Chapter 1 “Testimony of the Chronicler” Age of the Faerie 35,362,597, Age of the Fallen 1 The Meridian of Time This is my testimony of the Fall. And, this is my confession. We are dreamers in the dream of the Tao, infinite potential iterating permutations within the Void’s eternal, infinite expanse. Possibilities realized enable or preclude others as Existence explores unlimited imagination for novelty. Fantasy in one reality is fact in another, and often stranger. At the centre of Reality Prime spins the world of Aldyryc. A large white fireball appeared between its two yellow suns at noon of midsummer. It roared north over the Shire Plateau, sonic boom echoing off the Kaxxuun and Lantani Mountains to the east and west. Streaking into the ground six kilometres south of Hobbiton City, it blasted rock, dirt, corn, and flame, over a kilometre. Hobbits, the few still left on Aldyryc then, poked heads from holes to inquire about the noise. Pündi in flying cars swarmed the crash site. The meteorite was brought to Shire University. My father, Parsius, a third-degree master conjurer and Head of the Metaphysics Department, led the investigative team of fifteen, including scientists, an enchanter, a mage, a druid, and a necromancer. The rock crust was too melted to date accurately. Underneath, they discovered a five-and-a-half metre egg of clear, pale blue with a thirty-centimetre opaque, ultramarine, sphere embedded in its surface.

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The egg proved to be a seemingly indestructible crystal. No one had any idea about the sphere, no scan or spell revealing more than that its indivisibility. Both contained powerful qi, life force; the sphere far greater than the egg. The egg, however, possessed an intellect akin to a pre-vocal child or smart dog. I, Sorvah, served as Father’s assistant while they experimented within an adapted faerie ring, a circle of black monoliths that collected, transformed, and focused the qi of ley lines. Balanced qi made the egg grow, dark qi shrank it, and light qi made it reproduce by budding. This allowed Parsius to create the first three hyperships, using standard saucer design, gravity drive, and wormhole generator, technology that had spread pündi throughout the universe and beyond. Pündi were been given little choice but explore beyond our world. Aldyryc was into the second Age of the Blood Wars, each named for a race created to defeat the spawn of Tiamat. The Wars and the Shire’s isolation produced hobbits, expert at remaining unnoticed. Curiosity drove some to reach beyond home, advanced technology their advantage. The stars became their horizon, their genes a tool. Now shape-shifters, pündi evolved from hobbits through time, science, and sorcery. Our circular eyes lack whites, pupils, and irises, glowing like a cat’s in dimmest light and sensitive from infrared to ultraviolet. Sienna to coffee in complexion, lines follow our features like wood grain, appearing in puberty and getting darker and wider with age. Our wavy or curly hair is black. Our feet are neither hairy nor leathery, travelling boots being a pündi’s best friend. Father earned his University position by leading the first expedition into Outer Darkness, beyond Reality Prime, to explore the infinite realities spread throughout Existence by the Chaos Wave that ended Ragnarok. In a

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saucer with void steel armour, they used wormholes to travel to the Dream Time, the Astral Sea, and Pandemonium. Then, using momentum, they crossed Outer Darkness near one of the Maelstroms, where realities collide. Crossing the new reality, they sampled each of its dimensional layers before moving on to the next. In the second reality, Parsius married Anyah, expedition surgeon. By tradition, with one needle, he pierced her left ear and she his right, each donning one earring of a set. I was born upon arrival in the third reality; my brother, Pandis, twenty years later in the fourth. Three years following, in the fifth, Mother and four others of the expedition contracted an unknown, fatal pathogen resistant to magic and nanotechnology. Father promised her that he’d raise us back home. Not yet adolescent, I held my infant brother and stood by Father in orbit, watching as fusion bombs bloomed across half a continent. The expedition ended. Without a body, not even Aldyryc’s gods would be able to recall her soul from wherever it went in that distant reality. She would be forever separated from her family. If he could go back and retrieve her soul, they could be together, but there seemed no hope. Until the hypership, possibly capable of withstanding paradoxes and conflicting forces that had masticated Atlas – most invincible of the Elder Gods –, spitting out his belt and hammer, Mjölnir. Parsius theorized that all Maelstroms formed actually a single “hyperspace”. You could travel to any reality in a relatively short time, maybe instantly. Worth the risk, at least to him, we got swept along, me out of curiosity and hope, Pandis for the rare time with Father.

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We weren’t alone. It became a racial project, followed devoutly. Trillions watched the launch’s holographic projections or immersed virtually. Even hobbits, who usually stuck to gardening, farming, and cooking, couldn’t resist the unending, ubiquitous coverage. If it worked, the voyage of Maelstrom One would change everything. If only it hadn’t. I discovered the crystal sphere’s power. Others had examined, scanned, and handled it without revelation. Then, Pandis got hold of it and, loving the attention, had to be chased, me prying the sphere from his hands while Father held him, squirming and giggling. The moment it was free, voices filled my head, a three-dimensional colour image forming inside and replaying chasing the laughing boy, blue-eyed like Mother. Parsius and I shared yellow. Voices filled my head, many more than were speaking in the scene. “Holy Marduk,” I exclaimed. The scene in the sphere became three personages sitting on golden thrones. The left held a golden man with three eyes, four ears, two mouths and four arms, wearing a purple cloak and grey leather kilt. Beside him sat a woman with red hair, a grey robe and purple veil, flawless skin deathly pale, two ravens perched above her shoulders. At their feet sat an ebony man with a jackal head, a golden ornate mace gripped across his blue leather kilt. Marduk, Rawna, and Anubis, in session with the Council of Powers in Qohlahb, a place no magic could view. <About time, or, it was. There’s a lag, > said the King’s two voices, one high, one low. The God of Magic

