Long, long ago, when the Division was still a fresh, raw wound in the planet, in reality itself, The Skekses and the Mystics were very different to what we know now. Hiding in their Castle, or in their far-off valley of stones, each of the now sixteen pairs of sundered remnants of those strange beings of light mourned the loss of their brothers in their own distorted or detached way. They each felt realisations dawn upon them with every passing day, and they each adjusted in their own subtly individual manner.
For a collection of beings who had started out on one side bestial and on the other completely lost, their development progressed in leaps and bounds over the passing months, discoveries of the needs of corporeality intertwined with memories of language and of building, of concepts and of realities.
No-where was that more evident or more drastic than with the Mystics, the urRu, as they came to be called. They had fled the Castle, scarcely aware of the Gelflings astride their tall Landstriders. Instinctively they followed the call of the planet itself, covering the distance with a speed they'd never again muster, arriving within a day to a valley in which the very energies of the planet converged in a well of stillness.
And within that valley, in that still, calming energy, they stopped. Their new flesh-and-bone bodies would carry them no further and they fell to the dusty ground. There they lay for a long while, exhausted, terrified by the thumping of rapidly-beating heart and the rasping of air in panting lungs. Their knowledge of these things had, until now, been purely conceptual--they knew why Gelfling and Podling had to frequently pause in their activities, why such beings had to spend hours in unconsciousness every night, but until this moment they had never understood why.
Many moments passed in silence as sixteen bewildered beings lay, fascinated by their own slowing breath and pulse. With this slowing creeped in a clarity of thought, an ability to look past the immediate concerns of safety.
One of them stirred, sitting up on his thick haunches, all four hands balancing against the ground. After a moment he removed his hands from the ground and stood as close to upright as this strange frame would allow.
He took in his surroundings, then regarded the others. His head tilted. The others gazed at him almost expectantly.
"Auuummmm," he said, the labial sound trailing off into a contemplative hum. It was the only sound any of them had made. It carried meaning and yet insufficiently so. Words were needed. Spoken words. They could no longer hear each other's minds.
"Ssstoooonnnnnes," he said, the words coming slowly. "Theeeyyy... keep... safe."
The others looked about, seeing the same energy. "Safe," another intoned, "for now."
"Now... is all we have," another added.
They fell silent.
"Two of our brothers," one said softly. "Gone."
After a long pause of contemplation, another said, "To mourn who they were, we must first know who we were." He took a few steps and drew a tightly curving line in the dust with the top right hand. The curve led around itself, becoming a small spiral. "I... was ZokZah." He stopped, stepping back and looking at the others. Another came forward, continuing the spiral. "I was SilSol." The others came forward one by one, adding to the spiral, watching it grow larger and larger.
"I was LiLii."
"I was OkAc."
"I was NaNol."
The spiral wound out further and further, the line broken by small stones embedded in the ground, forming nodes on the path.
"I was VarMa."
"I was AyukAmaj."
"I was SaSan."
As the group gathered, they came to realise this simple memorial was slowly becoming an augury.
"I was MalVa."
"I was EktUtt."
"I was GraGoh."
Their footprints joined the small stones in breaking up the lines, a clear reminder that everything they did changed the future, in small or large ways.
"I was LachSen."
"I was TekTih."
"I was ShodYod."
"I was UngIm."
"I was SoSu."
As this last one, SoSu, stepped away from the spiral, the being who used to be ZokZah came forward again. "Our brothers, HakHom and YiYa, will not be forgotten. They are now lessons to the rest of us. One is now two, but like a split stone, the two will ever reflect the one."
There was another pause for contemplation.
"Names... are important," the being who was once OkAc mused. "We are each half of one. We are... the first of... something new. We must... have new names."
After yet another pause for contemplation, the being who used to be SoSu nodded decisively. "You are right. Thus, I will be known as urSu."
Some of the others blinked as they almost felt time shift onto a new path. A small breeze blew, dragging a small stone along the spiral, changing its course. The decision was final.
And so time passed, as it always does. Night followed day, over and over, as the Mystics cleared the bowl-like valley, building and reinforcing a spiral path that led up to the top of the slopes where the stones they'd noticed on their arrival stood.
Anyone who saw them would be fascinated by their slow, deliberate circling of this ring of stones. urTih scratched sigils and patterns on them with the burnt end of a stick. In doing so, and in half calculating and half-intuiting the path of the ley-lines, he came to the realisation that a few of them would have to be moved slightly.
