vi. inquisitor
the final shape looms - two days before the allied assault
You sit in the calcified remnant of the village in which you were resurrected. Your familiar fortress is a suspended ruin on the hill behind you, vines of egregore choking its once familiar walls and Taken blights crackling around its ruined ramparts. A team of corsairs lie immortalized in stone at your feet, their faces frozen in dual masks of terror and anger. Segmented statues of Eliksni stand triumphant around them. The moment of a massacre, frozen in time within the final shape.
This place is a place of memory, as much yours as anyone else’s who set foot in it. In the Pale Heart, you’ve seen the Gorgon’s labyrinth from which Doug-5 averts his eyes, the funereal mask of Uldren Sov, the homestead of Safiyah.
A low roll of thunder rumbles in the overcast sky. You flick your eyes to its zenith. The looming monolith, obscured by a rise in acrid winds. Though you look, you do not feel Its eyes on you. You do not feel Its presence behind you, nor Its hands on your shoulders. You feel only emptiness.
Your blackened fingers brush the slight laceration on your cheek, the sum of the wounds It inflicted on you. It could have killed you with a thought, but It didn’t. What was that, if not an infinite mercy? You brush those same fingers over your forearm. The bruise from Doug-5’s hand is a bright, angry purple. Only your armor protected you from a broken bone.
“Guardian?” says your Ghost. He’s calling you by that moniker more these days. As if you need reminding that you're bound to the Light. In the rapidly blackening sky, the pronounced scars of the fight with your Witness crack across his shell. “The Empress has asked us to look into psion activity in the Divide. I told her we’d be there as soon as we can. I have the coordinates - it’s back through the old wall.”
You remember standing at Caiatl's side before Calus' corpse, both made silent in your shared grief. As you think it, a prismatic aura emanates as if from your mind and you watch as the boulders in the Impasse reshape into a suspended body. Vines of egregore creep over the jagged rock, winding their way across powerful points of rock that reshape into limp arms. Stone chips away into an eternal look of pain, and a swarm of flies settle into a bejeweled countenance.
And at his feet, towers of jagged stone rise from the ground: one tusked and once proud, now made low by her grief; and the other, so small compared to the two, and so silent in her grief. This place has made a monument of your memories, and frozen the moment of his death in the final shape.
Your Ghost floats in front of you, his eye trying to draw yours away from that moment of grief. He recognizes it, both from the eulogy and from his subsequent violation.
“Should we…go to Caiatl?” he asks.
You stand, but a flicker of pale light cuts through the gloom to catch your eye.
The wind turns. It towers like an ocean in your ears. The crooked trees creak. They say your Traveler is a gardener, a creator. But there is another god with its hands on the throat of creation, and in Its wake, a storm begins to brew.
Your Ghost doesn't argue as you turn from the old wall and go deeper into the Impasse. The two of you pick your way past rusted cars and over abrupt chasms. Taken and Dread swarm this unforgiving landscape, but you are nimble enough to avoid them, you think.
The sky begins to darken into an all-encompassing black. It is a sudden, abrupt shift in weather that you haven't experienced since entering the Pale Heart. "How is - " Ghost stutters. "I don't understand how this weather is happening." He shivers, but expands to cast a light into the gloom. It can't penetrate the encompassing shadows. "I've run scans, there isn't even air pressure here. Not in a scientific sense, at least. It's a constantly shifting landscape, but it isn't natural."
A crack of lightning snaps across the sky, emanating from the looming monolith. The archway is obscured now, almost impossible to make out but for that flickering light. Your Ghost is right, but you are not surprised. You know this weather isn't natural. You are being repelled.
The shifting sands of the ground swallow your feet and your hair whips around you in the torrent of wind. Your eyes sting, but you push forward, one step at a time.
Beneath the whipping wind, you hear a growl.
