Chapter 9

Sorel arrived breathlessly at the clearing—the one Amalia had noted as the site of his transformation, where he had seen light and felt shadow. He dropped to his knees and felt the grass here: ambivalent to his power. The trees ignored, tolerated him—immune he guessed to the strength he possessed. He whispered to them; some replied bitterly, others sealed themselves from him. But they did not evict him as the old oak had done. He was not the first they had to endure. He asked them about his master, wondered if he was light or shadow.

None answered, except Amalia. “Your question is dichotomous. For is he neither light nor shadow, yet he is both light and shadow. He is light to those who love him; he is shadow to those who fear him. His essence changes to your perceptions—or he changes his nature to fit that which is in your heart. To the liar, he is darkness incarnate. To the trustworthy he is friend above all friends. And as such, Sorel, you must guard your heart. So do not bother yourself with the trees here. They have learned what you need comprehend,” she noted and raised her brows.

Sorel pursed his lips at her answer and spun, taking in the cold, harsh resilience of the forest here. The oak brush wove thickets beneath the insensitive pines, whose needles littered the forest floor. Then he found a path, dipping into a slight gulley and stretching off into the foothills. Closing his eyes, he retraced the steps. Felt the heavy hands guiding him, blindfolded, back to his reed mat under shadow. Amalia stepped lightly behind him.

“Yes, the Corcea camp is that way,” she intuited his question.

“Our destination?” Sorel wondered without turning.

“Of course.”

“You were there while I was prisoner,” Sorel deduced.

“While you were being liberated, I was,” she clarified.

“Who were the two fellows, my escorts? One self-confident—perhaps too much so, the other, a bit slower…”

“Marnal and Blisick. You don’t want to meet them again. Their hearts are as thick as their skulls.”

“I had to suppress a laugh, though, many times,” Sorel recalled.

“Had you glimpsed their faces, you would have been glad you did,” Amalia replied without a smile. “They are two of the many hands our master uses. Be glad you were blindfolded.”

Sorel scrunched an eyebrow, but said nothing more of the two. Perhaps he would meet them again—have a new chance to evaluate them with all of his senses. But the path beckoned him, the trees seemed old, silent comrades, from an era, long past in the few short days. Yes, he was something different now, but he believed Amalia—it could be for the better. He leapt down the path with a renewed energy to discover his maker with new eyes. To grow under him—to surpass him. But Amalia quieted his energy.

“Remember, Sorel, you have been transformed, and must live with us—with the Corcea; I gladly accept this, but others may not. Not yet.”

Sorel turned to glance at her cold stare. “You have joined a stubborn race, Sorel,” she continued. “Some will see you as a threat to their position with the master. Others, like myself, have yearned for someone to break the master’s control over us. They will befriend you. But be wary, Sorel. The master will draw out any subversion and punish it mercilessly. And his guards, the Loche—Marnal and Blisick among them—are completely loyal, brainwashed even…you will understand when you see them.”

“I suppose I’ll just follow your lead, then,” Sorel said sarcastically. Any sign of amusement left Amalia’s face. Sorel shrugged his shoulders.

“Be careful: that’s all I’m saying, Sorel,” Amalia cautioned. Sorel nodded, but still felt anxious to see the place of his imprisonment again, as if on the other side of the walls now. “Sorel,” she pleaded with a short breath. The trees turned with him. A wry smile crept across her face. “Race you there,” she challenged and broke into a sprint.

^*^

The first phone call did not confirm his fears. Dr. Livingbree had asked the head researcher to query the Imperial Databanks for his old friend—but not much more than that—a certain Farlile Gontha (the man he always knew as Fargon). The man had replied that yes, Farlile had been under Imperial employment for a time, but had been released from service, two or three years ago now. Livingbree had asked the occupation that he had held. After a brief silence, the answer had come: Imperial Inquisitor, serving particularly in commercial transportation. Livingbree had then questioned the man about Farlile’s dismissal. Retirement had been the man’s answer. Of course, Livingbree had thanked the man and ended the call.

Fargon had always seemed an interesting fellow, but his eccentricities hinted at a false base—that the Fargon they knew had his own realm, an agenda of his own, and that his real face and character rarely surfaced the waves of deception rippling across himself. Livingbree never liked Fargon’s lack of sincerity when they worked together, all those years ago, on the establishment of a new university in the capital. He would promise, alright, and sometimes would fulfill those promises—if they lined up with his own purposes. Ever the man’s pliability vexed Livingbree. Fargon had not seemed the assassin type to him. He was too short for the role. But then, his ability to lie and set his victims at ease—perhaps even kill them laughing—would make him a perfect assassin.

But that was over now. Olin had killed him. A part of Livingbree wanted to clap, to applaud Fargon’s demise. And yet, he had known the man—not on good terms always—for nearly thirty years. Should that alone not give him reason to mourn—if only a little—for this man? And who would mourn him? His family—did he even have one? His employer?

That question moved Livingbree down another path of thought, to what he had set out to discover in the first place: the Empire had not employed Fargon for some time, now. So if Fargon was not employed by the same Imperial Division that had likely ordered the abduction of Wilcox and Eva, who then hired him to assassinate Olin? Livingbree had assumed it was the Emperor, but now the waters had been muddied. It had seemed clear to him: Fargon, Imperial Inquisitor, discovered Wilcox’s old friend smuggling something important—or dangerous—and ambushed them at sea. When the girl escaped and fled to Wilcox, Fargon would have concluded that he had a hand in the plot—whatever it was—and captured both of them for interrogation. The Inquisitor would not risk someone as dangerous as Olin snooping around and would figure he was doing the Emperor a favor. But, Livingbree concluded to himself, it was no longer that simple.

He decided not to brood on the subject for too long. He punched Olin’s extension on the earphone. This would change his approach entirely. The other end buzzed several times. But when the voice answered, it was not Olin, but a smooth, rehearsed voice, one Livingbree recognized immediately: the ex-Inquisitor, Farlile Gonath.

Chapter 8

When Sorel found the road, stretching east from the border of the forest, he sat, without thought, on the concrete—something he could not corrupt. He became again that little boy, alone. But this time, there were no comforting voices in the blue shadows and black branches in his night. This time, he was truly alone—an enemy of his friends and friend to his enemy. His tail flipped beside him, searching for warmth in the sunlight. It found none. Even that had abandoned him. And so he sat, leagues from any other living being, on human creation—something inanimate, something immune to his influence. Had any traveler found him, he or she might have deemed him an ungodly statue of horrific artist hands. Had he then moved, the traveler would have certainly screamed, turned, and fled, to relate his or her encounter with a demon over a mug of ale at some tavern as far from his place as possible.

Footsteps behind him shook him from his dream. The sun had lowered itself significantly towards the horizon. His long, sensitive ears told him the footsteps were not human. As he stood to face the visitor, he stared at the concrete beneath his feet, his tail twitching. Then a familiar iridescent voice called his eyes up to her own, “You are as I am, now. Perhaps we should start over, Sorel, hunter of the Corcea.”

Sorel locked his gaze with Amalia’s. “You did this to me. You drove me from any comfort I ever had. Why? Why should I ever…” Sorel demanded, voice quivering, but she interrupted him.

“Sorel, look at yourself. Look at me.” She walked upright, but boasted the same sleek coat of fur he did, though her’s was tinted a sandy brown—his a dark grey, nearly black on his back. Her long thin face and smoldering eyes burned with something less than apology, but more than sympathy. “I did this to myself,” she continued. “As did you.” She ventured a step closer. “Yet we are more than something foul. We do not always and completely corrupt.” She crouched and examined a blade of grass, struggling against the concrete, vying for room for its roots, cracking and overcoming through time. Clasping it between her fingers, Amalia watched with empathetic eyes as the green flushed with color, then dried into a withered, dead thing, hanging in her simple grasp. “It is this form that reflects our master—it is his power that flows through us, now.” Here she paused, catching and holding Sorel’s confused glance. “It is not corruption that destroys. It is an overabundance of power—of life itself.” She let the blade fall to the concrete, where it shattered into dust.

“But in other forms, that power is diminished, and may restore life.” Before him, she transformed into her human form. She bent over the leaf and breathed a word on it. The brown faded, green rushed back into its veins as it stretched again towards the receeding sun. “Sorel,” Amalia continued, “it is a fragile thing, life is. And as you are, you possess to much life; to much power for the trees to understand. The burning they felt was not poison, Sorel, but fertilizer—something too potent for them to understand. And they feared you.” She rose to his side and again took her Corcea body. “Don’t you understand? With time, and practice you may return to the forest, not as corruptor, but as keeper—one who will preserve them for years. You have been given a gift, Sorel. Learn to use it, as I have, to bring life, not to destroy it.”

Sorel snorted. “Yet you attempted to destroy me.”

