The Vault

The cracked clay streets of Samut baked brown under mid-summer sun. The heat seemed to fall in radiating sheets and scorched air visibly rippled and warped in the haze of morning.
The village had stood since before the days of the Zealots and had endured the Ban of the Sun Children in the days when Firewalkers burned for the sins of Akhal. The quiet town of Samut bore few signs of those turbulent days. The village archway, gift of the Isarchs, still stood in the market hall. Garlands of parti-coloured flowers hung wound round the arch's lacquered ebony frame. Flower petals, blanched and wilted in the heat, had already begun to flutter and fall upon the scorching tiles. During the Zealots' revolt, the Isarch's inquisitors had stretched the necks of rebels upon that very arch. The inquisitors had feared the return of Mindfire and burned entire villages to ensure it would not.
Those days were long gone, but Samut remained: the same Samut where previous generations of men and women had toiled in fields, forests, and pastures. Those men and women had to learn the lessons of the jungle, learn to gather so that they might feed. Whatever the jungles could not provide had to be grown or hunted. Here in the heat of Summertide the present generation similarly laboured in preparation for harvest, growing the same crops, raising the same beasts, living the same lives as their forebears and expecting to die in much the same way too. The lives of men had not always been thus in these regions, but Saffi's world was shaped by the pastoral rhythms of survivors who had learned to endure the privations of the fallen world and had forgotten the wonders of the Race Fathers. To a curious boy such as Saffi, the word frags and spoken lore of the Precursor world represented a window on a lost world that enticed even as it confounded belief.
As he left the homestead that morning, Saffi was worried that he hadn't tied the gate of the hog pens securely enough.
When he passed by old mother Edjo on the road he noticed her manner, hurried and impatient. When he greeted her she gave a slight wave, a weak smile, and shuffled past him. He wondered if she was upset about some insult, real or imagined, some personal slight he may have inadvertently given or forgotten.
When he had arrived at the old briars he saw the head bands of other boys hung on the trail posts. The others had arrived earlier and already ventured into the briars for harvesting. The cord-wound bands were left to stake claim to territory.
As he hurriedly went about sliding on his gloves and tying his own cord upon a post he realized he was the last to reach the briars this morning and that all the decent forage ground had been claimed. He would have to take one of the poorly marked western trails. And he was worried. For the western trails led behind the Verno Hills towards the rain shadow of Mount Ahriman. Everyone knew that forage was sparse in those dry vales of Ahriman, rune warrens of Acros, badlands kissed by Cataclysm and haunted by its restless ghosts.
Old Grandan had told him stories of lost Urzen settlements in those blighted lands. In her day she had been Word Keeper and, during the weekly reading groups she held in her leebrum, Saffi had often merely feigned interest whilst she lectured from the bench. She knew the Unwritten Words carried over from mouth to ear during the Unhistory. She preserved the stories of the Fallen Empires, the lore of Precursors, Race Fathers, the lost roots of humanity's surviving stem. Saffi had wanted to be an enthusiastic student but got distracted easily whenever she spoke of trivia such as the lineage of the Silver Clans or the origins of Jungle Law. These things meant little to Saffi, who usually got his nose stuck in some enticing tome or another, a tale of deeds such as the Testament of Ali-Vox or one of Grandan's rare Merikan romances, whenever the old reader started to wax pedantic.
As a result, Saffi missed many of finer points of her lessons, but he always perked up whenever Grandan recounted the marvels of the Urzen Empire or legends its Pestilence. Saffi had been taught that a plague had destroyed Urzen along with all the other Precursor kingdoms.
The Precursors had used advanced tekcrav to subvert nature and tamper with the sacred words of the body. Their unnatural experiments eventually breached the physical boundaries of human possibility and bred a new race of humans possessed of preternatural psychic abilities, including telepathy, precognition, and all manners of psychokinetic projection.
In the process of evolving these psychic gifts, however, the Urzen and other adherents of mindfire had been driven mad by the very metaphysical powers which they had unleashed in their hubris: the Mindfire Pestilence. These stories now came to mind and Saffi's imagination luxuriated in tales of the blight, disease, and decline that had swallowed the majesty of Old Urzen and Orad.
Samut Village had been built on the edge of Acros, the impassable frontier of Old Urzen. The western approaches of this region were known for their fallow soils and poor forage: the legacy of ancient Skyfire Cataclysm and the original font of Samut's perpetual poverty. Consigned to scavenge near these blighted western borderlands, Saffi wondered if he'd bring home anything but sand, and in his worry he decided to leave the well worn path in search of unspoiled forage. He was certain that he would not wander too far because he'd surely notice the beginnings of the blightlands, a clear warning to steer him clear from the forbidden frontiers of Acros.
Saffi's Em said he was prone to worry because he thought about things too much. This wasn't exactly true, however. Rather, he spent too much time thinking about the wrong things. For instance, as he stumbled his way through the vines and runners of the western pass he should have been thinking about mushrooms: pink stems and flat blue caps lined underneath with white fleshly folds.
But Saffi's thoughts wandered away from the task at hand and lit upon idle fantasy. His foot nearly planted itself into a shiny blue cap, but Saffi paid it no notice, for he was distracted by thoughts of Samut: its rustic society, its prejudices, and its gossips. His thoughts revolved in bitter self-deprecations, Late for the morning chores, that's the right impression, the buzzing sarcasm of life's simple failures. His brows furrowed with worry and clenching his fists he could hear the blood in his head. Stupid. Stupid pigs.
Looking after the cottage farm was too much work for a single man let alone a boy of Saffi's age, but he had done it since his Em and uncle had moved in. Saffi bore the responsibility with stubborn resignation and the pointless pride of a misguided martyr. Like Saffi's father had been, his uncle was a pig farmer, and for that reason he had been asked to claim the vacant freehold farm of Saffi's childhood home. But he had been lamed in a bad fall a few seasons back and so relied upon Saffi for much of the physical work required on the farm. Desiring to show his appreciation for their guardianship, Saffi performed these tasks without complaint. He didn't seek acknowledgement but consoled himself with the vain expectation that his many sacrifices would inevitably be recognized.
Saffi couldn't help worrying about what others thought or felt about him. His need for approval mirrored his constant state of self-assessment and provisional self-regard. And in that vanity his thoughts found their true shapes and lit upon his earnest desires. No, he wouldn't pick mushrooms and shovel pig slops for the rest of his life.
Everyone recognized his gifts for letters and language. His own self-assessment confirmed these talents and he knew he was destined for a place in the academies of Azoturia, maybe even the Scriptorium. At the age of ten he had memorized and recited the first book of the Ages of the Sun. Samut's Sun-Speaker, kind Father Tremaine, had commended Saffi's recitation. When mother brought out the honey wine, Saffi imagined that Tremaine would raise a toast to honour him, but the priest instead thanked his hosts for their hospitality and offered a prayer for their family's health and good fortune.
It was the same prayer Tremaine would make the following summer when Saffi's mother fell ill with Blood Sickness. She had always boasted that she bore survivor's blood, that immunity ran in her family going back to the Renewal days. The story of great father Ramai's week-long ordeal in the desert vale of Eloy was the stuff of legend, told and retold at every family gathering Saffi could remember.
