Drum beats, rapturous and cold, called out like quasars in the void. A deep and sanguine cry rang so loud as to empty Oscar's stomach and pull blood from his ears that trickled and stained his robe. The likemind's homecoming had impacted the iron walls of the Will and melted straight through with giddy expectation, splintering shrapnel of apocryphal knowledge along the path of its ingress.
"Where did you come from father?" Oscar had asked in a time so distant it felt a lie, "if I came from here, where did you come from?"
A healthy and red-cheeked Crown Paramount had smiled back at him that day. Looking down on a small boy he'd said, "from a place long since past into memory, son."
Ti Malis had squeezed young Oscar's shoulder, his pride unmistakeable.
"I was among the few that stood on a new world to humanity. Elysia, we called it, the cause of such strife between the first Starfires and a race not known to us at the time... the Alfar."
"You see, my ship outran the greatest of Alfari battlefleets, where I and my fellow explorers were forced out into the black. After some searching we came across a world full of strange, wondrous life."
"And so I am here now," he finished, pride for his son still brimming on his face, "here amongst family and I would have it no other way."
He stooped to look his son in his eyes.
"We should always remember it unwise, my son, to incur the wrath of those we can't yet measure, to never take that which we cannot wholly handle. Elysia was folly for that reason. Never should we seek to make such missteps lest we risk everything."
In his final sacrifice, the Crown Paramount had succeeded in scrambling the connection that had hewn large gouges into the community of the Will, and so quickly. Oscar's stowaway was now dust, cut off and starved by the Crown Paramount's final act, and so again Oscar was alone.
Alone, if not for his brother – writhing in agony as he did.
All the while, the watchful eye smiled from the void, having borne witness to the suppression of the likemind's reconnection. Smiling and moving closer now from its recess within the nameless depths.
Images of fire wicking up cavernous walls, shadows consuming entire worlds in fireballs so massive that they erased cities in an instant, and vessels not unlike the Evil smashing into the surface of an unknown world dominated Oscar's mind.
A massive storm of choking dust whirled about Oscar's brain, about the Wandering Evil's crew, and across the wordless clamour that recoiled through every host, every attendant, every functional, every descendant of the Starfires on the homeworld and out into orbit with painful speed.
Everything was thrown into chaos as the final gasps of life faded from Ti Malis' body. Even the Wandering Evil called out in melodious woe as its thrusters began lighting off with the randomness of discordant hail. Gravity aboard the vessel was thrown into disarray as Oscar and Nín were forced into the ceiling.
"Grab my hand!" Oscar commanded, reaching out for his brother as the Evil listed again and slammed them into a bulkhead, then again into the wallscreen.
"It hurts so much!" Nín screamed, as he tugged hair away from his own scalp. Still healing from his injuries just before the chaos reared itself, Nín's neck was surely re-broken, but Oscar wasn't certain that was the pain he was referring to.
Tapping his breast pocket, there was no answer from the stowaway as Oscar's heart sank seeing its lifeless form spill out and dissipate in the shifting gravity. He reached again for his brother.
"You have to reach for my hand!" Oscar pleaded. "Use me as an anchor!"
"What is happening– where is... father??" Nín begged, his head searing.
"He's gone!" Oscar explained. "Without a crux to spin around the Will is unravelling! The functionals are disconnected from the community and new likeminds are being birthed!"
"What's—" Nín tried to say, "...a likemind?"
Oscar pointed to the floating cloud that remained of his stowaway.
"Separate minds! Heresy outside of the Will! Without father, the Will cannot find them to control them. Every attendant, admiral, augur, functional, and ship – even you and I – are now evolving away from the Will!"
"Make it stop!" Nín pleaded, fear gripping him with more muscle than the pain could. "Why is the ship– why is everything screaming into my head?!"
"I cannot–!" Oscar insisted, "I never held that power, was never able to tug the strings of the Will like father could!"
"But, you showed me the truth when I couldn't see it! You showed me the lie! You must be able to do something!" Nín pleaded again.
Oscar shook his head, his own neck searing with the movement. The Evil shifted again, sending them sailing into the floor and then into Nín's bed frame.
Grabbing onto the frame, Oscar reached out and grabbed hold of Nín's collar. With that, Nín was able to right himself and lash his body onto the frame. Struggling to maintain their grip, the pair of them screamed with agony as the inertia suddenly increased and the Evil began to shake. Oscar knew what that meant.
"We're headed down– the Evil is moving into the upper atmosphere!" Oscar yelled as the shaking increased. On the wallscreen, the true image of Ghede below was growing steadily closer. "At this rate we'll impact the surface in just under three minutes!"
