Labyrinths

[HuggieSunrise]

Previously

Haog aka Jim McKenna Stood on an suspended bridge way leading into what looked like a mirror frame. It was a new construction within Altair. Ont he alien side where humanoids were not welcome it was practice to have an escort.

Harbinger or Suum which was the humanoid Harbinger. Red skin, jet black.. what you could say was hair and eyes that were little more then pits where his perceptions flowed. It was an immense being but different then what you'd think Harbinger was.

The builder caste the dreamers were the engineers of the hive one appeared at the opposite end and began to manipulate the mirror like aperture. its arms reached out as tones and sounds emanated within the entire chamber, Haog looked off the bridge to see that lights playing off of an invisible surface... they were inside of either a field of hallow crystal of some sort.

Suum "spoke" warning. "Dont go too far seraphim, you cant fly here."

Hoag pulled back looking at the giant red guy. "Your saying I could anywhere else?"

His escort huffed... psychicly? "The shadow lands have many wonders. you may."

The dreamer was not as tall as Suum but its power felt bigger then him.. Hybrids like Suum and the elder casts.. wanderers, dreamers, etc always had a presence like the whole hive of minds were behind them. Though the hybrids never lack being personable... people can interact with a hybrid easier then a older form of the nomads. Whom are much more abrasive with "lesser" species.

Energy was now flowing around the mirror frame. A surface was forming like a pool of mercury.

Hoag suddenly had.. second thoughts. The old man in him was thinking hell go through all this and appear as his old man self trip on a rock and break his neck. Suum never spoke of the shadow lands but satrina said it was a vast alien wilderness.

"The vision of the lands of light within the shadowlands are almost hospitable to beings such as us... a near human would have great difficulty if one even made it there... it isnt not an illusion it is not a trick this is a place that the light carve out of a diemension were nothing should exist.. it is imperfect... scary, and above all deadly."

She had a way of hiding truth... she wasent hiding it then.

"What is it like." Said.. more as an order then a.. question. Suum regarded the little man next to him.

"Imagine part of you is a branch of something so huge and eternal that few things surprise you, your experience is many lessons and suddenly you enter a cave of wonder.. awe.. and find the other-side to be beautiful.. brilliant.. and mortally frightening..." Suum imparted.

"I see.. Do you miss it?" Haog asked.

"I dream of it. I yearn for it. Yet there is fear. " Suum said.

Fear.. from harbinger. ... great.

"So I should take something to defend myself?" Haog asked

Suum "smiled" at him.

There was the sound of thunder.. electricity was in the air the mercurial surface was now like an hourglass tunneling outward reaching toward Haog.

Inside there was a blue light.. errily bleeding through to this world this diemension. The light was cool.. and warm at the same time.. it seemed to call to him.

The dreamer make noises and gestures.. Suum nodded.

"Haog. its time.. Three Winds is coming." Suum implored.

Hoag didn't think walking towards the looking glass the "focus" of the other world was more vivid he felt natural..gravity an attraction.. he felt as if he "slipped" but was being carried in.. as he went in he saw Thomas's flowing white cloak possibly as he was entering Thomas was exiting.

For a moment he panicked feeling his emphatic senses his ears and eyes were assaulted with extremes of cold and heat..

Then suddenly silence. A single voice..

"Jim.. Forgive me."

Something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.. The forces where all wrong he wasent going far enough something was trying to pull him back..

Haog was suspended above a void... a gate way visible from where he came.. he saw Thomas well his back and the Dreamer laboring like it was attempting to reverse this process.

"No let me go im almost there!" Haog yelled no idea if they could hear him.

Thomas raised a hand and the dreamers head went in an odd direction violently.. Thomas was suddenly solid and the pull on Haog re asserted itself. Flying quickly instantly over what looked like oceans of.. nothing.. silvery water like masses.. ...

Then sudden falling..

He knew this sensation.. he was definitely falling like an escape pod falls and the only thing you had to guarantee your going to make it was the fact the chair you where strapped in to was rated to survive terminal velocity impacts. ... 5 times out of 10.

[HuggieSunrise]

Ruins went on and on. What was the central city there was only three structures left intact.

Haog lay in a pile of dust and debris... it wasnt a hard impact.. he had felt several inconstant slowdowns in his dissent.

Haog was beyond confused.. this.. was definitely not what he expected. Satrina had described a quaint outpost set in a vary ... lush valley.

This was a moonscape.. grey mists flowing from cracks in the ground. Winds howling and whistling through.. the skeletons of structures. .. Haog surveyed stepping on debris.. murals.. art..

