As for me, I picked one at random, marched up to it, and took a look. Instantly, I was back inside a wall. I wanted to gasp, but, like before, the mechanical form I was inhabiting had no need to breathe. Even if it had, though, it still wouldn't have breathed, because the view would have taken its breath away.
Holy fudge…
For ease of reference let's call the cylindrical structure I saw in the previous porthole a skycyclinder. Now, as big as the sky cylinder was, the long, hexagonal cross-sectioned space I was currently looking at made the skycylinder seem tiny by comparison. Platforms spanned the space like great wheels or gears. Each and every spoke opened onto an individual skycylinder. And the wheels themselves? Angel's mercy… the gears were covered in a myriad different biomes. Impossibly different worlds rested side by side in jaggedly contrasting colors, textures, and skyscapes. A shining, silvery square of torrid marshlands sat between a sector of bare, rocky hills and a sector of mist-swept jungles. Knowledge I'd gained from the soul of a chemist pointed out patient, gallium lakes flowing gently over brittle, silicate reeds. Voltage gradients leapt among the reeds, ensouling the tide—making it bubble, furcate, and dance.
The next wheel over was covered in tall stacks of waxy-surfaced bubbles spread among rocky cliffs in a forest that glistened in the light. Fragile tauroid beings ambled through the groves, singing ancient songs, tossing sacred spices into the air. Gray giants wandered beneath the cliffs, dredging their stone bodies' five legs through a waveless green amoebic sea. Propeller-powered dirigibles drifted through the air, as did giant bats and their wild riders, flying across a wheel's mountain ranges.
A crystal dragon soared past me, briefly eclipsing my view; the beast made a wide, baking curve. Its scutes glinted in the artificial sunlight; its tail whisked by like a fiber-optic cable.
The landscape was dotted with photo-manipulating towers that created and managed zones of light and darkness. The light zones were caught in daytime, and the dark zones in night, not that the nights were quiet ones. Red strobe light flashed on the towers' sides, while secondary displays shone beneath them, and on the digital billboards and holo-advertisements that clustered in nearly seemingly available space. The displays' feed showed troops assembling in skycylinders, just like the ones I'd seen. I saw montages of hangars filled with row after row of flower-ships loading and launching to join the fight.
I retired from the Vyx-vision before it overwhelmed me, the silvery substance of my borrowed body melding back into a nearby surface. The next thing I knew, I was pushing my hands off the labyrinth's smooth wall, with my elbows sharply bent.
This was the worst possible combination. On the one hand, the Vyx wanted to blow up the Sun and murder me and everyone else like me. On the other hand, fudddddddge, they were awesome! I was honestly heartbroken that our peoples couldn't be friends. Worse… what kind of jerk would I be to destroy all that? How heartless did you have to be to consign all of that to death?
If it ever came down to whose survival mattered more… I… I might just have to abstain.
My companions chatted in earshot.
"This is… incredible," Suisei said.
"Well," Mr. Himichi clapped his hands together, "I know what I'm writing my next manga about."
"Beast's teeth," I muttered.
We turned to face each other.
"Did you find anything?" Suisei asked.
I shook my head. "I can't do this. I… I can't…"
Mr. Himichi's expression tightened. "What's wrong?"
"I saw them. It's… it's incredible. It's beautiful."
Accessing the three spirits' memories of what they had seen only added to my newfound conviction.
"I'm sorry," I said, "but… I'm not going to genocide these people and rape the souls out of their bodies. I just can't."
"I'm glad you have a moral compass, Genneth," Suisei said. "Maybe even the Vyx have one, I don't know. But what does it matter if they kill you? They want to kill you because of what you are. You, &alon, and all the wyrms, down to the last. And, like you said, they'll stop at nothing to get their justice." He nodded gravely. "I understand your concerns, really, I do, but, if you don't do something soon—"
I clenched my jaws, nearly grinding my teeth. "They're people, Suisei, just like us. If I was willing to wipe them all out to ensure my survival, I'd be just as bad as &alon, albeit with a much shorter track record. Heck—and I hate myself for even thinking this—it's a darn shame that the Vyx didn't arrive here sooner! If they had, maybe they could have destroyed &alon and stopped her from destroying any other worlds. But, no matter, it won't be much longer now. You heard them. We have twenty-four hours before the Lodestars are fully charged."
Dour, Suisei lowered his head. "Kill or be killed; that's the law of the jungle. I know you don't like it—neither do I—but… as cruel as it is, it's just the way of the world."
"Can't you try talking to them?" Ileene said. "That's what you told my mother you'd do."
"Yes, but—"
"—What buts?" Ileene replied. "Dr. Howle, you were able to talk me down, and I was in a cult! If anyone can get through to the Vyx, it's you!"
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My lips quivered. I wanted to smile at her compliment, but I was just too upset.
"Ileene, there have to be millions of them. Yes, you were in a cult, but that was small potatoes compared to this! This is like trying to talk down the Soran Empire, or the Third Crusade." I tugged at my lucky bow-tie. "Ileene… this isn't like your case. It's too big for that. Abnormality is relative. The only reason I could bring you back is because I had the rest of the world and all of its values anchoring me as I pulled. I don't have that here! Flibbertigibbet! This isn't just a cult! It's an entire civilization! You really expect me to get them to change their minds? All of them? And, even if by some insane miracle, it was within my power to do as you suggest, where would I begin? Would I have the benefit of my mind-powers, or would I be forced to do it the old-fashioned way? And, don't forget, you're assuming I'll be able to communicate with them without stealing their souls like &alon does. And, even if I could communicate with them, why would they ever listen to me? I'm just one wyrm."