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and Knowledge fixed me with a red, a blue, and a purple eye. <Secure the Eye of Ptah. It is yours, alone, once you earn it.> Ptah was God of Space, Time, History, and Prophecy, one of four Ancient Ones from the Age of the Egg, ended by the sacrifice of Bahamut starting time and creating the early cosmos. Parsius deduced what was happening by watching over my shoulder. “With this we could locate Anyah. I’d pay the Raven Queen’s price, a life for a life, if I could bring her back. Without body or spirit, all experience since leaving Reality Prime would be lost she were restored by a god willing to pay the price of Charon, Ferryman of the Styx.” It was something similar to what Pandis and I had heard him mumble when alone in his study with an empty glass and half a bottle of gin. Not every night, but always around the anniversary of her death, when the bottle emptied. Pandis didn’t understood Father’s sadness and distraction. Knowing neither parent, Pandis missed both. I tried my best to look after him during the twenty-two year journey back to the Shire, and during the frequent times father worked. He got attention, positive and negative, in every way his active mind invented. He tortured everyone with creative pranks, like filling a shallow pit with manure and covering it with illusion powder stolen from Father’s study. Most caused embarrassment, some pain. One started a small fire in the lavatory. I got the brunt. It got worse when puberty manifested untrained mystical talents attuned to the Fey Key. I sometimes wished he and Mother could switch places. Armed with knowledge of sphere and egg, Father forgot everything else, often including food and sleep.

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When with us, mind and body, he was happy and engaged. He let us help where possible. His hope infected us. Working together to help Mother made us feel a family. Both of us wanted to go find Mother, something he didn’t discourage. But, first he needed to see if hyperspace even existed. Anticipation and anxiety increased daily in our apartment. The lure of exploring Existence pulled our race along. Academics, dignitaries, the social elite, and media, were a small part of a massive crowd watching two hangers of Clarke Field open their doors to release ninety-metre crystal saucers floating a metre above the tarmac. Electromagnetic pulses and space-time micro-ripples shimmered around each with a low, oscillating hum. Accompanied by cheers and live music, Maelstrom One and Two moved to the spaceport’s central field and rose into the middle of a diamond formation of four larger, silver saucers. Together they flew towards the crater. Hundreds of thousands of pündi and hobbits lined the route, eyes locked on the sky. Without the escort, most would have missed the light-blue disks, only five concentric chalky rings on their bottoms visible against the sky. No one knew why the pattern appeared with the gravity drive’s activation. At this moment, no one cared. Balloons and banners waved. The suns glinted off countless lenses. The saucers stopped over the huge crater. Officials pontificated about the unlimited potential of mind and spirit, and the courage of those who risked lives for the advancement of all. Then a hush fell. A large black sphere filled with stars expanded ahead of the lead ship. One by one, escorts entered, flipping

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horizontally and vertically inside. Then the wormhole shut. “Let the Pathfinder lead us,” High Councillor Vendya shouted into her microphone, echoed by the crowd for a planned ten seconds before Parsius told his ship to open a gateway into the Maelstrom. Forming eleven metres in front of the ship, the sphere wobbled, swirling beams of colour drilling out in all directions. Spinning in many directions at once, some conflicting, it emitted a metallic grinding heard in the bones of everyone outside the hyperships. Maelstrom One threw electromagnetic and space-time pulses two hundred and ninety kilometres, flicking Maelstrom Two across the sky more than forty-eight. Winds hammered clouds of dirt from the ground as light poles danced, earth-quake proof buildings cracked, and electronics died or exploded. Communications disintegrated. The wind carried screams, roars, growls, hissing, babbling, and howling. Outside the hyperships, every orifice streamed blood. Maelstrom One stretched and snapped into the writhing wormhole, collapsing it with a boom that shattered windows across the city. The wind stopped. The bawling of children rose through dust clouds. Crawling into the command chair as soon as the ship stopped spinning, I scanned the area where Maelstrom One had been. There was no wreckage or spatial distortions. I reached out to the One through the Two’s telepathic connection. Minutes crawled past, fear mounting in my belly.

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High Councillor Vendya’s wizened face appeared on the left half of the viewer, bloody, dirty, and dishevelled, orange eyes wide. “Anyone alive up there?” I opened my end. “I'm ok. How’s everyone down there?” “Shaken. We’re taking stock of the damage now. What the Hell was that?” “Don’t know. We thought there might be side-effects, but nothing like that.” The High Councillor nodded. “I’ll have the University put their people on it.” She turned to the side and nodded sharply. Then her gaze returned to his. “Any word from your father?” “Not yet, but there's a time effect differential of ten between the Telestial and Terrestrial Realms. Things happen slower here. I'm going to try again.” <Father? Parsius, are you there?> I tried to focus on the message and listening. Planar conditions could weaken, scramble, or prevent a response. Long seconds became agonizing minutes. Time might be meaningless in the Maelstrom. <Sorvah.> Distorted, echoing, but comprehensible. <Connection good, considering. In one piece. Ship holding if mind can. Seen horrible, impossible things. Going to nearest edge now. Talk then. Love my boys.> I opened my eyes, smiling broadly, and slapped my knee. “He did it.” My gaze met the High Councillor's. “Father’s alive.” Her smile was half mine. “What about his ‘hyperspace’ theory?” I shrugged. “He’s testing that now. I have no idea how long it might be.”

