Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

THE MOON, SOUTH POLE-AITKEN BASIN, 5322 BCE

It was cold and silent on the Moon. The tiny blue world it orbited seemed like a jewel hanging there in the sky overhead. It hardly seemed to August like a real world at all, like it couldn’t be capable of supporting life when it was that small. The entire moon was completely dry of tensa, though it seemed impossible. When he had first used his anima to investigate the inhospitable place, he’d been shocked. There were just a few bright spots of energy that blazed like stars in his anima that he suspected were the batteries he’d sent through the portal ahead of him. When Cerise had come up with the design, her proposal for the number of tensa batteries seemed ludicrous. He had argued vehemently against the expenditure—after all, they could always just recharge the damn things—but now he realized he had been wrong and it irked him. This moon was a tensa desert.

That wasn’t the only worrying thing about this place. They’d chosen a system deliberately in the middle of nowhere and now…Now they couldn’t find the Nolm system. Their readings had been thrown off by the odd teleportation issues they’d endured in the portal they’d taken to get here. By the time the portal had closed, their expedition was already lost in the wilderness. Cerise theorized that it was somehow the Herald’s influence but August didn’t credit it. Besides, all that mattered to him was that it was going to take a little more time to find Nolm, and time, at least, was something he had plenty of.

He hoped at least that there was more air on the little planet than here on its moon. He didn’t need to breathe, but he liked to. You couldn’t taste anything if you couldn’t smell, and he didn’t exactly relish the idea of spending any time at all here eating tasteless food while he constructed the return portal once they found Nolm again. The Herald, at least, was still dead. For now. Void monsters could never truly die; of course, they never really lived either.

He rose slowly above the surface of the moon, luminous wings that he manifested from his back leaving a trail of light behind him. He hovered for a moment, getting his bearings, then, with a flash he went rocketing through the lunar sky, heading to the borehole. It took a long few minutes until he arrived at the lip of the huge crater on the South Pole of the far side of the moon. The crater was 8.2 km deep at its deepest point and it was there Cerise had decided that they’d drill the borehole to the center of the moon.

He dove into the hole, his luminous wings trailing white light in long streamers behind him. He flew for almost a hundred kilometers, passing carved-out sections of the tunnel where carefully positioned blocks of moonrock were ready to fall back into place and bury the tunnel once they were through there. August had chosen this moon because it had been so bereft of tensa energy that it would be a perfect prison for the Herald. The undying monster would never escape. It would only ever be able to wait for forever to arrive.

The silence of this place unnerved him. Grunting, he thumbed the little stud at his ear and immediately, his ears were filled with the sweet sounds of the opera house back in Bethedren, the third movement from The Pauper Queen swelling in dramatic crescendo. It passed the time as he flew through the perfectly smooth hole and served to take his mind from the thing he had stored in the chamber at the end of the tunnel.

It took another twenty minutes, and he was well into the opera by the time he arrived at the obsidian monolith he and Cerise had constructed. There were protective spells, runes, and power feedback loops all dedicated to keeping this area etherically dead. A true null zone. It required an absurd amount of energy to power. All the batteries he’d brought would just about cover it, leaving him a bare few That he had planned to recharge on the blue planet the moon orbited. Once he had enough tensa stored in the batteries, he’d run the ritual to get the gate open again. He’d have found the coordinates by then. It’d only take, what a few weeks at most to recharge and then he’d be back from the mission, a hero.

He checked his watch irritably. Such things were such a chore without System access. Everything had to be done manually. External systems for everything. Still, that was the entire point they’d chosen this sector. By now, the others would have prepared the gateway back down on the surface of the planet. All that remained was to activate the prison system and the deadening field would tighten down, sealing away the thing inside for eternity.

Your friends are already dead, and your mission is a failure before you have even completed it, August. The voice spoke coolly, logically in his head. There was no malice and certainly no triumph in the voice. It sounded almost pitying. Almost. You merely delay the inevitable.

August shut his eyes and took a deep breath. The thing had awakened. It was talkative. Most weren’t, but this one liked to chat. “You’re nothing more than a level 2 monster. Level 3 on a good day.” He spoke aloud, but there was no air for the words to travel through.

It is easy to be dismissive when you think you stand triumphant. The voice held no anger or recrimination. Time is meaningless. Your delay is meaningless. In the end, this prison will fail because you are human. You think you are so far above them with your vaunted Reborn virtues. You are not. You have no concept of eternity. When the weight of years rests upon your shoulders, you will break me out of this prison yourself. Your failure will be complete.

August did not respond. The Herald’s voice was so loud here. But soon, it would be silent. He saw a strange blurring in the entrance of the borehole and suddenly Cerise Tekara was there, her teleportation graft having delivered her there instantaneously.