So when mother lingered one afternoon upon the lip of the Zero Crater, she had justified it by saying that she could bear the invisible flames of the old Skyfire. She was supposed to survive, but then she fell faint at the cliff's edge and Saffi's father had to lift her out of the crater's dust bowl and carry her home in his arms. Saffi recalled her ruddy complexion and uncontrollable sweats. Father tried to console her as he held her in his arms. At every place where her skin and clothing had touched him, his father's own skin had grown inflamed in an angry, weeping rash.
Gazing upward through the foliage Saffi saw the sunlight fall dappled through cloud and branches. He moved among these columns of light imagining their weight and thinking of his future. It was hard to tell how much time had passed but he was sure that it was still before the High Sun. Besides, the surrounding vegetation remained lush, verdant, and he saw no sign of the blight that would have warned him from wandering too close to the rune warrens.
Saffi contemplated whether he ought to pause and make his noon orisons now or later or not at all. He was not pious, though his mother mother had wanted him to join the priesthood. In his green days he used to bundle himself in her skirts and wear them as priestly smocks. Pressing a gold coin to his forehead, he would entertain guests by affecting the mannerisms of a solar cleric, O sun, invincible fire, whose light is great forever. In spite of their laughter, Saffi was not joking.
He remembered wearing a saffron apron across his soldiers at the neighbors' house, the home of his friend Mal and his parents, and bowing after giving a performance, O sun, invincible fire. Tired of reciting the words of others, he had improvised his own lines but nobody noticed. Afterwards he ran out to the back garden to take off the extra garments.
Mal's older sister had been there laughing from the kitchen. He wondered if she had seen him imitating the high heirophant's bull sacrifice with a hatchet and saucer. Here in the garden he saw her teasing at a ringlet of curly dark hair and smiling at him. Wiping sweat from his brow he felt the sticky gold coin peel off onto the back of his wrist. Turning his hand, he tried to catch it but it fell into clump of broad squash leaves. He heard Mal's sister giggling at him as he knelt down to find it. While he padded and scratched through the garden looking for the coin, Saffi tried to think of something to say. He decided he would give her the coin, but by the time he finally found it and rose to his feet all he could see was her turned back walking away, braided hair swaying at waist-length.
At this point an enticing sight came into view: a close bunch of clustered mushrooms. Grandan called these clusters "faerie rings" and Saffi was relieved to see it, for it had been Saffi's only find so far. Its size reminded him how lucky he could be. "Blessed by the fortune of Dawn," was what his mother had often said. Like any doting mother, she had lavished her son with praises and wasted no opportunity to laud Saffi's gifts for learning and intellect. He took this praise to heart and his self-belief fed his irrepressible expectation of greatness.
Scrambling for footing in the loose sand, Saffi approached the faerie ring and began tossing the blue mushrooms, stems and all, into his sack. As his perpetually wandering mind finally turned back to his putative intent, Saffi took a complete survey of his surroundings for the first time in a long while.
He didn't see any more mushrooms but he did notice something out of the ordinary. Upon the trunk of a wide tree, at about eye level, he saw an inscribed icon. It was a circle with a dot scrawled in its center: the sun sigil of Lost Urzen. He drew closer to the marking and realized that the symbol had been carved into the bark and then burned into the tree. Recognizing the icon instantly, Saffi realized that while his distracted thoughts had carried his mind away from his task, his feet had carried him further than expected from the main foot path. He had inadvertently ventured to the edge of the Acrosian frontier, a forbidden hinterland of lost Precursor ruins.
He knew that the punishments for trespassing these sacred places could be dire. Old Grandan had often warned about the penalties of breaching the Ban of Acros. She spoke of banishments and worse.
Then again, she also told of the strange and wonderful relics that had been discovered in Acros's lost Urzen settlements. An Azoturian freeholder had once found a candle that burned as bright as daylight, non-stop for ten years. Another explorer had recovered a cache of rocks that released steady heat for months. Many didn't believe these tall tales, but Grandan knew better and she bade Saffi take heed of the old words.
But the edge of Acros was nothing like Grandan had said. He had expected to see signs of death and decay. If anything, the foliage had grown more thick, more lush and vital. He found additional markers inscribed on other nearby trees and confirmed he did indeed now stand at the edge of the imaginary barrier dividing the living world from the unknown realms of legend.
He wondered what may lie beyond the frontier and considered his situation, I'm alone. If I crossed over now, who would know? They all left me behind. No one else is here. Who would know? He further justified himself by rationalizing that foraging was bound to be decent in the forbidden area. No one will have been through here. This soil is good. Surely there's mushrooms to be had. Likely truffles too. I should do it for Em's sake. In this way Saffi embraced the delusion of his own altruism and convinced himself to go ahead and do as he liked. Saffi breathed deep through his nostrils as he crossed the threshold of warning markers and wandered further into the western hills.
He found a few more blue caps--no truffles, but still a good find. Of course, he wasn't really looking for such things anymore. His curiosity lighted upon a clearing in the jungle canopy. Within the scattered light of the tree break he found a bare grove of sandy brown soil. The clearing was ringed with stone plinths, all about waist height. The stones were cylindrical and carved with grotesque human faces. The carvings were oriented to face outward from the empty clearing and Saffi decided it would be best to remain outside the circle. He approached one of the plinths and ran his hands across its surface. Obviously quite old, the carving was cold to the touch and bore a deep blue hue. He imagined that the statues must be dedications to some forgotten god, the offerings of a doomed people.
He then noticed a change in the air around him. The humidity seemed to increase rapidly and a constant wind began to blow through the branches above. Through the tree cover he could see that the clear morning sky had rapidly turned overcast and that billowed clouds had emerged in the south. To the west he beheld a clear prospect of Mount Ahriman's imposing black silhouette. He was still far from its slopes and resolutely determined that he would turn back long before reaching that far.
Taking cover under the shade of a towering white alder, Saffi decided to stay put for the time being and wait for the rains to pass. By now he had crossed over the crest of the hill and began moving downward upon its western slopes. He guessed that if the storm wasted what was left of the day it wouldn't be a difficult walk home before eventide. He felt some small relief that the storm had cut short his explorations and given him a reason to pause and make an end to the impromptu expedition. With some weight in his sack and no particular ambition to satisfy, Saffi let himself sit easy to wait out the storm.
The sound of the wind soon mingled with the staccato sizzle of falling rain. Raindrops rolled down tree trunks and vines and curled under leaves. Their waters bathed the sweaty jungle air and broke the stagnant heat. Huddled under a dry frond of broadleaf, Saffi watched passively as the water begin to flow downhill in sandy rivulets. The streams began carving grooves in the loose sandy soil. Intense rainfall persisted and these grooves steadily spread into widening troughs. A flash of lightning discharged somewhere high above Saffi's refuge. The momentary flash strobed his field of vision with a nimbus of blinding light. Like other children, Saffi used to look upwards after a lightning strike in hopes of sighting the Thunderbird. He stayed crouched in darkness now as the ripple rumble echoed through the air around him.
More lightning followed. Saffi's disquiet thoughts abated giving him pause to hear the steady report of thunder and observe the lightning tracing webs of white fire across the mountainside. Distracted by the spectacle, Saffi was surprised to find his dry hollow suddenly undermined by a stray rivulet of run-off. Saffi sprung to his feet and pivoted to lean against the white tree trunk for support as the run off rapidly spread to mingle in a sudden downhill torrent. Face lashed with wind and rain, Saffi now stared wide-eyed as clumps of sand and brush began to tumble down around him.
