Domi didn't know what to hold onto. He only had two hands. Yet his body screamed at him to cling all at once to his fragile twin, his unconscious aedificans, and the bulla warding off the Eyes.
In the end, necessity made the choice for him. With one arm wrapped around his reeling brother's waist, he felt along the wall with the other to steady them both.
He tried not to look down as he and Daedalus followed the pair of eidolons up the spire.
Like a serrated ship's prow, the Restoration Tower leaned over the edge of the squat but still too-high mesa atop which it sat. Its black facade shone with the stars and rogue promenia reflecting against its glossy surface. The ancient entrance at its base, crusted over with generations of wind-flung snow and heaped ice, lay inaccessible far below. And so they climbed the narrow staircase winding around its core to an entrance on the fourth floor.
Domi drew a sharp breath as ice crackled and his foot tried to fly out from under him. His twin's muffled whimper as their bodies knocked into each other made his heart lurch as much as the deadly fall they'd nearly suffered.
"Careful, the steps are slick," the smaller of the two eidolons said.
"You think?" Domi grumbled under his breath, and Daedalus huffed a pained laugh against him.
Thank the Eternal Radiance, they were almost there. The eidolons stepped off the stairs onto a ledge. Beyond, a crumbling archway or perhaps what had once been a window opened into the darkness within the building.
As Domi followed the eidolons inside, darkness fled in a flare of brilliant light, and the bitter cold vanished like it had never been.
"What is this place?" he asked in awe, drawing the arm not wrapped around his brother over his eyes to block out a little of the dazzling pale-gold light spilling around him. A warm breeze ruffled the fur ruff around his face. "I didn't expect it to be like... this."
In sharp contrast to the glossy black stone outside, as his eyes adjusted, all Domi saw around him was white.
Sloping white walls, interspersed with bench-filled nooks, overlooked the icy expanse beyond several archways like the one he'd stepped through. Polished white stone radiated warmth beneath his boots. And carved into the white ceiling above him, a large circle held a white-gold sphere that bathed the whole hallway in relaxing light.
Every last bit of it--the light, ceiling, floor, walls, and even the white benches--crooned. The whole hallway, maybe the whole tower, was made of promenia crystal.
"This place is many things," the taller eidolon said, gazing at Valens and Aix as the pair drifted like feathers to rest on two of the benches in the nooks. "The Ancients erected two towers, one here and the other in the heart of the day-side. The other was razed during the Pyrrhaei rebellion, and Arx Luminosa was built in its place."
Domi nodded, biting his lip, as he guided Daedalus to a third nook. His twin grew heavier in his grip with each passing moment. There was no way Dae could walk on his own right now. Domi doubted he could even stand.
"But this was the first tower," the eidolon's voice drifted toward him from beyond his sight. "The Eternal Radiance first arrived here, and our original Heritage Records remain stored here within the promenia crystals."
Daedalus shook his head but did not speak as Domi lowered him to sit on the bench. The younger twin rolled his eyes. Heresy again, probably. He kept his teasing to himself for now.
"Are we safe here?" he asked instead, lifting his voice to carry to the other nook. "There's rogue promenia all around outside, but this whole place is one giant promenia crystal." The view outside the archway the nook faced was beautiful but terrifying, all twinkling stars, drifting snowflakes, floating obsidian shards, and golden whirlwinds.
At least the Devouring Eyes weren't visible over the sprawling landscape of broken ice and stone. Not from this angle. Still, Domi shivered.
"Promenia crystal is not promenia," the smaller eidolon said, appearing around the corner.
Their childlike voice, combined with their matter-of-fact tone and the way they hovered in the nook's entryway like some lost kid, was one of the creepiest things Domi had ever encountered in his life.
As the thought crossed his mind, they eyed him with glittering pink and gold eyes, their hair shifting from magenta to tangerine. "Rather, the crystal is promenia arranged into a lattice and then converted into various metamaterials that store promenia. This particular kind isn't indestructible, but it's extremely durable and not subject to corruption by rogue promenia. Not even diamond can cut it. Though all things degrade over time, your Ancients designed this tower to withstand earthquakes, nuclear strikes, and hypercanes if necessary."
