FANTASY

It was a shock, no doubt about it. Nothing like it had ever been seen before, and things were, for want of a better term, changed forever. Turuk could remember it clearly, the day he saw it. But, like so many things, it was not a simple matter of cause and effect. Seeing that heliograph for the first time was something akin to... nothing really, he couldn’t think of any other way to articulate it. He paused and thought about it before replying. “I suppose it was like a storm, laying into us and sucking up detritus and waste from beneath our feet. That litter; the lose bills and papers and receipts--whatever the filth on our streets is made up of--was the strands of our lives, all being yanked mercilessly from their courses and being pulled together, with that storm as their new heart. That’s not right, not really. But I think you get what I mean. The storm, of course, was the heliograph, at the time a word known only to one person. “What the creation of that thing done to us and all the other insignificant pieces of litter that got sucked up in its path is nothing short of an oddity. Even now, looking back on the events that happened not two months ago, I find it difficult to believe that I, a simple man with no active desire to populate my life with events out of the ordinary, managed to become involved in such events. “I sometimes wonder if Ilknar knew beforehand what his invention would bring to the world, if he would have gone ahead with it. I know not what drives men to question the world and see in its reflection a void that needs to be filled. Perhaps it is an uncontrollable urge, something that cannot be staved by will alone. If so I doubt that anything, not even the fact that his invention led to his death, would have altered the course of his actions. Such are men of science. Me, I would have acted differently. “I am no one. I suppose I am more fortunate than others; being an amanuensis in the vaults of the Imperial Houses in Nyardor, I escaped the child’s life of enforced manufactory labour. Some have it worse still; having no lives they can call their own and working instead as slaves in lodestone mines, dross factories or ironworks. I am a free man, bound by no mark to be confined within the walls of certain wards. I have money enough with which to survive, which, while being no luxury, is certainly more than others here can attest to. I could have chosen to remain a shadow on the edges of this great drama, passing fleetingly through the story to be forgotten after a while. But something within me--perhaps the same thing that drove Ilknar to the creation of his unholy invention--bested my judgement and threw me into the middle of that storm.” The man shifted uneasily in his seat, his sallow eyes flitting from those of his questioner to the inanimate things around him and back. He was thin, his face long and his nose hooked, like most of Azazemi descent. Where the bulk of imperial citizenry had bodies broken by daily soul-crushing labour, his was whole. His hands were delicate, slender and bore not the mark of shovel, club or toil. The inquirer had been investigating the case for some days now, filling in the blanks left by his predecessors’ death; itself a new addendum to the matter. On the surface, Turuk was a man ashamed of his luck--born into a family destined to a life of recording and scribing, he was above most others born in the Empire. By his own verbose admission, he rarely went into the working wards when the ‘factories were closed, out of guilt over something he could not control. This was a coward. The inquirer glanced to the papers before him. What he read described a different man entirely. A rabble-rouser, an agitator of unrest, an instigator of free thought. And to think it had all started with a simple heliograph. The first of its kind. A deep breath; prologue to another question. A finger raised to the inquirer’s forehead. A dull nail scratched the tarnished surface of a metal stud on his forehead—a medal, of sorts. The fingers returned to the papers, flicked through them absently; their contents already consigned to memory. It was an instinctive thing, a by-product of his own thought processes. Again, he thought. “Start at the beginning. The heliograph. What was it?” Turuk fidgeted. His head c****d, his hand shielding the inquirer from an uneasy cough. Not even an amanuensis is free of this worlds’ taint, thought the inquirer. “We had never seen anything of its kind before. The pamphlet was nothing out of the ordinary; simple news relating to my home-ward. Executions, the actions of the ‘guard, dross prices increasing again. Nothing special. Then, beneath it all was a picture. An engraving I thought. It was not uncommon for even the cheaper pamphlets to have such designs. Yet, as I glanced at it I knew that it was no such thing. This was new, something else. The headline confirmed it. ‘Heliograph captures life. Azazem hails Ilknar as visionary’. I read on, finding out about the process--something to do with bitumen on glass and light, I don’t know the details; I was too amazed to really care about the workings behind it. To be honest, I never really thought of the heliograph, and was more engrossed by what it showed. It was unclear, grainy and details were not easily discerned. Though it was enough. “It showed a number of locumni and surgeons standing behind a table with the body of what was clearly an otherworlder atop it, its skin pinned open, with its flesh and innards clearly visible. I could tell it was an Otherworlder because of the outline of tis