencing their story. If you can make a change in their narrative, they won't be able to overwrite us, because they'll need us to exist. Do you understand?” “Honestly?” Graelyn asked. “Honestly.” Kinan replied. “That sounds like pseudo scientific mambo-jumbo.” Kinan shrugged. “Hence why I didn't phrase it that way before. But I see our guest has arrived.” Kinan gestured toward what had once been the distant shape. It became clear now that it was a Tyrannosaurus Rex. “What.” Graelyn said. “Hello!” Said Arch. “What I need to learn now is what is different about your universe, every universe has some special power in it, whether you know it or not. It can be bold like fireballs, or subtle like the clegging in Songbird's world.” Graelyn raised her hand. Kinan blinked, and then called on her. “Yes, that is great, but why do you need a T-Rex.” “Well how else am I supposed to terrify you into manifesting whatever your skill is? It will be easier for you than Arch, because he's so modified. Here take this wristband.” She dropped a band in Graelyn's lap. “Uh, seriously?” “Seriously. This is part of your training. I'm going to chase you, and you're going to try to escape.” Graelyn took her glasses off, and rubbed them clean, then put them back on. “You can't be serious.” “You'll be totally safe.” Graelyn remembered how insanely quick she'd been in the duel. She could probably kill a T-Rex in a fair fight with that sword... Then it occurred to her. “Kinan, you said that you'd be chasing me, not the dinosaur...” But Kinan was already crossing her legs, and closing her eyes, she seemed to be meditating. The dinosaur began to sway gently. Graelyn quickly threw off her suit jacket, leaving the hoodie on, and slipped on the wrist band. Okay, training, this was just like gym class. Which she hadn't been particularly good at. But she could do this. Right? Kinan opened her eyes and mouth, and they all glowed golden. The T-Rex's eyes flashed the same color, and Arch looked at her “Okay we can do this together.” “No, if this is something she needs to know... Then I'll do this.” the T-Rex stomped towards her, and Graelyn ran. The big stompy footprints followed her, and she could smell its breath, rancid like rotten meat. She ran hard, and felt its jaws close behind her, nicking her hood. Was the dinosaur actually going to try to eat her? Kinan said she was going to chase her... So she was what, possessing the dinosaur? That was ridiculous, but it had to be the case. Huffing, running her arms back and forth, she tried to think of what she could do to outrun the dinosaur, her wristband hummed and beeped. There was nothing she could think of, no special power. So she just kept running, the dinosaur nipping at her heels. She ran and ran, till she couldn't run anymore. She collapsed, panting, and felt the warm jaws of the dino reach around her. It didn't bite down though, instead she found herself scooped up like a ball by a golden retriever. The T-Rex turned around, and headed back towards the hill, stomping all the way. The big lizard dropped her down gently, if a little smelly and moist, next to Kinan, and then stepped back politely. Kinan's eyes stopped glowing, and she took in a deep breath, looking down at her human hands as if checking she was in her own body. Arch put his hand on her shoulder and she nodded to note she was okay. “Okay, that was pretty crazy. Were you the dinosaur?” Kinan nodded. “I learned how to do that a long time ago. Its a difficult technique. But it didn't seem like any showed up in you.” She reached out and looked at the band on Graelyn's wrist, her eyes looked confused. “Something should have though, surely. The band can usually detect them when you get enough adrenaline...” Kinan removed the band, and scrolled through its options. “Was trying to eat me really necessary!?!?” “I wasn't going to eat you, don't be melodramatic.” Kinan looked back at Arch and Graelyn. “Its not reading anything.” “Okay, question about your pseudo-science here: what exactly is that detecting differences from?” “The prime universe. Its about as boring a generic place as you can get, till it started stealing things from more interesting universes. But your universe... There's nothing this can detect. You don't have any powers it can detect different from Prime... So why would you be linked to it at all?” “I don't know, I'm not the sorcerer.” “I'm not a sorcerer.” “Right, you're a warlord.” “Yes.” Kinan said seriously. “But that doesn't stop this being odd. If you'd had a special technique, we could have trained you in it, pushed the boundaries of it. But you don't.” “So we're not special.” “I never said that.” “But we're not.” Kinan rolled her eyes. “It just changes the mission perimeters. You'll have to be careful. The prime universe is a dangerous place. You'll be trying to get to the year 2227, on the moon of Neptune, Triton.” “There's nothing on Triton, other than made up monsters to scare children.” Graelyn said. “I'm afraid there is. That's where a probe from another universe will come through, checking it out. You need to capture it, and get it to someone who can analyze it in their universe. That will change their narrative, change it to one where the opening up of their world into other dimensions isn't something that passively happens to them.” Arch rose up, dusting himself off. “That's a pretty big change.” “It will change everything.” Kinan said. “If you do this, you'll create a whole new story.” “And you'll send us home.” “And I'll send you home.” “Then what are we waiting for, I just want to get this over with.” Graelyn said. Kinan stood up, and offered a hand to Graelyn, who ignored it and got up on her own. “Go eat, go sleep, I'll drop you off there in the morning.” Kinan began to walk off, “Try to enjoy your life for ten seconds.” Graelyn stared silently after her, Kinan's boots leaving a trail of footprints in the soft soil as she left, the grass giving gently underfoot. “We could go swimming.” Arch said, pointing at the bubbles. “I suppose we could have fun.” Said Graelyn dejectedly, “But just this once.” Kinan came to get them the next morning, followed by Johnathan and Miranda Vice. They'd spent the previous evening swimming in the floating bubbles, diving off of the floating islands into them. Graelyn swam through the bubble watching the dinosaurs walk below through through the bottom of the bubble. She tried to figure out the physics of this world, but gave up when she realized Arch could somehow swimming the bubble to without sinking, a fact that seemed to confuse him as well. She laughed, and took in a lung full of water on accident, which her body somehow processed into air. That was the real moment she gave up trying to figure out the laws of this world, and just enjoyed the feeling of being in the water. It was quiet in the bubble, her hair floating free in the water. She could have stayed there forever, but of course they eventually got hungry. Climbing out of the bubble onto a ladder that dipped down into it from a passing island, they looked for something to eat and settled on some sort of vat grown shrimp meat for dinner, cooked by a woman in a sari who put the meat on kebabs with pinnacle and green peppers, grilling them to add