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The High Councillor pursed her brown lips. “We’ll wait, at least for a few hours. How long will that give him?” “Three hours would give him more than a day, if I have the time differential correct.” “All right then. Let me know as soon as you hear anything.” I adjusted the form-fitting seat, called up a puzzle on the video screen and settled in. Less than an hour later, Father’s voice returned, undistorted but so faint I could barely make out the words I hadn’t missed. Such connections afforded about twenty-five words. <…edge. One parsec, seven-dimension reality with coloured qi stream through doughnut center, from Heart into dimensional bubble. Following rainbow to gold.> I leapt out of my seat whooping. “He made it.” Falling back in my seat, I beamed at the High Councillor when she appeared on the screen. “He found the nearest edge of Existence. The Maelstrom must have taken him the entire way.” I paused to breathe and lower the pitch of my voice. “He found a single ring-shaped planet in a universe with a diameter equal to the distance between Aldyryc and its suns. A stream of qi runs through the hole, though a dimensional bubble, into the Void. My father is trying to discover where it leads. Where Existence ends.” The High Councillor didn’t blink for a long time. “The Pathfinder has done it.” Her voice was a whisper of awe. “No reality is out of reach for the pündi. Think of the exploration and trade.” Cheers rose around her. Even with hours until basic communications were restored, the news spread like an electromagnetic pulse

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energizing trillions of pündi in with overwhelming possibilities. Existence had changed forever. Too concerned with their struggle for dominance to pay attention to the reclusive, insignificant pündi, the other races continued fighting one the largest, bloodiest battles of the Blood Wars, not realizing it would be the last. I flew back to the hanger. Pandis joined me on the on the bridge that night. Spreading bedrolls to stay in the ship’s telepathic field, we hoped to hear a soft whisper in our dreams that might slip past the conscious mind. The night passed uneventfully. Others took over for periods during the day, but we returned each night. The next contact came six nights later. I sat on a large rock, waves lapping its base, the suns sparkling on the surface from cloudless azure. Parsius whispered beside me, distorted, pitching up and down, fading in and out. <The rainbow feeds the Demogorgan. Warn the gods. It comes for all. I’m returning.> Father began to laugh, growing louder, higher, hysterical, unconnected words and sounds bubbling forth as his presence receded. Everything went dark, not just lightless, absent everything. I was utterly alone. Then hunger radiated from the darkness, growing more intense as it surged at me, beyond comprehension, formless, unfocused, consuming until only IT remained. I jolted upright, bedroll soaked, heart racing. Woken by my scream, Pandis stared across the bridge.

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“Father’s coming home,” I said, panting. “He found something in the Void.” Silence sat heavy for a time. Pandis didn’t know if he should smile. <Help.> Parsius’s panic put fire in my skull. <Ship struck something. Coming apart. Drive offline. Must get out.> The last three words were in many voices at once. Impossibilities, paradoxes, and contradictions assaulted my mind, incomprehensible, overwhelming. I emptied my stomach. Pandis knelt at my side. Terror set me upon my feet. “Off the ship, Pandis.” My voice was strained but loud. “Father needs help. I’m not risking you too.” I hustled him off the bridge, through the central common area to the levitation shaft, where he stopped. I grasped his shoulders. “There’s no time to argue. Father would want the family to survive.” Then I stepped backwards toward the bridge. “Get off my ship.” Although he looked like he wanted to argue, Pandis nodded. “Good luck brother,” he said, leaping into the shaft and floating down out of sight. I rushed to the pilot’s seat. As soon as Pandis was clear, I raised the ramp and launched into the cloud-laden sky. Rain pelted the ship as until it broke free into the upper atmosphere, then space, and opened a wormhole to the Maelstrom. Everything stretched forward, blurring and twisting tight before snapping back into shape and focus. A cacophony assaulted ship and pilot as the contradicting forces of the Maelstrom took hold. The ship bucked, lurched and spun in every direction at once in constantly changing, often conflicting, and