"What am I to you!?" Nín called out. Oscar stalled in confusion.
"What am I to you, Oscar!?" Nín yelled again, "What am I if not a scientist. What am I if not a tool... What am I?!"
"You are our only hope to put this all back together!" Oscar shouted.
Placing a bruised hand on Nín's face, Oscar spoke clearly, "...and you are my brother!"
"It's so much, Oscar! I can feel the torment. Everywhere I look there's still so much death and agony. The functionals and all other forms shriek within me–!"
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"Quiet them!" Oscar insisted, "dominate the ones that the Will commands, and disp– dispatch any that will not be commanded!"
"Dispatch... No. I will not kill! I will not be bloodied like you, like Nalusa, like Tarrare and Domery and the augurs!"
"You must take hold of the reins, Nín! Become the ruler our father wanted you to be!"
Nín let go of the bed frame and gripped at his hair once more as anguish overtook him. Oscar could feel everything Nín was forced to endure, linked to his brother through one of the few remaining fading strands that tied back to the Will.
"Oscar, I can't do it! I'm just a scientist– I'm no monarch!" Nín pushed back in panic as the voices began to rise within him, drowning him in a sea of wordless dread.
"Together then!" Oscar cried, "Just like father wanted!"
Nín opened his eyes again and stared back at him. There was a sincerity there, a warmth in his eyes that Oscar recognized in Ti Malis.
"How?!" Nín asked.
"I'll lend you my strength! Use my ability to navigate outside the Will to centre yourself!" Oscar instructed, "then return with renewed mettle!"
"I'll try," Nín said, wordlessly.
Oscar and him concentrated as the Wandering Evil continued to plummet through cloud layers and roiling fog. The vessel shuddered with obstinate fury as herd-sized sections began to break free. The brothers were hurled from the bedside but retained a tight hold around each other.
Ignoring the pain of their injuries they continued their efforts and – as likeminds might – rumination evolved into meditation as they passed outside the chaos within the Will. Nín's expression softened as Oscar could perceive the voices slowing.
Around them was the void, resplendent and black. The conglomerated chaos of the Will was before them, quivering and threatening to break apart like soap bubbles taking to the wind. The conglomeration held all of the minds of the Will as they existed in a normally tightly-bound mass.
The mass now writhed with discomfort as each likemind sought autonomy; the more powerful among them – whom Oscar knew to be the augurs, the once united in their derision of his own likemindedness – attempting to corral lesser minds into their own burgeoning fiefdoms. Without a Crown Paramount to rule them, the augurs' ambitions betrayed them into blasphemy.
Oscar spied another bubble of minds, led by one with incredible strength, not growing but remaining steadfast and united.
"Nalusa!" Oscar shouted, only for his words to fall flat across the void.
Notably absent however from her domain was the Wandering Evil itself as it continued its plunge into the atmosphere.
The marshlands below came into full view as the Evil broke through the last of the clouds. Heat from the fall continued to peel layers of the outer hull away, as fire began to wick its way into the substructure.
"Nín, forget the likemind on the planets' surface," said Oscar, "for now I need to to focus on arresting our fall! Bring the Wandering Evil under your sway or all will be lost!"
Nín nodded, concentrating on bringing his and Oscar's likeminds closer to the confines of the Evil and all the attendants that clung to it. Once they pushed through, the vessel's cries remanifested, once more sickening the two of them.
"Use the power we felt back in Mardavatt, brother!" Oscar pleaded.
Nín's grip on his brother tightened as his mind became more chaotic. The copper taste of fear percolated throughout Oscar's whole body. On the horizon, the Palace tower was now clearly visible as the Evil's thrusters fell silent.
That's when he heard it.
With the split-second of silence around them, Oscar sensed a voice so soft that it would be so easy to miss. It was a fading kernel of light like that of a dying match, glimpsed across a league of fog and still water. Wordlessly, the last remaining vestige of Ti Malis spoke to him.
"And, you are to train him," his fading father's voice said in a muffled whisper as visions began to flash again before him.
Oscar saw a wordless horror; a writhing mass of young likeminds each jockeying for control on a once scratchy landscape.
He saw a victorious, lone likemind that knew little of the universe before the arrival of the Starfires.
He saw the Starfires' subsumption, their willful annexation through the Transformative Power into the Will. And with their new minds came delegation and the ability to separate without the risk of birthing new likeminds, so long as the Crown Paramount held firmly to the reins. The functionals' songs tolled across the rift.
