Cassiel Winters 1: Sky's End (37 page)

What’s wrong with him? His soft eyes are wide with terror, fixed over my shoulder. The multitude of me’s spin around, and the dizziness causes us to lose our footing. But not before we see him—
my great Aeon
—and there are so many of ‘him’ they make mine seem feeble. My heartbeat’s infinite thudding drowns out our screams. I’m frozen in absolute terror of this otherwise unremarkable humanoid. I remember him as I did in that horrible dream, when he said he was coming for me.

“Don’t fret, little one,” the Aeon rattles ever so slightly to Lai. “I will finish it for you,” he adds, smiling menacingly down on me.

Of course. That great Aeon who I nearly killed on Or’ic’s ship isn’t just any old Aeon. He’s A SIFTER as well as an Aeon. That’s how he too could be here
inside
the rift. That’s why he could open and close that rift on Or’ic’s ship.

“Very clever of you to hide in the rift even if it is suicide,” he says to Lai, standing still in front of us both. He sighs. “Time to come to us, child, and fulfill your proper destiny.”

He expressed ‘child,’ almost tenderly. But I don’t buy him being capable of any worthwhile feelings and stand up protectively in front of Lai.

“Stop,” I say, but before all of me can quite rise in time, Lai rushes toward me, unsheathes a knife from his green waistcoat, and thrusts it straight into his tiny heart. He falls to his knees, holding my eyes, the pain no greater than the burden of regret in the sift. He touches me, and I gather all at once the final message, before he crumples forward, forsaken.

This Aeon’s the sifter who betrayed all sifters. He must be stopped. The eternal curse must be preserved at all costs. Find the Quintom. Find the Quintom.

A heartbeat later, the many me’s scramble for the knife, but the Aeon has grabbed my hair from behind, straining me back until I’m forced to look up at him upside down. He leans forward, grabs Lai’s lifeless body, to see if he is indeed dead, then tosses the corpse aside,

The Aeon’s eyes are devoid of life, like space.

“Allow me to complete enlightenment.” Every fiber of all of my beings recoil in terror. He leans forward and all of his beings enter my beings head first.

Chapter 34

I inhale sharply, as though waking from a bad dream.

Where has he taken me?
Wait, at least this time I know he’s here, in me.

I look around and we’re inside . . . the Dome! He took it from my mind. It’s different from symbiosis, which is abundantly dream-like, with blurs around the edges. Less visually tangible, though emotionally all too real. The reality the Aeon creates is über crisp, harsh almost, too visceral. It’s surreal.
Yeah, that’s it.

My eyes search for the one thing that terrifies me. He’s standing across the living room from me at a safe distance.

“I ask only that you hear me out.” He seems human. A lovely, pleasant, perfectly decent guy. Someone over for tea.

He wears human clothes, a soft metallic shirt, toventer pants. His features are rounded, his eyes dark, but not really any solid dark color. It dawns on me that he blinks very little if at all.

Don’t listen to him! Run!

“I will set you free from here,” he says, his arms spreading to indicate the Dome but meaning my being, “after you listen.”

I swallow. I notice for the first time that the infinite me’s are no more.

Lai.

I experience a morass of loss and yet it compares little to the pain I had felt just moments before.
Is this great Aeon-sifter sparing me? How?

“Have we left the rift?” I whisper.

He stares at me, a cruel smile curving his lips. “No. And neither of us can remain at length in there. So you will listen.”

I wait for him to speak, assuming he plans to convince me to be an Aeon sift. A fate like Lai’s. Better cooperative sifters than imprisoned sifters.

“You are much more intelligent than you appear,” he says, still smiling.

Oh super
.
He can read my mind, I take it.
I work furiously to build walls.

“We do prefer sifters we can trust. Sifters who believe in our cause.”

“Your cause?”

“Although we will not hesitate to force you to do our bidding,” he answers, ignoring my question. “In your case, that is less likely,” he continues, ignoring my question, choosing his words very carefully. “English is a fascinating language, if lacking in texture,” he says to himself. “Humans, now they are something. Certainly compared to Thell’eons.” He focuses on me fully. Staring at my body, then my face.

“What are you talking about?”

“I have been wondering if my counterparts, the sifters of the past, chose wrong. Perhaps they did not expect your species to advance so rapidly.”

“Chose wrong?”

He sighs as though he has told this story many times. He probably has, to many sifters.

“Long after I began my quest to end the eternal curse, after I built up my planets and people across many universes, the Libidion sifters”—he exhales as only a man of so many years can—“who wouldn’t join me, came up with one final plan, before I nearly wiped them out, to stop me. They sent their greatest fighter, Rokon, into the future to find a species who would be formidable enough to battle my future corps. He chose Thell’eons. Here. In this universe.” He looks like he’s about to spit.

