Chapter 1434 (1/2)

Let’s speed things up a bit, shall we? Yystrix continued after a particularly long breath into the silence. I made those special pieces for him and they were very well received. Many praised him for his vision in commissioning them. This was where most of the support for Elhume becoming the next historian began. People said he combined the best of a First and Last. He understood tradition and could innovate. Plus, he had been taught by the current historian. It was as though he was born for the role.

The memory shifted and that horrible image of destruction associated with Elhume was pushed back. It howled at the edges of the new memory, whirling around the current oasis like a grudge-holding sandstorm. Elhume and Yystrix were sitting on a high column of orange rock, watching the plateau below. Elhume was talking and Yystrix was just listening to his blurry words.

Elhume pursued me for a long time before I could trust him. Even then, I could see the… violence of his emotions. Especially when it involved the Nether. But in the end… I truly did love him. Because for every bit of rage he would use to lash out at the Nether, he would turn double back on himself. For being too weak. For being so helpless in the face of the problems plaguing our people.

He was determined to be the one who would lead us back to Eden. It was the home our people deserved, he would say. It was stolen from us, he would insist. The people of Nether had the key to returning and they kept it from us.

Yet even he admitted that as far as we could tell from the records of our bitter war with them… neither side had an advantage. Our combat strength was equal, despite our innovations to the wargames that we played. Aether defended the tower, Nether defended the Sinkhole. Suddenly, Randidly could sense a smile in Yystrix’s voice. Which, in my heart, only served to prove how useless these games we were so obsessed with were…

The memory shifted again to an open-air amphitheater. With long strides, surrounded by blurry figures bright with color, Elhume with dense cords of black light in his chest ascended to the stage. The crowd began to cheer. To the surprise of no one, Elhume became our historian. Yet rather than being happy, his depression grew. To suit his new role, the standards to which he held themselves were hoisted beyond the realm of possibility. Almost overnight, he transformed into a man possessed.

The historians, I suspect now, had a bit of extra information about the true situation of my people. Being faced with that truth broke Elhume in a very vital way, just as it had with most other historians in the past.

Toward the end, in that brief happy time after I brought my son back for his help, Elhume showed me some of his father’s musings, although not the records that led his father to create such strange and ominous ramblings. In essence, the former historian believed that the Aether people had never left the promised land. The dead land in which we now lived was the very Eden we always dreamt about.

The memory shifted again. Yystrix was standing at a window high in the Tower to Heaven, looking out over the surrounding area. She glanced upward, seeing that the maroon clouds were very close above her. She was now on the 399th floor. Soon her view from her window would be completely obstructed.

To describe the historian Elhume as moody would be an understatement. He was more natural force than a living being, always shouting or swearing or crying or preaching. There was only one place where he could be silent; on those game boards. He even made several variations to wargames in the wake of skirmishes with Nether forces, perhaps to alleviate his sense of responsibility by increasing our combat ability.

None of it made a difference. Our people were evenly matched with the Nether. But for all the raw emotion coursing through his being, my spouse was extremely practical. And interacting with me… I believe I gave him the last bit of inspiration he needed to develop a very desperate plan.

If he couldn’t make our people stronger, the only way to improve our military strength was for there to be more of us. Of course, life energy was constant. An increase in our population was impossible without extreme methods.

Yet one day a ‘miracle’ occurred, its sudden arrival like a bolt of lightning splitting the tallest tree in the forest. We, the animals, came out of our secret living spaces and were aghast. But our historian… proclaimed it was a cause for celebration. His vehement words whipped up a grand jubilation to mark the event. A couple had given birth to three children. Within a few months, such miracles began commonplace. Elhume became our prophet, proudly declaring that the time had come for us to return to Eden with our newfound strength.

Do you want to know how he managed it? Yystrix asked softly. But Randidly didn’t need much of an explanation. The memories had gotten so sharp that he could see how diminished these new beings were; their inner light was dim and muted. Randidly couldn’t just intuit the method, but he remembered the mad experiments of Thomas Karmin on Earth.

Something spiritual had been cut out of the original Aether being and placed into another body. The wound had healed as well as it could, but what had grown in the stolen soul’s place was more than slightly wrong, Randidly could sense.

The window in front of Randidly blurred and vanished. Then Randidly felt a sense of immense speed as the world slowly came back into focus. He was rushing forward over orange highlands. Although Yystrix didn’t turn to look, Randidly could sense that the Tower to Heaven was behind him. The further than Yystrix proceeded, the denser and lower the maroon clouds became.

Gradually, she rushed forward into a land of shadow. The Badlands, home of the Nether.

I stated previously that I ran away from Elhume. And that was true. But I was also purposefully looking for something. Maybe even what I was looking for was a clean death. Because there is no way to describe my methods but foolish.

Periodically, Elhume would travel into the wastes to scout out the area. IT quickly became a point of pride amongst my people that our historian was a powerful warrior. Yet I watched him every day; how could I miss that every time he returned from that place, more miracle births would follow?

As you can see, those Births created individuals that were… dull is the term that seemed to fit. It was all too easy to miss at first, however. Because of the overwhelming joy of the miracle, several of the elders gave up their lives to have multiple children. All at once, the grand and bright lights of our people dimmed.

But our numbers soon swelled to a little under a thousand. Elhume’s hatred was a beast that could now stalk openly through the halls of the Tower to Heaven. He practically leaked emotion with his every brutal action. All of Hallohm revered that beast and praised it endlessly. He was transforming right before my eyes.

The stones transformed from orange to black as she continued to run forward. The sky, too, was completely black. It was a lightless place, illuminated only by the light from Yystrix’s own body. She rushed forward while ignoring the changes. I arranged for an accident. It detained Elhume and I rushed into the wastes in his place. I had hoped… I don’t know. I had hoped for an answer.

And in that darkness, I met an agent of Nether. He was wounded and desperate, or else he might have detected that I wasn’t my husband. As it was… by the time he realized his mistake, it was too late.

Amongst the rocks that were thoroughly soaked in shadow, a figure gradually emerged in front of Yystrix. He was large, larger than any of her people and possessed two sets of thickly muscled arms. The Nether man was hunched over and a portion of his substance seemed to be gradually seeping into the surrounding air. Great wounds covered his torso and his essence made use of them to waft off of his skin in thick waves.

“You…” The Nether being seemed troubled as he looked at Yystrix. “Who are you…? You… how...

“Stunning.”

Then the memory froze, leaving Randidly staring at the strange innocence in the eyes of the Nether being in front of him. I’m sure you have questions about what I am telling you. But… just believe that this is true. I… do not wish to share my talks with this Nether King. Suffice to say that I learned much, including the fact that the Nether were just as pathetic a people as the Aether ones were.

And I also learned that Elhume had been meeting with this man to appropriate Nether methods to mutilate our people and subdivide them into more bodies. He was a butcher of the soul, justifying any amount of suffering in order to appease his hatred.