Dark.
A dark as deep as anything could be.
<hr>
Light.
A fragile, mellow light the color of spring grass.
A ball of awareness absorbed the light without comprehension.
The light split and clumped into bleary forms, gaining new shades and hues,
becoming a series of objects.
In front of the ball of awareness—or above?—was a
nest of spindly, armlike things that looked hostile.
<i>Person</i>, a part of the awareness whispered. <i>I am a person, a man.</i>
The man became conscious of his body, of his heart pumping
blood, of his lungs drawing air, of his eyes growing watery in the green light.
He moved what he knew to be his tongue, though the concept was slippery—moved
it from side to side in his mouth.
He blinked. A satisfying sensation. He blinked again.
The armlike things were definitely <i>above</i> him. They were
luminaires of some kind, snaking down from a green ceiling. He was lying on a
hard surface, its metal cool against his flesh. Warm, thick air surrounded him.
Sounds. A metallic tinkering.
The man slid his gaze to a slouching figure beside him. The
figure was arranging odd steel implements on a desk, not paying attention to
the man. He looked, impossibly, like an overfed triceratops in filthy overalls.
His pebbly orange skin was brindled in red. Strapless black goggles sat at the
base of a beak. The goggles seemed as small as a pince-nez on top of his
huge horned head. His broad, swept-back frill was studded with little nubs of
gray bone. He wore leathery black gloves and big steel-soled boots. He was
mumbling to himself in a weird tongue, his voice a creaky bassoon.
Waru—the man remembered his own name; that was a start—sat up
and looked around. He was in a forest teeming with ferns and stout palm trees.
An <i>indoor</i> forest.
Around him stood desks and shelves and a
mobile bank of computers, the screens of which bubbled with diagrams. All these
objects levitated a few inches off the ground.
The chamber connected to others in all directions through
marching rows of groined vaults, their pillar-archways covered in moss. A white
mist obscured more distant chambers.
<i>Waru Kingsfield. Yes. I remember. But who am I?</i>
He was naked. It felt wrong.
All over his body, thin wires had been inserted. That felt
wrong, too.
He grabbed a bouquet of wires stuck to his chest and ripped them
out. The pain was dazzling. He screamed.
The creature arranging implements—a member of a race called Cerans,
he would come to learn—jumped with a shrill cry, the goggles flying off his
head. He scampered off through the pillar-archways and vanished into the mist.
Bewildered, Waru ripped off the rest of the wires and jumped down
from the hovering slab he’d been lying on.
<i>Waru Kingsfield. A man. A Dragon.</i> But what did any of that
mean?
He studied the implements on the desk. Surgical tools, by the
look of it. And a device that resembled a qi reader.
<i>Qi. I know qi.</i>
But the qi was a tiny flame inside him. He pointed the device’s
prong at himself and pushed a button. Symbols appeared on the screen: a pair of
green triangular logograms. They looked faintly familiar. The computers showed the same symbols.
Lying on a desk was a tattered black gi with a dragon emblazoned
on it. Gasping in recognition, he snatched the gi and threw it on.
He could fight. He knew that much. But when he punched the air,
he felt weak.
He clutched a scalpel like a dagger and struck off through the
forest in search of the Ceran. A black six-winged dragonfly lofted from a fern
and sailed off in a blur.
“Show yourself!” he shouted. “I don’t know if you wish to harm
me, but I will defend myself with lethal force if I must!”
No answer.
He walked on, keeping away from the denser plumes of mist that
rolled through the trees.
He came to a transparent wall, corded here and there with vines. He gasped. Beyond the wall lay a wilderness of stars, uncountably many of
them, red and white and blue and yellow, flickering through veils of orange and
mauve and lavender dust.
“Szkel!” piped a voice behind him.
He whirled to find the Ceran clutching what looked like a huge
red butterfly net, the mesh humming with electricity. The Ceran’s yellow eyes
were wide. He was trembling.
“Clesch vin tzar tzumi!” The Ceran took a small disc of blue
crystal out of his overalls and tossed it at Waru’s feet.
Waru flinched, but the disc did not hurt him.
The Ceran gestured for Waru to pick it up.
Reluctantly, Waru
did. The disc glowed, then flared with bright strobing light.
