Chains of Loss (4 page)

“I’m not letting you blindfold me.” 

“Oh.  You can leave your other eye uncovered.  We’re not working with it.  Or, wait.  Let me have a look.  Keep your eye open…”  He leaned in close.  “Okay.  Good enough.  You can leave it uncovered.”

She did as he said.  The cloth seemed smooth and soft, except when she placed it on her face; there, it stuck.

“Now I work.  Don’t worry, just relax, and whatever you do, don’t take off the cloth.”  He sat down behind her, back to back.

“Okay…”  She sat still for a minute, hearing nothing of her companion except his breathing.  “Sooo…?”

“Working on it.  You can talk if you want.  I’d actually suggest it, really.  I have a lot to learn about this world.”

“Right.  Hmm.  What do you want to know?”

“What happened?  To the planet, I mean.  My people left a very long time ago, and the world was very different then.  No orcs, for example.”

“More than seven hundred years ago?”

“Quite a bit longer than that, actually.  And I have no idea what’s happened here since then.”

How orcs came to Earth.  She knew that one.  “That would be the Sundering.  I was never very interested in that one.  It’s kind of an old story, so people don’t really care.”

“I do.  Very much.”

“Sorry.  Anyway, I understand the world was torn apart and put back together again, but some of the pieces were from a different world.”

“The orcs’ home?”

“No, not right away.  First came the taerlae.”

“And they are?”

She searched for a way to explain them.  He seemed to know a lot of words.  Perhaps he'd know them by another name?  “Some people call them elves, but they don’t like that.”

“Means nothing to me, sorry.”

“They’re…”  She sighed.  “They’re kinda like humans.  A little shorter, a little weaker, but tough.  They have claws on their hands, retractable claws.”

“Friendly?”

“They can be.  Don’t expect them to think like you, treat them fairly, and they can be fair right back.  They can be as bastardly as anyone else, though, so don’t be stupid.”

“Okay.  And then came orcs?”

“I’m not sure.  I know it took a while, with parts of the world being replaced each time, but I can’t remember how long it took or who came in what order, other than taerlae.  Orcs were one of the last, I think.”

Derek was silent for a moment.  “What other people live here, other than humans?”

“Let’s see.  Orcs, taerlae, waushan, vreet, and titans.  That’s it.”

“Mmhmm.”  He was quiet for a while. 

“What now?” she asked. 

“I don’t know.  I know there’s a lot of questions that I need to ask.  I don’t know what they are.”

“Well, how goes the—whatever the thing you’re doing is called?”

“Good enough.  Here, I’ll test something.  I’m going to make you see purple.  Tell me if you can see it.”

“What d—oh”  Mycah shuddered.  “Yes.  Yes, I see purple.  Can I see something else please?”

“Sure.  Would you like to see how the world was when my people left?”

“…Okay.  Do it.”

He began to speak softly, and images appeared before her.  “The city of Ars Unitas was the greatest that the world had ever seen.”  Buildings stretched out in every direction – especially upwards.  The road she was standing on led towards one in particular, a gleaming edifice that went further up than seemed possible.  “It was possible to walk the stairs of the central spire up past the clouds, or ride the elevator into space.” 

Her perspective shifted upwards, as if she were climbing the impossible building. “Up at the top, there was the Buraq.  It was the spot from which people left Earth – including my ancestors.”

Mycah knew she was sitting on the ground, her back against Derek’s, but at the same time she was standing on a balcony at the top of the spire.  She looked up and could see the stars with greater clarity than she’d ever imagined; she looked down and saw the world itself stretching in all directions.  Vertigo surged through her and she tried to recoil, only to find her back still against Derek’s.  Again the dichotomy of the vision struck her, as she felt his hand on her shoulder at the same time.
  Either he was impossibly flexible or she could feel the phantoms she was seeing.

“Steady.  There’s nothing dangerous about this; you can’t fall, because you’re not really there.”  A fraction of a second later they were at the base of the tower, surrounded by gleaming buildings.

“I’ve—I never even thought that high up existed.  I mean, I—shit.  What was that?”

“This is just a simulation.  Sensations with no reality behind them.  My people use these often; within the world of a simulation, a man is bounded only by his imagination.”

“And a woman?”

He hesitated a moment.  “Why would anything be different?”

She looked at his face.  There was such honesty in it that she knew that he was completely sincere in his lack of understanding, and she didn’t feel like explaining.  “Never mind.”

The images seemed so real…she tried to snap out of the reverie.  She could still see their campsite if she tried.  “How much longer before you can start?”

“We’re finished with the eye, actually.”

“
Already!?
”

“Sure.  I’m just getting the rest of the stuff into place so it can finish its work.  You really have excellent natural vision, by the way.”

“Um.  Thanks?”

She felt completely normal.  Had he done anything at all?  It suddenly occurred to her that she could not feel the cloth on her face, and she fought the urge to touch it.  Something was happening, at least.

He spoke up again.  “Did you like the simulation?”

“Why?” 

“You’ll be able to do that too when your system’s ready.  You can take the shroud off now.”

She unwound the cloth and blinked with both eyes.  For a moment she didn’t notice the difference.  Then she realized she’d seen the simulation with both eyes also.

“It’s back.”  She couldn’t keep her grin down.  The skin of her face didn’t have the familiar pull of the scar either, and her fingers couldn’t find a trace of it.  “I didn’t believe it.”

“Why not?”

“It was just too good to be true.”  No price, no demands—who was this man, Santa Claus? 

Derek picked up her discarded eye patch and slipped it over his right eye.  Why would he—

A suspicion hit her.  “Did you just…”  She reached out and touched the eye patch. 

“Just what?”

“Just—just give me your eye?”

“Yeah.  I'm in better health than you are, so it was the easiest way to do it.”