"And to restore the Trellis," Domi said.
"Yes." The taller feminine eidolon answered, joining her companion at the edge of Domi's nook.
"Are you... are you going to stop us?" he asked, sitting down next to Daedalus as much to get away from the eidolons as to be near his twin. His normally-stuffy brother promptly slumped against him in testament to how bad he was feeling. Not that Domi needed any special clues; his own body throbbed in echo of his twin's pain and fatigue. He rubbed Daedalus's shoulder soothingly.
"Stop you from bringing the Trellis back?" the promenia woman asked.
"Yeah."
The eidolon waited long enough to respond that Domi's heart began to race in his chest. "I am... going to advise you against it," she said at last.
He gritted his teeth. "And when we don't take your advice?"
"You will." Her steady stare, gold glittering in sparkling gray eyes, made his heart sink.
Still, he needed to ask. "But if we don't?"
She sighed. "I don't know. I haven't decided yet."
"Decided what?" He shook his head, frustration welling and swiftly overtaking fear. How could there be anything to decide? There was only one thing to do now to protect the world. Why would she stand in the way of the only possible solution? She'd been human once. Didn't she have descendants she was worried about? "Decide whether to let everyone live? What's to decide?"
"Who to let live," she said slowly, "and at what cost. But you need not fear me. As you said before, if I were going to hurt you, I would have already."
"You might later."
She shook her head. "I don't need to hurt you to stop you. But I don't think even that will be necessary. Now--" She glanced at Daedalus. "--May I borrow his crystal for a moment? It will allow me to diagnose your companions."
Domi glanced at his twin, uneasiness gripping him as Daedalus, remaining slumped against him, didn't stir except to crack open his eyes. "I-I don't know. Dae needs it." But Valens and Aix needed it too. His heart hammered.
"Here."
Domi swallowed as Daedalus shook off a mitten and plucked the yellow and gold gem from his temple. "Dae..."
"I... I am fine." His twin held the promenia crystal out to the eidolon, breathing hard.
"You can't even stand!" Domi snapped.
The promenia woman accepted it into her hand. Literally; the crystal sank partway into her shimmering palm but did not fall to the floor below as she curled golden fingers over it. She stepped around the corner and disappeared.
A few moments later, her voice rose from the nook where Valens lay. "Concussion, thankfully mild. Lacerations. Clivia poisoning." Her footsteps padded away, and after a pause, she continued. "Your other companion should be fine when he wakes. He too suffers from clivia poisoning, but milder. You were right, Logos. The Blended possess a modified toxin. It looks as though it only sedates, unlike the original."
Daedalus lifted his head a little from Domi's shoulder. "Can... you help them?" he asked, voice soft and breathy.
The eidolon must have had keen hearing. "There is no need," she said. "Their prometus already stopped their bleeding and is fighting the poisons well. They should wake soon, though they will need rest."
"G... G-good..." Daedalus said as the smaller of the two eidolons frowned and stepped closer with a furrowed brow.
"Kaitlyn," they said, "you need to bring the crystal back."
Domi's twin reeled where he sat, bumping into Domi and gasping.
"Daedalus!" Domi's own chest tightened, and he knew with dread it was not just his own fear but something way, way worse.
The older twin clawed at his chest with both hands, sling forgotten. "I cannot... I..."
The other eidolon--Kaitlyn?--hurried back into the nook.
Domi snatched the crystal from her outstretched hand. "Hold still," he soothed, pressing it to his twin's temple. "There." Panic flared as Daedalus writhed against him, gasping desperately, and the crystal glowed angry crimson. "Why isn't it working? It should be green."
"The color means his condition exceeds the crystal's capacity to provide aid," the smaller eidolon said, shifting from foot to foot as its hair turned blue. "His heart is failing."
Domi's head jerked up. "Help him!" He peered from Logos, who hesitated, to Kaitlyn. "Please!"
Her face fell, the first hint of human emotion he'd seen. "I'm so sorry. I wish I could, but I'm not a physician."
"I am a medical daemon," Logos said softly. "But... But I have never performed medicine. I merely advised lifeholder practitioners of such."
