Lightbringer (Empirium 3)

I think you will see, as you did that first day, faint images of what I believe are worlds beyond our own, as if you are walking through memory. But I think it isn’t memory—it is happening now, or has happened, or will happen. Many worlds, all connected by the Deep, in which time has no meaning.

Eliana focused on her steady breathing. You think.

It is a theory, the Prophet admitted. Many scholars throughout history—both human and angel—have posited the very concept I describe. Think about it. You were able to stand in those hills, even though they were mere illusions, echoes through the Deep. So, whatever you see today, be it roads or mountains or forests, trust it. Use it. Believe the illusion. Let your power provide you with reality.

Or else fall into the endless abyss? Eliana asked wryly. Be consumed by the Deep?

I am confident you will manage to avoid that.

And Eliana felt that confidence, sent to her by the Prophet on a steady current.

She wished she shared the feeling.

Instead, a sick fear gnawed at her stomach. She could not shake from her mind the violet sky tinged gray with the shadows of beasts. Though she had survived her first journey to the Deep, there was no certainty she would survive the second. But if she waited any longer, she would be cowed by the sight of this thing she had made.

Eliana held her breath, let go of the tree roots, and stepped swiftly through the fissure, expecting the same vista of soft hills and empty fields to greet her.

Instead, she saw a city crowded with narrow black spires that stretched toward a dark sky scattered with stars.

She froze where she stood, in the middle of a broad thoroughfare choked with people—merchants carting their wares, jugglers tossing glowing orbs, children leading animals by knotted ropes. Some of the animals she recognized; others, fleshy and mottled, she did not. If she looked too directly at any one thing, it slipped from her gaze, turned gray and cloudy, then flew out of sight. There was a faintness to it all, a slight discoloration, as if she were looking not at something real but rather at the relics of a dream.

They don’t see me, she said, slowly making her way through the crowded street. Dark shapes quivered at the corners of her eyes, giving her the unsettling sense that something vast was closing in upon her. She learned quickly to keep her eyes focused straight ahead, or else the world would start spinning. She could not think about what truly surrounded her: nothingness, endless and dark. The fall of her feet on the illusory road beneath her—that, she lied to herself, was real and true.

You understand, now, how they did it. The Prophet’s voice was grave. The Deep touches all things. The joints between worlds here are thin and pliable, the empirium capable of being molded by those with the power to do so. Like your saints of old, who used their elemental talents to doom an entire race.

Zahra told me it was a peace treaty, Eliana thought evenly, matching her words to her measured pace forward. The angels would enter another world, one that was uninhabited, and make it their own. The humans would remain in Avitas, and the Angelic Wars would end.

Zahra told the truth, the Prophet replied. It was a terrible deceit.

The saints did not enter the Deep, though, or else they would have died. Isn’t that right?

They worked their magic from Avitas, yes. A pause. More or less.

How was this accomplished?

Silence from the Prophet.

Eliana fought a swell of impatience. How do you know all of this?

I am a keeper of many stories, was the cryptic reply.

Holding her many questions on her tongue, Eliana watched a boy run past. White braids fell to his waist, and freckles dotted his pale skin. She looked for too long at him; his shape blurred and faded, then flattened, as a shadow would fall across the ground, and was gone. The cobblestones were slick with rain, and Eliana thought she saw drops falling, but when she looked harder to confirm it, pain spiked behind her eyes.

She turned away, her head aching. Not knowing what was real and what was not left her stomach in queasy knots.

None of it is real, the Prophet replied, and yet all of it is real. I believe what you are seeing is another world, very distant from this one and yet so near that if you put out your hand here in Elysium, you would be touching it and not know it. Many worlds, the Prophet repeated, their voice soft with fascination, all connected by the Deep.

A movement above her, faint at the edge of her vision, urged Eliana to look up, but she refused, afraid of what she would see. She remembered Remy convulsing at her feet, Corien watching coldly from above.

Did it hurt? she thought, knowing the answer. When you lost your body?