And deep above it all, the original Wandering Evil –once feared– now hung as a beacon lighting the path home.
Ti Malis' final thought was of something long buried and feared, of a genetic memory that lay dormant within the Will across aeons back to its birth, so far removed from its reinvigoration with the blood of the Starfires.
It was a voice, not of wordless quiet, nor of hunger or any other base desire. It was a feeling Oscar and Nín could touch. Reaching out together they grasped onto its form and peeled it open like a dusty tome.
"Cronsuwhede," they said together.
A great eye looked back at them with endless longing.
Dismissing them as quickly as it had seen them, it slammed the heavy cover of the tome shut, smothering the last of the candlelight.
Shrugging off the distraction, Nín's continued concentration bore fruit. The thrusters of the Evil reactivated as its own voice fell silent, halting their fall as gravity in the room reengaged. Oscar and Nín climbed back to their feet as the vessel righted itself and began to climb once more through the clouds.
"Very good, brother!" Oscar whooped. A similar cheer was echoed by the attendants throughout the Evil as they too were brought back into the Will.
There was something else; Oscar could feel his strength diminishing almost as if something was sapping it away. Weakening to a point of passing out, Oscar wasn't sure how much longer he could last, or if the effort would kill him.
Nín's power continued to build, less chaotic than before, as it spread outward like a blast wave. On the planet's surface, the roving bands of functionals reconvened and resumed migrating across the plains. In orbit, the numerous admirals and captains swore silent fealty to their new king as most of the remaining hosts folded into the community of a new Crown Paramount.
In the Palace grounds, there remained pockets of resistance that took more convincing.
The lesser augurs folded at the first sight of the waxing Will. The last and most intractable of them, chiefly those of newly nascent heresy, continued their rebellion with feckless disregard.
Suddenly, as if heralding the Crown Paramount's ascension, a vast structure peeled itself out of riftspace and into orbit above the Evil. The voices of three powerful augurs entered the melee– two starkly familiar and one new and untrained.
"I lend freely my claws," clicked Abadón, as they surrendered Nín their aid.
"I lend freely my sight," shrieked Gilgalel, as they too gifted their power to Nín.
"I lend freely my heart," spoke Jonothen, the newest among their number, as he humbled himself before the new Crown Paramount.
Along with their retinue, came endless voices that spanned the many levels of new structure – a station of Odeen design that dwarfed the Wandering Evil and cast a vast shadow across the Palace grounds beneath. The countless voices called out with gleeful assent, a cacophony of wordless melody.
The many reverberations of all fledgling likeminds began to meld back into one another until once more they became one under the reins of Nín Bonwadé, Crown Paramount of the Will.
"Did you see it too?" Nín asked, after he regained his breath.
"Crownsuwhede. Yes, I did, though it's far from the first," Oscar said.
"So did I," Nalusa said, her voice finally freed from chaotic confinement.
"As did all," Gilgalel shrieked, "an ancient quintessence."
"I keep seeing it everywhere, only now do I know its purpose."
"Purpose?" Oscar asked. "Did you gather something from that encounter that I did not?"
The Crown Paramount thought, pensive at first, as if mulling over to divulge something.
Oscar found this strange, for with his ascension, he could no longer seem to look freely into his brother's mind. If secrets were what Nín wanted to keep, there's little to nothing Oscar could do to countermand it.
"It's old," Nín began, "so old its origin stretches off beyond the horizon; I cannot see its beginning."
"So, you cannot see its origin, what can that mean– what truths have you learned?" Oscar asked, a terrible feeling welling within him.
"I asked you once, 'what am I if not one of you?'" Nín stated. "I ask you now, what are we if not for the embrace of the Will?"
"Without the Will...? Without the Will we are lost," Oscar said with marked hesitancy.
"We may not get a choice in that," Nín said. "Deep in the far vestiges of time... it birthed us. It seeded life on this world and gave rise to the Will."
"It–" Oscar started, revelation spinning in his head, "It... created the Will?"
"It means to reclaim us, Oscar."
That's all she wrote!
With the close of Oscar's plotline (that I have been writing in realtime rather than pulling from a backlog, unlike Karim and Jara) that ends all of my prepared chapters to-date. I will be circling back around to write Saul's story arc beginning with Chapter 1 in the new year! I plan to stay at least 10 chapters ahead on RR (with 5 chapters available each a week early on Patreon) this time around so there will be more of a backlog.
Well, that's all for now. Merry Christmas (I wonder what holidays the Ghede would celebrate...) and a Happy New Year!
Where do you think Oscar's going to get up to in between now and his rendevous with Nora and Tolly?
