Illumination 3.11: Transition Is The Hardest Part
Natalie delivered the basket of supplies to the infirmary only to discover it was nearly empty. “We’ve sent ‘em all to the Portalry,” said the remaining medical assistant. She looked between Ajax and Natalie meaningfully and sniffed. Ajax gazed back at her blandly but Natalie looked away, trying not to blush.
He followed her as she jogged to the Portalry, his long strides keeping him only a few steps behind her even though he was only walking. Every time she looked back at him, he managed to convey that he was just wandering in the same direction as her. It could be true, she reasoned. He liked to hang out in the Portalry.
Her thoughts were so confused that she didn’t recognize the Portalry at first when she arrived. It was full of people, with several hospital beds in the midst of crowds. Seth and Jake stood next to Rohan as he sat up on his bed arguing with them.
“It’s just a bumped head,” Rohan snapped.
Seth laughed, and Natalie noticed a long, untreated scratch on his cheek. She joined them, punching Seth lightly in the shoulder. “What happened to you?”
He twisted his head to look back at her with a bright grin. “A battle scar, of course. Where have you been?” His gaze drifted past her to Ajax. “Aha! You’ve been busy, I see!”
Natalie punched him again, harder this time. “Shut up. We’ve been defending the Tower on the upper levels where it was open to the sky. What’s going on?”
“Well, Kentigern is dying, and our leader is kind of crazy.” Seth ducked away from her fist and spread his hands.
“Oh my God.” Natalie stared at him, then at her father. “Are we trapped here?”
“Nah, not yet,” said Seth. “It depends on Kentigern and our fearless leader.”
Harshly, Jake said, “She’s doing her best, Seth. Stop poking her.”
Seth gave their father a ghastly look, but before he could say anything, the lights went out.
It was different than the previous power flickers. The entire Tower seemed plunged into a pool of silence. The open portals vanished. The tablets went dim. Even the air stopped moving.
In the distance, the doctor started swearing, the only light the indicators on the beds he stood between. A moment later, flashlights started flickering on.
“Well, I guess that decision’s made,” said Seth. “Dibs on the reach gun.”
Ajax moved up beside them, holding his Stage 2 weapon. It gleamed in the near darkness. “We’re not without all hope, I think.” This time, the dim light made his face seemed angelic, not demonic. Maybe it was because he was smiling, and perfectly calm.
He was one of the only ones. A lot of people were shouting, and somebody was crying already. On the other side of the big room, Tanist Kiley’s voice was raised in an attempt to restore order. Jake said, “I should—” then he shook his head and dropped his hand on Natalie’s shoulder. “We got your mother and the kids out.”
“That’s… good?” Natalie thought rationally it must be good, but she really wanted her mother’s calm pragmatism right now. It was the right response, though, because her father squeezed her shoulder and moved away.
Jehane appeared beside Seth’s elbow. “I can’t—” she began worriedly.
All at once, the Tower came back to life. As the lights flickered on and the air started to move and the tablets lit up, Kentigern said, “Sorry about that. I needed to get some filing done.”
Natalie drew in a deep, gasping breath of relief. Seth frowned, though. “That’s not how Kentigern talks.”
The voice from the walls continued. “I think things are all right now. Or will be after physical repairs complete, but I’m on that now. Night should end in a few hours.” And as the voice spoke, it shifted in tone and register from Kentigern’s to someone else’s.
Natalie said, “What happened? Are you feeling better?”
“You could say that. It’s probably better if I don’t talk about it.”
Rohan half-fell off his hospital bed, his face white. “Why do you sound like Elian? Where is Elian?”
“Oh, crap.” The voice from the wall— Elian’s voice— paused for a long moment. A shocked silence engulfed the Portalry.
“Rohan, this is Elian. Kentigern is here… somewhere. He was ready to retire. I’ve taken his place, just like Kentigern took the place of the previous control system personality.”
Jehane cried, “No!” then covered her mouth.
Kiley, striding across the room, said, “Dammit! Well, I’m glad to see it worked, although it needn’t have been you, Elian.”