“Destroy? No, Sorel. Change,” she asserted. “I knew the power within you, I could see it. As a Corcea, you would have the power to destroy ultimately, as perhaps I feel our master wishes, or to restore ultimately.” Amalia lowered her eyes to the blade of grass. “I took a chance with you, Sorel. I brought you to our master, to complete your transformation. To you I left, I leave, the choice to corrupt or to resurrect.” She lowered her voice and whispered in his left ear. “You have the potential to become more powerful than he…you can redeem the forest from his grasp. You must, Sorel. For my sake, for all who exist under his power. You’re power does not completely stem from him, as does mine. You learned of it as a human, and now, as a Corcea, you are that much more powerful.” Her voice dropped off into nothing more than blocked exhalations. “You are our savior, Sorel.”

He exhaled his confusion and stepped back. Her liquid eyes begged him to comply. But the oak’s words still reverberated within him: “Do not look.” Was he not to follow what seemed the obvious. He wanted to trust her; he desired to know that the trees were misguided and that he could revive them for eternity—to exist as their friend, forever.

“How can I trust you?” he finally managed to ask her. She looked to the sky, as if asking its advice. Then she wiped away the fur from her face and took her human form. Soft fingers held his jaw and compassionate eyes caressed his own.

“Trust this,” she whispered and closed his eyes with her thumbs. He felt her lips press against his own for a moment—which became something like an eternity. He lost himself in space, forgetting time. When the light came back to his eyes, it was clear and warm. She still held his face in her hands. “Look at yourself, now,” she urged with a smile.

Sorel glanced at his hands: the delicate, rounded fingers; pink skin, stained with blue veins. He felt his own face, smooth cheeks. His ears were again small and round and long, dark hair fell over them. He looked back at Amalia, who nodded him towards the grass. He stepped off the concrete and onto the vegetation. Nothing happened, except the tingle on the soles of his feet that made him laugh.

“You see?” Amalia chimed, “there is beauty, still, in who you are. In who we are.” Sorel stilled himself.

“How did you do it. How can I change myself?” he asked.

“Have you forgotten everything? Remember your bird. That charming little blackbird you knew. How did you change then? And, how you will change now!” Sorel’s memory lit with epiphany. He took two steps and leapt into the air, his blackbird wings catching him, wheeling him higher into the afternoon atmosphere. Amalia joined him, now as a thrush, in his aerial acrobatics. She sung to him, “You knew the blackbird well. Do you know an eagle?” Sorel dove quickly and rose on more powerful wings: eagle wings. A falcon with Amalia’s eyes screeched at his side. The bland world of desperation and loneliness disappeared below him. Here, he felt free again. He fixed an eye on Amalia, his liberator and asked with a glance, where are we going?

She rolled twice and veered off to the northwest, saying, back to him. To learn how to defeat him. Sorel dipped his wing and followed her. Finally, something made sense; at last, he understood why he had looked.

^*^

Dr. Livingbree’s epiphany did not come as they usually did. Instead of striking him in the shower or on the toilet, it came to him on his morning walk. And instead of forming itself as a question in his mind that demanded answering, this time it came as a bold statement that blistered his thoughts: Fargon was a name he knew; a name the Emperor knew, too; a name that neither he nor the Emperor would ever forget; a name that made Olin’s assassination attempt as far removed from the Imperial Special Forces as the blasted east from the west. His pace quickened and he made it back to his manor five minutes early. The first phone call he would make would be to the research center; the second, to Olin.

^*^

Though Olin’s eyes rarely left the road, his mind concentrated on the information he was streaming from the database. IHT was an archaeological institution whose charter was to examine the ancient ruins recently discovered just north of the Tiri Desert. Fourteen employed scientists lived there, raising a greater annual salary each than that of Dr. Livingbree himself. Whatever is going on there, must be of immense value to the Empire, Olin mused and scanned other relevant data while he programmed its exact location into the vehicle’s navigational system—just a small jaunt from his current position.

From the overview, he determined that the ruins were those of late Escollion descent, dating to the Second Civil War, when the Sages and Dark Tribunal finally collided in brutal combat, after joining to defeat the last Masok invasion and scattering the reptilian race to the four winds. The ruins were rumored to be a religious site, where the Dark Lords, who had in the end been defeated by the Archsage Illumni Falta, gathered to seal their power for a future return. Various histories accounted that their spell had failed and the Sages slaughtered the Dark Lords of the Tribunal to end the war and restore peace to the land.

Olin couldn’t figure out why the Emperor would maintain such an interest here, at the northwestern borders of the world—unless he somehow believed in the ancient lore of the magical powers these lords possessed. It was ridiculous, of course, to think of this power in their common era. It was scientific discovery, rationalization of the world, that accomplished miracles now. The miracle of electric light after dark, mechanical minds, a cure for every ailment, death, even, in his case. Perhaps the Emperor figured he could open a museum that would attract tourists from every part of the land—raise travel taxes, perhaps. Whatever the Emperor’s reasoning, Olin couldn’t understand it.

When he pulled in through the gate, a metallic fence closed behind him. Olin was astounded at the simplicity of the site. A long portable trailer, apparently the housing, rested on the northern side of the compound, and another similar one decorated the southern grounds. The sagebrush had been cleared from the middle, leaving dry, silt dirt surrounding the single, observable remnant of the ruin. A short, dark obelisk rose from the ground encircled by several tents, housing—Olin guessed—the equipment.

Olin stepped carefully from his vehicle, hiding Fargon’s pistol in his overcoat’s pocket. A man with a short, trim beard welcomed him, but stopped in mid-sentence. “Where’s your escort?” he wondered.

Olin fingered the trigger. “Fargon?” he ventured. The man screwed up his face.

“No, no…different name. Jellion. Or something like that,” the scientist said. “He didn’t come with you, then? Oh well. I’m glad you’re here. We thought you might have been held up by the weather or something.”

Or someone, Olin thought to himself. This man was not lying. Fargon had been lying, he knew, though he was good at disguising it. But this was the truth. Perhaps they were not to have known about it. Or perhaps the Empire wasn’t behind it at all. Olin decided he would trust this man.

“My name’s Biln. Pleasure to have you here, Olin. You’ll be staying in the southern compound with the geologists. Hope you don’t mind. We figure you’d take it better than the historians. They’re not much for conversation, and that’s saying a lot, coming from a scientist,” the man chuckled and guided Olin by the shoulder south to his temporary quarters, with a jimmy-rigged re-charge station, he was saying. The figure of shadow loomed in Olin’s peripheral vision: the thought that danced on the edges of an abyss of meaning. It gnawed at his conscious process. “I’m sure you’ll enjoy your stay. Ha, just listen to me, a regular innkeeper. Once you’ve had some time to replenish your energy tanks, come find me at the southwest edge of the dig, okay?”

Olin nodded and entered the haze of dust motes swirling around in front of the receding obscurity of the doorway. Thick, plain curtains veiled the windows, and a spongy, orange, brown, and red-splotched carpet had been laid over what once must have been a flatbed truck. The bunk-beds lining each side, however, did not squeak. Whether by quality or scientific field-modification, Olin couldn’t say. A small electric stove soothed a teapot to life—its first breaths squeezed into a whistle—which drew Olin’s attention to the recharge station, if it could be called that. Olin’s lethargic footsteps did not disturb the carpet, nor the teapot, as he advanced towards the station.

It happened to be the closest thing to sleep he truly experienced now. Yes, he had tested sleep programs—dreams even; though he was reluctant to try them—but when he power down all of his systems, back-up also, and draw power solely from an external source left him the most satisfied—though, his memory argued, not quite like the real thing. Olin considered plugging in, despite its seemingly rudimentary nature. Perhaps he would only shut down his normal systems and leave the back-up’s online. Just in case. The musty air, cool and dry with winter’s ravenous progression convinced him in the end—just to warm the joints. He reclined in the chair and inserted the proper cables. They had done well with the specifications Dr. Livingbree had sent them—judging from what they had to work with. Even that had surprised Olin, considering the high salaries he had discovered in the database. He shoved the questions to temporary memory storage and powered down—one hand still fingering the pistol.

Chapter 7

Olin’s earphone buzzed just as the dunes of the Tiri desert came into view. It was Dr. Livingbree. The old doctor had been close to him, ever since he had rescued the man as one of his first actions in this age of the world. Olin tried to answer cheerfully, despite his bland surroundings. The voice on the other end, twisted and shaken by some knot in the throat, did not seem to be Livingbree’s normal one. But before he asked the doctor outright what had happened something restrained him. The man beside him stared straight ahead—too straight, without wavering. His ears seemed to twitch in anticipation. Olin monitored himself.

“Go on.”

“Olin,” the voice stammered, slightly confused, “I…I don’t know how to say this.” Olin heard him take a deep, trembling breath. “Dr. Wilcox and Eva Decon were abducted from his manor this morning.” A thousand questions launched through his systems, and Olin wanted answers. But he refrained from asking the doctor, who continued. “I don’t know who they were or why they were after Eva and David. I don’t even know why Eva was there in the first place or where her grandfather, Sharle was at the time. But I do know Wilcox was dead serious when he asked me to contact you, Olin. He’s going to need your help.”

Olin nearly shouted his agreement when another warning went off in his CPC reminding him that he was not alone in the vehicle. He monitored his emotional response and stated flatly, “Yes, I’m interested in your product.” He paused slightly, then continued. “But, I have no means to buy it at the moment. May I call you back later?”

