I n t i m a t e__S h o r t s  b y  K h y l e  A l e x a n d e r  R a j a  

[a l l  c o n t e n t  © 2024]

//S A K I N A H 

(f); Divine Love / Compassion / Tranquillity ; Earthen Arabic

(73 T.E [Trinity-Era])

// 188 years since the discovery of Earth

// 27 years after the First Ce-Dian War

// The 68th Year of Empire

The Kahve was half empty, lightly rolling in the white noise of varied conversations. Coffee was brewed and strained through polished filters, the strands of bitter, viscous liquid infused with milk and spices , poured like lava into beautifully sculpted glass flutes. Knockboxes smacked against timber tabletops, an aeropress hissed and siphons dripped, forming a backdrop of percussion amidst liquids frothing over glass lips, spilling casually onto the floor. The baristas carried on about the vast chemistry set occupying one entire side of the room, unconcerned at the various spillages staining the timber floorboards, or the comings and goings of patrons. Instead, their attention was focused on pouring each mixture across a countertop full of glass flutes like dedicated alchemists.

Ornately milled timber cradles spread out evenly along the bar, the soft redwood milled by a part-sentient device programmed to combine calligraphic and geometric scripts in a near-infinite number of combinations. As each flute was placed within these cradles, mottled root structures transmitted the warmth of the brew evenly throughout the timber, each vein glowing a dim, golden hue whilst the coffee was still hot. The arrangement of letters, set gracefully around the circumference of each glass, adjusted themselves in semi-liquid fashion to the grip of the baristas’ hands.

Regular visitors came and went, taking coffees placed in an apparently deliberate fashion for them in a silent, practiced litany. As the hours of the morning passed by the dimly lit chamber, a wide variety of patrons came and went. Two human Scholars, dressed in robes and bespectacled in augmented lenses, held an intense conversation against one wall of the kahve. Their refined aura was broken every so often by the phrase, “now see here Sidi!” For the past hour their conversation had cycled between various feelings of scepticism, conciliation and open dissent. The same intellectual jousting continued outside the chamber, set within the heart of the city’s Scholarly Quarter.

A Deran woman sat near the iwan, her eight-foot frame supported loosely by a kneeling chair which let her long legs fold away from her towards the rear wall, a meter and a half away. Her back, unsupported, arched perfectly upright. her lean physique wrapped beneath a dark green cloak, a large hood concealing her eyes within a pool of shadow. The other corners of the kahve were occupied by a mixture of Human and Sentient species, many hiding away from the thronging streets, focused on blue crystal texts, celestial projections or other augmented information.

The gateway into the kahve was a complex arrangement of three portals that folded into the chamber and across the ceiling. Each opening, of differing size and complexity, stood a meter apart, the light passing through them in strangely distorted ways. Each component made up and integral element of a three-part portal known as an iwan. It was both an elegant ornament and a practical membrane to the outside world, and also the primary feature of the kahve that brought Sakinah to sit at its tables each morning on her way to the Hall of Cartographers.

Sakinah was a Sentient female, a freethinking life from of loosely arranged organic tissues who had chosen to occupy a Human-esque body-form. She was tall, halfway between local Human and Deran in height at almost seven feet, her skin a pale ivory but her features dark and intense. Her eyes were a pair of black sapphires laced with several, slowly spinning white pupils; a type of augmentation which best allowed her to see as a Sentient should; as close to unlimited as Time-Space allowed.

She studied the iwan, and noticed that the first door was a field of suspended ions, regulating airflow and moisture content within. This charged field, a single molecule thin, was held in suspension by a miniature loom made of electromagnets which kept the air comfortable but dry for the coffee and spices, stacked in racks along the walls. The loom spun beautifully, crossing the spectrums of light and electrical charge, tracing patterns across her eyes.

As she gazed around the kahve, Sakinah did not simply see colours, or hear simple vibrations, or even watch light reflect off the various surfaces that Humans were attuned to. She could hear colours dance about her, taste the intensity of their white-hot sun Hon, shining directly above the kahve and out of sight within its musty walls. She could feel the moods and heart rates of the creatures sitting around the room. 

Looking towards the ceiling porticos, she noticed how the second portal’s beautiful set of hard sheaths were set open like a tall flower fallen on its side. Its various flanges spread inwardly towards the dark interior of the kahve, protruding within and throughout the chamber’s loose arrangement of tables and chairs.

Sakinah’s metabolism was broad, able to absorb and interpret a wide variety of stimuli off limits to un-augmented humans. Her’s was the genetic makeup of a highly complex biological organism, one of sentience and free will, occupying a bio-synthetic body that was part artificial, part natural. The body-form was one of the most sophisticated types of technology ever fashioned by Intimate craftsmen.

She grew physically, emotionally and spiritually through this body at the rate of a Human metabolism, unlike her much slower, natural metabolic rate. It allowed her to converse with Humans who were uninitiated spiritually, or were otherwise preoccupied and not present within the Barzakh; the Intermediate Realm. That inhabitable boundary between the physical world and the Heavens was where she felt most at home. She had no need for a body-form there.  

Sakinah was a part of a civilisation in is adolescence, a culture still forming around two very different life forms; Human and Sentient. It was an intimate commune, laced with a cautious respect; an elaborate dance of technological and spiritual renaissance. These were two lovers afraid to trust one another, straddling stars and worlds with their affairs of the heart, mind and soul.

Sakinah noticed a disturbance in the third and final portal; a thick, draping curtain of protocells animated by various electromagnetic forces. Orin-Kaben-Aesa, another Sentient of average human height and a hooded skeletal-form, passed through the iwan peeling back the draping fabric and its invisible layers of energy.

He walked confidently into the chamber, communicating with a number of sentient machines in the fabric as they explained within three microseconds that Sakinah had already entered the kahve, on time as she had specifically noted, and directed his attention to three crucibles glittering in the ceiling’s tapestries. Some niches in this fabric, seemingly drawn and tied into different pinch points across the porticos, held crucibles of shimmering light. Other niches coalesced into collections of solid shapes, spheres and smooth polygons, humming with soft vibrations and rotating about mysterious points in space like pairs of Baoding balls, manipulated within the palms of invisible monks. The ornamental arrangements lead him towards Sakinah’s table in the far corner of the room, and reinforced the point that he was indeed late.

She was sat comfortably, her flowing gowns draped attractively over her hidden legs. A constellation of ornaments drifted carefully in orbit overhead, gliding past one another at different speeds. The collective, heavenly display, partly aligned to the local star constellations above the planet Calas (Orin noted with some admiration), sat like a softly glowing halo above the scene. She was, in every sense and spectrum, a beautiful sight.

Orin approached her and stopped short of the table, made a slow bow,

“My Lady, I confess I am embarrassed to be late,” Orin began.

 Sakinah offered a look of mild disdain, as she disliked tardiness of any kind.  She held her ruse for a second longer, before breaking into a wide smile. Her white pupils dancing rapidly in orbit about the centre of her dark, absorbing eyes.

 “Peace be with you Orin. All is forgiven,” she said. “Now buy me a sesmet & cinnamon coffee.”

He looked at her and tilted his head quizzically.

She feigned offence, “Trust me, its delicious.”

Orin hesitated for a moment, before shrugging his carbon shoulders, “if you say so.” He walked towards the bar.

Sakinah watched him as the baristas continued to prepare their drinks, both oblivious and perfectly aware of their patrons needs. A Sentient with a similar body-form to her own was looking across the range of cradled flutes at the bar, reading the heat and balance of composition of the brew through her heightened metabolism. She hesitated, moving her hand across several flute before finally settling on a brew. Orin stood next to her, their contrasting appearance immediately obvious.

