Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy, Volume One) (32 page)

Steffor angle
d their decent to the spot as they traced the Deagron's path through the city, a loop roughly covering a square mile that eventually led back to the cliff side. Evident by the eight dead Guardians detected along the way, they concluded Traiken and his team somehow managed to deflect, or entice, the creature back to where it originally entered the city. There, jammed in-between Sevorist Avenue and the cliff, Traiken and his troop made the tactical decision to make their stand against the Deagron Maker.

Now o
nly a few hundred yards above, they assessed the scene below with trained eyes and heavy hearts. The Guardians had partially pinned the Deagron to cliff side and ground, cuffing five of the long sinewy limbs with thick bands of Source, each formed between the out stretched arms of two Guardians. With ten of the remaining thirteen Guardians focused on holding the beast down, the remaining three darted along the ground, dodging probing tendrils while concentrating tight bursts of the Source at the remaining free limbs. Traiken directed the efforts of all from atop the cliff, arms outstretched, and his staff barely discernable in his left as it radiated with the Source, shielding his men from the creature's relentless assault on both its captors and assailants.

While limbs and tendrils appeared to act independently of each other in their counter attack on the Guardians, Steffor noted how the Deagron's eye slits stayed locked on the thousands of wounded they had detected earlier, gathered not twenty yards from th
e battle. The violet lights behind the slits pulsed with longing as it watched the Healers who had rushed from the Healing Ward shifted into the Trunk just above the stepped mesas. They had collected as many of the wounded as they could and were frantically shifting the Source, administering the healing energy as best possible within the makeshift triage station.

Little did they know the Deagron would reappear in the same spot only moments later, Steffor thought.

Steffor turned his attention back to the Deagron and for the first time noticed the hundreds of Citizens wrapped within the leathery tendrils that grew everywhere from the creature. Most had already perished from the constricting tendrils but a few still lingered, their last minutes of life an excruciating struggle to fill burning lungs with air. The horror only continued as he watched tendrils jam crushed bodies into mucus-covered maws housed atop spastic tumors pulsating across the body.

"This nightmare ends now!" Steffor bellowed to all. "Vejax, r
elieve Traiken. Not one more Guardian dies today!" He released Vejax and propelled him toward the cliff. Vejax extended his staff parallel to his shoulders and projected a razor thin sheet of Source, twice the width of his staff and three times the length of his body. With his Source blade before him, aimed toward the Deagron, Vejax turned his staff perpendicular, pulled hands behind his head with elbows bent then chopped downward with all his might. The perfectly timed blow sliced through the flailing arm that sought to swat him from the air, completely cleaving the limb from the grotesque body. Using the momentum of his swing, Vejax completed a full flip before landing gracefully on the cliff's edge a few feet from Traiken.

The Deagron roared in pain as th
e fresh nub spewed blue-black blood along the cliff side, bringing its attention away from the Healers as it stared in disbelief at the dismembered limb convulsing wildly on the ground. With renewed vigor, the Deagron jerked one of its pinioned arms free, launching the two Guardians who held it high in the sky.

"Grimlock! Martna! Cut me a hole in that abomination so that I may purge it from our world!" Fifty yards above and thirty out by this point, the two shot outward in opposite directions before turning
back to face the other with arms extended. Each then sent forth a rowdy coil of Source as thick as a man that fused to the others in the middle. The bite of Vejax's blow still fresh on the mind, the Deagron recognized the mortal power behind the Source garrote and struck at the two flying Guardians with all its remaining limbs. Traiken, Vejax and the three Guardians below, anticipating this desperate act, expended their remaining strength with targeted punches of the Source in attempt to deflect the veracious talons.

A claw managed to sneak past the barrage of defensive strikes and rip into Martna's flank. With their entire focus placed on maintaining their connection to the other, Grimlock and Martna relied solely on armored, but limited, garments for prot
ection. Steffor winced at the blow, the gash in her garments plain to see, but was relieved to see her link to Grimlock stay intact. Successfully through the gauntlet, the two stretched the coil of Source to encompass the full breadth of the Deagrons plated chest, then with one final orchestrated movement, a jet of Source burst from their feet and shot them at supersonic speed into the cliff.