Dr. Livingbree’s voice sounded enthusiastic that he had deciphered the simple coded speech. “Yes, Olin. Please do. I will be ready to talk to you whenever you are free.”

“I will. Thank you. Have a good day, too,” Olin replied and hung up. Fargon turned his head sideways.

“You buy from telemarketers?” he wondered with a crooked eyebrow and a half-smile.

Olin held his palms open and gestured towards himself. “All the new upgrades. Everyone wants me to try them out. Some aren’t so great, but most work well. And they’re quite cheap—promotional items or prototypes.”

Fargon stuck out his lower lip. “Sounds like a trashy gimmick to me. I mean if someone offered me a new liver or some flashier fingernails over the phone, I’d tell them to go kick a Sanyx.”

Olin could only shake his head and gaze back out the window. A rogue blackbird flitted alongside the vehicle. It fought what seemed a strong breeze, climbing higher with each stroke of its wings, then diving and soaring back to its position next to Olin. The struggle to maintain airspeed eventually wore on it and the bird veered off towards the dunes.

The next hour passed awkwardly. Whenever Fargon felt inspired to talk, it was a long, rambling comment about the project, though he would never fully explain Olin’s involvement, or he pulled some pointless anecdote which he found hilarious from the seemingly infinite reservoir of his memory. Olin found it easy to ignore his comments, storing them temporarily, just in case he said something intelligent.

When Fargon finally stopped the vehicle, it seemed to Olin he stood in the middle of nowhere, with some dunes to the south. “Where is the ‘Imperial Headquarters at Tirac’” he asked, quoting the itinerary the emperor had sent him. Fargon picked at his teeth with one finger and scratched his head with the other.

“Good question. I think its still a bit further south…maybe a bit to the east, but honestly, it doesn’t amount to Sanyx spit,” Fargon said, rambling again. “If you look towards the dunes, you might be able to see the imperial flag.” Olin turned and scanned the horizon. Fargon pulled a pistol from his jacket pocket and continued. “But seeing how your plans have changed anyway…” he trailed off with a sneer and carefully placed Olin’s head in the sights of his weapon.

Olin heard the click of the safety and dropped to the ground. The blast echoed across the dead plain, rumbling back from the dunes seconds later. Olin rolled and kicked Fargon from his feet before he could assess his miss and fire again. Springing to his feet and retrieving the weapon, Olin pointed it at Fargon and stepped on his chest. “Tell me what I want to know and you might live. Hold your tongue one second longer and you’re Sanyx bait.”

Fargon held up his hands, blabbering, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don’t kill the messenger! You disarmed me. You win, alright.”

“That is not what I want to know…” Olin threatened, pressing the barrel to the man’s forehead.

Fargon gazed crosseyed down the barrel, then focused on Olin’s eyes. “Alright, alright. The Emperor wanted me to kill you—destroy, dismantle you, whatever—I don’t know the why’s and what for’s. He says, ‘Make sure he’s never found again and an extra thousand if it’s done before tomorrow.’ I’m not one to refuse that kind of money.”

“Who contacted you!” Olin demanded of the strangely calm man.

“A little friend of mine,” Fargon smiled. “Right here,” he said and tapped his jacket pocket. The electromagnetic surge almost overpowered his interior circuitry, but Wilcox had equipped his system to deal with such an attack. Olin did not experience the arrest any normal computing system might have, but it did wipe out his temporary memory banks. When he came to, he was on his back, struggling to pry a pistol from a man’s hands. Fargon’s hands. The breached connections were repaired and Olin rolled, wrenching the weapon from Fargon’s grasp. He had no qualms with killing the man now. Olin stood, took three steps backwards, firing with each step.

Fargon stumbled to his knees, held himself for a prolonged moment with shaky arms, his mouth gaping. “One of those ‘trashy gimmicks’ made special order from Dr. Livingbree.” Olin quipped. As Fargon’s left arm gave out, Olin walked to the vehicle, opened the door, and headed south, one hand punching Dr. Livingbree’s number on his earphone.

“Yes, Olin?” came the old doctor’s breathless reply.

“I’ve been attacked, too. I just killed the assassin, but my circuits may need some repair soon. He had a small EMP device. I took his pistol.”

“Oh my! Olin, I’m glad you’re okay, but I do believe Dr. Wilcox has been abducted. You must help them.”

“How? I need information,” Olin replied.

“Does your vehicle have a satellite uplink?” Livingbree inquired.

“Yes.”

“Good. Connect to this server,” Livingbree instructed and read off the address. Olin did as he was told and accessed the mainframe. “Okay, ask your questions. Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will, doctor. Thanks.”

“I hope you’re successful, Olin. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Olin finished and ended the call. He diverted his attention first to deciphering his exact location. Once the positioning program was running, he ran a direct search for “IHT: Imperial Headquarters at Tirac.” Olin lifted an eyebrow at the result—this was better than he had hoped.

^*^

Light like lime dusted the woven crimson reeds on which Sorel slept with smooth spots, filtered through the myriad of leaves waving and whispering above him. A melancholy breeze shook them lightly, played with Sorel’s clothes, and tugged at a stray tuft of his hair. But it was the shadows dancing across his face and crossing his eyelids that finally woke him. When his eyelids slanted open, the trees welcomed him with silhouette arms.

The colors made him squint and inhale through his nose. He massaged his eyes and sat up in the forest clearing. He was alone, save the distant chirp of a bird somewhere welcoming the sun as it cleared the mountains to the west. Sight itself was a relief of sorts. Sorel investigated his surroundings and recognized his old home and his ancient friends towering over him. He jumped to his feet and whispered a joyful greeting to them.

But they seemed concerned, sighing their misgivings about his change. “What change?” he questioned the old oak, who pointed him towards the stream and his drinking pool. Under his friends’ careful watch, Sorel crept to a moss-carpeted boulder and peered into the rippling watery mirror. A different creature gazed back at him. The burning eyes staring into his own stirred his memory. And then he remembered the face of the figure of light and shadow: it was his own now.

Sorel wiggled clawed fingers in front of himself and twitched a pointed, hairy ear. His furry cheeks itched and he brushed them with the back of his hand. A shiver shook him and he glanced at the sleek coat of fur that now covered most of his body, save a thick leathery skin covering his abdomen like worn gray armor and the palms of his hands and feet. He turned his narrow face sideways and reached behind his ears to claw at the thick, bony horns curving straight behind him. He felt them with both hands.

A shiver raced down his spine, and further. Sorel felt something behind himself twitch. He turned to find his fluffed tail curving and snapping in the air. It smacked the leaf-strewn ground, begging for attention. He pulled it into his arms and stroked the fur back down.

The oak had been observing patiently with all of his cousins. Sorel turned to it with drooping lips and concerned eyes. “I don’t understand,” he pleaded to each of the trees. Their bark softened from brown to gray and no longer held their twigs proudly aloft.

In the ancient language the oak lamented, “You have become like your maker. You gazed upon him face to face. You are Sorel, forest friend, but you are also now a Corcea, forest fiend, corruptor of life. Sorel, look at your footsteps.” Sorel turned from the liquid mirror. Where his soles had pressed the soil, the leaves went black with decay; he felt the earth struggle against his poison. “Please, Sorel, you must leave and do not touch the water, or the whole of the valley will suffer.”

“But I didn’t choose this, I didn’t ask for this!” Sorel defended.

“You looked,” the oak explained.

“I was blindfolded.”

“You were tricked, but the fact remains you looked; now my roots burn beneath me because you did. Sorel, we treasure you, but you have become our enemy. Please leave, before we must evict you.”

“But I want to stay; you are my only friends,” he cried to all listening.

“Sorel,” the oak whispered and straightened, “we will cherish you in our memory, but until you have purged the corruption from within you, you cannot stay.”

“What must I do?” Sorel pleaded.

“Do not look.”

“At him?”

“No. Just remember, do not look. Now, farewell Corcea—may you return to us Sorel, forest friend,” whispered the ancient oak and slipped back into slumber. Sorel’s shoulders fell and he sighed. As he made his way to the edge of the forest, the brush parted for him, trees pulled their leaves from his reach. Sorel fixed his eyes on the ground, apologizing to each dying leaf the curse he would bring upon it. Guilt, like the thick, black ooze in his footsteps, ate away at him. Here he was, in the place he feared most: solitude.

Chapter 6

Sorel’s first attempted escape ended in disaster. Instead of aiding him, his transforming powers were drained the minute he spoke the ancient language and a blow to the back of his head left him unconscious for what he thought either a moment or an eternity. When he did reawaken, he was shackled to a wall—a steep degradation from his mat on the floor. Ever the blindfold kept his eyes from attaining a truer knowledge of his captors or his surroundings. It seemed a cave of sorts. The air was thick with moisture and wore on his lungs.

His second escape attempt came en route to his second visit with the being of shadow. It also ended in failure. He had called on the trees to restrain his oblivious—or so he assumed—captors. Only two oaks responded. But the Ash trees surrounding them were of a more secluded nature and only laughed at his summons. The guards, however, warded off the trees with what must have been a physical gesture, for Sorel heard no words restrain the Oaks. He did hear the trees cry out and apologize for their inaction.

