Chapter 1: The Holiest Relic
Part 1
Prologue
Vertigo struck like thunder and the world folded over itself until it was gone altogether. He was left spinning madly through incomprehensible vastness. No sense of orientation. No body. Not even a sense of the space he occupied.
'Am I dead?' The question left the instant it arrived. It felt as if there was no set space or time for it to occupy as his consciousness stretched and smeared across the face of the universe. What he was became what he could be, splitting like cells dividing. At first small changes, but each divergence created its own possibilities until the exponential multiplication stretched into infinity. Memories came pouring out, like an open luggage compartment spilling its contents onto the freeway. They tumbled amongst the limitless variations, becoming indistinguishable from the background static. Lost forever in a soup of potential.
Parts of his identity peeled away with the memories, leaving only a numb sense of being everything, everywhere. What was left panicked, drawing in around his identity and refusing to let more memories bleed away. In doing so he made himself distinct, once again anchored to a place and time. The new form hurtled through the void at unimaginable speed, clinging fiercely to his name… Lucas.
Chapter 1
Pog's wooden clogs resounded down stone steps. To make better time he hiked up his robe, revealing pale bowed legs and knobbly knees. Pog hoped the rhythm of his descent, echoing down the stone passage, would encourage whoever heard his approach to move out of his way. Surely only someone whose need was great would strike such a tempo. The acolyte who appeared, however, took one look at Pog's' Aura and pushed up the centre of the staircase. Pog was a Tranquil after all, and a Tranquil could not possibly have anything important to do. He was used to being treated in this way, like a piece of furniture, ignored unless he was needed or got in the way. Nodding respectfully as the Acolyte passed, Pog pressed himself against the stone to give him room. Once the young man was out of sight Pog hiked his robe again and continued click-clacking down the stairs, imagining how the others would react if they knew his secret. Pog was the curator of the Holiest Relic, buried deep under the Temple Compound. Access to so powerful a Church secret could only be trusted to a Tranquil. A normal human would surely be corrupted.
Pog had never received a parcel from the courier service before. Surely there had been some mistake. Pog had dropped his lunch half eaten, eager to get his hands on the package before it was confiscated. This was easily the most exciting event of the year, perhaps of his whole life. He couldn't really know, of course, since he could only remember the last fourteen years since the Tranquillity Ritual. Once, a porter had been sent to deliver his delayed rations. The porter was a young lady who had travelled beyond the walls of the Holy City. She had stayed to share a cup of nutrient water with him, telling stories about the outside world.
Much of what she said had been hard to understand. Lacking knowledge that is built up over a lifetime meant he had been missing the fundamental context that non-Tranquils relied on to talk with each other. He had memorised every word of that conversation. They had become like jigsaw pieces that he could fit into context as precious secrets from outside inevitably leaked into the compound. Pog liked puzzles and mysteries. Imagining who he might have been in his previous life was Pog's favourite pastime. The thought that this 'package' might be related to his previous life made Pog suppress a squeal as he reached the bottom of the staircase.
The courtyard outside was still damp with morning dew, the pale spring sun had only just begun to shine over the rooftops. Tradesmen, cooks, porters and servants bustled about, preparing for their day's work. The familiar sound of rustling silk was barely audible over the wind chimes that filled the air to ward off the Great Silence. Immense care was taken to keep carefully curated ensembles from touching so much as a blade of grass. None of them paid any attention to a Tranquil skipping over the paving stones on his way to the gate.
Being made Tranquil had not removed every trace of Pog's previous life. Many tantalising hints could be found within his own nature. He always noticed more than others and remembered everything perfectly. Pog had dissected, categorised, cross referenced, and inferred every possible insight that could be gleaned from his fourteen years in the complex. This talent was probably why he had been chosen to work with the Holiest Relic, which was incomprehensible to a casual observer. A skill at drawing and sketching had revealed itself when he had gotten his hands on some parchment and a bit of charcoal. To Pog's continual bafflement, a peculiar pattern of linked spirals seemed to reoccur in many of his drawings. Letting his mind wander resulted in his hand drawing great interconnected loops of these spirals. The spirals could fill whole pages while he daydreamed, as if they lurked just underneath the great void left by the Tranquillity Ritual.