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currents of energy, matter, and force. Chunks of rock and ice pounded the crystal craft, along with random explosions. No words, no concepts rooted in reality, adequately described the Maelstrom. Matter shared space, flame cast darkness, and things travelled opposite directions simultaneously. A planet opened wide and swallowed its sun. Cause and effect traded places and disassociated completely as time slowed, raced, and skipped randomly through all three dimensions. Paradoxes tore at the ship apart while impossible, horrible, and wonderful, entities and environments tore at my mind. Most, my reeling mind refused to accept or acknowledge. A foetus in a crystal womb, inside a berserk blender with blades on all sides, I couldn’t resolve anything. Overwhelmed, I bellowed rage to depressurize the frustration and anxiety. I bounced from wall to ceiling to wall to floor. Rolling toward the pilot’s seat, I struck something invisible doing the same, grabbing it with both hands. “You should have put some seatbelt’s in these things,” Pandis cried, turning opaque, barely audible. “What are…?” I yelled. “How did you get here?” We hovered in the air. Pandis smiled. “New mystical talent and a non-detection potion.” I shook my head. “We have to find Father. Reach into my haversack for a Sense Location scroll.” Pandis reached into the backpack, actually the entrance to a dimensional bubble about twice its size, and pulled out an ivory tube, pushing it into my hand an instant before we were flung in opposite directions. Clutching the tube, I struggled to pry open its corked end. Parsius had purchased the most powerful location spell available for just this sort of situation. I prayed to

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Marduk that eighth-circle would be enough to pierce the Maelstrom, if location meant anything. <Gate out of here.> Father's voice exploded with pain that blocked out smashing my back into the ceiling. My stomach churned, mind filled with mad echoes and wild, conflicting emotion. <Don’t ask. Just get us back.> The telepathic voice felt odd, but I dismissed it as the Maelstrom's effect while getting to the pilot’s seat, opening a wormhole and ordering Maelstrom Two through. The ship stopped, pitching me onto the floor. Shouting at it, I called up our present location as Pandis helped me up. It took a minute before the ship’s sensors recovered, placing us three hundred and twenty-two kilometres northeast, one hundred and seventy-seven kilometres above, the Shire. “What happened?” Pandis breathed hard in the calm. “Why are we back?” I beamed at him. “Father’s aboard. He contacted me from the hold.” Then I vomited on his boots. Pandis cheered, ran to the levitation shaft, and leapt in head-first. I wiped my mouth with the back of my leather jacket’s sleeve. Then it hit. Father had returned from the Maelstrom. Nothing would be the same. The levitation shaft’s magic lowered me to the hold floor fifteen metres below the command deck. Parsius stood in the center of the empty eighteen-metre circular room, with Pandis’s arms wrapped about him, face buried in his chest. Stiff in the embrace, looking bemusedly at the top of the boy’s head, Parsius glowed

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with vitality, a presence so intense that it electrified the air, nearly knocking me to my knees. Tearing away my gaze, I noticed something on the floor behind Parsius. Almost seven feet of red crystal with a black heart, two curved blades twisted around a straight central blade, all sharply pointed. A dagger made for someone around thirty feet tall, its quillons were the horns of a demonic skull, the hilt a collection of tentacles gripping a spherical pommel. A shiver travelled up my spine. Over Pandis’s shock of black hair, Parsius saw my expression. “It hit my ship,” he said it as if repeating someone else’s words. “Came through the viewer.” Using my Sense Enchantment wand, I concentrated on the crystal weapon. Normally it would take a few seconds before I could tell much about power or purpose, but I immediately staggered back from intensity of qi, chaos, and evil. It could only be one relic, Cthanic, Dagger of Destruction, created by the Great Old One, Cthulhu, eldest Abomination of Tiamat, for Ragnarok, the First Existential War. Impaling Rawna, its tips pierced the Keystone of Reality, causing the Chaos Wave that remade the cosmos, sending unnumbered realities throughout Existence, and generating the Maelstrom. I stared. “You found Doombringer.” “More like it found me.” His dark brown lips twitched under his thick moustache in an attempted smile that went nowhere near his eyes. They held the wonder and fear of a newborn struggling to make sense of everything, tightened at the corners by pain, but his voice lacked emotion. “I felt your presence just in time to teleport here before Maelstrom One disintegrated.”

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I continued to stare. “I… guess that makes two things to bring to the attention of the Council of Powers.” “Two things?” Parsius cocked his head, patting Pandis on the back. I frowned, but no one knew what effects the Maelstrom could have. I felt scrambled. “You said you had to warn them about the Demogorgan. We have Doombringer as well. We must take it to Qohlahb and give it to the Council.” Parsius frowned for a moment, and then the pain seemed to vanish. “Qohlahb. The Celestial City. Mid-point of Yggdrasil and location of the cavern of Acheron wherein lies the Isle of Tranquility and Keystone of Reality.” He locked a fervent gaze on me. “Surrounded by the divine fires of Phlegethon and the amnesiac cloud of Lethe, which neither wormhole nor dimensional shifting can penetrate. The only way in is flying. Both barriers identify those permitted through, such as souls accompanied by Reapers. How do we get through?” Pandis straightened, stepped back and grinned at Father. “The ship can take us. It survived the Maelstrom. They can’t be worse.” He looked to me. “Can they?” I pursed my lips, and then attempted a reassuring smile. “The ship should get us there in one piece.” “Then,” said Parsius in a voice that ignited excitement, “it’s off to Qohlahb.” I led the charge up the levitation shaft with brother and father behind. Once gathered around the pilot’s seat, I gestured for Father to take command. “This is your ship, son.” He smiled through a pale complexion. “I have a migraine.”

