The Revelation of the Vine: Graft

Chapter 15: That Which is Not as Though it Were

  The platform moved toward the central dome of the facility, sometimes passing straight through a thick pillar of lightning. Emptiness danced all around us, purple and black sparks of a void that jumped, arched and twirled incomprehensibly, as if the emptiness was being filled with a tangible nothing. Mara began speaking again as we reached the site, "This facility was Metaphysical Anomaly Research Outpost -- MARO -- CD1-001, one of many quick-deploy research stations were being set up since the first sign of the dark abyss above the Surf appeared. This was where some of the other Founders and I discovered the truth about our universe; where the Vine itself warned us of the coming age of darkness." The platform passed through a small window that opened in the dome, and landed on the dusty ground. Mara appeared in front of us, as she stepped off the platform like she had been there the entire time hidden from view. Long, wavy brown hair whipped around in the dusty currents, and a white lab coat flapped at her waist. A short man, slightly balding, wearing odd goggles and the same white coat came running out of one of the structures inside the dome. "Glad you could make it, Mara," The short man hollered in a raspy voice pulling the goggles up onto his forehead. "I came as soon as I got your message, Ben" She said over the swirling winds. "Have you discovered something?" "You could say that," He said, eyes wide. "I never thought I'd be calling a cosmologist down to the surface to look at something for me. Come on." The image followed Mara, as she and Ben walked toward an open door in the side of a wide grey building. Bright light engulfed us as we moved through, and the door slid closed behind us. A stale silence filled the air, save for the constant beeps and whirs of machinery. A long white hall stretched out with similar silver doors embedded in the walls along its path. Mara and Ben continued down the corridor and we followed like flies in the air. "It s been 160 hours since the first sign of the anomaly appeared, Mara, and we haven't picked up anything about it with our sensors," A hint of excitement actually broke through his voice, echoing in the empty hall. "It started out as a black pin-prick in the sky, which as you can see down here is hard to notice, but now it covers the entire continent. From observing the effects of what it does to the things we consider real, which is all our machines can do at this point, it separates matter, Mara. It's some kind of opening. Out of sheer desperation, I decided to check the visual feeds from the time it first appeared, from our observatories, and that's when I noticed something." "I stopped searching the sensors days ago," she replied, "But I was only able to view the outer ellipses from our satellite cameras. I started to realize what it was, and then I got your call." "Always one step ahead, Mar," Ben said, raising a finger in the air. "Don't get too far ahead, or you may lose us." "I've also been having strange dreams that I can t remember lately," She confided, "What's even odder is that they didn t record on my dream-scanner. It s like they re not forming in my mind, but . . . somewhere else. . . I don t know." "I've been having them, too," another voice spoke up as we entered a main room. A blonde haired man with hazel eyes, turned from a flat display to face them. His eyes locked on Mara, filled with a nimiety of old emotions. His face was intricately lined and thin. Dark rings hung under his eyes like heavy weights, "Others have mentioned them as well." "David," Mara said, wrapping her arms around the man's neck and leaning into him. "Hey, Mar," He said, pulling her tighter, "Sorry I look so rough, I ve . . . been having trouble going to sleep." "Looking rough is not an uncommon trait in troubling times, David," Ben said in his logical tone, "and neither is sleeplessness." Then he pointed toward a long desk of flat screens, and said, "Pull up the streaming video from observatory C1-003 and let s see what Mar can make of it." David rushed over to the desk and sat onto a stool that rose up from the floor. He hit a few buttons on the display, and swiped his fingers left to right across the videos that popped up. "Here it is," He said, tapping the screen twice, and the video expanded. Mara, Ben, and David stood apart, staring at a swirling vortex of neon, purple energy spinning around a central black spot that was shrinking and dilating like a great cosmic eye. It was surrounded by the black abyss of clouds below the Agro-layer, and frequently sent long, black tendrils of lightning out into the darkness around it. "Watch this, now. David pause the feed," Ben said, pointing at the video. David tapped the screen. The entire black abyss that covered the sky, the purple vortex and the dilating pupil, the black lightning that flashed out into the darkness, all vanished from the paused frame of the video feed. "What in the world . . ." Mara looked around the screen in