For reasons Sakinah did not fully understand, Orin-Kaben-Aesa had chosen to retain his wartime skeletal-form. It was both intimidating and quite graceful, topped by an arced, smooth shell shaped head. It was covered in sensors and made of a tough metal alloys, like small pockmarks on a adolescent face. An eye-less armour plate, its sole surface feature was a sharp crease like an inverted crescent crossing from one side to the other, his sensorial focal point. Behind this surface were tightly packed, muscle like coils tied like a neck, connected to his skeleton body made of a dark, carbon-grey synthetic material.

It was a tactical outfit, made for durability and practicality over any ornamentation or evolved augmentation, although he had made some embellishments over the years, small machines like jewellery laced across his hands, some subtle etchings like tattoos, calligraphy winding up and over his armatures and exposed ribs. His battle spines were gone; he no longer needed them. His musculature was sinewy and taught.

Orin was not alone in his choice of naked anatomy over the more advanced and aesthetic body-form. So many Sentients who had served and survived the war maintained their skeletal-forms as they were. Instead of adopting more Human-like bodies of advanced cell tissues, they chose to wear loose cloaks or other apparel to disguise their famished appearance. Despite all his embellishments, Orin’s faceless head was clear for all to see. But Sakinah had seen him with more thqn her eyes. She has walked with him in thr Barzakh, talked soul to soul in a place beyond mind and matter.

Orin returned to the table with Sakinah’s spiced coffee, a strong drink with a distinctive odour. He spoke aloud without any discernable mouth, although his words were as clear as a her own voice,

“Sakinah,” he said, placing her drink on the table, “Thank you for meeting me here. I know this is your favourite corner of the Quarter and I don’t mean to intrude upon your personal routines, rather rude don’t you think?”

“Don’t worry Orin. Yanni it is not mine to give, so come as you please.” She drank slowly, looking across the golden surface of the liquid to meet his featureless face. “Tell me what’s on your mind?”

He leant in towards her, his dark hood catching Sakinah’s blurred reflection in its dull polish. “I joined a group of fellow scholars recently at The Library of Scholars. There was a majlis there, just your usual gathering; star fields, latest discoveries, phenomena and so on. We made our litanies and ascended as normal into the Barzakh. There must have been eight of us, but I don’t recall all of their names...”

He paused as if to think over them, rolling his fingers over the tabletop before continuing, “We ascended into one of the lesser portals, near the Library Vault. We were making our way towards the Anostat constellation where the meeting was supposed to take place.”

“The triple portal. This all sounds quite normal, Orin?”

“Indeed it was, until I saw a Sentient walking towards the Library towers, where they keep the old records. Some of the oldest archaeological records from across the Intimate are stored there. One of the towers is aligned to Hon, I saw the Sentient walk towards the portal, he was a man by all accounts.”

Orin paused, and Sakinah pout down her drink.

“And then?” she asked.

“Then he passed through, having recited a verse or password of some kind.”

“You were following him?” Sakinah asked with a look of amusement.

“Well, yes,” Orin replied,  “I had a question, pertaining to Ce-Dian archaeology in Anostat that I felt would inform our majlis, and it seemed to me that asking someone who was familiar with those records was the best place to find the correct answer.”

“Yet he had already moved through the portal, and it wouldn’t be possible to find him after that, would it?” Sakinah asked tentatively.

“Quite right, that’s what I thought, but you see he re-appeared and confronted me.”

“Confronted you?”

“Yes!”

“…In what way sidi? I mean…”

“He stood there in front of me, blocked my path and demanded to know why I was following him. He was quite direct, rude even.”

Sakinah paused before replying, “Rudeness aside, which is irregular in the Library at the worst of times, was he not within his right to ask what you were doing? The Library does not tolerate unsolicited enquiries towards scholars Orin. It sounds like you could have interrupted his intentions?”

“There is adab Sakinah, like the etiquettes you describe. Then there is comportment, and worse, aggression. He was angry with me and I could not understand why.

The fabric of the kahve ceiling began to shift slowly, offering them more privacy. Sakinah caught the tall Deran woman in the opposite corner peering over at them, before returning to her reading

“More disturbing”, Orin continued, “Was the ornament cast about him. The Library architecture had twisted itself into knots, hideous things that caught me by surprise. It was dark, hot, dangerous. Ornaments like that do not belong in the Library, I know that…”

“…Because you have seen it before, during the war?” she interrupted.

“Yes. During the war,” Orin replied.  He sat back in his seat.

Someone slammed shut a knockbox, and they both looked over towards the bar with a start. The discarded grinds were dropped into a shoot as the barista continued his craft. Orin was clearly uncomfortable. The war was a subject not discussed lightly.

It had been a long 27 years since the conflict against the Ce-Di had been fought, and reputedly won. Their mysterious neighbours dwelt within the choking confines of the Al-Khalili Nebulae, a vast, cloudy arrangement of matter that bordered several Intimate star systems like an impenetrable wall of glowing matter, darkness and dust.  Of the Ce-Di themselves, little was known beyond the archaeological ruins and remnants of their former, far-reaching civilisation that had receded within the nebulae several thousand years ago.

“We were patrolling for years at a time,” Orin said, carefully stroking his hands over the table. His metallic fingertips caressed the rivets and grains of the old wood, picking at chips and blemishes.  

Sakinah remained silent.

“Their techne stalked the clouds like ghosts, haunting the spaces between stars, sometimes hiding within them” he said, his voice trailing off.

He turned back sharply to face Sakinah, “Most of their machines were ancient and half malfunctioning. The others were totally abandoned and drifting, half alive.

“You were part of The Redemption?”

“Yes, we were.”

Sakinah knew the name as well as any other citizen of The Intimate. Each fleet would take a name, a reflection of their intentions, a collective expression of their feelings. The Redemption was a strangely emotional response, but High Admiralty had allowed it in honour of the tradition. No one could question the choice, but this particular name had been the closest their civilisation had come, in almost a century of history, to openly lament a war. Rather than regret, they had sought to redeem themselves in the name of protection, but those that served carried a garden of draining and difficult memories wherever they went.  

Orin could read Sakinah’s trail of thought, as she starred distantly into her coffee, steaming gently across the table toward him. “We were all ashamed. We taught ourselves that it was a burden, one we had to bare for all of us like some Procession to Calvary.  We carried that cross through the nebulae for ten years.”

“Orin,” Sakinah began reaching to take his emaciated hand in her own.

“Its…” he stopped and crooked his head to one side. It was gesture she knew, he had closed up again. “Each ship grew attuned to detecting a Ce-Dian Form, in case it crept up quietly from some dark cloud of hydrogen or the gravity well of a neutron star,” Orin said flatly, almost wistful, “A ship could unwittingly set off a derelict defensive Form by getting physically too close, or emitting too much electromagnetic noise. The results were usually catastrophic. Fatal.”

“That was where you learned to spot their ornaments. You were a ShipSpirit?

“For my part, yes. We learned, and were spared a terrible retribution.”

The sounds of the kahve returned. They both sat in silence, as Sakinah sipped at her drink and pondered over Orin’s story.

On the face of it, she felt there was little to be concerned about. Orin was forward, trusting and unassuming. He would see no problem in following someone to ask them for knowledge. Sentients usually had a high tolerance for one another, unlike Humans whose behaviour was more unpredictable, but what Orin had described was disturbing for one fact; this dark, hot ornament created by the Sentient he was following. He was scarred by his service in The Redemption, and that could have tainted his experience of the ornament. However, the Barzakh was not home to illusions; it was the realm of meaning. To conceal intent, malicious or benign.

A disturbance within the Barzakh, Sakinah knew from her own experience, was usually accompanied by a threat in Time-Space.

“Orin, the ornament you saw, was it evident Fully perceptible?” Sakinah asked.

“Not really,” Orin replied,  “If anything it was difficult to discern.” He sat back, “We both saw it together, then he looked at me blankly and walked away. I didn’t follow him, I just kept on looking at that ornament above his head.”

“An ornament of intention?”