The suns trekked across the sky as they dug paths, lashed vines around the stones, and hauled at the stones until the desired configuration was reached, turning some and shifting others a few feet. They buried the base of each stone again. The suns burned on the horizon as they made their way back down the spiral path. They rested in a circle around a cookfire. Some calmly watched as urAmaj prepared a stew, while others gazed at the sky to watch the stars come out, and urUtt quietly spun cords from plant fibres with a carefully-carved drop spindle. Thus was the life of the Mystics, now--quiet and sheltered.
The rest of the world roiled and frothed in the chaos caused by the Division. The Skekses sidled into the lives of the Gelflings and Podlings, spinning their lies and weaving their deceptions as deftly as urUtt wove spiral-patterned cloth; carving their version of the world as smoothly as urTih carved sigils into the Standing Stones. Their world remained firmly ensconced in the valley and its small concerns until, confident that they could not be traced back to the valley, urGoh, urSan, and urVa stepped beyond the Standing Stones and vanished into the world.
Every day, a mildly concerned urZah would cast auguries under the rising suns, though he would only trouble the others with what he saw if it told him anything untoward. That it hadn't happened yet at the very least spoke to the competence of their travelling brethren.
No, the untoward things happened within the valley. It started with a sudden gout of blood. Gasping loudly with pain, urAc dropped the stylus he was holding and whipped his front right arm away from the parchment before blood obscured what he'd written. He stared at the gash in his forearm, only tearing his gaze away from it when another hand gently grasped his wrist. urIm, his eyes closed in concentration, right hands held up in half-remembered mudras, murmured as he passed his other left hand over urAc's forearm. Heat tingled and the wound closed. Before urAc could even draw breath to speak, the other swayed and nearly fell, exhausted.
"I will... recover," urIm murmured after a moment.
"Thank you," urAc whispered, stunned.
Not far away, urSu made a thoughtful, worried sound. They all still remembered how quickly their newly-born brothers had been killed, how violent and brutal the Skekses had been. Would this continue, now, as the Skekses turned on each other? He would have to meditate on it. He crossed the thalweg, stopping next to urZah. "I have a task for you. Come." He repeated this instruction to urUtt, adding that he should bring some stout cords and a drum.
The three made their way to a clear spot near a waterfall. Once they reached the large flat stone, urSu took the cords and bound a bunch of pollen-heavy flowers with a hypnotic scent to the ends. The others waited patiently for an explanation.
"We must know what the Skekses intend," he said, chewing the cords to further bind the knots in the manner urUtt had discovered. "We must meditate and find their minds." He handed one cord to urZah, the knots and flowers hanging heavily from the end.
If the others were at all concerned about this, they gave no indication. They instinctively understood what needed to be done--they had to find the rhythm, chant, and motion needed to cast their minds from the valley and back along the connexion to their other halves.
Starting slowly, urZah swung the knotted flowers, spreading their scent in the air, experimenting with which arcs and circles to describe. urUtt started a simple, hypnotic rhythm with the drum. Without urSol their voices faltered, fumbling for the proper notes, but as urZah found the proper movements, urSu mirrored his actions and their drumming and chanting grew more confident.
The knotted flowers swung faster and faster, the cord bending over wrists or necks, whirling into the air, around their heads, from one pair of hands to another. Their feet trod in a curving, turning pattern, no movement wasted. The scent and sound and movement took hold.
In the castle, skekEkt's gaze went blank. Slowly, they made their way through the Castle, someone else gazing through their eyes and steering their body, trailing the feathers and silks they'd been working with. They reached an open chamber wherein stood an equally blankly-staring skekZok. Their de-facto leader, skekSo, shifted his gaze between the two.
"Explain yourselves!" he hissed.
skekEkt's beak opened and the voice that left it was not theirs. "We must talk."
skekSo's eyes narrowed. "Must we?"
"You know who we are," said a voice that was not skekZok's.
skekSo hissed. "Indeed, I do, you hairy monstrosities. What do you want?"
"We want you to remember," the mind that had taken skekEkt intoned.
"Remember those whom your brothers killed, even as they, themselves, died," the mind that was not skekZok's added.
Remember that, as you turn on your own, you take us with you, a third voice stated in skekSo's own mind. He pawed at his head for an instant, almost dislodging the elabourate headpiece.
"Are you afraid to die?" he sneered.
Are you? the voice in his mind answered.