a smoky flavor. Each bite was juicy, but still firm to the teeth, and perfectly complimented the other flavors on the kebab. Graelyn drank some kind of fruit flavored tea, while Arch just had water. They'd slept under the stars a second time, the lights in the sky winking as if they knew that such nights were rare and to be enjoyed. “I see you found the swim suit dispensary.” Kinan said as she set down the tray of breakfast food. Graelyn picked up a plate with a Belgian waffle on it, then a jug of syrup which she drenched it in, and dug in. Arch ate paste. “It was cleverly disguised with a large sign that said 'Swimsuit dispensary.” Kinan nodded. “We're very good hiders here.” “So when do we leave?” Arch said. “Whenever you're ready. We've packed bags for you with what you might need. Swimsuits are apparently a part of that.” “What do you mean?” Graelyn said with her mouth full. “I mean we'll be dropping you off on a beach.” Graelyn and Arch exchanged looks: not the worst place to be left off, not at all. Kinan opened up a portal on the field, throwing a handful of the crystal dust into the breeze, and swirling her hand, as if she was (and she probably was) controlling the wind to spin the dust into a circle, and gestured toward it. Graelyn had her swimsuit on under her usual clothes, with the Dawn hoodie on beneath the jacket. A pack was slung over her shoulder. Arch had on a pair of swim trunks, which were of course entirely unnecessary for him, hidden under his usual long coat and his hat. “Good luck.” Kinan said, “I'm counting on you.” Graelyn smiled faintly, and walked toward the portal. Arch waved goodbye to everyone, and followed her. She looked into the swirling white of the portal, and took a deep breath. She just had to do this, and she could go home. She could get her cat back, and just fade away. No one would have to notice her again. But as she stepped into the swirl, it occurred to her that that was probably just denial. Tune in next week as Graelyn and Arch's mission begins... And not in the way they'd expect! Welcome back to 10,000 Dawns! We hope you enjoyed the hiatus stories, but now we're back to the real deal-- Graelyn and Arch off on inter-dimensional adventures! This is a meaty chapter to (the audio version is over an hour long!) so you'll have a lot to dig into. From here on out there will be a chapter every week till the story reaches its conclusion-- so buckle up! Oh, and did you see our announcement last week about other 10kd spin off projects? http://www.jameswylder.com/home/10000-dawns-news-from-the-future cause if you didn't, hey, there's a link right there. I'd like to thank Annie for all her great work on the art, and also the producer of the audio version, Rob Southgate, for all his support in helping get this project off the ground. 10,000 Dawns has been a team effort, and their work really has mattered. If you enjoy our return, please talk to us in the comments! We'd love to hear your thoughts! But I've prattled on long enough-- get reading! -Jim Art by Annie Zhu, Story by James Wylder All chapters are also available as an audio podcast from the Southgate Media Group. http://www.southgatemediagroup.com/10000dawnspodcast You can also subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html Chapter 16: The World Was Wider, the Sky Was BolderIf you open up a history book, you'll find someone's opinion about the nature of a person in history. Were they a rebel or a terrorist? A dictator or a stalwart against chaos? Did their hand grasp the oppressed in the drowning waters, or shove their head down to watch the bubbles? The same person can be so many different stories, and its up to you to decide which one to trust. So if you could see every version of a person, every ramification of choices they made or didn't make, would that give you a more complete view of the person, or just muddy the waters with things that person couldn't have known themselves. I'm not just waxing poetic here, this is what Graelyn was thinking as they stepped through portal after portal. Graelyn had found the trips she'd taken through other portals disorienting, trippy even, at the worst terrifying, however the Portals that Kinan made were none of those things. Graelyn's stomach churned, and her skin pricked up, plus her ears popped and she lost track of gravity for a moment, but really compared to the other trips it was a walk in the park. They had come out the other side into a forest filled with tall trees with broad branches. The sound of owls hooting filled the space. They'd taken a few detours on their trip, and Graelyn hadn't actually thought to ask the obvious question yet. “How-” “You're about to ask how I made that portal.” “And-” “And how it didn't make you sick.” Graelyn just nodded. The members of Dawn filing out through the portal with them looked non-chalant. “I've had a lot of experience with these. More than anyone else, and that's not talking myself up unfairly. Do you know where we are?” Arch had scanned the area, naturally, and responded. “Wooded area, filled with large birds.” “I kind of expected you to say 'avian creatures'.” John Vice said. “Why would I say that?” “You know, it sounds sci-fi.” “They're just birds.” Arch replied. “Just birds? Why, I should practically be insulted.” A large owl said, poking its head out from a hole in the side of a tree. By large owl, it should be explained we mean an owl 4 to 5 feet tall. Its huge eyes were shiny in the light. “Ah, Manuel, how are you today?” Miranda asked, and reached into a bag, pulling out a large rat she threw to the owl. It caught it, and took a few seconds to snarf it down its beak. “Delicious. I'm well. The forest is healthy, little to complain about.” “We want to pass through the usual way, is that okay?” Miranda asked. The owl bobbed it's head. “Of course. I see you have new ones with you. Anyone I know?” Miranda looked back at them. “Is there a Graelyn Scythes Owl or an Archimedes Von Ahnerabe Owl?” “They made human Graelyns and Arches to? How funny. Its hard to imagine them being anything other than owls you know!” “I'm an owl here?” Graelyn ejaculated. “Why of course.” Manuel the Owl said, “There's an Owl of all of you somewhere, except Kinan that is.” Graelyn and Arch exchanged a look. “Why not Kinan?” Kinan gave the owl a look, and he ignored the question. “I should go get them, keep walking through to the clearing, Dawn is always welcome in the Left-Winged forest.” Manuel Owl took flight, his mighty wings carrying him through the air. Kinan gave barely a gesture at all, and they kept moving. Little owl eyes peeped out of holes and nests. Some landed on branches above them to look down. “I can't actually tell if any of these owls are supposed to be people we know.” Graelyn whispered. “I can.” Said Arch, “I'm used to picking up people from things other than their face.” Graelyn supposed that made a lot of sense, judging by the snippet of footage she'd watched of where he came from. “Like look, there's Doctor Hiriwa from your city.” Graelyn squinted at the owl, and she could sort of see what he was saying. The owl moved a bit like her. She wasn't sure if that actually proved anything, but it was interesting at least. They pressed on to the clearing, where