And so Sorel was led back to the sunny clearing after what he had calculated to be the passing of four days to meet this ringleader. Again the sunlight disappeared in chilling shadow and again the deathly calm voice pierced his ears.

“Actions always overshadow words, Sorel. You must agree. It was words, after all, that drove you to action all those years ago in the forest, when you learned the force those words carried. Still this principle, in principle, serves you well. You attempted escape twice. Commendable, almost, from your perspective.” The voice paused. “If you had known, Sorel, the nature of your escorts, you might have thought differently. Ahh, but this is all rambling. Let my actions now speak for me.”

He felt gentle hands undo his blindfold, dropping it from his eyes without flare. Sorel blinked in the light. Before him was a sphere of impossibly bright and incredibly cold rays. As he stared at the glinting light, almost as staring into the sun’s reflection in wind-thrashed water, Sorel felt he saw outlines—the slight vertical shade of a nose, two arching brows, and the recess of a grim smile. And the longer he gazed upon this countenance of light, the more he wanted to stare. Whether from the adjustment of his newly-freed eyes or from the diminishing of the light itself, the finer lines of a face emerged from the glow: the slight rings of eyelids around the burning eyes, the creases of the forehead, the slight shadow of the cheekbones.

The light swallowed Sorel. He forgot himself for a moment in the light, teasing the features of the face from the illumination before him. He softened. He felt his bonds cut from his wrists, but he them no heed—the countenance gazing at him was too wonderful. He determined purpose, ambition, and courage in those eyes studying him.

He folded his arms and, though slightly shocked by their frigidity, spoke to the figure of light before him. “How? What? Who? Are you?” The figure smiled and Sorel’s toes went numb.

“More questions, Sorel. I will not answer. Observe, Sorel, that which I have revealed. Then you will know more.” Sorel drank in the presence, like a refreshing draught of water on a summer’s afternoon.

“You are light. I imagined shadow.”

“A dichotomy, then. One which I thought existed. But rather than ask you of your thoughts, I revealed that part of myself and drew the tension to the surface. And now you have a different perception of me. Whether for the better or for the worse I will not know until you reveal more of yourself to me—a risk I took.”

“I’m cold,” Sorel finally noted, drawing a pleased flicker from the smoldering eyes.

“Ahh, a statement worthy of attention. And here I choose to risk a bit more: you are cold due to your lacking,” the lips of light announced.

“What do I lack?” Sorel wondered, but realized his mistake. The presence understood and paused, waiting for him to rephrase the question. Sorel collected his wits and responded carefully. “You are much more powerful than I am. Therefore, my insignificance chills me.” The gleaming figure grinned.

“You see, Sorel, your mind can intuit a great many things without questions. Had you been wrong, I might have chastised you, or led you to the correct conclusion to the unasked questions. Yet, you succeeded. And with this, our meeting will end.”

“Will we meet again…” Sorel began, but the eyes feigned injury. “I mean, we will meet again soon.” The parting smile filled Sorel with a happiness he had never experienced before. He didn’t remember when the figure finally disappeared over the forest canopy, but when the blindfold was draped over his eyes again, he didn’t care. The burning gaze lingered in his vision, embossed in his eyelids now, in watery blues and metallic greens.

^*^

The estate of Dr. Wilcox, just north of Mizer, was mainly just for show, and had been weighing heavy on his mind. As a scientist, he spent most of his time at the laboratory or just in his study behind the library. The manor went largely unoccupied, save the infrequent visitations of close friends. Just a month ago, the Dr.s Burke had visited for “tea” and some of Wilcox’s famous nut bread. Stan and Laura had been married for nearly a year—both teaching now at the university. Shalre had also visited regularly—as regularly as his ship came into port: once every Black Sanyx.

It was the emptiness of the place that fled when Eva returned with him, despite the gravity of the situation. Though he held good graces with the empire at the moment, sheltering a known smuggler would not smooth his governmental relations. However, as Eva herself had pointed out, the ship was sunk and no captives taken. She no longer existed, for all practical purposes.

Dr. Wilcox had questioned the harbor monitors, but she explained that the sheer force of the explosion would have drowned out her small submersible. She had also come into harbor beneath the footprint of a larger ship. Wilcox acknowledged her arguments and decided that she would stay upstairs—the warmer, but stuffier, part of the house. Her young, sea-air-hardened lungs could handle it; he always wound up coughing when he ventured to the second floor.

And when he was choking his way through cleaning the hallway upstairs, he realized just how much of this manor went unused or even unseen. As a man of resourcefulness, he had hesitated to lay such an enormous foundation, but his since-deceased wife had encouraged him. Now he wished she had not. The years had worn on the walls and thickly dusted the furniture. How much better had he donated the money to a new orphanage for the south, or a school for the north, or an observatory in the west?

Several times he had nearly decided to sell the whole thing and move into the city. He would be closer to work, closer to friends, a bit more content, if nothing less. But it was the nature outside that stayed his hands. The orchard, the gardens, his patio in the crisp air and friendly sun: they all kept him wandering the land of the estate. The scientist in him had thought to start a school there of some sort for emerging scientists to use his library, his resources. And yet days passed and nothing of the sort happened.

But Eva acted as a catalyst on him. He cooked with more fervor, picked only the best ingredients. He scrubbed the tile, dusted the library shelves, cleaned his study. The last one gave him the most trouble. He had never been the most organized man. It was much easier to have piles: the recently-finished pile, the need-to-do pile, the will-get-to-sometimes pile, and the ancient pile. The first two garnered the most attention; if an item went into the last pile, it was forgotten.

And when he had made up his mind to clean his desk, he remembered the AI project and that it was the first day of the week. He glanced at the clock—only three hours late. Cursing his fallible memory, he fingered his earphone, weighing the options of tardiness over absence. Eva was there, but she was old enough to care for herself. Yet, due to the trauma she had just experienced, he thought his presence alone a necessary part to her recovery. Livingbree would understand. He always did.

Wilcox lobbed the earphone into the furthest drawer in his desk and abandoned his cleaning ambitions. It landed with an explosion that shook the house. He stared at the open drawer dumbly. His desk was intact. There lay his earphone. Wilcox turned. Dust and smoke billowed through the open doorway connecting the library and the main chamber of his manor. All thought left him. He ran to the doorway, holding his shirt over his mouth and nose. Still he coughed and hacked his way through the hallway, towards the stairs. Footsteps pounded the upper floor. Wilcox began his trembling ascent through the smoke, leaning heavily on the handrail for guidance.

But the muffled scream he heard from above hastened his footsteps and sent a single thought racing through his confused mind: they came for Eva. He stopped and stooped, gathering his wits. His earphone was the primary defense he had at the moment. He fumbled himself down the stairs, tripping on the second to last and landing face-first on the hardwood floor. More footsteps echoed through the stairwell. Wilcox pulled himself to his feet and scrambled for the library.

“Hey!” a voice commanded from the dust behind him. Wilcox paid the mandate no heed and sprinted for his desk. He snatched the earphone and connected to Livingbree.

“Wilcox? Where are you?” Livingbree answered.

“At home. Hunted,” he gasped, searching for a hiding place.

“What? Why?” came the expected questions from Dr. Livingbree.

“Eva Decon—they took her. I have to find out who and why.”

“Why was she…”Livingbree began, but Wilcox didn’t hear him finish. Above him, pale-eyed and sitting in the dimly-lit expanse of a bookshelf, a black bird eyed him. Wilcox met its gaze fiercely. It ruffled its feathers and chirped at him. Wilcox almost felt as if he should speak to it—to beg its help to drive out the intruders, to rescue Eva and return them to a peaceful life. Wilcox nearly spoke, but felt suddenly warm. He regained his wits deduced the situation as the footsteps came right for him. They had gamma search beams. It was impossible to hide; the radiation illuminated him better than the sun might in their masks. He looked again for the bird, but it was gone. He remembered Livingbree.

“They’re coming,” Wilcox whispered, pulling the device from his ear to amplify his voice. “Notify Olin.” Then his earphone crackled, sparked and fell from his grasp. A Directed Electro-Magnetic Pulse, Wilcox thought to himself, they thought I had a weapon. These were Imperial troops for sure. A rough hand pulled him from his refuge and a black hood slipped over his head. He wouldn’t remember the blow that knocked him from conscious thought.

Chapter 5

The voice proved correct. The path on which Sorel found himself was soft and sloped only slightly downhill. Two hands, one on his left shoulder and another on his right, guided him well, through intermittent shadows and long patches of warm sunlight. For the most part he trotted straight ahead, steered to the right only a few times. Sorel’s headache had eased with the passing of the leather hood for a strip of cloth to serve as a blindfold. The warm sun on his face and the fresh pine-scented air also helped his countenance, but the twine rope used to bind his hands together rubbed them awfully, in an itchy, intolerable manner.