"On your left!" warns Ghost with a shout, but just as you see a horde of Taken thrall racing towards you, the air behind you crackles with a shrieking resonance. You've heard this sound before: when the careful poise of Rhulk snapped into an eruption of terrifying power. A tall, thin silhouette pierces the suffocating shadow before you.
She gives an elegant bow and a facsimile of Lubrae's Ruin materializes in her hand. She speaks to you in a language you have never heard, and then stasis erupts from her glaive.
You dodge just in time, pulling a radiant sphere of solar energy from your mind to dash towards the Subjugator. The black sky snuffs it out before it can burn her, and she laughs. Stasis shards whip towards you, and crystals of ice slice the skin of your face. Your Ghost pushes healing light towards you, but it is slow, and you are not fully recovered before the grasping hands of Taken thralls grab your back.
But you, formidable you; you are not frightened by shadows. You are not cowed by the darkness, and you have faced greater enemies than this. Kingslayer, Godsbane. You reach into the void, and it answers with the yawn of a black hole that sucks the brutal winds into the vortex within your hands. You unleash its chaotic energy onto the Subjugator.
These Dread are strong, but they are themselves facsimiles. Unlike their progenitor, the subjugators cannot withstand the concentrated power of a supernova. The battlefield is cleared in an instant. But you're no fool. This sudden respite will not last. You are being repelled.
"I think the light is coming from that structure - " Ghost begins, but a pulse emanates from the monolith. He shudders violently with a quiet gasp. "I'm okay," he says quickly, his reassuring voice doing nothing to ease its tremble or the aftershock that ricochets through his shell. His Light is weak here. He struggles to push warmth to you. You and he have been truthseekers and knowledge-bearers for centuries now. He's as inquisitive as you, and he’s held you up through every hardship. But he's never been in this much pain. He fails.
You take a steadying breath, centering yourself as you have done so often before, and you dash around the shifting landscape in the final stretch to the light.
Your foot slips down a sudden drop. The very ground on which you stood cracks into a plummeting crevasse. You push a burst of air to your feet and stagger back before slipping into what looks like deep space. It is a temporary save, as the ground around you splits and reforms into something more precarious. You are being repelled.
You leap over the largest gash in this landscape, and your feet land upon onyx. You stand at the mouth of the ancient architecture that lies deeper in the Impasse. The symmetrical archway is high but narrow, obscuring what lies within in shadow. You've seen this architecture before, but never outside of a pyramid. It looks older somehow. A trick of the light, perhaps, or a fossilization of memory.
You know enough from your studies to theorize that this is a vestige of the Witness' precursor civilization; a civilization whose name is long forgotten in the eons since its assimilation. What was it Ikora said, when you found her staring intently at nothing, searching for answers her god would not give? That this place, this Pale Heart, was shaped by your thoughts, Doug’s, and those of your Witness. Did It intend to lay its own past bare, you wonder, during Its yearlong desecration of the Light? Or did the wanton creative energy of the Traveler pull that unwillingly from Its mind?
Do the countless multitudes that make up your Witness even remember their civilization? Or was that, too, carved out in service of Its final shape? And if you could carve out the pain of your past, would you not do the same?
As if in reply, the faint light glimmers into your eye. You turn to it, and find its source at last: a broken shard of a mirror, clutched within the prostrate hands of a veiled statue. The vaguely feminine form is familiar to you, as are the hollow pits where eyes might be. In the mirror you see your reflection, distorted into a million disparate shards of glass. You hear whispers around you, but they are too soft to make out.
Zavala and Targe once stood before these and demanded guidance. Trading thier begging of one god for another. You do not seek divinity. You seek truth. And in the haunting stillness of this statue, you seek an answer.
So you pose a question - what are you?
'I do not exist. Our existence is eternal.'
It is not a good answer. You ask again.
