Alium, p.62
Alium, page 62
“But not us,” Elts agreed. “Yet here we are.”
“You are a child of Caelare,” said Sylna to the sorceress with dignity. “As are you, Ogwold.”
“But what about you!” Ogwold bellowed, hardly controlling the volume of his voice. “You are related to Primexcitum. He’s the god of the gods! And he’s your dad!”
“No, he cannot be my father. I already have one! And Primexcitum has been imprisoned for millennia.” Sylna did not seem as shocked as she perhaps should have been, but still her eyes were wide with uncertainty. “I had a vision of his burning cell when I first came to Muewa, and discerned that I had some relation to him. If the song is accurate, I am at most a descendant far removed in blood.” She stood and removed her hat, rotated it awkwardly in her hands. “But… that is not important. If these are our instructions, we must comprehend the stanza concerning Byron.” She suddenly fitted the hat back to her head snugly and composed herself.
The mercenary grunted, unchanged in countenance. “Seems like all it said was that I’m not like you all, half god or whatever.”
“Because you are mortal, you make the final decision…” Ogwold thought out loud. “It’s just like Wygram said, about Primexcitum’s Decree! He didn’t think the gods should ever bother the mortals, and so mortals can make their own decisions. But clearly the gods are involved in our doings in some ways. Maybe this waking of the Alium is too big of a decision to make without mortal input.” He turned gazing up at the vast sphere.
Sylna began now fully to pace back and forth. “Certainly I am reminded of that philosophy… Really the whole idea behind it is to make sure that there is free will for mortals as there is for gods.”
Now Elts spoke up. “We must consider why Primexcitum made such a decree. He was inspired by his own maker, All, who promised not to interfere in his own life. But in the song, All seems to have done this very thing in completing the Alium. God broke Its word; but not quite yet, because the Alium is asleep. In fact, I believe All itself is in a way incarnated in this orb. If we waken it, we are breaking that primordial promise, we are bringing All into the universe All promised not to interfere with. Our own free will may be at stake, and certainly the free will of the gods as well.”
“I see what you mean,” said Sylna. “We may be standing in the very presence of the One incarnated.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Byron gruffly. “I have no issue with waking up this Alium. It’s easy enough to recognize the ships of Duxmortul in the song as well. In that case, this thing was made to defeat the Shadow.” Byron reached back and hefted Azanog onto his shoulder, grinning.
“You must be right!” Sylna gasped.
Elts’ tails flicked. “Well I suppose it really is your decision, Byron. I won’t stop you.”
Ogwold’s head swung speaker to speaker, his jaw loose. “Hold on a moment! We might lose our free will? And how do we know All is going to help anyone but the gods?”
“You’re one to talk,” Byron laughed. “You trust everyone you meet!”
“Perhaps the Alium is not exactly All itself, but a different spirit imbued.” Now it was Elts who sat upon the platform, for she had fully accepted the mercenary was set in his mind, and the voice and the words of the song had moved her deeply.
Sylna, however, was still quite anxious, and could not keep still. “Even so, it is a power far beyond not only our own gods but the High Gods as well.”
“If we’re all going to die anyways, we’ve got nothing to lose,” Byron said with sudden exuberance. “I doubt this marble can be harmed, so I’ll use the key I know best,” he grunted, stepping forward swiftly; then he swung out his sword into the living silver light.
The blade arced high through the air, and came crashing down through the side of the great orb. Ogwold, Sylna, and Elts shielded their eyes and staggered back from the exploding halo round the stoic mercenary. Torrents of light erupted about the path of his weapon’s edge as it drove deep into the luminous, seething flesh, but Byron only gritted his teeth and began to laugh wildly as he pressed onward, advancing on his lean legs until he was swallowed up in radiance. Then there was a tremendous, brilliant flash of light, and all was dark.
*
Clean, earthy air rushed over Byron’s face, and he blinked his eye, still emblazoned with the blinding face of the sphere. Slowly the flash faded and dispersed into multiple points of light, which were the stars, dusted across a cloudless navy firmament. All around were the black peaks of the high mountains, and to the east but the long, neon blue moon Xeléd cresting their craggy shoulders. The hilt of Azanog was still tightly crushed in his fist.
He was out in the crater, but sitting up he could see clear across to the other side, for the great mountain Zenidow had entirely vanished. In its place before him was an infinitely deep and dark pit, as though whatever once caused the vast caldera in the land had now sunk further down into the bowels of Altum.
Byron was seated upon a broad ledge some twenty meters from the abyss. Beside him was splayed the grey hulk of Ogwold, fast asleep, and behind them Sylna slumped against a smooth boulder. The witch started at the sound of his boots upon the rock, but the ogre required many a powerful shake before rolling over and yawning cavernously, blinking his eyes, and then leaping up with a holler as he took in the strange sight. His bellowing woke Elts, who they now saw nearer to the rim of the great hole.
Silently the company gathered at the edge, and stood in awe of its vacancy, peering into the endless dark. Way down in the deepest, purest black, the space seemed more empty and wondrous than even the spaces between the stars on a moonless night. But even as Ogwold was thinking so, he thought he saw a single such pinprick of light far away in the centre of the world, and it seemed now to be drawing closer and closer. Sylna spotted it next, then Elts, and Byron, but none spoke as it grew brighter and more lucid.
Suddenly and swift as an arrow it shot silently past their eyes and up into the night sky, arching across the coal-beds of stars and banking off along the crater’s face. Slowly, gently hovering, it came to pause not unlike the little sphere which Ogwold had brought so far into the mountains, yet as it now approached them they saw it was not a sphere at all.
Floating towards them just above the rock was a being of amorphous shape, its texture and arrangement of parts slowly changing, as though it were a collection of silver and white liquids suspended in space. It swam through the air like an amoeba, then ceased to move when it was but a meter removed from the company, hovering as in observation.
Suddenly it condensed into a slim body no taller than an adolescent Novare, which sprouted silver limbs like little arms and legs. Between its nimble shoulders lastly formed rose a simple, oval head. Upon its seamless surface there opened wide and curious two large white eyes, and a soft, thin mouth.
“You were in my dream,” said the silver child.
Grady Lynch grew up shooting hoops and telling stories. He loves all fiction, but there is no form of art so inspiring to him as the novel. Alium is his first contribution to that sphere. In even its most minor characters and smallest themes, it speaks to all those books and authors without whose spirits it could never have existed.
Grady Lynch, Alium