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I nodded and smiled, through a building sense of danger, before slipping into the chair and opening a wormhole to the plane of Air. Perceptions and stomachs twisted as Aldyryc’s curved horizon and star-filled sky was replaced by palest blue, contained within Faerie’s two-parsec hollow sphere. At its centre shone the Celestial sun. I activated the gravity drive, the ship’s reactive coating tinting as we flew to the sun’s equator and into Phlegethon, the blazing outer one-hundred thousand kilometres. The coating blackened but couldn’t hold back the brilliance, heat reddening skin and raising blisters. Eyelids were useless. Cries of pain filled our ears. Then, we entered the next one-hundred thousand kilometres, Lethe diffusing the glare and dropping the temperature. The swirling mists withheld all signs of orientation and progress, but were unable to enter Maelstrom Two. We broke into the sun’s hollow interior, only the ship’s reaction-time preventing collisions amid a three-dimensional forest of clear blue crystal branches. We followed their increasing thickness and decreasing number toward the source. From a hair’s breadth, the branches grew to over one and a half kilometres thick as three planetoids came into focus, nested within. The size of gas giants, the middle was separated from the others by twice its width. The upper one and branches glowed pure white inside, the lower were black, with the equatorial growth clear; its orb striped horizontally light and dark. Heaven, Hell, and Qohlahb. Drawing closer, twin lines of trunk came into view connecting the three spheres at the poles; all branches stemming from their nineteen-kilometre diameters.

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Everything part of Yggdrasil. Qohlahb consisted off thousands of kilometre-thick branch disks a kilometre apart, top and bottom sprouting buildings and columns. Disks varied in diameter by location; the largest at the equator, its magnificent cyclopean structures including the Celestial Courts, Celestial Palace, and Pantheon, meeting hall of the Council of Powers. And, we were trespassing. The previous trespassers were Tiamat with her Abominations and demonic army, at the end of the Ragnarok. They changed Existence. With Cthanic. Which was sitting in the hold. Cold fear clutched my groin but I couldn’t stop the ship, couldn’t argue, and couldn’t shake my eagerness. “Take us to Acheron,” said Parsius leaning toward the viewer. I obeyed, scanning for an opening in the trunk at equatorial level. There was only one. “Near the Plaza of Remembrance,” said Father, excitement squeezing through pain. “Lots of statues. Can land there.” “Are you all right?” said Pandis. “Soon.” His smile was the opposite of reassuring. Pandis smiled back. “Good.” I wanted to vomit. Instead, I located the opening and set course. I was under an enchantment, and Father was too. He hated using other people, magically or otherwise. Mother had called such mental rape. Besides, sorcerers could only use one Craft and his was Conjuration. So who was in control? Cthanic may be capable of such. I only knew that Parsius wasn’t the controller. He couldn’t be. He’d never dishonour mother that way.

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“Are those angels?” Pandis pointed at the viewer, where hundreds of winged anthropoids rose from streets and rooftops. “I don’t think the gods appreciate mortals entering their city uninvited.” Saying it surprised me. Maybe the enchantment was wearing off. “We have to get their attention.” Parsius’s voice was tighter. “I think we already got –” My words died as Pandis gasped. Parsius hunched over, arms clutched around his stomach, hair pasted to his head, skin ashen; the glow gone from his eyes. “Acheron.” His voice was a hiss. “Why?” It took everything to say the word. Awe radiated from Parsius, but weaker. “Everyone ignores us. We must do something drastic.” Straightening, he gave Pandis an intense smile. “We’ve got to enter the Cavern of Sorrows and ring the cosmic bell.” Pandis laughed. “That will get everyone’s attention.” Parsius nodded and patted him on the head. I tried to object, but a glance of Parsius’s dead eyes hit like a physical blow. “That’s a great idea,” I heard my mouth declare. “It might even stop the Blood Wars.” Huge flocks of immortal warriors flew toward the ship, white, grey, and black, feathered cloaks flapping like wings. I surfed the ship around Qohlahb on a space-time wave, leaving archons and angels far behind. The semi-circular Plaza, lined with towering obelisks of ultramarine void steel, offered a good landing place. I brought the ship to within a metre of the crystal ground, close to the twelve-metre high, nine-metre wide oval hole in the crystal trunk.

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A chain of will pulled me from my seat to the hold where we gathered around Cthanic. Only the tips of the blades were sharp, so Parsius gripped two just below while Pandis held the pommel in both hands. I grasped the two-metre long weapon near the guard and we hurried down the ramp. A metre above ground, the mouth of Acheron was surrounded by a raised rim engraved with repeated runes comprehensible to all minds. “Abandon all hope.” To enter and return without reaching the Isle of Tranquility was said to be cursed for life, but getting to the Isle risked the unforgiving Styx. I tried to let go and stop. We slid Cthanic into the cave mouth, and then climbed up as a Celestial host landed in the Plaza and charged the cave, rune-inscribed swords gleaming. Returning to our positions on the dagger, we jogged down the crystal tunnel, Pandis laughing. Glancing back, I saw Celestials halt, unwilling or unable to enter. Parsius’s strained cackles joined Pandis’s giggles, their gazes fixed ahead. After something like six kilometres, the tunnel opened into a massive cavern with a smooth beach a few hundred metres wide running along the wall. Black, motionless water stretched beyond sight, covered to the kilometre-high ceiling by thick fog. “Styx and Kokytos,” I whispered as we paused at the end of the tunnel, “the Waters of Hate and the Mists of Lamentation. Just touching the Styx traps victims within, beyond the power of the greatest gods. Kokytos’s despair makes plunging into the Styx irresistible. This deep in the Celestial Realms, only the weakest of spells are possible, leaving one way across.”