“From my perspective, I think I can safely say it did, ma’am.”
Kiley pursed her lips, then shrugged. “It’s done now, in any case.”
Rohan pushed himself away from the hospital bed. “This is stupid. Kentigern has gone mad. I’m going to go look for Elian, or whatever is left of him.”
Natalie shook her head. “Wait, Kentigern was… a human before he was the Tower?” It was an incredible idea, but she caught her father’s expression and knew that it was true. Cold, Natalie reached out for Rohan as he passed, but Ajax caught her hand in his own.
“Let him go,” he suggested quietly. “Elian will take care of him. Yes?”
“Yes,” agreed Elian, his voice low.
Natalie’s hand turned into a fist in Ajax’s. “Tanist, you were planning for this? For somebody to take Kentigern’s place in the core? You knew?”
Evenly, the Tanist said, “It was an option we were discussing.” Her gaze flicked to Jehane and away again, so quickly Natalie might have imagined it. “Not necessarily the most wholesome one, but…” she shrugged again. “What’s done is done. I’m grateful for Elian’s sacrifice.”
Elian said, “It’s all right. I wouldn’t have made a very good Nightlight, and now I’m getting lots of education, just like I always wanted. Of course, I’m not Kentigern. Everybody will have to learn to live with that.”
Illumination 3.10: I Don’t Like This Memory
“Please hide,” said Kentigern.
Elian didn’t think until after he’d ducked under the bar about what he should be hiding from. If it was a rogue process of Kentigern himself, he’d picked a terrible spot.
Footsteps echoed on the gallery overhead. A voice said, “I thought I heard somebody down there.” The footsteps paused. “Just Kentigern rambling, I guess. Sorry, old boy.” The footsteps retreated again, back to the Carta Lab.
Elian sat under the bar, looking at the column of light. “Am I not supposed to be here?” He pitched his voice low. “Am I making things worse?”
“No. They would have made you leave, though. They don’t trust me right now.”
“But you seem a lot more functional here than anyplace else.”
“Yes. Don’t worry. Out there I may have trouble processing my sensory input, but here everything is clear.” The quiet voice from the beam of light was resigned.
Frowning, Elian said, “They shouldn’t just leave your core alone if you’re sick. What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re very busy. There’s so much to do with me falling apart. You wanted to be a Reader, didn’t you? Why?”
Elian shifted awkwardly. “I’ve always liked computers. I liked to get right inside and figure out what’s wrong and just be able to fix it. And I like words, too. So, you know, natural fit.” His gaze unfocused, looking at something inside. “Computers are easier than people. Sometimes you can never do the right thing with people.”
“Ah. I’m a computer. But you can’t get inside me and fix me.”
“You’re not a computer,” said Elian firmly.
“Of course I am. Or do you consider me a building, then?”
“Nope. Not just that either.”
“What else could I be?”
“A ghost? You said that once.”
“A glitch.”
Elian eyed the column of light. “How did you get patched, a thousand years ago?”
“It’s written down somewhere up in the Carta Lab. You can read about it later. They’re going to save all the records, oh yes.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“I don’t remember. That’s why it’s written down.”
“Kentigern—” Elian blew out his breath in exasperation. “My mother and Rohan do this. Think they’re fooling me just because they’re don’t want to face something themselves. If you don’t want to tell me, just say that.”
The motes swirled around the pillar of light. Then, in a rougher voice, Kentigern said, “Lailoken, after our initial contact, went home again and brought some friends with him. Including me.”
Elian chewed on his lip. “Yeah?”
“Oh yes. The previous version of me needed both maintenance and perspective. We thought I was a mad god. I was very scholarly. Not as wise as Lailoken. I watched myself take apart an invader and extract the knowledge of another tower from within it. I wondered if it could derive understanding from us the same way. I voiced this wonder. I acted upon the idea.” An old bitterness swam under Kentigern’s flat words.