Another beat of silence. Seldom did they speak of the Prophet’s identity. Eliana often feared that delving too deeply into such questions would ruin everything between them.

But Eliana had known the truth from the first time they had spoken: the Prophet was an angel, whether they chose to talk about it or not.

Once again, the movement above flickered. Eliana looked up. Overhead was a night sky with stars more numerous than those she knew in Avitas. Ripples passed through the stars as if they were froth on black water, and in that water swam creatures unseen. Eliana squinted and saw faint dark shapes.

Her blood turned cold. The cruciata?

Yes, the Prophet replied.

Do they see me?

It is possible.

Driven by a wild, throat-clenching instinct, Eliana reached an iron gate and hurried past it into a small park, where the trees were heavy with rain. She ducked behind one and clung to its trunk, hidden beneath the sopping leaves.

But then, through her fear, she remembered: None of this was real. She could hide beneath a tree, inside a house, deep in a cave, and none of it would matter, for in reality it would still be only her, Eliana, huddling behind nothing, seen by whatever lurked in the Deep. She couldn’t hide—she was alone and vulnerable in an endless abyss, and this tree was not a tree, and the ground she stood on was not ground at all. She existed in nothingness, and nothingness surrounded her.

Abruptly, her fingers passed through the tree, and she stumbled through it and fell. A stubborn part of her brain expected to hit the ground, but instead she kept falling, past the ground that wasn’t truly there and into a spinning maelstrom of darkness.

Lights flashed, as if she had passed into a storm. She tried to shut her eyes against them—they were too bright, they were hurting her—but she couldn’t. They were everywhere, scorchingly brilliant, as if all the stars she had seen were now erupting in sprays of color. The hot white of lightning and a roiling plum, the punched black-blue of a fresh bruise. She tried to scream, but the air stole her voice. No, not air. Nothing. The empirium, the Prophet had said, raw and unfettered.

Distant shrieks and howling roars crashed against each other, building to an awful, discordant cacophony that slammed over and over against her ears, as if she were falling from a high cliff through chaotic mountain winds. nk you will see, as you did that first day, faint images of what I believe are worlds beyond our own, as if you are walking through memory. But I think it isn’t memory—it is happening now, or has happened, or will happen. Many worlds, all connected by the Deep, in which time has no meaning.

Eliana focused on her steady breathing. You think.

It is a theory, the Prophet admitted. Many scholars throughout history—both human and angel—have posited the very concept I describe. Think about it. You were able to stand in those hills, even though they were mere illusions, echoes through the Deep. So, whatever you see today, be it roads or mountains or forests, trust it. Use it. Believe the illusion. Let your power provide you with reality.

Or else fall into the endless abyss? Eliana asked wryly. Be consumed by the Deep?

I am confident you will manage to avoid that.

And Eliana felt that confidence, sent to her by the Prophet on a steady current.

She wished she shared the feeling.

Instead, a sick fear gnawed at her stomach. She could not shake from her mind the violet sky tinged gray with the shadows of beasts. Though she had survived her first journey to the Deep, there was no certainty she would survive the second. But if she waited any longer, she would be cowed by the sight of this thing she had made.

Eliana held her breath, let go of the tree roots, and stepped swiftly through the fissure, expecting the same vista of soft hills and empty fields to greet her.

Instead, she saw a city crowded with narrow black spires that stretched toward a dark sky scattered with stars.

She froze where she stood, in the middle of a broad thoroughfare choked with people—merchants carting their wares, jugglers tossing glowing orbs, children leading animals by knotted ropes. Some of the animals she recognized; others, fleshy and mottled, she did not. If she looked too directly at any one thing, it slipped from her gaze, turned gray and cloudy, then flew out of sight. There was a faintness to it all, a slight discoloration, as if she were looking not at something real but rather at the relics of a dream.

They don’t see me, she said, slowly making her way through the crowded street. Dark shapes quivered at the corners of her eyes, giving her the unsettling sense that something vast was closing in upon her. She learned quickly to keep her eyes focused straight ahead, or else the world would start spinning. She could not think about what truly surrounded her: nothingness, endless and dark. The fall of her feet on the illusory road beneath her—that, she lied to herself, was real and true.

