Elysium: Book Six of The Liminality

Chapter 34: The New Realm

"Do I have your consent?"

"Sure. Whatever Gaia thinks is best. What do you want me to do?"

"Come to us."

"How?"

"Your chariot will bear you. But you must express your consent."

"I already did."

"Your chariot is not responsive."

"Gaia Vibeke Pounce!" I should. "Go wherever this thing wants, Zeke. Got it?"

Zeke's walls were firming up, but I didn't get the sense that we were moving anywhere.

"You will need a trace."

"Trace?"

"Does the word 'strand' mean anything to you?"

"Sure thing. Those noodly things from the looms."

"Stand by for Maker Cardullo's trace."

All six strings pop and curl up into knots. The broken headstock slips free and drops onto the floor, reshaping itself into a slender tube that glows along its entire length, mixing colors in a way that Gaia's strands never did.

The guitar continues to disintegrate, its body melting into Zeke's floor until it is entirely re-absorbed into Zeke's mass. I am not pleased with this development. This had been my best guitar yet.

Everything goes silent again and I'm alone with my murmurs and whines. I sit there looking at the strand, wondering if I am ready for what comes next. I've been idling here for so long I am not sure I know what it feels like to be busy. I suppose it is time to find out. I retrieve the strand from the floor and slip it into the slot on Zeke's pedestal.

***

Warp speed! That's the only way I can describe this ride. None of this slow drift, hot air balloon nonsense I'm used to traveling with Zeke. We're zipping along, in and out of more interfaces and voids that have a right to exist. They really don't want this new realm to be found too easily.

I'm on the floor trying to hold onto my cookies from all of the sudden changes in direction like a kid on a roller coaster begging for the ride to end.

There's not much to see outside Zeke's diaphanous walls, just a whole bunch of shimmery membranes, one after another, like a Youtube compilation of aurorae borealis. I lose count after ten, but a few more after that a glow kicks up all around us and we are descending slowly to the surface of a large planetoid, seemingly larger than the moon but quite a bit small than the earth. I can tell from the haze around it that it has an atmosphere, but no oceans, just grey, flat plains.

So this is the New Realm. I'm not thrilled with the landscaping or the lack of life. It's more boring than a moonscape. At least craters add some character. Who wants to live in a place that looks like the flattest part of Kansas without the corn fields.

Zeke sets down beside a huge pale dome ringed with one continuous window from ground to head height. Hangar sized openings along its base offer more expansive views into the structure, which seems to contain clusters of low buildings. The thing has to be a mile in diameter. I'm impressed.

The landscape surrounding it is mostly flat and shiny, although there are heaps here and there of looks like gravel from afar. In the distance a few smokeless cinder cones are spewing out something coarse and gritty that falls back to the ground immediately. These cold volcanoes or whatever they are seem to be the source of the slag heaps.

Zeke is acting totally at peace with this world. He is all floppy and transparent with no sign of his armor or weaponry. His petals unfurled the instant we touched down.