She floated down to August, her complex, brilliant blue robes shining in the dim light. Her eyes shone silver and her long hair floated like a halo around her in the light gravity of the moon. Even after two hundred and twenty-nine years, August knew Cerise was the most beautiful woman he’d ever know. She was also the most brilliant engineer he’d ever encountered. “Are the batteries in place?” She asked as she alighted next to him, her voice sounding in his head, using the Instant Communication loop he had opened with his Great House seal; he noted that she was wearing silk slippers with sapphires on them before her robes settled over her feet.

“Most of them. The Vuoita Carserai, your Void Prison, is finally complete. All we have to do is slot in the last of the batteries and we’ll be able to leave this cold, airless wasteland,” August replied. He couldn’t help watching her as Cerise moved gracefully through the microgravity, investigating the prison they had constructed. She was only a meter and a half tall, but she had a full figure, and no one would confuse her for a child.

“I need to run one final inspection. It was late when I wrote the routine to inscribe these runes. There might be a flaw in the nanorunes’ formation; it’ll only take a few minutes to check, so get comfortable.” She donned her headset and knelt until she was on her hands and knees, minutely inspecting the runes and spell matrices. He enjoyed the view as she inspected.

He studied Cerise so that he could avoid looking at the outer shell of the Vuoita Carserai. Even though it was undoubtedly a triumph of tensa engineering, it made him extremely uncomfortable. Even unpowered, the enchantments that Cerise had used in the creation of this place seemed to want to suck the tensa energy from him. It was a perverse thing that belonged as far from their planet as possible.

The chamber they were in was just about thirty meters across, carved out of the rock, with vast coolant systems installed to prevent the heat and pressures this near the center of the moon from liquifying everything back into molten rock. The tensa cost for the coolant system had been staggering, but they had finally figured out where to dump the waste heat: directly into the prison itself. The only prisoner could not be harmed by the heat and the material they had used for the prison itself was an impossible alloy of ghost steel, Tartarian obsidian, and stellar diamond, all reinforced with hundreds of spells of containment inscribed in nanorunes all over the outer surface of the structure.

It was a strange, mind-warping construction involving multiplanar cross-sectioning of the imprisonment lattice that made August’s head hurt to even consider. He’d tried talking to Cerise about the schematics he’d seen her referring to when she’d first started construction, but she’d so quickly lost him when she started talking using jargon that the conversation had died shortly after. While he didn’t understand the prison itself, he had the means as the head of a Great House to create the prison. If it worked, they would return as heroes and they would have a new method to safely store the nearly unkillable monsters of the Void when they manifested in reality.

The prison itself looked to be deepest black, but it occasionally shimmered with a sickly green energy. It was about ten meters across and a perfect icosahedron. Each angled plate was made of shimmering alloy with deeply etched runes carved into them. It hung in the center of the chamber, at the very center of the moon. Hardened layers of iron, made of the molten core pressing down with the billions of tons of rock formed the first protective layer of the prison. The pressure, even from this tiny moon, was palpable even for August and Cerise with their amethyst-rank attributes.

The voice of their dead prisoner insinuated itself in their heads again, interrupting August’s contemplation of Cerise’s behind as she bent. August is leering again, so that must mean Cerise Tekara is here. Have you found out yet why I am unable to detect you? I’m curious. It’s a strange blindness that I have been unable to understand as yet.

“Shut up,” Cerise growled, not moving from her inspection of the runes.

The voice laughed drily. It approximated a laugh. There was no emotion in the thing’s voice. There was nothing there in that voice at all. This prison you’ve created is quite incredible. While my corporeal presence has been momentarily inconvenienced, I’ve had the chance to inspect your work and I must say, I’m impressed.

August snorted in disgust, “I wouldn’t call that nexus I created a ‘momentary inconvenience’. You’re dead, Herald. Accept it.”

Do the dead trouble you as much as I do? You must be very troubled indeed then, August Vasilias. Your name is synonymous with butchery—even in your own province. Why did you think they were so eager to see their Head of House go on a suicide mission? Your failure, August, will be delicious to contemplate through the intervening millennia. Cerise Tekara’s, however, is a more tragic story. Cerise stiffened but didn’t respond, still inspecting. August had stopped watching her, his eyes inevitably drawn to the floor, trying to bore through the metal to see their prisoner entombed within.

The voice continued, getting louder and more insistent, the pressure hardly bearable. Even still, your failure will be that much more poignant. Despite your obvious brilliance, you’ve wasted your time. My message is truth, and it cannot be denied. You should know that by now. The voice fell silent, but its presence loomed in the chamber like rainclouds at a picnic.

