Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy, Volume One) (6 page)

"Master, I pray you forgive my ignorance, but how is it you survived?" Steffor kept his back to the man and said nothing, not knowing h
ow to begin to address the question. The rush of Source was fading and the insatiable craving for more already mounted. But the sudden twist in events kept him under control for the moment. He stared at the reservoir below and tried to make sense of things.

"We received word from the First Province, before Durlirave and his minions overthrew our forces, that you had evaded the assassination only to fle
e into the abyss. Is it true? What did you discover? Are the legends true?"

Steffor was only partially list
ening, struggling to make sense of his own internal dialogue.
This is not my world yet its existence serves a purpose. But what purpose? Why am I here? Am I to destroy it?

"All of this," Steffor said with his arms spread toward the city and bough beyond, "
must end."

"Yes and with your return, no one will ever stand in the way of your eternal rule. What is thy bidding?"

"Destroy the factories, extinguish the fires. The Source must flow freely!"

"Destroy what...the
Source
...what do you speak of?" Despite his conspicuous deference, the other could not hide the disbelief or reluctance from his voice.

Steffor turned on his he
el, feeling drained and flat, his mind and body aching for the rush of tainted Source.
It must be destroyed before it destroys me.
"Destroy it all, take every man-"

*****

Caught between what was neither life nor death, Steffor floated in black nothingness; an oppressive vice pressing the essence of his soul, death's sickle on eternal life.

This cannot be! Life is eternal. The Provider is eternal. Where are you father?

The nothingness mocked him. The vice tightened. Language, beliefs, ideas, love, the final fibers of life, faded from consciousness. Sadness, the last emotion to register, before the void that was nothing, forever consumed his existence.

After what could have been an eternity or no time at all, Steffor's soul revived to soft, musical vibrations. The frequencies of sound massaged and healed, repairing his essence piece by piece. S
urrounded by crystalline whites and rich mosaics, his reformed energy floated in a plane of infinite size and possibility.

He would have stayed in that existence if not for the sudden ping of another; one bound to his soul through endless love forged over
countless lifetimes. His guide materialized at that moment, a pulsing, violet energy contained by a faint human outline. Patient but with a sense of urgency, she gently pulled him from his ethereal bed, back toward the dense material plane.

It is time to r
eturn Steffor, there is much to accomplish before your mission is complete.

*****

The Source, guided by a divine touch, caressed his essence like a warm shower. The touch massaged away dense knots of negative energy and aligned his soul with body.

"The flesh will heal but his vibrational resonances will not harmonize. He remains...imbalanced. An energy I have never encountered is preventing true symmetry..." The voice, at first coming from the far reaches of his consciousness, was now so close he s
melt the speaker's sweet breath brushing his ear.

Steffor tried to open his eyes and found he could not. A gummy epoxy had formed around his eye lids, gently keeping them closed.

"Let me help you," said the musical voice, still intimately close. A soft hand ran across his brow and eyelids, immediately followed by the gush of his own tears gently forcing his eyes open. The salty sting of his tears instantly revived connection to mind and body.

The next sensation to register was his complete immobility. Sensin
g his sudden panic, the voice said, "It’s all good, you are in a Healer's shell."

Healer's shell? Why am I in...the
dive championship...the branch...I am alive! How? I should not be alive, I do not...wish to be...alive. I just want to rest.
His new reality too much to comprehend, too soon, new tears, tears of grief, freely streamed down his face.

Steffor looked around his surroundings as best he could, given the vice-like but cushioned head-to-toe grip on his body. He recognized the conical ceiling of the H
ealer's shell. Steffor's conditioned response to relax was instant, triggered by the healing Source pulsing through the spacious room in soothing, warm colors along the curved walls. He concluded soon after, given his centered proximity in the room, his entire body must have been lying in a Healer's table: a waist high block, shifted directly from the sapwood of the Provider's Trunk.

This was not his first time in a Healer's shell. His first visit to a Healer occurred after shattering his wrist training for
a regional dive qualifier ten years prior. His entire arm submerged into the table, the Healer had rhythmically moved his hands over the smooth, pliable wood and intravenously merged the Provider's energy into Steffor’s injured hand. His hand completely healed within minutes. A pang of withdraw immediately followed the procedure and lingered for days after.

Steffor lost himself in the memory. Life seemed much simpler back then. Everything made perfect sense, a time when thoughts of not wanting to live were
foreign. Reveling in a time past, feeling sorry for himself, he could not recall how her face appeared before his eyes but he recognized how that face, her smile conveying love in ways he only imagined possible, instilled a new purpose to go on.

"Welcome
back," she said as if on cue, beaming a relieved smile.

All Steffor could do was stare into her corroborant, gray-blue eyes. He tried to return the smile but could only muster a babbling sob. To his relief, she simply hovered over him with a caring smile.
Steffor did not question this gift. On the contrary, he greedily accepted it; staring deeper into her cathartic eyes until all concept of time disappeared. The trance finally broke when her face contorted with an expression of mild pain and her lips parted to release a soft moan.

"Why won't you align?" She asked, sounding both disappointed and concerned.

Because I no longer belong here
, he thought. Instead, he answered her question with the only question he really cared to know the answer: "Who are you?"

Gi
ven their face-to-face position, Steffor realized for the first time that she was lying on top of him. Rather, she was lying on top of the table, his face being the only portion of his body not submerged into the table.

"My name is Calivera. I am your Healer."

"How long have I been here?"

