literature

Odyssey II Ch.8 Entry: Brethren

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Maya wore confusion on her face.

Paul had always been short with words; this time would be no different.

"I know everything now."

Maya watched as he floated upwards through the hole in the ceiling.

There was no time to tell her what he had seen. What it was like to die while psychically connected to another being and how, in that moment, the mind-soul rides that tether like a roller coaster searching for the end of the track. That he rode that tether through the mind of Tal'shen and then into its mother, witnessing their lives, truths and stories.

No time to explain that he knew her race, perhaps better than her. That for millennia these stained glass people worshiped science as humans worshiped gods, and evolved a culture of unraveling the complex mysteries of the mathematical universe. They were a race that evolved exponentially because each was dedicated to self-improvement. He saw that, over time, there was a great shift - physical and mental - and an age came to pass when their minds became so intimate with understanding, they began to manipulate the base principals of reality.

Verbally.

Born from meditation-like practices, this tuning to the universe led to what would appear to be magic - incantations - but was simply the spoken formula for making the universe bend. Words are sound and vibration; the rhythmic-like frequencies that drive our plane of existence. Speak the right words and control the un-tamable.

Many excelled at the tuning, named DeShol, becoming so proficient they needed only think these commands. This was a dangerous thing, and the people became divided about its potential. Was this their evolution? To toy with the matters and energies of life? Factions aligned and war erupted. On one side, the disciples of DeShol. On the other, those who feared it. In the middle, a dying planet and a group that chose to leave. This group, through focus, created a quantum rift and crossed to our world.

Their bodies quickly dying, the para-dimensional jump to the oxygen-rich Earth would be their demise, unless they claimed the planet for themselves. But even this group splintered and fought until only two remained: Lysanna and Mayanna.

Lysanna's last misguided attempt at saving her race had soured. Mayanna's last humble attempts to stop her had faltered. A unforeseen offspring ran rampant, choosing it's own destiny.

Paul looked down at Maya. Maya who had always wanted only peace and knowledge and caring, but was forced to betray those beliefs to stop her sister. She now rested her hope in an unexpectedly re-purposed human. She may never have intended to be a threat... but Paul knew better. Harnessing DeShol was a mistake, and his hybrid mind would tap into it like none other. But this power too great.

She was a threat to the Earth like Tal'shen.

With a sound that was as much a hum as it was words, he separated her atoms and turned her to fine red mist. While he was no longer quite a human, he was going protect his planet at any cost.

Paul and Tal'shen  were anomalies of those that sired them yet they shared a few base similarities to it, including the psychic bond. Paul could sense it, feel Tal'shen was several blocks away, reproducing, by thrusting a long thin tentacle into the chest of any human it could find. Hundreds had been impregnated with the spore-like, symbiotic embryo but to Paul's heightened senses, they were like beacons.

Paul glided down to street level, to the carnage and began to eliminate the incubating humans. Each beyond salvation, nothing more than a husk awaiting the eruptive force growing within. One by one, Paul hummed a murmur that ended them. He paced his actions, to be sure to find each and every one of the poor humans, yet always closing in on Tal'shen, the unimaginable offspring. Soon, Paul got too close.

Far ahead, Tal'shen had a moment of clarity and felt Paul approaching. Using the tether between them, it spoke into his mind.

"We are Brethren, we are not like those who made us. We are above both our peoples, it is we who should rule them."

The voice boomed inside Paul's, swaying him.

"I have no such desire, neither did your people." Paul sent this, moving ever closer, turning human bodies to plumes of crimson.

"Lysanna sought to bring her people here…but… this is my home and I choose to make… my own people… But you are killing them." Tal'shen sensed few of it's life-spores remain via the tether, Paul sensed that too.

"You are an unknown variable, your offspring will be as well. You don't know what they'll be. What they'll do…" Paul touched ground. The hybrid was very close and turned to him a grotesque deformity of life. It's shimmering skin too tight with it's over-slim waist and torso proportioned in defiance of its bloated upper-body. The elongated head surrounded by tentacle stumps hacked by Maya, save one, that danced, seeking prey on its own accord.

Paul used the DeShol as he had on the humans and felt Tal'shen flare up in resistance. The hybrid stood unharmed.

"You cannot stop me.  You move… I counter." The lone tentacle turned to him first.

Paul shut down the tether and hummed the tone and pitch he had witnessed in Lysanna's memory. A sound unknown to Tal'shen. A rift opened, smaller less than what Paul knew of, but good enough as Tal'shen walked right through…

…Into the vacuum of Earth's outer orbit.

Devoid of oxygen, it flailed. The tentacle whipped about madly. Spinning, weightless, Tal'Shen looked down upon the giant blue-green sphere and saw only it's own failure and then, slowly, its demise.

Paul extinguished the few remaining human husks. Ultimately there was still another threat. Not just to the Earth, but perhaps the universe itself.

He focused his mind and the vibration shook the buildings around him. The DeShol gave way and opened a rift to the home world of Lysanna and Mayanna.

He would see to it that their world would never threaten his, or any other, planet again.
Entry for Odyssey 2 featuring Clive Barker
© 2013 - 2024 BillBlogins
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C-blaze21's avatar
Wow,
What a conclusion.
I never would have imagined that Paul would become another Dr. Manhattan.