'Our Gardener does not allow for memory. She has only ever concerned herself with the here and now, and the hope for her own future. In her, there is no memory. But the Darkness remembers. We remember. But we do not wish to remember. In our Witness' suppuration of the Light, Darkness is entwined within the Gardener's marrow. The Light makes us forget. But the Darkness makes us remember. Seek us. Embrace the darkness and seek us.'
The ancient threshold looms before you. Shadows lie beyond it. The storm behind you lets up just enough for the Traveler’s prismatic heart to break through. You could turn back and return to its Light. You look at your expectant Ghost. He wants you to turn back. But you, formidable, insatiable you, must always know more.
You cross the threshold into the Transgression.
A biting cold steals the oxygen from your lungs the moment you enter this memory. The very air seems heavy, and your movement feels as if every step is weighed down by a lodestone. The silence is a deafening pressure in your ears. Even the echo of your footsteps is stolen in the crushing air.
You traverse deeper into a mountain face. It seems impossible to scale, even more impossible as you descend. It is buried, a horde of secrets submerged beneath tons of rock and soot.
Not rock, you realize, but ash. Ash calcified over the remains of corpses burnt in a pyroclastic surge. Their last moments are tumultuous, terrible chaos. They are contorted, helpless, locked forever in their death throes. Some are buried so deep you see only the peak of cranium beneath the dirt. One holds their child aloft above the conglomeration, fighting to keep them alive. Another is torn to pieces. Elders, adults, and children clamber over each other in a desperate, futile escape.
All tumbled together in their frozen, final moments. Their faces are agonized, horrified. Within the contracted shape of one, you see incisors in a mouth frozen in a scream. The teeth are bleached white as if fresh but somehow yellowed with age. In another, you see a tibia jutting through what was once their leg. Another, a hip. Another a rib. A jaw. You do not traverse a rock formation.
You traverse an open grave. Their hands reach seem to grab at you, a broken sesamoid, a blunted phalange, a detached trapezium. With the wind battering your front through the cavernous walls of this structure, it is as if they are pulling at your hem, dragging you away.
“I don’t think we should be here,” warns Ghost.
Which is precisely why, you reason, you need to be here.
You emerge from the howling storm onto the barren wasteland of an unfamiliar planet. An ancient star burns relentlessly through the atmosphere, but it is not your sun. Wind whips sand and gravel into a punishing frenzy, and you shield your eyes from the onslaught. This desert is unforgiving, colder than you'd expect but no less hostile than the deserts of Sol or Mars. The landscape is desolate, and what is not covered by biting sand is riddled with jagged rock. Giant predators stalk the earth, and a torrent of biting insects plague the sands. This place breeds only survival and death.
Huddled beneath one of the towering rocks, you see veiled figures clutching each other, sheltering from wind and predator. Small, weak, but they hold each other. They are not One, but a unified many.
You watch the landscape transform. The once barren desert gives way to a gentle rain. The jagged rocks transform into cities of glittering onyx. The rocky mountains reform into elegant pyramids, which take to the unfamiliar stars above. The veiled figures do not huddle. They steward, they worship, they sing. Where once was survival, there is joy and contemplation.
And then the rainy clouds part as their god departs. You hear their shock, their disbelief rising to a cacophony of wails. They argue, they war, they flee. And then you see them veiled, thousands, millions maybe. They hum a unified chant as their bodies drop to the ground with a sickening sound that is swallowed by a rising storm.
A veiled statue watches with you, and though it does not move, you hear its soft cries as your Witness is made.
This moment is made for silence, but you cannot quiet your inquisitive mind. You pose to the statue your question - why did they see It as the ultimate answer, the immutable truth? Why was It the only salvation?
'I was a gardener. In Light, my flowers bloomed. I cultivated the perfect tree. I wanted to protect it. If I could suspend it in a perfect moment, it could live forever. But chaos took my garden. The life I made smothered by withering vines and insatiable parasites. My self, smothered by Our self. I don't know if my tree survived. I don't remember what it looked like.'
You stand with it for a moment in silence, before it softly says, 'I wish I had just watched it grow.'