"Dr. Howle," Ileene said, "to quote a wise man, 'you're regressing'."
I narrowed my eyes.
She was quoting what I'd said to her during one of our recent therapy-sessions.
"No, I'm not!" I barked.
The sudden outburst drew my companions' stares.
I sighed. "As a doctor, I'm used to dealing with patients who don't want help or insist they don't need any—least of all mine—but… this is different." I straightened my collar. "Ileene, you wanna know why I'm feeling so much apprehension toward convincing these extraterrestrial otherworlders that they're wrong to seek vengeance against the wyrms of &alon? Well, I'll tell you. It's not just because I doubt my ability to sway them, or because I don't have a clue as to how I could even pull it off, no, there's a much bigger problem. And you know what it is? It's that I think they're right to feel the way that they do! I'm not going to lie to them. I'm done lying, whether it's to myself, or anyone else, and because of that, I can't lie: their anger is fully justified! Look at what &alon has done!" I scoffed. "How can I try to get them to believe something I, myself, don't believe?"
Mr. Himichi sighed. "Then it would seem we are at an impasse." His expression was as serious as a grave.
"If there was some way I could figure out how to stop these 'Lodestars' or modify them, maybe things might be different."
"Then look for that," Ileene said. "It's better than nothing."
We locked eyes for a moment, and then I sighed in defeat.
"You're right."
And so, back to the portholes we went.
I looked through several without really getting anywhere, just more amazingness. However, when I got to my fourth, I saw something truly game-changing: one of the buildings from the Lantor Incursion, from the city of hummingbirds turned to stone. It wasn't an entire one of them, just the core and some surrounding structures—like castles on columns and catwalks—but there was no mistaking what it was. The gardens were the same; the architecture. Really, there were only two main differences.
First, the structure was incomplete. Only the central structural columns were present, along with the buildings atop and around them, and gardens surrounding everything on the ground. Instead of the large rotunda with a base studded through with archways like the structures we'd found in Lantor's dead, mist-shrouded city, there was only the silver substance of Vyx construction.
Second, there were far more than just a couple of structural columns. A cylindrical structure stood among the central columns, like a taller, thinner version of the whole thing, repeated at slimmer scale. The only entrances I could see in this inner column were the large holes built into its walls.
Unlike the other places the portholes had shown me, this area was almost entirely devoid of people, and the few people that were present were all of the hummingbird species, and sat or stood on the walkways that stuck out from the central cylinder, decked out in slender-looking armor totally unlike the silver suits. Given their stoic poses and the weapons in their hands—short energy swords, and bidets and tridents—I figured they were guards of some sort.
Obviously, I was intrigued.
By now, I'd become familiar with the details of maneuvering while in the geometric eye-on-the-wall form I took whenever I looked into one of the portholes. I swam down the wall without any trouble, only to stop as I reached the ground. No matter where I looked, there was no trace of silver material anywhere except the surrounding walls and some patches on the ceiling. This wouldn't have been an issue, were it not for the fact that when I tried to move off the wall and onto the gravel-paved walkway toward the central structure, I didn't budge. It wasn't for a want of trying, I just couldn't move off the silver. That left me feeling like a kid stranded at the far edge of a pool, with arms too short to pull myself out.
Fudge.
I "sat" there in frustration.
The more I looked around, the more I was convinced that I was in some kind of high security area. Why else would it be so empty, or so filled with armed guards and so few people?
The place was deathly still.
But instead of sitting around and moping, I tried to get creative.
Maybe there was some way I could jump off the wall, or something like that?
Granted, performing a jump when you were a limbless lump of abstract geometry extruding from a quasi-metallic wall probably wasn't the easiest task to pull off, but it was worth a shot.
I tried to jump. That did not work. It was like moving a limb I didn't have, a notoriously difficult task. After that, I tried thinking intently about jumping.
This brought better results. All of a sudden, the hunk of silvery metal my consciousness was currently embodying floated out of the wall. After about a minute of experimentation and wildly spinning around without getting the slightest bit dizzy, I figured out how to move around.
How was I flying? What laws, powers, or principles were at work? I didn't have a clue, nor did I care.
Eyeing the guards up above, I kept low to the ground, mere millimeters over the gravel path. After a burst of panic, I was about to take cover and hide behind a shrub when I realized that was a really dumb idea.
When you were up to no good, it was very important not to look like you were up to no good. Acting suspiciously was one of the most effective ways of drawing suspicion to yourself.
Here, since there didn't appear to be any way inside the cylinder other than through one of the guarded holes, I really had only one option.
As my son might have said: I had to go in "like a boss".
For a second, I imagined myself fidgeting with my bow-tie. It helped. A little.
Then I flew up. I moved decisively, making a beeline for the nearest entry hole without any attempt to sneak up on anyone or anything.
One of the guards glanced at me as I passed by, but that was it.
I was in!
Then I looked down, and immediately froze.
No…
I zoomed in on the sight down below. My polyhedral body shivered.
I moved closer, unable to believe what I was seeing.
But, no. It was real. It was there.
If I had arms. I would have made the Bond-Sign.
Slowly, I lowered myself toward the ground.
I took in every inch of the scene around me and then willed myself back into my body, but not before merging my latest borrowed body back into its surroundings.
Angel-knows what might have happened if the Vyx discovered I'd been peeking.
Then, stepping away from the wall, I turned to face Suisei, Ileene, and Mr. Himichi and in a wavering voice, told them what I'd seen.
"They have the Sword."
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