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A tall robed figure on the side of a long, wide ferry, emerged from the mist, pole and boat of light blue crystal, sliding silently through still black water without a ripple, only a soft chime as its prow bumped the beach. “Welcome to Acheron.” The voice echoed from the mist, dry as blowing sand. “All who step within obey the laws of Charon or are taken by the Styx. Turn back now or pay my price.” “What price?” Parsius called between clenched teeth. “A life given twice. Board and enter my debt.” I had to stop this. “We have but one life.” “The tale of your life, told truthfully, pays the crossing. A thousand years’ service pays the return.” Pandis gasped; then laughed. “A thousand years. Might as well make it a million. We’re not faerie.” “Age is no factor. Charon chooses the time. Obey or face the Styx. All must pay the Ferryman.” We looked doubtfully at Parsius, but his dead yellow eyes saw only the ferry. “Everything will be fixed once we ring the bell,” he pleaded quietly. I tried to object. We entered the cavern. Yggdrasil trembled, knocking Parsius to one knee, grip locked on Doombringer’s blades, pulling me onto the floor. Pandis rode the quake with a smile. My tense muscles relaxed. Acheron stilled. Parsius spat two teeth in blood, rising to his feet, limbs shaking; breath laboured. Diminished, awe faded, he raised his head with a series of loud cracks, eyes and skin grey. Ropes of hair dropped onto trembling shoulders. Blood trickled from his mouth. Sweat soaked

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his clothes. Maintaining a grip on the sword with one hand, he tore off his knee-length leather coat. Pandis stared at him, speechless, horror and worry struggling on his young face. I was stunned. Parsius grasped the blades with strength belying his condition and pulled us toward the boat. “We’ve got to ring the bell!” Pandis nodded, eyes glistening. “Then everything will be better,” he said, repeated as we approached the boat. “Then everything will be –” Pandis stopped dead at the water’s edge, staring into the blackness. Parsius moved his end to Pandis’s left to add his stare, pulling me along. Horror, revulsion, and pity, gave me vertigo. A sheer drop into darkness, the Styx held innumerable anthropoid and non-anthropoid bodies, tiny to colossal, some inches below surface, upturned faces locked in shocked terror, with more shapes below. My gaze fell on the pale features of an elf girl. Her amber, feline gaze grabbed mine, begging for release. Gasping and shuddering, I backed away, pulling the others with me. Charon spoke from the mist. “The Styx embraces those who break its oath for eternity.” A death-rattle laugh chilled my bones. The eight-foot figure planted its ten-foot pole with a loud chime, shadowed hood turned toward them. “Approach and pay my price. One lie and nothing can free you.” Pandis jumped, and then gingerly returned his hands to the pommel. After a moment, he looked at me in amazement. “It just said it can free them.” His eyes darted from Dagger to Styx.

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I frowned. “How?” “By doing more than ringing the bell.” The voice rose, toneless, from the mist. “It does not lie. But you must pay my price to face that choice.” We stared at the Ferryman. “I… I’ll go first.” Pandis smiled wanly. “I have least to tell.” He began with birth, moving through a childhood travelling from reality to reality, and on to his time in Hobbiton. Making unwitting mistakes, he jumped from place to time, details reminding him of other details, tangents entangling him for a moment before nervously joking and going into intricate detail about all of his pranks. Each word, I feared, would send him into the Styx, but, at last, Pandis reached the present and smiled at the robed figure, shaking; a couple of tears spilling from his eyes. “In a word,” said Charon, “what is the purpose of your crossing?” Pandis frowned then looked at Father and smiled. “Love.” “Board or leave as you choose.” I let out my breath. “Next.” The quiet word hovered, a promise of doom. “I’ll speak my tale,” I said, hoping lies you told yourself didn’t count. I condensed my story to major events and summations, cutting embellishment with the bardic edge of an apprentice illuminatus as I covered the time before Pandis’s birth, corrected his errors and lapses, and worked factually up to the present, trying to conceal my concerns about Parsius, yet tell no lie. “In a word, what is the purpose of your crossing?” “Hope.”

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“Board or leave as you choose.” Relief bubbled in me, but popped. “Next.” Parsius closed his eyes, words trembling, sentences clipped. Born on a farm, he became an illuminatus, an adept in knowledge collection, oratory, charm and illusion, wandering the war-torn world beyond the Shire as well as several other planets. He returned to the Shire to study metaphysics and sorcery. While working on his doctorate and learning Conjuration, he participated in expeditions to other planes and dimensions. Meeting a medical student named Anyah, they decided to explore Existence as far out as possible, calling it the “Quest for the Edge” and managing to assemble a party for the endeavour. Through gritted teeth, but lacking emotion, he told of his children’s births, his wife’s death, returning to the Shire, the appearance of the meteorite, the hyperships, the Maelstrom, and a ring-world threaded by a rainbow that bridged a demi-world. Throwing his head back, Parsius shouted, “Demogorgan.” Eyes closed, he slurped and a tooth fell out. “Doombringer. One and many. It hurts. Must make it stop. Must ring the bell. Help. The bell is near.” “In a word, what is the purpose of your crossing?” Open eyes stretching into large almonds, he screamed, “Relief.” “Board or leave as you choose.” The voice held a hint of sadness. “Do not let the weapon touch the boat.” We stepped aboard and up the length of the ferry, big enough for twenty times our number, keeping the Dagger above our waists.

