The civilians huddled around the Great Temple watched in fearful silence as EUe and several other gatherers entered.

EUe muttered as they stepped into the dreamshard shrines. "Careful."

The interiors of the shrines were floored in sand. Freshly harvested dreamshards rested among the grains, like stones in a garden. It was the duty of the Temple's priests to tend to them, cleaning them as needed as they oversaw the delicate, highly ritualistic work of breaking the shards into small—even minute—pieces. Once that was done, they'd prepare the shards to be shipped off to where they were needed.

This time, however, the priests just stood off to the sidelines, watching in silence. Out of the corners of EUe's eyes, the clerics' pale, gold-inlaid robes and frilly collars seemed like sprigs of death sprouting from the ancient ground.

He shook his head, forcing out the morbid thoughts.

Much as they had on the day of Uka-yen's death, EUe and hUen-dE shared the weight of the massive dreamshard as they carried it out of the shrine. The priests and other Gatherers helped support the shard with communions with Ela-tU and gods of Strength and Labor, weaving the not-light into an astral palanquin.

They couldn't be too cautious.

The vast powers locked within dreamshards made them highly sensitive to external communions, especially before the insulators had been applied to them. Even weak communions could wreak devastation if they tapped into a dreamshard's unremitting power. With one this big, a single wrong move could destroy the entire continent.

geU used his magic to pry open a hole in the Temple's side; the stone parted like water before his outstretched hands, and hovered in the air as the Gatherers and priests bore the dreamshard out of the Temple.

Gasps broke out across the gardens. Onlookers skittered back in shock, fluttering their wings and alighting.

geU floated the Temple's masonry back in place, smoothing over the cracks as he sealed them shut.

"Are you sure you know where we're taking this thing?" hUen-dE asked.

"Yes," EUe grunted, "just follow me." He kept glancing nervously at the onlookers, worried that someone might panic. Eventually, he just stopped looking around altogether, not wanting to see the fungal abominations lurking at the gardens' edge, watching and staring.

Thankfully, the priests managed to keep the crowd calm and away as EUe, hUen-dE, and several other Gatherers carefully marched the giant dreamshard up the ramp into Vyx. They had to tilt the shard onto its side just to fit it in.

Eventually, they made it inside.

"Alright, alright," EUe said, "let's set it down."

The Gatherers cautiously lowered the dreamshard to the floor of Vyx's entry chamber.

"Careful!" EUe said. "Careful!"

"I am being careful!" geU snapped.

They leaned the shard against a wall.

Finally, shaking out his limbs, EUe looked up at the ceiling. "So, buddy," he asked, "how is this going to work?"

hUen-dE glared at him. "Buddy?"

But EUe ignored her.

"Things are strength," Vyx said, "and strength are things."

hUen-dE looked up in shock, wings fluttering, her beak darting left and right. geU and the others made similar gestures.

"Who said that?" hUen-dE asked.

"Vyx did," EUe explained.

hUen-dE stammered: "I…"

He found it amusing that, of all things, it was Vyx's voice that flustered her.

"You get used to it," he said. He looked up at the ceiling once again. "I'm sorry, Vyx, but I don't understand."

Silver, polygonal curves grew out from the wall and floor around the massive dreamshard. They crept along its facets like roots. The air around the shard twitched and flickered, the activity filling EUe's head with an overpowering thrum, like the flaps of a billion twEfE wings.

Suddenly, hUen-dE screamed.

"What's wrong?" EUe demanded.

The Gatherer shook her head and rubbed her eyes. "Don't look through your second eyelids," she said. "It's so bright…"

One of the walls crackled.

EUe turned to see Vyx's silver roots swell with mass where they touched the giant crystal. The roots extended and bulged as the growth spread, racing up the walls.

The chamber's light waxed and waned.

"What's happening, Vyx?" EUe asked.

The vessel rumbled. EUe heard screams coming from outside.

"Vyx?!"

"Vyx is… growing," Vyx said, its voice strained. "Vyx make ship. Ship eat temple. Everybody in ship. Ship safe. Everybody safe. No scared. Understand?"

EUe turned to the others. "Got it, everybody?"

hUen-dE nodded and then flew out of the entryway. Others followed her, but then everything shook. Somewhere, something crashed, making EUe flinch.