“I think so. A dark intention, unusual and cruel.”

“Intentions are made clear in that realm, meanings overriding sensorial appearance. So whatever this Sentient was doing, he meant to harm you. Do you think it was his reaction that gave rise to the ornament, or his intended line of enquiry within the Library?”

He placed his hand hard and flat on the table, “I know that feeling Sakinah, and what I saw. Ce-Dian techne of the worst kind. They still control it, and anyone immersing themselves into that dark art has serious delusions, and a grave intent.”

The war was unpopular, its wounds still raw. She had to overlook his sensitivity. After the initial campaigns, it had grown into a sprawling source of political instability for the Emperor, the demands for an increased militarisation across their fledgling civilisation having brought High Admiralty a great deal of power.

Eventually, a stalemate took hold, the Emperor’s successor had claimed victory, but in reality required the continuous presence of Intimate warships within the nebulae, the existence of The Redemption, put any sense of triumph to bed. Orin had suffered at the hands of those powers, the same forces that still held sway in the Empire.

She focused on his assertion, “Yanni, I can only see two possible options.”

“Both reasonable assumptions. But there is a third option. W

“Yes?”

“Was he Sentient at all? Was he a Ce-Dian techne, infecting the barzakh. A weapon.”

Sakinah was taken aback. She placed her coffee on the tabletop, making a soft knock as a beautiful pattern of geometries radiated from the base of the flute. They spred slowy outward outward like a drop into liquid wood.

“Orin,” she tried to say as reassuringly as possible, “If he was not Sentient, or Human, what else could he really be?”

Before Orin could offer rebuttal, Sakinah noticed the tall Deran woman looking over at them again. There were fewer people in the kahve now, as they had passed into mid afternoon and most scholars were at their various colleges and libraries.  Orin followed her gaze across to the taller patron. She shared their glance briefly, her eyes hidden beneath her hood, before casually turning her head back towards the iwan. The woman’s back remained perfectly straight.

Orin locked eyes with Sakinah, “Will you take a walk with me Sakinah, it would be my honour. Perhaps the Hall of Cartographers can offer us greater privacy.”

“Quite, lead on Orin. I think we could use some fresh air.”

They rose from their seats, greeted the baristas and walked out of the iwan. A warm, yellow afternoon’s light gently struck their faces as the sun began to set in the west. The commotion of the city enveloped them like a blanket as they walked anonymously amidst the crowds of young students, debating scholars and marching Guardsmen.

The Deran woman looked on through a glass oculus window as they disappeared into the bustling streets beyond the kahve. She followed their path until they were out of sight, before placing her tablet down onto the tabletop before her.  A voice carried itself over invisible wavelengths, energies coalescing into a smooth, creased timbre she could sense ahead of her face, calling out from the crowds.

***

Calasian streets wove their way through hewn sandstone rock like cataracts of frothing Humans, Sentients and technological forms. Unending waves of bodies, voices and colours of every conceivable kind, across both visible and non-visible spectrums, spilled throughout the porous landscape. Dormant blowholes, carved over centuries of tidal erosion, some several hundreds of meters in diameter, were now laced with metallic and synthetic architectures. Crenulations that housed colleges and laboratories clung to overhanging rock formations and resilient strata. Thick bridges arched across steep canyons. Electromagnetic nodes faced-off from one another like primed cannons, anchoring local magnetic fields that flung goods and Orbs between sculpted tower clusters and neighbouring ravines.

Along the topside of the vast coastal formations, rocky outcrops were fashioned into tremendous architectures that sailed kilometres into the sky, the tallest supported by slender flying buttresses levitating off the ground, re-aligning the towers around them to the shifting constellations of the creeping dusk.

As rocks and veins of minerals had collapsed or sunk beneath the Deep Ocean, an archipelago of islands had been maintained and fashioned by Intimate artificers. Kept in a dynamic equilibrium as reef habitats for millions of Sentients, they extended for several kilometres underwater in all directions. An intricate lacework of physical, mag-lev and electromagnetic bridges connected these landforms together both above and beneath the ocean’s surface. The Sentient ecosystem was a thriving, parallel metropolis. Together they formed Calas; these human and inhuman terrains were the home and centre of power to an Empire of trillions.

Thousands more citizens arrived daily, in large ships that docked within the Orbit. This towering centrepiece was a loose arrangement of structures and reinforced halogen balloons that rose up towards a landscape of cribs at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere.

Large docks for starships, sheathed in protective layers of protocells that thrived off of ultraviolet radiation, surrounded the Imperial Observatory at the Orbit’s zenith. Visitors and migrants, having docked within the tower’s summit and having passed through its highly attuned metabolism, would descend into the heart of the city over 100 kilometres below via terminals built within the Planet’s crust. From these subterranean nodes, travellers passed along tunnels and transit paths back up to the surface or other embedded regions of the city they had come to settle in. A ship docking directly on the surface was a rarity.

One traveller stood alone within a single person pod, descending rapidly towards the surface from the observatory.

He looked out over the approaching city, an eggshell thin sheath of charged cells his only protection from falling the tens of kilmoeters to the surface.

“Where are they now?” he called aloud.

The view remained silent, until an ultraviolet shadow emerged alongside him,

“They left the khave; they saw me. I am tracing them through the crowds.”

He turned his head slightly over his shoulder, “Will you let them get away?”

“No Admiral. I think I know where they are going.”

“Very well. Report back to me when you get there.”

“And if he appears?”

“Find him first. Use them however necessary. Both are trained, either one could kill him if they have to.”

“You want to take that risk?”

“In the Barzakh? I leave it to you. I’ve never been there.”

The ultraviolet figure starred dispassionately, before folding a cape back over her head, and dissipating into the air like a mirage.

He watched her fade, and turned back to the view. The towers out above him now like thorns, the city approaching.  

***

Sakinah and Orin were walking amongst the masses of students, using the Orbit as their primary point of reference. They passed through tunnels and over bridges, following the natural pathways of ancient water systems. Throngs of teachers, scholars and philosophers that populated the Scholarly Quarter washed past them continuously like the rivers that once flowed through the chasms. They covered in a thin sheet of echoed conversations, and half heard moments in the crowd.

Orin was the first to see through the noise, and notice that they were being followed.

“My dear Sakinah,” he said above the clangor, jostling his way along the thoroughfare  “It appears we have been stalked on our way from the kahve.”

She began turning to look. “Not yet,” he said quickly,  “Look carefully; greet this stranger next to you just as they pass as if you recognise them.”

Sakinah turned to her left and mouthed a few words to a passing woman, who barely noticed her amongst the din voices and bodies.

“I see her Orin, that Deran woman. She seemed far taller in the kahve, now her face is only just visible over the crowd, do you notice?”

Orin, using his arced head, could see behind them without provoking suspicion by turning around. “Indeed. That chair could have been a ruse, playing on our pre-conceived notions. She may not have been Deran after all, so spotting her would be a nuisance in this crowd.”

“She has gone to a great deal of effort, shadowing us for so long,” Sakinah said cautiously.

Orin looked around them and gestured broadly, “I don’t recall there being so many students yesterday,” he said.

“All the better for us to hide sidi!” she shouted, grabbing his hand and pulling him into the midst of the oncoming crowds.

They cut through conversations, couples and followers, past preaching sermons and passionate debates, weaving around two scholars locked in a heated exchange at the centre of a growing congregation, long beards shaking in distress. Eventually they had shuffled their way towards a reasonably large staircase that led in to a seminary lining the street.

A group of young students were sat reading and talking on the steps, fashioned from the surrounding sandstone. Two Sentients and a Human were busily designing a set of ornaments along one edge of the stair using augmented manipulators. Sakinah’s eyes moved from them and up towards the entrance iwan’s keystone machine; a ball of dark grey matter held between two sharp brackets, inscribed with a short litany.