Steffor landed a few yards away as the Source coil pounded the Deagron into the cliff side, followed immediately by
shrapnel exploding from the holes Martna and Grimlock bore on each side. The beast slumped down in anguish, releasing a rumbling bellow from the depths of its being. The blow dislodged two of the limbs, previously clamped down, from their sockets while the other two were jarred free. A jagged line gapped across the top portion of its thick chest, the fresh wound penetrating deep into its body cavity. Yet the beast sill lived.

Driven by a force beyond Steffor's understanding, the Deagron began to stir. Its h
ead reared down on Steffor, eye slits pulsing violet, a look Steffor could only describe as primeval recognition and carnal hatred. The glare flushed Steffor with anger, funneling a rush of Source into his staff, making it glow so bright he could no longer see past his outstretched hands.

Fearful his reciprocal hatred for the Deagron would consume his heart, Steffor closed his eyes, locked out the world around him and seized control of his vengeful emotions. In that brief moment, he stopped being the nescie
nt soul floundering to find meaning to his existence. The beginning of his awareness, the clarity he had sought since his rebirth, had finally arrived. Upon opening his eyes again, his perception of the Deagron, and himself, had changed forever.

I know you,
Steffor said telepathically to his ancient enemy.
You are the face of my fear, the last threshold before what is familiar and that which is not. I banish you from this world, for your purpose is no longer required.

With a vile chuckle, spastic waves ran
across the Deagron's broken body. Then, in a voice that sounded all too familiar, it replied.
Yes, my purpose has been fulfilled. I leave this world complete, knowing I have unlocked that which you fear most: yourself. Steal yourself Steffor, for you will be forced to face your deepest fear again, sooner than you realize.

Steffor, beset by confusion, the Deagron's words evoking a swirl of foreign emotions he knew in his heart to be true, stifled mounting doubt with his steadfast resolve to rid the beast, an
d what it represented, from the world.

Fueled by his ghoulish surroundings, images certain to brand in his psyche and influence every decision he made going forward, Steffor became one with the Source and infused evil incarnate with sublime adoration.

Chapter 20

"The patch will modify the source code that currently prevents him from executing a solution," Janison said, standing before the virtual control panel as hands skillfully reconfigured an array of three-dimensional files projected b
etween him and Muzar's sedate body.

"What do you mean by prevents him?" Antone asked suspiciously.

"Our unique information theory, the primary reason the project has been so successful to date, is what has enabled Muzar to run his own show since the beginning," Stalling explained. "The code base, while complex in design and execution, are the simple laws the user must abide by. Governed only by this broad sequence of instructions, the results have been limited only by Muzar's imagination."

"The results go beyond the imagination, Muzar's soul is the ultimate influence," Janison added as streams of code sc
rolled down the three remaining open files.

"True," Stalling agreed. "The imagination is what we have been able to quantify and reengineer into the Auranet, link visor and the entrainment platform. But it is the quantified experiences of the soul that we c
ovet most and now look to salvage."

"So what went wrong?" Antone asked the room.

Janison, his back to the rest of them, fought the impulse to reply while Jennifer, standing to the left of Antone, looked to Stalling standing to his right. After a long pause, Stalling replied. "I overestimated the durability of his soul. We knew there was part of him that would be stretched thin," Stalling said, momentarily locking his vision onto the server tower on their right, "but....well....the assumption was that it would persevere, no matter what the circumstances."

"And it didn't," Antone concluded as he studied the same tower, wondering what could possible cause a soul to break. "So, it is this tainted third causing the systematic breakdown of the rest," gesturing wit
h a nod to the tower behind Muzar and the one to their left.

"Essentially, yes." Stalling said

"And we have no cure for this.....
virus
?"

"The cure must come from him. More specifically, we are assuming he has already identified the cure. We are simply allo
wing him to alter those laws so that he may activate it," Janison stated matter-of-fact.