He realized too late that the roar of thunders had masked the onset of a sudden deluge. The rapid accumulation of monsoon rains had so saturated the sandy slope that the entire surface of the hill now began to slough downward into the valley. Saffi, standing upon the moving mass of earth and water threw his body upon the alder for safety, but the tree was now uprooting from the ground, sliding downward as well, and pulling Saffi with it along with the rest of the hillside. Not knowing what else to do, Saffi held fast to the tree as it plunged headlong into the surging current and slipped into the sinking depth of the tumbling flood. Falling with it, Saffi experienced the weightlessness of floating before plunging into an enfolding darkness.
A phantasmagoric drama claimed Saffi's consciousness. As his lifeless body tumbled upon the hillside his mind's eye opened upon a startling vision: And once these hills of the Acros, for that is what they were called in bygone days, trembled with the noise of gears and pistons grinding. The sound of machines within the earth: scrubbing soil and air, purifying water. Pimacan lore of the Green River tribes told tales of the giants who had reigned in the last days of Orad and Urzen. In those days the valley had been known by the name of Acros, and it was foraged and inhabited by colonies of Urzen men and women. The Urzen of these Acrosian colonies grinded holes in the mountains with their mighty drilling machines and sought to hide what was most precious to them: engines of steel, rods of fire, miracle machines, and black fuel.
Saffi roused with a start. Sweating profusely and vocalizing a muttered cry, his countenance and conscience bore the lingering imprint of a troubling phantasm. He peered around, nervous in the dark and dripping with fear. He had expected to see people around him, a multitude of men and women, but they were gone and he remained alone. Still staring wild-eyed at nothing in particular, Saffi came to the conclusion that he must have been dreaming and after a few more moments of quiet contemplation he came to accept that conclusion.
The dream had been vivid, but even now its content was already leaving his conscious recollection as if the thoughts that composed it had been only temporarily usurped and now had returned from whence they had flown. He remembered a throng moving through the trees, up and down the hill as days and nights revolved counting the passage of untold days. While recalling this much Saffi had already begun to forget even these meager details.
As the boy came to full consciousness he realized he was in darkness and stricken with pain. Groping in unfamiliar surroundings, he perceived that he was lying upon his back and unable to roll his body, which was now jammed between two crags of a rocky outcropping. He had been dragged by the monsoon current for an indeterminate distance and would have been pulled further but for the interposing of a stand of rock at the edge of raised bluff. He could not see it but he heard the sound of a stream moving 30 feet below the bluff. Straining to move he felt the interposing body of rock weighing heavy against his right side and winced gasping at a sudden stab of pain that throbbed in his right leg.
Too baffled by pain to think, Saffi lay there panting in the darkness for a long while. Tasting metal in his mouth, he felt an overwhelming wave of panic and had to consciously resist the urge to thrash his upper body and wriggle free from his confined position. He forced himself to lie still but couldn't resist the urge to whimper, vocalizing his rising sense of helpless dread, "No, no, no!", he quietly wailed to himself and noticed that his eyes were stinging with tears that welled up and lingered. He shook his head letting the tears flow down the sides of his face and blinked hard. He took gasping gulps of air and saw red when he closed his eyes.
Contemplating his own imminent demise, Saffi became aware of how pathetic he must appear. Lying helpless on a nameless cliff, he teared up again at the thought. He could not die here like this. He refused to suffer it.
Listening to the hollow wheeze of his own panicked breathing he forced himself to take measured breaths, deep and even. Gazing down at the rise and fall of his shadowed chest, Saffi felt his respiration and heart rate begin to slow. The sound of his own breath drew him back to lucidity and allowed him to orient his thoughts. As his eyes finally adjusted to the darkness he realized he was wedged upon the edge of a cliff. A boulder had broken loose from further up the hill and rolled down with the torrent pinning his right leg against the edge of the precipice. Leaning his upper body upward he peered over the lip of the bluff and realized that the rock that held him fast may have prevented him from a potentially fatal fall over the cliff. Were he not trapped he realized that even a slight shift could put him over the edge into a fatal downward plunge.
Recoiling from the precipice, Saffi craned his head backward and rolled his gaze around trying to orient himself in these unfamiliar surroundings. Piles of detritus lay heaped in the hollow bluff. The same craggy ledge that had snagged Saffi's body had collected an assortment of other flotsam, including tangled masses of branches and wet leaves. Saffi also noticed that he was covered in small metallic flakes resembling iron filings and these fragments were littered all around the bluff.
He wriggled his left leg out from under a mass of branches and weakly lashed out with a kick to the boulder. After a few more vain attempts to free himself, Saffi realized that without leverage to anchor himself properly, he lacked the force to move the rock and free his right leg. Reaching backward with an outstretched arm, Saffi tried to get hold of a large branch with which to pull his body. If he could get a firm grasp he could pull himself away from the boulder while pushing off against it. All was out of reach. His fingernails barely managed to scrape against the nearest life line, a thick branch jutting up out of the wet sand.
Having now regained his wits, Saffi had to consciously contend with the pain emanating from his pinned right leg. The pain had woken him up and it now seemed likely to render him unconscious again. Tired simply from trying to prop himself up, Saffi relaxed his muscles and let his body slap back down upon the wet ground. His taxed limbs entertaining the urge to betray him to agony and exhaustion, Saffi permitted himself a moment of self-pitying resignation. He wondered why had he followed this trail at all. He cursed his lateness. He laid blame. Stupid pigs. Stupid mushrooms.
At this point his hand moved instinctively to his leather satchel. In his mounting frustration, he wanted to rip it open and hurl the mushrooms over the edge of the bluff. The sack was already open. Its leather strap had loosened in the flood and its contents had long since already washed away. Saffi snorted derisively and let out a whimpered laugh.
He was about to slip off the satchel and throw it away anyhow but when its shoulder loop caught on his elbow he felt enlivened by the revelation of a sudden solution. He extended the length of the strap and opened the loop as wide as possible, about two feet. Next he took the satchel in both hands and gripped it at the points where the strap was riveted to the bag. He sat up as straight as possible and began hurling himself backward to cast the loop behind himself towards the branch in the sand.
Saffi had little experience in physical exploits. In fact he rarely ever even participated in the village Pig Ball contests. Samut often had success in these matches but Saffi took no part in them. After a few fruitless attempts with the strap he began to cast the strap loop while shifting his back with an arching motion. Finally the leather band fell upon the trenchant stalk and caught upon the axil of a broken stem. Saffi pulled the loop taut upon the rough stub of the stem and the branch held firm as he used its fastness to pull his upper body thirty degrees upward away from the flat of ground.
Further enlivened by this succession of small victories, Saffi began vigorously pressing his left foot against the boulder, simultaneously extending his good leg forward while trying to yank his trapped leg out. With no small measure of satisfaction, he noticed the boulder begin to nudge; however, the rock's slightest movement intensified Saffi's agony to such an extent that for the first time during his ordeal he couldn't resist the urge to cry out in full-throated agony. Saffi wiped away fresh tears and tried in vain to compose himself. His thoughts crowded in to cloud the moment. Even if he should he escape and live, he wondered if he would ever walk again and began sobbing. Still holding the leather satchel strap, Saffi slumped down to the ground again and relented against his state of mental and physical exhaustion.