body, long and lithe, its skin pale, and on its back two pairs of appendages I could only describe as bladed wings. Its face, though clearly bestowed with human features, was of something else entirely--a creature of life beyond life. Immediately I was disgusted by what those men had done to a creature of supposedly divine-rights, whose purpose was of a calling far superior to that of meddling surgeons. That a creature of the otherworld could be strapped to a table and dissected like a simple beast of the shallow earth disgusted me. Who knew what its purpose was, what its message was; now unfulfilled, but a hollow memory in its lifeless husk? That those butchers had rid the world of such... otherworldly beauty was a thing of horror. “When I read of the manner in which the creature had been captured and subdued and the details of its inner design ultimately scrutinised while still alive... well, I found myself reacting like never before...” Though some might say we are creatures of purpose; sent to the material realm to fulfil some preordained destiny, the truth is rarely so simple. First there is the matter of rebirth. It is painful. An eternity of slumbering beyond the pall of death inures the senses to such stimuli. At first there is the wonder of the endless vistas of death; the pure soul-mocking awe of a life beyond the grave that no manner of indoctrination or belief can prepare you for. All around you are the burning husks of other souls, each slowly fading, awaiting their rebirth. The timelessness of death is unkind to the gestating soul. I have, on few scant occasions tried to explain it to mortals, but they are simply incapable of grasping the idea of it – the void of it all; the slow decay of time that grows never closer, never easier; the maddening despair of idleness and then... as though it had never occurred at all, the stark torture of mortality. You are writhing on the cold hard floor, your skin and eyes and ears and nose crying in agony at the bombardment of sensation that suddenly envelops you. And then the slumbering eternity is but a dream, a distant echo, barely remembered. Those first few moments of life are horrid; something I would not wish on the most wicked of creatures. Imagine a child born deaf, blind and dumb, isolated from the world around it. Then, after decades of silent still darkness, a cacophony of sensations--shapes, colours, sounds, smells. I would be too great for its body to withstand. Madness would surely follow. We have an eternity in which to grow accustomed to the madness of life renewed. Many of us never learn to grasp this so-called gift and spend the greater part of our new life lamenting over the nothingness, the stillness, that was lost. Others remember what it is that most mortals associate us with. Apparently we are messengers, creatures of prophecy. While it is true that in our deep slumber between lives we have witnessed much what has been and will yet come to pass, the shock of rebirth shatters such glimpses, reducing them to shards unfettered, relics without harbour in which to anchor them. Our thoughts are awash with fragments of futures unknown and flashes of pasts unlived. Some of us seek meaning in those memories and spend ages in meditation, trying to piece together the parts in the blind hope of fumbling to some hidden whole. Some of us find it, and seek to spread its message to the mortals. Others use the powers they hold over the mortals for their own gain. Most of us give up and forsake any ties to the otherworld, living in solitude, looking up to the skies--forever dark to our eyes, forever filled with the spirits of others like us, twinkling in blissful ignorance--asking ourselves why. If only I could truly bestow upon mortals the lament of our kind. Only then perhaps will they learn to leave us in peace, to let us to our reveries and wistful musings Unlike others of my kind, I sought not the solitude of mountaintops or the stomachs of forgotten caves. My soul, if such I even have now, was empty, filled with questions over my being, the reason for this rebirth, and it needed filling. The chaos of mortal life, the sounds and events and roil and... everything, drew me to it. Perhaps I was drunk on its bitter taste or I thought answers were easier sought amongst the multitude than the singular. I was disgusted by it all, the uncaring speed of their lives, the randomness of their actions, their lack of interest in the world around them. I could not believe that at one time I had been such a creature; a mindless automaton, slave to life, thoughtless to rise against it. I saw that first life in all its stages--birth, the corruption of life, death--and it just happened without end, like a great machine ever turning--individually meaningless, yet together something far greater. Yet I was not part of that machine. I was something else, perhaps an afterthought, or maybe... something more. After all, that engine was powering something. If we were beings without the mortal plane, where did we truly belong? With the fields of stars, in which we slowly formed or the oblivion that awaited us beyond this half-life? Or were we ghosts, marked to wander the material world, never part of the machine nor affected by its great force? I was intrigued and desired to learn more... “I know little of the life of an otherworlder. What I do know is more rumour and conjecture than anything else. Scriptures speak of them as messengers of the Undying Machine; either angels sent to guide us along the righteous path or demons sent to tempt us away from it, so that