The trees encouraged him, whispered past his guards to greet him—him who they had heard of from their southern cousins. He only whispered a few grateful replies when his guards were talking to each other. It was good to know that these trees were not too foreign, too cold to bother with him as those of the Reliegh Forest north of Crena: they were harsh trees, impatient and bitter—they had seen much expansion into the forest in the last few decades. But these trees still echoed the spirit of the Jasol Forest. Again, he whispered his thanks—a bit too loudly, for one of his escorts commented on his remark.

“What was that?”

“Did he say something?”

“Course he said something, didn’t you hear him?”

“No. You were talking.”

“And then I stopped. Hey, what did you say?” the one on his right addressed him. Sorel mumbled something incomprehensible.

“It’s still the after-effects. Remember?”

“But that destroys your argument that he’s a natural.”

“Oh…yeah; well, I still think he’s a natural.”

“Then what did he say?”

“Something.”

“Exactly. Which is why I’m trying to get him to tell me.”

“Oh.”

Sorel moaned pitifully.

“See?”

“Alright, so he isn’t a natural.”

“Unless he’s faking it.”

“So you think he’s a natural?”

“No. But if he was, he’d be faking that he was in pain.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Cause he’d be a natural. They do things like that.”

“But you said he isn’t one.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Then why would he fake it?”

“He wouldn’t.”

“So…”

“So I’m trying to get him to speak, to find out if he is or isn’t faking it, to find out if he is or isn’t a natural.”

“Oh…okay. But I still think he’s a natural.”

Sorel wanted to rip off his blindfold and look at his guards. He could barely conceal his smile and had to remind himself to keep up the injured pretense—something he figured might come in handy later.

And suddenly, he was stopped. He figured he was still in the forest—the trees whispering to each other was proof enough of that—but they were faint enough that he thought himself in a clearing. The sun’s beams still caressed his face and the hint of a morning breeze tickled his ear.

“This is the place,” the voice to his left whispered, “Isn’t it?”

“No, idiot, it was three clearings back,” the escort on Sorel’s right whispered back.

“Well I was just making sure, cause I don’t think he’s here.”

“Course he isn’t here.”

“Then are we in the right place?”

“I double-checked. That old pine over there is the same one—the one with the twisted trunk. Remember?”

“No.”

“You never remember.”

Suddenly Sorel felt a chill enter the clearing, like an unnoticed cloud blocks the sun and a rumbling voice chastised his escorts. “Your bickering and shallow minds disgust me. Yet, you’ve fulfilled your mission. Well done, my servants.”

The silence and fear emanating from his two companions subdued Sorel. Something dark and mysterious haunted the voice, a presence that filled his senses with dread. He wasn’t sure he wanted to remove his blindfold now, even if he could. The prospect of meeting a being whose palpable aura was shadow made him shiver.

And he felt the gaze focus on him. He called to the trees for comfort, but even they shrank in the darkness.

“As for you, Sorel—you evaded my huntress. You have some strength in you, and your pride stands just as tall. Perhaps you will be useful,” the voice prodded, circling him, Sorel thought. He considered telling the presence to save his lies and state his purpose up front. But the sheer power radiating from the entity at his side persuaded his question to a much milder form.

“Who are you, and how do you know my name?” Sorel asked, straining to keep his voice level.

“Ah, it is questions you have. Questions are never enough; they only lead to more questions and never to the root of the problem: that we are strangers and are then wary of unidentifiable intentions—that, in our deepest self, we are very much concerned with one thing: our own existence.” Sorel felt the gaze strengthen, tighten, and narrow. “And so, Sorel, you want to protect your own existence. You wish to learn about me, whom you perceive as a threat, in order to survive. I, on the other hand, do not want to reveal much about myself, in the case you could use that information to endanger me. We are at a dichotomous crossroads then, Sorel. At the moment, I hold the upper hand in the battle to preserve our own existences; I know more about you than you know about me.”

Sorel felt the presence pause. “And yet, we both hold assumptions—assumptions that may critically endanger our own perceptions of danger to our existence. You see, we are strangers, and naturally we assume many things to streamline interaction. For instance, we both assume that the other is an intelligent creature capable of understanding. Hence your questions and my reply. We both assume we stand on earth, in the sun, and that the other will recognize these things. So what, Sorel, do we assume about each other, either in strict conscious care or in unconscious streaming, that will affect the way we perceive each other?”

Sorel shifted his weight to one foot, then the other. “That was a question. The underlying problem is that we both possess a fear of the unknown.”

“And that goes further back to the haunting problem of self-existence. Well done. Now, Sorel, I have learned a little of you, and you have learned a little of me, without answering questions asked out of fear. Tomorrow, Sorel, we will talk again, as we have today, eliminating questions. And in time, you may learn my name, my agenda, my requirements for you. Until then, I bid you farewell, Sorel,” the voice finished. Sorel felt the shadow lift and life return to the glade in which he stood. The whispers of the trees regained their voices and his two escorts seemed to wake from a trance of stupor.

“Alright, come on. More work to do,” the voice on his right demanded with a rough hand on Sorel’s arm.

“It don’t matter to me, as long as we get something to eat. I’m starving,” lamented the voice to his right.

Sorel settled under their grips and trudged back to wherever he was when he awoke. Deciding that the necessary information would divulge itself later, he listened to the trees and tried to banish the headache which pulsed just behind his blindfolded eyes.

^*^

Though Olin certainly didn’t feel the fatigue the other passengers tried to expel with outstretched arms and held breaths, he was ready to move about a bit. The air which invaded the aisles, row by row from the opened exit, was deceptively cool—when he stepped out into a stiff breeze, the temperature dropped drastically. Small shrubs and thin grasses resisted the razor winds cutting through the valley. Olin shrugged his jacket tighter to maintain appearances and glanced northward. There loomed the Welmen Wilderness, raw and bitter, rising into monstrous, bald peaks threatening the deepening blue horizon. It was clear in Shilac, but the sun seemed less enthusiastic in its orbit. The mother and daughter clambered out the door, the young one bundled in a matching jacket and scarf, stuffed tiny gloved hands in her parent’s and shuffled beside her.

Olin strode to silver-polished bench, set his case down on it, but refused to sit. The crisp air relieved him, kept his Central Processing Core cool and efficient. A nagging desolation echoed through the station as the passengers departed with welcoming relatives or distant friends. When he found himself alone on the platform, he decided to call Dr. Wilcox. No answer. His holo-message system came on and Dr. Wilcox’s voice echoed through the empty complex. “This is probably a wrong number. Check your number and don’t call again.”

Olin laughed. He hadn’t heard this one yet. After a prolonged paused it droned on in Wilcox’s most monotonous voice. “Unless you absolutely must contact me. In that case, leave a message without filled pauses. Thank you.” Olin hung up. He wouldn’t bother Wilcox. When he returned his focus to his briefcase, a small chickadee scratching atop his case turned its head sideways, focusing a large black eye on him. Olin met its gaze. What must such a fragile creature think of me? he thought to himself. From somewhere inside of him, a voice reverberated an answer. “Such questions do not expose true intentions. After all perception matters less than essence.”

Olin tried to trace that thought. What key variables of his unconscious processing had triggered it? He was sure it hadn’t been conscious—routed through his short-term memory banks and Spirit Processing Interface; instead it had echoed through his SPI without temporal attachment. He abandoned his cognitive search for the moment and stared at the bird who was pecking at his briefcase.

It blinked twice, three times, then stretched and shook its wings. With a light hop, it caught itself on the breeze and shot from sight, veering behind the building. Olin was left alone again, with only the cold northern wind descending to meet him. He fingered the recorder in his pocket and thought again about calling Wilcox.

A voice from the shadows of the building interrupted him. “I didn’t expect you in a tweed cap, that’s for sure, Olin.” The voice gained texture in the shape of a small, compact man with wire-rimmed glasses as he stepped forward to introduce himself. “The name’s Fargon. I’m assistant to the chief archaeologist at the new Imperial dig here in Shilac. We both know you’re not here because you like to handle a shovel or brush, so I’ll explain why you’re here, at least, as far as I know.” Olin could only crook an eyebrow in amusement at the man’s apparent love for his own voice. When he found his voice, it snapped back at the man with a surprising bitterness.

“So what do you know?”

The eyes behind the glasses smiled, though the lips below them did not. “You are one hell of a machine that should solve all our problems. If not, I’ll ask for a recall.” A moment stuck between their throats, dripping tension. Then Fargon laughed. “Don’t mind me: I wouldn’t know the difference between you and a toaster oven. I just like old things. Oh, here’s your itinerary,” he seemed to remind himself and handed Olin a datachip. Olin fingered it and clutched in his hand. A small holograph popped up. “Can you just plug that in your hand? How handy is that? Wish I had one of those. Save me five minutes in the morning getting dressed. You ready to go?”

“To the ruins?” Olin mused, scrutinizing the itinerary.

“Of course not. To dinner. There you’ll talk with the chief. He’ll give you the spit and the dirt on the project. I need to get back to work,” Fargon chided.

“What do you do?” Olin asked, but wondered if he should have continued the conversation.

“It’s like cooking eggs, really. I break conventions and make them better by doing so,” Fargon stated and raised his eyebrows, setting up the punch line. “I’m a manager.”