“The Scholars of Equations,” she read aloud, looking back at Orin. “We can take a short-cut to Cartography through here, I used to take it in the winter to escape the cold along the road.”

“Marvellous, I had no idea,” Orin replied, “Sakinah you are a marvel…”

“Bless you Orin, but don’t thank me yet. Equations is all politics, so try to keep calm,” she said, anticipating his imminent distaste.

“Oh dear,” he said, shaking his head they climbed the steps two at a time, “I solemnly swear to try my upmost not to argue the distinction between hereditary rule and appropriately appointed…”

“Orin!”

“I jest, and our tail seems to have spotted us. Lead on!”

They walked on through a series of four portals that formed the Iwan of Equations, a gateway designed as a path rather than a single point of entry. It made the transition between the hordes of students and the debating chambers within far easier to handle, the steady winds that blew breezily through the gorges of Calas now replaced by a crisp and lightly perfumed aura of calm.

Sakinah and Orin walked purposefully past small antechambers that surrounded the larger debating halls of the college. Stairways peeled off in various directions towards viewing galleries and passageways, with little in the way of clear instruction. Polylines of glowing resin had been grown throughout the solid, stone walls that lit their path with a golden glow like late afternoon, synthetic cells clearly interlaced about columns and ceiling ornaments shedding their own, twinkling light and trickling sounds like falling sand.

“Is this labyrinth some kind of architectural metaphor?” Orin asked jeeringly, “A spatial sophistry deliberately designed to bewilder? Must have been designed by the Emperor herself.”

“I think it’s likely,” Sakinah said half heartedly, “Equations is her school,” she said under her breath, trying harder to recall the correct path to Cartography than listen to Orin.

An ornament like an ellipsoid chandelier hung from the ceiling ahead of them. As they passed beneath it, Sakinah opened up the metabolism of her body-form to commune with the Sentients within, her skin briefly radiating infrared messages for a fraction of a second,

~ Peace be with you all, Scholars of Equations. Pardon my intrusion, but might you know the way to the Cartographer’s Iwan?’

A series of voices answered her almost simultaneously, each one cut off by the next, offering varied advice and direction.

~ Indeed, Sakinah of Cartographers; continue along this corridor, take the next right, up to viewing gallery six, pass along the Second Chamber…

~ Beware, a council is currently in session, so correct adab must be observed at all times; I would recommend...

~I doubt they will be able to hear them, or perceive anyone walking up there, especially as…

~ Who’s that woman following you?

The voices fell silent as Sakinah hesitated,

~ An overly interested third party, whom we are trying to give the slip.

~ Need some help?

~ I would welcome it.

~ I don’t believe…

~ In two seconds the light will cut out along this corridor, that should give you ample time to reach the staircase undetected.

~ You are too quick to…

 ~ Doing that won’t make a difference to someone with electromagnetic….

~ May you all be blessed and increased.

~ Our pleasure. Beyond that we must continue liaising with the chambers, important debates are taking place today…

~ I still think…

~ Of course.

She cut off abruptly, hoping they would not think her too rude.  After two seconds, as promised, the light dropped all around them, quickly fading into the distance as they reached the staircase.

“Ah, this one,” Sakinah said confidently

“None to soon. How did you drain the light by the way?” Orin whispered as they began climbing a woven timber stair towards the viewing gallery, “Our tail is wearing a cloak, dark green, covering her eyes but the shape of her chin matches the earlier profile. She is persistent.”

“Let’s waste no time then, how fast can you run Orin?” Sakinah asked.

“Well, my body-form was designed for close combat, so faster than Imperial Guardsmen, and you.”

She laughed at him silently, this inherent contradiction of reclusive, awkward scholar literally held within a warrior’s body, “That’s good enough for me. Not yet though, only if we need it and beyond that we have the Barzakh.”

Orin hoped that they would not need to resort to changing realities in their escape, as they reached the gallery floor.

After a few meters walk along the raised cloister of the gallery, its open, woven alloy colonnades looking down onto a standoff between two debating socio-political schools, they saw the portals ahead of them close shut. Sakinah stopped, pulled Orin back, trying to find another avenue of escape before they came face to face with the their pursuer.

As Orin had guessed, she was a tall Human but not Deran, still too short to have come from the river world. She stood motionless between them and the stairway back down to the main corridor, and any other way out.

Orin looked to Sakinah, “Shall we jump?”

Sakinah turned and looked over towards the main chamber, contemplating their only other route of escape. Their bodies, far stronger than flesh and bone, could cope with the physical impact. However that particular type of uncivilised behaviour would have serious repercussions.

Her mind had drifted for a crucial half second before she saw the coconut-sized egg hovering a few inches from her face. She slowly turned her head to face the machine, its surface a dull gunmetal grey and covered in tiny sensors. Its body was held within the clutching grip of three elegant armour plates and outfitted with what looked like ultraviolet weapons.

Although a Human would not have the sensory range to notice, Sakinah could see the small Automaton was semi-autonomous and electromagnetic, manipulating a local magnetic field about it’s core to hold armour and other limbs carefully in place; none of them physically touched one-another, no more than a few atoms apart.

“You won’t be able to reason with it, Sentient,” came the woman’s deep voice, “It only communes with me. That is our sacred bond.”

Sakinah looked to their pursuer. The woman was dressed in dark green, her eyes still hidden, only her mouth visible and telling of her motivations. She looked quite satisfied to have caught them.

Orin looked between her and the suspended automaton, “Are you one of the Augmented? A Warrior?” Both he and Sakinah looked uncertainly at each other, then back to the woman.

She paused before replying, “My name is Erimi, and I am an Augmented of The Imperial Guardsmen. Please do not be alarmed or question my motives. I was sent to look for you, and I assure you both that we are on the same side.”

“Side? What side?” Sakinah asked, quite taken by surprise.

“I find it ironic,” she said, “that we meet here within the halls of Equations, considering the context of what you, Master Orin, had found in the Library of Scholars.”

“How so?” he replied, “You are being particularly cryptic and I am not sure why, ergo our lack of trust.”

Orin then stood partially between Sakinah and Erimi, shielding his companion from the Automaton which remained fixed to their side. It stood there ominously like a leering youth, barely held in check by its master. Sakinah felt it emit an unseen sense of psychological control over her movements that she could not explain. She knew it was impossible for an Augmented, even a warrior to do this directly through techne, yet she refused to admit to herself that she may be genuinely afraid of the woman and her machine. Orin’s bravado was unexpectedly chivalrous, but unnecessary.

Sakinah composed herself, walked past Orin to his dismay as he clutched at the air after her, and stood purposefully in the face of the mysterious figure.

“What are you, Human?” she demanded,  “Truly, an Augmented is a fearsome and respected ally in any fight, but we are not in combat. So there are no sides. Not here.”

Erimi smiled, her teeth still hidden behind sealed lips. She raised her hands to her face and lifted up the hanging veil of her deep, darkly green cloak to reveal an extraordinary pair of totally black eyes. She and Sakinah starred at one another for a few seconds, but what felt like an hour.

“You have a Sentient’s body-form eyes. Why? No Human…”

“I am an Augmented; a Human-synthetic-biological hybrid,” Erimi said,  “I see you noticed my Automaton is electromagnetic, specifically able to manipulate magnetic fields. My eyes see through it; light, in a traditional Human sense, is meaningless to me.”

Orin had slowly come forward to join them, the threat having apparently dissipated, “I have never before seen an Augmented with such singular sensorial enhancement,” he said, enthusiastically studying her from various angles like a caught specimen, “I mean, most have several additional abilities, and several Automata in response, but none so specifically advanced as your magnetic sensitivity or your highly advanced companion over there. You seem so…”

“Direct? Precise? That is because I am sidi. I am one of few Augmented not meant to be warriors. We are investigators.”

“Of what?” Sakinah asked, intrigued by Erimi’s ivory lower face, which transitioned smoothly into her dark eyes and much deeper, darker features of her upper head.