Wait.. maybe this wasn't art..

This was an elder caste... Mostly dust but forms left undisturbed. Haog went to touch what was left and barely any disturbance blew it away.

For the fraction of a moment he was able to remember or sense its final moments. There wasn't any heat or.. force.. no explosion just a feeling of.. attraction? A pulling and a draining. it felt like bleeding to death.. Sadly Haog knew what that felt like from his own misadventures with a knife in the back and a gunshot to the knee.

Standing up Haog made way for the interior of the only shelters that were left standing. The door Spiraled apart like a animated piece of art. It was ingenious... if it wasn't probably a grave.

The inside was warmer, pews were lined up and set out neatly... Haog had seen this place before.. it was a recreation of The Aquanas church on Malta. Catholic Iconography paintings and glass where dimly lit by a soft blue glow. The lights inside seemed like fireflies or.. undersea life then a candle or lamp.

Haog walked behind the Podium... Yes.. Thomas definitely build this.. But how long ago.. when did this happen here?

"Need answers.." Haog focused.. sensing the echos of the past. The vary "place" was alive.. It was a witness. Because this was a.. illusion or rather and expression of the hive-mind... It must remember.. would it speak to him? As it had before?

It felt as if it was trying to.

The room lit up.. shadows became forms.. there were many meetings here..

The first flash was Thomas tatters in appearance speaking to a bruised and scarred group. They were hybrids.. the newest generation.

"They will not respect you.. You are their toys.. their puppets. Within their reality the echo will never usurp the voice. But ... All that separates you is what they cannot control... your will, your feelings, your.... passions... " Thomas suddenly looked off to his right towards Haog.. and the vision stopped.

Oh ... I dont like the look of this Old man.. He thought.. he also was thinking.. this wasn't the plan. Making these.. nymphs these babies fight their elders?

Like.. men and maggots.. they would have no chance. and judging from the outside no one made it.

Haog scoured and looked through every drawer and door. Nothing was left here.. no notes.. So this was not a true sanctuary. There might be one further along... if it wasn't a complete wasteland outside..

Haog left the small temple. And began to journey forth into the wasteland.

[HuggieSunrise]

Roughly two weeks since Haog landed in this place and wandering ahead... He had thoughts of.. when he expected to be hungry or thirsty... realizing there was no cardamine here and even those sensations weren't happening.

Energy seemed to beam from.. everything.. the plants the grass.. Wait a minute.

There is grass here. Haog looked up to see the sight that he had been told before coming here. But it looked untouched.. it had been years before he came... and supposedly there were supposed to be cities.

The land was remaking itself? Was it healing from whatever happened?

There were ruins all the way here.. he had sensed the same thing in every tomb. The draining dying sensation. Something went wrong in the badlands but here... here it was pristine.

Something sucked the life out of the center of this place but it seems to be recovering... vary slowly.

It was in the blue Forrest he saw the first sign of actual life... Sensing its energy it felt like a morphs mind

Hoag projected warmth to the being and it began the float over to him.

"Hello little one." Hoag said.

"You do not take?, you are different. you give." It chimed

The statement was a little disturbing. Forms and colors and textures were many here but only essence mattered he thought.. did something suck the life from everything here?

"What happened to the lands in the center?" Haog asked.

For awhile there was silence but the images were streaming in..

Faces, creatures, cities, all consumed.. at the end was only one face.. one being at the heart of it. and it stunned him.

Letting the swirl of memories integrate within his mind... he felt an expansion within.. A type of sense for what was before and in the future. The present tense was more fluid.

Looking back "inland" the before the great city that had been there expanded out this far.. It was first an outpost.. bridges connecting floating islands in the sky.

It grew into a metropolis.. but something strange occured, an attack.. but it wasent like the last even.. this.. looked like a raid from other beings..

They looked like dreamers and wanderers.

After this many left the city.. parts of it weren't repaired. It happened vary quickly.. but where were the answers?

"Little one.. are there any older spirits nearby?" Haog asked..

The small whisp flew out amongst the trees until this.. Giant.. "thing" overshadowed by canopy's of blue stood up.

The ground rang, vibrated as it spoke..

"Seraphim... The winds foretold you..." It communicated.

"What the hell happened?!" Haog asked.

It looked down at him..

"Yes, let us sit upon the ground.. and tell sad tales.. of the death of kings."

[HuggieSunrise]

The being that spoke to Haog was named Yaldabaoth and it had witnessed the ages of the great light city that grew above the ground from its humble beginnings as an outpost it rose from the ground.