"You're an unchained daemon with a promenia form," Kaitlyn said, stepping to them and resting a glittering hand on their shoulder. "It is time to embrace what you've become, Logos."
"I don't care what you are or aren't," Domi pleaded, "just help!" He couldn't lose his twin again. Not like this. Not now.
For a moment, as they stood motionless, he thought they would refuse. Then violet light shot through their hair, and Logos offered a firm nod.
"Very well." They strode forward, their body humming a low, soothing thrum. They peeled Daedalus from Domi's hands and helped him lay back on the bench. His lips had turned faint blue, and Domi's heart fluttered like a bird. "Please rest and try to remain calm. There is little unkeyed promenia available here, so I must treat you with my own as conservatively as possible. There is only so much I can diminish myself and still be useful to you."
"I cannot... ask..." Daedalus said, each strained word leaving Domi more and more breathless.
"Please," Logos said, hair turning a deeper purple, "I wish to. I will be alright, and so will you. Stay as calm as you can, now." They glanced at Domi. "And you, please practice your breathing. Your prometus can help him if you remain calm."
<>
Daedalus did not recall much of his healing. Tightness in his chest, like a fist squeezed his heart. Air that would never come. His twin, still as a statue at the edge of his vision, eyes closed. Then relief so sudden and intense it must have led to sleep.
When he awoke, he found Domi peering down at him against a background of purest white. Dark brown eyes searched his face, and then his twin grinned. "You look better."
"I feel better," Daedalus said. He sat upright with care, pleased when only the faintest twinges greeted him.
"You scared me," Domi said, voice accusing.
"I am sorry." He was not, however. Valens and Aix had needed aid, and Domi needed the two men. The choice to give Kaitlyn the crystal had been easy. "Aix and Valens? And the daemon?" He still could not believe a Caeles entity walked the world.
"Logos is resting, whatever that means for a daemon, and Valens and Aix are still sleeping off the poison." Domi sat down on the bench next to him. "I can't wait to see their faces when they hear what you did out there. It almost killed you, but if you hadn't done what you did, we'd all be dead." He glanced at the window across from the nook, where a lone clivia, hovering like a monstrous snowflake, drifted. It seemed unable to cross the invisible barrier.
"Or worse," Daedalus said, eying the awful creature with a hatred that surprised him. Once more, his father's face, bluish-white and glittering with crystalline markings, rose in his mind's eye, and he shoved it down. No. No, that man was no longer his father. No. He did not know what manner of creature his father had become, but Ausus was dead, a mere husk something... else... occupied. He had to be. Daedalus could not bear the alternative.
"Like those people," Domi said in a small voice.
"If they remain people." Daedalus swallowed, horror making him shudder. "My father... our father..."
"What do you think happened to him?" Domi bit his lip. "I've never heard of clivia poison doing that to people."
"He's Blended." The boys glanced toward the nook's entrance as Kaitlyn appeared in the archway. "That's what they call themselves. I'm unsure of the exact nature of the symbiosis. He and the others refused to let me examine them." She shrugged. "However, the spores he received have modified his body to permit some degree of communication with the clivia and other panspermia."
"I don't understand a word you just said," Domi snapped, "but shut up. You're upsetting him."
It was only then Daedalus realized the breath had stalled in his chest as the eidolon spoke. He shoved the horrible thoughts of what his father had suffered away. "I am fine."
"No, you're not," Domi said. "You thought your pa died and then saw him like that. I'd be really upset too if that happened to Merula."
"He did not come home." Daedalus swallowed hard. "Even after... everything. He just stayed out here. Cercitis and Astricus too. I thought they died, but Father said they were here. Helping those... things."
"The clivia?"
"The Eyes." He glared at the eidolon. "Right?" He did not trust the woman. Yes, she had helped them, but she surely possessed her own agenda. There were reasons the dead remained chained to eidolon pillars before Trellis Descent.
"It's complicated," she said after a moment. "There's much your people do not understand about the Eyes. Even in my time, it was..."
"Complicated," Domi said.
"And confusing. My people predicted sentient panspermia might be possible. But it did not manifest the way we anticipated. By the time I began to realize what we might truly be dealing with, the Trellis had been erected, and the Eyes fell silent."