This gave him pause. This simple two-word challenge carried with it the clear implication that these Mystics were more than willing to end their own lives just to thwart them. Or him. Moreover, urSu had struck a nerve that skekSo himself had buried--he was afraid of death. He scowled.
"We want a promise," the mind within skekZok said.
"You what?" skekSo snarled.
"We want a promise," it repeated. "That you will not kill each other."
How dare they, skekSo fumed. Still, on further consideration, what they asked for was almost laughably mundane. Don't kill each other, eh? It would keep the rest of the Skekses in line, he realised. He harrumphed. "Very well," he said. "You have my word."
Do not forget it.
In another instant, the strange presences had left, causing the other two to collapse to the floor and leaving a roaring silence in skekSo's mind. He hissed and growled and pushed his headgear back into place, leaving his throne and kicking the others awake. Ignoring the how did I get heres and what's going ons, he stalked out of the chamber to find someone to enforce this new law he had to come up with.
In the valley, the three Mystics sat on the warm, flat stone, resting.
"I do not entirely believe that he will keep his word," urZah murmured.
"We shall see," was urSu's calm reply.
---
DREAMS
The dreams came gradually. Every night, more and more, skekGra dreamed through someone else's eyes, lived someone else's memories. He had no idea at the beginning where it came from, why it was so vivid and consistent and real. He chalked it up to an overactive imagination and, really, too rich of food and too little exercise. Time to leave the Castle again.
He headed out to the southeast in a small armalig-drawn carriage, crossing the Plains, settling into something of a patrol of the villages and towns. At first surveying his conquered lands brought a kind of proud joy to him and kept the dreams at bay. But as he travelled further, the Spriton and Plains Podling settlements growing smaller and further apart, an uneasiness crept over him and the dreams returned. Every morning skekGra awoke more and more unrested. Every day his energy ran out quicker, his patience grew thinner, his thoughts became more scattered.
It wasn't until he found he'd been veering east instead of west, toward the swamps, that he started to worry. What even lay in that direction? He'd not ever travelled this way before, and had but a vague notion of the topography, knowing only that he would eventually reach nigh-impassable mountains. He could see them in the distance, misty and jagged, and yet the ground sloped gradually downward. He found himself falling asleep during the day, and it was then that he came to a very important realisation. Whereas before he saw only glimpses of stones and plants and clear pools of water, he now saw other beings whose familiarity sent a shudder through him--black, deep-set eyes, long and shaggy manes of hair, four arms with large but dextrous hands. Mystics. urRu.
His surroundings grew strangely familiar, but it took him an inordinate amount of time to put together the fact that he was headed toward them. Thus it came as more of a shock than it should have done when, one afternoon, he woke up and started walking on foot toward a line of standing stones on the horizon. The closer he got to them the better he could see the spirals and symbols carved into them. So absorbed in puzzling them out was he that he bounced off of something, tumbling to the ground with an undignified squawk.
SkekGra sat up, staring at the abundance of nothing in his path. He hauled himself to his feet and stepped forward, one hand outstretched before him. His talons stopped short in the space between the stones. He pressed his palm against it, ran his fingers over it, puzzling over its smooth, transparent, solidness. A tap of a talon against it resulted in a small concentric flicker of white light. He stepped back, drew his sword, and prodded the obstruction with its point, eliciting more lights.
Oh, so that's what an invisible barrier looks like.
He scowled in thought. Why is he having dreams about a place he can't get into? Well, no invisible barrier has ever thwarted skekGra the Conqueror! Mind you, no invisible barrier has ever tried up until now, but he's not about to let his unconquered streak of conquering end here! He sheathed his sword and picked up a small rock, which he heaved upward and watched it reach its zenith to then fall, bouncing off the barrier at a height of about fifteen feet. A dome. Hm.
He started walking the perimeter, dragging one hand along the barrier, over standing stones, and further along the barrier, dragging little white circles of energy behind him. After some minutes of this, he stopped when his hand fell through, smacking against rock. He paused, blinking, and reached out two hands, mapping out how big the gap was by feel. It was only just large enough for him to squeeze through. He had to suck in a bit as he inched his way through, sideways, and then climbed onto the rocks.
The orange-brown stone was warm under him as he paused, catching his breath. As he recovered a strange sensation stole over him--an almost drugged kind of feeling, his mind swimming in an imposed peace. Other beings might find it pleasant but skekGra shook his head vigorously, resentful of this imposition on his senses. He clenched his fists until his talons drew blood and only then, when his senses sharpened, was he satisfied.
