31. COMM #3
The chaos crystallized, shaping into a vision far less alien.
Jacen saw the ocean again. Its waters receded, leaving in their place a barren expanse of rock and sand.
Beasts crawled out of the sea on four legs, then walked on two.
They developed tools and settlements. They began to speak.
They lived and died and changed and lived and died.
The only constant, underlying it all, was the Source.
It flowed beneath the surface of reality like a great artery, everywhere and nowhere.
Deep in the canyon, the Source opened wide—the first Gate. It brought forth heat and shadow.
Naxal.
Generation after generation, the demon chose its hosts from among the people of the Scar.
They counted among their number brilliant scholars and great leaders, bloodthirsty conquerors and depraved murderers .
. . women and men who led lives defined by grief, jealousy, or hate.
All of them were in pain, especially toward their ends, as their bodies withered beneath the inexorable force of Naxal’s power.
Some were driven mad. When they succumbed, the Disciples of the Gate returned Naxal to the Source.
They took it on faith that their great guardian would return to choose another.
For fifteen thousand years, it was always so.
Time raced forward. The Zal Empire flourished, expanding across the continent. They even began to look up—toward the stars. They traveled to the moons and sent probes out into the dark.
They could not have known what was listening.
A hooded man sat on a shadow-shrouded throne.
His ruby eyes peered out like dying twin suns.
His body sagged with tumors, dark veins like lines of frost cracking over his limbs.
He felt pain and ecstasy, grief and mania, and he could no longer tell them apart.
This man’s mind was a nightmare from which he could not escape.
His voice was loudest of all, clearer than the rest. Neri said, He was the one before me.
The man looked directly at Jacen. I am Artek Var Naxal.
Jacen knew him—perhaps not by name, but by deed. He knew what they were about to witness.
A dozen soldiers of the Firstborn Empire, clad in beetle-like armor, approached the throne.
They left a shattered resistance in their wake, countless bodies strewn across the stone.
They trained their strange weapons on Artek Var Naxal.
He raised a withered, blackened hand. It pulsed red, with an energy so mighty, it made the canyon tremble.
Soldiers’ steps faltered. One shouted at the others. Jacen did not understand the language, but he didn’t need to. They did not believe Artek would go through with whatever he was threatening.
“I am a god,” Artek said. “And we refuse to go quietly.”
Now one of the soldiers spoke Zal. “We can give you freedom from your affliction—a cure. Cooperate, and let us learn from you. You need not die here with the rest of your people.” A pause. “A god is all-powerful, and you are not.”
“No,” said Artek. “A god is sacrifice.” He staggered to his feet, as he had not been capable in years. He spat one final curse at his enemy: “Sha. Et. Nath.”
You. Are. Dust.
And then he broke the world.
He channeled energy from the Source until, like a dam of kindling before a river, his body disintegrated. The earth trembled and cracked. The seas rose. Fire rained from the sky, poisoning the canyon, mutating its plants and animals, turning the western sands to glass. That first
Gate below Zal Fel spasmed, the great artery of the Source hemorrhaging and bringing forth demons in unprecedented numbers.
The Cataclysm. Not an error born of hubris, but the last gasp of resistance before ruin.
New gods with ancient eyes remade the world in their image, with their strange machines and a city of pale stone. Language, technology, tradition—even hope itself—were all but lost.
With the destruction of Artek’s body, for the first time in fifteen thousand years, Naxal was stranded without a host, unable to leave this world behind.
Weakened but not defeated, somewhere deep in the canyon, it waited.
Fine tendrils reached across the Scar, touching the minds of anyone sensitive enough, collecting all the despair, sorrow, fear, pain, hunger, sickness—and wrath—of a shattered world.
Naxal fed on that for centuries. It called. It burned. It demanded blood.
Some remained who still believed. They lived in hiding, always searching, waiting for the day their prayers would be answered.
They had not prayed for peace.
Reality pitched and whirled around Jacen.
Shadows swept past him, caught on cosmic winds, and that chorus of a thousand voices throbbed through his head.
They spiraled around an impossibly dense and complex knot at the center of everything.
It was everything, and it was nothing. An infinite void. A demon star, devouring the light.
It was also a door, and it needed only to be opened.
I see. Neri’s voice was so faint, Jacen strained to hear him. They say when I’m with them . . . I’ll see everything. I’ll understand.
Jacen had become suddenly, painfully aware of his own mortality. He needed to get back, escape before the overwhelming presence snapped his sanity like a twig.
He could not use his human tongue, so he spoke in the language of demons. One question. A shout into that omnipotent shadow.
WHAT ARE YOU?
In answer, he received just three words:
WE . . . ARE . . . ALL
And Jacen awoke.