the weak may be separated from the strong, or something like that. I had never seen one before then, though I had made contact with halfbloods. Even then, most halfbloods are unwilling to speak of their heritage and the only one I knew who was open to questions knew nothing of his otherworldly parent; something I have learnt many share. So strong is the otherworldly blood that their traits can be seen in ancestors many generations removed. That they can breed with us is something I find somewhat obscene, and surely it is part of their purpose. Though what that purpose is I do know not. “This particular individual lived in the city, though made no effort to be part of it. It lived in the peripheries; an imagined noise in the shadows, a flitting shape in the night, a whisper on days when the wind had no life. It was an observer. What it saw in our daily routines I do not know, but surely it was scrutinising us, ascertaining our worthiness... making judgement? Who knows. “They found it in the ruins of a manufactory. The place had been torn down years before, the rubble used to erect a tenement over the ruins. The tenement was mostly empty, home to the worst of the work-slaves. The Iron Guard walked its streets regularly, ensuring that they weren’t poached by other manufactories’ press-gangers. The streets of that tenement were otherwise quiet; vendors only trading there on city orders. It could have lived anywhere it wanted, a mystical mountain however far away or a place where green life remains! But it chose the slums of Nyardor instead. It lived its days in a dank room, its only contact with the world outside being through rusted spyholes. How a being of such beauty and mystery could tarnish its destiny in such surroundings I cannot guess, but that was its home. Such was is destiny, I suppose. “I know not how they learnt of its presence there, only that they knew and came purposefully seeking it out. High-ranking Artramentists were present in that scouring, their acolytes present also, wielding the Atramenta in the name of their masters. Shadow-slaves, their eyes black with umbra, scoured the ruins like hounds on a scent-trail. Amongst them too were the clones of the Steel Legion. At their head was an unassuming man, slender, tall, without weapon or armour to mark him as a leader. But the fact that none there seemed to stand as his equal lent his otherwise futile frame an air of potency. Nameless he remained, the office that sponsored him likewise unknown. “Surrounded, the otherworlder had no chance. Once it tried to escape by wing, but fusiliers maimed that route. Tighter and tighter the noose wound until blade and pellet were within range and it was brought down, its body broken by the fangs of a predator without mercy. Bound in shadow-forged manacles, its movements broken by wards and charms I cannot name, and drugged with the sap of plants whose roots are not fully anchored in this world, it was taken to the atalier of experimenters and others who delight in the study of flesh and blood and the changes that may be wrought upon them. “On the chirurgeon’s table it was set, its wings clipped, bolted down; its limbs restrained, chained to the cold surface that was to be its final tomb. Its body was tortured; tested against all manner of procedures and implements; thresholds delved into. Where once the flesh of a divine creature had lived, now were the twisted broken remains of something profanely altered, its purity defiled, sacrificed to the greed and fetishes of unwanted science... _________________________________ Time is a fickle thing to my kind. When you have slumbered for an eternity amongst the stars, the lives of mortals are but the harrying of insects under the scrutiny of a god. Worthless lives pass by rapidly, yet the allure of their ignorance draws you ever closer, until you have become such an insect yourself, your interest mated with their faceless industries. Indistinguishable from them, time becomes relative once more; slows down, becomes something measurable as it once was in that forgotten life. Days and nights are no longer one and what was once the inconsequential actions of mortal specks is now the rise of a king, the death of an industrialist, the influence of a demagogue, the passionate embrace of lovers. The beliefs of those few with power over the many without. _________________________________ Something akin to emotion stirred inside me, granting life once again to the murmur of broken dreams that dwelt within. I saw once more the visions and messages that mortals accused my kind of possessing, and for the first time I was able to bestow upon them meaning. I knew finally what it was I had been sent here to do. That realisation was a balm to my aching vessel. I watched the mortals once more, the veneer of their worthless lives no longer there, replaced instead with a tarnished tint; imperfect yet somehow... perfect. The differences between us could not be more pronounced. On the one hand were the mortals, their lives no more than the fluttering of dead leaves in the wind, being carried by eddies out of their control to destinations they could not hope to understand. They lived, blissful in their ignorance of things; like automatons set upon a table and left to decay. Creatures more base, worthless, useless than them I could not name but yet they seemed to fit into their world perfectly, like keys being twisted slowly over the years into great locks. One day those keys would stop turning and the gates of revelation would be opened for all to see. Then there were the