there were perches set up in big rings like bleachers, which were filling up with owls. John and Miranda seemed to be taking point here, throwing the giant owls rats and mice from their bags (which definitely were not big enough to hold the amount of rats that were being chucked out of them. “Welcome Owls of the Left-Winged forest, I'm Miranda Vice, this is Johnathan Vice-” “Who are you? We are they!” hooted two owls, this was apparently a running gag because even though it wasn't actually funny everyone laughed, or did what Graelyn and Arch assumed was the 4 to 5 foot tall owl equivalent of laughing. “And we are passing through with two new humans. Graelyn Scythes and Archimedes VonAhnerabe.” Two owls fluttered off their perches, and landed on the ground where they waddled on their talons up to Graelyn and Arch. The owl that was Arch seemed to have a mask, as the feathers on its face were white with a rim of gray around them. The other owl was, naturally for a Graelyn, gray. Their feathers were thick and deep, and their eyes the size of tennis balls. “Youuu, are I?” The Graelyn owl said curiously. Graelyn felt the need to Curtsey, like she was Alice in wonderland. “I never thought I would be an owl, anywhere.” She mused. “Nor I a primate.” The owl moved its head to the side, and the two mirrored each other as they inspected each other. The Arch owl and Arch just looked at each other and nodded. “You must feel so limited only able to walk on the ground. Doesn't that create difficulties for you?” Graelyn thought for a moment, “I've never really thought about that. I suppose that since I never had wings it doesn't seem like their absence is something I've put much thought into.” The owl bobbed up and down. “Do you regret not having opposable thumbs?” “Hoo... I suppose not.” She moved from side to side on her perch, and opened and closed her left talons in thought. “Arch, Graelyn.” Kinan said plainly, “Its time for us to keep moving. I have more things to show you.” “Seeing myself as an owl is pretty spectacular.” Graelyn replied. Kinan shrugged. “I suppose.” Arch looked around at the throng. “Where's your owl Kinan?” Kinan looked away from them. “There isn't one.” Arch and Graelyn looked at each other. She was clearly not saying something about something. “I suppose we have to go then, owl selves.” Graelyn said. “It was good briefly meeting you.” Arch added. “Youuuu tooooooo.” They hooted in reply, and the pair of them waved as the owls bobbed a sort of goodbye. Kinan had already started walking, with most of Dawn following her instantly. Twigs cracked under their feet as they rushed to catch up, and Kinan reached into her bag, and pulled out a handful of blue dust that sparkled faintly in the light, and threw it in the air, running her hand through it lightly till it cracked into a swirling blue portal. “Okay that looks like magic.” Arch muttered. He was right, it did. But there was a method to the madness Graelyn was sure of it. Magic wasn't real, and even if it was, Kinan didn't give off the vibes of being a wizard. She was so practical, so intentional. But that wasn't a very logical way to think about that, Graelyn was simply pouring through the mannerisms of wizards in stories she had read. There was always an element of whimsy or oddity around them in some way, even if they were orderly, that Kinan just didn't project. But what did Graelyn know anyways? This was foreign territory, and she needed very much to understand it. Stepping through the portal, Graelyn found herself and Arch alone with Kinan on the other side. Kinan was facing them, just as stoic as always. “Where are the others?” “I sent them home. We'll get there in time. But I need to show you things.' Graelyn looked down at her feet and saw a long crystal walkway, filled with what looked like blue sand.... Like what Kinan had thrown to make the portal. All around them there was an infinite star scape, but they could clearly breathe. “Okay, this is different.” Arch said, “Where are we?” “This is the bifrost. It has a couple names. Some call it the Labyrinth, some call it the back room or back stage. Pull away the curtains, and here we are underneath the universe. I call it the bifrost though. Its evocative.” She said. Graelyn knelt down and felt the crystal under her feet with her hands. It was definitely real.... She peered over the edge, and there was a vast depth with more stars. “If this is between universes, why are there stars?” She inquired, grabbing her glasses quickly before they slid off her face into the void. “There aren't. The space between universes is a place you are not supposed to go. If you couldn't already tell from the fact that there is a walkway, this is an artificial construct. Simply one more elaborate than you can dream up with concrete or steel. It just looks like there are stars.” Arch gently grabbed Graelyn by the back of the collar as she tried to peer under the bridge and nearly slid off. “So, you built this?” Arch said. “No. I just use it.” Arch was having a hard time reading Kinan. Her face just didn't move like it was supposed to, the more he looked at her the more he got the impression she didn't just have a good poker face, but that she couldn't move her face much for other reasons. Her slow, monotone speech being perhaps unintentional as well. At first he'd just thought it was an act, a way of holding back the liars and manipulators in the various worlds he met, but he was certain this was the best her body could do at expressing itself. It only got more confirmed as she kept talking as Graelyn quietly asked him to help her up cause she couldn't actually get up on her own from her position over the side. “I'm going to show you what I'm fighting for, what I've given everything for, and I want you to understand why its so important to me that you get into the prime reality. You've seen a few alternate worlds so far. What have you thought?” Graelyn dusted herself off and regained her footing. “Well, the owl reality was nice. I really enjoyed the Halloween reality.” “Yes.” Kinan agreed flatly. “That was fun.” She finished without inflection. “Songbird's world was... Scary in a lot of ways. I was in so much danger.” Kinan nodded. “Not to mention the ones we went through ever so briefly,” Arch added, “The so called... Prime reality, with all the dead things in it. The little glimpses we saw of other worlds. And yeah, Songbird's world... I hope we don't end up in a place that dangerous again.” “You thought you were in danger there?” Kinan said, and turned to continue walking down the walkway. They kept on silently for maybe half an hour, when Graelyn realized one of the 'stars' was getting... Closer. “Uhh, Kinan?” “Each of those 'stars' is a door.” She said. “More detail please.” “No.” She reached a hand up, and the star accelerated, while a side path of the same material began extending from the walkway. She turned and stepped onto it, followed by the curious pair. The white disk met the end of the path, seemingly two dimensional, and then caved in on itself; it was suddenly a hold in the darkness, leading to an empty room made of the same crystal. One by one they hopped through the hole. There were no ill effects as they did so. “The people