Dark World

by Resha Caner

conclusion

“If you built it,” Penel pleaded, “then you can stop it.”

“No.” The mechanical chirp of Varus’ voice faded in despair. “This machine is not confined to the material from which I built it. It moves by inhabiting the earth around it, possessing it, consuming it, spewing the spent remnants behind. It is more a chemical reaction than a machine. Trying to stop it would be like stopping an explosion after the powder has been ignited. No one controls it. They only light the fuse, and it will continue on until all fuel is spent — until everything Red is gone.”

Penel did not wait to hear more, but ordered work on the defenses to cease, and everyone turned their attention to the ship. The only hope, she said, was to complete the ship and sail away before the arrival of the Seytan. Everyone focused on her orders except the two who had encountered it before.

The Captain stood beside Varus as he wrapped himself in a silence of despair.

“I thought the Seytan was lost,” Varus whispered.

“So did I,” the Captain said. “The Red General himself led the diversion that took it down beneath the foundations of the world to trap it in the molten seas of the deep. I volunteered to go, but my assignment was to stay behind with the Fifteenth Queen.

“Then, when she was mortally wounded by Black Soldiers, I was sent on with the Sixteenth Queen.” His toe played across the sand before he continued. “Why do they do it? Fight over finding the Convergence?” He shook his head, and held out his hands as if expecting the ocean to answer.

Varus sighed. “The answer is all too simple, my friend. To possess it. To possess what surpasses all things is to be a god.”

“Does it make us gods,” the Captain asked, “or demons? I cannot stop trying to figure out how we might stop it.”

“If the Seytan did not dissipate itself in the deep caverns, I cannot imagine what could ever stop it.”

“Then why are you here with us? You could leave. This is not your fight.”

“Ha,” Varus snorted. “Such a silly thing. We look for complex answers to life’s questions, yet they are so simple.”

“Do you ever give a straight answer?”

Varus laughed again. “I was greedy, my friend. The best way for a seller of war material to make a profit is for war to continue. So, after my deal with the Black Queen, I went to the Fifteenth Queen of the Red Colony, thinking I could build a weapon for her as well. What I did not expect was to fall in love. Penel reminds me of her.”

“I love Penel like no other,” the Captain said.

Varus slapped the Captain on the back. “She is blessed to have you.”

“I’ve been thinking of what you said about the Convergence,” the Captain said. “No one has ever found a way through it or around it. Maybe that is because they have never really seen it. How can one appreciate music if one cannot hear? How can one appreciate the stars if one cannot see? You have built machines to do both. Maybe you could build a machine to see things no one has ever seen.”

“It can’t be stopped.” Varus left his cold, mechanical voice to enforce the words. “Hmm.” He ground the heel of his boot against a rock. “No, it can’t be stopped. But maybe it can be tricked.”

The Captain wanted to question Varus, but the odd alien raced away, muttering quixotic formulas and incantations. He refused help, insisting everyone continue work on the ship, and in a sheltered cave near the tunnel running under the cliff, the Captain heard clanging and hammering. His heart lifted, and he found the strength he needed to push himself into the task of building a water vessel.

Despite their efforts, the time was too short, and the craft not ready when the battle came. The Seytan had no need for stealth, and the forest rumbled with its approach long before it broke from the ground.

“Into the water,” Penel ordered. The stay ropes were cut and the assigned crew put their muscle to the launch levers. The half-built ship rolled down the gangway, shuddering as it struck the water. Everyone held their breath, waiting to see what the craft would do.

Though it listed to one side with an imperfect balance, it did not sink, and the Red Colony climbed aboard, hoisting sails to make use of what wind they could and working the oars to push out into the open ocean.

The tiny Colony huddled on the deck beneath the incomplete superstructure, their ears turned toward the beach as they awaited the arrival of the mechanical demon.

The Captain remained on the beach until everyone had boarded, and then he turned to stare into the cave. Varus appeared from his cave, coughing out wood dust, his feet slogging in oil-soaked shoes.

A low, grinding rumble issued from the tunnel. The Captain’s fear asked for the fell scream of a demon, but the Seytan would not give it. It wasted no energy on such things, but plodded on, eating away at everything in its path, unstoppable.