otherworlders; my kind. We’re beings divorced from the natural realm, something that painted us in a light outside of the innate spectrum. We were outside of the natural order of things; an addendum to the rules of life. Nature is a harsh mistress; everything is interconnected--cogs in that great machine--working together towards some great purpose none can claim to understand. That which falls not within the workings of that machine is superfluous, of no place in her realm. That we otherworlders are allowed to live, that we are saved from the oblivion of death and returned to this place is testament to the fact that despite the schism that tethers us from the true mortal realm, we are a part of it. We are aged like some ambrosial wine until we are plucked from the stars and returned to the world, but for all the perfection of our form, that realm is as alien to us, as the otherworld is to you. We are perfect, yet utterly flawed, unable to find our place within that machine. Are we the by-product of its operation? Are we otherwise to assume that we are its operators? I daren’t presume such things but knew that the machine and I were separate entities, that though I walked on a level plane with the mortals, we existed on different realms entirely. I secreted myself within their plane, watching them, trying to find what it was that made them integrate so well with their world, whereas I struggled ceaselessly to find my purpose. The weight of knowledge that bore on my conscience, that the world had selected me to return from the veil of death to this world worsened my frustration. I had my place, that much was sure. Only I had not found it. The more I recorded their lives, their toil in the workhouses and manufactories, their blind worship of a false deity and worthless saints, the more I saw our paths linked. Perhaps my observations had given me the wisdom to show them that there was more to life than that which their overlords had burdened them with. But the chance to show them the true path never came. It seemed as though my role within the great machine was to be something else entirely... The inquirer listened attentively to the man’s story, taking notes whenever doubts entered his mind. The testimony seemed well-planned, and though many of the details and facets were precise, it was unlikely that they had been gleaned first hand and were likely lifted from later pamphlet reports and hearsay. How otherwise could Turuk have known such things? The Patrician-general’s role in the hunt for and subsequent apprehension of the otherworlder was not public knowledge. Indeed, the inquirer had only found out about it after repeated imploration at the Bureau of the Fraternal Inquisition’s houses in Nyardor. Turuk had to be more than he was claiming. No-one could come by such details by accident. “You know a lot for a simple-minded amanuensis. True, you are above the work-slaves, but that gives you neither right nor the means to learn that which you have recounted. The hunt for the otherworlder--how is it you came by this knowledge?” He had appeared nervous from the onset. Was it in his disposition to be so anxious, or was he hiding something? Perhaps an Atramentist could be summoned from his offices to sift through the mans’ thoughts, wade through the mire of lies and forethought in the hopes of dredging up something of worth. It could be done. The inquirer had full control of the city’s resources and could easily arrange such an encounter. No, he thought. Too many forms to fill in. Let the man struggle some more. No need to spend precious time where he can be made to speak. “I asked you a question, Turuk.” The prisoner nodded. “You must let me go if I am to finish my work.” The inquirer lifted an eyebrow. “Your work?” he assumed that by that he meant his rabble-rousing and destruction of peaceable compliance that constituted a well-oiled city. Turuk remained hesitant, though not for want of trying to put his thoughts into words. He seemed stalled by a reticence that was working hard to keep back a flood of words. A confession? Revelation? Finally, after a few false starts, he spoke. “When I saw the heliograph I was consumed by a desire... No, not desire. That would imply that I wanted a part in all this. I felt a compulsion to speak out against what had been done. All I knew then was that the otherworlder had been the subject of horrific experimentation. It was nothing new to me--I had known for years that the empire, in its drive to answer questions that few of us had even though to ponder, performed research and experimentation of that nature. It was only with the revelation of that surreal image that I understood what it truly meant. No creature should have its life compromised in such a way. And this was no simple slithering thing of the shallow earth or vermin of the rusted undercity. This was an otherworlder; a --” “Please, Turuk, try and keep it concise.” The reprimand stopped Turuk’s recollections and it was moments before he could continue again, his head nodding slowly. “Yes. I was against the torture of this creature and felt the need to share my thoughts with others who may not have read the pamphlet. I waited for a few days, hoping that the urge was no more than a primal emotion, something that would die. But it did not, and as I read more about it, I knew that there was nothing else I could do but speak out. “I had been able to keep my thoughts private, for the most part, speaking only to my closest friends on the matter. Some seemed not to understand my reaction, which I was strangely thankful