“The electromagnetic spectrum and other physical phenomena of Time-Space, specifically.”

“That sounds like a hopelessly broad field of investigation. Millions of minds are dedicated to those studies,” Sakinah said dismissively.

“Yes,” said Orin with wonderment, “But not like you Erimi. You can sense its subtleties, or even its wider wavelengths without the need of other machines, or Sentients.”

Sakinah looked at Orin sceptically, “Which begs the question Erimi, why are you after us? How can we help you, lowly Sentients that we are.” Orin backed off at her words, embarrassed.

  “Our abilities are both powerful and sensitive in Time-Space, but not within the Barzakh. That is the sacrifice we made to become Augmented, so I need your help. Master Orin, I was sent to find out what you had seen in the Library of Scholars. One of our Guard became aware that you had witnessed something peculiar that relates to the spectrum of Time-Space forces. They even saw a hint of that dangerous ornament you think you perceived there.

“How exactly did you come to know all of this?” Sakinah enquired, eyebrow raised.

“By another of my kind, as I stated, and by eavesdropping upon your conversation in the kahve today.”

“Oh, of course you were,” she replied derisively.

“Sakinah, lets not dwell on that,” said Orin,  “We appear to be allies and this is the Scholarly Quarter, no secrets here and we should know. Plus, Augmented can only work in service of the Emperor.”

Sakinah remained silent.

“Erimi,” he continued, “It is true I witnessed something in the Library but we are not sure what it was or what it could mean. In truth, its only significance is that I have had a similar experience before, albeit in entirely different circumstances to those we currently find ourselves in,” said Orin.

“You mean the Ce-Dian War?”

“The very same,” he said soberly.

“You were a member of a close combat unit’s support detachment, aboard The Great Bear, a BATIN-Class Intimate flagship, correct?”

“Yes, at the time the only ‘immanent-class’ vessel, the largest ever made. We offered tactical support on Ce-Dian activity, their presence within the Barzakh and how this could affect strategy within Time-Space. This is all a matter of public record in the…”

“Do you know as much about me Erimi?” Sakinah interrupted with a hint of contempt.

Erimi turned to Sakinah and replied flatly, “I do not. Truly, you are new to the equation, as we did not know who Master Orin would speak to, if anyone, about the incident. However, I am now informed that you are a Scholar of Cartography; that was where you were headed?”

“Who can say,” Sakinah replied.

“But why the interest?” Orin asked eagerly.

“As I said, I am tasked and equipped both mentally and biologically to investigate electromagnetic anomalies, on behalf of the Imperial Household Guard. Our investigations suggest that within the scholarly hierarchies of Metabolism, Cartography and those of High Admiralty are individuals or groups secretly exploring zeno-technological systems and Intermediate Landscapes that can manipulate Time-Space forces to pre-set parameters, from localised cases to even system-wide events. The consequences of possessing such an ability are, obviously, potentially catastrophic and must be exposed and explored as thoroughly as possible before any irrevocable and adverse political, sociological and technological consequences take effect. The Empire itself is under threat.”

The three of them stood motionless for a moment, Erimi’s Automaton slowly retreating to her side. They were both confident that neither Sakinah nor Orin would want to leave now.

“Zeno-technological; you mean, Ce-Dian techne?” Sakinah asked.

“It is as I feared; and a logical conclusion. That Sentient I saw, if thas what he was, was headed towards the archaeological towers of the Library,” said Orin.

“But wielding Ce-Dian techne is far removed from merely studying it. I don’t know of any working examples of their machines outside of the Al-Khalili Nebulae.”

“There are many examples of Ce-Dian techne hidden throughout our civilisation, attuned to the various forces of our universe,” Erimi replied candidly. “Until now, no one has been able to interact with them. This potentially dangerous ornament is the first incident. I am here to prevent any more from taking place.”

“You mean preventing any more from taking place outside of your control,” Sakinah rebutted, “Helping you is to help the state acquire this person and their abilities, so that the danger passes on from maverick and unknown to institutional and supervised, yet the risk does not decrease.”

“I agree with you Sakinah, if anything it increases once that state is involved,” Orin said.

The automaton appeared to quiver, catching his eye. He held out his hand and caught Sakinah by the arm, gently bringing her back from the argument.

“If you do not assist me, you will both be declared complicit,” Erimi said, her smile having faded as she drew her hood back over her eyes. The Automaton continued to shudder threateningly.

Neither Sentient replied. The gallery echoed the debates taking place below. Confident that they would do as instructed, Erimi broke the peace,

“The joy of silence. Follow me.”

Her smile returned as she walked between them, brushing their shoulders apart as the portals at the far end of the gallery re-opened at her silent command.

***

An Augmented Human and two Sentients walked towards a quiet chamber, a large, angled space cut out from a solid rock strata. In the centre of the chamber’s ceiling was an oval shaped void, allowing bright sunlight to burst into the heart of the space. The entire room was a sundial in reverse, dim and unlit bar the single, slowly migrating beam of light. The floor was a polished, dark stone, inlaid with a detailed geometric pattern containing various constellations, as seen in the Calasian sky directly above. Each star was marked by a milky-white glass crystal, set perfectly flush within the floor.

Sakinah was entranced. They had come upon a cave of wonders, cut off and seemingly abandoned by civilisation as the city hummed and roared beyond the walls of cold, silent stone. Despite the solitude of the scene, the celestial searchlight continuing to uncover once crystal star at a time, Sakinah knew there were thousands of such installations across the city. This particular one must belong to an Augmented order, a spiritual brotherhood to which Erimi was affiliated outside of the Emperor’s Guardsmen. She pondered on whether her loyalties, and intentions, lay in murkier places than she was prepared to admit.

Sakinah was careful not to step on the star stones out of respect. Near the far wall, she could make out a set of depressions in a closed circle. Erimi lead them towards the sunken arrangement,

“This majlis should offer sufficient privacy. My Automaton will guard the portal.”

Sakinah looked back; indeed the levitating machine had silently disposed of itself to hover precisely level with the centre of the portal’s closed sheaths. She could feel it emit a local magnetic field that would keep the entrance locked tight. Security, or secrecy, seemed to be Erimi’s paramount concerns.  

“As I explained, I need your help. This chamber has excellent properties for a clear, smooth ascension into the Barzakh. Sidi Orin, please proceed exactly as you did when you first encountered the anomaly. Our protagonist should be exactly where you found him.”

“Hold on,” Sakinah interrupted, “You know who this person is, the one who confronted Orin?”

“That information is classified.”

Sakinah felt used and uneasy, “We have a right to know who we are following. How can we prepare ourselves if you don’t even tell us what to expect?”

Erimi looked irritated at her question, her smile once again subdued, “All I can tell you is that this person is a Sentient, like both of you. Their motives and intentions are unclear, which is why we must find out what we can, as soon as possible before any further…”

“Well, that rules out my theory on him being Ce-Di,” said Orin trying to lighten the mood,  “Its ok, Erimi, we understand. Sakinah, would you be so kind as to accompany me? I offer you my protection for what its worth…”

“Orin, I will be the one doing the protecting here, you just find him.”

“In your own time,” Erimi said, breaking the awkward silence that followed as she sat at the farthest end of the circle, legs crossed, eyes obscured. She looked calm and focused, smiling again. Sakinah had the unwelcome feeling that Erimi was expecting unwanted company; the Automaton at the portal, her well trained poise. She looked ready to pounce at a moments notice. It was a subtle and well-honed combat stance.

Orin had sat a few seats away from Erimi, and Sakinah took her place on the opposite side of the circle to Orin. Neither said a word to each other, focusing on their litanies.

Sakinah felt her body-form relax, her physical senses slowly becoming numb. She and Orin cleared their minds, attuning their hearts to inaudible and invisible frequencies, a reality outside of Erimi’s perception and far removed from the cacophony of civilisation that filled the city around them. Sakinah’s eyes closed. Orin’s hood simply remained motionless.