As the boy sat in quiet contemplation the sun was beginning to rise. Its earliest rays started to penetrate the jungle leaves and silhouette the forest canopy in a haze of morning pinks and greys.Beyond those trees is my home, Saffi thought to himself, and the thought began to set his mind away from despair and back towards his ordeal.
He recalled and felt the leather strap of his pouch. He still held in his hands. Now he wound it around his wrists and fastened his grip on it with white knuckles straining against the leather band. Determining to finally overthwart the stone in spite of his pain he found the resolve to endure its crushing roll and free himself no matter the injury such terrible freedom should compel.
Once more he set his free foot against the rock and heaved with all his strength. This time when it began to roll over his shin he did not flinch at the pain and instead hauled himself through it, twisting his body sideways as the boulder slipped down toward and over his foot. Saffi set his teeth and rumbled a low growl throughout this final try and let out an agonized cry in full voice only after the rock finally slipped past his foot and over the lip of the bluff's edge. The echo of the crashing sound it made when it landed upon the flat of the earth below redounded for miles around. It was followed by a loud cracking sound and a low tumult of further shifting rock. When the ground below settled again, Saffi heard the sound of winds emanating from the earth and a low barely audible hiss.
Barely taking a moment to inventory the extent of his injuries--surely his foot was nearly crushed--Saffi pulled himself forward, fell sideways onto his belly, and crawled forward through sand to observe the boulder's impact. The rock had fallen onto a sandstone outcropping which it had cracked before tumbling further down. The outcropping appeared to be the lintel of an archway which had split in two and collapsed downward along with a thick veil of sandstone beneath it. The sandstone fragments were still settling and Saffi could see loose sand sliding down and piling near the shattered outcropping and the sheets of stone that had fallen with it.
At a distance of twenty feet, Saffi could make out traces of carvings on the fallen fragments. His imagination reeled at the prospect: An Urzen colony! One of the lost vaults of Acros!. Saffi then heard a rumbling noise emanating from the crumbling sandstone rift and saw a peculiar green glow begin to pulsate within the open cliff face. From his vantage point above he could not see the source of this strange light but he saw its rays cast down upon the shattered blocks that lay before the breach. The falling light grew longer upon the ground with every pulse indicating that the source of the light was drawing closer to the mouth of the cave. Saffi felt a buzzing sensation in his brain accompanied by a shrieking metallic whine unlike anything he had ever heard, unlike any living thing he could imagine. When a column of blocks burst outward from the breach a plume of white smoke and dust followed with it and the unearthly sound grew to a crescendo.
Overcome with fear, Saffi sprang to his feet and, ignoring the numbness in his right leg, he began to hobble up the sandy slope in a halting sort of half shuffle, half hop. The allure of the unknown, his fascination with the lost world of the Race Fathers, had shaped his psyche for as long as he could remember. Now faced with the disorienting alterity of real Precursor contact, all of that allure melted away in the horror of a world so alien that Saffi could scarcely believe what little he had glimpsed of it.
He shambled through a stand of brush and fell forward into a copse of trees. Atop the rise of a plateau, the grade of the incline beneath his feet suddenly reversed and his inertia carried him forward onto his knees. Saffi staggered on with his momentum and winced through the pain. He spat upon the ground as his lungs began to throb from the strain of manic flight. The hurt in his leg and the fire rising in his lungs could not compel him to ignore his fear, however, which drove him on all the way up the hillside out of the rune warrens and back to the safety of familiar trails.
Saffi ran as long and as hard as his flagging endurance would permit. He knew not where he was or by what route he had arrived here but he knew he had been carried west and so scrambled to the east as well as he could reckon it. Hours of blind orienteering passed into days and Saffi frequently fell into slumber when exhaustion outstripped his efforts. During these interludes of unquiet sleep, Saffi's consciousness slipped in and out of a persistent, enigmatic dream: The hillside throng emerged once more from the jungle shadows. Their bodies were shrouded in long white linens. Accented with rings of gold set with decorative jade adornments, these robes appeared luminescent in the darkness of the rune warrens' boundless forest. Upon their heads, the wandering shades wore tightly-fitted cloth caps that gave them all a hairless, androgynous appearance.
The specters, aimless vagabonds of disembodied energy and memory, shuffled in aimless silence and wordlessly communicated their thoughts through an interconnected web of mindfire missives. The mindfire, quintessence of psychic power, passed invisibly from mind to mind and heart to heart. Its mental force carried the totality of the people's thoughts and desires and sustained the entire continuum of their cultural memory within a singular super-consciousness. Within the cacophony of voices, a lone missive took audible form, "We are the memory of Urzen. We share a millennium of lifetimes. Join us in the fire and seek remembrance."
Some time after midnight, one of Sun-Speaker Tremaine's personal guards chanced upon Saffi's fallen body near the two-mile stone marker on the edge of Samut's common fields. At the time, Saffi had been barely conscious and utterly insensible. He was unresponsive and incoherently babbling in tongues as he lay prone under the stone. By this time he had been gone for two full days and sentries had been posted to watch for him or one of the search parties sent to retrieve him. The guard, unsure what to do, called for Father Tremaine, who examined the boy and administered a tincture of sleepflower to suppress Saffi's mania and sedate him. The boy was then removed to Tremaine's home where the wizened priest administered recuperative tonics and applied bandages to bind Saffi's wounds. Throughout the night, Tremaine kept vigil and made prayers to the unconquerable sun that Saffi might live to see the dawn-rise once more.
When he finally woke the next morning, Saffi's Em was there to greet him. Tremaine explained that apart from a broken foot Saffi had been suffering from exhaustion, "The best cure for it is sleep. Nothing more to be done for it. There's no telling how long he was wandering lost in the wilds. Nothing to be done now but rest and wait." Saying this, Tremaine turned a look of concern upon Saffi. Did he know the truth? Saffi felt a twinge of guilt and with it his familiar feelings of worry. He had not intended to be such a bother to the village and he wished he'd never crossed the threshold into Acros, but he wasn't going to tell the truth. In spite of his feeling of guilt he could not bring himself to accept responsibility for it. Silence seemed easier.
So he kept his secret. When asked about where he had gone Saffi explained that he'd lost the path in the storm and wandered into the southern swamps where he'd twisted his foot and fallen into a mire. Saffi felt satisfaction at this invention. He lied with the skill of practiced deceit. A thousand little deceptions sprinkled over his short lifetime had given Saffi the skill to dissimulate and he used a liar's confidence to tell his fabrication whenever called upon to relate what had happened to him. The searchers had failed to locate him because they were looking in the west. A simple mistake!
Saffi did not dwell upon the ease with which he told these falsehoods. In this case, self-awareness might have disturbed him. As it was, any such moral misgivings were overcome by his relief at having escaped punishment for his ill-advised trespass. In the face of such relief, the lie was not a compounding transgression. Far from it.
Saffi realized that an artful lie, well told, could undo his trespass. He had escaped punishment. And wasn't that the right outcome? Aside from Saffi, no one had been hurt. Why tell a painful truth when an easy lie might suffice and spare further embarrassment? Telling the truth seemed to be a pointless cruelty, a needless pain where none need be suffered. And so he lied as often as he had to and buried the truth of his misadventure deep inside where notions of abstract morality could not challenge it.