for--as though I needed proof that my reaction was unnecessary. But I found others agreeing with me, if not to the levels I had found myself reacting. Those sympathisers planted in me a seed that just grew." “I went to the dawn market, where I knew other demagogues sometimes preached and where the Iron Guard held less power. I was nervous and more than once thought to turn away. I did not though and stood there for an age before I found a podium and walked tentatively up it. Though no one seemed to have noticed me I felt as though my thoughts had finally found an outlet. “I was lucky. Most who agitate at the dawn market do not last long; the Iron Guard follow up reports, arresting them before they even have chance to amass a following. I managed to speak at the market three times before my first encounter with the ‘guard. By then I was familiar with the faces watching me, many of them coming to the market specifically to listen to my words. And they brought people with them. I never thought myself much of a speaker but for some reason what I had to say struck a chord. I spoke against the torture of that otherworlder, the oppressive net in which we lived, the torturous pall cast over us by the imperial administration. But I was testing my luck. When they finally came upon us, I knew I had enjoyed a good run, and so did not resist. ”I was proud of the way the crowd had defended me and my ideals. Never before had I felt more alive than then, and I was doing nothing more than speaking my mind, declaring to the world I had had enough of the way you disregarded the people--be they otherworlders or work-slaves or clerks like myself. “The rest, you know...” I remember feeling sick when I first found myself returned to the material. Through the cacophony of sensations--the wailing, screaming, droning of the mortal world as registered through my ears; the cold and heat and pain of sensation; and the searing light and colours and patterns and shapes that blinded me--there was something else. I was disoriented as never before. It is probably the way a child feels upon leaving the soothing curves of the womb and being thrust into the harsh angles of life. Only worse. Though the disorientation faded over time, in its place a dull sickness overcame me. I was weak, aching, sore. Was this what mortal life had always been like, or was this something new, my immortal body adjusting to the imperfections of the material realm? Though you may not believe it, I was unwell, my body rallying against its new home, for much of my first years. As the colours and sounds and touch of the mortal world became less extraordinary, I found myself recovering, my proportions becoming the way I somehow knew they should have been. As my transmigration was finalized I learnt that the explosion of sensory stimuli was not to be a constant part of my life. In fact the opposite became true; the more time passed, the more inured I seemed to be to the world around me. Soon--over the span of centuries--or was it millennia--I found myself surrounded by a grey world of muffled sounds and stifled sensation. Never again was I to feel pain, or enjoy the smell of a flower, or the touch of... well, anything. I was a hollow thing to which sensation had become a memory, an unnecessary facet of my new life. But the memory of that pain remained, and knew I would never allow myself to forget it. It served me well during my tenure on this plane, reminding me that I was not invulnerable, that my body was still of flesh and blood. It served well to prepare me against the horrors those insidious mortals who found me believed they were inflicting upon me. I struggled at first, knowing that this was not my place, that my destiny lay surely elsewhere. But it was for nought. My strengths lay not in the realm of the physical and I had no power to resist my captors. As skin was rent from flesh and bones twisted and shattered into anamorphic grotesqueries, I found what resolve I had slowly ebbing, replaced with a great pity. For the err of their ways, the cruelty they were knowingly subjecting a living creature too, I could see the passion in their eyes, the certainty with which they believed their actions would bring progress to their world. The fools. It was like seeing so-called men of progress destroying the temples and hypogea built and dedicated to ancient deities. These people, so-called men of science, had taken myths and beliefs built upon the foundations their ancestors had lain countless centuries past and tore them down as though their worth had been reduced to ashes by time. What purpose is a messenger if his wisdom is not allowed to spread to the ears of the intended? Was this the fate my rebirth had been leading to; a tortured epilogue to the endless void of true death that was sure to follow? I would not allow that to be my fate, but I was powerless to stop them. My strength was not to resist the corporeal, but was to implement the true meaning of the intangible. I had failed. Or had I? A revolutionary was only as potent as his impact on those around him. If his death could be interpreted as martyrdom then his words would transcend the boundaries of death and become something timeless, with weight and cadence far greater than they could ever achieve in life. Was my death necessary to achieve my intent, to bring awareness. went unseen, untapped; laying within, waiting to be driven out and used. Such a gift was revealed to me then...... to be continued and be followed as soon as possible the next part of the story, don't worry I'll try the best way.