who built the bifrost never intended for others to travel it, so for us to use it is complicated. No one can open up a door who hasn't already visited the reality it leads to. Its a silly rule, but its an effective security measure. Naturally that rule doesn't apply to the people who built it.” Kinan ran her hands along the walls, until she found something she was looking for (though what that was Graelyn didn't know) and pressed her hand on it. The crystal on the wall shaped itself into a wooden door, which Kinan turned the door knob of, but didn't open. “Lesson one. There is a reality where anything is commonplace.” She shoved the door open and they found themselves in a dilapidated warehouse. It was very anticlimactic. “Well... I think in my reality old warehouses are pretty common to.” Kinan gave her a blank look that still spoke volumes so she shut up. “These doors all lead into carefully chosen locations that don't draw attention so you can move in and out of them without attracting suspicion. Close the door on your way out.” They did so, and walked past the rows of old boxes and messy crates. When Kinan opened the warehouse door to the sunlit streets of this new world though, Graelyn and Arch both gasped. There were frozen arcs in the sky, each melting in the sun. Some of the arcs were... Forming, and Arch soon spotted and pointed out to Graelyn that moving on the edges of the arcs were people. “They're pushing themselves through the air with ice.” She let her jaw go a little loose. “Its amazing.” She got the impression from Kinan's eyes she might be smiling. “It is.” Kinan gestured for them to come close to her, and then gesturing downwards with her hands formed ice beneath them. Graleyn gasped, and the three of them rose up into the sky, higher and higher, the city below them stretching out. It looked like Montreal. “I didn't know Canadians could do this!” Graelyn joked. “I didn't either...” Arch replied. “That was a joke.” “Ah.” “In this reality,” Kinan interjected, “everyone can create ice like this. Its normal.” “So you were born here?” Arch asked. “No.” She said without looking back. “Then how do you do it?” Kinan hit the top of the ice arc, and began to form the path for their descent, rapidly lowering them onto a city street where their arrival was treated as pedestrian. “I learned it.” “Can I learn it?” “Can we learn it?” “Maybe.” They kept walking down the street. Things seemed so.... Ordinary. Graelyn would have expected this society would have diverged massively from the development of society she was familiar with. But there were the signs in French and English, there were the paved streets and glass shopfronts. A casual inspection showed that refrigerator technology was a bit different, but things were so identical as to be impossible. She passed a cafe, and watched a man touch his beer bottle to chill it to the proper temperature before he drank it. “This world shouldn't exist.” “Of course it should. There are infinite alternate realities, and this is just one where everything is nearly the same except people can create ice and lower temperatures naturally.” Kinan stopped in front of a shop, and turned to enter it. They were getting used to following her without her beckoning them on at this point, so they just tailed her inside. But Kinan pushed a hand against Graelyn's chest suddenly, and reached into her satchel, pulling out one of those hoodies every member of Dawn seemed to have, as well as a big pair of aviator sunglasses. “Put these on, put the hood up.” “I'm not part of your army, and this barely fits with what I'm wearing.” “Do it.” Graelyn wanted to argue, and snarled, but realized she was totally in Kinan's power. She'd be left here, in some strange world where she couldn't do what the general population could if Kinan wanted to leave her here. Of course, Kinan also needed her for something... “Fine.” Graelyn bit back, and grabbed the hoodie, slipping off her blazer and putting the hoodie on, pulling the hood up. “Could you hold this for me?” She said to Kinan, holding out the blazer. “No need to get catty.” She replied, and put the jacket in her bag, finishing her entrance into what turned out to be an ice cream parlor. There were a bunch of red and white booths, and glass cases of ice cream with a girl working behind the counter, washing up come cups. At the sink. “Whats the special today?” Kinan asked, and Graelyn Scythes turned around behind the counter, smiling. “Blue moon, again. We didn't get a new flavor in so the boss decided to keep it.” “I'm Canadian?” Our hoodied Graelyn asked. “You're going to school here. Exchange program.” Kinan sort of whispered. “Do you guys like blue moon?” “Sure.” Graelyn said. “Never had it.” Arch replied. “Three blue moon cones please.” They sat down at a booth, and Graelyn eyed herself wearing her new outfit in a mirror on the wall, glad she was wearing the hoodie and glasses, and mad at herself for being mad at Kinan. Behind the booth ice cream shop Graelyn began stirring together ice cream ingredients, and chilled them by hand into ice cream, which was apparently something you could do here. It was a few moments before Graelyn realized that this Graelyn had a different hair color than her. Her hair had almost a purple sheen to the black, and she looked out the windows to see if other people had the same shade (they did). She wrung her hands under the table. She was so many people. She was right there behind the counter. She was an owl. She was some sort of monster. She felt her shoulders pushing in on her body as though to crush the stress out of her. “Three blue moon cones!” the other Graelyn said cheerily, handing them out. The other Graelyn looked at her a second, as though she recognized her, but must have decided she was mistaken, and leaving the bill walked back to the counter. “You see,” Kinan said as though no time had passed, “there is a version of you here who can make ice. And a version of Arch. As well as every other person you've met in duplicate. Now why might that be?” Graelyn squinted at herself. “You said all these realities are linked together?” “Yes.” “So they are linked together on purpose. These realities aren't random. They're specific. The reason we're in a reality that is so much like our own but with people having this power isn't chance, someone wanted it this way.” “Perhaps not intentionally, but that's how its worked out.” “We haven't seen any other versions of you, Kinan.” Arch said. “No you haven't.” Kinan replied. “Is that just chance?” “No.” Graelyn licked her ice cream. Apparently this version of her was pretty good at making it: it was smooth and creamy, not too soft but not too solid. “The reality we're going to you called the Prime reality. All these realities are tied to it. So... All the people we're meeting are people who exist there, correct?” Graelyn said. “Good. Yes.” “You said you learned that power to use ice. So people can learn to use powers from the other realities? They can... Make themselves superheroes or Jedi or something?” “But only if there is a version of themselves they can draw that power from.” “So there is a version of you wandering around here running a rival ice cream parlor or something. Kinan's face screwed