"What's going on?" geU yelled.

"Whatever it is, I'll take care of it," EUe said. "Just make sure people get on board—and don't forget the bonsai elU!"

EUe took flight, zooming out of the vessel. An extraordinary view awaited him.

"By the Gods…"

Cracks echoed through the Temple Skyholder, as if a hammer was driving a nail into the ground, to break open the earth—only it wasn't the earth that was breaking.

It was Vyx.

The alien's silvery, metalloid body grew before EUe's eyes. Angles cracked. Mass twisted with each spurt of growth as the vessel expanded in every direction, like a crystalline tree trunk.

"Ship flying moves big door!" Vyx said. "Unstable. Must… defend…"

Panic broke out among the onlookers in the catwalks as Vyx expanded toward them.

hUen-dE buzzed out of the shifting structure, calling in a strong voice. "geU! hlE-a-e! Help me get everyone inside. I don't care if you have to levitate them in! Just do it!" She whipped around. "And get as many dreamshards as you can get your hands on!"

Hearing her words, panicking twEfE ran toward the ramp or fluttered down from above in a frantic swarm. Things quickly turned violent. People started fighting, clawing at each other, slapping one another with their wings in the struggle to enter the vessel. Several Gatherers had to intervene to give the priests safe passage back into the Temple.

"Vyx!" EUe yelled, turning to the ship. "We need more room! More entrances!"

The vessel bellowed, deep and low. "EUUUUUUeeeeee…" The sound reverberated across the skyholder.

The entrance around the ramp widened in spurts. Holes opened in the sides of Vyx's expanding body, and twEfE rushed inside.

EUe noticed movement rustle through the fungal hordes. He couldn't tell whether they were retreating or if they were just regrouping.

Vyx subsumed its surroundings like a lava flow as it grew. It even pierced into the ground, sending fissures through the gardens as the silver-stuff of Vyx's body rose up from the earth, enclosing ponds and trees with walls of nascent chambers. The alien structure metastasized, glomming onto the Great Temple's wall—the skyholder with the skyholder—invading its architecture and making it its own.

If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"E U U U U U U e e e e e e…"

Vyx's voice was barely audible now. It quivered through EUe's wings, more felt than heard.

The alien grew, cracking through the masonry. Chunks of the GTS's walls fell to the ground, crushing wayward zombies.

The malignancy spread and spread further, engulfing the Nectar-King's palace, the houses of government, and the surrounding structures—even the zUzU Fresh—and all the twEfE nearby.

EUe screamed. "Vyx, no!"

A group of clerics were about to be consumed.

EUe surged his wings, rocketing to their, but a sudden protrusion of Vyx's mass stuck out, directly in the Gatherer's path. It extruded too quickly for EUe to dodge it as it engulfed him.

Everything went dark, and for a moment, EUe thought he was going to die. He couldn't breathe. The crushing pressure made his bones quiver and scream. But just when it became too much to bear, the silver retracted, forming a bubble of dark, empty space that EUe could only feel as he stretched out his limbs. A moment later, one of the bubble's sides popped open. Air came rushing in and EUe gasped. As soon as the hole was big enough, he started up his wings and shot out, but by then, the rest of the bubble had receeded, leaving him hovering mid-air, staring at a massive silver wall slowly expanding away from him.

And not just him!

Vyx hadn't been destroying the surrounding structures. The alien had been pulling them inside itself!

That's what Vyx had meant! It was "eating" the Temple!

Other twEfE hovered about in a daze as they emerged from their bubbles. Around them, the Temple's inner skyholder stood perfectly intact, as did the Nectar Palace, and the gardens and everything else. Down below, the squabbling crowd had fallen silent, having lost their reason to panic.

But any relief EUe felt vanished the instant he checked things through his second eyelids.

Not-light was sweeping out from the Temple in blindingly bright shockwaves that Vyx's silver roots sucked up and channeled up and out the aerial doors and into itself.

Then there came an indescribable sound. EUe didn't know what it meant, other than nothing good.

He darted around until he found an aerial door into the Temple that wasn't obstructed by one of Vyx's roots and flew inside. Gatherers zipped every which way, no longer knowing what to do with the dreamshards in their arms.