“A manager?”

“Yes,” he defended, furrowing his eyebrows at the lackluster response to his joke, “A manager. Do you have all your bags?” Olin lifted his briefcase. “Oh yes, robot. I forgot. Good. Let’s get out of this wind. Come on; it’s a short trip to the restaurant.”

Olin fell in behind Fargon, who muttered to himself about something unimportant. Again, the winds kicked up, snatching at Olin’s overcoat. Somehow he wished Dr. Wilcox was with him. He was the only one with whom he could truly relate. Wilcox had been in his position. He could identify with Olin…unlike this scoundrel named Fargon. Olin sighed. It would be a long week.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Spliced between lime halves, dropped ice cubes, and a nearly-opened bag of sugar, Dr. Wilcox heard his earphone ring. Twice in one weekend, he marveled to himself. He was never this popular in his youth. He slipped the sugar between the blender and the sink, cradled a lime onto the green-tiled counter top, and strode down the hall to his desk and answered the call.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Wilcox! It’s Eva. I’m so glad to hear your voice—so glad. You don’t—they killed him, Doctor—no warning. They just shot him and threw him…”

Wilcox raised an eyebrow. “What? Who? Calm down Eva and speak to me.”

“It was the empire. We were returning from the northern colonies. They came aboard and shot my grandfather—they killed him—just shot him and threw him overboard.” Wilcox found his breath short and unwilling to enter his lungs. “They loaded her with explosives and sent her to the sea floor. They just shot him and blew her up—just like that. No warnings, no inspection, just down with both of them. I can’t…” Here she faltered. Wilcox struggled to find his voice. “I…I can’t believe it; he’s gone…just like that…”

“Eva, where are you? Listen to me...” he attempted to ask between the sobs now flooding the receiver. “Eva, tell me where you are…let me come to you.” His grandfatherly attitude overwhelmed him. “I just need to know where you are…understand?”

Between two halting breaths she whispered, “Mizer docks; grandfather’s warehouse.”

“Okay,” Dr. Wilcox soothed. “Okay, I’ll be right there.” He kept his earphone in his ear, just in case and left the lime smoothie unmixed in the blender.

When he arrived at the warehouse, Wilcox found her huddled in the office, eyes and cheeks crimson with despair. She tried to stand, but her weak knees trembled and Wilcox reached out and pulled her into a comforting embrace. Her tears flushed anew and triggered his own. She buried her face in his chest; he stroked her hair from her face. There, without words, the two rocked in healing unity.

^*^

Olin knew the specs of the Slaac Canyon Bridge; he had even looked over them before this trip. But even to his mechanical photoreceptors, the magnificence of it astounded him when he began to speed across the repulsor-bridge; Olin thought it seemed like a massive knife-wound in the plains, bitter and swollen with reds and whites, plunging away to the river that bled into the faraway ocean at the mouth of the canyon.

It snaked slightly west at the northern-most part, bending back east just at the bridge to continue straight to the South Sea. Olin marveled at the phenomenon. The canyon opened further beneath him, dropping away in side canyons and burnished cliffs. The further he moved from the eastern edge, the more the distance between the rims became apparent: the western rim refused to seem any closer.

And so Olin, glued to his porthole, gazed at the increasing depth and width of the canyon—his mind told him at the midpoint of the bridge, he would be nearly one and a half miles above the river, and the western rim still nine miles away. He knew that the ancient bridge had been torn down and replaced with the repulsor bridge, but the awe of the engineering those ancients had possessed, perhaps the sheer courage to attempt, to build a bridge across such a canyon seized Olin profoundly.

When at last the western rim passed beneath him, Olin let himself ease back into his seat for the rest of the journey through the sagebrush plains on towards the Nolkric Mountains and beyond, past the Dead Lake and Tiri Desert, to the far city of Shila. Had he been capable, Olin would have shuddered at the mention of his destination. His mind worked through the historical databases that had been compiled for him by the librarian at Mizer Public Archives.

In the last decade, the city had nearly doubled its size; the grassy highlands and its remote location seemed attractive to many settlers looking to move away from the eastern metropolises. But its history was not as simple as those moving there. It was an ancient city, dating back to the Separation period, shortly after the fall of the Ashtonian Empire.

Its sister city, Surgaph, had been the capital of the dark lords, built by the general Rolar, after he seceded from the newly-founded Escollion Empire. These two separate allegiances, after a time of strained relations, finally collided in war. The approximate dates for the war, however, startled Olin: 586-87 E.E.E. As close as he could estimate, his former life in the Basalk Forest was about 566 E.E.E. Caida was not too terribly far from his home. Perhaps some of this activity would relate to some of the tales he heard as a child. He scanned the following information. The first battle erupted at Caida, formerly known as Harken, between the dark Lord Skora and the Sage Trista Tslatsen…he skipped over the information, looking for more about Shilac, but found nothing of interest.

When he looked up, the Nolkric Mountains loomed southward, parallel to the Slaac Canyon, all the way to the ocean. He stared out the porthole at the monotonous passing prairie and wished he could sleep.

As he began to power down his systems to hibernate, a faint voice caught his attention. He resumed his functionality instantly and turned to find the round face of a young girl. Her wide eyes sparkled in the morning light seeping through the thick plastic windows, but her eyebrows were furrowed in confusion.

“Are you a real person?” she asked in haste. Near the back of the aisle, a lady who must have been her mother was excusing herself forward to retrieve the stray girl. Olin’s face softened as he pondered her question.

“Yes, I am,” he answered, then turned the question to her. “Are you?”

She smiled. “Yes,” came a bashful reply.

“What is your name, then? Bob?” he asked and she giggled.

“No!”

“Then is it Super Toad?” he prodded.

“NO!” she retorted, laughing. “It’s Molly!” Olin exaggerated epiphany.

“Oh, well then Molly, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” he replied and extended his hard, metallic hand. She took it lightly in her own and shook it. Olin bowed his head and smiled. The lady finally moved behind the girl.

“Please excuse my daughter,” she began, taking Molly’s hand, “she sometimes…oh!” she remarked as Olin turned to face her. She fumbled for words for a moment and looked away. Olin glanced back at Molly and grinned.

“Have a good day, Miss Molly.”

“You too!” she replied, then looked to her mother. “Mommy! Can we go to the snack place?” The lady nodded all too hastily and shuffled past the other passengers. Olin watched them work their way forward and sat back, but noticed the purposeful gaze of the man opposite himself. He leaned forward a bit, scratching a stubbly chin with one hand and adjusting his cap with the other. Olin raised an eyebrow. He finally set his armpit over the armrest and squinted at him, mouth half-open.

“Are you a real person?”

^*^

When Sorel’s eyes flickered to life, they winced immediately at the pain of a massive headache, throbbing behind them. He blinked once, then shut his eyelids and exhaled. Where was he? What had happened? As his senses opened to the world outside himself, he heard whisperings.

“Is he awake? I think he’s awake…”

“Shh…he’ll hear.”

“Well, if he’s up we might as well do what we’re supposed to.”

“Or we could well make sure he’s awake first.”

“Which he is.”

“He’s not opened his eyes right yet.”

“You don’t have to open your eyes to be awake!”

“Yes, I know, but under the weight of that spell, he’s...you know…”

“Groggy?”

“No, blockhead, in pain. Don’t you well remember the first time?”

“Oh yeah…that did hurt.”

“See? And since he hasn’t groaned yet, he isn’t awake.”

“But what if he’s a natural?”

“He’s not a natural; just like he isn’t awake.”

“But…”

“Shut up and man your post.”

“Okay…I still think he’s awake.”

At that Sorel sat up and rubbed his left eye. He heard an audible gasp from his right and a scuffle from his left. The voices raised from their previous whispers to normal tones.

“Get the bag!” he heard from his right.

“I got it, I got it!” came a voice from his left. Sorel turned to look for this bag the one had referenced. A rope fell over his face and tightened around his throat. As his hands moved to the twine rope to loosen its choking hold, a black leather bag consumed his head and was tightened by a drawstring. At that the rope was removed and his arms quickly twisted behind him and hands bound, despite his struggle.

“Told you he was awake.”

“You should have bound him before he woke; he struggled too much. If the master finds out that we damaged him…”

“It wasn’t my job—it was our job. It’s your fault as much as mine.”

“Would you get going. Now that we can move him, let’s move him.”

“Alright, alright. Come one,” the voice on his left addressed Sorel, “Stand up. We got places to go. You won’t get hurt. It’s an easy walk from here.”

Chapter 3

When Sorel saw the synx pause and stretch beside a gleaming brook, he glided downward, alighting on a branch—well out of reach of the cat. His inquisitive eye followed her as she crept to the water’s edge and quietly lapped. When she had finished, she flopped over on her side and stretched again—into her human form. Sorel swooped down from the branch and hopped to stop in the long grass. The next step he took was to unbend as he stood, pulling the hair from his face with his hand.

“Is this the place?” were the first words out of his mouth. She giggled and turned her eyes to the looming peaks of the Atep Mountains.

“No, my dear. We must cross them,” she stated.