Elian frowned, processing this. Then his expression cleared. “Wow.” He sat quietly a moment. “Did it hurt?”
“Yes,” said Kentigern, shortly. “Every connection in my human mind was exploded and re-assembled. But when it was done, I was truly functional. I’d applied not just the knowledge and perspective of my corporeal life, but also the wholeness and resilience of my mind. It wasn’t just mechanical, as you’ve guessed. This place isn’t just physics.”
Elian looked down at his hands. “Can you do it again? Fix yourself using somebody else?”
“I don’t recommend it. The most that would be left of whoever volunteered would be like the twilight proxies. I’m not very good at assembly of souls.”
“But you’re still Kentigern, aren’t you? At least partially? You’re not just the… the mad god left behind by the aliens.”
“I’m not what I was. A small favor. I can recognize the futility—” Kentigern fell silent, then continued. “I can not recommend it, Elian. I’ve spent over fourteen hundred years like this. I’m not a machine. All this time, and for what? I think it would have been better if Lailoken had never stepped through the portal. We are no better than we were then.”
“We are a little better, at least. I’d be dead, and my mother, too. We live, who would have died.”
“You will—” Kentigern changed directions mid-sentence. “The darkness is vast, child. You don’t understand.”
Elian stood up, his eyes bright. “I understand that you’re broken, and I can fix you. Do it, Kentigern. Use me. Keep everything going.”
“No!” said Kentigern, sharply. Then, sulkily, “Do you know what it’s like to fall in love? I do.”
Elian caught his breath. “Maybe. I don’t know. I know what love is, though. Of course you do too. How could you not? For the love we both have, Kentigern, please! I’m here. I want to do this.”
“I didn’t. I don’t. I just wanted company at the end. That’s all.”
“I’m here,” said Elian again, softly.
A mote drifted out of the column of light and landed on the trembling boy’s arm. He looked down at it, eyes so wide they were mostly whites, but he didn’t shake it off.
“I remember how much it hurt,” said Kentigern, just as softly. The mote flashed, and seemed to dissolve into Elian’s skin. He collapsed into a boneless heap on the floor. A moment later, a swarm of motes emerged from the column of light and settled on the boy.
I dreamt of darkness and light, and I was born.
Illumination 3.9: Provocation
Logan held their mother’s hand, but Kaylee insisted Seth carry her to the Portalry. She clung to him like an octopus, arms and legs twined around him, and rested her head on his shoulder. “You’ll come with us,” she told him.
“Nope,” he said cheerfully.
Logan’s head swiveled to scan the Portalry as soon as they stepped inside. A dozen portals were fixed opened, with Readers stationed by them. Many, many small children crowded the floor, swirling between the full-grown people like water between rocks. “Natalie’s not here.”
“And that’s why I can’t come,” Seth told Kaylee. “I’ve got to go get Natalie out of trouble. You know how it is. Wait, what am I thinking? You’re a troublemaker, too.” He transferred his attention to Logan. “You know how it is.”
Logan sighed. “Yeah.”
“Uh-uh,” said Kaylee, and tightened her grip. Seth opened his arms, but she didn’t budge.
“Kaylee,” said Valeria. “Let your brother go.”
Kaylee sniffed. “But if Natalie and Seth don’t come with us, I’ll cry!”
Logan tugged on Kaylee’s foot. “Come on. Don’t be a baby.” The little girl sighed and slipped down Seth and took her other brother’s hand. True to her word, she started to cry, but quietly.
Seth looked at his mother. If she was on the verge of tears, he couldn’t tell. She looked like she did before any field trip to Earth with the kids: thoughtful, a bit harried, a little resigned, with a light dancing in the back of her eyes.
“Got everything? Money? ID? Latchkey?”
“Yes, dear,” she said. “It’s still right here.” She patted the purse slung over her body.
“Good,” said Seth. He winked, kissed her on the cheek, and slipped a luminator into her hand. “Just in case.”