Or, at least, he figured he was, as he looked down at the beads of dark blood on his hands. It isn't often he sees his own on them, after all. He rubbed them dry on his robes and set his sights forward, making his way over the rocks, climbing in an almost reptilian fashion. He crested the ridge and looked over it, down into a deep valley.
Spread out before him, far below, lay a spiral path, half natural and half dug into the ground, pierced with caves as it made its way down to end in a wide, flat thalweg of sorts. The sandy ground, dotted with standing stones, sported a few tent-like structures. He ducked behind the rocks when he spotted movement, slowly coming back up to watch one of the Mystics plod patiently along on whatever errand occupied his too-complex thoughts. Ducking down again, skekGra sat, grinding his teeth and wracking his brain in an attempt to figure out why he was dreaming of these creatures. Dreaming through one of them. Was he seeing what his detached other half saw?
The very thought caused him to shudder, blood running cold with an existential dread no Skeksis psyche was equipped to handle. Each one of them was only half of a being, something of which they were acutely aware every second of every day despite their myriad attempts to contradict it. No amount of denial, scorn, resentment, or disdain could restore what the Division had taken from them. No occupations, no titles, no rugged individualism, could change the fact that they were all incomplete, that half of what each one of them was, as an entity, lived a separate life, hundreds of miles away. The emptiness gnawed at them in their thoughts and in their dreams, and all the gluttony and violence, cruelty and depravity, greed and blood that they could drown themselves in offered only fleeting surcease. It still tightened the nerves like harp strings in the middle of the night.
And they hated it. Loathed it. Deeply. With every fibre of their sundered being.
He peered over the ridge again, unconscious of the furrows his talons dug in the stone. Why? Why?! Was the other half of his being calling to him? Trying to torment him? Attempting to send a message or make a point or just amuse himself? Should he find this... urSomethingorother (urGoh, some part of his mind whispered) and demand answers?
Another one ambled by and skekGra saw the being wore an eyepatch over the right eye. It reminded him of skekNa and another realisation hit him. What they see, we see. What we feel, they feel....
They all knew that if a Skeksis died then an urRu died and, more importantly, vice versa. Their counterparts could, at any time, take their own lives to thwart the Skeksis if they so chose. After all, unlike the Skeksis, these Mystics lacked a healthy fear of death. But that was all any of them knew, until now. Now... it was obvious that the abuses the Skeksis heaped on one another also brought harm to beings hundreds of miles away, beings with no culpability, beings who... were their equals. They couldn't be anything else. Feeling as though he stood on a precipice over a chasm of terrible, terrible realisations, skekGra ducked behind the rocks again, panting, his mind whirling and his eyes staring sightlessly.
He stayed that way for an unmeasurable amount of time until a few rocks clattering down the slope beside him startled him back into the present. He whipped his gaze toward the source of the sound and his breath nearly stopped--he'd been discovered! He backed up a pace, drew his sword, hissed in warning. That sound died a moment later as his vision swam and, for an instant, he was gazing up at himself, fascinated at his own bewildered expression. Then his mind snapped back into his own head and he reeled. His sword dropped from nerveless fingers. "You...." he choked.
The Mystic who'd discovered him, who completed him, stepped forward. "Be still," the being murmured, possessed of a serenity skekGra could only attempt to imagine. He reached out a large hand, palm forward, absurdly like a Gelfling attempting to engage in... what did they call it again? Dream sharing? Dream... Dreamfasting. And yet, absurd as it was, skekGra mirrored the gesture. He had no idea what to expect and when their hands met there was no colloquy of images, no sharing of experience and thought, nothing but a pulse of energy that grabbed them and pulled them forcefully toward one another. They stumbled awkwardly, fell against one another with another bone-jarring pulse of that horribly ancient and familiar energy, and tumbled a short way down the ridge in a tangle of limbs. When they came to rest a few beats later skekGra could scarcely move, though he lay sprawled atop the larger being. His mind beat wildly at this strange paralysis. He wheezed and spluttered and tried to force himself to his feet.
"I said... be still," the Mystic repeated with what sounded like infinite patience.
"Why?" skekGra spluttered.
"So that you might move again."