Pog was very careful to burn the drawings. In his first year, one of the Priests had discovered a scrap of parchment that Pog had been using. On it he had created a diagram in an attempt to map out the relationship dynamics between the different priests living in the compound. For his own amusement he had done so in coded symbols, using his own unique spiral patterns. The Priest's Aura had taken on a dangerous edge the moment he saw it, sending a chill down Pog's spine. A survival instinct woke up at that moment and Pog blithely described to the Priest how he had been drawing flowers from the garden. Several minutes of aggressive questioning ensued, to which Pog gave only vacant expressions and stammered responses. Eventually the Priest convinced himself that he had seen something that wasn't there and let Pog go. Pog never forgot the murderous intent from the Priests Aura, taking care to hide his nature from then on. It wasn't hard. The whole point of having Tranquils was so nobody had to concern themselves with what they got up to. As long as Pog acted the part, nobody paid any attention to him. This was the great mystery at the heart of Pog's life. He was, in many ways, a flawed Tranquil. He was also, however, the one they had trusted with their most dangerous secret.
From what Pog understood of the Tranquillity Ritual, he was not supposed to be capable of hiding something from his superiors. In Pog's case, only some parts of the ritual seemed to have worked. That was not uncommon as the ritual was difficult to perform perfectly. Normally, however, post ritual testing would pick up on any flaws and a failed Tranquil would be terminated. For whatever reason Pog was left having to fake it. He didn't mind the idea of dying, but there were some important mysteries that he very much wanted to solve. And for that, he would need to remain un-terminated, for a while at least.
As Pog reached the gate, the guard's attention passed over him as if he wasn't there. The courier must have been told that he was to deliver to a Tranquil, because he approached as soon as he saw Pogs Aura. The courier's Aura was perfectly casual, but the look in his eyes gave away the tension that he was keeping hidden. He was, much to Pog's dismay, obviously unwilling to stay and chat. He held a package the size of an apple, wrapped in wax cloth. From down low where only Pog could see, the man flashed a strange hand signal. He then passed Pog the package and immediately retreated. Pog's hope of a lengthy conversation faded away, but the encounter was just as mysterious as the box he was now holding. He would no doubt have many afternoons of entertainment postulating about it. Pog hurried back across the courtyard, hoping to avoid any of the Priests, lest they confiscate his treasure. There was only one place private enough to investigate something so momentous as a package sent to him from the outside. A place where only he could go, the chamber of the Holiest Relic.
A short time later, Pog laid the precious treasure on his desk unopened, having no fear of someone coming down to disturb him. He was more than fifty yards underground, having passed multiple layers of automated security that would incinerate anyone except himself and the High Priest. As much as he would have loved to open the package immediately, there was work to do and Pog prided himself on prioritising his duties.
Pog's tasks were simple. First, he made his way to a row of maintenance automata that had lined themselves up to have their power replenished. One made a metallic squeak and poked his leg playfully with a polytool as he approached. The maintenance drones were as ancient as the Relic, though their original forms had long ago been replaced by various parts the drones themselves had put together from scrap. If Pog was not here to provide them with power crystals they would seek out power sources on their own, which usually involved draining the accumulator lamps. Pog had taught them that he would come each day to this spot and give them a fresh power crystal to drain, if they behaved themselves. For beings older than recorded history they were surprisingly playful, sometimes collaborating to think up creative ways to prank him. They were the closest thing Pog had to friends in all the time he could remember.
Pog watched as the freshly powered maintenance drones sprouted limbs made of various pieces of scrap metal that Pog kept nearby. They were very skilled in metal work and could shape a bit of copper sheeting into a wide variety of parts to keep themselves functional. They each leapt the gap to latch onto the relic, then wound their way into the network of maintenance tunnels that honeycombed it. His other task was to monitor the Fate Lines of the Holiest Relic. These Fate Lines were used by the Priests to read the future. There was an event of some significance in the distant future, nine thousand years from the present that caused the priests to wring their hands whenever mentioned. Pog was instructed to immediately inform the High Priest if the Fate Lines indicated it changing in any way. In all of Pog's time with the Relic, it had not moved whatsoever from its perch in the distant future. Nevertheless, Pog would dutifully check several times a day.