You reach out a hand to offer…something. Some small measure of comfort, perhaps. You’re only human after all, and so was it, once. But you hear its sob break with the crush of a windpipe, and in its death rattle you hear the whisper of a thousand others.
—- You are not welcome here. —-
Its voice is in the very winds that batter your skin and stings your eyes, and it resonates with the might with which it revoked its proffered salvation from humanity. You are shut out by an onslaught of psychic pain. This memory is not yours to witness. You tumble. But you force your question into the swirling abyss into which you are falling.
—- In life, there is only chaos. Suffering. We seek to mend a broken universe. To create a single, perfect existence free of suffering, of chaos. We offered ourselves to a thousand civilizations on a thousand planets. We offered them healing, hope. Harmony. But they saw in us the means to create their own perfection, to wield us as a weapon against their enemies. But we will not be used. Not by gods. Not by men. We do not sow chaos. We sow peace. —-
It is not a good answer, so you ask again. Why is Its salvation the only salvation?
—- What but the edge of the first knife can carve purpose into being? —-
You fall onto the ruins of a simple town. Palm trees wither and die with neglect. Power lines hang limply over unkempt streets. Statues and monuments are broken around you. There is no life here. It has been utterly abandoned, perhaps by those same thousands whose bones were now ash.
Your Ghost nods at you, and you follow his gaze to a dissenter statue in a nondescript corner of this place. You approach, and hear the familiar whispers encircle it. Ghost opens his shell and a soft Light pours through.
'When will we take me back? I don't want to be alone anymore. When will we take me back?'
You pose to it your question - why did the Witness not destroy these disparate parts of Itself?
'We fell to infighting when our Gardener left us. Discord, dissent, chaos. We fractured. We fought. We slaughtered. We forced our purpose into our Witness, but our Witness forced purpose upon us. We would not assent, so our Witness cut us out, fractured us. Our pain is infinite. Our loneliness immeasurable. I hurt. I hurt. We can still become One. We can still serve finality. When will we take me back?'
A dozen questions enter your mind. They speak in riddles, echoes of the past. But you know there is truth in there, buried beneath eons of pain and confusion. If you could just find the right words, you might receive concrete answers. Something satisfying. If you could only ask the right questions.
The statue falls silent with a shuddering breath, stolen by the whispering air.
—- We came to you with answers. In the pyramid of Nezarec, in the icy winds of Europa. We sought to commune with you on sulfuric Io, the sands of Mercury, the ruins of Mars. You would not listen. You chose the violence that your Traveler forced upon you. You chose dissent, discord. But though you bow still to your contrived nature, though you insist on dissecting every iota of matter in your futile search for the unknowable, we do not forsake you. —-
You turn, and you are faced not with the macrocosm, but with the very breadth of the universe. You see its vibrant colors, ultraviolet and radiant, colors which no mere human eye can perceive. You see, as no human has seen, its great expanse of trillions of stars around which orbit limitless planets. You see every photon, neutrino, and electron encompassed within every atom. You see matter and antimatter, darkness and light. You hear its perfect, beautiful silence.
—- Would you like us to divulge unto you the secrets of the universe? We have seen them all. We can slake your search for knowledge. We can quench your relentless thirst. In us, there is answer. We ask for nothing in exchange. —-
It is all you have ever wanted. Well, not all. Not really. You once had more. Friendship, companionship, even love. Great minds with which to share your curiosity, your knowledge. Yet knowledge for the sake of knowledge is purposeless. You crave…love.
You stand on a planet split open. Lava from its collapsing core erupts around you. In the sky, a white sun's light fades, and a companion blue sun splinters. A calcified figure kneels in grief as the planet continues to burn, and its glaive is suspended in a shimmering splinter of resonant Luster. His sobs resound on the ruined surface of this dying planet, and they are swallowed by the cries of a thousand voices behind you.