"Why can't we just isolate the problem and fix it ourselves?"

"We could study the data for a lifetime and still be nowhere near to understanding why the problem occurred, much less know how to solve it." Stalling answered.

"I am confused. My understanding, confirmed by you only a second ago, is that the data gleamed from the project over the past decade has enabled everything to this point. Now you are telling me we no
longer have control over it?"

"The information we have garnered is but a thimble full of what the project has produced, it is the tangible data the source code is designed to identify and extrapolate. The rest is...beyond our conception. Our ability to bot
h comprehend and deliver it to the world lies with him." Janison closed out the last window as Stalling finished his statement and stepped back to join his friends to gaze upon Muzar.

"It is done." Janison stated.

"What now?" Antone asked.

"We wait. If our
theory is correct, Muzar will return to us in moments."

"And then what?"

Janison paused and turned to Stalling. Preparing for what came next, Stalling’s attention centered on Muzar, leaving Jennifer to reply. "Then we give ourselves unto him. Muzar is the key to unlocking the door to our ultimate reality. The only reality that matters."

Chapter 21

By the time he reached the outer limits of Sofelarus's dense canopy, Kilton was cloistered in his own thoughts, surrounded by wistful doubt. Perc
hed on the rogue stem jutting downward from the main canopy, he placated his apathetic mind on the dreadful lesion torn into the Provider's body a few thousand feet below.

The final moments of his friend's battle with the Deagron Maker, his perch providing
an ideal aerial vantage, temporarily abated the numbness in his soul. Like thousands of celebrated passages recorded in the Deeds and viewed countless times in his long life, the Guardian's orchestrated offensive was spectacular to behold.

It is only fitt
ing the last Deagron battle recorded by the Deeds be the most salient.

Vejax, as usual, did not disappoint. Grimlock and Martna, their unique union of the Source, earned a respectful whistle from the old man. As Steffor landed before the wounded but far fr
om defeated monster, Kilton instinctually braced himself for what would come next. Akin to the experience prior to Steffor forging his staff, the Source around Kilton began to dissipate. Despite being far above the scene, Kilton squinted from the blue fury radiating around the man and held his breath as Steffor's invocation reached its peak. Just when he thought Steffor might be lost to his own power, he and his furious light pierced the Deagron Maker.

The creature howled in pain, its limbs extending behind
and convulsed in rigid agony. Steffor's invasive energy slowly elevated the Deagron off the ground as the blue light seeped from a thousand crevices, warping it from the inside out. Rotated so that its belly faced the sky like an impaled bug specimen, the body rose past the cliff, halting high above the city in front of the hole it had emerged. A sickening crack filled the air as the shell bent opposite the hunched back. Kilton winced despite himself as the powerful light finally burst through and disintegrated the last Deagron from the world.

A wave of silence immediately followed the blast of energy. Kilton existed in the quiet, contemplating the meaning of Steffor's disappearance.
And so the road of trials begins. The time of reckoning has arrived.
Foresight into what the future may bring did little to relieve a heart plagued with indifference. Reluctant to embrace the role bestowed upon him, hesitating to fulfill a promise made many lifetimes ago, Kilton pleaded to the Provider for insight one final time.

"Ask me what you desire and I will reveal what you are prepared to see."

"Why request this of me now?"

"It is time. The need for your sacrifice is the irrevocable; the concordant ascension of all is predicated on your final choice."

"But why remove the blissful blinders from my soul? Has not blind faith led me to make choices for the greater good in the past? Why must I make this choice with the outcome revealed?"

"On the contrary, none of the decisions you have made to this point have required blin
d faith. Do the Deeds not reveal all that was learned from past lives? Does shifting the Source not provide you tangible evidence of my existence?"

"Yes, but all of those gifts empowered me to make hard decision, content to leave that which I did not under
stand in your hands. Has this devout faith not been evident in all that you have asked me?"

"Yes, and it has directly contributed to my growth, our growth."

