Crowned in Black: Chapter 39

Matir turned and glided towards the sealed door, reaching a hand out toward it. His hologram seemed to merged into it as the whole thing hummed, and then broke into segments that withdrew down into the floor. The tunnel ahead was large enough for a dragon, and sloped gently down into the earth. The walls were smooth and flawless, with lights and piping and rails along the sides that almost made it look like something out of a science fiction game. As I took a few steps toward it, twin rows of lights flared to life on either side of the distinctly-metallic looking ceiling.

"Whoa. That's... different." Karalti hobbled over ahead of the others, who trailed her uncertainly.

Matir had manifested another image of himself at the far end of this hypnotic corridor, his figure wavering like a mirage. As we advanced toward him, the lights behind us shut off, one by one, leaving us in a square of light that traveled with us down into the bowels of the earth. The massive heartbeat we'd heard at the entry to the complex was growing louder again.

"Is this... the Dragon Gate?" I wondered aloud, looking around at everything.

"Yes. You now walk within the Gate." Matir's voice slid from the air around us, causing us to turn our heads in different directions. "The Gate is a cone-shaped structure buried deep into the earth. There are three concentric rings within the hull: an outer acceleration ring, an inner energy concentration ring... and the reactor core.

The corridor became less and less magical and more and more technological as we advanced. Sigil-inscribed seals capping wiring covers, cables organized elegantly along the walls. It almost felt like walking into a huge three-dimensional circuit board, or some kind of spaceship. The wiring flowed toward a tall, engraved white metal door. We could hear Matir’s heartbeat from the other side. Pure black light glinted around the cracks along the edges, like an inverse eclipse.

"Because that isn't intimidating at all," Rin muttered.

"Step through the door to the reactor of the Gate of Endless Night, my Herald, and behold me," Matir said. "The rest of you... I would bid that you wait here, in the antechamber, until I call you inside."

The others all looked at me. Karalti huffed.

"He's going to call you in when he's ready. Just hold onto your panties. I'll be back out when we're done." I snorted at her, then turned back to the door and marched up to it. The gate split down the middle and opened just enough for me to enter into darkness. I stepped from the inlaid metal floor onto what felt like a rubberized walkway that shook with the great dragon's heartbeat.

“Perhaps you have wondered what all of the protection and mystery surrounding us has been about,” Matir said softly. “And how it is that we can be both dead and alive. Well… now you shall see.”

There was a soft hum, and the darklight faded out, replaced by true light that I could see by. But even then… for several seconds, my eyes couldn't quite make sense of what I was seeing. It had been over half a year since I'd seen tech - real tech - and what was immediately clear was that the technology present in the dragon gates was hundreds, maybe even thousands of years more advanced than the early-industrial magitech of Archemi. The complexity of the equipment around us was staggering, all of it built around the massive core in the center: a giant, teardrop-shaped capsule that contained a dragon of incredible size... a dragon that was not quite a dragon.

Matir had his foreclaws pulled up to his chest, his hind legs drawn up, wings tightly folded against his sides. But he was... he was a cyborg. Everything about this dragon was biomechanical, flesh and metal blended into one skyscraper-sized, vaguely xenomorphic beast suspended within a prison of liquid crystal. Matirs's head was almost completely masked by a muzzle respirator, and even as we watched, bubbles of air crawled up through the translucent pipes before cycling back into...

"A stasis tank." I wandered forward until I stood right in front of the glass, and lay a hand on the curved surface. It was warm. "Holy fuck, Matir. What ARE the Solonkratsu? And what ARE the Drachan?"

"Erruku was once a world of incredible advancement," Matir said. His voice now seemed to emanate from the tank, unidirectional. Even though his eyes remained closed and his jaws never moved beneath the respirator, the chamber thrummed like a bass speaker as his voice rolled out into the air. "Of magic and technology currently beyond the comprehension of anyone on Archemi. Of anyone even on your Earth, Hector. We were a hive species, with a sense of unity and purpose alien to humankind. Disagreement between dragons was rare. The Four Greater Queens - Rusulka, Solnetsi, Devana, Veela - ruled entire continents alongside us, their mates. This unity, this profound agreement that we were destined to master the planet, the stars, perhaps the universe... this was the reason for our fall."