up minorly. It was subtle, but more than they had seen it do, like a drop of water in a desert. “Ignore me in this. The people in the prime reality can learn the powers from these realities as long as they are linked. But its much harder for people in these realities to learn other powers.” “You make it sound like we're second class citizens.” Arch said. “That's exactly what we are.” Kinan replied, and got up with the bill to pay it. “I have more things to show you. The Ice Cream will keep through the biforst.” * * * * After flying through the sky back to the warehouse, and going back through the door, they got back on the bifrost, and walked for a long time. The stars started to vanish, and the path they took seemed like it was in the middle of nowhere. A solitary door sat there, already connected to the path. Kinan touched it lovingly. “Where are we going now?” “You wondered where I was born?” Kinan said. “Let me show you.” She opened the door, and it looked like it led to... more blackness. Kinan stepped through the door onto more bifrost that extended through the doorway, and they followed her. There was only blackness. “Is this another part of the Labrynth of bifrost?” Graelyn asked, noticing there was a sheen like a bubble around the brief bridge. “No.” Kinan said. “This is where I was born.” Trying to describe nothing is hard, but let us try. Imagine if you would, the sun. This is, if you're reading this on Earth, a rather regular fixture of your life. It is in the sky, it makes things warm, makes plants grow, brings life, and provides light. Now, imagine all the suns in the universe, each with all of their little balls of rock and gas around them. Millions of them and more. Now imagine them gone. Imagine not just their absence, but the absence of anything around them. No dust. No energy. No particles. No nothing. No way of sensing that there was anything, because there is no input coming towards you, no rays of light, no sound, no radiation, no debris. Nothing. Imagine you were standing on a bubble within that. You can breathe, so there is some noise, there is some light being made by the cyborg next to you's skin, or maybe you are the cyborg, but its still too quiet. Its quiet enough you can hear your own heartbeat without trying. You can hear your body at its most very basic, the sounds it makes so quiet that even the most subtle background noise would block out. So even though it is quiet, it is actually deafening. You're aware of yourself, you can hear your own movements and it feels like you're going to break your sinews because of the sound. Your breath increases. You know exactly how much is moving in and out of your lungs. Given enough time you could measure it by instinct if you didn't go insane first. This is where Graelyn, Arch and Kinan stood. They were standing in a place that made nowhere seem like an inadequate word. This was the place Kinan was born. This was nothing. “When I was a young girl, I lived on the last place surviving the heat death of the universe. The universe around us was eaten away to nothing, stolen, sucked out like a straw, and converted to energy.” “How? That's impossible, humanity would have evolved or gone extinct by the time the universe got that far gone...” “This wasn't a natural death, this was a murder.” Kinan turned, her head tilted down just slightly, her eyes burning. “Here is a hypothetical for you: someone finds a way to link realities to their own. Someone can draw from them, learn abilities not found in their own world. That's preposterous. It sounds like pseudo science at best, and magic at worst.” She narrowed her eyes further. “But presume you could do that. The amount of energy that would take, to bend or rewrite the laws of your own reality slightly to... channel that power would be immense, wouldn't it?” “I mean, its impossible, but yeah, I have no idea how you'd do that, but if you could the amount of resources would be insane.” “Good. Now accept this: its not impossible. Someone did it. Someone did the math, and figured out how to do that. Someone waiting on the other side of the mirror who can smile when you frown waiting to reach out and grab you by the neck. Now where would they get the resources? How could you fuel that?” She gestured into the darkness. “You're not going to devour your own universe for that are you? But there are other ones, 10,000 maybe, all ready for you to use as batteries to suck up and throw out when you're done.” Graelyn and Arch were silent. “Imagine you lived there. Imagine you watched the universe die around you. And imagine you found a way out. You'd want to stop that happening to other universes, wouldn't you?” “I suppose I would.” Graelyn whispered. “And would you Arch?” “I think I'd have a moral obligation.” Kinan stormed past them, back out the door, and they scrambled to follow her. She created a new path, and followed it, pulling another door towards them and ripping it open, walking through it, and cracking open the door in the crystal room that followed it without pausing. Running after her, Arch exited the door first after Kinan, and stopped in the doorway, causing Graelyn to lightly push him. “Arch let me through.” He stayed put. “Arch, come on.” He stepped out of the way, and Graelyn stepped forward onto a dry field filled with dead plants. The sky was filled with cracks, blue cracks, and deep blue holes. Massive Crystal orbs floated in the sky, along with a vast plethora of different vessels moving back and forth between the ground and the sky. Between them all floated faceless blue beings shaped like people. They had no visible orifices, their blue skin coated them completely, but it seemed like they had jaws and such under the layer. Their legs hung beneath their body, unused as they flew. Each wore a garment sort of like a poncho. As they flew, occasionally crackles of electricity flew between them and the sky. “Kinan... Kinan what are we looking at.” “Earth.” She replied. They stared for a few more minutes, and a chunk of the ground in the distance suddenly began rising up, converted to blue energy. “I need more of an explanation than that, what are we looking at!?!?” Graelyn said louder. “You're looking at why I need to send you into the prime universe.” “But what are they?!?” Graelyn pointed at the blue things, and Arch's skin instinctively flashed an uncomfortable static. “Am I showing you too much at once? I thought this might be overwhelming.” “You should have listened to your instincts!” “That's the first inter-universal empire. I won't bore you with their history, it would only confuse this more... But here is the long and short of it. You connected to Songbird's Universe, and were able to move through into it. The prime reality did the same thing, only they connected to the universe these guys came from.” “So... They're going to die?” Arch said. “Yes.” Kinan started walking across the dry field, the grass crunching as she stepped. “Where are you going?” “Continuing the tour.” The giant Crystal orbs in the sky sent small bolts of lightning between them, and the wind screeched, a sound that was just plain incorrect for the wind to make. Nervously, Graelyn gave Arch a look that seemed to communicate “I don't want to die, but