Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 11, Part C

The eidolon remembered fear, that unpleasant, fleshy sensation that plagued mortal kind.

A great deal of time had flowed around it since the emotion last afflicted it. Indeed, a great deal of time had passed since it last interacted with anyone who felt the emotion. One needed a body for such a visceral experience, and it no longer recalled the last time it had gone within an eidolon pillar and been confined within a promenia form, let alone within the fleshy mortal form that once contained its being. Its mortal descendants no longer called it forth for visits. Being forgotten used to bother it. Now few things bothered it.

But yes, it remembered fear. It remembered a fist-sized lump of meat clenching and releasing within a cage of bone long ago. It remembered hot liquid pulsing too swiftly through the whole mess and more moisture beading, cold and slick, on flesh stretched over squishy muscle and rigid bone.

The eidolon preferred to avoid recollections of fear. In fact, like most of the elders among its kind, it preferred to avoid the vast majority of memories of its mortal life. The messy, cramped weight of the whole affair had been but a blink of an eye, a mere teardrop in eternity's ocean, yet intense. It regretted nothing about leaving that unpleasant business behind.

But now the Trellis was failing and the eidolon felt something stir within it in response, as did its kin. Was it fear that drove them to swirl together in frantic eddies in the spaces between fading Caeles mists, trying to draw stability and answers from the failing mental environment?

Whatever the feeling was, it stirred up overwhelming confusion and a fierce desire for answers, a desire almost as intense as the pressure to survive. Somehow, whatever mortal the Trellis relied upon for homeostasis had become disconnected from the vast promenia lattice. Emergency shutdown processes were underway. The ruling mortal sent wave after wave of commands through the Caeles, orders to hide, to catch. Orders to ration promenia. Somewhere, great promenia works were being unkeyed, releasing rivers, bestia, volcanos, and tectonic plates from their confines. Yet the Trellis no longer relayed the Six Stars' locations to starholders, making escape from the coming disasters impossible.

The younger eidolons fretted over the imminent danger the mortals faced. All eidolons speculated about what had happened and what they should do. Countless theories passed among them, but they couldn't collect enough data to settle the debates before the lattice supporting and constraining their kind began to fragment. True terror was alien to them, but they still screamed as the unraveling network scattered them and the knowledge they sought in a trillion different directions.

Perhaps the thing the eidolon experienced now was not fear, exactly. The alarm distorting its calm, drifting thoughts lacked the embodied sensations it recalled from its enfleshed days. Its desire for self-preservation lacked the meaty immediacy of mortal existence as its outer boundaries dissipated like mist into the advancing void.

Yet it did not know a better name for the thing rippling through its being and prompting it to flee annihilation. What did one call the sense that one's existence was about to end and the fierce desire that such a thing not happen?

The word "fear" would have to do. Fear, this reborn, refashioned experience arising from this unexpected, unimaginable situation drove it toward the closest eidolon pillar, a golden, glowing beacon in the encroaching night.

The universe around the eidolon unraveled as it sped before the void, and as its outer edges fell away so too did layers upon layers of conditions and commands that had once enwrapped its existence like chains.

It felt a new feeling it thought had been discarded in its mortal days. Hope.

Behind it, a shadow lurked. The new feelings, fear, and hope warred with one another as it turned to the newcomer. Fear of delay. Fear it would not reach the pillar in time if it lingered to deal with the shadow. Fear of a possible enemy. Hope it might be facing a friend. It did not want to be alone in whatever came after.