Their prisoner was already entombed within the solid structure. There was no cell in the Vuoita Carserai: they had manipulated the structure of the creature’s strange metaphysical “body” into sliding just within the spaces of the molecules of the eldritch prison. Once the enchantments were activated with the tensa batteries, the prison would be truly active and would hold forever.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the voice leave his head. August only barely felt the strain of keeping the thing “dead”, but it was always worse when it decided to talk to them. His destructive nexus around the creature kept melting its flesh, kept invading its nerves, and exploding any organic tissue it found. He fed a constant stream of tensa energy into the nexus, but it was just a drop in a vast ocean. Once they placed the last batteries, he would transfer the draw to them, maintaining the nexus by the batteries instead of his own reserve of tensa energy.

Cerise finished her precise inspection of the spell matrix engraved in the latest microlayer of the structure of the prison. The Herald would be the ultimate test of her abilities—no one had ever successfully contained one of the deadly entities from the Void. “Well then, let’s put those batteries in their housings. I can’t wait for this thing to stop invading my head!” She shook her head and pushed up the headset, looking over at August as she straightened. “I couldn’t find any flaws in the spell matrices of the sample I inspected. I guess I wasn’t as tired as I thought. All it needs now is tensa.” She put one hand in the small of her back and rubbed it as she stretched.

August floated over to her as she started taking off the delicate headset. His wings glowed brightly as he flew through the core, affecting effortlessness despite the discomfort that the strange reality-defying enchantments caused; the engineered enchantments Cerise had already constructed were protecting them from the raging heat and pressure of the core of the moon. He enfolded her in his arms and leaned in for a kiss, but she shrugged out of his embrace with a curse as she muttered about him breaking her delicate equipment. He frowned for a moment, feeling a stab of irritation as she checked her headset for any damage. He had been careful.

“When we get back to Nolm, we’ll Ascend together, Cerise,” he pitched his voice low and gentle, burying the momentary resentment he had felt. “It’ll only take a few more batteries to get the Vuoita Carserai activated, and we’ll finally be able to focus on a proper meditation to restore our tensa pools…”

“August,” Cerise interrupted, “We’ve missed something important. We have to talk about it now. Every time I bring it up—”

“Not this ridiculous theory again.” August threw up his hands in disgust. “I’m tired of hearing about this mysterious ‘dead zone’ you keep bringing up. We’ve just been too intent on our work. We simply need rest!” He laughed, attempting to ease the mood. “Look at you! You’re wearing the slippers you wore to Duke Gerhardt’s garden party, what, three hundred years ago? Wherever did you dig those up?”

Cerise refused to be distracted, “It’s not a theory, August. It’s not. Stop talking for once and listen.” Her bright blue eyes pierced him with a fierceness he knew well and he, for once, shut his mouth. Cerise eyed him dangerously, daring him to interrupt again and he felt a hint of her anima against the edge of his consciousness, and he shrugged uncomfortably: her proficiency in the use of her anima was practically legendary.

She waited another long moment before continuing, “There is no tensa energy here on this moon and there is every indication that the world it orbits will likewise be as barren. August—we’re stuck here.”

August frowned, “But Cerise,” he started.

She held up a hand, forestalling him. “No August,” she said, her musical voice firm as silk-wrapped steel, “It’s not impossible. We specifically searched the galaxy for a place as bereft of tensa energy as we could find, and we succeeded.”

“But the batteries!” He blurted out.

Cerise’s anima sharpened and seemed to stab into his mind. He flinched, opening his mouth to protest, trying to gather up his anima to defend himself, but he found that she already had his anima smothered in her own. It felt like suffocating. “Enough.” She said the word quietly, but she increased the pressure of her anima on him until he nodded, silent once more. “I’ve been listening to you for the past two years as we’ve been working on the Vuoita Carserai. You say the same things over and over and it was cute at first, but your steadfast refusal to acknowledge reality has become tiresome. Grow up, August!”

He stood there red-faced but didn’t respond. He didn’t have to take this! He was the High Seat of the Great House of Vasilias! Who was Cerise Tekara but a pretty engineer from a vassal House? No matter that she was also Amethyst rank, there were the proprieties to observe! But he didn’t say anything.

“We rushed our preparations because we couldn’t keep The Herald on Nolm—not with the allies we knew it had. Call it what you want, but we had to run here because if we didn’t, there would’ve been a Cataclysm that no one could recover from.

“We didn’t prepare well enough.” She sighed and looked at everything they’d created together. “We didn’t bring enough batteries. Even if we find Nolm again—and that’s a very big ‘if’, no matter what you say—the gateway cost alone would require half the batteries we brought with us.”

“What are you saying?” He asked quietly.