For a time Saffi experienced some notoriety as the boy who was lost and then found. Folk would stop him in the streets to wish him well and send gifts for his poor Em, who "must have worried so." Hobbling around on the crutches made for him by Father Tremaine, Saffi smiled and let the wise women lay hands on him for luck. The attention satisfied his ubiquitous vanities but grew tiresome when Saffi realized that his name had become the laugh line of a deprecating joke: "Of course Saffi got lost looking for blue caps! He couldn't find his own two feet if you tied them together! Somebody write directions to his house in a book; maybe then he'll find it!" Being long misunderstood and underappreciated Saffi was used to these sorts of jeers but found them difficult to endure in light of what he had actually witnessed. They simply couldn't understand what he had seen. And he wouldn't dare express it.
His uncle insisted that even if he couldn't chore in the fields or forage Saffi would nonetheless make himself useful. According to his uncle, "everyone needed a purpose to serve," and he was not alone in that opinion. So Saffi was sent to run errands in the village market. When Em ran out of things for him to fetch and carry she'd send him to the neighbors to handle their lighter tasks too. But Saffi resented the comic spectacle he had become and his sensibilities bristled against the ridicule of others. He became increasingly sullen and withdrawn.
So he set aside the crutches and spent long hours laid up in his room drawing pictures of what he had seen in the forbidden frontier: the stone circle, the metal arm, and the unsettling green emanation. Poring over ink and parchment that he had taken unbidden on his last day at the common school, he spent his days pondering and sketching the grotesque face carved in stone and lost track of time guessing at its forgotten name, its forgotten purpose.
Meanwhile Saffi's nights continued to be consumed by disquieting dreams of Old Urzen's spectral shades: Within the Urzen collectivity spoke the voice of a multitude. Night after night, they shared mastery of their language and hinted at further secrets: the wonders of technology, the lessons of history, and the secrets of forgotten mindfire mastery. All of these things revolved in thought forms of simulated sound and light, simulacra of living presence. Convinced of the unreality of the images that confronted his unconscious mind, the boy tempted the boundaries of ancient law which forbid investigation of mindfire secrets. But did such laws govern the land of dreams? Could the dictates of a magistrate compel one's inner thoughts?
Seduced by the promise of power and the seemingly safe space of speculative imagination, Saffi consented to receive the forbidden knowledge. In return, the shades of Urzen unfolded their mysteries and named him a brother of the ancient Phoenix fire. He now dared to grasp the sacred fire. In time, he understood how to pull it around his body and push it outward. The Urzen shades taught Saffi how to exert his will upon the world, and for the first time since he was very young Saffi experienced the barest sensation of what it must feel like to have a place in the world: simply to belong.
Submitting himself to learn the devotions of mindfire, Saffi gave expression to the mounting discontent that had characterized his emergence into maturity. Even so he clung to the belief that these dreams, however vivid or implausibly interconnected, couldn't possibly be authentic messages from an ancient intelligence. After all, he couldn't actually create fire or move objects with his mind, though every day he tried. In spite of these disappointments, the dreams felt increasingly like visitations rather than mere condensations of consciousness, and Saffi retained an increasingly complete recollection of his nocturnal visions, which he now referred to as "appointments."
Underlying the rebellion now consuming Saffi's innermost desires, Saffi's will was now set upon an irrepressible desire to return to the shattered vault. The feeling wasn't so much a compulsion as an intentional certainty. Saffi knew he was going back but didn't know how long it would take or how he might create the opportunity, but he knew for certain that he would return.
He had to. Life in Samut had somehow become even more insipid to him than before. To avoid dealing with the mundane drudgery of quotidian life, he feigned his injury was worse than it actually was. Occasionally his Em compelled him to take to market anyhow and on these occasions he could barely conceal his growing contempt for the village and all the people in it. It was all so tedious now that he had set his mind upon the vault. The object of his dreams had encroached upon his waking life and thought of it had begun to crowd out all other concerns. Regardless of their true provenance, Saffi dreams had become more important than his life's actual circumstances.
When Saffi's Em approached Father Tremaine for advice, the sage came to Saffi and examined him once more. Saffi, who had begun to feel much better weeks earlier, had merely feigned his pain for nearly a month. He was sitting on his bed pretending to read when the Sun-Speaker entered his bed chamber. Father Tremaine told Saffi to stay where he was and proceeded to examine the boy's apparent wound. He manipulated the joints of Saffi's ankle and practiced a routine exercising the foot's range of motion. Without wrappings the foot looked quite well healed, but Saffi affected a wince or a halting cry of pain at every touch. Tremaine looked at the boy with a probing glare and regarded his writing table, "You've not had much use for that since your classes ended, have you?" Saffi had been writing secret notes every day since he returned home and was momentarily startled by the question. He stammered searching for a suitable reply, "Yes- No- I haven't been writing so much. No." "You're Em tells me- she tells me you've been alone here often since your accident." "Yes, I haven't been well. I'm sor-" "Never mind that," the sage spoke firmly but without admonishment. Saffi looked up at him a little surprised to realize he had so far avoided direct eye contact with Father Tremaine. Tremaine's features were handsome but not without the creases of age. He was dark-skinned and wore a short, well-groomed beard that complemented his fine features. He was older than Saffi had initially supposed but still bore the vital presence of a younger man. Locking his gaze momentarily with Tremaine's pale blue stare, Saffi blinked involuntarily and stopped himself from trying to apologize again. Looking around the room at Saffi's various sketches and barkpaper fold books, the sage remarked almost absent-mindedly, "What is it that you're dreaming of, son?" At this Saffi's eyes widened and he felt a note of panic sink into his heart. Surely Father Tremaine could not see into Saffi's inner thoughts. As the boy stammered an unintelligible reply, Tremaine continued. "You've got an imaginative eye. An eye for wonder. But nothing of home. You don't enjoy it here, do you? This place." In Saffi's mind, the moment he had been waiting for had finally arrived. Father Tremaine had come to announce Saffi's enrollment at the Scriptorium. He decided he must conceal his expectation and feign ignorance, "You mean here? My Em's?" "I mean all of it: Samut, the Green River, everything here." "I- What?" Not expecting to carry quite so much of the conversation by himself, Tremaine let out a sigh of mild irritation. "I shall come to my point then. Word-Keeper Jumal says you were a student with potential. You enjoyed your studies, did you not?" Saffi nodded and felt the concealed anticipation mounting within him. "Now they are done, so let's be frank. What is to be done with you?" The posing of the question caught Saffi off guard. "I don't know; I don't know what to do." "You must think about it." "What?" "What's next?" "Next?" "For you. Your life. You think about these things?" "Sometimes. I don't know." "Do you think about continuing your studies?" "Sometimes," Saffi lied. Of course the thought of matriculation preoccupied his thoughts. "You must realize how expensive it can be to take a place in the Scriptorium. To be sponsored is a great honour." Saffi's heart fell into his stomach. The sage saw Saffi's teeth clench. The boy blinked hard for a moment, "Yes, I know, father." What Saffi had taken for granted was now in doubt and he didn't know how to respond. The life beyond this village now seemed very far away and Saffi was trying to imagine his future in Samut, a future he had hitherto never gave a moment's contemplation. "What is it, boy?" "It's just, I always thought I'd try the tests one day." "You thought it would happen? How? How do you expect to get anywhere in this life if you don't ask for it? You never came to me or Keeper Jumal. Even if we had a sponsorship to give we-" Sensing the need to soften his words, Tremaine relented his probing, "Samut isn't like Vergoth or Gumao. To be born in a place like this- Do you know how many Scriptorium scriveners have come out of Samut?" "Not many." "Not one! It's the way of things, you know? Some are born in the light of Mazta; others must toil in the shadow of Ahriman." Recognizing the cliched aphorism, a trite lyrical monument to the stifling ignorance and poverty of Samut's backwards hinterlands, Saffi turned to face the sage and hunched his soldiers with a quizzical expression. He didn't know how to respond. "I didn't attend the Scriptorium, you know. There are other paths. I spoke my creed before the shrine of the Blue Rose." Even if Saffi was still listening he would not have recognized the name of the esoteric Blue Rose guardians. Staring into Father Tremaine's face, Saffi felt a jagged sensation claw across his heart, the despair of recognizing his future taking shape without his own volition. No longer listening, he nodded at the man as if to prompt him to continue speaking. Father Tremaine proposed an apprenticeship. He would take Saffi into his home as a house hand. There Saffi would receive a small temple stipend and complete his education under the Sun-Speaker's own guidance. Once enough money could be saved for enrolling at the Scriptorium, Saffi would enter the Azoturian novitiate and attempt the Word-Keeper tests. Saffi would have to have his Em relate all of this later, however. Lost in a despairing trance he could not grasp the import of Tremaine's words. Recognizing the the mixture of shock and despair in Saffi's expression, Father Tremaine excused himself. "Think on it. I've spoken to your Em and uncle already. They agree it's for the best. I shall call on you within the week." As he was about to pass out the door he turned back upon the threshold and gestured to Saffi's foot, "When I return you will greet me upon your feet. Understood?" Saffi nodded and waited for the sage to pass out of view before rolling upon his side and sobbing into his pillow until the merciful oblivion of sleep could claim his misery.
