Book 5, Chapter 47: Within, Without
Passing through and into nothingness, I exploded, unleashed, the energy streaming out vibrant and alive, streaming forward, backward, in circles, outward like a supernova, power unimaginable, inward to a singularity, until it all coalesced into itself, me, a persona.
Not nothing, this place, but more than could be viewed from the world I’d emerged from. More than could be understood by the body I’d inhabited, more than could be. And, concurrently, nothing at all, because my energy waxed and waned simultaneously. Time, I knew and could feel and experience, was here a cube and not a line.
Three people appeared in front of me, but I couldn’t see what they were standing on. Two women and a man. And I didn’t know what I was standing on, nor did it matter. If we were standing at all.
“No names.”
“What?” None of them had spoken.
My brother, he was in front of me, we were somewhere else, some other indescribable nothingness, sitting by a fire burning a whole lot of somethingness, repeated himself. Not the brother of this world, Thomler, but my real brother, from the time before and the time now. “Names have power. Don’t speak them here. Don’t give our secrets away so easily and cheaply.”
In front of me in front of the doorway that no longer existed, the man flanked on either side by the women asked, “And just who are you?”
“The mead is good.”
“No names,” said my brother, waving his cup at me, “for they will steal our power.”
“Mead?” I asked, “Where did you get it from?”
“How did you walk through that door,” asked one of the ladies.
“Door?”
“But the cost!” The mead hung in the air before my cup, if it was indeed air, “The sacrifice you made. None has given more.”
“Well, I made the mead.”
“You can call it a portal,” she continued, “from there to here.”
“None, brother?” I asked him as he passed me the mead.
“There’s no escaping this place,” the man said before me.
The other lady continued, after, I think, the other lady, “Or here to there, if you like. Perhaps even if you don’t like.”
“Nonsense,” said the man. He winced for a moment. We all did, we all felt it. And it passed, while returning.
“Brother,” I ended, “I’m thirsty. How can I be thirsty here? In this place so unlike the other?” Then or perhaps before or after, I couldn’t tell for the shifts, I said to the man, “Not here, I won’t give you that. For I was informed well. Not his name.”
“Maybe you can escape this place,” he said, the being I knew as my brother. He reminded me of Morry but bigger, more powerful and, if anything, more terrible. Blond, braided beard. This was a man who slayed countless. And giants. Titans. My mother. “Don’t say Father’s name. Not his, not here, and, if you can help it, not without here. Especially mine. And your own. Of course.”
With reluctance, I spoke to the man before me, “I have no name.” He didn’t believe me and kind of half smiled. Where was my brother? He was already here. I knew he was coming. He’d already taken me to his campfire. “What do you mean, portal?”
“And your name?”
“No, don’t tell me. You said so.”
“I’ve been here too long, in this trap. I make mead and pass the time drinking and fighting. These pursuits are enjoyable, but not nearly so. I miss our world, our plane of existence.”
The man stepped backward, menacingly, into my face, “You came to our place. Why did you come to ours?”
One of the ladies took me by the hands, if we had hands, and maybe we didn’t, and none of that mattered, led me across the vast emptiness until we stood by the way-space I’d entered through and whispered in my ear, “He lies to you and still, you drink it.”
“How did I come here?”
“Brother!” Finally, or perhaps before, he stepped out from behind those three people, standing before me, sometimes sitting with a mead in hand, with each glance in different locations, “You must be thirsty. Say nothing,” he gave them a scowl, “and come with me. Or should I say sister?”
“I don’t know how I got here. I simply woke up.”
“It’s too difficult. Subtracting the dimensions. There’s no escape.”
“You’re looking for someone,” the man smiled, and it was just him and me, without his companions, “by what are they called? I’ll bring you to them.”
The cup was at my lips and I instinctively sipped. “Glorious! Perhaps the best mead I’d tasted. Floral and light, with just a hint of honey on the back of my tongue, almost like drinking sunlight itself.”
“A princess! I can’t believe you did that to yourself.”
“No,” I waved my hand in front of the strange man, “I won’t give you any knowledge and to steal his power. I won’t give you that!”
“Lies and deception,” whispered the lady. “Focus!”
Why did she betray him, her companion, so?
Leaning in toward me, she backed away, “Join us. Be free. Tell us who you are and where you came from.”
And then the three were gone and I was alone with my brother, drinking mead, “Nothing. I said nothing to them.”
“Come with me now. Let’s leave these three in peace.”
“I can’t. I’m everywhere, there’s too many timelines here, existing all at once.”
“Once you escape, if you can, destroy this building. The temple complex. You must! But it will be terrible. The cost. Ruinous.”
“You said I can’t escape.”
“No. You are in a single time dimension. The problem is you. You’ve been living among the mortals too long.”
“Sacrifice? I don’t know. I don’t remember. Where is Father? And who are you?”
He poured me a glass and the perfectly clear liquid paused between the sleek, hexagonal glass jug and the misshapen, rough pottery. I reached out and touched it, wetting my finger.
“Four veils. Challenges. Doors. All trying to kill you. I see why you did it now, you anticipated this. Only a mortal could escape. Only alone can one do this.”
After entering this place, the supernova and implosion were beside each other in three dimensions of time, but one after another in linear time, each instant real. It was as if I’d been bound and, now released, couldn’t contain myself. I needed out. Or death. Death might be preferable as it was understandable.
“But don’t pay attention, we need you to retain your earthly shape.”
“What?”
“You’re trying to maintain an earthly shape when you should release your heavenly one.”
“Contradictions! You’re speaking backwards!”
Then we were at the door. I only remembered walking here in the future and it annoyed me that we hadn’t gotten here yet, but the door was before us now. “This is too much!”
I raised the glass to drink and he spoke before I did this thing.
“Here, you haven’t had nectar of the gods in some time, have you. Try this mead.”
“Brother, the door.”
“Ignore the three and come with me. I have new mead to share! And many stories.”
“Brother!”
“The door. To rescue me. It’s why you came to this world. We planned this. And I know who built the trap. We will take our vengeance!”
If he had a human body, his face would have stretched out in both directions. Into the past, the future, and whatever time is when it goes up, if up actually is a sensical direction, and all this was too confusing to focus on communication, but that no longer mattered as the door was collapsing the time lines, like an event horizon, and our conversation and my thoughts soon extended into infinity on its flat, planar surface, squishingtogetherandbecomingnomorethanabuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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