"Will I remember my life here, with you? Will I remember what it means to be loved?"

"Your soul wil
l remember me. Trust in this as you have from the beginning and know that I will always reside in your heart, no matter how dark it may become."

"Can you not make an exception this one time and instill some shred of memory of this existence."

"I am now. Have you ever known me to communicate in this manner to any Citizen?"

"No. I just...the next level...I thought I would ascend, not descend."

"Your next life will be your last in this world."

"Is the place I go really of your world?"

"Yes."

"What purpose does
it serve?"

"A soul always has a choice and it is his alone to make. The decision a soul makes directly affects the direction it will go, either toward me or away. To know the true impact of those decisions, a soul must experience the extreme of both. Ever
y advance is complemented by a retreat."

"What went wrong?"

"We have been separated from the Divine Presence for too long. My ability to maintain balance has reached its limits."

"What is our purpose?"

"To show the wonders of Becoming, evolve spiritual greatness and promote life without strife or rivalry.

"Have we not already reached that destination?"

"Yes and now it is time to share it with the rest of the Universe. Your role and the choices you make in future events will directly influence us completing that final step."

"Why did I
—Sevorist—have to make the ultimate sacrifice so long ago? Why suppress the existence of the Deagron Maker and the origins of the Forging Tree?"

"The Deagron played a pivotal role in our early growth. They fostered the most pain
ful step in our evolution that, without them, we would have never willingly embraced. By the time you, Triffor and Fregak discovered the Deagron Maker, the Deagron's usefulness had ended."

"It was originally
intended for you to return safely to apply what you learned about the Deagron Maker, and how its offspring proliferated from my seed. The Forging Tree would soon after be born, providing man the final counter measure to defeat their requisite enemy, leading up to an epic and final battle led by the first generation of Teuton Guardians."

"The final closure we never had."

"Correct."

"But why deviate from that destiny?"

"It was a required measure of control. Our ability to survive has been threatened by inevitability, foreseen since the genesis. The solution was not revealed until that fateful day."

"Which was?"

"Force the Deagron Maker into hibernation, a feat accomplished by the combined actions of Sevorist destroying the last generation of Deagrons before they were spawned and the birth of the Forging Tree."

"Steffor's transformation of the Forging Tree....it released the Deagron Maker."

"Yes."

"But why wait till now?"

"To ensure our survival required reaching our final destination sooner than what was originally accounted for."

"We ran out of time?"

"In the corporal sense of the word, yes. As it was always intended, the Deagron forced us to grow when otherwise we would have not."

"Why not reveal the outcome of Sevorist's sacrifice to me then?"

"You are always given what you are prepared to receive. Search your heart and you will know Sevorist made an informed choice."

"What of Steffor? What makes him so different from the rest of us?"

"Steffor is the physical embodiment of me."

"What do you mean? I thought you resided in all of us."

"My spirit resides in all living creatures. As life grows, so do I. Citizens exemplify this process and contribute to my growth in ways no other life form can. In order that I may complete the growth intended by this vicarious existence, there must be an intermediary to experience the process first hand. Steffor, and all of his or her past incarnations, is that agent."

"And what of the place you now send me? Do you grow in the same way?"

"Yes Kilton. But you already know this, as it directly relates to your future mission. You are the balance that will restore harmony between the two."

"So be it."

Kilton stood up, and with a renewed paradigm, faced the maligned Source oozing freely from the Trunk's gaping wound. With a dramatic inhale, he released a final prayer: "Thank you father. I love you with all that I am. Please forgive my questioning mind and doubtful heart."

Taking in a more efficacious breath, finding utile strength from the liturgical words, K
ilton aimed his body and soul and dove head first into destiny.

Garments, reinforced from energy once allocated to faculties no longer needed, encased in a Source sphere fortified by the reserve power of his staff, Kilton plunged into the loathsome crud an
d forced his way down the Provider's hollow core. The deeper he penetrated the more tainted the flow of Source became. As he finally reached the vast lake of Source stored below the Provider's extensive root system, the flow of healthy Source diminished to a trickle. The ability to shift his protective sphere lost, the poisonous radiation began to tear into his garments and burn away skin, tendon, muscle and bone.