Reaching the patch of primeval forest in between the three dreamshard shrines, EUe's hovering flagged, waves of dizziness sweeping through him. The Sacred Blade floated in front of the Great Dream, where true-light and not-light bled into fractal lightning as they leapt between the twining blades and the rim of the Door.

Vyx's roots ran along the ground, converging at the great magics, greedily siphoning off their power.

EUe heard the sound again.

"Oh, fuck…"

Vyx had said the "big door" would become unstable. EUe just hadn't had enough imagination to dream up what that meant.

The Door sputtered and gasped, shrieking effulgence and supernal glory, sloughing off fractal tides that shuddered and gyred.

Open, shut. Flutter, spread. The abyss blinked.

"EUe!" hUen-dE screamed. "What's happening?!"

"Vyx is—"

Waves of power hurtled out, slamming EUe back.

THWOOM.

Then the tempest self-destructed. The implosion ripped EUe off the Temple's inner wall, making the surrounding trees and shrubs bow. The Gatherer adjusted his wingbeats, stabilizing his flight.

Below, the Sacred Blade clattered to the floor. Not-light seethed around it and lost orifice, the power gone. Yet its echoes remained, permeating in unsteady afterimages.

"No!" EUe screamed.

Vyx had said the door would become unstable, not that it would collapse!

But then the fungus chorused in terrible ecstasy, and EUe knew his people were doomed.

With the connection to the Great Dream broken, there was nothing to hold the fungus' armies at bay. The barrier was gone. Everyone was about to die.

The wing beats of the screaming civilians vibrated through the Temple's walls.

Energies crackled around the Blade, drawing EUe's gaze.

He cooed softly and clenched his fist.

No, it wasn't his people weren't doomed. This wasn't their farewell, it was his—and he wouldn't have it any other way.

Throat dry, licking his beak, EUe hovered down to the ground and picked up the Blade. Just lifting it up required drawing power from Ela-tU, it was that big.

In all the centuries since hU-U-te had first discovered the Blade, no one had ever dared to disturb it. And why would they? It was not a twEfE's place to meddle with the Gods. What if it disrupted the Door and cut the Rubies off from the Great Dream?

But EUe dared.

To the extent the Blade's powers were understood at all, it was known that, somehow, they sustained the Door, bridging the physical world with the Great Dream.

EUe had communed with Dream only hours before. He remembered that feeling perfectly. And here, right in front of him, were the threads of the communions responsible for the Door, broken and fading, but still there.

Not all hope was lost.

The Blade thrummed in EUe's hands.

The Blade opened the Door once before. Surely, it could open it again! But how long would that take? Seconds? Hours? It would all be for nothing if the fungus killed everyone before then.

There just wasn't enough time!

Time…

And just like that, EUe knew what he had to do. He knew he wouldn't survive it, but that no longer mattered. As long as he succeeded, others would survive, and just maybe, in his next life—if he had one—he'd be able to savor the fruits of what he was about to attempt.

Gripping the Blade's handle with both hands, EUe zoomed out of the Temple, bearing himself skyward with his magic. He shot out through the aerial windows he flew over the gardens, a hole opened in Vyx's expanding walls. EUe shot through it with pinpoint accuracy, and just in time.

The deluge was upon them.

Shrieks and roars filled the air. Gatherers hurled magic left and right, blasting the monsters with fire and fury, but the hordes just kept coming. Several more Gatherers flew out from the openings in Vyx's body, summoning energy barriers to hold the monsters at bay. Fungal abominations plunged their limbs at the forcefields. The evil within them broke the barriers, twisting the Gods' will and sundering the barrier. True-light and not-light shattered like glass.

geU collapsed, drained of power. His body disappeared into the seething chaos.

EUe closed his second eyelids and wove a desperate prayer. The view was blinding. The fungus' raw power poured out from every creature and corpse, making his vision a maelstrom of deadly color. Fungal monstrosities launched their bodies at the Great Temple and at Vyx's expanding body.

The skyholder shook. Walls fell. Dawn streamed in through the holes, showing the corrupted, green tinted skies.

EUe took a gentle breath, EUe felt his life flash before his eyes. His heart was a bomb ready to burst in his chest. His wings were razors cutting through the air.

And yet, within, he was calm.