What?! That was ridiculous. Stay still so I can move? That doesn't even make any sense! He had no choice, though, and remained where he was, heartbeat slowing, breath growing quiet. He... could feel knotted muscles easing, tension seeping away as though he were submerged in a hot bath. He became aware of a scent, dusty and herbal but not unpleasant. It seeped into his brain, where it sat calmly as though it belonged there.
And after a few moments of this, he found he didn't want to move.
Yet... that thought frightened him. He pushed himself away, but that strange force insured he didn't get very far. He sat on the rocks, staring at his other half. As though to distract himself he reached out and picked up his sword, returning it to its sheath.
"We were once one, we were once GraGoh" he said, his usually loud voice quiet and vague-sounding, as though he were puzzling out the thoughts as he spoke them. "Now... you are urGoh."
"And you... are skekGra," the other responded, sounding almost amused.
It made far too much sense. Fitted together too well. And the Mystic's presence was too relaxing, too calming, too pacifying. The energy wicked between them, invisible tendrils that continued to try to draw them closer to one another.
It filled skekGra with an unaccountable fear. And anything that made a Skeksis afraid all too often very quickly made him disturbed and then angry. He shook his head again, backing up. "No. No, I will not allow--" He broke himself off, caught in the effort to stop his instinct to attack. It would only bring harm to himself. With a hiss he turned and bolted, running down the ridge and vanishing among the rocks.
Silence. A breeze blew, stirring urGoh's hair as he sat for a small while, wondering what in the world that was all about.
--
VISION
To say skekGra was sometimes easily distracted would be to miss the opportunity to use the phrase 'egregiously capricious,' especially nowadays, as he'd been running out of places and peoples to conquer. Thus it was that, on his way back to the castle, he got rather bored with following the course of the river and wandered into the forest.
This was more of an adventure than one would ordinarily think, given the sheer amount of vicious attack flora. Trees would attempt to ensnare him in tendrils, flowers would squirt poison at him, pits would open up in the ground, turning out to be gaping maws. One would be forgiven the assumption that the very planet itself wish to rid itself of Skeksis, but for the occasional skeletons of Gelflings amid the savage undergrowth. The vegetation's hostility, however, suited skekGra just fine as something he could exhaust his still-simmering rage upon that wouldn't leave him injured or embroiled in a tiresome political brouhaha. He hacked and tore his way through vines and branches and stems until he stood, panting, in a clearing, dripping with water and ichor.
He pawed the stuff from his eyes and flicked it into the bushes, doing the same with the goo on his sword before sheathing it. Did he feel better?
No. Not really.
Still, he had gotten rid of that maelstrom of emotion and come out the other side with his thoughts and senses much clearer. Heh. Guess I found peace of mind, eh? He chuckled to himself and kicked a log a few times before, satisfied with its inanimacy, he sat upon it to rest for a moment in the shade of a massive tree. The forest settled around him, returning to its usual noises. A few moments of that, though, solidly reminded him why most of his kind avoided nature--save for skekMal, that lunatic.
The tree stirred above him, setting skekGra on alert again for a moment before he realised it apparently had no intention of attacking him. The branches waved aimlessly. He blew a sigh through his nose and let his gaze wander down, spotting some rather pointedly innocuous-looking berries.
Contrary to what one might believe by their appearance, Skekses were not obligate carnivores and could easily subsist on plants if they had to. They just preferred to cram live animals into their beaks because the crunching and screeching was something they relished. Figuring the animals were probably all poisonous anyway, skekGra plucked a handful of the berries from their branch and eyed them. Their colour looked edible. He peered at the leaves, vaguely remembering something skekAyuk had said about leaf-shapes in one of his meandering ramblings about what they could eat and what would try to kill them. Satisfied that he wasn't going to puke out his own insides and die an ignominious death in a forest, skekGra simply stuffed the berries into his beak and chewed them contemplatively. Their sweet flavour told him at least he'd get sufficient energy from them to make his way back out of the forest. He hauled himself up from the log and, between defending himself from plants and striking first to stop them trying anything, he found a few edible mushrooms, and then a fleeing colony of crawlies, a few of which he caught and ate.
There was something satisfyingly brutal about the screeching of animals between his jaws and the ichor splattering like blood under his sword. As he approached the river, he even found the carriage, its armaligs asleep until he climbed onto the thing and slapped the switch that sent current into them, jolting them awake and causing them to roll forward as though in an attempt to escape, thus setting the carriage in motion.
Ah. Much better. He felt like a proper Skeksis, now.
