Destiny's Kingdom: Legend of the Chosen (21 page)

Quade didn't even hear her last word before the sound overtook him. It was powerful and foreign, reverberated within his head and rung deeply through his entire body. His own scream from the pain inside his ears and inside his mind was even drowned out from the sound that still swelled, howling and surging, an undertone beginning to ring through the earsplitting wailing, an undertone of a building shriek.

Soon after the sound came the sickness.
 
A sickness like none before.
 
The two together were more than he could bear.

"Shield us!" demanded Echo, and suddenly the sound fell silent. Quade remained on his knees, clutching his head and moaning softly. “This will silence the sound, but I am afraid it will do little for the sickness.” Echo glared furiously at Mimic.

"You always forget to warn them!" She slapped at the air and suddenly there appeared a blue handprint on the side of Mimic's face. "Why must I constantly remind you of how this part effects mortals?"

Mimic wiped her face angrily, collecting the blue dust off her cheek and throwing it violently into the air. "Why should it be me who remembers to remind them? Why does this burden fall on my shoulders?"
 

"Because it is you who likes to tell the tale. But you always forget the details!"

"Indeed, just me? Shall I remind you of the last detail you left out and what the consequences were of that oversight?"

“Who is that?” Quade ignored the emissaries’ bickering, nodded in the direction that he was staring in, now holding his stomach. A man had appeared and like Quade, he fell to his knees. As quickly as he appeared in the distance he disappeared, and a different man faded into view in a different spot. This pattern repeated itself again and again, each person having the same reaction.

“Those are others we have brought to this place in the past, to witness that which we show you now. Pay them no mind.”
 
Men and women continued to appear one at a time, would quickly collapse from the effect of their surrounds and then disappear. Only one other man appeared and stayed while others vanished around him.

“And this all around me,” Quade said, “What is it I’m witnessing?”

"Behold, Quade, and see what it is that you heard a moment ago."
 

Cautiously, Quade glanced up at the sky, rolling his eyes to gain focus after the aural assault he'd just endured. What he saw was at first was a darker shade against the clear, ripping its way through the tear from whence the abominable sound had burst forth. As it developed it became a mist, then a mist that had shadow that became a cloud that transformed into a murky vapor. As it closed in from all around it was still in the unreachable distance, but it took up what seemed to be an enormous space, a space that Quade could hardly comprehend, it was so vast. It rolled and crept together slowly, and as it met itself it grew darker; first neutral and then gray. Then a churning became apparent and it was dense and gaseous. What would have been the sky if there were a sky to see, was filled to eternity with this unfathomable mist, a cloud that grew darker and denser the longer he watched, until it finally made Quade gasp in recognition.

"That thing!" he whispered as though it could hear. "The same entity that attacked me at the nexus, that surrounded the Keystone."

"The very one," said Echo.

"Get away!" Quade tried to stumble to his feet but felt unsure at the lack of visual ground beneath his feet. "It takes up the space of all there is! It's enormous! Get us away!"

"This is a vision of the past, Quade," Mimic said as she flitted around his head, distracting him from what might have been an attempt to escape.
 

 
"This is a vision of what once was, but it has long since passed."

"We are shielded now, from its destructive effects, the sensation you feel, you will only feel while you are here. You are merely an observer of what has been, and of course you can have no affect on what you will see."

Quade nodded. "The pain… it worsens…"

“Enough!” cried Mimic. “We’ve no time while here to dwell on your pain. In this place, you cannot stay very long. For if you linger you shall lose your way and not be able to return. In the eternity of time we have lost only one; we do not wish to lose another.” Quade glanced over to the one man who remained, who was now gesturing wildly and shouting to himself. Echo’s tiny hand brought Quade’s focus back and again she began to speak.

"The gods found a new joy in creating, and now that they had begun, they continued to hone their skill, continued to create." The cloud had turned black and inky, looked more like what Quade had seen in his encounters, only larger and more vast than anything he could imagine, so large and so overwhelming that he couldn't see it in one glimpse, took several passings of his eyes to take in the enormity of it. A sense of rage was beginning to manifest on the air, a sensation that revealed itself by a strange magnetic pull in the atmosphere, an unsettling static that crept straight into Quade's memory, making him very anxious. The shadows began to take shape as he watched, and the rage that filled the air was overwhelming. The shapes began to attack one another it seemed, one devouring the other in what appeared to be a hateful bid for power and space, a vengeful hate that made the air so heavy it was hard for Quade to breathe. The newborn SanFear swallowed one another with their loathsome gaping mouths, cannibalizing their own kind.

“Get me out,” Quade gasped, “Get me out of this place.”

He felt a pulling force, a transitional sense of time and space and once again he heard Echo’s voice.

"The gods eventually created things that worked off of one another, things that had balance and harmony, that grew and built on their own." As his bearings came back to him Quade felt a strange sensation of being turned, and suddenly realized that he had indeed been turned completely around to face another direction. From the clear nothingness that had surrounded him and had been slowly filled with the inky apparition, he now went to the blackness of deep space. "They created beauty, they created life with form that intermingled, that flourished and advanced."

There was no sensation of moving and yet Quade watched as he was drawn into this galaxy, a galaxy full of star systems and planets, moons and solar formations he'd never seen before in his travels or his schooling. They came upon a planet, large and orange and brown from their unmoving descent into its atmosphere. Suddenly Quade felt ground beneath his knees, though the dirt was of a glassy make up that he didn't recognize, felt completely foreign and unidentifiable. But there was sky above, albeit green, and strange vegetation all around.

"The original creation of the gods was left behind as the gods themselves advanced. In its solitude, the creation began to seek a place for itself in the new worlds that the gods were creating. But they were not of these new realms, these new galaxies." Echo looked skyward and Quade followed her glance, and he saw the same apparition, ripping its way into the sky above, tearing through effortlessly, spreading like a dark blanket over the sky.
 