The Augmented Human lifted the veil from her eyes to watch the two Sentients enter a silent, still sukun; the focused meditative state. Of the two, she suspected Orin may be the threat, his resolve slightly weaker than Sakinah’s owing to his curiosity; he was the most likely to let his guard down at the crucial moment. Erimi prayed to Origin that it would not come to a kill.

The Automaton, still hovering by the sealed portal on the opposite side of the chamber, remained motionless.

***

Sakinah had not been to the library in several months. The architectures were generally similar to her last visit, but the details had moved and altered. She and Orin stood by a huge portal, far larger than anything one would find physically on Calas. Its peak rose too far above them to make out clearly, its tip as white as a moon seen in a summer’s afternoon. In the far distance, thin bridges swept their way towards spires, towers and climbing architectures that she could not name.

The library itself, set within the sweeping panorama, was asymmetrical from where they stood, and to see it in its entirety would require an Angel’s vision. Its structure appeared to be slowly moving, a soft blur painted beneath each static detail. She felt like she was passing through an exploding landscape, moving gently around flying objects and matter that advanced at imperceptible speed towards an indefinite destination like shadows on a sundial. It was a cloud of knowledge and form; half solid, half somewhere else.

The sensation grew stronger as they walked through the portal. Orin, who no longer required his skeletal form in this immaterial realm, had become much taller, his limbs gangly and slow in their long strides. His hair was long and brown, wavy and attached in handsome ways to a thickly layered scarf, hung loosely over strips of material forming his cloak. The fabric looked was woven from tiny, ornate machines.

Here, his essence exposed, Sakinah could see into his soul. They both walked silently through the grand openings of the Library door, a sequence of portals of varying sizes, some technological, some solid, part material, part ethereal, majestic and mysterious.

-- The Automaton became aware, on the edge of its sensory range, of a fluctuation in the chamber’s local magnetic field.

Orin looked over at Sakinah, walking with the grace and airs of a confident and mature woman. He admired her in Time-Space, but was more taken aback in the Barzakh by the purity of her appearance. Her gown flowed softly in her wake, spilling over soft pools of light that traced her footsteps. Her intentions were unadulterated by ambition, her lightness a sign Orin understood immediately. She did not have a broad frame or heavy step, but carried herself formidably nonetheless. He mustered the courage to speak first.

-- Erimi’s eyebrow rose over the corner of her left eye.

“You look…like you’re flying along those lights.”

Orin was as awkward here as he was in every reality, and Sakinah loved him for it. She looked down and behind her at the glowing pools that traced her footsteps with embarrassment, pulling at her robe bashfully,

“Ya sidi, don’t be so polite. I am as old as the rocks beneath the Great Ocean, and I feel it,” she said, laughing.

“There is a dignity in age Sakinah, a noble quality you have earned. Besides, all our souls are older than time itself.”

Sakinah was not used to receiving compliments. She found an awkward satisfied smile, and enjoyed it.

-- The Automaton’s armour and sensors, floating seamlessly over its humming core, suddenly became transfixed. Its senses pricked like a hunter, catching a glimpse of movement in the electromagnetic spectrum.

They had entered a large, hushed chamber, lit distantly by three gaping ovals cut out of the ceiling high above them.

 “Over here, the portals aligned to the stars. Somewhere through these iwans I came across him,” Orin said quietly, preparing to set off in the direction of three distinctive gates on a higher library mezzanine.

Floors, walls and levels in the Library did not necessarily relate to height, but rather depth of enquiry, a system much like a living, fully dimensional catalogue of ever expanding knowledge. It continually grew in unexpected and unplanned ways, new pathways to enlightening truths uncovered and explored by scholars, students and archivists.

-- Erimi drew in a deep breath. Her body became poised.

The whole environment was perplexing to someone as ordered as Sakinah, “We should be careful sidi. Even amidst the sanctity of the noble Library we may not be safe. If Erimi is right, our nemesis awaits.” She looked cautiously around the blurred boundaries of the pathway Orin had chosen.  

Orin’s faced contorted, “Sakinah, there’s no need to be so dramatic. This Sentient is a scholar, like us. What would he conceivably…”

-- The Automaton began inducing electromagnetic potentials throughout its core, careful not to loose any energy before moving away from the portal

They both approached the mezzanine. It’s portals shimmered like a dull plane of mercury, moving slightly, distorting the light emerging from somewhere far off that Sakinah could not make out. Nothing in the Library appeared to make sense, the further they went in.

She tried to shake off the feeling, realising that she had to shed her notions of Time and Space to inhabit this realm, a place that Orin frequented and felt comfortable in. She wondered then at how far he had delved into the depths, searching for the truth. She had come here many years ago searching for new worlds, and answers to the unsolved mysteries of the cosmos. Orin was cut from the same cloth, and his compliments to her were better suited to himself; an astute and dignified student of knowledge.

“I feel like this is your home Orin, this strange place,” she said smiling.

Orin look at her, concerned. He was glad to see she was comfortable with him, and he smiled back. He would hate to think she felt uneasy with him, and began to realise that he had not taken anyone this far into the Library before. He was opening up his world to another soul for the first time.

Sakinah felt a flush across her cheeks. Something in Time-Space was happening around them. It was subtle, like the sound of very distant wave, too far to comprehend, emerging from the hidden depths of the ocean. Her smile disappeared, and she held out her arm to stop them both.

“Orin...”

-- Erimi called her Automaton towards her, a series of augmented, magnetic limbs within her own body preparing to cradle it as it arrived.

“Quickly Sakinah, its this way,” he said, brushing her arm gently aside.

“Orin, wait.”

“What?”

“Something isn’t right here. Do you feel it?”

“Its just nerves my Lady, trust me, I know the feeling all to well.”

“Wait, just wait. When you saw him, the last time you saw him and that ornament appeared, how did you feel?”

Orin became serious, “Like I was back there, in the dark again.”

“The war…”

“Yes.”

“Do you sense it now, sense its presence?”

“What do you mean?”

-- The Automaton pressed its own fields against the portal, crumpling the door’s outer sheaths beneath the sheer force of its acceleration as it catapulted towards the closed circle where the three figures were sitting in silence. 

A Sentient man stood within a portal, half visible, moving hesitantly some distance along the mezzanine away from Orin and Sakinah He had been following them for some time, moving carefully to trace their footsteps, recognising the intentions in their wake. He felt they were seeking someone, or trying to find a particular place within the library, but he could not clearly tell. They had crossed his path without noticing, but now they had stopped, and the woman could clearly feel the ornament. The magnetic anomaly was close.

Then he recognised Orin, and froze.

“Erimi was assigned to this task, and as you said Orin, is finely attuned to electromagnetic fields. If anything, she is too dedicated to a single purpose. They wouldn’t chose anyone else.”

“What in all Intimacy are you talking about?”

“The Augmented woman. Her Automaton. That magnetic field…she’s projecting something, in Time-Space, something dangerous Orin. We have to leave, now.” She held on to his arm, pulling him back.

The Sentient man knelt within the portal, his eyes frantically searching for a solution in the blank floor beneath him. 

“Slow down Sakinah. Anything brash, like crashing out from here, and we could loose the trail.”

“Why do you even care Orin?” she snapped, “We need to…”

“BECAUSE I FELT IT BEFORE! DON’T YOU SEE? Don’t you see why we have to do this?”

His hands were shaking, his skin had become subtly angular and sharp. His voice was coarse.

“Orin…I’m sorry I didn’t mean…do what? Orin what…”

“It was a war Sakinah. We lost so much out there, fighting in those nebulae, for years. Years we were lost, like wading through fog for an eternity. Wherever your turned, you feared the apparitions. Those ghosts of dark space, stalking us, haunting us. We awoke those powers.”