Waru dropped the
disc and staggered back against the wall, his head swarming with those strange
triangular logograms. For a few seconds he had a splitting headache and feared
he’d sprung a trap. Then his mind stilled and he was himself again.
“Now we can speak to each other,” said the Ceran, still
trembling. “That locution disc you hold has altered your brain so you can
understand the Tzintzuni tongue, be it spoken or written. Please give it back,
as it cost me a thousand scales.”
Astonished, Waru tossed back the disc. “Who are you?” he
demanded. “Where am I?”
“I am Peleg. But I can’t imagine that name means anything to
you.” His fingers tapped his net in a fretful rhythm. “Do you intend
violence?”
“Not if I can avoid it.”
“That is marginally encouraging. Yet the scalpel in your
possession raises doubts.” Waru tossed the scalpel near Peleg; the Ceran picked
it up. “My doubts have receded somewhat. Please accompany me to the lounge and
I will explain all—but walk in front!”
The lounge turned out to be another forested chamber slithering
with mist. But this one had levitating chairs made of a soft shapeless
substance somewhere between foam and clay.
At a word from Peleg, two of the
chairs scooped up him and Waru. The foam-clay substance rippled under Waru. The feeling was pleasant, but Waru’s unease did not lessen.
“I don’t belong here,” he said. “I feel like I’m in a dream.”
“You could hardly be blamed for that,” said Peleg. From a
trolley, he dialed up two glassy bulbs full of yellow cream. Peleg’s chair drifted
over so he could pass Waru a bulb. “Do you have a name?”
“My name is Waru Yarran Ryusei Kingsfield,” said Waru. “That’s
about the only thing I know about me.”
Peleg frowned. “Amnesia. That is unfortunate.” He sucked some
cream out of his bulb’s tapered aperture. “But I suppose it’s a small price for
not being dead. As for me, I’m a deepspace trawler for the Clan of the
Carrion-Eaters. I trawl the vastnesses of interstellar space in search of
derelict qi ships. When I find one, my vessel’s retrieval arms gut the
bluestone drive from the qi ship’s engine room and reel it into my possession.
I then sell the drive on Asteron Prime. That’s my planet, as you may have guessed.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
"But a strange thing happened while I was trawling space today. My ship’s qi
reader brought me to you.”
“I don’t understand," said Waru. "I was floating in outer space?”
“If by <i>floating</i> you mean flying at five miles per
second. I’ve never seen anything like it. But the strangest part,” said Peleg,
frowning down at his bulb of cream, “is that you were dead, stone dead, when I found
you. Dead things don’t have qi signatures. Or so I thought. Truth be told—and I
hope you won’t take this personally—I had planned to, erm, study you before you
came back to life.”
“Take me apart, you mean.”
Peleg threw up a defensive hand. “You had no vitals! I was
certain you were dead!”
Waru pardoned him with a shrug. “Maybe I wasn’t all dead. Is
that possible?”
Peleg puffed his cheeks thoughtfully. “Or the qi—well,
resurrected you. There are some, and I did not count myself among them until
today, who believe qi has a will of its own, and guides nature to its own
mysterious ends.”
“But why? Why me?”
“If only I knew!”
Waru clenched his fists. “I must learn who I am, where I came
from.”
“Ah, the second question I can answer. You’re a human, of
course. Based upon the trajectory you were flying when I found you, and after
running simulations of this sector’s stellar alignments over the preceding
millennia, your flight path perfectly intersects that of the Sol system nine
hundred and seventy-six years ago. It therefore seems likely you came from
Sol—which does not surprise me, Sol being your race’s birthstar.”
“What do you know of Sol?”
Peleg’s eyes glittered. “Now that is curious. Come to think of
it, you would have left Sol the very same year that <i>he</i> awoke. How
intriguing.”
“‘He’?”
“The Plague of Grief, he is called among those who fear him.
Joy-Eater. Shadowblight. King of Sorrows and Lamentations. To his worshippers,
he is the Nova’s Light, he is Truthbringer, he is the Flame of the Source, he
is the Holy Storm Eternal. Others call him merely the Blue Emperor, or Lord
White-Eyes. But his true name is Azreth.”