Well, gee, I think they are doing pretty good so far.

This great Aeon glares at me.

You’re in here. You get what you get.

“Defiant. Powerless, yet defiant. Is this universe rampant with stupidity?”

I cringe, moving back a few steps, never taking my eyes off of him.

He readjusts his features, as though he forgot what it’s like to physically express an emotion. I long to erase my mind of it.

“My name is Lochmore, although you may continue to refer to me as ‘Great Aeon’ in your mind if you prefer. I rather like it.”

I shake my head.

He tilts his to the side, contemplating something he’s enjoying, like chewing steak.

“You know, Rokon and his remaining sifters broke their own Amaranthine Compact, interfering with this one universe. I find great pleasure in that.

“Do you know, they justified doing so in order to plant the seeds for the necessity of war in those Thell’eon apes. And those arrogant fools bought it, eagerly.

“And do you know, the Thell’eon do not even know why they fight Aeons.” He laughs a terrible laugh. “They think it is wrong to travel across dimensions, and that we must be stopped to prevent them from destroying their universe. They do not know that they fight to preserve the right to die in a singularity!

“Alas, they will never know better. My Aeons will never tell them. And your inane pact, your legacy, prevents you and the remaining sifts from doing so.

“Wouldn’t you, Seraph of sorrow and tears, like to know what it is that you are actually seeking to destroy? I had hoped, now that humans have joined the battle, they would be less easily manipulated. Or are you like the rest? Ready to kill upon command?”

He’s crossing the room, toward me.

“Stay there!” I back into the kitchen thinking there must be a weapon in here, but there’s nothing. The knives are gone. Not even a fork.

“You will not find a weapon in here. I already learned my lesson with you,” he says, his eyes greatly amused. “I have not been surprised like that in billions of years.” I assume he’s referring to me stabbing him with a piece of crockery. “Not since I discovered what else Rokon had done.”

I wait for it, thinking I like this Rokon.

“After instilling a zeal for killing Aeons in Thell’eons, Rokon sent out the youngest remaining sifters in pairs to as many future universes as possible, pledged in the Amaranthine Compact. They were hidden far and well, ensuring that each generation passed on the enlightenment, the legacy, to another.

“You know, I have spent ages hunting them all down, bringing them over to Aeon or killing them. There are so few left. And now that I have encountered the first real resistance in Rokon’s Great Thell’eon Siege, I have no doubt the last of the sifts are in this universe. That this universe is the last hurdle in my quest. You may even be the very last Seraph.”

I’m descended from Libidians?
Yes, this is my legacy.
I know this as certain as I breathe. I’m entrusted to ensure mass annihilation. And here in this universe, in my lifetime, it may be the final chance we sifters have to do so if this Lochmore speaks the truth. I think of the weight of regret, the burden, and I rebel involuntarily against such as task. It’s a horrible truth. No wonder this one who calls himself Lochmore rebelled.

I look away for only a second. Suddenly we’re sitting at stools by the kitchen counter facing each other. I thought for a minute I had some sense of safety in here but that was an illusion, created by him. He knows what I just thought. I back away, but he places a hand on my leg, somehow holding me in place. The warmth surprises me.

“Don’t feel guilty. You reject the Amaranthine Compact precisely because it is not natural. I, of all people, understand this. Your feelings, your desire, to interfere with extinction is right. You know why? Because it’s wrong to stand by and watch every living thing end.”

I glance up at him, tears forming in my eyes. I don’t want his sympathy.

“Oh, you will do just fine,” he says, smiling. Nice, white teeth. His cover, his pleasantness is perfect. I want to feel safe. With him.

Wait, what did he mean by ‘I will do just fine?’

“What if I told you that my cause, Aeon’s cause, were just as noble, just as ‘right,’ as the Amaranthine Compact.” He stares at me with soft eyes.

He waits for my answer. I think he’s mad.
Mad.

“Well, I would say,” I start, unable to swallow properly, “I have no doubt you believe that to be true.”

He smiles, confident, then shakes his head slightly.

“You understand that no one wins an ideological argument. You hide behind that. Eventually, you and your kind chooses a side and tells yourself whatever you need. But this isn’t just about life and death. It is about extinction or,
What words will you understand?,
kingdom come, neverland, utopia,” he whispers, animated.

In this state his attempt to appear human makes the truth of what he really is horribly unsettling. My mouth waters from nausea.

“You do not like my appearance? Perhaps you want me to be taller, or have red hair?”

My face burns with indignation that he can read my every thought.