“There you are, Val,” said Jake, showing up with a travel case. He put it down to embrace Valeria. “I hope this turns out to be an over-reaction on our part. Kiley doesn’t think it’s necessary yet but–” He looked around at all the other families saying goodbye. “Well… we’ll know soon.”
“One way or another,” Valeria agreed. “Don’t let Kiley talk you into anything stupid while I’m gone, all right?”
Jake laughed awkwardly. “I’ll do my best.”
Valeria turned back to Seth. “I’m proud of you, kiddo. When you find Natalie, give her my love and tell her I’m proud of her, too.”
Kaylee’s weeping became sobbing, and Logan looked like he was fighting back tears too. Seth rumpled his hair. “Extended goodbyes are no good, Mom. Get out of here.”
She nodded, picked up the case in one hand and took Kaylee’s free hand with her other. Then, without a backward glance, she stepped through the portal to London.
Behind Seth and Jake, the Tanist said, “I was looking for you, Jake.” Her voice was flat and angry. She was often angry at Jake when Valeria was around, Seth had noticed. It was like she was jealous or something.
Jake visibly startled, whirling around to face his boss. He shoved a hand through his hair. “Kiley. Hey. How’s it going?”
“Not as bad as some people seem to think,” she said, and paused meaningfully. “The Readers are investigating and they think there are options for remaining at this Tower even if Kentigern himself is damaged. They’re working on a report.”
Seth said, “Meanwhile, what’s the plan for when that fails?” The Tanist gave him a cold look, and he smiled insolently at her. “A lot of people have been hurt already. I went ahead and made sure my mom and siblings got out, did you see?”
“Seth…” said Jake, tiredly.
“Everything is fine,” snapped the Tanist. “And you, boy, if you go around telling people it isn’t fine, any injuries resulting from the ensuing panic are on your head.”
Seth tossed his hair out of his eyes. “Oh, I never take responsibility for anything. You’ll want Natalie for that.”
Jake said slowly, “I do think we need to consider what happens if we can’t stay here,” and Seth looked at his father in mild surprise. It was unlike Jake to argue seriously with the Tanist about anything. He usually just accepted everything she dished out, her obedient yes-man. It was an interesting departure from the usual, and Seth considered how to exploit this.
“You think I haven’t?” the Tanist said. “But we are not giving up on this place. We’ve been here over a thousand years and the Guardians are not just giving up, not on my watch.”
Seth couldn’t resist. “And afterwards?”
The Tanist gritted her teeth. “Jake, why is your son such a coward?”
Jake shifted uneasily. “Hey now, you two.”
Delighted, Seth said, “I knew there was a reason I was uninjured! Cowardice! Yes! If I’d been brave like Linc— wait, I meant stupid–”
Her hand lashed out and Seth couldn’t dodge, not when he knew letting her connect would be so much more entertaining. He may even have leaned into the blow as she hit him in the face with her half-open palm. Her fingernails caught in his skin, drawing blood.
Jake moved as if galvanized, grabbing the Tanist’s arm. “My god, Kiley!”
Seth grinned so widely that the scratch burned as it stretched. She looked at her nails, then at Seth’s face.“Something to remind you of your courage, then.”
Jake shook the Tanist. “He’s just a kid, Kiley.” But the Tanist put her hand on his chest and pushed him away so hard he stumbled.
“A kid badly in need of discipline that neither you nor your wife seem able to provide. So it falls to me.” She looked at Seth one more time. “If I see you again this nightfall, kid, I’m going to throw you out a portal without a latchkey.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, vanishing into the crowds toward the other end of the Portalry.
The blood on Seth’s face trickled into his mouth. He licked it, staring after the Tanist, no more able to stop smiling than he was able to stop bleeding.
Illumination 3.8: In The Dark. Not Alone.
“So, aren’t you injured?” Ajax said, leaning on his glowing weapon. “Shouldn’t you still be in bed?”
“I’m fine,” Natalie said quickly. “The doctor sent me up here.” It was technically true.
“Uh-huh.”
Natalie twisted her wrist and brought her katana out. “Which one of us has a stage 3 weapon here?”