There were millions of beings, hybrids within it and all within built the city... it was soon after its rise into the sky that those that dwell in the sky grew resentful.

There was no other influence above the Advisers. It was via them that the outpost for the Hybrids begain and this place was given the blessing to begin as it seemed the greater spirit the light of the entire hive mind willed it so But something crept in.. something went wrong, ego become rooted in their voices..

ThreeWinds was the one who consulted them in the first place he always had the touch of foresight and why the Advisers bothered speaking to this.. man thing this mongrel as they came to regard him.

The Hybrids were nothing more then a better solider a better weapon for the elegant and pure castes to use aganst all those who opposed their will.

Many of the elder casts within the shadow lands were vary old beings and a handful of them would incarnate back in the sirius dream.

But one new comer from Sirius was Semjase... a "young" adviser of renown came to assist the caste of the beyond to guide the hive.

"Semjase forebear the wrath of the elders.. the fair castes upon the drones... which they called the new children of this land he called them hybrids but to each other they were brothers and sisters." Yaldabaoth told the story.

The peace did not last... to the fair castes it was an extermination. To the drones it was war.

Threewinds made them pay for the fair castes mistake. You do not exterminate what is at war with you. For what wages a battle will overcome any instinct or basic culling.

"For you see the fair castes viewed the drones as beneath them. Threewinds spoke the truth... the drones where equal and had listened enough to follow their own rules." Yaldabaoth illustrated.

The city of light crashed upon the earth but instead of sealing the fate of any or all usurpers the legions marched in all directions. There was a price paid for peace.. and there was no more civil conflict.

There was an uneasy peace...

"Time will heal Threewinds said to the drones... but even he did not foresee treachery." Yaldabaoth foreshadowed.

It was like a sick inky cloud the covered the ground

Its name was Maldek... it was the root of ego and hatred. It showed it was superior by taking and mortally wounding Semjase.

"To take love and destroy it, was a flavor of wrath never before seen here. Maldek was but pious and superior... insects he spoke about the drones and their teacher and anyone who saw them as equal. In harming Semjase he sought to show the insects that their protection their ally was but a pawn to be toyed with or broken. Maldek truly showed them that they could be ... killed. It was a high price for such knowledge." Yaldabaoth spoke in low tones.

Flashes of her final moments lingered in Haogs imagination... he never truly thought Thomas was capable of.. "loving" someone in the special way.. "The Way" always said that special love invited segregation of true love real love the path of the master as a channel of the universe. To put a person before that blocked the flow of the universe...

Maybe he found both... and lost it.

"Semjase was not like other fair caste... their existence in Sirius contained the secrets of the old songs sung by the binary elders... Old song make even the fair castes fear because they cannot withstand thier incantations... thier magic unmakes them... all of them except the adopted children of Threewinds." the great being knelt down and sat.

"The hybrids arent affected by the old song? " Haog asked.

The storyteller nodded. and said. " I have heard that the old song within the dream of Sirius has plauged the light since the beginning... but this new generation of children could use the magic themselves."

The shape of the situation become perfectly clear...

This was the plan the whole time... and why everything up to now didn't matter. The nomads would never ever be independent until they were self sufficient and understanding or.. not being subject tot he Daam K'Vosh foundations was the only step.

Thomas had somehow done this... Semjase must have given him something... but what about this place? whats left.

There were sounds of grass being moved and steps.. the great storyteller revealed a.. grove of hidden alcoves.. like creches.

Little "people" came out of them and approached Haog.. these were hybrids.. but wheres all the adults..?

"This cant be all thats left?" Haog asked.

The storyteller .. could not answer.. but it was plain.. the being had turned to a stone.. almost indistinguishable from the other trees...

All of these trees... the Forrest.. and the little nymphs growing from this patch of pods.. This place assent a Forrest it was a memorial.. a graveyard of the hybrid survivors.. Threewinds destroyed everything... all of the high castes were gone this is why he sensed no minds no energy... this place was dormant waiting for him..

"Come here... all of you.. " Haog spoke to these.. children of the Forrest.

They all approached him regarded him, this was his mission... Three winds had planted a grove of the true next step... and returned to Sirius to enact the flood that would cleanse the rest of the fair caste... Haog knew that Thomas did not spare anything in the face of what had to be done... and the Hive itself empowered him to do it.

These children were the first wave... Haog had a bigger job then Thomas ever had... Haog had to raise these beings these children as best he could.. the only true choice...

Should he tell them about the past? the World beyond? or keep them ignorant ... and possibly innocent?

...It was not easy the first day to decide and the many years later.. it would still be difficult.