Rising from the silent spaces within the forgotten hollows of the earth, Saffi's persistent dream of the Deep Zone continued to take shape: The dream visions eventually evolved beyond the province of pure ideation and took on a more narrative aspect. Saffi increasingly imagined himself back upon the rune warrens of the Acrosian Approach. The narrative followed a persistent script: feeling compelled to retrace his steps into the forbidden frontier, his dream-self leaves the footpath. Under the cover of darkness he has no fear of discovery and slips unseen into the unknown. He becomes a shadow merged into shadows.
By some obscure intuition he knows the direction he must travel and his silent footfalls inevitably bring him to the familiar hillside where he had freed himself from the rock which had rolled downward and demolished the stone face of a subterranean archway. Standing upon the edge of a nearby river bed, Saffi obtains a full view of that archway. Carved into the very hillside the arch bears decorative figures and markings inscribed in the language of Old Urzen. The linen shrouded figures within the cavern gesture at Saffi, and beckon for him to enter. He is powerless to resist their psychic pull.
Beyond the stone portal, Saffi sees a settlement, an underground city shielded against Skyfire's lingering flames, the invisible fire of the Deep Zone. Night after night Saffi shares the dream and eventually imagines himself joining the ranks of the enigmatic, pale-skinned Acrosians. Across the span of mortality and the passage of untold centuries, they beckon him from the realm of the living to meet in the realm of dreams, that frontier of sleep's repose between living and dying. Saffi accepts their welcoming mental embrace and approaches through the threshold of the subconscious into an otherworldly landscape. Taken into their community, he wordlessly agrees to have his own head shorn and his clothes replaced with the white robes of the Acrosians. He finds the material soft, gauze-like, not unlike a baby's blanket. Wearing it he follows the silent heralds of Acros into their secret mountain and assumes a second life.
Amid the air-purifiers and water-fabricators, miracle machines built by Precursor science, Saffi finds kinship. He lives a life of significance. His desire for learning and intellectual fulfillment is accommodated by a career of contemplation within the archives of the Acrosian machine city. Night after night, the dream resumes within the silver walls of the Acros archive chamber. The dream-walls hum and reverberate with the power of hidden machinery, the source of the cthonic city's artificial lights and mechanical conveyances. Ambient noise cushions the subconscious exploration of dream-life and crowds out the distractions of the waking world.
The actual archives take shape not as written documents, but as thought-form transmissions that emerge in Saffi's mind like the recollections of long-forgotten memories. In time, the Acrosians teach him to discipline his mind to retrieve and interact with these transmissions and soon his garden of memory is planted with the thought-forms of myriad lifetimes. Generations of Acrosian progeny whose names and lives had long been lost to time find expression in Saffi's storehouse of memory. Experiencing the psychic imprint of their lives, their hopes and desires, he feels he knows them. At times he feels he is them or perhaps that he is becoming them. Within the collective web of thought that governs Acrosian social interaction Saffi doesn't experience this clouding of ego as a threat to selfhood. He rather embraces it as a necessary implement of the overarching sense of purpose, fulfillment, and acceptance that draws him further into the shared dreamworld.
Saffi soon joined Father Tremaine at his apartments in the town square. Taking very few of his personal possessions with him, he claimed a basement room adjoining two other rooms provided for a pair of aged alms-takers who lacked family support for their maintenance. Saffi came to realize that these otherwise homeless wretches were provided for from Tremaine's own occupational stipend. His sense of pride bristled at the notion that his own way was being paid in much the same manner. He reassured himself that his case was quite different. His arrangement with Father Tremaine wasn't a matter of charity. The sage had set Saffi to work after all.
Saffi's new labours included much in the way of inscription. According to Tremaine, Saffi could read and recite well enough but he lacked mastery of the careful book hand required of Scriptorium literates. For this reason Tremaine had decided that Saffi would hone his hand by copying reams of the sage's notes into a high quality vellum codex. Saffi took to the work with some enthusiasm. Tremaine's documents recounted a surprising number of interesting encounters with borderland outlaws. When asked about his obscure career in as a peacemaker, Tremaine would give no direct answer and bade Saffi to concentrate on his skills rather than busy himself with interpreting the content of the workbook.
The sage's notes also contained a preponderance of what appeared to be recipes for varied concoctions. Saffi counted no less than four purported cures for rad-tox and marveled at what appeared to be a liquid fuel derived from peanut oil. Saffi could tell from the dialect in Tremaine's notes that many of these lists had been copied from Precursor sources and he wondered where the sage had encountered so many ancient word-frags. The thought of an ancient automobile powered by the cold press of green peanuts intrigued the boy and fired his imagination.
Saffi found himself most intrigued by Tremaine's scraps of observations taken in a disjointed travelogue on the Deep Zone marches west of the City of Two Suns. The sage had apparently participated in expeditions to Urzen ruins and created a disparate series of sketches and descriptions of art and architecture uncovered at various sites. The sketches were separate from Tremaine's written notes and Saffi had been told not to disturb them. Of course, his curiosity compelled him to regularly peruse them anyhow. He was disappointed, however, to find that his fluency in the Old Urzen language did not persist beyond the confines of the dream realm. Saffi's fantasy lingered upon images of ruined settlements with enigmatic names such as the "Sun Hall" and the "Temple of Seven Sisters." He felt a tangible urge to see the broken stones of these lost cities for himself.