The Blade was so heavy. Yet it was warm to the touch. Within it, something stirred, barely an echo of an echo, yet it was there, and it gave EUe hope.

EUe screamed. His wings were fire on his back. He raised the Blade up high.

ekUtle-la, he prayed, Goddess of Time, help me. I don't care if you're not real. Just, please… help me. Help us!

He wove his prayers into shimmering hopes, and then opened himself to his dreamshard.

His whole body buzzed with spewing power. He drew it out and onto the Blade, which came alive, whirling with movement, spurred on by the scintillating, gyral light.

The web grew. Its shimmering rings encompassed everything in sight in an orrery of dreams and time and galaxies divine. The figurations moved in undying clockwork, tracing paths of the unfathomable. Then the energies slowed, and the world slowed with them, slowing, and slowing, until all had ground to a halt, as silent as the grave.

The horde.

The collapsing skyholder.

The massive ship Vyx was becoming.

For a moment, EUe's wings itched. A second later, he couldn't feel them at all.

Air buffeted his feathers as he fell.

Just as twUzen had done, EUe drew from his dreamshard to fly himself and the Sacred Blade back into the Temple. Lights rippled through the spectrum as he moved, sliding past ultraviolet in what lay ahead He spread his wings as wide as they would go, or at least tried to, falling in spurts until he hit the ground with a thud.

Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw his wings, lifeless and gray, flanked by a world retreating into somber red.

Groaning in pain, in the slowed time, EUe drove the Blade's tip into the ground and pushed off it with his arms, raising himself onto his knees.

The threads of the Door's magic were still there, floating in the frozen moment.

For the last time in his life, EUe used his mentor's wisdom, just as he had on that beach at the end of the world. Even if his world's connection to the Great Dream had been broken, EUe's dreamshard still remembered its homeland. Its magic resonated within it—and that was enough. It had to be.

And it was.

EUe communed with the Great Dream once more, but this time, EUe didn't call on the Gods' power. He didn't need it anymore. He'd grown beyond it. No: he didn't take; he gave. He wrapped his mind around the Door's fading communion and gave.

The same indescribable power he'd felt on the beach came rushing back to him. Not-light crescendoed around the Blade, gleaming like a torch. The power stormed through EUe's veins with a desert's fury, all sand and lightning, screaming to be free. The magic leapt out of him in bristling fractals. Order swept through the Door's weaves, crackling as it crystallized. He could feel its presence waiting for him on the other side of the sky, waiting to return.

There was only one thing left to do.

EUe released his hold on the Goddess of Time. The rings of heaven dissolved into motes of light as the ancient portal returned with a slurp of thunder. The Blade burned in EUe's hand, spewing out lightning like in the days of old.

EUe let go; the sacred weapon drifted back to its place as all the monsters' screams fell silent.

For the briefest moment, EUe saw Uka-yen standing in front of the Door. EUe wanted to tell him goodbye, but he couldn't. He couldn't speak, and could hardly move, and even if he could have, the old bird didn't seem to notice him.

Uka-yen turned around and stepped into the Great Dream.

Then EUe fell forward, flopping onto the ground.

"EUe! EUe! EUe!"

As the alien's cries filled the air, the polygonal roots on the ground pulled away from the Door and raced onto EUe. They coiled around him, forming a cocoon. EUe could feel the life leaving his body even as Vyx's roots entered it.

With his last breath, he looked up. The silver ceiling high above the Temple flickered and turned transparent, giving him a view of the sky.

And the sky was moving. The green was falling away. The clouds scattered like parting fog.

It was morning, and Vyx was rising into the sky. It was beautiful.

EUe closed his eyes as the silver tide engulfed him. His awareness fell into darkness. But instead of death, as his world faded to black, EUe heard a voice, and felt a light.

Vyx…?

"Thank you, my friend. Thank you."

The response was unlike anything EUe could have imagined. It felt like what God should have felt like: a vast intelligence, deeper than any abyss, yet filled with light and kindness, and the yearning to know and be known in return.

"Is this death?" EUe asked. "Is this the end?"

"No, my friend, it's a new beginning. We made a promise to help each other, remember? Your people will find justice, EUe, I promise. And we'll be there every step of the way. Now rest, for there is much work to be done."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.