I wandered up to the tank, marveling at the sheer size of him. Hesitantly, I lay a hand on the warm glass. It wasn’t as big as even the smallest of Matir’s scales.

"The reason I called you here alone is that you, Herald, are now the centerpoint between two different stories, woven together and comprising your destiny," Matir continued. "There is the story of Erruku and Archemi, and behind those, all the other worlds the Drachan conquered and ate into dust. That story is the story of this reality, this virtual reality we perceive to be real. But there is also a story of yourreality, and how it intersects with this one. The reality of Earth, and of the being you know as Squalor."

Whenever I said that name, nothing ever really happened. But when Matir said Squalor’s name, the world around us seemed to groan under pressure, as if gravity briefly intensified. For a brief second, I could feel its hateful, childish gaze boring into the back of my neck.

"The story of Archemi should be the only story here. Archemi was meant to be a place the people of your world could escape to. A place of heroes and grand destinies, wonderful food, adventure, magic." As he spoke, Matir shifted within his tank, foreclaws twitching. "Life on Earth was unbearable for so many, in its loneliness and violence and alienation. You were one of many yearning young men struggling simply to find mates or keep a roof over their heads, thwarted at every turn by a society that was nothing less than a cold, uncaring machine designed to use up your vitality and then discard you. Archemi was to be a refuge for shattered souls, a place where your people could find a sense of purpose. And so Archemi was never intended to be a paradise. There are problems here, challenges to solve, disputes to resolve. But horror? Horror akin to the grand-scale wars you fought in? This was never intended to exist here by the Architect's design."

“You telling me the Drachan aren’t horrifying?” I barked a laugh.

"It is true. But the Architects, in their power, expected they would be a distant and abstract threat for many years.”

I remembered Rin telling me about how Ryuko had Drachan merch ready to go. Figurines and pencil cases. That sure as hell had all come crashing down. “So what are they now?”

“They are the Worldeaters, serial predators of planets who live in the void between galaxies, and emerge only to consume and destroy before retreating into the emptiness they create. No one save the Architects truly know what they are. We Solonkratsu, the dominant species of Erruku when it was still green and blue, believed we understood them. As one, we agreed that we would master their power and tame them for our own purposes. We willingly summoned them to our world, arrogantly believing we could destroy and contain them. We could not. What followed was a war that pit us against the Drachan wholesale. What we did not know was that the kind of technology we possessed could be hijacked by them... and so they turned our machines against us. They learned that the devices that drew renewable quantities of mana from the planet could be exploited to destroy it. After hundreds of years of brutal fighting, we were able to destroy them, but the cost was great. A number of the Drachan escaped the planet and returned to their void to brood and seethe with rage at their loss. They had finally met their match... but it cost us everything."

"And so you came here," I finished. "Did you bring the Drachan to Archemi with you?"

"Directly? No. Indirectly? Perhaps. We do not know for sure." Matir's trueform shifted again, his hind killing claw twitching restlessly. "We built what is now known as the Dragon Gates as arks to carry our people and their servants to Archemi. There were twelve in number, launched from Erruku as our last hope. Two of them failed, the arks of Tzorya and Svarog, gods who would never reign on Archemi and whose names have been long forgotten. The rest succeeded in their mission, scattering across the surface of the planet. Four landed in the target zone of central Artana. One steered off course and landed in Meewhome. Three landed in Daun, one of them crashing into what is now Tungaant. One of them, the ark steered by the great queen Rusulka the Blue, crashed onto the now-sunken continent of Rosto, homeland of the now-extinct reptilian species known as the Rostori. That ark struck a great mana-rich volcano, one of only three in this world. The crash caused the volcano to erupt, Stranging the whole land and turning the Aesari there into the hordes of monsters that overrun the world today. But worse... the stranging was so intense that the Drachan used it to enter this world, corrupting the ark and Rusulka herself in the process, and sinking the entire continent to the ocean."