“Orin, you are not are part of The Redemption anymore. You don’t need to carry this burden you whole life,” she starred into his eyes,  “Won’t you let me help you? I want to help.”

He placed his hand over hers, still gripping his arm tightly. “I was the ShipSpirit, it was my duty to help them, to see as far as possible into the storm, to navigate us out of harm.” He stuttered, looking away.

Sakinah held his arm tightly, not relinquishing her grip.

He turned back to face her, his eyes wet with tears, “I failed…because I was afraid. So they died.”

-- Erimi projected her own magnetic field like a glove directly between where Sakinah and Orin sat, reaching out towards her onrushing Automaton. She still could not feel which one would break first, but knew the fluctuation was getting stronger. She had been trained to resist such anomalies, her body attuned to them down to her DNA.

The Sentient man was moving behind shifting walls and layers of matter, his eyes fixed on them. He had discovered his conviction, and committed to his decision. No one could be allowed to discover the anomaly.

Orin and Sakinah stood still, facing one another.

“We have to fix it,” Orin said, his voice breaking around the lump in his throat, “I felt something bitter, an evil force right in the heart of our sanctuary of knowledge. This Library, everyone in it, is in danger.”

“…I am ready if you are, but I still don’t understand what you need to do?” she said.

“I didn’t mean for it to get this far Sakinah, but I couldn’t be more grateful to have you by my side.”

“I will stay here as long as it takes Orin. I wont leave you.”

She was holding his hand in her’s now. Their souls were close, intertwined in a soft orbit as they rode the storm of tension crackling about them. Despite their shared sense of dread, Sakinah began to feel something stir in her heart, a contentment she had not felt in many years. If her fate was sealed, she had already embraced it.

That precious feeling was broken when Orin suddenly tensed, “I see it now.”

“He’s close, very close,” she whispered, finding her courage returning, her strength growing. She would not let anything harm him now.

Orin’s eyes looked through her as his expression darkened, “He’s behind you.”

-- The Automaton reached a top speed of six meters per second as it flew through the bright shaft of sunlight crossing the centre of the chamber.

The Sentient man stood clearly in the light, no longer needing the disguise of shadow. He began reciting a litany, words slipping between his lips as he threw a small object towards them casually. The collection of paper thin sheets moved through the air before settling into a complicated little lattice. The pattern became increasingly elaborate until finally, followed by a deep rumble like a stampede of wild and frightened animals, the pattern split into four distinct pieces.

Orin knew the man’s face, and starred into it with a strength he thought he had lost. He had returned to the nebulae, facing the same, dangerous foe, only now he realised why he had failed all those years ago. The manfacing him was a Sentient, a similar height to Orin but much boarder build. He was a fellow survivor of The Redepmtion, a fellow veteran who had stood by him when they had lost The Great Bear.  

Orin stood fast, enraged and this mans betrayal, but Sakinah’s eyes were only on the emerging machine, splitting in perfect symmetry until they perfectly framed the Sentient man.

-- Erimi could feel the sunlight pass over her automaton’s skin, sensing its warmth, the fluctuations in intensity caused by atmospheric disturbance, and could even feel the angle of the arriving light subtly change as the planet continued to rotate on its axis.

Sakinah crouched down, as the four machines stopped. For a moment, no one moved, she and Orin standing on one side of the frame, the Sentient man on the other. A thin line of dark heat began snaking about the strange formation, as if caught between two panes of glass.  The line grew into a circle, and the frame suddenly blacked out. It was wide and deeply dark, like a sinkhole ready to swallow them both.

The Sentient man drew back towards the portal, his work done.  Orin had recognised him, but it no longer mattered. Neither one of his persuers would survive the Anomaly.

-- The Automaton passed beyond the shaft of sunlight, its surface temperatures changing very slightly, its speed now constant. A shimmer of light, reflected by a star crystal along the chamber floor, flashed across its body.

Orin was faster to respond.

He shot forward, leaping towards the black hole. He summoned the strength of Divine Origin, calling His names one hundred times between two halves of a single heartbeat. He open his arms wide, his hands radiating a crisp light from within his palms.

Sakinah was the spiritually weaker of the two. The Sentient man had somehow discerned this, and targeted her. She began to close her eyes and shield herself from the blinding brightness of Orin’s attack.

-- Erimi felt a connection in that infinitesimal moment to the timeless movement of the great celestial bodies. The automaton flew towards her, photons of light crossed its path, the city of Calas rotated away from that light into the encroaching dusk as it’s home planet continued in a rapid orbit about Hon. The star itself steadily moved about the centre of its own galaxy, accelerating away from the very epicentre of their Universe where Time and Space had began.

Sakinah realised that the hole was a magnetic portal, the type of which she had only read about in scriptures. A deep heat began to emerge, shooting towards their faces like a flare. Orin had pushed her aside, reciting something she could hardly make out. The Library structure became animated, pulling in towards them, thickening and hardening itself like an open wound. Orin was closing the walls around him to protect her.

Time began moving even more slowly, but Orin’s head turned as normally towards Sakianh as if he stood outside of Time and Space.

“Its a solar flare Sakinah, and its passing through the hole.”

“Those are Ce-Dian technologies?

“Something like that. I can’t be sure, but you must find out. Get out of here Sakinah and quickly, before the walls are sealed. At least we can save the Library.”

“Maybe I don’t care about the Library Orin! We need to get out of here NOW.”

“Then maybe you can save yourself,” he said, smiling.

The folds of the Library, some walls, machines and other ornaments, flew between them, slowly obscuring his body until only his shoulders, then his face were visible.

Sakinah was crying, and desperate. Orin simply stood there, a man at the end of his time, resigned and resolved to put her life ahead of his own.  

“There is some peace for me here Sakinah,” he said calmly. “Something beyond the world and its memories. I will miss you, too much. I…”

-- The Automaton was now at the cusp of the circle.

Sakinah could not bare to watch any longer. She realised that she could not stop him hurtling towards danger in the Library, but would try and physically wake him to draw his soul back.

She knew he would be killed horribly if the flare hit him, and recited six litanies of protection before descending from the Barzakh. She disappeared like sand falling through an hourglass, back towards the realms of Time and Space. Orin watched on, until his face was hidden hidden behind a wall of matter.

- The hairs on Sakinah’s head, a thick weave of sensory limbs that were in constant metabolic communication with her environment, had perceived the automaton’s arrival two seconds earlier. Her protocell body-form began to rise up from its kneeling pose.

Orin saw the flare rising to meet him. He had drawn it out, but the source had escaped. ‘A being who could manipulate the forces of electromagnetism so precisely, that it could summon the intense radiations of the stars to where it pleased.’ He thought, the heat growing and strangely calming influence on his surroundings.  

He could not grasp how much focus, energy or litanies were required to pull off such an audacious act of violence. The black hole was a dark intention, a burning desire to kill him manifested within the Barzakh, where

‘No meaning can be hidden except by the Will of Origin,’ he thought, feeling his mind warp under the pressure of the emerging black hole.

 At least he had saved her, his beautiful and only companion.  

- Erimi’s magnetic hand was clawing out and around the small ball of incredibly energetic technology, preparing to deflect the automaton’s path at the last possible moment. The subject had used Orin’s body as a vessel to project heat, in an attempt to kill both him and anyone involved in the investigation. Erimi and her Automaton would not let that happen.

- Sakinah could feel herself return to her body, slipping into her body-form like a wetsuit. She had dived blindly into an ocean, only to emerge on the other side into a new world; the Barzakh. She knew that there mere seconds left to act, back in Time-Space within the confines of her own skin.

- The Automaton was now level with Sakinah’s face. A dull blur of silvery light reflected over her pearl white skin cells.