The Relic, as far as Pog could tell, was an immense square that rested in a pit so deep that no light could reach the bottom. Only the uppermost segments of the Relic were visible, and several interface panels bridged the gap to allow Pog to interact with it. Pog had once dropped bits of copper into the crevasse and timed the sound of it hitting the bottom, attempting to estimate the depth. By averaging his measurements Pog had come to the conclusion that it was a little over half a mile deep.
Pog's hands played along the interface panels, bringing up the Fate Lines with practised ease as he daydreamed. Only the High Priest, and members of certain secret societies within the Church, could access the most sacred Relic. They rarely did. They came to it because of its function for predicting the future. Various factions within the Church were in perpetual competition with each other over forbidden secrets, and worked tirelessly to keep each other's power in check. They generally preferred to use political manoeuvring to keep their competitors away from the Holiest Relic instead of agreeing to share access. Pog got the impression they were all generally terrified of it, but it was too powerful to ignore.
Pog understood a lot about the Church, mainly because the Priests didn't concern themselves with what he overheard. The Church was a labyrinthine bureaucracy that had built up around the ancient Relics. The Relics were required for running water, transportation and countless other things. Modern civilisation had built up around the few Relics that still functioned, but knowledge of how they work was mostly lost with the disappearance of the Ancients. When times became hard, Operation Rituals replaced true understanding of the machinery. Training an engineer took a lifetime and it was far simpler to remember by route or ritual what steps would make the Relic produce a desired result. What started as fairly simple Operation Rituals became, over time, padded with ostentatious drama, complex chants, and sometimes sacrifices. Pog doubted if the Priests performing the rituals could distinguish what parts were actually required to have the Relic function. Such knowledge was fiercely guarded by the upper echelons. The nightmare that haunted the Church was one of common people discovering that anyone could operate a Relic if they knew how, robbing them of their vaunted position in society overnight. Secret societies, elaborate memory conditioning, and layers of information quarantine had been stacked over each other through the centuries; all to protect secrets. By now it was impossible for one part of the Church to understand what was happening in another part.
The most vaunted and powerful secret of them all was this Holiest Relic. Pog was sure that none of the Priests knew how it worked. The Relic was connected by great Mana Conductors to more than a thousand sites around the world. It could once have been connected to ten thousand sites, but most of them had stopped responding over the millenia. This led the Priests to believe that vast quantities of power were being drained from these sites to somehow 'blast a hole through time'. Pog had spent countless hours of his life with little else to occupy his overactive mind. Slowly he had come to the realisation that the truth was far more mundane, and far more interesting.
Some of the maintenance tunnels were large enough to give a human access. Much to the delight of the drones, Pog had ventured in to watch them work and figure out how the components interacted. Most of the machine was made up of millions of filters that split and subsplit the Mana into categories. The rest was a device for keeping track of the patterns recorded from the Mana and checking them against the pattern that had been recorded thus far, creating a running record of changes over time. The result was a machine that read information and calculated patterns, but on a grand scale. In principle it was very simple, no different from the reasoning that people did as a part of navigating daily life.
Pog's thoughts drifted into a familiar fantasy of explaining it in a way that could have been understood by the young porter who had delivered his rations all those years ago.
'If you throw a rock at a window, it is not hard to predict that it will break. That is because you have sufficient understanding of the nature of rocks, glass, and momentum. However, if you also understood; the currents of air between the window and the rock, and the spin and angle of the rock, you could predict where exactly on the window it would strike. If you also understood the structure of the crystal within the glass, you might then predict the shape of every shard of glass that would be shattered from the window and how it would tumble to the ground. In principle; the better you understand the variables of any situation the greater will be your ability to predict the outcome of any changes. Unlike us, the Relic has access to vast amounts of information. Its ability to make use of such quantities of information is also far greater than a human mind, allowing it to predict outcomes deep into the future.'
Finally satisfied with his work, Pog skipped over to his desk. A few accumulator lamps, cool white half orbs embedded in the rock, provided the only lighting. Pog spun a finger in a circular motion over the orb, increasing its light output, then sat at his desk. Reverently and slowly, he broke the seal and unwrapped the package.
Mysteries on mysteries, Pog thought to himself as he examined what lay before him.