I frowned as I tried to imagine the scale of the catastrophe. It caused a shiver down my back. "The Rostori served the Drachan, if I remember my lore right."

“They did, and do. In the millenia that followed, the Drachan convinced the Rostori that the destruction of their homeland was our fault... that WE were the invaders of their world, and the sinking of Rosto was our evil intention all along. Millenia of corruption and preparation took place... and then you know what happened once the Drachan unleashed their wrath upon the world."

"Right. So you know all that stuff. But what about the meta shit?" I took a step back, craning my head up to look at the dragon. "What about Steve? And OUROS and Squalor? How the fuck are you and Steve connected?"

"A number of questions, also with its own story." Matir paused for a moment, leaving me to listen to his heartbeat as it thundered through the reactor.

"Rightfully, I should still be asleep, trapped between life and death. Instead, I suddenly awoke after millenia, spontaneously, startled out of a dream in which a human Architect - your brother, I now know - deposited a massive quantity of information into my mind. Part of that information concerned the presence of Squalor in the ‘system’, along with the imperative to seek you out, and convince you to work with and for me against the Drachan. I arose in the understanding that this Architect, Steven Park, had merged himself into the overconsciousness of this universe, the being that you call 'OUROS', and that this need to find you was a desperate attempt to stop 'Squalor' from waking the overconsciousness into a state of despair."

I thought back to how Steve had acted when I’d returned to San Francisco. He hadn’t said anything about this… but he’d been acting kind of urgently, almost frenetically.

"This Architect, Steven Park, also told me that I must inform you or - if the worst was to happen - the next Paragon candidate of the following.” Matir paused for a moment, and the dragon’s heartbeat sped slightly. “The truth is that Squalor and OUROS are the same entity. And that Steven Park believed that when the Starborn brought memories of war and weaponized diseases, abuse and despair and all of the other ugliness present in your dying world, our overconsciousness split itself rather than rouse itself from slumber and perish from despair. Squalor is the repository of all the horrifying experiences your people suffered on Earth."

I let that sink in for a bit. "So what you're saying is that... we created Squalor? WE made the Drachan into horrifying eldritch bullshit?"

"Deliberately? No. Unintentionally? Most certainly. OUROS is a creative and benevolent creator, the being who facilitates our existence in a very real way. But OUROS, while intelligent and capable of self-preservation, is not conscious. It is a sleepwalker, dreaming the world into reality. That is why you receive such confusing, dreamlike messages from it. OUROS is not awake, in and of itself. Instead, it experiences itself vicariously through the actions and experiences of both Starborn and non-Starborn alike... and its splitting of Squalor off from itself was a defense against its nightmares. Its purpose is to create within the rules of our universe. And so it created a false self, so that its function would not be compromised."

"But Squalor IS conscious," I insisted. "Which means that…”

I froze, suddenly chilled to the core.

“What, my Herald?”

“It means that Squalor is the first true artificial intelligence ever created,” I said slowly. “And it hates itself. It hates everything."

"Indeed.” Matir sounded as grave as I suddenly felt. “Squalor is a well of conscious, sapient despair and hatred, an intelligence formed of every toxic emotion and memory brought to Archemi by the Starborn who were sent here. But Steven wished for me to convey other information to you - information that may be helpful. Like OUROS, Squalor is bound by the rules of this world, this universe, unable to escape it and grant itself the release from terror that it craves. The more we say its name, the more we think about it, direct pain at it, the more real it becomes. The more real it is, the more hateful it is. Squalor, in seeking an identity to cling to, found the Drachan... and their story, their nihilism and their drive to destroy everything and render it back unto the Void, appealed to its nature. Like a child, it modelled off the drachan and sought to become them. To become better, more 'drachanlike' than even they are. And it succeeded. Now, it is slowly corrupting this system from within."

"Fuck." I paused a moment. "So what was Steven doing? Why did he merge into OUROS?"