amazement. "How did it just --" "Vanish?" Ben finished the question. Mara nodded. "No idea," the stout man said, "I've moved it frame by frame, but it never appears unless it s moving in real-time." "Amazing," Mara said, "Start playing the video again, David. I think I noticed something earlier." David tapped the screen again, and the black void reappeared. Mara leaned in close, gazing with unblinking eyes at the hypnotizing black and purple spiral. "Yeah. There. It looks like there s something inside." She said, rearing back a bit, but then pushed closer. "Can you zoom-in?" "Sure," David said, "But it won t help. Whatever it is, it stays the same distance away from the zoom, watch." The camera zoomed in closer, a little green arrow by a bar on the side of the screen rose from the bottom to the top, but the spiral and the black hole in its center never became larger. "But what does it mean?" Mara responded. "That's what we were hoping you might be able to tell us." David said, glancing at Ben with a secret look. "Me?" Mara sounded stunned. "But what makes you think I would even have a clue?" "My dreams," David said, "I'm starting to remember things from my dreams. Just random flashes mostly, disturbing images I d rather not try to explain, but you were in them too. I thought it might mean something." "Keep looking, Mar," Ben said, waving a hand forward, "You may formulate . . . or unlock . . . something our minds couldn't." "I'll try," Mara said, returning her gaze to the screen. She gazed at the object, her mouth moving as she spoke to herself under her breath. The dark center dilated and shrank like a pupil, as if gazing back at her and mesmerizingly pulled her in. She got closer and closer to the screen until she almost touched it with her nose. Ben and David glared with precaution, as Mara's eyes began to widen abnormally. "I see something else, it s smaller, barely there . . . inside the first object, but . . . deeper, like the outer object is a lens focusing on something even further away." Her nose pressed against the invisible panel. "But . . . I can t quite . . ." Suddenly her mouth dropped open, and her eyes glazed over as she slowly turned her head toward the men. Her body straightened back until she stood there like a statue. Her breath became slow and heavy, as David and Ben stared in bewilderment and trepid fear. "Mara," David called, "Mara?" No response. "Mara, what s wrong," Ben asked, "What did you see?" Suddenly a sound crawled up her throat like an ethereal trumpet, powerful and ominous, filled with warning, and then she began to speak amidst the echoing call, "The Veil between Realms is tearing. The Shadow overflows with negative energy and pushes back against the tide of the Light. The flow has reversed, and the foundation has become unstable. Heed my warnings, sons of man: That which is not, shall be; and that which is, shall be not. The lords of the Shadow Realms have awakened from their ancient slumber, and soon they shall muster their armies against the Light, following in the wake of Corruption. The Transition shall be breached." Her voice suddenly shifted as the echoing trumpet blast ended, and took upon itself a soothing essence with an enduring echo of compassion and intense love. "However, a way shall be made for the sake of the sons of man and that generation which shall not be moved, but life shall become both blessed and cursed; even until the end. A new seed shall be sown in the earth, and the root will take hold in a valley, hidden under a sea of mist. The tree shall bear forth for the chosen of men a fruit of great renown, and the power it will bestow upon those who eat of it shall be unlike any the race of man has ever known." Ben and David stared with slowly closing mouths, as their demeanor also shifted with the voice, embodying elated and peaceful expressions. "Those who eat of the fruit shall be a chosen few, taken from every other generation of the sons of men; they shall be fearless, brave, selfless, and true. And they shall be called the Lemniscata, the Knights of the Vine, and they shall fight against the Corruption that will pave the way for the Ancient Ones until the number of generations has been fulfilled. "For those who are not chosen, the leaves will provide perfect health, healing, and extended life. And so shall the Knights defend the world from the All-flesh, and preserve the race of man until the last generation shall appear. "And the generation that is to come will appear as the Last Seeds, and they shall herald the Lamentation of Sol, for then shall the presence of the Shadow Lords be felt again in the Transition, and the day of their arrival drawn near." When she mentioned the Lamentation of Sol, the memories of the secret meeting between the High-Sage and the Prelates, the sun flare, and the meteor came flooding back into my mind. I suddenly felt like I had already experienced all of this before, like I knew what was about to happen next. I couldn t explain the feeling or the sudden lapse in consciousness that brought me swirling into darkness.