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The Ferryman watched with empty eye sockets, gripping his pole with bare bone, almost as tall as three pündi. We hurried to the other end. “Stay where you are until the other side. Disruptions or outbursts will send you into the Styx.” Charon turned and drove his staff into the still water without ripple or sound. The ferry slipped away from the shore into the fog. Keeping one hand on Cthanic, Parsius tore off clothing until naked. I watched him, faking enslavement with as little horror and revulsion as I could manage. Something had taken possession of Father in the Maelstrom. The further it went into reality, the more pain it experienced and the less powerful it became. Or, its magic was also limited here. I had to wait until it was weakest, and then act with surprise to drive the tip of Cthanic into his body, hopefully killing it and releasing Father. When Cthulhu tested it on his mightiest brother, Cronus, the weapon spilt him into Azathoth and Odin. Pandis’s mouth gaped. Parsius’s limbs and neck stretched and his penis fell off, but he didn’t scream until his head expanded, pulling his nose into two flat slits. Hair fell from leathery grey skin; the last teeth from his mouth. Bloody spittle hung from his shrunken chin. The thing stared at us, black alien depths containing only pain. The boat chimed against the Isle of Tranquility. “You have arrived. Disembark or return.” With Pandis in the lead, we hurried onto the one-and-a-half kilometre, circular Isle. Kokytos avoided it, creating a clear dome almost a kilometre high. A hundred and eighty metres ahead, the smooth upper third of the spherical Keystone rose five-hundred metres, an

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ultramarine mountain topped by a blazing white jet that disappeared overhead. The Inner Valve of the Heart of Existence fed Yggdrasil light and dark qi. Metaphysical theory stated that the Heart produced instantaneous temporal pulses, leaving decaying entropic layers imprinted upon the Heart, like retinal afterimages, forming the Keystone around the Valve. Aldyryc’s suns orbited the Outer Valve. The Valves were believed to slow the decay, allowing the present to be built upon the past. Were the process faster, there would not be time for the cosmos to form. The Keystone prevented collapse. <Ring the bell,> the alien cried without trace of Parsius, only pain, body twisted in on itself. Pandis ran and the creature loped, holding Cthanic’s hilt and blade like a battering ram with me seeking any opportunity to end the madness. I hoped to trip them at the last minute and somehow impale the creature. The last minute passed and we were upon the Keystone, Pandis yelling, “Charge,” and giggling. In the last seconds, gripping farther down the blades, the creature swung the tips towards the Keystone. I threw my weight onto the blades above the guard, forcing them down, tips digging into ground and stopping dead. Pandis pitched forward, hands gripping the pommel as it chimed against the Keystone, the vibration growing until our ears began to bleed. Yggdrasil shuddered. A ripple of red light spread from the contact point. Red energy exploded from the Keystone, hissing, humming, buzzing, crackling, and rumbling as the

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wavefront swept through Styx and Yggdrasil with equal ease, rippling reality. The Styx bubbled, thousands of stiff bodies bobbing to the surface, screaming. Bolts of gold leapt from the Keystone into Pandis and me, blazing from eyes, noses, and mouths before fading. Time sopped. Everything stretched away from the Keystone, pausing smeared before snapping back to normal. Time stuttered, each strobe creating a duplicate of Pandis, me, the creature, and Charon, tracing our journey back across the Styx through fog turned diaphanous. Many duplicates transformed into other creatures, some vanished, a few reappearing around Acheron. Reality continued flickering, duplicates and creatures attacking neighbours as broken curses, screams, shouts, and bestial sounds echoed. Vibrating in our hands like a power-hammer, Cthanic shattered into seven pieces, the pommel remaining clutched in Pandis’s hands. Everything warped and twisted. Duplicates, monsters, as well as patches of mist, water, and ground, exploded randomly. Then, the back of the energy wave rippled from the Keystone, leaving Acheron empty.

∞∞

I awoke as if from the grave, filled with life. A comforting cosmos of questions encircled my consciousness. The wonder of wondering made me smile. Feeling connected, in-tune, and whole, I opened my eyes. The gold surfaces of the colossal cell shone in the light of four spheres set near the nine-metre ceiling.