hey she is our ride out of here so...?” and began to scamper after Kinan. Arch sighed, and looked up deeper into the sky. Dark shapes slowly latched onto the orbs, and then let go, their shapes were inconsistent, like they were a wide variety of somethings. Feeling the dead grass with his armored foot, and shifting it around, he began to follow them. The ruins of civilization littered the ground. Was this Earth? Was this a colony world? Even though Kinan had answered that question, Graelyn couldn't even tell. The sky was purple-- but was that natural or just another sign of the ruin? “We'll need to stay out of sight of the drones.” Kinan said, and began to walk towards a large reservoir of dirty water. Next to it were cages. “Kinan, what are we looking at?” “It will be clear in a moment.” “Please, can't we just leave? I already agreed to do your dumb mission.” “I know. But do you believe it?” “What does that matter?” Kinan stopped, and looked back at her, then kept walking. Graelyn wasn't sure what that meant, but it became clear what was up ahead. The cages, hanging from cranes, were filled with people. Graelyn looked up at the cage, filled with the malnourished people, who barely seemed to even notice her. “They're in a cage Kinan. Why are they in a cage?” “They'll be used as slaves to keep building the Empire. The Council needs them for whatever its trying to do.” Arch looked furious. His skin was glowing orange, then red. He wasn't hiding his feelings, and the suddenness of it threw Graelyn off. “Arch?” She whispered. “They're keeping them in cages? People. Like they're less than human.” “That's what the council does. People from universes that shift in accordance with other universe aren't really people to them, after all their memories could change at the drop of a hat in another universe.” He stepped towards her, his skin shifting into flames. “That's no excuse.” “Oh, I agree.” “Then we need to help these people!” Kinan stared back. “We'll need all three of us. The question is, is Graelyn on board?” They both looked at her. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. She felt cold, and tried not to look at them. “Can't we just... Leave?” “Excuse me?” “I mean, this is going to be really dangerous. And I've done a lot of dangerous stuff lately. Honestly I just want to go to sleep.” She shrugged, and tried to look like she was saying something normal. “How could you even say that? How can you think back to the pain you lived through and see this and just.... Shrug?” “I just don't think its my job. This is what Kinan wants to do, and apparently what you do. But I'm not meant for that kind of thing.” I'd poison it, she thought. Arch and Kinan were both so stoic, she had a hard time reading them, but the disappointment was radiating off them. Then the crane holding the cage began to move towards the reservoir. “What are they doing?” “It looks like the stock is too sick. They're not going to bother harvesting it, they'll just drown them. There are other worlds. Other universes. Its not our business, anyways.” The people scrambled in the cage, but did so so slowly... Graleyn remembered the sink. Graelyn sat next to Trisha on the playground, swinging back and forth on the set. “We're going to be too old for the playground next year.” Trisha said. Graelyn nodded. “Maybe its time then.” Trisha raised an eyebrow, and stopped swinging. “Time for what?” “To run away from home.” Graelyn said. “Graleyn be serious.” She stared at her own feet. Her slip on shoes were scuffed up. “I am serious Trisha, I'm going to run away.” “Why would you want to do that?” She didn't answer the question, just looked at her shoes and kept swinging. Graelyn came in the door, sliding her shoes off, and setting her bag down. “Mom, I'm home.” “I'm in the kitchen dear!” Graelyn looked at Xandra's shoes, they were still there by the door. Mom hadn't moved them. She'd moved dad's leftover things so much quicker than Xandra's. Graelyn sighed, and walked into the kitchen, famished. She was ready for a snack. “So Graelyn, I got a call from Trisha's mom a few minutes ago. She said you were planning on running away from home.” Graelyn looked at the kitchen counter to see Mister Sprinkles in a wire cage, not his usual cage, with a wire loop coming up out of the top of it. “Mom what's going on?” She didn't answer, just put a plug in the sink, and began to fill it up. They stood there in silence at it filled, and then she shut it off. “Graelyn, do you remember when your father left, with your brother and sister?” “...Of course how could I forget.” “And I got you and Xandra in the court settlement, while your father moved to New York with them. And then Xandra left, and hurt me so much. Now Graelyn, I have to wonder, how could you think of doing that to your mother?” She picked up the cage by the wire loop, and Mister sprinkles made uncomfortable noises as the cage wobbled. The wires themselves looked kind of painful. “I can only assume you don't love me, that you want to cause me pain. Which is a cruel, cruel thing for a daughter to want to do to her mother.” Graelyn's eye's grew wide behind her glasses. “Mom, I was just kidding about leaving. You know, it was a game.” “Oh, Trisha's mom said you'd made yourself very clear you were serious. So serious about making me hurt.” She lowered the cage with Mister Sprinkles into the water, and then picking up a wooden spoon, shoved it down into the sink, displacing water all over the counter and onto the floor. Mister Sprinkles writhed and squealed as he began to be submerged in the water, scratching with his claws, biting, and trying desperately to keep his head above water. Graelyn ran for the sink, and tried to stop her mother. “No, no you can't do that! Please you're hurting him!” She held the struggling Graelyn back with her other arm, and smiled faintly at her. “I'm just trying to teach you a lesson. You want to hurt me, but you care so much about when your cat gets hurt. Do you love your cat more than me?” Mister Sprinkles was all the way underwater. He was thrashing in the small cage, his tiny eyes panicked. He was drowning. “No, of course not.” She lied. “Say it again.” “No, I love you the most in all the world. You're the best mom ever, and I'm never leaving home.” Sprinkles began to fight less. His movements were getting sluggish. “Do you promise?” “Yes I promise!” She smiled, and pulled the cat out of the water. She set the cage on the counter, and let Graelyn get through to him finally. He was hacking up water, but looked like he'd be okay. She opened the cage up, and took him out gently, pressing the wet cat to her breast. Her mother began to fill the basin again. Graelyn stepped back. “Now Graelyn, if you really love your mother, you'll prove it to her. Show me how much you love me. See how long you can hold your breath.” Graelyn looked at the sink. “Do I... Have a target time I need to meet?” “Oh, I'll know if you've been there long enough. See if you can hold your head down there till you can't bear it anymore, and then a little more. Or should I put the cat back in?” Graelyn kissed Mister Sprinkles' back, and set him down (he instantly scurried off to her room), then walked towards the sink. Her face was mirrored