I shake my head. Sick. Refusing to countenance it, even if I’d concluded hours ago that this was what he’d meant. “I don’t feel like a copy.”
Caeror flits another glance at me before resuming his surveilling of the clear morning sky. “Perhaps ‘copy’ is a bit crude. It’s more like …” He scrunches up his face as he reaches for a better explanation. “We’re no less ourselves. Think of it as setting out on a branching path. It’s stillyou. Just travelling a different road.”
I chew over his words. Kindly delivered, but I find little comfort in them. “And this whole world was copied from ours, too?”
“It might be the original. I don’t know. But … yes. Thousands of years ago now, but yes. That’s my understanding of it.”
I gaze out at glistening walls of water shattering against the Seawall. Distant spray glitters as it explodes upward. “On a different road for a while, then,” I observe softly.
We clamber up another short rise, and beyond, I see what appears to be our destination. A large obsidian circle set into the stone underfoot, only fifty feet away. Polished black notable against the drab surrounds, but it’s the lines of shining silver running through the dark mirror that draw my eye.
Even from here, there’s no mistaking the familiar, three-pronged pyramidal icon pointing out at the distant waves.
“Give me a moment.” Caeror doesn’t hesitate to walk on the glossy surface once we reach it. I trail him tentatively as he moves to the apex of the Hierarchy symbol and draws an amulet from around his neck. Larger than the ones we both wear on our arms, it’s obsidian too. Etched with a single symbol, what appears to be a crossed crook and flail.
He crouches, then inserts the medallion into an indentation at the very top of the pyramid. A quick twist, and a small section of black stone, barely a few inches across, rotates.
“Done.” He scans the horizon, then suddenly grins an irrepressible grin. “Rottinggods, I still can’t believe you’re actually here.” He shakes his head, still smiling broadly.
Several points of illumination just above where he set the amulet begin to appear. Barely visible against the glint of the sun, at first, but steadily increasing in intensity until they reveal themselves as more glyphs, like the ones on the triangle that still sits fixed at the base of his skull.
I don’t return the expression. Watching the light, and then gaze drifting to the desolation around us again. “Is there any way back?”
Caeror pauses, his smile fading, then exhales and walks over to the glyphs. Crouches down and touches several of them in succession. There’s an abruptly growling thrum of building energy, and I flinch as the circle in front of us bursts into motion. The stone, which I thought was a single piece, starts to separate and rise. Sections rotate and slide and snap together in rapid succession, re-forming, building almost instantly into a ten-foot-high triangular archway that darkly reflects the azure sky.
“No, Vis,” he says, so quietly that I barely hear him. “There’s no way back.”
He collects his medallion from its slot and then stands on the silver symbol. The humming sound hasn’t stopped; if anything, it’s intensifying. Caeror motions for me to join him.
I do so uneasily. The base of the jagged obsidian archway in front of us is lightening. Becoming clear, glass-like. As I watch, translucence flows toward the apex.
“The Cataclysm those people couldn’t stop. On … on our world.” Still hard to say that out loud. “You said it was the eleventh. Three thousand years after the first.” The calculation’s not a hard one. I’ve still made it several times since he told me.
There’s an apology in Caeror’s smile. “I’m not here because I thought we had lots of time.”
Vek. “Were they at regular intervals, though?” A little desperate.
“From what Veridius and I translated. Regular enough.”
It’s an expected confirmation. My heart still drops.
It’s been three hundred and two years since the last Cataclysm.
Emissa. Callidus. Eidhin. Aequa and Lanistia and even gods-damned Ulciscor. “But you have a way to stop it.” Veridius was trying to send students here, despite the consequences. Belli’s torn body hangs on the Labyrinth wall in my mind. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
“I hope so. I think so. With your help.”
There’s a crescendoing whine and then suddenly, just as the entire archway becomes crystalline, it stops.
Nothing but the distant roaring of waves for a second. Three.
Then, violent and abrupt, a haze ejects from the glass. Slicing away from us, smokelike, leaving an ethereal triangular tunnel in its wake. A million ghostly reflections of the arch that arrow directly at the glistening mountains of water in the distance.
The silver beneath our feet begins to throb with rhythmic white. Getting rapidly brighter.
“How?” My heart pounds in time with the pulses beneath our feet. It’s all I can do to follow Caeror’s lead and stay still.
Caeror’s face is lit starkly from beneath. His deep brown eyes assess me as he issues a crooked smile.
