Beacons in The Dark

Chapter 20 - Back Home

"You do not question. You do not think unless ordered to. We keep the Imperium safe from exterior and interior forces." - Ch.1 v1 of the Holy Armada Guidebook

The wind was warm and one of the suns was just beginning to appear above the horizon, casting its octogonal light over the checkerboard mass of raised slabs of concret and grass. He hurt in a dozen different places, but he was healing fast, fast enough that the red ring of scab around his neck was already turning into the pinkish puckered flesh of a scar.

There was a slight breeze coming off the limitless horizon, and in it Blue smelled...something? It wasn't anything malodorous, but it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He reaches in his pocket and gripped the laz sword held in there; considerably larger and more expensive than the smaller laz knives, they were harder to carry, but the slacks Shampoo had given him had ample room for the weapon.

The black amantium of the Loreseeker ziggurat was just beginning to gleam in the morning, you could see the light penetrating the stonesteel construct, giving it an extra sense of depth as if the building were part of the land.

He walked along steel pathways up to one of the entrances, the railings running horizontally across the paths being etched with runic scriptures, Blue took time to notice them.

Each one from a different race, a lost race, a destroyed world, each series of runic writings on the railings proclaiming that the path to knowledge is righteous. The metal seemed to shiver and vibrate with his touch, as if trying communicate with him.

The second sun was rising, an azure blue one, as he stepped through the entrance of the Loreseeker's Guildhouse and quickly stepped by the guardsmen into one of the maglifts. He felt the familiar downward push as the small lighted container shot upwards like a rocket, the lights flashing by the tiny windows in the lift like fairies winking fey secrets.

Or was that just his imagination?

The closer to the thousandth floor, Blue had begun to feel sick, his head was pounding and every nerve was screaming at him to leave, to flee, and it thoroughly confused him because he had never felt this way in his life before - was Shampoo's work going awry? It was a very real possibility.

With a resounding thud, the maglift came to a stop at the uppermost peak of the ziggurat, opening into a long red carpeted, elegantly carved wood panelled hallway.

Step by step was a pain, and lights were flashing before his eyes, his hands clenching into clawlike fists, blood seeping down his palms from his grip. 

The door to the council chamber was open, mostly because no one ever came there except the council and the Loremaster; there were protocols to keep unwanted strays out of the thousandth floor.

He huddled against the side of the door, almost retching, and he could hear voices inside, talking.

Voices talking about assassinating him, the council itself, thinking him dead, and by their own wretched hands.

Blue closed his eyes and a super nova seemed to burn through his mind, an acidwash of rage and something else that pushed his spirit forward, that pushed and pushed and pushed, and would not stop.

His ocular insets glowing a smoldering orange, Blue walked calmly into the council room.