in it, and there was some cat hair floating on the top. Her mother's face came up behind her, and she felt a hand shove her down into the water. Later, she sat curled up in the corner of her room, soaking wet but afraid to take her clothes off. She held Mister sprinkles (who unlike her was wrapped lovingly in a towel against her, and rocked back and forth gently. “I just want them to leave us alone Mister Sprinkles. I just want to be alone.” He meowed. Her eyes darkened. “What kind of person doesn't fall Mister Sprinkles?” There was no answer. The people in the cages scampered slowly, and Graelyn closed her eyes. Fine, she thought. Fine, I'll get involved again. But she just wanted to go home. Do I even have a home? She tried to think of what she meant by home and it seemed nebulous. She home she'd grown up in had been a terrible place. She'd been shaped by it, she was a part of it, and everything she touched went wrong, just like that gun in Nojpeten, just like Project Atlantis. “Fine.” She said. “We need to save them. Tell me what to do. I don't know what to do.” Kinan nodded. “Arch, you free the prisoners, Graelyn, you lead them back to the portal when he has, while he gets started on the next one.” “What will you do?” Arch asked. “Show off.” She said, and began sprinting. Arch didn't waste time, he unsheathed his swords, and using them to get handholds climbed his way up the crane. He reached the control module, and found.... Something that resembled a human sized jellyfish. That was surprising, especially since it had so many limbs on so many devices. Arch was curious, but he had a mission. He turned on the vibration function on his left sword, and jabbed it repeatedly at the transparent material that made up the cockpit. He pinged off, and focusing in on the grain of the material, jabbed again. This time the sword point hit a tiny indentation, and as he put pressure on it with the vibrating blade, cracks began forming around it. He'd had programing installed to do just this sort of thing, he realized. He wondered why. The window shattered, and the creature inside glowed faintly yellow as if in surprise. It reached towards him with one of its many tendrils, which Arch grabbed, and pulled on. It tried to send a surge of electricity through his body, but he was built to withstand surges like that, and his body automatically redirected the overflow back into his internal batteries, which he used to pull even harder. It wasn't expecting that, and he threw it down out of the cockpit with force. He slid into the crane's cockpit and tried to figure out the controls. At first it made no sense, but a program kicked in and began pointing out the most likely controls for him to use to get the crane to do what he wanted. He stopped the descent into the water, and then turned the crane towards the ground. Perfect. Graelyn saw the jellyfish hit the ground, and ran over to it. What the heck was this thing? Was it an alien? She had always believed there was life beyond her star, and with so many alternate worlds it was a mathematical certainty. She had expected it to look different than a jellyfish though. It had a blue medusa, which pulses with either blue or yellow light. Ringing the medusa were a large number of tendrils, some ending in rounded tips, some with what looked like a single claw or a pincer, some with some sort of orifice on them. At the center of the bottom of the medusa was... A Glowing ball? She wasn't sure what that would biologically do but... It was definitely a thing. “Are you alive?” She asked, fascinated. She crept closer to it, and reached her hand out to touch it. It was soft, coated in a fine layer of mucus. Amazing! “Do you speak English? Vy govorite po-russki? Nǐ huì shuō zhōngwén ma? Parle vu le-” The thing cut her off, wrapping her wrist up in a tendril. She looked down at it as though it had betrayed her curiosity, but still whispered, “fascinating,” as another wrapped around her skull and she felt the electrical impulses surge through here. “Who are you?” She felt a thought think. “Graleyn Scythes.” She thought back. “Are you sending me thoughts directly to my brain through your tendrils?” “You figured that out quickly.” Graelyn found herself-- or maybe a conceptualization of herself? Standing in the forest filled with the owls. But she could tell this wasn't the real forest of owls, this was her memory of it. The details were only what she recalled, with bits clearly filled in incorrectly by her subconscious. The alien was floating there in front of her. “You're clever for a human, Graelyn Scythes. We are the Pantheon. We lead the council under our Emperors. The reach of our tendrils goes beyond stars” “...Okay that's cool uh, so you can go into people's minds?” “Yes. That impresses you more than the Empire?” “Well, I mean, anyone can build an empire. That happens all the time. Being able to go into people's minds is pretty special.” She felt it being confused by her reaction. “There is no greater glory than to be a god, to be raised into the Pantheon. To be looked up by others.” Graelyn shrugged, and all the owls did to. “I mean, I'm sure that took a lot of work, but all you have to do to get an Empire is be willing to be cruel. I could run an empire if I wanted. But that's boring. I'd rather learn something.” she looked down to see a tendril coming out of her sleeve.” “That's not what I see inside you, is it though? You're afraid of yourself.” “Well I'm certainly not afraid of you.” “I am in your mind.” Graelyn narrowed her eyes. “Only as much as I'm letting you.” “I can make you scared.” “I can be cruel. Would you like to see me be cruel? Did you know I got a friend expelled from my school for reporting something to my mother? I plotted behind her back, and I hurt her.” “And that you did that scares you.” The owls turned their backs. “I just want people to leave me alone.” “You're just one of many. You don't have the right to ask that. You're not important, you'll be submerged and we will change you. I can sense you, I can feel your anchor to the prime universe. We'll exploit that. You will become the you who lives there, I guarantee it. The changes are already happening.” “What do you mean they're already happening?” “Well-” The alien stopped talking, and the owls began to fade, the forest began to flicker. “...Pantheon?” She said. And she opened her eyes to see the creature's medusa cut in half, and Kinan's blade already sweeping up to cut another in half. She leapt up, and landed on some sort of air craft, which she burred her sword in the engine of, then leapt off, slicing a flurry of the floating blue things as she fell. She landed on the side of the crane, clasping a cord on it with one hand, then springing off again to land on a much larger floating craft, which she began to carve open. Graelyn looked around, and saw the cage of people. Springing up, she sloppily ran to it, and opened the latch. The people looked at her, as though they were unsure if they should leave the cage. “Come on! Lets go, you're free, follow me!” She yelled, and gestured For them to run towards the door. Arch had dropped a second cage, so she ran over to it, avoiding the fallen members of the Council, and dodging more who fell. She