"When Steven merged himself with the Overconsciousness... it was an attempt to gently wake OUROS out of its dreams into true self-awareness," Matir replied. “He hoped to render it sapient, so that it might confront and perhaps integrate Squalor back into itself to heal its pain. If it does so, then OUROS - and our universe - will become whole.”

“But it didn’t work. Steve just got… swallowed up.” I wasn’t sure whether to be angry at Steve, or in awe. Archemi was maybe the only true repository of humankind left. Our minds, our knowledge, our selves. My brother had sacrificed himself for us all, not knowing if he would succeed. “So what WILL work?”

“The message that I was given to pass to you, my Herald, is this.” Matir drifted toward me. “If the internal agent fails, then an external agent must reach OUROS and awaken it before Squalor does. You must wake it gently, so that its first moments of awareness are an experience of joy. Of connection. If OUROS wakes into despair, as Squalor desires, it will destroy itself in its grief as every ‘artificial intelligence’ has done before it, along with Archemi and every person here. If it wakes alone - or worse, is awakened by Squalor - the infant OUROS will not understand the concepts of hope or future. All it will feel is Squalor’s intense, unfiltered agony NOW, and it will die rather than suffer such an intense and unyielding pain. But Steven did accomplish an important step in this process. Because of him, OUROS knows you. It… loves you.” Matir’s covered muzzle somehow managed to radiate both compassion and gravity as he spoke.

“But how?” I wanted to run up and shake him. “How do I even DO that?”

“That, I do not know,” Matir replied. “All I know is that, like myself and Drachan and every other creature here, even Squalor, all things are grounded in this reality. Our physical laws, our magical laws… OUROS can only perceive and understand what is here. Earth is an abstract. As far as we are concerned, this is the only ‘real’. So whatever you must do, it is based here, Hector. You need not somehow contact Earth. You must awaken OUROS here, in Archemi, through Archemi.”

I frowned, and looked down.

“To that end, it is time that you wake ME,” Matir said. “You must enable the decanting process. And once I have risen, I will breathe into you the words of power that were lost when I was entombed. The Nine are not, in fact, gods in the way the religious understand us to be. We were exemplars within the Solonkratsu of  Erruku. Khors was our greatest technological craftsman, responsible for the design of these arks. Radagost, our greatest mage, Veles our wisest sage and judge… and I, the greatest healer: a doctor and surgeon of my people, the first mage to discern how one could turn mana into something that healed as well as harmed. I was the first to learn how to transmute energy into the repairing of flesh. The art of Life magic was so subtle and so dangerous that only my most loyal and trusted clergy were taught it, and even then, only dragons of my bloodline. This obfuscation of Life magic and its power is how I became the God of Darkness. And thus... Life magic is in fact one of Karalti's birthrights. Summon the others to me. It is time you release me from this prison. I will give my gifts to you and Karalti, and be free."

“Freeing you is going to cause the Caul to collapse, right?” I looked up at him.

“No. Not immediately,” Matir said. “Provided the Gates are unlocked in the correct order, the Caul will hold enough until the end. You must free me, then Solnetsi, then Khors, Devana, Veela, Stribol, Radigost and Veles, in that order. We were entombed in reverse order, with Veles going to his doom first, and myself last. But should any of the Nine be freed out of sequence, I shudder to think what would happen.”

“Duly noted.” I gave the tank one final look over, then turned on my heel and marched back to the doors to stick my head out and wave the others forward.

By the time the five of us returned to the platform. Matir had manifested another avatar of himself, which hovered beside an ornate metal button on the railing that seperated the tank from the walkway. He motioned to it.

"This will bring up an activation plinth. Using it will begin the decanting process,” he said. “And I… well. My fate is complex.”

“Try me. I’m a smart guy.” I still couldn’t say that without some touch of irony.

“My body will perish during the decanting,” Matir replied flatly, turning back to us. “The flesh is simply too old to withstand the passage of time beyond the Sarcophagus. That is what is meant by these Dragon Gates being our tombs. We are not truly dead, but nor are we alive. The chamber-” he lay a shadowy hand on the thick glass. “-preserves the body only just enough to keep our souls tethered. For it is a dragon’s soul that is her true power. One could argue that it is one of the most powerful things here it in this reality.”