"Are you an Ancient?" Domi asked. "Before you were an eidolon?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. You look weirder than other eidolons."
"Domi!" Daedalus chastised. He dipped his head politely to the woman as his twin arched a brow at him. "Please forgive my brother. He intends no offense. It is merely that we have never seen an eidolon who looks like you before."
Kaitlyn offered a wry smile. "I am a great deal older than other eidolons. It is less important to me that I appear human."
"How old are you?" Daedalus asked.
Domi snorted. "Now you're the one being rude."
"No, it's all right." Kaitlyn folded her hands before her. "I died one thousand four hundred years ago. I was an astrobiologist. Do you know what that is?"
"Astra means star and bio references life," Daedalus said. One thousand four hundred years ago? She must be one of the oldest remaining eidolons, then. And star-life? How strange. "Did you possess partial dominance? A starholder and lifeholder?"
The eidolon blinked, then smiled brighter, teeth gleaming like diamonds. "Ah, you speak Antigua Latina."
"Yes, it was part of my theological studies."
"I see. Well no, I was not a starholder and lifeholder. I was human. I suppose what you would call Pyrrhaei. I was a scientist--a scholar--who studied life among the stars."
"The stars?" Domi asked. "What life are you talking about? The gods?"
"No, not the gods. I mean life upon other worlds. Worlds like this one, but distant from here."
Daedalus exchanged a glance with his twin, who shrugged. "The Eyes?" Daedalus asked.
"Much farther away than the Eyes." She leaned against the entryway. "May I tell you a story? It may be difficult for you to believe. You may consider it heresy. It comes from a different time than this one."
Daedalus shrugged, marveling that the simple motion no longer pained him. "Yes, if you do not expect me to simply accept it just because you say it is true."
"Of course not," she said, her lip twitching. "So, here is my story. Long ago, there was--or I suppose still is--a world called Earth. It floated in the Dark Waters far away from here."
"How far?" Domi interrupted.
"So far that it takes forty years for light--the fastest thing in the universe--to reach that world from here." She chuckled as the twins exchanged dubious glances. "Yes, very far indeed. It was a blue, green, and white planet, like our day-side, but greener. And it circled a star much bigger and brighter than our own that looked golden in its blue sky, like the Trellis."
"A blue sky instead of violet? Sounds like a wondertale," Domi said, voice wistful. Daedalus shot his twin a quelling glare. Yes, it sounded like a fanciful tale, but he wanted to hear it without interruption.
"Sometimes it feels like a wondetale," Kaitlyn said. "Our ancestors lived on that world about two thousand years ago as both planets count time. They were like the Lightbearers of the Golden Age of Promenia, except far greater. They mastered many things. Among those things was the ability to travel the Dark Waters swiftly, for my homeworld, the homeworld of your ancestors, was so far away that--"
"Wait, your homeworld?" Daedalus found himself blurting. Domi also gaped at the eidolon, wide-eyed.
"Yes indeed. I will get to that." She looked slightly harried by the constant interruptions, and Daedalus forced himself to sit quietly despite the many questions wending through him. "Your ancestors, my people, mastered many things. We learned how to modify the human body, the fundamental components of the universe, and more. We used our arts to change the human body, so that it would produce a form of organic nanotechnology. Sort of like a tiny artifact," she amended, "so tiny you cannot see it."
"Machine-cells," Domi murmured.
"My people called these tiny artifacts we placed deep in your ancestors' cells genetic nanotech, and the ones in your blood biological nanotech. We modified a mitochondrion to create the first and a variety of blood cells to create the second. You call them the diopetes and prometus. And we fashioned something we refer to as primordial nanotech, which you call--"
"Promenia," Daedalus said. He did not know if he believed such, but he found himself nodding anyway, leaning forward in fascination.
The woman looked uneasy as she continued. "Your ancestors were created for a purpose, however. The scholars of Earth found many distant worlds. Among them was a planet in the Aquarius constellation that we called Trappist-1e. It offered a fine journey and destination to test the mettle of our technologies."