The trees of the distant forest began to waver and crash against each other as their roots were broken from below and they lost their grip upon the earth. Dust rolled from the mouth of the tunnel like fire from an angry dragon, and the Captain could hear a cascade of rock as it began to collapse from back to front.

“I have no time to explain,” Varus said. “You must put as much distance between yourself and the Seytan as possible. I have one trick left — one last little device to put the Seytan off your scent. Put on the audioscope and get aboard. When the time comes, the scope is all you will have to direct the course of the ship. Choose a runner to convey your orders by touch. And take this with you.” Varus pointed into the cave where a large box lurked.

The Captain realized Varus intended to stay, and he put his hand on the man’s arm. “Varus,” he said, “in your time with us you have picked up the Red scent. The Seytan will think you one of us.”

“You need more time. Someone must delay it.” Then Varus raced into the cave and returned, pulling the box onto the beach. “Turn it on here.” He grabbed the Captain’s hand, familiarizing him with the pertinent switch.

The Captain put on the audioscope, stumbling until he had accustomed himself to using sight rather than sound. Then he waded out into the ocean carrying the box. A Soldier reached down to lift the box onto the deck as others pulled the Captain aboard.

A blast of heat spewed from the tunnel, and Varus climbed the face of the rock to stand on the arch above. The Diggers had left tools from their work on the trenches, and he activated one of the electric shovels.

Realizing Varus’ intent, the Captain snarled. He attempted to divert steam into the tunnel, flooding it with superheated water to slow the Seytan. He would never finish in time.

The Captain stepped to the rail of the ship, ready to dive back into the water.

“No, Captain.” Penel put a hand on his arm. “We need you here.”

“Someone must help him.”

Penel exhaled, pondered for a moment, and then drew herself up in royal fashion. “If I am to be a Queen, it is time for me to make the decisions only a Queen can make. How many Diggers would it take to collapse the tunnel?”

“Penel,” the Captain gasped. “I will not send a Digger to do a Soldier’s job.”

“How many?” she asked.

The Captain searched his memory for the construction of the tunnel, then turned and queried a nearby Digger with a series of clicks and hisses. “Three,” he said.

“Send them,” Penel ordered, and in her voice the Captain heard a grim tenor he had not known in her before.

He considered defying her order and going himself, but he knew a Colony had no future without proper respect for its Queen, and he sent the Diggers.

The three men moved with great speed to the mouth of the tunnel as a blast of steam scorched the sand, turning it into a writhing mass of cauma. The Diggers leapt the burning pool and scrambled to the top of the small overhang forming the exit of the tunnel. Without the aid of machines, but bearing only tools of the old days in their hands, they opened a crack in the rock with expert skill. The overhang collapsed, taking one of the Diggers with it, as the roar of falling rock ripped across the beach and onto the open water carrying the smell of dirt, dust, and death.

“Send them back!” Varus heard the Captain bellow as the ship moved farther and farther from shore. He knew the Captain hoped to recover the two remaining Diggers, but the men did not retreat. Instead, they continued to wield their tools, breaking rock and widening the mouth of the trench to pour more and more calefacient water down on the approaching demon.

As they worked, small fissures of steam broke free like fingers pushing out of a grave. The ground rumbled, twisting and writhing like a great fallen beast as primitive hunters beat upon it with stone clubs, hoping to break its back. Yet the beast would not die. With one last huff, the ground settled in a brief moment of silence, and then erupted in a mammoth explosion. The two Diggers disappeared, their bodies ripped apart by shards of rock hurtling in every direction.

Varus looked to the ocean, and nodded with satisfaction. The ship had made the necessary distance. “And now for the last part,” he sighed.

The Seytan emerged from beneath the tunnel, ripping a deep furrow across the beach with terrible speed, turning in every direction at once, searching. Tools, carts, and empty boxes left behind by the Red were hungrily pulled under the surface as the Seytan hunted. The fervor paused, and Varus knew it was calculating an approach through the water to take the ship. He marveled at the speed of its decision, and it reached the edge of the beach in seconds.

Yet before it could enter the water, as if a great curtain fell upon the conclusion of a stage play, the ship disappeared into empty blackness. Sound and light, smell and touch vanished.

“It worked!” he shouted in victory.

Only one last vestige of Red remained on the beach, and Varus turned to face the Seytan.