You understand, now, how they did it. The Prophet’s voice was grave. The Deep touches all things. The joints between worlds here are thin and pliable, the empirium capable of being molded by those with the power to do so. Like your saints of old, who used their elemental talents to doom an entire race.

Zahra told me it was a peace treaty, Eliana thought evenly, matching her words to her measured pace forward. The angels would enter another world, one that was uninhabited, and make it their own. The humans would remain in Avitas, and the Angelic Wars would end.

Zahra told the truth, the Prophet replied. It was a terrible deceit.

The saints did not enter the Deep, though, or else they would have died. Isn’t that right?

They worked their magic from Avitas, yes. A pause. More or less.

How was this accomplished?

Silence from the Prophet.

Eliana fought a swell of impatience. How do you know all of this?

I am a keeper of many stories, was the cryptic reply.

Holding her many questions on her tongue, Eliana watched a boy run past. White braids fell to his waist, and freckles dotted his pale skin. She looked for too long at him; his shape blurred and faded, then flattened, as a shadow would fall across the ground, and was gone. The cobblestones were slick with rain, and Eliana thought she saw drops falling, but when she looked harder to confirm it, pain spiked behind her eyes.

She turned away, her head aching. Not knowing what was real and what was not left her stomach in queasy knots.

None of it is real, the Prophet replied, and yet all of it is real. I believe what you are seeing is another world, very distant from this one and yet so near that if you put out your hand here in Elysium, you would be touching it and not know it. Many worlds, the Prophet repeated, their voice soft with fascination, all connected by the Deep.

A movement above her, faint at the edge of her vision, urged Eliana to look up, but she refused, afraid of what she would see. She remembered Remy convulsing at her feet, Corien watching coldly from above.

Did it hurt? she thought, knowing the answer. When you lost your body?

Another beat of silence. Seldom did they speak of the Prophet’s identity. Eliana often feared that delving too deeply into such questions would ruin everything between them.

But Eliana had known the truth from the first time they had spoken: the Prophet was an angel, whether they chose to talk about it or not.

Once again, the movement above flickered. Eliana looked up. Overhead was a night sky with stars more numerous than those she knew in Avitas. Ripples passed through the stars as if they were froth on black water, and in that water swam creatures unseen. Eliana squinted and saw faint dark shapes.

Her blood turned cold. The cruciata?

Yes, the Prophet replied.

Do they see me?

It is possible.

Driven by a wild, throat-clenching instinct, Eliana reached an iron gate and hurried past it into a small park, where the trees were heavy with rain. She ducked behind one and clung to its trunk, hidden beneath the sopping leaves.

But then, through her fear, she remembered: None of this was real. She could hide beneath a tree, inside a house, deep in a cave, and none of it would matter, for in reality it would still be only her, Eliana, huddling behind nothing, seen by whatever lurked in the Deep. She couldn’t hide—she was alone and vulnerable in an endless abyss, and this tree was not a tree, and the ground she stood on was not ground at all. She existed in nothingness, and nothingness surrounded her.

Abruptly, her fingers passed through the tree, and she stumbled through it and fell. A stubborn part of her brain expected to hit the ground, but instead she kept falling, past the ground that wasn’t truly there and into a spinning maelstrom of darkness.

Lights flashed, as if she had passed into a storm. She tried to shut her eyes against them—they were too bright, they were hurting her—but she couldn’t. They were everywhere, scorchingly brilliant, as if all the stars she had seen were now erupting in sprays of color. The hot white of lightning and a roiling plum, the punched black-blue of a fresh bruise. She tried to scream, but the air stole her voice. No, not air. Nothing. The empirium, the Prophet had said, raw and unfettered.

Distant shrieks and howling roars crashed against each other, building to an awful, discordant cacophony that slammed over and over against her ears, as if she were falling from a high cliff through chaotic mountain winds.