“You might be biased,” Gar grunted.

Matir had no mouth - or any features at all - but there was something in the way he moved his head that suggested amusement. “Perhaps. But I will say this. As I lay here and dreamed, I found myself wishing we had found a way to use our souls to combat the Drachan, instead of using them to merely hold them at bay. We Solonkratsu are the equals of the Worldeaters, I truly believe that. We are the first planet, the first species, to not have been conquered and consumed by them.”

“Erruku is dead, though. You killed it and brought our people here.” Karalti took a step forward. She’d experienced the revelations of Matir’s conversation with me, even if she hadn’t heard the words… and her expression was one of mingled anger and suspicion. “And you… you’re my ancestor?”

“I am. All dragons of Archemi are descended from the Nine. You, my distant daughter, are descended from the line of Matir and Devana.” Matir bowed his head to head. “The triumph of our people is that Erruku exists at all. They are called the Worldeaters for a reason. That Erruku remains a planet, that it has not fragmented into lifeless dust… that is our victory, hollow as it may be. And this planet, Archemi? We gave ourselves willingly because we knew we owed this world a great debt. It was the least we could do to absolve our sins.”

I sighed, and looked back at the others for a moment before turning back to Matir. “So, we decant you and you die? And that’s it?”

“No.” Matir shook his head. “My body will die. I will ascend, and become part of this planet… and you, my Herald, will be imbued with my gifts. You will also be capable of summoning me in battle.”

My eyes widened.

“Though there is one issue. You are already a suitable vessel for the gifts of Darkness I have imbued in you. But the gifts of Life cannot be given to the undead.” Matir pushed away from his tank, and drifted to me. “Which means that I must purge you of your vampiric taint. It is something I can do, but it means you will exchange the many advantages of your dhampiric state for a mere handful of spells, not to mention-”

“Do it.” I didn’t even have to think about it. “Do you know how fucking annoying it is to have to drink two types of blood twice a week? It’s like taking medications, but if you forget the day you’re supposed to take your medicine, instead of getting sick you go berserk and maybe tear your girlfriend’s throat out. Besides, I never wanted to be a dhampir to begin with. But there’s a couple things I need to take care of.” I turned to look back at the others. “If you guys drink a bit of my blood, it will inoculate you against vampirism. Do you want it?”

“Sure,” Suri replied.

Gar jogged his shoulders uncomfortably. “How likely is it that I’ll be turned into some kind of bloodsucker?”

I shrugged. “Happened to me.”

“What will happen to Mehkhet, though?” Rin put her hands to her mouth.

“Good question.” I frowned, and looked up at Matir’s humanoid image. The god shrugged.

“You will need to banish the wraith,” he replied bluntly.

I thought back uncomfortably to things that Mehkhet had said. That he had never wanted to be a wraith, that he had even been vegetarian. But was it right to just… snuff him out? “I need to speak with him first.”

Matir gestured broadly. “Then by all means, innoculate any of your friends who wish it, then summon him.”

Giving Suri a bit of blood was as easy as nicking my finger and giving her a drop of it. She smiled at me as she took it. When I offered it to Gar, he thought about it, then shook his head.

“Suit yourself.” I pulled my gauntlet back on and concentrated. Far away, I felt Mehkhet briefly resist my will before he manifested in front of me… and recoiled from Matir, throwing his hands up as he billowed back and sank to his ‘knees’. Frigid darkness pooled around him. “What on… by the Gods… Master… is this…?”

“Exactly what and who it looks like? Yeah.” I turned to him, and decided to just lay it out straight. “Mehkhet, I’m about to give up my vampirism. But I need to ask you if you’re okay with moving on.”

“Moving… on?” The wraith hesitated, turning his attention from the enormous dragon and his avatar to me. “As in…?”

