“A life map!” said Sann in amazement, then looked to Onnd.
Onnd directed a single nod at Sann in response; she obediently stepped over to a data surface by the holograms to scan and analyse the genetic threads, which now bled shadows, shaping softly from the gleam — a shroud of black.
wreathing gash of filth
Shen quivered yellow, and stammered, “That’s Him! That’s what we saw!”
Then he, Onnd, and Jhor whispered all as one in awe, dismayed, “Déhath!”
His lightless pall bled back to blood-red coils. Kai looked deep into the structure, zooming in and flowing through the loops and turns with subtle movements of his hand, trying to comprehend its countless crimson orbs and bloody forks encircled by the holographic blue.
as final light glints off her hidden glance, her voice a sigh upon the air
“Is that it?!” spat Nira suddenly, “That’s all you have in that quiet little head of yours?!”
“Look inside when you lose your way.”
Suddenly, Kai’s eyes peeled wide in realisation, and he leapt forward to the centre of the room holding the scarlet threads, parting the sea of warrior white as he went.
“Onnd,” said Nira, “Come on, what is this?!”
“Wait!” shouted Shen.
Nira glared back at Shen, disembowelling him in her mind, as Kai flicked the gleam back out from molecular branches to the complete complex of helices, then stretched his arm into the holographic light, pushing the system of coils deep into the Tree at the very centre of the temple. Almost at once, an unknown force began to pull and stretch and reshape the hologram. The helices unfurled then wrapped again around the husk of the Tree. Red gave way to gleaming white, and roots of light sprouted from the Tree reaching down and outwards to the lower half of the sphere, as glimmering buds emerged upon the trunk and burst into a complex, writhing plexus of glistering branches stretching up and out into the temple’s space.
Onnd, Sann and Jhor exchanged glances, then moved in closer to Kai, just as he removed his left hand from the sphere — his creation remained; the Tree continued thriving. Kai cast his ardent gaze around, then thrust himself into orbit, pacing breathlessly around the orb. Onnd and Shen followed in his wake. Nira stood fast and frowned, arms still firmly crossed.
Suddenly he stopped, reached out and took hold of the holographic branch map, then placed it within the central sphere; not only did it swell and shape itself around the Tree, but it also exerted its own force within the new universe, flattening the sphere slightly and threading lustrous branches and roots into its weave of filaments. Then Kai reached out and effortlessly pulled in the planetary system; the bodies shimmered through countless colours as they realigned gravitational fields around them within the glimmering matrix in innumerable and incalculable ways then slowly shrank to infinitesimal dimensions, disappearing into the intertwining mass of light. Finally, its myriad stars glinting off his eyes, Kai took hold of the holographic galaxy and slid it deep into the sphere, where it began to expand and reposition its swirl of stars around the branch map’s channels and the tuberous boughs of the Tree, then imploded the top and bottom of the sphere towards the brightening core, until, at last, the symbiotic whole found balance. Every pair of wide warrior eyes looked on in awe as the galaxy — their galaxy — expanded to fill the chamber with the manifold layers and dimensions of its incalculably complex plexus of channels, currents and conflagrations in more detail and with more veracity than any of them had ever witnessed or imagined.
Before anyone could speak, however, Kai pressed his eyes shut again and lifted his left hand; with furrowed brow and increasingly rapid movements of his hand, he drew every single soul in the chamber into a searing, soaring track through swarms of light, streaking along channels, sheering under sapphire giants through temporal eddies hanging over nascent dwarfs and rounding glittering pulsars as their path began to merge with slender ruby strands that curved and coiled about themselves within the void until, suddenly shooting through a gleaming comet’s tail, he slowed and stopped and hovered far above a system of planets: nine distinct spheres with one bright, one black at opposite ends, the darker gasping, gulping in the spiralling strands of fading life from the other — a binary system: one waning crimson star; one swelling disc of sable. Between them, trapped in chaotic and impossibly irregular orbits — yet orbits still; a semblance of order within a system’s dying chaos — hurtled seven spinning spheres, each a different colour, together composing a spectrum whole, around an impenetrable nebula that glistened as a mirror with the rainbow hues of seven silent keepers.
No one in the chamber breathed.
Kai suddenly curled his fingers into a fist, and the room shot back to silent flight, flowing effortlessly into orbit around the system, and as he neared the disc of densest black, and as its darkness fleetingly eclipsed the light of its living, dying ruby twin...
its dark upon the sun
...Sann gasped — “N’van!”
Next chapter — Alignment
Sunday 7 August 2011
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