After several minutes of rattling along, though, he slowly became aware that things looked... different. The reflection of the sun off of metal in the carriage took a prismatic hue. He rubbed at his eyes, thinking maybe there was still some ichor on them, but that odd rainbow effect stayed. It was... fascinating. He couldn't tear his gaze from it. It pulled him into itself and sound faded away. Something vibrated in his head and the last thing he thought before the world burst soundlessly around him was that maybe those berries had been poisonous....
...
Light. The first thing he saw was light. Familiar light. It stirred up a yearning in his mind, in the gaping, yawning chasm wherein his soul used to live. It sang to him a song that his every cell vibrated in concert with. It thrummed through him, deep and resonant.
It was... a song he had sung before... before the Division. The song of the urSkek. His mind reached blindly for it, and another mind reached with him. They strained to bring themselves closer to that song, closer to what once was, closer to... completion. But the song trembled in a light that forever lay just out of reach. And the more they reached toward it, the closer they got to one another until... until....
They lost all concept of form, swirled around each other, shivered, spasmed, swirled again, and slipped into one another. Into
unity.
The world fell away. Time fell away. The song fell away. Another song replaced it--raw and pure and huge. The song of a planet. The song of this planet. The song of Thra. It wrapped itself around him/them and bore him/them along. All around him/them time swirled. He/they saw, etched in painful light against the blackness of eternity, the truth in sigils and symbols, in the lines and curves and arcs of a great branching spiral. It drew in on itself into a point of radiance and he/they passed through that point and he/they fell into light that turned purple and sickly and the world turned purple and sickly and wilted and withered and died and grew cold. It grew black. Its air clawed at the throat and all things perished. All things.
All things. Including urRu. Including Skekses.
He/they looked down and saw the path he/they had trod had led to this point. He/they looked back and saw all that was, all that is, all that will be that created that path. And he/they saw that it was their doing. They had fractured the Crystal. They had fractured themselves. They had fractured the land. And all would die, including them, if things were not set right. If things were not restored to the way they once were when Thra was young and innocent and had never suffered the tread of urSkek feet.
The light started to fade. Their minds started to separate and skekGra was struck with a horribly keen sense of loss, so much sharper and so much more painful than his dim memory of the Division. They were pulled apart a second time, sundered a second time, shattered a second time
and
his mind screamed, their minds screamed, the world screamed and screamed
and
silence.
fell.
--
HERESY
When skekGra's senses returned to him he had no idea how much time had passed. He was slumped in the carriage and an odd sound kept coming to him. He dimly felt something touch him. When he opened his eyes (or perhaps when his sight returned) he beheld the small, sharp, brown and blue face of a Gelfling peering at him, curiosity and concern in equal measure in those huge eyes.
"My Lord? My Lord, are you unwell?"
Wordlessly, skekGra hauled himself out of the vehicle and stumbled past the small armour-clad figure, heedless of the fact that this was uncharacteristically non-violent for him. The Gelfling blinked, watching him stagger into the depths of the Castle, before shrugging and directing servants to return the armaligs to their pens. The sound of normal activity faded from skekGra's hearing as his weaving path took him through corridors that shone with blinding white crystal light before fading back into darkness.
His rattling, buzzing thoughts had no clue where he was going, but his feet bore him further into the Castle until he reeled and lurched into a place filled with orange and purple light and ringing, ringing, ringing.... He clapped his hands over his ears and howled at the Crystal to be silent, begged it to stop that horrible keening. He could swear it replied in a voice made of light and ice and pain and fear that it could not, not until it was whole again....
He fell to the floor, unaware of the tread of feet, of taloned hands that grasped him and hauled him upright. A wash of the smell of hundreds of trine-worth of incense and blood nearly turned his stomach.
"Pull yourself together!" skekZok barked. A beringed hand struck his face, whipping his head to the side.
"I can't," skekGra heard himself say. "None of us can, don't you see?" A loopy giggle welled up from deep within him. "That's the problem...."
He was pulled closer to skekZok's bared teeth. "You know any mention of that is forbidden." There was a pause as the other regarded him. "You are clearly compromised."
All skekGra could reply with was another deranged giggle.
He had no idea how he'd gotten there, but at some point the Crystal Chamber was gone, replaced by a den of horrible smells and a bright light shone in his eye. Talons grasped his chin and turned his head this way and that and skekTek kept up a patter of recondite words.