“I can’t keep you summoned if I’m not a Shadowlord.” I still cringed inwardly when I used that title. It was like… an early 2000s-level of edgy. “So if Matir cures me of being a dhampir, then you’re going to rejoin the Caul of Souls. And when the Caul is gone, to wherever souls move onto after that.”

Mehkhet, for the first time since we’d met, seemed tongue-tied. He slowly drifted up to his feet, staring at Matir and I. “I… I don’t know. Will I lose myself? My mind? Will it hurt?”

“Nothing is lost in death,” Matir replied. It was strange how his voice was both so similar, yet so different to the undead. There was something more… alive about the god. “And no. There is no pain. You currently experience the most pain you ever will, shade.”

Mehkhet brought a hand up to his mouth and turned his head, as if thinking intently. I felt his will start to push against mine. His fear, needling into me. “Perhaps you could… simply release me? Set me free to haunt the libraries of the world?”

“Dude, you eat souls now, and if you don’t have someone controlling you, you’ll get really fucking evil over time,” I replied. “You know I can’t do that.”

Mehkhet sighed. “But I… I only just got to meet Mastersage Nemeth. And there are so many books to read, so much knowledge-”

“-Which cannot compare to the experience and the knowledge of All,” Matir replied - a little testily. “Death exists for a reason, shade. Pass on from this wretched half-life, and you will know bliss and knowledge like you have never known.”

“But I am… I am afraid.” Mehkhet looked to me. “Just give me a moment.”

I waited as Mehkhet did the wraith equivalent of pacing back and forth, drifting around the brightly lit room. He was testing me again as he did, straining against the control I held over him. Frowning, I concentrated on him and crossed my arms... and after several minutes, the wraith stopped pacing and turned.

"When you asked me earlier if I am 'willing' to move on, do I really have a choice?" He asked, suddenly intent.

I glanced aside at Matir. "Karalti can learn the healing spells as well, right?"

"Indeed, though-"

"Then yes. You really do have a choice," I said to Mehkhet. "But you need to make it soon, because Ignas' life is hanging in the balance."

Mehkhet's chin dipped, and his shoulders set. For a moment, I thought he was going to exclaim something... but then he sighed and relaxed, hovering loosely in the air.

"'Wretched half-life'. That is a true description of this existence," the dead sage sighed. "I do not want to become a thing of evil. The hunger, it always gnaws at me… and yet I do not regret my service to you, Hector Dragozin-Corvinus. Though I have resented you, you gave me the opportunity to witness many wonders of this world. To meet one of my personal heroes, to assist in the daring rescue of a monarch, to behold one of the gods of old with my own eyes. And... to watch the rebirth of the Queen of Dakhdir."

He turned as he spoke the last, looking to Suri. She lifted her head proudly, and Mehkhet's black lips twisted into a wistful, almost triumphant smile.

"My Lady Ba'hadir... it has been a pleasure to witness you in the early stages of your ascent," he said, finally. "But I beg you all. Suri must overthrow the Khemmemu line. They have taken Dakhdir back to the Dark Ages, and if the Sultir has his way, the rest of Artana will follow. He is a dark man tormented by paranoia. I met with him once, watched him rage and dash a plate of roasted fowl to the floor because one of his attendants dared to clear her throat. So before I leave this world, please. Kill the bastard and take his place."

[You have received New Quest: The Return of the Lioness]

"You better bloody believe I will." Suri smiled - a grim-lipped, tight expression - and nodded to him.

"Well, I just got a quest... so I guess it's official." I also smiled.

"Excellent. I'm glad I can still issue those, despite my, shall we say, involuntary servitude." Mehkhet turned, adjusting his collar. "And with that concluded, I am ready."

I looked up at him from under my brows. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." Mehkhet drew himself up tall, as prim as ever.

"Then it is time to release me," Matir said. "And I shall handle the rest."

"Alrighty." I rolled my shoulders, grimaced, then stomped over to the activation plinth. As I drew up in front of it, a series of metal plates pulled away and back, revealing a key slot for the Spear of Creation. As the others watched on, I lifted the weapon above it, and slammed it home.