“But—
your eye!
”

“Mine will grow back.”

Mycah stopped short.  “It will,” she said. 

“Sure.”  He smiled at her.  Somehow that smile had her fighting the urge to vomit.  “You should get some rest, though.  Let your body get used to having its eye back, integrate its systems, et cetera.”

She swallowed.  “You take first watch.  I—I think that sounds good.”

***

Derek looked around, bored.  He'd spent the last hour configuring his suit's motion sensors to ignore windblown leaves, swaying branches, squirrels, and rabbits, as well as six types of insect and three rodents (he presumed) that eluded his taxonomy.  He had long since extended the suit’s visor to compensate for his missing eye, and he was slowly getting used to the regular sounds of the forest around him.  The constant meteor shower of his homeworld was also absent, giving an easier view of the stars than he'd ever seen from a planet's surface, even through the canopy of the trees.  His ignorance stung once more, though, as he had no idea where his home constellation - Vela, if he remembered right - was in the sky. 

Nothing could approach without him being notified.  If he had been tired, he might have been tempted to sleep; however, he suspected that Mycah would be disturbed if she found him asleep on watch. 

She puzzled him.  What had she meant by enemies?  He didn’t think she meant orcs.  

Orcs.  Taerlae.  What were the others?  He replayed the conversation from memory.  Vreet, waushan, and titans.  Of those, his dictionary only suggested a meaning for the last one.  He glanced through the specs of Titan-class ships, Titanite adhesive strips, the grade of clay known as Titan White, the archaic ship known as the Titanic, ancient Greek mythology, and Titanides, the twenty-third century alternative jazz band, before deciding that the mysterious titans could be huge, pale, strong, doomed, deific, or rhythmic.  The first was the most likely, but it was all just a guess.

He needed answers and had no way of getting them short of waiting.  Unlikely as it seemed to him that people would fight each other, the Sundering could have been some sort of war.  The other peoples could have been engineered…or were they truly extraterrestrial?  There was a lot to learn. 

Growing bored, he began scanning the area with different vision modes, respectfully directing his scans away from Mycah.  He was well past the visible light spectrum when he did a double take.

Directly under the ground he was sitting on, someone had buried a hollow metal tube with the kanji of Kazenushi drawn on it.  For a full minute he stared at it, wondering if it was some kind of coincidence or hallucination, before he decided to dig it up.  He stood and carefully aimed his magnetic grapple at the tube, then pulled it out of the dirt.  Inside he found several sheets of paper, rolled up but otherwise unstained by their internment.  He sat down and began to read. 

Copy 42/320

To the Kazenushi

Today I had a vision of men and women in a far-off world, trapped in a tower of metal while a storm of fire and rock and lightning raged about them.  Many times, the tower was struck; the people gave into despair, knowing that no rescue would come before the tower collapsed.  And then it came; a massive craft that sailed the sky, captained by one man who had braved the storm to rescue these doomed ones.  Again and again it was buffeted into the ground by heavy winds, struck by lightning and smashed by the rocks that fell from the sky, but still the man came on.  He could not take them all, but he carried who he could to safety, a feat beyond most men.  And then he dared to go back for the rest; it was his doom, for neither he nor they survived.  But for it, his family gained the title of Kazenushi.  Your family, I know now. 

For a moment, Derek could only stare.  The story was true.  The storm had been the result of one of the final battles of the Hive War, and the pilot had been his great-grandfather.  The new surname had been offered to the family in honor of his heroism.  The name meant “Wind Master” in the original Japanese, a nod towards the family's distant heritage.  It was the only bit he knew of the ancient language – though his implant could teach him more.

I am sorry for everything that has happened, and assure you that while it is my doing that has, by the time you read this, brought you to this world and separated you from your friends, I did not cause the destruction of your home.  I know all about what might have happened in your life up to the point that you read this message – though but for a single moment, I can’t influence anything at such a great distance.  I may not say my name because this letter tells too much about me; if my enemies were to find it, we would all be in danger.  I am a taerlae Speaker, what you would call a prophet.  I brought you here because I need you to save the world.

I believe it prudent to tell you the story of Gantreli now.  Many generations ago, before our worlds were one, a Speaker named Gantreli arose among my people.  It was his fate to foresee in his lifetime that one among our people would rise, one with great ambition and power, who would bring ruin to all others.  He saw this many years in advance; many paths lay before him by which he could have averted this future.  Gantreli chose to send forth three young warriors to challenge the youth and slay him before his rise to power.  He gave them assurances of success; he told them that their cause was just, that they would win, and by the taking of one life they would save many thousands.

They failed, and all three perished.  My people turned against Gantreli, naming him a liar and false prophet, who squandered lives fruitlessly.  Never again did warriors go forth at his call, and to this day Speakers suffer for Gantreli’s failure.

There are a number of things to learn from this story, but the most important is that my foreknowledge is not perfect.  I must compensate for this through extraordinary measures – like burying three hundred letters in the hope that you will find at least one.  If I seem cryptic at times, it is because I either do not know everything, or because the future will be altered by what I tell you.  Had Gantreli told his warriors to fight and not told them if they would win or lose, might they have fought with greater caution and triumphed?  Might the maker-of-nothing have perished before rising?  Or, had Gantreli not sent those warriors, might his foe have become a different person?  Would he still have sought power?

These questions can no longer be answered.  Regardless, I see many paths on which you may tread.  Many end with strife and death.  A scant few give me the hope that  your coming may allow us to avert catastrophe.  I know I send you a companion, though I do not know who.  Is it the tall man?  The broken one?  I do not know; such is my ignorance of circumstances that my own actions might change.  Be cautious with him – or her, and don’t speak of this letter.  Destroy it when you are finished reading.