"Pupillary dilation, bradycardia, movement disruption." A sniff. "Ketosis?" Another sniff. "No." A beat. "Berries." Another beat. "Urdrupe berries."
"What are those?" skekZok demanded. "Poison?"
There was a pause before the Scientist replied. "Not a terminal one." Then he cackled. "Though he'll wish it was when he comes down!" Something pressed to skekGra's face. "Open up," skekTek commanded. He did so and a liquid he could scarcely taste flowed down his throat. "Must've stumbled on them while outdoors and thought they were food, the dunderhead. This'll stop him retching his guts out. He'll live, and in about six hours he'll be lucid again, much good that'll do him." skekTek tossed the beaker aside and pulled skekGra up off the chair he hadn't known he'd been sitting on. Well, that explained why the others seemed so unaccountably tall, at least. "Now get out. You've been muttering nonsense ever since you came in and it's distracting."
He weaved and stumbled his way out and skekZok grabbed his arm, steering him away from shelves of delicate equipment and out the door. Once a sufficient distance from the laboratory he pushed skekGra against the wall and leaned in close to hiss words into the other's ear. "Listen, you babbling miscreant, foolish words like those will cost you your head, law or no law." His fist tightened in skekGra's robes. "Blasphemy will not be tolerated!"
"You turn interesting colours when you're angry," skekGra snickered.
Hissing, skekZok drew back his hand to strike, but the sound of approaching footsteps caused him to go still. His lip drew back from his teeth when he saw who the footsteps belonged to--skekSil.
The crafty Chamberlain flicked his gaze between them. "My dear Ritual Master, clearly our brother is ill," he wheedled. "It would be unseemly to harm him. Uncivilised." A beat. "Impious." He let that word sink in and stifled an oily smile when skekZok released his grip. "No, what brother skekGra needs is rest. Time to recover before returning to his duty of conquest for the glory of our Emperor, yes?" Again, he watched his words sink in, seeing how mention of the Emperor caused skekZok to blench slightly. He reached out a hand and lightly placed it on skekGra's arm, guiding him away from the fuming Ritual Master. "Come, friend," he said. "You can repay me later, yes?" At those words his grip tightened for a beat, and even skekGra's addled mind could catch his meaning. With skekSil's iron grip on him, he let himself be led to his dusty and neglected sleeping chamber.
The journey seemed interminable, and skekSil filled his ears with hypnotic words until no, he didn't want to go anywhere, he didn't want to cause trouble, all he wanted was sleep. He needed sleep. Craved it. Oh, no, he would not dream, and it mattered not if he did dream, such dreams would be inconsequential. And when he was well again he would, yes, he would leave the Castle and speak not a word of any of this, of course....
He fell into shifting, formless dreams.
They refused to stay formless, though. He gave the appearance of sleeping deeply, motionless and silent, and yet his mind spun and whirled on some path he couldn't fully see and the whole time the Crystal keened and wailed and sang a mournful tale of the past and the present and the future.
He woke with a start several hours later and sat up in the litter of cushions each of them called a nest, fully awake. Horribly, piercingly awake. The ambient noise of the Castle washed over him--guards trooping up and down, far-off shouts, the clatter of some machinery or other, and yet it was as good as silence to him because that song had left a hole in his mind. He had to hear it again, he had to know what the Crystal was trying to tell him, had to remember it. It was important. Vital.
skekSil's words came back to him and, just as the Chamberlain knew would happen, they flared rebellion in him. He would not stay silent, he would not go on his way as though nothing had happened! He couldn't possibly do such a thing, now, knowing what he knew! He left the room at a run, pelting down the corridors with undignified haste, pushing aside small groups of Podling slaves, desperate to reach the Crystal Chamber again.
But when he arrived, when he strained to hear it, the great stone remained silent. Or... unheard. Something trembled at the edge of his perception, if only he could catch it! He needed... he needed something to make it louder so he could hear it again. Amplify the sound, magnify the energy....
...
Hundreds of miles away, urGoh awoke, groggy and disorientated, staring stupidly at the wall until his thoughts grudgingly returned to him. Someone was in his cave with him. A few someones. He lifted his head from the sleepframe and turned to see urIm patiently grinding herbs, while urZah and urSu calmly looked at him.
As the confused look on his face, urIm spoke gently. "You have been ill. And in your illness you have said... many things. Worrisome things."
"Do you remember any of it?" urSu asked.