“I would rather you maintained your real form, hideous and evil.” I push his hand off my leg, but he grabs my thigh again, holding on tight. He narrows his eyes but still does not blink.

“My real form is close to the perfection of the humanoid form. When you experience it, you will understand. For now, for you, I was wise to go back to my Libidion body. You are so young. So devoted to the sensual.”

“But, I thought you’re Aeon?”

“Aeons are my legion. My people. My creation.” He says this with great pride.

I notice he’s stroking my hand. I can’t prevent him. He shares his pleasure with me, the result of my torture, and my stomach turns over.

“In order to focus on solving the riddle of the dark energy and end of the expansion of universes, finding the Quintom,” he says, watching himself touch my skin, “I needed to extend the mortal entities that housed my top scientists and myself, of course. We manipulate time around our bodies so that we may last for as long as we choose. We have also made necessary modifications, such as eliminating our nervous system.”

This explains why he did not notice when I stabbed him. He would feel no pain.

“This state we are in currently is called Id, although it is not proper Id because we are not mutually here. If you came to Id willingly, you would discover why it is so crucial that we end the eternal curse.”

I’m bewitched, somehow, by his gaze. He leans forward and transfers a sense of Id through experience. No words suffice but I understand it’s a place of internal grace, or peace.

“You see,” he whispers, suddenly smelling of fresh bread. “No more pain. No more suffering. No more loss. No more regret.” He pulls away and I yank back in horror that I was so intoxicated by what he just showed me.

“Now you must understand, Cassiel, it is the change, the ending and rebirth that prevents life forms from ever understanding our real selves, from reaching Id. To survive and evolve every trillion years, we are forced to co-exist, to compromise individual desires and needs for the greater good. To battle our ego. Entire civilizations all eventually come to this same conclusion. In their delusion, they call this noble. You know what? I have witnessed trillions of civilization rebirths and not one of them has ever reached a lasting state of being, either within or between themselves.

“Well,
I have
, almost. When one is allowed eternal focus on the self, in Id, without any disruptions such as the wretched eternal curse, it will finally be possible to reach a perfect state of being.”

“You mean immortality?”

“No. Not immortality. Eventually the physical form will die.”

I think of some religions on Earth. “You mean . . . transcendence?”

“No. I do not speak of escaping our ego. In Id, the ego is fully embraced. We become one with ourselves and exist on a plane of completion where there’s no conflict, no interfering, or interference from others over our individual desires and needs.”

I try to grasp what he’s saying. What he’s really saying.

His way seems very . . . lonely, selfish.

“Selfishness is a moral lashing you create to stifle ego. But ego is not a bad thing. You have to reverse your way of thinking. Ego is the proper state of being. The way we were meant to exist. Why else would we struggle so to stifle it?”

“No.” I shake my head. “That can’t be right. Things like love, they are not possible when ego gets in the way.”

“And what about self-love?” he says, interrupting me. “Where would we be without it? Even when we die for others, we do so knowing they will carry on in our footsteps. Yet we call that altruistic. No. Self-love is the only sustainable love.”

My head hurts. Exhausted, I let it droop forward, and finally, he releases my hand.

“We must leave here soon.”

I raise my head. “You will let me go?”

He stares at me for so long I give up inside.

“I confess I would not. Alas, there are stubborn Thell’eon on both sides of the rift. They do not give up on you, though more than three of their months have passed.”

“Three months!”

“Don’t worry, my—” He stops short, hesitating. He shakes his head before continuing. “My Aeons are closer than ever to finding Quintom. And now that the so-called sentinel has arrived, it is imminent.”

Quintom?
Lai’s words echo back to me. He said I must find it first.

Lochmore stares at me, amusement flashing on his face.

“Yes, by all means. Please find it first. You are supposed to, as the sentinel.”

He rolls his eyes at my obvious ignorance, or my naivety. “It is a myth perpetuated by the last sifters, who say that a human girl, a sifter named Cassiel, will find the Quintom first. I should kill you now rather than let you go,” he adds, without changing his tone.

My heart plummets. A little part of me wants him to and when he smiles deliciously at me, I tap into anything but more self-loathing.

“But there’s another myth, another future, that was seen by one of my sifters. And I believe not only that you double my odds in finding the Quintom, but now that I have explained this to you, now that I can see in your eyes, that you doubt in the rightness of the Amaranthine Compact.

“Even if you do find the Quintom, you will do with it what I would do. Like so many sifters before, you would choose to end the everlasting obliteration, the useless, ceaseless
change
, and bring about the new expanse where all great beings will live the ultimate existence in Id unchanging eternal.”

Wait.

“What, what about those who do not want your ideal plane of existence. Can they carry on in their universe as they do now?”