Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

Separating the Soul

He settled on an image of space he had seen once before.

Afte Behemoth was gone, it had left behind it a few million lightyears of untouched space. Adam had once taken a ship out into that blackness and sat at the center where the Behemoth had sat. he had turned off all the lights and let the darkness leak in through the Empyrean's observation deck.

He imagined the stars spinning past him, He remembered the call of the black universe before him. He remembered the cool quiet calm that-

And then he was no longer alone.

Like a cool trickle of water he could feel conn and Eris permeate outwards from where they sat, filling the little bason with their presence. And with them they carried Naktan, his consciousness pulled away from his body and into the center of the circle.

He was now separate from his companions.

There was a ,uttering around the circle, though no one opened their eyes and no one dare speak more than uttered surprise . Power continued to trickle through him, as Naktan , with the help of Conn and Eris, rolled through their minds.

Adam tried to bring back the image of spinning space, letting the cool tide wash over him. Memories and thoughts that were not his own filled his head, and for a strange moment he felt as if he were not himself.

He watched from the edge of an obsidian peak as lava spouted into the air. Unbearably hot wind kicked up to caress his carapace as the roar of the flames consumed the land around him. The colors of the night were orange and red, and a strange flickering color he did not recognize.

And then he was in a long dark tunnel far away from the sunlight, and with him were the strange ones of his youth, pale and thin, short of limb who fed him and taught him the old ways. Their eyes were blind but they spoke as if they saw all.

And then he heard blades shredding over ice, felt the sure dancing of his feet as cool air cut past his cheeks.

He listened to the quiet groaning of the city overhead as the cogs clicked and moaned. The dust of old churches and abandoned places filled his nose, but he moved with caution, for you never knew what you would stumble across here in the deep tunnels.

He remembered floating in an indistinct greenish serum, his mind half formed, unaware and confused. He remembered the sounds of voices filling up his head with images and words that only slow began to solidify .

He remembered the cold reaches of space, and the carcass of the queen looming over his body as he floated alone for a thousand years.

And through all of it he could feel the slow pulsing beat of a heart laid to rest in his hand, could feel the cool wet slick of muscle as it contracted and expanded.

But then the vision dissolved, and he was not seeing images, but feeling impulses, the firing of one neuron after another, traveling through a system worth a thousand miles in a matter of seconds. The further they traveled the wider the road came until they had reached a chasm. There was no visual input to identify the place they had stumbled across, and so his brain , feeling unnerved that it could not see, though it understood the location, chose to recreate a vision for him.

He saw, clouds and a distant sun.

There was no ground for it seemed as if he was high up.

He stood on burning white marble high in the sky, so high he could see the slow curvature of the earth bending away from him. The edges of the horizon were brighter blue until fading slowly upward to a deep indigo.

Before him, a white marble bridge spanned a chasm to the other side where a strange glittering mountain lay.

And on this mountain.