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Buckled and cracked, a thin layer of gold covered light-blue crystal. Crystal bars three inches apart, with a six-metre high, three-metre wide gate in the center, sealed the room from a perpendicular hallway, its gold walls spider-webbed with cracks. A soft groan drew my gaze across the cell to Pandis on a huge sleeping shelf, eyes closed, hair a shock of shining silver. The creak of a door opening came down the hall from the left. I scrambled to my bother. “Pandis,” I said, soft but urgent. “Pandis, wake up.” Two sets of footsteps, one heavier, grew louder. Pandis’s eyelids fluttered open, eyes like molten silver gleaming. “What happened?” He looked around. “Where’s Father?” He broke into a crooked grin. “He was looking a little grey.” Giggling, he sat up and looked through the bars, lifting his hand to wave. “Hi.” I followed his gaze and gasped. Almost twice my ninety-seven centimetres, the shortest anthropoid wore grey robes, arms folded inside sleeves and cowl raised. Within the shadows, straight red hair framed the lower half of a face beyond perfection, the upper half behind a purple veil. Her pale bare feet hovered a foot off the floor. To her right stood a nine-metre tall man in a blue leather kilt, skin darkest ebony and head that of a jackal, the Mace of Judgement resting on his powerful shoulder, golden eyes piercing me to the soul. Eighteen feet tall, the bald bronze man on her left had four arms, four ears, two mouths, and three eyes set

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over a large hooked nose. The left eye was bright red light, the middle purple, and the right blue. All three focused on me, his chiselled features contemplative with a hint of amusement. A cloak of purple hung from his upper shoulders. A grey leather kilt girded his loins. Considering how Parsius had affected me, I should have been prostrate, begging. “Where’s my father?” Pandis mumbled between giggling, winking, and grinning, as if having some kind of fit. I feared he’d become unhinged. Anubis answered, voice rumbling. “Your father’s exploration of the Maelstrom released creatures we call the S’skahahn, People of the Mirror. Absorbed, your father has become the Grey King, dedicated to spread the chaos and conflict of their home. They can only exist on the material plane through anthropoid reflections and absorbing forms. Madness incarnate, they will start the Final Existential War. “In causing the Second Chaos Wave, you weakened the seven seals of the Demon Wall, nearly starting Armageddon by releasing the hordes and armies of Cthulhu. “This also shifted the Outer Valve to the centre of Aldyryc. It took most of the Council to keep the planet together, and will take constant effort by KI and Ptah to maintain. The Blood Wars ended, along with every civilization at once. Trillions died, most your race. Predicted by Mortis Liber and Vitae Liber, the Fall has rendered faerie vulnerable to aging and internal strife. “These were the charges presented to the Celestial Court. Satanael served as prosecution and Athena defense, both brilliantly, but due to the weight of evidence, I had no choice but declare your race guilty.” I was speechless. Pandis was tickled.

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“Considering the unprecedented scale and ramifications, the Council deliberated long over a sentence. The obliteration of the entire pündi race nearly came to pass, but for a single vote.” Marduk said from both mouths, “You will earn my sufferance.” Rawna said, “The spiritual evolution of your race has stopped. You will reincarnate as pündi, or a lower creature, until your race makes amends.” “When,” said Marduk, “three come who are pündi not pündi, a circle broken.” “Circle broken?” I managed to say. “You will become a race of secret watchers, an Existential network reporting to me.” Anubis nodded. “The number of pündi in Reality Prime is to be limited. The rest must disperse through Existence. Should your technology or knowledge pass to non-pündi, the offender has seven days to rectify the situation or die. The curse falls to the closest relative, then friend, and on until every pündi has to spend a life as a worm. This also applies should you intentionally interfere in the affairs of other races.” “The Council,” said Marduk, “has declared a moratorium on certain lines of technological development on Aldyryc, to avoid more races following your disastrous path.” “But,” said Anubis, “free will is guaranteed by the Council Charter. You must swear an oath, personally and as representative of your people. Then you must get all of your people to swear. If one doesn't, none do. As sign of the oath, all must display a circle on their foreheads representing the prison of reincarnation.” Marduk took over. “Your network will extend the Council's knowledge beyond the limits of our reality, to this being your father encountered. Demogorgan means

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'hunger' in Celestial. With your help we will prepare for all that is to come.” I stammered. “How can I do all this? I'm just a pündi.” Rawna said, “The Second Chaos Wave has elevated you and your brother, as my husband and I were by the First. You have become Ascended.” “More will come,” said Marduk. “What? Pandis and I are... what?” Pandis muttered an unintelligible, rambling string of sounds and then coughed a harsh laugh. “As Powers,” the King continued, alternating mouths, “the only way to enter the Mortal Sphere within Divine Law is by creating an avatar. You may have one at a time and you must be careful for it can become free-willed. However, your brother will be confined to Qohlahb until it is time for him to make amends. As god of Humour, Laughter, Jokes, Tricks, and Eccentricity, he will liven up the City.” You may regret that, I thought. A bored Pandis was never a good thing. “If he’s god of all that, what am I?” “You are God of Curiosity, Travel, and Wanderers, as well as patron deity of the pündi. If you accept the terms, you’re race shall be spared. If you do not, all will be slain, body and soul.” I stood with as much dignity as I could muster with Pandis rolling around on the floor mumbling and giggling. “I accept.” What other choice was there? The three gods nodded. “Then,” said the Speaker, “it is done and it is Law. The Oath is bond.” “I’ll call my avatar Parsius Pathfinder to honour my father. He’ll run things from the Shire.”

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Marduk flashed twin grins. “The guards will release you and escort you to your quarters. Get some rest. The Oath ceremony before the Council is in two days.” They started to leave, but Marduk turned back. “One more thing. You will chronicle all that the Eye shows you. It will be your final duty, after which your Oath will be complete. “ I nodded smartly. “I will do my best to be accurate.”

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