“That is no trouble for me, but how will you fare, Amalia?” he asked, a glint in his subversive eyes. She feigned injury.

“If you only knew…” she said and splashed across the stream, emerging a great, golden-feathered eagle. With a few bounds she took to the skies and circled above him, gaining altitude. Sorel hesitated. Her powers, then, were leagues beyond his own. And what would an eagle’s instinct’s do when spying a tasty little blackbird, winging along below her? He decided to test the risk, first. While the woven branches of the forest still offered him aid from the larger, more powerful bird. He took off over the treetops—heading northwest, towards the lowest possible pass.

The speck above him grew smaller and smaller, until she almost disappeared entirely, even with his intensified vision, yet he knew that she could still easily watch him. He attempted to fly naturally, without too much worry—until the speck came swooping downwards, gaining speed and substance. Sorel made his move and dove quickly into the trees, searching immediately for the tightest, most-entangled part of the forest. An interwoven mixture of four or five trees appeared to his right, and he squeezed through the conglomeration and into safety.

From his position, he saw no sign of the eagle and sighed. He hopped beyond the thickest tangles to better his view, but movement behind him caught his eye—an amber serpent reared its head to strike. Sorel dove from the branch just in time and spread his wings to land in a small clearing. The feathers held him long enough for human feet to touch the ground and lips to ask the trees where she was.

Amalia replied, dropping from the same tree. “I am here, my little Sorel.” She ambled towards him, emphasizing her feminine features. “Why do you run?”

“Who are you?” Sorel questioned and stepped backwards.

“Do you not already know?” she flicked her hair behind her ear and blinked her eyes carefully. Sorel tensed and looked behind him. When he looked back, the giant form of a jungle Sanyx bared its fangs and snarled, coiling its powerful hind legs for the pounce. Soren whispered into the still mountain air, calling upon the strength of the forest.

As she lunged forward, two branches swung down and knocked her sideways, and in that same moment Sorel took to the air, weaving through the forest limbs, desperate to escape. The sly synx was back on his trail, sprinting after him through the thinning forest. When Sorel saw the rock fields in front of him, he turned northward, back into the thick of the woods. But Amalia, close behind, used his trick against him and the branches in front of him wove into a natural, impenetrable net around him. They constricted as Amalia whispered him down to the ground. Sorel was himself again when he was set down, and Amalia stood and resumed her feminine form.

“You fly well, Sorel; if only you could fight as well,” she murmured and paced around him. “But I am a huntress: you stood no chance—and now, my fair Sorel, you will pay the price.” She fell forward as the towering Sanyx and smiled wickedly.

Sorel’s eyes shot around his surroundings as she approached, a salivating beast no longer resembling any part of a human. He found what two items he could use: a thorn bush and a beaver nibbled branch. With a small, airy whistle, the thorns leapt from their stems and implanted themselves in the beast’s quivering neck. The Sanyx yelped and jumped backwards, where the stick stood upright and impaled its rear right foot. With another whisper, Sorel stretched the branches, took aerial form and shot from the forest into the great blue of the liberating sky.

The mind-numbing shadow and sudden downdraft that sent him spiraling through the trees and into the rough dirt and shallow grass caught him by surprise. Sorel blinked twice and then dropped into the whelming sea of unconsciousness.

^*^

The next morning fell into the room with swift, soft beams and a host of floating motes; Olin watched them spiral around the hum of the air-conditioner with a mild disinterest. He was glad enough the night had passed. His inability to sleep didn’t bother him—he often shut down most of his systems and used his back-up processor to ponder the more complicated issues of the day. But the algorithmic part of himself took that night as opportunity to rationalize the Emperor’s summons in light of his history with the now outlawed spirit technology. He had come to no conclusion on the basis of insufficient information.

And so he welcomed the rising sun and the promise of more answers for his starved mind. He brought all of his systems online and rose—his ride would depart across the Slaac Canyon Bridge shortly. He slid his arms through the sleeves of the overcoat and slipped the hat on neatly. Walking outside, Olin decided the temperature was fair, a good balance between the chill of the night and the warmth of the morning rays. He had relished those sorts of mornings several thousand years ago and just a short distance away, in what had been the Basalk Forest.

He remembered little, but what did surface to his memory were impressions of the world—the morning chill, his brother’s laughter, the deep influence of an emerald pool: here he paused. The bitter twist of his stomach. The haunting liquid invading his lungs. The desperate cry for oxygen. The fade to black. Olin shivered mentally, his metallic body incapable of such action. The moment of his death forever lingered in perceptual clarity. And as he had passed the new developments—where once had been the infallible green of the aspen forest, bordered by the eternal blue of the firs beneath the jagged peaks of the Atep mountains—those memories surfaced, triggered automatically by his Sensory Memory program which collated those sense impressions with moment matching memories.

Olin disabled the program temporarily and strode to the boarding station. He stepped in lightly and bid the stewardess a good morning. As he scanned the aisles for his new seat, he passed an elderly man coaching his grandson on the mechanics of bridge-building. “Back in my day, the bridges were built to withstand gravity through structural integrity. No repulsors. Just huge columns and strong foundations. Even back to the ancient days, they were built this way—all very dangerous, you see. Natural forces would sometimes shatter the foundations or sway the columns, collapsing the bridge.”

“Could that happen again?” Olin heard the boy gasp behind him.

“Oh no. Our technologies are foolproof now. Nature has no power here,” the grandfather replied.

Olin set his mind to that statement. It disturbed him. He himself, perhaps, was living proof of the greatest defeat of nature’s greatest power: death. He had died. He had regained life—through no act of his own. And yet his acknowledgment of such had been necessary to free him from his delusions—from his dreams of what life was, to the reality of that life. He still wasn’t sure that everything he saw around him was real, but the evidence pointed to that conclusion. The laws of nature functioned properly, no matter how he tried to bend them as he had in the dreamworld—and that he had been learning on his own—proved to Olin that he existed in a world separate and distinct from his perceptions of that world.

This comforted him as much as the thought of complete human domination over nature frightened him. Yes, he may be the conclusion to the argument, but also the exception to it. He thought back to the powers of the ancients—the society he had existed beside all those thousands of years ago: the village witch doctors and prophets he remembered; the sages of Escollion; the dark lords of Surgaph—all myth, legend now, but a power he remembered distinctly. Where was this force today?

Olin found his seat and eased himself into it. Looking outside the small polished porthole he saw a blackbird alight on the glass canopy of the boarding station. It seemed to gaze right at him. Olin gazed back. There was something about the natural that intrigued him—some connection he felt between himself and the bird. Then it hopped off the edge and flapped upwards and over him. Olin shook his head and relaxed. Only a few more hours and he would have some answers.

^*^

When Dr. Wilcox stooped under his favorite oak tree to escape the heat of the afternoon, a profound thought struck him. He sunk into the shade and pulled a notebook and a pen, an antique he had found quite by accident, from his pocket. The brilliance of the cerulean expanse above him and the emerald grass that softened his seat hit him as extraordinary. He tried to think first, but instead he began writing:

I have assumed that if light and darkness were inherent metaphors constructed by the human mind for existence and non-existence, respectively, and if these were replicated, without any such existing program, in the artificial intelligence, then I should be looking for shades of grey to understand the nature of life—be it natural or mechanical.

Such were my thoughts, but now, now something has changed. Yes. This afternoon of dazzling blues and unsettling greens, spirited oranges and deepening violets has illuminated that which I overlooked: white light is not white. No! The beams of the sun itself are composed of all color, not a single color, selected group, but all! If existence then, is light and non-existence the necessary opposite, the absence of any light, then the key to understanding life itself is color.

Yes, good. Color: the powerful symbol, everyday energy, my tool for determining existence.

Dr. Wilcox looked up from writing and sighed aloud. He closed his eyes in anticipation of his next interview or even the chance to call Olin and run the theory by him. This was certainly to be hailed a breakthrough. So he stood and walked to back to the house, leaving his un-weeded garden for another day. He decided to make a fresh lime drink, his grandfather’s recipe, and picked four suitable limes on the way. He would spend the rest of the afternoon with his notebook, hammering out the implications of his discovery. This was a good day, he decided and entered his house.

Chapter 2

When Dr. Wilcox woke, the sun had already broken the horizon and peeked in his window between two huge willow branches. He stretched and rubbed his scruffy cheek against his right bicep. Then his earphone rang. What timing, he thought and scrambled out of bed to answer it. “Hello?” he replied in a raspy voice. The familiar voice of Dr. Livingbree saluted him on the other end.

“A fine morning, isn’t it?” Livingbree pondered. Wilcox grunted an approving reply and walked to the kitchen. “I know it’s the weekend, but I have a question for you.” Wilcox raised his eyebrows, grunted again, and took a pitcher of juice out of the refrigerator. “Were you the one who applied for the undersea geothermal generator a few years back? Before Olin?”

“Yeah,” he answered, pouring himself a glass of juice, “I did. Why?”

“The Emperor wants you on it right away; won’t say what it’s for, but his urgency makes me suspicious. You still want it?” Here Wilcox paused and gulped as he thought.