"You created people to come to Aquarius?" Domi asked, a dubious note in his voice. Daedalus shared his doubt. Such a tale made for a good diversion, but surely the eidolon did not expect them to believe such. "Are you a god?" Domi teased.
"I am not a god, and neither were my people." She sighed. "Though we played too often at being gods. And no, we did not create people, exactly. We made changes to some of our children, however. Changes that made them--"
"Lightbearers," Domi and Daedalus said in unison.
The woman's lip quirked again. "Yes. Your ancestors were engineered to use the biological nanotech in their veins to control the primordial nanotech in the ship that bore them through the stars."
"Engineered?" Daedalus asked. Most forgeholders were engineers. But none crafted people.
She nodded. "Navigators to captain and guide the ship using pulsar navigation and govern upon arrival. Communicators to attend to the mental health of the crew and serve as public relations officers and teachers. Terraformers to maintain the promenia and transform your new world into a fit home for life from Earth. Lifesupporters to attend to the health of the crew, food stores, and living cargo. And Engineers to maintain the ship's systems and erect buildings, roads, and other wonders on Aquarius."
"You..."
"But..." Daedalus's mind spun. Had she truly just revealed why Starholders sensed stars? How could she know such a thing?
She smiled as they both stared. "The ship was very swift, and to avoid being vaporized by cosmic dust as it traveled, it needed a promenia outer hull to capture and convert the particles. The promenia also provided food, water, oxygen, and other necessities for such a long journey, for your ancestors lived, gave birth, and died for generations upon the ship instead of traveling in cryo-sleep, as I did."
Daedalus frowned. "As you--"
"Dae, shh," Domi hissed, leaning forward eagerly.
The eidolon inclined her head to Daedalus. "I will get to that, I promise. Eventually, when your people arrived here, they dispersed the ship's promenia outer hull over this planet, which provided the raw materials your own worldholder ancestors, the terraformers, used to modify this world to make it more accommodating to life from Earth. Do you understand?"
"But only the gods sail upon the celestial barges," Domi said, and Daedalus nodded in fervent agreement. "The Eternal Radiance had a barge and--"
"The Eternal Radiance was a barge. A ship."
Daedalus frowned. "No, the Eternal Radiance is a god." He glanced at his twin, who looked as confused and uneasy as he felt. Why would the woman tell such an absurd heresy?
"I know that is what you believe," she said with the patient but matter-of-fact tone Daedalus's tutors had oft employed, "but no, the Eternal Radiance was the ship that bore your ancestors here to Aquarius. My ship traveled a little slower--the journey took us six hundred years instead of your ship's five hundred year-long journey-- and so I arrived a hundred years later. My ship was called the Divine Light."
Domi laughed, and this time Daedalus could not fault him for his rudeness. The woman was woefully ignorant or misled in holy matters. "No, the Divine Light is another name for the Eternal Radiance."
"No, the Divine Light was the other ship. You sometimes refer to it as the Frozen Galleon."
"Where the Sleepers wait," Daedalus murmured, staring. Now she claimed to be a Sleeper? The story was almost too strange to be fiction. Almost.
"There were twenty of us who traveled in cryogenic sleep on the Divine Light. We were sent to offer ourselves to your people as resources, advisors, and--should your mission fail--a backup plan to colonize this world."
"Why you?" Domi asked with the tone of voice of one hoping to lure someone into a lie.
"We and your ancestors knew that your culture would change greatly during the long journey on the Eternal Radiance." She shrugged. "How could it not? So, my people and I were sent in stasis because we still recalled our common origins and original mission. When we woke, we could remind your people of who they once were and what they came here to do. We arrived as a resource to you, pledged to support your self-determination even at the cost of your mission."
"And yet today you stood against us at that creature's side," Daedalus pointed out, his eyes narrowing sternly at the woman who sought to mislead them.
"It is no longer just about your own self-determination, Child," she said gently. "The situation is far more complex than--"
"Valens!" Domi blurted, darting to his feet with a relieved grin.
Their aedificans, leaning heavily on the entrance to the nook, peered blearily from the window overlooking the heart of the Blightlands, to Daedalus's violet laurel, to the eidolon. "I get the sense I missed something."