It was a small wooden container, hexagonal and decorated with a pattern of interlinked spirals. It was the exact pattern that often came from his own hand as he drew. He had never seen that pattern anyplace else and had assumed it was his own invention. With a trembling hand he opened the box, his mind already churning furiously over the possibilities. Inside was a crystal that glowed with infused energy. It looked to Pog like a simple power crystal, glowing in a dull uniform blue. Refusing to believe it could be anything so mundane, Pog reached up and turned down the accumulator lamps. In the near darkness, with the crystal brought right up to his face, the truth was revealed. The glow only looked uniform because the details were nearly microscopic. The inspectors at the gates would never have noticed in broad daylight.
As Pog marvelled at the intricacy of the ultra fine Mana structures, they began to shift. Slowly at first, as if waking from a long sleep. Then a tiny wisp of energy left the crystal and made contact with the Mana in Pog's Aura. Like two pieces of a puzzle, or a lock and key, the Mana patterns in the crystal formed a perfect link with his own. Pog's mind was buzzing with the implications. This crystal's Mana pattern fit his own so perfectly that it could not possibly form this connection with anyone else. Mana patterns were unique to each individual. Even more extraordinary was that in order for the crystal to have such a pattern he must have been there when it was created.
Pog shivered as impressions began to leak across the connection. From inside the crystal a consciousness was reaching out, brushing against his own mind. It was seeking, with humility, to be let in. Pog had heard that very skilled artificers could store the Mana patterns of memories and experiences, but a whole human mind was something else entirely. It was terrifying, and fascinating. Inviting another consciousness into his own mind would undoubtedly change him forever. Being suddenly changed, like that, seemed to Pog a lot like death. Pog's first instinct was to take the crystal to the Priests immediately and feign ignorance. What gave him pause was the spiral patterns on the box, which looked very much like he had created them himself.
Impressions continued leaking through their connection. An image appeared in his mind, as if he was only just remembering something important. He was young, sitting in a tavern and dressed in a silk acolyte's robe. His hair was well groomed and he was so clean that he looked every bit like a little lordling who had just joined the Church. He was nursing a spiced beer and exchanging shy glances with a pretty girl who worked in the tavern. Pog gasped at the richness of the sensations; the smooth tangy brew, the thick warm atmosphere, the fragile hopeful mind of a young man. The head spinning combination of fear and yearning evoked by the girl's smile brought Pog to tears. Simmering under everything, he could feel the fierceness of the young man's will. His ambition burned like a flame that could light up the world, given the right fuel.
Parts of Pog's soul, that had been dormant for fourteen years, blazed with sensations like the birth of a new sun. He felt as if he'd been starved for air, for over a decade, and had only now taken a breath. But just as suddenly as it had begun, it all went dark again. The memory dulled as the Mana flowing from the crystal dried up. He still remembered it, but the colour and power faded, leaving him grasping desperately for what he had lost. The mind in the crystal was still there, a begging supplicant at the door of his consciousness. But now Pog understood, it was he himself from another world who wanted to reunite. He lowered his defences and welcomed the stranger.
With sudden and overwhelming force the 'other' invaded. It took over the motor functions of his body before he could react, freezing him in place. Next it came for the parts of his brain that controlled speech. Pog panicked and tried to resist but was pushed aside by a gentle yet unstoppable force, like a toddler being put to bed by his father's unyielding hand. The 'other' had the same powerful will that Pog had felt in the memory, but it was no longer that of a child full of potential, it had grown into the fullness of manhood and hardened into steel. Pog retreated deeper, fortifying himself around his sense of identity and personal memories. Here he was stronger. The 'other' began to speak, using his voice.
"I apologise. I had to ensure you could not flee or cry out before I had the opportunity to talk with you. My name… Our name is Polimathras."
Polimathras was still in the process of transferring himself from the Memory Crystal back into his old body. He had known that he was to undergo the Tranquillity Ritual after creating this backup, but was still surprised at the weakness and servility that the Tranquillity Ritual had inflicted on him. The Order had organised, at great expense, to have the ritual botched and the testing phase brushed over but he had not expected this level of deviation. Forcing himself into Pog's memories could provide answers, but doing so might permanently damage their ability to reunite. Instead, he looked back into the crystal. Aside from storing an imprint of his consciousness, it kept very basic records.