Your back hits a smooth surface, and you look up to find a veiled statue. Ghost glances at you nervously and expands his shell. The sobbing grows, and in the din you hear a single, breathless voice, struggling against the weight of its stone visage.
You pose your question, and your voice breaks - why him? Not Rhulk. Him.
'We sought allies, the means to grow our strength. But we could only break them, reform them into our tools, an extension of our hands. We are not so powerful as we pretend, and we are so afraid. We fear the Light. We fear discord. We fear isolation. We are so alone.'
The light of Lubrae’s dying sun cracks through the segmented shape of Rhulk, the last of his beloved people that he slaughtered. Behind you, the voice suddenly sputters and chokes. Its last gasp is a thousand.
—- We uplifted the First Disciple from a paltry existence. We removed his pain, his futile clinging to the vestiges of a love unreturned. We gave to him purpose and the means to shape a better existence. And you cut him out of finality. No matter. We have made more. —-
No. You do not accept that answer. You want him. The why which you were denied. You seek not the grief which has swallowed you, but an understanding of his ignominious end. His purpose. Why you were not enough.
So you ask again. Your Witness answers.
—- You cut him down. We did not. It is not we who cannot speak his name. —-
You turn from the ruins of Lubrae, and Calus stands before you. A warm presence of glittering gold, with that smile on his face that was only ever for you. He has stripped his dazzling splendor, his golden halls, overflowing baths, and rich offerings of trinkets and glory. That was never what you wanted. You wanted only this, only him, and he is here, all of him, for you and you alone. Calus’ hand is held out in calcified beckoning, the jovial glint in his eye immortalized in stone. You hear whispers, but they are his, and he calls your name.
—- Would you like us to return him to you? Not broken and in despair, but hopeful, whole. Resplendent. In the final shape, we would eternally reunite you. We ask for nothing in exchange. —-
"He's not real," your Ghost pleads, but he shudders with another suffocating pulse of darkness.
But for you, formidable, insatiable you, this is still not enough. You do not take Calus’ hand. Instead, you turn to the darkness.
You pose your final question - why me? Of all others, why me?
The room in which you stand is enveloped in total blackness. Ghost expands his shell for some light, and in it illuminates the smallest veiled statue you have yet seen. It is barely your height. It does not weep or lament. You hear no air and feel no movement. It is a perfect stillness.
And then the veil falls from the statue. As the threadbare fabric slips down its chin, you see its face at last.
Your effigy turns as if in a trance, its shroud falling beneath its feet, its movement blurred like sand shifting in a desert. For every step your effigy takes, she sinks further into the ground. The room takes shape around her, cavernous, with high stone walls that only just keep out the cold. Rows of dusty tomes line the wall. In the desaturated light, you cannot make out the titles, but you do not need to. You know them. You know this library, this study. This is the ruin you haunted for centuries. You can but watch as she, as you, are drowned by your isolation. You waste away. Alone, abandoned, and unloved.
Your breath is stolen, and you find no words for your question. And yet, your Witness answers.
—- Do you still not understand? Your Emperor did. So to you, we pose the same question: What is the worth of a life lived without purpose? —-
You see the rust and decay fade from your old haunt. The tomes are restored, the dust settled, the sun gently shining through the faded stained glass. You hear through your walls the din of your village, its people protected and content. They live, they contemplate, they rejoice. This is your world restored.
—- Would you not like us to carve purpose into the futility of your existence? So that you may stand where your lessors stood; stronger, wiser, than you have ever dreamed. To be infinite. We ask for nothing in exchange. —-
You stand enveloped in a being with a thousand, unified names. And then you stand back in the Impasse, back in the memory of your old home. The storm has lifted, the sky has cleared, and the monolith looms on the horizon. The soft breeze caresses the skin of your face and parts your raven hair. The gentle wind carries the whisper of a thousand, unified voices.
gummygunk
stormborns
pixelskylines
turnnoffyourmind