"Three days. By most definitions, you were dead when you arrived."

"You saved me?"

"You saved yourself. I simply helped you find your way back. Do you feel strong enough to leave the tab
le?"

Not waiting for a reply, Calivera swung off the table and moved to his side then leaned into the right side of his vision. "No one has ever been completely submerged into a healer's table, much less for three days. If you are able, we need to make the
separation."

Hard as he might try, Steffor could not feel his body. For that matter, he could not remember what it meant to have a body. The only feeling he could remember was how Calivera had caressed his soul.

"Are you ready? I will go slowly." Rejected by her insistence, he was far from ready to leave the table, to face the world, to go on. "Here we go." Breath sucked from Steffor's lungs the moment the sapwood lowered and exposed his body to gravity.

"Stop! The pain
…it’s too much!"

"It will pass," was
all Calivera replied, continuing the slow descent of the table. Shaking uncontrollably, Steffor fought against the pain.

"Stay with me!" Calivera commanded.

Steffor turned to her in desperation, searching her eyes for relief, begging to stay within the supportive confines of the table. She conveyed love and sympathy but continued the torturous withdraw. Right before passing out, he started to believe it would be enough to sustain him through anything.

Steffor awoke to a warm breeze on his face, reclined in
a comfortable chair sitting on a large veranda. Razum City's Upper East Side consumed his view, leading him to surmise he had received treatment from Calivera at the main Healer center: a multi- tiered facility shifted into the Provider's Trunk. Steffor tried to digest the cityscape, finding it difficult to process the flurry of activity and colossal scale. Citizens traveled along intricate systems of bridges, escalators and elevators interconnected to a forest of enormous structures shifted from the Provider's first limb, known for generations as the flying buttress. The Provider had never been more intimidating.

He turned away and found Calivera by his side. Positioned under one of the many sunbeams peppering the veranda, she reclined peacefully with eyes
closed and arms casually folded above her head. Despite himself, Steffor's eyes wandered up the length of her long, athletic body. Tall by any standard, the white healer's tunic accentuated her perfect proportions. Images of their bodies in deep embrace formed by the time he reached her graceful neck lying on blonde tresses. Moving to her face, the full lips parted slightly as if about to whistle then formed a bright smile as her eyes greeted his stare.

"Enjoying the view?" she asked, nodding toward the cit
y.

"Yes. I am," he replied, not averting his eyes.

"How do you feel?" she inquired, sitting up in her chair.

"Better. The pain has subsided but I feel...hollow." On impulse, he stood up. D
izzy at first, he quickly regained his balance. Calivera shot up, giving him a mixed look of disapproval and admiration. Saying nothing, she grabbed a hold of Steffor’s hand, gestured with the other down the length of the veranda and began to walk.

Populat
ed by a smattering of healers and patients, the long veranda, shifted from resin polished bark, displayed an assortment of doorways and archways shifted into the Trunk, each leading to various Healer facilities: shells, pools, living quarters, etc. With the city sprawled in every direction to their left and the Provider's Trunk all-consuming to their right, the contrast between the two made the city appear closer and smaller than it actually was.

Steffor was content to hold hands with the women he had just
met, yet somehow intimately connected to, leisurely walking down the veranda for several minutes before his curiosity surrounding recent events finally forced him to ask the obvious.

"What happened?"

"Well, what do you remember?"

"Everything up to the imp
act with the mysterious branch."

"Mysterious branch? What makes you call it
mysterious
?" Calivera asked perplexed.

"Nothing. Just tell me what you know proceeding the accident up to now."

"Somehow you managed to break through the branch and emerge from the dive chute. By the unnatural contortion of your body and flailing limbs, we assumed you were unconscious at the time." She paused at that moment, looking at him for confirmation.

"My last memory was right before impact with the branch," he repeated, gestu
ring with raised eyebrows for her to go on.

"Anyway, about midway between the chute's end and the Deagron Fields you slammed into the Trunk. Amazingly, your body landed in a rut between bark. As a result, your descent was dramatically slowed. You appeared
destined to slide down the remainder of the Trunk and disappear into the depths of the Belly Briar, when your body was abruptly thrown outward toward the edge of the Deagron Fields. At the last second, you formed a source sphere to break your landing."

He knew she wanted him to fill in the blanks but the fact was he could not. "Who won?"

"Grimlock. After what people are now referring to as The Crossing, Vejax and Grimlock had lost too much time to overtake your lead, emerging from their respective chutes a few seconds after you did. Vejax had a half second lead on Grimlock, plenty of time to win but when he saw your condition, he pulled up. No one knows why and neither has shared their thoughts on the race. Everyone is waiting to learn of your condition."

Based off Calivera's recital and her response to the branch mysteriously appearing, it seemed safe to conclude that the branch had always been there.
Could I have overlooked it? No, I am positive it was not there until the last moment. So what then?

As he
contemplated Calivera's feedback, he began to notice the probing stares of those around them. Word that I am alive, if it hadn't already, was surely being transmitted by this time, he surmised by the excited faces. Questions, lots of them, where sure to follow.

He still had time. Respect for each other's privacy was one of the many values held sacred by the Provider's society. No one would force him to do anything he was not comfortable doing. Even so, truth and honestly held an equal value. Not coming for
ward in a timely manner to share his experience with the whole would set a precedent unknown in modern times. Still struggling with the foreign emotion of not wanting to return to life, Steffor was at a complete loss as to how to explain what happened. He had never needed the Provider's guidance more than he did now.