didn't look down to see if it was Arch or Kinan cutting them down, but she tried not to look. She wasn't meant to be in a battle. She opened the other cage, and shooed the people out in the same direction. They were largely carrying each other, but no one picked up a little girl who was missing part of her leg, and looked barely there, Graelyn grabbed a man by the arm and yelled at him to pick her up but he just shoved her off and kept moving. Everyman for himself. Graelyn cursed, and ran to the little girl. “Hey, hey are you alive?” She looked at her, her eyes sunken, and nodded. “Okay I'm going to get you out of here.” Graelyn was not a physically strong person, but she found lifting the little girl easy. “What's your name?” She said, and the girl tired to say something back, but only her lips moved. “Nice name.” Graelyn encouraged. And began to run after the survivors, yelling at them to go towards the door. She awkwardly opened the door, and the refugees flooded in. Through the crowd, a woman in a poodle skirt began cutting through. “What the hell is going on?” “Er, you're Jenny right?” Graelyn yelled over the clamor. “Backgammon Jenny, yeah. I've been following making sure nothing went wrong. What's gone wrong?” Graelyn handed her the child. “Kinan is saving a bunch of people.” Jenny sighed, and rolled her eyes behind her sunglasses. “Of course she is.” “Yes, I am. Jenny, get these people back to Spiral.” Kinan said, followed closely by Arch. They'd caught up quick. Jenny gave a crisp salute, somehow, while still holding the child, and began to usher the people away. “Arch, Graelyn, a moment.” Kinan had them wait at the door, and they stared up at the giant crystal orbs, the little things moving back and forth between them, and the black blurs. They were starting to move towards them. “Kinan, what on earth do you want from us? This is insane. This is impossible. I can't do anything to stop an army of flying.... Whatever those are.” “You can. Remember, you can only go into a universe you'd been to.” Graelyn remembered the universe she'd been in so briefly, that room full of bodies. “You've been to the prime universe.” Her cat paced its cage, it hadn't been fed yet today do to a computer error in the shelter. It was getting impatient. “You and Arch can get there to a place early enough in its history you can change it, give them a fighting chance.” She watched herself look over her own shoulder, ready to be kicked out the window. “I can train you for what you need to do. It won't even be that complicated, but you're the only ones who can do it. I know this sounds ridiculous, but there are trillions of lives on the line here. I need you to do this, and then I'll send you home. I'll make your life easy, you can both live calm and wealthy. You can do what you always dreamed of doing. But I need you do do what I'm asking you to do.” She curled up in her bed, holding the cat close to her chest. She tried to ignore the bruises on her chest, but it didn't quite work. “Will you do this for me? For yourself?” Graelyn was back in her own present, looking Kinan in the eyes. She turned to Arch, she wished he could read his face. “I don't know how to say no to this. I don't think I could if I wanted to.” Arch nodded, and looked between both of them. “When I was growing up, there was a man who thought he could make my life what he wanted. He built me up, built my family up, just to tear us all down for his own ends. We were like toys to him... Slaves, really. Do you really think I can say no when either when you tell me this? I'm not sure... I'm not sure I totally get it but...” “You don't have to. Lets get out of here.” Kinan walked passed them. “Kinan,” Graelyn said, looking out at the wasteland ahead of them, “if its as bad as you say here... Shouldn't we try to help more of the people here?” Kinan sighed. “Its too late here. We already tried. We don't have an army big enough to fight that kind of war. I do what I can. We saved some.” She looked out across the fields, as another crack formed in the sky. “We have to fight the battles we can win.” * * * * The journey back through the bifrost was quiet. Graelyn still wasn't sure what to think... She felt like she was walking through a dream. But here she was, and her sore feet seemed to prove otherwise. Kinan took a new path, and at the edge of it, reached into her bag for more blue dust. “Where is the door?” Arch asked. “I'll have to make one. We're going somewhere outside of the builder's specifications.” Kinan threw the dust expertly, and moved her hand through it. Graelyn pulled up the shades and tried to watch it carefully. Kinan moved her hand through the dust in a circle, little tendrils of electricity slipping out of her fingertips. A swirling white portal appeared, and she gestured to them to go ahead of her. Graelyn held her hand out, and Arch took it, the two of them stepping into the portal together, letting the white energy enclose them as they walked. The stepped out onto a grassy plain with a blue sky filled with floating islands. A massive crystal staircase went up the sky in the distance, spiraling up, and blobs of water floated through the sky like clouds. Graleyn could see people swimming in them-- someone waved at them and Arch waved back. Then they noticed the people in hoodies riding a brontosaurus in the distance, as if the scene couldn't get any weirder. “Welcome,” Kinan said, “the home of Dawn. We call it Spiral.” “Spiral.” Arch whispered, and they walked onto the grass, the sky welcoming them as the white swirls faded down into nothing. Join us next week, where you'll get to explore Spiral! ... And see another dinosaur! Same Dawn time, same Dawn place, every Thursday right here! Let us know how you liked the story in the comments! It feels weird to say "Welcome back to the Hiatus!" since we took a hiatus from the hiatus, but hey, welcome back! From now on 10kd will be posting in audio and text on the same day again, we're finally back on track. We also have great stuff lined up for you in the future, so be pumped. Next week, the 26th of November, is the last Hiatus story about our lawyer friend Jame Morrel! December 2nd, 10kd comes back with Chapter 16, and its going to be a big one! Annie and I have been working hard to get this ready for for you guys, so its going to be a real joy for all of you to finally read it. As some of you know, I had two ideas for a Mister Sprinkles Adventure when I started writing, but one turned out to be too long for the 15 minute radio slot, so I went with the other one. Now you finally get a taste of my much much longer idea. Enjoy :)! -Jim Story by James Wylder, art by Rachel Johnson Previous chapters are also available as an audio podcast from the Southgate Media Group. http://www.southgatemediagroup.com/10000dawnspodcast You can also subscribe to the podcast version on iTunes and your RSS feed easily from libsyn: http://10thousanddawns.libsyn.com/ If you're new to 10kd, you can read the story from the start for free below: http://www.jameswylder.com/read-every-chapter.html Bonus #4: The Day the Cats Spoke |
James Wylder
Poet, Playwright, Game Designer, Writer, Freelancer for hire. Archives
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