A piece of ice fell through Waru’s soul. “I know that name.”
“So you know of him.” Peleg shuddered. “Never has a being
brought such pain to my world. Asteron Prime was the first of his conquests.
There have been many since. His accursed Galactic Fief has conquered thousands
of worlds. None have withstood his armies, not even the Dracari. Yet Azreth
himself rarely leaves Earth. He seeks but one thing: a being who can defeat him
in single combat.
“So strong is Azreth that few warriors in the last millennium
have given him the slightest challenge. Yet many, many, many have tried, for
anyone who defeats him is entitled by law to his Galactic Fief. His challengers
come from all across the Fief to participate in the Grand Tourney of Earth,
which he hosts once every century. The victor of that Tourney gets to fight
Azreth to the death.
“A mad wish, if ever there was one, but the Azrethi Galactic
Fief is so vast there is never a shortage of madness. I have heard it said that
at any one time there are a million beings on Earth training for the next Grand
Tourney. Of those, only a few hundred will qualify for the Tourney at all, and
virtually everyone who participates will die in the process. A dismal ambition,
wouldn’t you agree?”
Peleg’s words had knocked
loose many thoughts in Waru.
Waru was slow to answer. “This Azreth sounds like
a vile tyrant. If his challengers believe they have even a tiny chance of
overthrowing him, the near-certainty of death might be worth it.”
“Fools! All of them! None
can defeat the Plague of Grief! But again, it strikes me—you came from Earth
around the time of Azreth’s emergence. Can this be a coincidence? Legend speaks
of humans finding Azreth in the depths of the Earth and awakening him. In a
brief time—the Nine Hours of Disobedience, it is called—Azreth laid waste to
all humans who opposed him.
“Humans were a stubborn
race in those days. Some launched atomics against him. But in doing so, they
only slaughtered themselves. Fewer than one in ten humans survived this Great
Hemoclysm. A better fate than some races faced at the Joy-Eater’s hands, but
worse than most.”
“This monster,” said Waru.
“You say he came from the depths of the Earth. What else is known about him?”
“He is the last member of
a race that lived on Earth before humans evolved. The Tzintzuni, they called
themselves. It means ‘acolytes of nature’. A strange and powerful race of qi
adepts. But of Azreth’s life, little is known. He is a sullen and secretive
creature.”
“What does he look like?”
Peleg grimaced. “You wish
to see his visage.”
“If you can show me.”
“The sight fills me with
dread. As a boy, my creche-mother kept Azreth’s effigy in my room, to watch
over me so I would not misbehave. But I suppose an image cannot harm me.”
Peleg pulled a device from his overalls and cast a hologram into the air.
The sight startled Waru so
much, he flung his bulb away and would have toppled from his chair had it not
adjusted to catch him. His heart raced. His skin crawled.
His voice creaked with
hysteria. “I know him!”
The memories came rushing
so fast, so painful, he thought they would crush him. “No,” he groaned,
remembering the avian demon who turned his father into a pattern of blood. “No,
no,” he muttered, remembering his mother imprisoned in a crystal, remembering
all the death and destruction at the dig-site, remembering Azreth’s cold hand
as it clutched him, drew back, flung him into the sky.
Peleg watched Waru with
wide eyes. “Are you alright?”
Overcome with a nameless
panic, Waru jumped out of his floating chair and raced off in a random
direction, then doubled back a different way, his pulse racing, his mind a
white fuzz of dizziness.
“It can’t be—can’t
be—can’t be….”
Peleg fidgeted nervously.
“Storms and starfire,” he whispered, “I’ve brought a madman aboard!”
An instant of darkness
came over Waru.
Then he found himself flat
on his back amongst the ferns, staring up at a fearful-looking Peleg.
“You fainted,” Peleg
explained.
Waru rose unsteadily.
Without getting back in his chair, he told the Ceran everything he could
remember about his encounter with Azreth in the heart of Antarctica. Peleg’s
expression turned from curious to bewildered to awestruck, and finally to
silent, stunned contemplation.
“It all makes sense now,”
said Peleg sadly. “It all makes sense. The grief must be fresh in your heart.
From your perspective, Azreth killed your father mere moments before you awoke
on my table.”
