Chapter 21:
Chapter 17 — Fractured Descent
The Archivist of Lost Eras
The world broke before Yusuf’s eyes.
Stone tore away into clouds of sand, sky peeled into ribbons of light, and sound fractured into a thousand overlapping echoes. He hit the ground hard—if it could be called ground. It was a shifting mosaic of cobblestones, grass, bone, and glass, all fused together in trembling patches.The faceless child fell next to him, still holding the Codex whose cover flared like a beaten anvil. Threads danced frenziedly about its spine, flailing in all directions, seeking holds which no longer existed.
Yusuf hauled himself up. "Where. where"
The head-of-child tilted, but its voice remained constant in the storm.
"The Convergence."The response had been contained in noise: giggles and shrieks and whispers mixed so their intent was obscured. A half-tower of Elarra stretched sideways into nowhere above. Across it a river flowed in mid-air twisted endlessly over its path. Shadows stitched the bits together in rough seams.
Shapes stirred within those seams.
A face--a girl, a fluttering broken lantern. Her eyes had pleaded him once to remember before her body contorted into claws and teeth. Then there were the others: strangers, people he had lost or had saved, all contorted into ugly parodies of themselves.
The book sprang wide in the child's grasp. On its page burned two words:
"Crossover Spawn Yusuf had scarcely a second in which he could possibly take a breath when a convulsion swept around the earth and a presence sprang at him. It wasn't like the Memory Eater—it wasn't mass, no formable thing. It was simultaneous: too many mouths, too many lips, a scream which had a flavor like iron in his throat. He was acting on his impulses. He took up the piece Rae had given him and held it up. The crystal flared, cutting in halves the thing. But triumph was for nothing. There were still more coming out of seams for every one he brought down.
Faceless child gazed out over a gorge dividing the horizon in two, bare and throbbing with luminosity. "Through there! That's about the only recurring thread!"
Yusuf's boots thundering on ground shifting before him - ash for an instant, then water, a whale's rib bones afterwards. Things stretched for his heels, shrieking in throats he almost understood.
Afterward a man emerged out of it when a great chasm opened nearby.
Not shadow. Not spawn. Solid. Whole.
It was a man in a tattered historian's cloak with his back to him, his hands rummaging at a Codex of his own. Pages flew loose around him and were whipped away into the storm.
The voice of the unseen child was shaking with an affect Yusuf had not perceived in it before - fear."Not him." Gradually the man got up on his feet. And Yusuf looked at his father's face.
Stone tore away into clouds of sand, sky peeled into ribbons of light, and sound fractured into a thousand overlapping echoes. He hit the ground hard—if it could be called ground. It was a shifting mosaic of cobblestones, grass, bone, and glass, all fused together in trembling patches.The faceless child fell next to him, still holding the Codex whose cover flared like a beaten anvil. Threads danced frenziedly about its spine, flailing in all directions, seeking holds which no longer existed.
Yusuf hauled himself up. "Where. where"
The head-of-child tilted, but its voice remained constant in the storm.
"The Convergence."The response had been contained in noise: giggles and shrieks and whispers mixed so their intent was obscured. A half-tower of Elarra stretched sideways into nowhere above. Across it a river flowed in mid-air twisted endlessly over its path. Shadows stitched the bits together in rough seams.
Shapes stirred within those seams.
A face--a girl, a fluttering broken lantern. Her eyes had pleaded him once to remember before her body contorted into claws and teeth. Then there were the others: strangers, people he had lost or had saved, all contorted into ugly parodies of themselves.
The book sprang wide in the child's grasp. On its page burned two words:
"Crossover Spawn Yusuf had scarcely a second in which he could possibly take a breath when a convulsion swept around the earth and a presence sprang at him. It wasn't like the Memory Eater—it wasn't mass, no formable thing. It was simultaneous: too many mouths, too many lips, a scream which had a flavor like iron in his throat. He was acting on his impulses. He took up the piece Rae had given him and held it up. The crystal flared, cutting in halves the thing. But triumph was for nothing. There were still more coming out of seams for every one he brought down.
Faceless child gazed out over a gorge dividing the horizon in two, bare and throbbing with luminosity. "Through there! That's about the only recurring thread!"
Yusuf's boots thundering on ground shifting before him - ash for an instant, then water, a whale's rib bones afterwards. Things stretched for his heels, shrieking in throats he almost understood.
Afterward a man emerged out of it when a great chasm opened nearby.
Not shadow. Not spawn. Solid. Whole.
It was a man in a tattered historian's cloak with his back to him, his hands rummaging at a Codex of his own. Pages flew loose around him and were whipped away into the storm.
The voice of the unseen child was shaking with an affect Yusuf had not perceived in it before - fear."Not him." Gradually the man got up on his feet. And Yusuf looked at his father's face.
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