As Saffi inscribed the travelogues into Tremaine's workbook the words became further etched upon his mind. By day he read accounts of Urzen and by nights he dreamed of it. As his dreams unfolded night after night they revealed further wonders of the lost Precursor world: superhuman marvels such as bizarre machinery and massive stone and glass structures. Saffi wondered if his dreams were true visions of the ancient world long passed or merely unconscious condensations of his waking experiences, subconscious nocturnal manifestations of his emergent enthusiasm for Urzen lore. His behaviour and responses suited either circumstance, for vision and lore merged in such a way that Saffi could no longer discern a clear distinction between the content of his dreams and the content of his readings. All these things mingled undifferentiated within his mind; all merged in the uncertain category of memory.
A particularly harrowing passage in Tremaine's travelogues recalled the discovery of a family found immolated within the doorway of a dwelling in the ruins of the "Seven Sisters." Tremaine's impassive observations described the scene: "Corpses of mother and two young children found in a pile of mortified ash mingled with traces of sulfur and salt." The sage's notes further remarked that these unfortunate souls had surely been burned alive during the plague of the Second Cataclysm, because fire, sulfur, and salt were thought necessary to purify the bodily remains of those infected in order to prevent the spread of the mindfire pestilence.
Saffi gazed at his master's silverpoint sketch of the family's remains.They didn't look like monsters driven insane by science amok. Partially skeletal, they nonetheless bore enough aspect of bodily form to clearly register the desperate huddle of humanity clinging for life. This was a human image and Saffi wept to see it as though weeping for his own kin.
Saffi heard a stirring at the door leading to Master Tremaine's adjoining office. The boy hung his his head as he gathered up the forbidden sketches into their leather and calf-skin portfolio. As footsteps approached from the door, Saffi bit his lip expecting a crack on the head for his disobedience. Placing the hastily closed portfolio upon his desk's raised easel, Saffi slowly turned to face his master, but facing the advancing footfalls he realized he remained alone in the room. The doors were closed and not a sound could be heard save for Saffi's own quickened breath. In that instant he heard the familiar fumbling at the door once more and now Father Tremaine did indeed enter the room. Smiling broadly he rolled up his loose sleeves as he approached to regard his apprentice's handiwork. The leather portfolio, now closed and set aside, was ignored.
Tracing his index finger across the ruled lines of the workbook, the master commended his apprentice, "Quite good, Saffi. Now you finally begin to reveal your potential!" When Tremaine left the room Saffi sat in disbelief unable to account for what had occurred. Surely he had anticipated Tremaine's arrival by chance. Saffi was obviously nervous to be intruded upon. Surely that could explain what had happened. Surely he had not experienced a premonition. Saffi comforted himself with the only conclusion that made rational sense, attributed the episode to coincidence, and tried to forget it had ever happened
In his dreams, however, he would recall the event and seek to recreate it: He did this as if compelled by an irrepressible though unbidden desire. Within the presence of Urzen's dream shades, Saffi sought and received further encouragement and even instruction. A series of mental exercises and mandalas revealed themselves in visions of mindfire. Were these images illustrations in Father Tremaine's portfolio or fanciful patterns contrived by his own dream consciousness?
As the weeks passed, Saffi's nocturnal meditations produced demonstrations of power: telekinesis, psychokinetic projections, revelations that would be forgotten in the daylight world of waking consciousness but nonetheless linger in the sublime depths of the subconconscious. Barely cognizant of these wonders, Saffi continued to disbelieve in the metaphysics of his dream life but felt the certain sense that a well of power lying dormant within him was merely awaiting the slightest prompting to reveal itself.
Father Tremaine insisted that once per week Saffi ought to return to his Em and uncle's home for a family visit. After putting it off for fear of an awkward encounter with his uncle, Saffi finally relented and made plans. His Em prepared yam fritters and fried rice spiced with saffron and lime. The house, which had served as a tomb for Saffi's childhood, now felt suffused with home-cooked aromas and a lightness of spirit that belied the quiet desperation that had characterized the family's previous year.
Saffi appreciated the smiles and the unfamiliar sense of welcoming that greeted him but nonetheless felt a new distance interposed between him and the family. Saffi remained unsure of the true nature of his recurring dreams but nonetheless had come to identify his own hopes, wishes, and desires in the spectral dream shades more than in his apparent kin, with whom he had shared nothing but resentment and disdain. Whether real or merely fantasy, the denizens of the subterranean city of Acros had acquired an aura of reality that outshone the quotidian presence of mundane existence. For Saffi, the dream shades had become more present and vital than the living beings of the waking world.
Saffi's uncle, red faced but affable enough, spoke his praises in elevated tones. Saffi found praise of this kind and from this quarter unfamiliar but nonetheless appreciated it. Em had invited her own grown son to the dinner as well, and, after being long compared unfavourably to his cousin, Saffi felt relieved to no longer be on the defensive in his shadow. The family was curious about Saffi's arrangements with Tremaine so he answered their questions about the Sun-Speaker. He also spoke about his work in Tremaine's leebrum, though, after noting their lack of interest, he realized that their inquiries had been nothing more than bait for gossip.
After finishing off a potent draught of Tabazani aguadante, Saffi's uncle turned to him with a sobering expression. Before speaking he now paused to clear his throat, something he always did when he wanted to announce the importance of his own utterances. The room fell silent and Saffi's Em pursed her lips expectantly. "Well now, let's come to it, Saffi. Ever since your'n died, your em and me have been responsible for your keeping. Since you got on with the 'Speaker, everybody's real proud of you and nobody's gladder than me to see you responsible for yourself now." Feeling prompted to respond, Saffi thanked him for his generosity and then thanked his em as well, "I'm grateful for all you have done. Thank you." "Well you're welcome, lad. Of course you know you are. But since you been moved on and seem to be making something of yourself your aunt and me have been talking about how to settle things up." Saffi had taken the last of his parents' personal effects out of the home weeks ago and failed to take his uncle's meaning. "You know what they say: everyone needs a purpose to serve. You know I'm sure glad you finally found a purpose, Saffi. That's why I think it's time we talked about paying for last year's boarding." Saffi took a look around the family table and pushed himself away from it with straightening arms. His response was decidedly muted, "I see. So I must pay then?" "Don't make it out like that, Saffi! It's not like that!" His aunt's interjection, infused with the passion of wounded feelings, immediately raised rather than lowered the tension in the room. "We just think that since you're doing so well with Father Tremaine that you wouldn't mind paying back some of our generosity." "But how will I pay for my testing? How long will it take?" Raising his own voice and becoming a little redder in the face, his uncle offered a rejoinder, "Look here, boy. We gave you a year; it's only fair to expect you do the same. Besides now that you've taken up a quill we're two hands short around here!" Saffi's thoughts traced around the inconsistency of their protests and he found himself once again revolving between the familiar conundrum that had shaped his domestic life ever since he had been orphaned. For the past year he had wondered if he was a burden or a servant in this household, and now he finally had his answer: he was both. Clearly no longer the former, he resolved to longer be the latter. Saffi began moving toward the door, "Right. I only wish I could pay back all that you've given me." Saffi walked out brusquely and could hear his uncle and em pondering his meaning, "Well is he going to then?" Saffi truly wished he could pay and then be done with this counterfeit semblance of kinship for good. He knew that, howsoever petty or ridiculous they may have been, he would always feel beholden to them so long as they considered him in their debt.
