The void was felt long before it was close enough to be seen, an tide of bad dreams and vague malaise. This was an intermittent phenomena on the rough plains at the edge of the world. But this time it was much stronger than usual, and even the hard plainsfolk found themselves making excuses to head inward, towards civilization and light. Most of them did not consciously know what exactly spurred them to leave. A few of the older ones knew themselves enough to be aware of the fear in the back of their minds, and they brought keepsakes with them, knowing they may not come back. Over a few days the negativity reached a fever pitch, until even the most adamant had no choice but to retreat.
So it was that when the darkness finally came, only Alquin ro Said was there to see it. He was facing outwards, looking into oblivion, as he always had. It crept forward with a predatory slowness. To call the thing a cloud of darkness would have been wrong, but perhaps less wrong that any other description. It was a creeping clot of nothing, devouring the world behind it as it went.
“We could have had peace, you know,” Alquin said, almost kindly.
It could not speak back, did not understand his words. But it could taste the idea of his words in the air, and it could respond in kind, excreting its emotions like ink,
contempt
flashing as sudden as lightning. Alquin's face did not betray any response.
“Unlikely, yes. But perhaps detente. You have your side of the border, and we have ours. It has been so many times through our history.”
Disdain
, and this wash of emotion was richer and more nuanced. Disdain not only for the lone man before him but also the darkness that had come before, had accepted this uneasy standoff.
“Even skirmishes. Small fights, taking territory inch by bloody inch. In conflict, it can be wise for both sides to set limits. Do you understand?”
By now the thing had totally encircled Alquin. But still it kept a respectful distance, wary of the humming power and total resolve that blanketed him like a shroud. The thing's
impatience
buffeted Alquin, met the force of his will and evaporated, like rain falling on hot steel.
Hesitation.
“But not this. Your massive and blind consumption was foolish. It was never sustainable.” His voice was level, gently reproachful. “It had to end somewhere. And it's going to be here.”
Shock, fury, hunger,
and it fell upon him, through him, demanding his assimilation.
Alquin ro Said closed his eyes, although in any case there was nothing to see, and he drew the Sign of the Blade.
Perhaps he traced it out with his hands, light following the paths of his fingertips, hanging in the air. Perhaps he shouted it, and his words unfurled sharply in front of him and found form. Perhaps he merely thought about it, and it was there. Perhaps all of these things. Signs defied easy classification. They were ideas, certainly; they were stories passed through generations, they were metaphors that were understood in a way beyond words. But there was something undeniably physical about them, as well – they were tangible things, and to pass it on was to lose it yourself. Alquin had saved his Signs all his life, as had his mother before him, carrying the torch without ever truly seeing its light.
The Sign tore through the thing, and for a second, had Alquin cared to look, he would have seen the sky again. But the gashes closed as quickly as they appeared, as the thing greedily consumed the echoes of the Sign. This was pure, concentrated existence, a far richer fare than Alquin and the ground around him, and with a terrific and nauseating
lust
it grappled with the Sign, incorporating it into itself. Growing stronger.
Alquin drew the Sign of the Candle.
The light sustained him, and he opened his eyes, feeling warmth in limbs that had not realized they were cold. Like moths, motes of shadow swarmed rapturously around the brightness, and if there was
confusion
, curiosity at this man so freely giving up such beautiful secrets, it was drowned out by far by the
hunger
pounding like drumbeats.
Alquin hesitated for a moment. The thing was more interested in his Signs than him, now, but still he felt the pain of what he had lost, his existence threaded inextricably with the void around him. But he had prepared for this, and he took a breath, stilled his mind, and drew the Sign of the Stone.
It met this third, new taste, found resistance where there had been none before. The signs had been chosen in a careful order. For a second there was a tremendous compression in the air, and then suddenly the thing screamed wordlessly, filling the air with
fear
.
“Disdain!” Alquin roared. “That was when I knew you were lost, thing. I fought the darkness that came before you, and I paid dearly for the victory. But you mocked it. You have consumed more in your short life than it ever did, and in your thoughtless way you believed that made it weak and you strong. But it was old and it was clever, and above all it knew how to stop eating.”
Confusion, anxiety, fear, fear, fear.
The darkness was no longer uniform. There were clusters forming, sticky masses of order that grabbed more of the nothing-stuff with their gravity. Alquin watched the largest clot. It writhed as it grew and became more detailed. Like a statue being chiseled from stone, the form of a man became distinguishable among the mass. Even before the contours of his face were drawn Alquin knew it was Viktor Jarvik.
Alquin was glad to see him in pain. He had utterly devoted himself to this thing, and his efforts had done much to hurt those like Alquin who stood against it. Viktor's reward was to be subsumed in to it, to lose himself and embrace the ecstasy of the growing formlessness. But now, suddenly, he was individual again.
“Hello, Viktor.”
“What the hell,” he snarled, “do you think you're doing, Alquin? You're giving us the power of the Signs. If you had any damn chance at all, it's gone now.”
“The Signs cannot be taken. Only understood.” Suddenly Alquin's voice had a terrifying hardness. “Why do you think you're here, Viktor Jarvik? The Signs demand a mind to understand them. You can't have their power without having their form. Consciousness is precipitating out of it all.”
Viktor fell silent. There was no more emotion in the air. It had taken a lot of that ur-thought, that emotive mass, to reconstitute the being of Viktor. There was none left to make itself felt. Instead, there was only a faint buzzing, a sense of being pushed, of conflict. The void still trying to consume Alquin and the Signs, Stone maintaining its form. Inward want, outward assertion. Paradox.
“It's too late to back out. You will have your precious emptiness, for a moment. And then the Signs will wax stronger, and you will be living, and you will feel pain, and you will be able to die. And then perhaps you will gain control another moment. But you'll always be forced to be real, again and again.”
“There's others,” Viktor replied. “Others of us. We can use your power against you, combine it with our strength, crush your resistance, and then suborn the Signs at our leisure. This is temporary. We are inevitable.”
“Against me, that is true. I'm just one man.” Alquin smiled. “But I'm not alone.” The pressure between the two of them was growing stronger. “The Signs have been shared, quietly, for as long as creation. People will feel the call of the Signs within them and come to fight. Do you understand how long ago this trap was laid? How many times the hunger came before you, felt the force of the Signs, and turned aside?”
The void was being torn apart by the conflict at its core, desperately attracted to the light of the Candle, repelled by the Stone, splitting along the seams cut by the Blade. Soon Alquin knew the tension would become too much, and he would be blasted away, crippled by the force of the clash. But so too would the thing be torn apart, and the
it
would become
they
. “We could have had peace,” Alquin repeated. “But if you come seeking blind and effortless absorption,
you will find only war.
”