“Grief, yes. But more than
that, I feel….” Waru trembled, fists balled tight, face burning.
“What?” Peleg asked. “You
feel what?”
“<i>Rage.</i>”
The feeling was a nuclear
furnace in Waru’s chest. Anger and Waru were one. His heart was racing so fast
he thought he might pass out again, but the anger, red-hot and vast as the
surface of the sun, kept him standing. He screamed with insane fury, screamed
and screamed.
When at last he gained
hold of himself, ignoring Peleg’s fearful fidgeting, he paced the room,
calculating vengeance.
“I will obliterate
Azreth,” he said coolly. “I will torture him and torture him, and then I will
destroy him.”
Peleg swallowed. “An
understandable ambition. But perhaps I can recommend more achievable ones.
Like, say, gardening.”
“Azreth must face justice! He must! When is the next Grand Tourney?”
“In twenty-four solyears,
but—”
“More than enough time to
train. We must go to Earth immediately. How far is it?”
“One hundred and
seventy-two lightyears. My bluestone drive is reasonably adequate; it can make
that trip in nineteen solyears. That is three weeks, ship-time. But I assure
you, time is not your problem, Waru Kingsfield. If you had all the time in the
universe, you would be no more likely to defeat Azreth. And that is because <i>no
one</i> can.”
“Twenty-four minus
nineteen is five,” said Waru, Peleg’s words washing over him. “Five years to
train. Funny. That’s how long I asked Azreth for, just before he threw me into
space.”
Peleg shook his head. “I
don’t know how to put this gently. You are not strong enough to kill a
star-conquering demon.”
“You underestimate the Son
of the First Dragon. Take me to Earth.”
Peleg ticked off three
nervous fingers. “First, Earth is much too far away. The fuel cost would be
exorbitant. Second, you have no means to compensate me for the work I would
forego. Third, I fear Earth down to the little crystals in my bones. It is the very
den of Azreth!”
Waru said impatiently,
“I’ll pay your costs. I’ll pay double.”
Peleg cocked his head.
“How?”
“They must have jobs on
Earth.”
“None that would earn you
the nine thousand scales I’d require, notwithstanding all the time I’d lose.”
“None at all?” said Waru
in disbelief.
Peleg rubbed his forehorn.
“You say you’re a great fighter. If that’s so, you could make a fair amount in
the fighting pits. More likely, you’d die.”
“<i>Was</i> a great
fighter. My qi is dim and pale compared to what it was. But that will be fixed,
in time. Are there other ways to make money?”
“Outside of gambling and
theft? Or games of great danger, like gauntlet lodges or teleportation
chicken?”
“I’ll do whatever it
takes. Surely there are just—jobs?”
“Alas, humans are a lowly
race on Earth. They number two billion, but the offworld races who inhabit the
planet are five times more numerous and tend to regard your kind as a nuisance.
The status of humans on Luna is more favorable—there, they have some power—but
Lunarians have no truck with outsiders.”
“Whatever. I’ll find a way
to pay you back. I promise.”
“Ah, but how do I know
you’ll keep that promise?”
“You don’t. I’m at your
mercy. But I swear on my honor as a Dragon.”
Peleg made a chewing
motion with his jaw, his eyes far away. “The Dragons fought Azreth during the
Nine Hours of Disobedience. This is known. It takes a mad sort of honor to
fight a demon knowing you will die, but honor all the same. I suppose you share
this honor yourself, given your goal.” He threw up his hands. “Very well. But
you must pay me back triple the fuel cost: twenty-seven thousand scales, no
less. I must be compensated for the unpleasantness of coming to Azreth’s world.
And you must pay me as soon as you can. I do not expect you to live long, if
you aspire to become a Tourney Ronin.”
“Deal. What is a Tourney
Ronin?”
“It is what you must
become to prepare for the Grand Tourney. But that is no urgent matter.”
Peleg hopped from his seat with a grunt and straightened his overalls. “Great storms
of Asteron, what strange circumstances I have tumbled into. And you, Waru, have
tumbled deeper yet. Come with me, if you would. I will bid my Pterids prepare
your sleeping chambers while I draw up an official contract and set course
for—Earth.” He shuddered at the word.