While escaping to a walled alley through the home's vine-choked rear garden, Saffi heard his cousin call from the back porch of the homestead, "Wait! Where are you going." In spite of his every instinct Saffi turned back. Afterwards he wished he had not, "Look I have to go. I can't be here." "How can you just walk out?" "What else am I supposed to do?" "Well I don't know but you can't just run off, can you?" "You really think they care?" "I do." Saffi looked at his older cousin and realized that the growth of summer had greatly diminished their height difference. Standing with eyes almost level, Saffi felt Jei grabbing him by the sleeve and tugging him back to the house. Saffi relented, "Let me go!" Now panicking, Saffi felt a the spontaneous urge to get free and expressed the impulse by suddenly jerking himself away from Jei's grasp and interposing his freehand to push him away. But Jei did not let go, "Just stop and liste-" Jei did not finish his final words. In this moment, Saffi was suddenly blinded by white flames flickering at the edges of his field of vision and he felt a hot sensation suffusing his body running from his chest along his right arm. When his vision cleared he saw Jei lying at the base of the sandstone wall. Lying face down, Jei's hair was matted with a sticky mass of dark red gore which mingled on the ground with the blood pooling from his nose and mouth. Saffi reached down and cradled Jei's broken head. Feeling the wet warmth of his cousin's lifeblood draining away, however, Saffi recoiled from the scene and slumped against the warped wooden gate. The realization of what had happened now fully dawned upon him and Saffi wept at what he had done, however involuntarily. He hadn't wanted this to happen, but his own mind had done it. That had to mean that somehow this was done under his own volition. Sick with his own guilt, Saffi felt the urge to throw up but instead could only heave in between audible sobs.
Across the alley Mal and his family had come out onto the back porch to check on the commotion. They saw Saffi stagger into the cobblestone alley. His face and hands were stained crimson with Jei's blood. Saffi's visage appeared a mask of horror. Then Saffi saw Mal's sister. Her mouth was open to scream, but he heard nothing save for the pounding crescendo of the blood in his own veins. By pure animal instinct alone, Saffi had started running before he had even had a chance to give thought to how he might explain himself. Dashing towards the jungle, he knew was leaving the village forever.
He realized he had to leave. But where would he go? With no obvious option presenting itself he continued to follow his instincts. He knew where it would lead and allowed his feet to carry him along the well-trod dream path and return to the vault. He had not decided to follow that path, but had moved to it by dint of nothing more than purest instinct. The only family home he had ever known, however horrible it had become, was gone forever.
He sought a new home and could think of no other replacement more fitting than the vault. He was surprised to find that the landmarks he had followed by moonlight in his dreams were present now to guide his steps once more. Unlike in his dreams, however, there was no light to see by, only the shadows of phantom stones and trees that after weeks of rehearsal had by now become so impressed upon his thoughts that he supposed he could run through the jungle with eyes closed, as if in a walking trance, and still find his way back to the place where his fate had been so irrevocably altered.
Contemplating this he imagined he was dreaming yet again, that in fact all had been a dream. Jei was not dead. He couldn't be. This ordeal must all be a figment of his mind. Not real at all. Saffi wished in vain as fate and circumstance contrived to draw him toward his chosen destiny.
Then Saffi entertained an impossible thought: If the dreams were real, then perhaps the city and its people are real, living, and waiting for me! The thought of it spurred him onward to his uncertain end.
Coming to the now familiar cave entrance at the edge of the jungle stream, Saffi perceived that it looked different than as remembered from his dreams. The arch of the cave portal was cracked; its broken lintel and a significant portion of one great stone dooor lay in fragments upon the river bank. Saffi drew closer to peer over the rubble and into the maw of the cave mouth. As he approached, a soundless voice intruded upon Saffi's thoughts and beckoned him to enter, "Welcome, child. We have long awaited you. It is time to come home. Until now we have only been able to send our transmissions to your unconscious mind. The fact that you are here demonstrates that you have retrieved our subconscious instructions. Finally, your waking consciousness is sufficiently developed to merge with our collective."
Offering no answer, Saffi climbed over the rubble to gain a prospect of the cavern beyond the broken arch. Inside the shattered portal, he saw the vastness of the vault chamber. The entrance led to a catwalk overlooking a massive illuminated cavern approximately 60 feet high and over a 100 feet wide.
"Behold, the gateway of Acros, splendor of the valleys, last bastion of Urzen's eastern frontier." Saffi measured these words against the sight before him. Lined with crumbling architecture and corroded machinery, the vaulted chamber had the appearance of a grand mausoleum. Approaching the rusted metallic walls of the upper chamber, Saffi brushed away centuries of dust and iron filings and gazed into what appeared to be a round window.
As he touched it the source of light emanating from the wall above brightened to grant a clearer view. As his eyes adjusted to the light he saw his own reflection, a visage smeared with tears and blood and sweat: unrecognizable. On the other side of the window he saw the charred remains of a human body lying reclined with arms folded across its chest. It still bore the gold rings and jade stones it had worn in life and laid in a state of peaceful repose that seemed grotesque when juxtaposed with the hideous state of the corpse.
Saffi gasped and looked around the vault chamber. The walls were lined in all directions with similar windowed pods. "All dead..." "Of course. We have been dead for over eight centuries. Our consciousness endures in the mindfire that lingers in the machines of this place. We are ready to renew the flesh. We have awaited you." "How did you die." "Delusional mania. Mass psychosis." These words meant nothing to Saffi, so he responded with a word he did understand, "Mindfire?" "Yes." Saffi had to stop and ponder these revelations. "What about my mindfire: am I going to die?" "Outcome possible, but evolutionary mutations in the survivor strain indicate a definite chance of survival. If you live, nature will have achieved what we could not." "And what chance do I have?" "42.7%" The voice was void of emotion, a fact which served to heighten Saffi's fear. Sensing his misgivings, the collective continued, "There is no going back now, you have demonstrated your genetic suitability and unlocked your potential. Now you must join us, even if you must burn with us. Commencing transmission."
Before he could object the metal filings scattered throughout the chamber suddenly began to move autonomously like a swarm of insects. They crawled upon Saffi's body and he felt the mental surge of a mindfire transmission. For the first time, all of the knowledge, history, and culture of the Urzen survivors flooded into Saffi's conscious mind. The sensation was an exhilarating rush and for a brief moment he felt his own tortured ego slide away displaced by the onrushing super-consciousness of the Urzen collective.
Saffi's synapses twitched and became inflamed as mindfire sparked through every conduit of his cerebellum. Smelling the putrid scent of his own burning, he staggered between life and death and fell at the cavern entrance with white fire sparking in his eyes.
The Urzen hivemind opened eyes of flesh for the first time in 833 years. Rising from the stone floor of the cavern, it gazed upon blue sky and took in the scents and sounds of the living jungle.
So much had changed since before. Renewal had cleansed these lands and made them habitable again after so many long years of Skyfire blight. Primitive men walked the earth in their teeming multitudes. These would be quelled, whereas the descendants of Urzen, men and women possessed of mindfire like the host Saffi, would be found and returned to their tribe of birthright. The world would be remade again, as it was in the original days of Urzen.
A human approached from the river. The hivemind recognized it from Saffi's memories: Father Tremaine. The man looked upon the nanites crawling around the feet of Saffi's body, and realized the horrors of the day had only begun. In the space of a thought his hand flew to his concealed holster and reached for his Merikan six-shooter. In that moment Saffi's consciousness interposed itself within the hivemind for the briefest of moments and hoarsely whispered a weak plea, "Save me, father."
The Sun-Speaker raised his pistol in the name of mercy.