"Not yet!" Kilton screamed, pressing forward with a determination born beyond the flesh. Pushe
d to the limits, he finally reached the Provider's heart. Puzzled by the temporal nature of his destination, repulsed by the invasive tumor consuming it, Kilton was calmed by the presence of Steffor seconds before exploding his being into the negative energy destroying the Provider from within.

*****

Dazed and confused, his eyes still adjusting to the strange light permeating from everywhere yet originating from nowhere, Steffor got to his feet and studied the thorny hedge. The organic wall, adroitly pleached from a species of bush he could not identify, was about ten yards wide. He craned his neck and followed the wall over a hundred feet before it disappeared into a ceiling of dense gray clouds.

Steffor turned around and peered down a long trail with no end in sight. Carpeted by a spongy green, short turf and framed by sinister hedgerows extending from the sides of the dead end wall, the trail presented the only means of exit.
I guess it is intended I go this way.

With peevish determination, Steffor started down the path. Moments into his walk, the amnesic residue coating his befuddled mind
—a condition disconcertingly familiar to how he felt moments after he emerged from Calivera's table—dissipated and as it did, he became cognizant his staff’s absence. His confusion was compounded when, while frantically searching for the staff in the vain hope that it might be secretly stowed within his garments, he realized his Guardian garments had been replaced by a strange silver colored singlet. Skin tight but barely perceptible to the touch, the narrow v-neck suit exposed shoulders and legs just above the knees.

What is this place? Why am I so......slow on the uptake?
The moment he stood up his senses would have normally logged the texture, smell and color of the weird lawn. By the first step, he could estimate the length of each blade within hundredths of inch. Why now, having traveled over a hundred yards did he struggle to register any of these basic senses, let alone just now realizing he was barefoot and no longer wearing the garments that had not left his body since becoming a Guardian.

On impulse, Steffor extend
ed his right arm and tried to shift a pulse of the Source. Nothing.
The Source surrounds this place but something blocks me from shifting it.
He searched for the Deeds in the hope they might reveal some precedent to what he now experienced and could not locate the Mysticnet to access them. Steffor sat down, crossed his legs and closed his eyes.
Reach past yourself, find the Provider
, he told himself as he began to meditate. Clearing his mind as he had trained to do his entire life, he opened his heart. Due to altered sense of time, he could not decipher how long he meditated but certain it was well past the normal amount of time required to open a connection with the Provider.

For the first time in his life, Steffor panicked in earnest.
It is all so......stale! Real but lifeless, as if the Source once flowed here and all that remains is an empty shell.

"Have I died?" Steffor asked aloud. No, he told himself, confused as I may be, I know this is not the afterlife.

"You are both right and wrong," said a voice in his head. Steffor jumped to his feet and spun around in search of the owner. "Who said that?"

"Come down the trail a little farther and find out for yourself." The voice had an ominous tone but Steffor knew it was something else about the voice that swirled trepidation in his gut. Steffor headed back down
the trail, robbed of the compass that always showed him the direction to go at every crossroads, for the first time believing he had no other choice.

After what Steffor estimated to be a mile, the trail issued into a wide, gradually ascending glade. As St
effor scaled the hill, the grass field continued to expand to his left and right as the gray blanket above rose higher in the sky. Within thirty minutes of steady hiking, the hedgerow walls were but faint arboreal sides to a gray dome. Within the hour, Steffor reached the top of the hill and stopped at its peak to gaze upon a setting that was both strange and familiar.

Like a wave about to curl, the hill was the same height in either direction with a steep decline that fed into dense woodlands. Positioned a
thousand feet over the highest tree, Steffor scanned the top of the forest for miles without finding a discernable end; the distant tops blending into the featureless gray backdrop. Despite his eyes not finding it, he innately sensed the mysterious hedgerow encompassing it all.