“What about the AI project?” he asked after he swallowed.

“We’ll transfer it. No problem.”

Memories of his conversation with Olin the night before returned to the forefront of his mind. Shades of grey. “Could we bring it with us?” he finally questioned.

“Done. You’ll leave at the start of the week. Should I have transportation arranged for the two of you?” Livingbree asked.

“No, I have an old friend…” Wilcox began, but the laughter on the other end silenced him.

“Always. I’ll send you the location. Have a good one,” finished Livingbree.

“You, too, friend,” he replied and ended the call. Opening the refrigerator and removing a carton of eggs, Wilcox whistled. It wasn’t as good as his best idea, the Spirit Lanes, but the undersea generator was his pet project—even better Olin had already made it. This would be a fun, easy job, away from press reporters and scientific journals: a place where he could sit down with Olin, face to face, and philosophize about their attempt at artificial intelligence.

He pulled out a skillet and cracked three eggs into it. He enjoyed the old ways of cooking, over electric heat, though it was considerably more time-consuming. But he had little to do today—or, more precisely, he had little planned to do. When his eggs were scrambled to perfection, he sprinkled a little cheese and some pepper on top, and strode outside. The patio had warmed already, and he slumped into an eastward facing chair, soaking up the morning light. A blackbird cried from one of the many willow branches above him and was answered by several others in the stillness of the morning.

^*^

Sorel woke in his forest bed, as if he had slept a thousand years, refreshed and replenished, but after a few breaths, noticed a weight on his chest. He strained his neck upwards to find a synx lying comfortably, licking a paw. The feline form turned a distracted gaze towards him and purred happily. Sorel reached a hand behind the large cat’s ear and scratched it. Intensely pleased, the synx moved its nose under his wrist forcing a stroke down the back of its neck. Sorel chuckled and stroked it several times more before helping it off his chest and onto the floor of early autumnal leaves.

He rose to make sure all his things were in order. He pulled his glass drinking jar from a vine-hidden cleft and filled it in the crystal pool, surrounded by mossy green and grey-blue stones. He drank deeply and bent to refill the container, when a reflection behind him caught his attention. He sprung away as memories filled him. The traveling girl. How had she come to this place? Had he led her? His eyes spoke the questions his lips would not and she addressed them.

“I brought you here. Don’t you remember?” she questioned and blinked innocently. Sorel raised the jar to his lips and sipped the cool water, trying to bring sound to his throat.

“Where did you sleep? I don’t mind the leaves, but you…” he began. She pursed her lips and lowered her brow. He scrunched an eyebrow and sharpened his gaze—took another sip of the refreshing water. Then she smiled and licked her hand twice in a twisting feline manner.

A wave of crushing realization swept over Sorel. His eyes went wide with understanding. “Yes, Sorel; I know your secret—for I too possess your powers,” she stated, then smiled with her eyes and continued in a softer tone, “We are so alike—you and I.” She sauntered closer to him, raising her cheeks as if to offer him some privileged information. “There is a place we could go, deep in the forest, where there are others like us. We could live, away from lies and deception, together.” Her hand and eyes moved to Sorel’s chest. When she looked up, Sorel found himself gazing into the most undeniably convincing set of eyes and lost his speech. “Will you?” she purred.

Sorel blinked his eyes. He didn’t even know her name, much less her character. Doubt crept back into his dark eyes. “Where is this place you speak of?” he finally managed to ask.

She spun from him and took three steps northwest. “That way,” she said, looking at him over her shoulder.

He walked to her. “What is your name?” She raised her eyebrows.

“My name?” she tilted her head as if to consult the trees, “My name is unimportant.”

“Yet you know mine,” he stated.

Her eyes brightened and widened. “Ahh, Sorel, it is because you are famous! You learned of the power on your own. None have done that since the elder days. Of course I know your name…” she paused and softened her gaze. “I am Amalia, if you must know.”

Sorel felt something tighten in his chest as she fingered her hair behind her ear. He found himself glancing at the tree beside him. “I cannot leave them—my only friends.”

“You will make new friends—those who will understand you.”

When he looked back into the amber eyes, he found himself unable to refuse her again—not even a delay was possible. She read it in his eyes and smiled.

“How fast are you?” she asked, then turned and sprinted northeast. He took off after her. They weaved through the trees, ducked branches, and lightly hurdled the tangled undergrowth. Sorel had nearly caught her when she began singing in the voice of the forest. The next thing he knew, she fell forward and bounded onwards in a feline form, outdistancing him quickly as a synx.

Sorel whispered a verse to himself and leapt into the air, where his wings caught the breeze and lifted him into the air. His vision narrowed, focused—crisp and clear. He kept a wary eye on the tan blur flashing through the forest as he broke free of the branches to soar above it. He fell slightly behind as he worked to gain altitude, but in a swift dive he pulled easily in front of her, gliding through the morning air.

^*^

Olin felt displaced. His enamel skin and titanium joints set him apart from the ordinary traveler. He did not need the clothes he wore; without surprise, they hindered more than helped. The overcoat and tweed hat did not keep the stewardess’ eyes from widenening momentarily. His polite discourse put them somewhat at ease, as did his Imperial badge.

The Emperor, however, had been enigmatic about his existence. He and Dr. Wilcox had hidden for some time after his awakening, onboard Shalre Decon’s cargo ship, waiting for Wilcox’s application for the undersea generator to clear. It was Dr. Livingbree who had notified them of the official governmental ban of any new spirit technologies. Livingbree had also proposed their new project: Artificial Intelligence. Wilcox had been optimistic, but Olin remained skeptical. The idea rubbed too close to home. He wondered what the difference would be between them—a soul within metal and autonomous metal.

And it was during their work that the Emperor requested Olin’s presence at a ceremonial christening of an ancient archeological dig in the western half of the Empire—and his expertise in this field. Olin remembered little from his former life, though some memories still flashed within him in the late hours of the night, and hoped his logically deductive mind would somehow make up for it.

Halfway across the empire, he had stopped for the night in the city of Talorn, a dusty town on the edge of the Plains of Raida and overlooking the Slaac Canyon. Olin stepped from the hull into the swirling breeze. He felt immediately thankful for the overcoat to keep the dust from infecting his joints.

Olin strode down the main street, anxious to escape the sweeping dust flurries blowing westward through the town and out over the canyon edge. He entered the twin glass doors of the first inn he found. He checked into a room and slouched into an open recliner. The room, painted a fuzzy yellow, seemed to choke on his presence. A dull light flickered passively on a brown carpet—dirty or clean, he could not tell.

He retrieved the recorder from his pocket and flipped it open; the crisp silver sheen seemed to remind him of his home, as much as he could call Livingbree’s laboratory or Wilcox’s library home. The instrument’s display lit up with an azure glow and Olin plugged into it, choosing the interview session of which he had spoken to Wilcox.

Though his memory banks contained the dialogue in perfect form, to experience it again helped him concentrate. The holographic scene flickered to life in the middle of the hotel room. Olin slumped back in the recliner, perfectly alert, and watched the interview unfold:

“State your name, please,” Olin began, folding his hand together, elbows resting on the table. He stared into a face similar to his own, coated enamel designed to bend and flow with facial expressions. The eyes were set a bit wider apart, the nose thicker, the lips heavier. It’s photoreceptors dazzled back at him in a permanent smirk.

“521-B,” it said flatly.

“Brandon,” Olin corrected and sat back. “Brandon, tell me what you are thinking now.”

“You, a class 345 autonomous unit designed by Dr. Stanley Burke, 11.43.2573.2, exist 3.5 feet 29 degrees south of west of my entity, sitting on a Crenian lab-stool, product number 8657123, ordered 09.32.2572.2, rest 100% of your weight, spread evenly, on grade 3 reinforced concrete 50 meters below sea-level in a pressurized environment of 1.12 atmospheres. Your vocal frequency matches that of a certain deceased Karl Demasca and has attained a maximum wavelength of 4.5 clicks and a minimum of 4.1 clicks.”

“I know that, Brandon.”

“Yes, you do. Your central processing core, though 3.2 months older than mine, retains 98.32% of my computing capability. I completed the computation 3.2 nanoseconds faster than you did.”

“I know that, too, Brandon,” Olin remarked again, carrying the face of a gambler, the patient blank waiting for the right hand to bet big on. “but tell me about yourself, without describing what I know.”

“You know all I know. You have seen my blueprints. You can see me now.”

“I cannot know what you think, Brandon. I can assume you are as I, interpreting the world around you into its rational explanation. But I cannot know your thoughts. That is why I interact with you; that is why I asked you what you were thinking.”

The blank face across from him stared back with dull eyes.

“You are not a passive receiving entity in this world, Brandon,” Olin continued. “You are an active, participating force, autonomous in this world. So I’ll ask you again: what is it that you are thinking, uniquely?”

The blank face changed little, but changed nonetheless with a slight eyebrow raise. It inched forward.

“I think,” it began carefully, “that I think.” A murky silence filled the room. “I think…I think I remember thinking, thinking that I think.” It eyes stared far beyond the confident smile of Olin.”