There was a long stretch of silence, punctuated only by the quiet rasp of pestle against mortar. Finally, urGoh said, only, "I had a vision."
The grinding stopped. Stillness hovered over them as though the world held its breath.
"Tell us," urSu replied simply.
There was another pause as urGoh pulled his thoughts into something resembling a sequence. It had all been so chaotic. "It is difficult," he said, "to arrange the memories, to... bring order to chaos."
"To order chaos is to enslave nature. Simply speak," urZah told him.
So urGoh took a breath, calmed his thoughts, and spoke. What he said made little sense to him, but appeared to make a terrifying sense to the others. Their reactions, while almost invisibly subtle, were plain to another of their number. He could see it in the way urIm flexed the fingers of his front right hand, the way urZah blinked more than usual, the way urSu leaned almost imperceptibly forward.
Though he knew urSu had decreed otherwise, long ago, he couldn't stop himself speaking of how, for a moment, he and skekGra were one again, or of the conclusions that that led him to, or of the warning, the warning both the Crystal and Thra itself sang to them of how they must act--
A flash of excruciating pain lanced through urGoh's head. He broke off with a strangled sound. Something pounded against it, driving agony into his skull, there was something hot and slick in his hair... dark blood.... the world faded. All was pain and pounding and two words:
Forgive me....
...
"It's warning us! It's warning all of us, don't you see?" skekGra howled. "I have to hear what it says to me!"
Later, he would wonder how he even survived doing this, driving a metal spike into his his own skull, but at the time he was consumed with desperate, terrified need. And the more the others tried to silence him the louder he shouted.
"The Crystal warned me!" He tried to grab hold of skekLach's robes but she pulled back, hissing in fear. "If we continue on this path we carved out, we will all die!"
"Maybe if you hadn't nailed a spike into your head you'd speak sense!" skekLach spat.
"I had to!" he sobbed. "I can't hear it any longer!"
"Oh, wonderful, he's gone mad," skekAyuk groused. "It's upsetting my digestion."
"If only you all would listen!" skekGrah clambered up onto the Emperor's throne, eliciting a gasp from the others, and stood unsteadily on it. "I've been shown the future! We cannot continue like this! You all know what is gnawing at us every day and every night, haunting our thoughts and our dreams! We are incomplete! We are only half!"
The others hissed in apprehension. skekEkt whimpered.
"The longer we remain so, the longer we drain this world, the closer we come to death! It will shrivel and it will die and we will die!"
A babel of voices rose--objections, questions, remonstrances, until a single bellowed shout cut through all of them. "ENOUGH!"
skekSo strode through the crowd, his Chamberlain and his Ritual-Master behind him.
Finally, skekGra thought, some kind of authority.
"Sire! Surely you understand how vital this warning is," skekGra started, but the other snapped a hand out and grabbed him by the neck.
"Stand down!" the Emperor hissed.
skekGra's beak moved soundlessly, as though unable to stop speaking. With a growl, skekSo hauled savagely and threw the other to the floor where he tumbled a few feet and lay, panting.
"You dare tell me what I understand?" skekSo thundered. "You are a disgrace, babbling about warnings and death!"
"Heresy!" skekZok spat. "We all know the punishment for daring to speak of the Division!"
The room fell deathly silent.
"Indeed, we do," skekSo growled. "So be it. Scroll-Keeper!" The bespectacled creature snapped to. "Henceforth, skekGra shall be expunged from all records. Chamberlain! Henceforth, the title of Conqueror shall no longer exist! skekGra shall be branded Heretic and forever more will he be known as such!"
"Heretic!" the others chorused.
skekSo narrowed his eyes. "Strip him. And banish him. He will have the death of which he speaks."
The others turned, gleeful malice shining in their eyes. They advanced. They pounced.
...
The urRu had gathered to mourn. They mourned not a death, but a departure. For urGoh, healed and bandaged, was to leave and not return until he had rid himself of these visions that led him to defy urSu's decree of non-involvement.
"We wish you safe journey," urZah intoned as the others droned and chanted quietly. "We wish you rest. We wish you relief of your burden." He handed urGoh his walking stick. "You who we dubbed Wanderer, who trod the length and breadth of Thra, must do so again until the time comes that you may return to us, untroubled by that which our law does not allow."
The chanting stopped and silence fell.
"Go, now," urZah intoned, and would say no more.
Slowly, urGoh turned and started up the spiral path. He did not look back, not once, and the others watched him until he could no longer be seen.
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