"I can't feel it now," he said as he stared.

"T’was only in the Beginning when the SanFear's numbers were so great that its power funneled from past to present." Echo twirled slowly as she spoke. "From here forward, it cannot affect you."

Quade could feel his face contorting into overwhelmed horror, but nothing compared to the scream he heard when the blanket, all at once, dropped from the sky like an inky cover and enveloped all that surrounded him. The next thing he knew, Quade was lying on the ground, wrapped in a protective fetal position. As he opened his eyes and unwrapped his arms from his head, he saw the emissaries both standing on the ground before him, staring impatiently.

"We told you it cannot affect you," Mimic said with a scowl. "This is long since past; now look and see what has become of this world."

Quade unfolded himself and rose to sit, looking all around him. There was no more grass, no more plants and trees. All around was char and smoldering, but there appeared to have been no fire. Simply a drain of life, of existence. And what lay beneath Quade where he sat, was a planet completely dead of all things that were once alive.

"How do they do this?" He asked, surveying the destruction, the emptiness. "How does a force like this occur, that has the ability to demolish an entire living planet?" There was no life, no movement, no sound, nothing to be seen or felt. Where a planet had once been, where there was movement and promise, there was now emptiness and solitude, a place devoid of any hope to ever spring to life again.

"We will show you." The emissaries hovered together and then were suddenly a blur in Quade's eyes as everything spun for a second and once again all went black.

Everything we show you we show you for a purpose, as we have shown others before you.

It is more important now than ever to take note of all that you see and all that is.
 

The voices were inside his head now, and Quade only then realized that although his eyes were open, he could not see a thing. He gasped and shut them tightly as panic rushed through him.

Do you really think he is ready Mimic?

He must be, for much rides on him being so.

“I am ready,” replied Quade, grateful at the sound of his voice, that he could be heard, that along with his sight his other senses had not be robbed from him.

Are you? Are you ready to witness a hundred, a thousand fold, that which you have already seen?
 

Easy, Mimic. That is why he is here, so he can understand, so he can be prepared.

"Can I open my eyes now?"

Yes, Quade…let us begin.

Quade stood bent with his hands over his eyes, and listened to what was around him. A crisp scent of grass and soil hit his senses, the smell of a field. He heard the soft wind blowing, its song mellifluous and rich as it rose through the grass. He could hear its effect on each tiny stalk, could hear it bend with the wind then let out a sigh as it returned to its original position. Curious and amused he straightened, then opened his eyes.

The intensity of the light he saw momentary blinded him. As he became accustomed to the brightness he realized all the colors around him were more intense than he ever remembered them being. The grass he stood on was a stronger green than he had ever seen before, as if this green were the true green and the green he had always known was a paltry tenth-generation copy of this hue. He heard the buzzing sound of an insect near his ear and backed away to avoid it, but when he looked to where it should have been he saw nothing there. What he did see was a bee as it floated nearby, bobbing and weaving, it’s erratic movements mesmerizing. The colors of the bee left a trail behind it; not so much a trail, he realized, but more of an after image that followed the bee, a repeating of its movements shadowed in its path. The bee was a good five feet away but Quade still heard its buzzing wings as if it were in his ear.
 

Quade surveyed his surroundings. Large trees, reminiscent of Cheramoor trees, outlined what Quade deemed to be north due to the position of the sun. Behind him he heard a soft laughing and whispering. Quade turned around to see who had spoke and to his surprise he saw no one nearby. Off in the distance past the hill he stood on, he saw a meadow where tents of every color were arranged in lines and in circles. Adults mingled, sat in small groups and children ran and played. Quade listened carefully and realized that even at this distance he was hearing these children laughing, and whispering things to each other that he could not recognize.
 

He started off towards the camp at a slow walk and the closer he got, the more he heard. Others were laughing and talking, men, women. Quade thought out loud to himself.

"This is impossible." He tilted his head, like an animal hearing a high pitch, but the voices were becoming clearer. “I’m so far away…how could I be hearing this?"
 

The sound kept building and building, the colors of the tents around the camp too saturated to look at for very long, too deep and too garish. The reds were brighter than blood, the blues beaming a hundred times more intensely than the sky. The chatter of all the voices got thicker, louder as he approached, and Quade could barely make out what was coming from were. He put his hand to his ears in hopes of drowning out some of the noise. Not only was the din almost too much to bear but he colors made it hard for him to focus on anything. Now on the outskirts of the camp, children ran around him, laughing and speaking to each other. He couldn’t understand their unfamiliar language. He saw adults exchanging gifts and laughing, some engaged in what appeared to be story telling, others sitting and leisurely enjoying the day. A pair caught his attention, two lovers that were in an embrace.
 

“Who are these people?”

There is no need to whisper Quade.

Quade was startled by hearing the emissaries in his head, as they'd been silent for quite some time now. Mimic, he thought to himself, pleased to hear something familiar, and further pleased to be able to tell the difference between the two.

They are the first. The first to encounter the SanFear.

Among all this color and life Quade caught a glimpse of something dark and starkly unnatural, without defined shape in this blazingly luminous world. It crept and weaved about, it’s dullness an unmistakable contrast to the startling colors of his surroundings. Moving unnoticed in the crowd, it became more erratic as if with each passing moment it grew angrier and angrier. The air became heavy with the pull of static and Quade had to fight hard not to draw back, to remember that this had all happened long ago. The shadow stopped by the two lovers, hovering, swirling about them, not quite touching them, Quade thought, more…observing them.

“It's shrinking," he breathed. "With each passing second it seems to dwindle a little, as if it were disappearing from this world.”