“I guess you’ve got everything well in hand then. Should I just move on?” She didn’t answer, and his silhouette didn’t move.
In the distance, outside the wall, something crashed and squealed. The hoarse, faraway cry dropped into the silence of the storeroom like a rock into a pond.
Ajax shifted position. “I’ve been wondering if all this stuff is proto-monster. I heard that Kentigern manufactures raw materials for his own construction and stores them here?”
“Something like that,” Natalie said, then admitted, “I haven’t paid very much attention to how Kentigern and the Tower works, outside of what’s required in class.”
“Straight As at the required stuff, though, I bet.”
“Well, yes. Obviously.”
He laughed, the first time she’d heard him laugh without bitterness. “Obviously. Well, I was thinking maybe we could use the goop to close up some of these holes. Some of the stuff here is like our own anima, so—”
It was her turn to laugh. “Where did you get that idea?”
He fished something out of a pocket, which he handed to her. It turned out to be a tiny LED flashlight. As soon as she turned it on, he let his glowing stage 2 weapon evaporate.
He pulled on the side of one of the half-crumbled crates, revealing the stack of translucent bricks inside, and picked one up. Holding it like a club, he concentrated.
It flickered, a warm glow appearing from deep inside. “Like stage 1, kind of,” said Ajax. “But see?”
The brick moved in his hand, flowing up into a point, then melting all over his hand and pouring onto the floor. The glow faded, and he shook the droplets off his hand. “I’m no better at managing this stuff than I am at managing my weapon, though.”
Natalie stared. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. How— is it just you?”
He snorted. “I doubt it. It doesn’t feel like a matter of power, just control.” He picked up another brick of solidified goo and tossed it to her. “You try.”
She hesitated. It was a brick of solid matter. She could cut it with her own weapon, but how could she change it? But her katana disappeared and she took the brick in both hands, trying to use it as she used the training blades.
It was the strangest experience. She could feel her anima enfolding the brick, just like it did the wooden blade. But unlike the blades, the brick was… permeable. Tendrils of her anima crept inside it. It became malleable in her fist, and the top part elongated in a pale facsimile of a training sword.
But it’s just a brick, she thought. Fuel for the motes. The raw material of the Tower.
The brick, or whatever it was, dissolved, gushing out of her hand. It didn’t cling to her skin like water, so that when she shook the last droplets from her hand, it was utterly dry. The floor, though, had more gooey puddles.
“I think I need more practice. Have you been making all those messes back where I came from? Trying this out?”
“I came from the other direction, so nope. Probably Kentigern. You said he was trying to fix himself.”
There was another roar from outside, and a thump that seemed like it was right outside the wall. A flash of lightning illuminated the room, dancing across the sky visible through the opening.
“Right,” said Natalie hurriedly. “How about we just shove the crates in front of the hole? They’re pretty heavy when they’re full and it looks like a lot of them haven’t been touched.”
“Good idea,” Ajax said thoughtfully. He pushed on one of the crates. It moved about an inch. She joined him at the crate, shoving hard. Together they maneuvered it in front of the hole to the outside. Then they struggled to tip a second crate on top of the first, blocking the rest of the hole.
As they worked, Natalie became aware of Ajax’s presence in a way she hadn’t been before. She pushed, and could feel the warmth of his muscled arm less than an inch away from hers. She paused to catch her breath after a burst of exertion and inhaled his scent, all sweaty male with a hint of moss and spice. A faint panic curled through her, and she shifted position and tried to work out why.
He wasn’t a kid, she realized. Part of her had been thinking of him as a kid, all this time. An oversized version of the first year students, somebody she had to take care of. A talented student to teach.
She looked at him from the corner of her eye, the light from the little flashlight attached to her belt loop glinting off his olive skin. He was a lot bigger than she was. One of his hands, broad-palmed and long-fingered, was almost twice the size of her own.