'Fourteen years!' As far as he knew, no merger of a forked consciousness had ever been successful after more than three years. He would never be whole again. At best they might live as two separate minds within the same body. The Tranquil version of him was weak and passive right now, but it would recover strength as it learned. It had no less potential for power than he did. In the end it would push back and drive them both mad. But right now, it was still possible that he could accomplish his goal.
The Order must be desperate to risk waking him after all this time. So many things could have gone wrong. If the Priests had gotten their hands on this crystal The Order would end up in open conflict with the Church. Polimathras shuddered with the realisation that this might already be the case.
"Pog, I will keep control of our body. Once we… If we escape this, perhaps there is a way we might learn to live with each other. For now, I will do what we both came here for. Look into my memories, Pog, you will finally have your answers." Polimathras opened up his memories for Pog to explore at will.
As Polimathras rushed over to the Relic control panels, waves of relief, joy, and gratitude came from Pog. Polimathras smiled, sharing in the joy of his emotionally starved alter ego. Pog had gone right back to that night in the tavern to relive all the richness of their previous life. When Polimathras reached the panel he began going over the training he had received for this moment. The Order had a very limited understanding of the Relic. They had chosen him for his ability to quickly figure out complex problems, but he was still dismayed by the complexity of the interface. Pog responded to his emotions and, much to Polimathras' surprise, freely offered him some memories.
Polimathras gasped as decades worth of fastidious research flooded into his memory. Pog had been reverse engineering this Relic for more than a decade and probably understood it better than anyone since its creator. Delighted with this unexpected gift, Polimathras sent a wave of heartfelt gratitude to his alter ego. Gliding his hands over the interface panels, now with experienced ease, Polimathras began to bring up the clusters of Fate lines that represented all of the Holiest Relic's collected data and predictions.
Taking the risk to wake him after all this time could only mean that something calamitous had occurred, and The Order desperately needed information. First he checked the position of the Great Enemy, projecting nine thousand years into the future. The centuries flew by in a blur, the fate lines beginning to fluctuate and flicker as room for unknown influences obscured the Relic's predictive power. When he approached the last known position of the Great Enemy this fluctuation ceased, the Fate Lines becoming solid and intractable. There, at the genesis of the Enemy was the inevitable conclusion of all possible paths. Annihilation. If the Great Enemy had not moved, then why did the Order wake him?
He quickly returned the configuration to the present and collected the largest Fate Lines into the interface, correlating their interactions. There in bold now was; The Church, The Empire, The Order, and The Great Houses. Countless other lines of varying strength ran with them, bound by their spheres of influence. Outliers swept in and out of the interface as they interacted with the main four. Unpredictable events like; the rise of powerful independent warlords, or blights, and even hard winters occasionally shook up the balance. Otherwise, the Fate Lines of history's great institutions were relatively harmonious. The histories of these great forces were very ancient. They had long ago clashed over, and resolved, the ways in which they might come into direct conflict. Now they competed with each other for influence but avoided open war.
Polimathras traced their journey over the fourteen years that his mind had been forked, searching for any calamity that might warrant the risk of infiltrating the Holiest Relic. Nothing. Moving into the near future, he immediately found what could best be described as a deterministic explosion. It had blown away millenia of carefully developed balance between the great powers, putting the very existence of the Order into question. Most perplexing of all was that it came out of nowhere, as if created from nothing.
'How can something come from nothing? How can an effect have no cause?' He wondered. The future looked like a gust of wind had scattered the fate lines like drifting leaves. Some of them were now on unavoidable collision courses and chaos abounded. Polimathras gripped the edge of the panel as the implications of what he was seeing began to sink in. Everything was about to change. He must get this information to the Order and get to the heart of the calamity before it spiralled out of control. Scaling down, Polimathras began adding in smaller fate lines trying to isolate those first impacted by the event before it drew in the great powers. House Morgan was there, and some Gothii tribes? That must be the Empire's northernmost border. Scaling down even further revealed the line of an ancient ruin and a long dormant Relic engorging to swallow the fates of everything near it.
'This is where it starts.'
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