Orin wished he had told her more. He thought finally of the war, of the loss and horror he had buried for years but carried like an open would across his military skeletal-form. He would not hide in the world of Humans any longer. He had finally earned a reason to sacrifice himself, and would die a man in love.

- Erimi closed her magnetic fingers and cupped her hand.

The flare hit Orin’s face with a heat so fierce he instantly dissipated. His soul had been absorbed by a far greater power than any technology or spiritual station he knew could proetect him. He died within a fraction of a light’s wavelength.

- The Automaton’s armour began to rotate about its core in anticipation of Erimi’s intentions. They shared their perceptions of the electromagnetic Anomaly, and pinpointed their target.

Sakinah had left the Barzakh.

Orin’s soul was pushed out from his presence in the Barzakh, beyond any realm of the living. His body had become a conduit for the dark malevolence of the solar flare to enter the world, and incinerate his accomplices.

- Erimi pushed the Automaton towards Orin’s hooded head with a perfectly timed, glancing blow of her own magnetic field.

 - Sakinah’s arms began to rise up from beside her, passing through the powerful magnetic effects induced by Erimi and her technological symbiot. The resistance of the surrounding air caused the veils of soft fabric wrapped loosely across and over Sakinah’s head and shoulders to ripple lightly at the corners.

 - The Automaton focused all of its remaining energy into a concentrated arc, millimetres ahead of its body as it swung towards Orin’s head. 

 - Orin’s head began to glow red hot, singeing the air around it and filling the room with the acrid smell of ozone.

- Sakinah’s eyes opened, her body tissues hardening to the magnetic field pushing against her as the Automaton sped towards Orin. If she had returned from the Barzakh a second late, her face would have been crushed under the pressure. Her right hand began reaching out ahead of her body as she strained to push Orin to the floor. She knew it was all in vain. She knew he was lost for good.

- Erimi released her magnetic field, having deflected the Automaton’s path sufficiently. She followed through by drawing a long blade from within her dark green cloak. Her eyes were hidden beneath the rim of her gaping hood.

- The heat from Orin’s head began to burn Sakinah’s cells faster than they could repair, trying to change their pigmentation and solidify along the surface of her face and arms. She knew she was committed. She would do anything to stop Erimi killing him, even as she realised he couldn’t be saved.

- The Automaton projected its arc of energy towards Orin’s neck instantaneously, snapping his skeletal-form’s long, curved headpiece clean from his body. The sinewy, tightly wound coils that connected them were cut and spun wildly away from each other, their bonds released.

- Orin’s body became lifeless and limp. The heat faded away as quickly as it had appeared, cracking the surface of his arced head.

Sakinah threw herself at Orin’s body with a roar, her skin a seamless ivory porcelain, tougher than the strongest of metals as it tried one last way to protect itself from the blistering heat. She thumped into Orin’s body as it began falling toward the hard stone floor, its black surface cracking and shattering beneath their combined force.

Erimi had half risen to a crouch, sword clasped in her right hand and held out behind her body. She had not needed it after all.

The Automaton hung triumphantly over Orin’s lifeless head as it rolled slowly back and forth.

What was once Orin’s face, a perfectly balanced curve, would not allow itself to come to rest. It slowly rocked back and forth like a toppled bowl, sitting idly on the floor. Sakinah had still not opened her eyes, slowly pulling her faculties out of the Barzakh piece by piece, giving her every last chance to stop Orin from sacrificing his life. She had failed, clutching his shoulders between her hands, eyes opening to stare at the cauterized, headless body of her companion. She turned towards the rolling sound of smooth metal upon stone. Orin’s head lay in waiting near the centre of the circle, shrouded in a thin sheet of vapour.

Sakinah cried out, louder and louder. She could not stop. Her anger became a wild, boiling rage, her hands shaking violently. Then her body-form became unbearable tight, a set of chords ready to snap, chocking her in a collar of despair. She shook for a number of minutes, her eyes blurring and her hands clasped like iron fists.

She cried again with a painful howl that reverberated around the chamber. The room lay dormant for the strange collection of beings in one of its corners, as events came to pass in Time and Space.

Sakinah could feel other forces swirl about her that she could not fully understand or describe. It felt as though the light of Hon, that magnificent and titanic force of energy unleashed, had shuddered for a fraction of time, its own requiem to Orin’s sacrifice. The light of the star, still shining through a single beam into the heart of the chamber, was a strangely omniscient force, but it did not fall upon or celebrate Orin’s body. The light had passed him by. The explosive fury of the star had already done its work in the Barzakh.

Eventually, after what felt like an age, Sakinah became quiet. Her unbridled misery had numbed into some sense of resolve. She plunged into a pool of cold hatred, lifting her head to stare at the Automaton that drifted motionless and indifferent to the pain it had wrought. She felt her mind race for the litanies of protection, seeking a shred of solace in the embrace of Origin.

Sakinah lashed out towards it, the automaton moving lazily back and away from the swipe with ease. She half collapsed on the floor, powerless and passionate.

Erimi ignored Sakinah’s futile and heal hearted attempt at retribution. She had not said a word since Orin’s sudden death. Instead, she let silent litanies pass between her lips, the hood of her cloak still hanging over her head now lower than ever. She closed the prayer by passing her hands over her face. Using both hands to support herself, she slowly stood, her back straight, her posture disciplined and calm.

Erimi walked silently away from the circle of small depressions, so neatly carved from the seamless stone floor, nowcharred and crackling. The Automaton remained for a few seconds longer, loitering at the scene as if to remove any hidden trace of its crime, before flying silently away in the shadow of its master.

The shaft of light shifted through the air, seemingly bending at the centre of the chamber a few meters above Erimi’s head. A thin oculus had hung there, invisible them when they arrived only an hour earlier.  Seals and sheathes of matter began to open, a steady beat of metallic and cellular flower petals unfurled and illuminated. Sounds of the city beyond began to find their way towards Sakinah and Orin’s lifeless skeleton on the far side of the chamber.

Erimi stopped as she passed through the doors, looking into an oblivious world beyond the walls of stone.

“You know why I had to do that. There was only one course. He was weaker than you, and had to be the one.”

Sakinah whipped her face up towards her with an incredulous expression. She began to laugh, and Erimi’s mouth frowned at each corner as she turned to face her.

“You idiot. You uninitiated, brash, fool! You are a curse on us…” she said, her voice laced with venom before shouting, “damn to the fires of hell YOU AND YOUR techne, damn THE EMPEROR HERSELF!”

She stood defiantly, “You could’nt be more wrong you asinine mongrel, you half grafted anti-life. Your soul is dead.” She stammered, unable to control her voice, “He was killed because he was stronger than me. He undertook the burden, witnessing the reality of the ornament, its evil. He saved our lives, and you killed him without remorse. That mag-rat you keep just killed him.  It enjoyed it…” Sakinah’s voice trailed off, wondering at the unreadable creature. It did not react to a single world of her impassioned attack in any way Sakinah could read, but she knew her use of anti-machine slander would have struck the automatons senses in familiar, human ways.  “May the mercy of Origin protect you on the Day when no other can,” she said with conviction.

“I pray that it will…”

“You need to pray for more than that,” Sakinah hissed furiously, “Because I will never forgive you. You can carry that weight into the fire.”

Erimi looked on, through her hood, unmoved. She turned and left the chamber as silently as she had come. The Automaton stayed closely by her side.

Sakinah returned to her fallen companion and knelt by Orin’s head. She carefully held it in her hands, the heat having sunk into some unknown depths in between the laws of Time and Space. It was as cold and lifeless now as the tomb they had chosen for him.

 The shaft of light had turned away from the portal as it closed in Erimi’s wake, to illuminate the stone alter that bore Orin’s body. Sakinah, his sole attendant to the passing of his spirit, clutched the metal to her bosom like a baby. She was entirely alone, in the embrace and warmth of the light.

Glass orbs glistened across the floor of the room. The star’s themselves bore testimony to what had happened.

***