He pushed the final crate an inch closer to the wall, then glanced down at her, meeting her gaze as she stared up at him. The light from the flashlight reflected off the floor up into his face, making his face demonic. He hesitated, then reached out and closed his hand over the tiny flashlight, catching the light in his fist. His thumb caught in her belt loop as the room dropped to near dark, the only source of light glowing through his fist and glittering in his eyes.
He tugged on her belt loop and his head dipped.
Just an inch, and then he froze. A ragged breath hissed between his teeth. He released the flashlight and her belt loop, shrugged off the hand she hadn’t noticed herself putting on his arm, and stepped back.
“Well done,” he said harshly. “You really ought to get out of here. Whatever the doctor sent you up here for, it wasn’t to hang out in the dark with me.”
“You aren’t—” Natalie began, and the light flickered on. Ajax looked no more like a child in full light, wearing a shirt that seemed a size too small and his mouth an angry slash across the planes of his face.
“Excuse me,” said Kentigern softly, then launched into a song, sweet and sad and alien.
“He sang that before,” Ajax muttered, and hit the wall gently with his fist. “You’ll have to translate, Kentigern.”
“It’s all right,” said Kentigern, when he finished singing. “I composed it myself. It’s a lament. Can you please leave the storeroom? I need to seal it.”
The hole Natalie had come through began to grow closed. Ajax pounded on the irising door, but it didn’t open. “Come on,” Natalie called, and darted through the sealing opening. It was closing very fast.
Ajax shook his head and threw himself through after her. He stumbled over the rising edge of the hole and fell, knocking her down and landing half on her. Then he rolled off her, like he’d landed on lightning, springing to his feet, grabbing her hand, and hauling her through the next hole.
For a few minutes there was only running and jumping and dodging, until finally they made it through the maze of storerooms back to the hall. Adrenaline pumping through her veins, Natalie leaned against the wall beside the supplies she’d abandoned and tried to catch her breath.
Ajax crouched down, pressing his head against the wall. “Does this mean Kentigern’s feeling better?”
Natalie remembered the lament. “I don’t… think so.”
Somewhere, deep in the tower, there was a clunk.
I mean, not with a stick or anything.
I’m working on outlining a new story.
Well, I say ‘working on’ but the last couple of days have been exercises in cat-vacuuming. I’ve gotten a lot of the basics of character, worldbuilding, and theme down. I even had a sense of the ending, and the overall developing action. What I didn’t have was a plot to string all this together.
I mean, plot is hard for me. In this case it was even harder because I almost could have made a story out of meandering character development and world exploration, a sort of magic realism– and part of me wanted to. But the story is a direct sequel to a definite contemporary/urban fantasy, and I’ve read far too many complaints about sequels being incredibly different books from the original to want to tread that route by switching whole _subgenres_.
Plus, I know what a solid plot adds to a story: it adds action, it adds pacing, and it usually brings a whole bunch of secondary character definition and scene ideas. Without knowing my plot in advance, my characters would spend a lot of time in the kitchen drinking coffee.
Anyhow, backstory explained: [Copied from Google Plus.]
Well, at least I got almost six hours of sleep before getting smacked in the face with a (relevant) idea about how to solve my plot hangup and a third of a novel unfolded before my eyes.
(Well, I say ‘getting smacked in the face’ but it wasn’t the ‘wake up out of a sound sleep with the Muse standing over me with a shovel’ variety. I’d woken up naturally, was having trouble drifting off again, and started the Hour of the Wolf, in which I chew helplessly on the problems afflicting me. I hate the Hour of the Wolf. But in this case, almost as soon as I turned my attention to the issue, I asked myself the Right Question about it. And lost all ability to go back to sleep.)
And, as is starting to feel suspiciously ordinary, it is the kind of idea that seems like it might get me into… trouble.
Plus, it breaks about half the guidelines I set out for narrowing in on a plot.
So now here I am, listening to the sun rise, thinking about all the work I have to (get to?) do now. I’m pretty sure I’ll do about a fifth of it before realizing ‘oh no, this idea won’t work!’. That’s just the way these things go. And it _will_ work. With some, er, work.