The Else

From the sizzling rip he had torn in front of him, the man saw the beginning of a street fight. Three young anarchists, as it seemed, taking on two policemen. It probably had started over a stolen piece of bread. It is true that the people were not really fed enough, these days. These years, in fact.

He turned around and sighed. He moved a hand, quickly, in a tired, used way, which closed the electrified magmatic breach he was looking through. Then the street was gone, and so was its annoying noise. The whole room was bright, despite the absence of windows or candles.

“Don’t shut it now, I want to see!” said the Child. The man sighed again and lifted his two hands. He clapped them, mumbled in a strange, unknown language, and opened them again. And the breach was there.

The Child said, “Something is happening out there!”

The man said, “Good, you’re not blind. It’s a common fight.”

The Child lifted a slab and left it floating halfway between the floor and the breach.

"You seem to get along with it," said the man. The Child smiled proudly and looked down. Now the three anarchists had become a little crowd.

“This is a riot!” said the Child. He was both excited and anxious.

The man took another glance and almost looked surprised. “Hum…not this time,” he said. “It’s bigger than that. And earlier than I expected, also.”

The Child came down his slab and put it back in its place with a wave. “How do you know? Were you expecting it to grow?” he asked.

The man smiled sadly. He turned to the breach and looked down more thoroughly.

“They can’t see us,” said the man. “But we can. We can see them all.”

The Child nodded.

“Just as we can see them throw rocks and smash windows”, said the man. “You can’t see it yet but it has started.”

He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. Then he opened them slightly, revealing two snow-white pupils, and he winked a little, just like it was painful. “All over the city, little groups are starting a fire the whole people will feed. They are prepared. A new elite is coming to take the old one down. Look: the police are outnumbered. Carts are being filled with furniture and straw. They are literally going to burn the city to the ground. Then the flames will spread through the country, through time, until it is forgotten, a thousand years from now.”

“But why?” said the Child. He didn’t look so excited by now.

The man said “Men fight, men rest, and then they fight again. Every man, every generation, of any age. This hasn’t changed one bit since the beginning.” He closed the breach again and a plain silence arrived. He grabbed a chair, sat on it and looked at the Child with a serious, quite intimidating look.

“Who am I?” he asked.

“Again…” said the Child.

The man frowned.

“The Guardian…” said the Child. The routine was not as fun as it used to be.

“Since when?”

“Since the first light shredded the old darkness.”

“Until when?”

“Until it is my turn.”

“When will it be your turn?”

“When I will have learned enough…” said the Child, kicking into a stool.

The Guardian shocked him with a little spark.

“Ouch!” yelled the Child.

“Focus. Now, what is it to learn today?”

The Child sat on the stool angrily. “Feed the people or they will starve.”

“No.”

“Or they will rebel?”

“Yes but no.”

“Or they will organize and revolt?”

“Again, yes but no. You don’t pay attention. You are missing the point as they all have from the start. It is simple: all that whisper of the nations is vain. All of this is…futile. Order, discontent, revolution, new order. All of that is vain. This is what you will learn today. I've been watching them for ages, and for ages, you will. All of this is vain."

He sighed like an old man. “Births, deaths, only limited time, and all they do is useless. They don’t even know where to go. Wise men shout in the desert, fools sit on thrones. They crowned the criminal and killed their true king. When it’s your turn, Child, you will see. And I really hope you will not see what I saw.”

“But when it’s my turn, where will you be?” asked the Child anxiously.

The Guardian did not answer. Instead, he stood up and turned one of his rings to the left. He crossed it with his thumb and grumbled gravely, slowly. The walls started to shake and a door appeared.

“Finally!” said the Child. “Where do we go?” He started to hop.

“Volatile mood, again," said the Guardian. He shocked the Child.

“Ouch!” The Child clenched a fist and closed his eyes in anger. His face progressively regained its usual pale colors and he relaxed.

“Good. Now open the door.”

The Child obeyed and they went outside. There was no landscape, no sun, nothing. Everything was white. Even the shadows had disappeared. It all was just a little chilly…

“The Else! Woooooohoo!!” said the Child. And he started to run around.

One snap from the Guardian and the door vanished. Silence should have returned, but a drizzling sound made itself heard. The Guardian frowned in discontent but didn’t pay more attention. He was getting old, even if age didn’t mean much for him. His spells could be sloppy from time to time, as it seemed.

The Child wasn't paying attention either. He was running around, summoning ethereal butterflies and little kites.

After a while, he returned to the Guardian, who was designing a miniature model of a new room with rays that were coming from one of his rings.

“I want to play the game!” said the Child.

“Mood…” said the Guardian, slowly pointing a finger to the Child.

The Child coughed in embarrass. “Can we play the game?”

“Why not? Let us see where we are, know…” said the Guardian. He summoned a staff and drew a big grid on the floor. It looked like someone had spilled shiny marbles of light on a silky plane blanket. Nothing in the human world could be compared to it. Which was indubitably why the Else was the Child's favorite place out of Earth. The Guardian said a few words and the grid started to float above the ground. He made the staff disappear into little orbs of light.

The Child summoned a little stick for himself and invoked two ranges of pieces, made from the very same indescribable matter. “Do we play regular chess? Timeless? Anarchy?”

“Hum…I don’t know… Timeless is still too complicated for you.”

"No, it's not!"

The Guardian sighed deeply. “Do you even remember the Being’s move pattern?”

“Yes. Half a horseman’s move and change of floor!”

“And?”

“And what?”

“If there’s…”

“Yes! If there’s another Being on the next floor, the last one freezes!”

"No, it doesn't. It disappears. I told you: you're not ready."

“Okay okay…how about Anarchy?”

“Anarchy is…well…just not today. Let us replay the Great Wars.”

“But…” said the Child, disappointed.

“But nothing. Add the sorcerers, remove the horsemen, double the pons, I will enlarge the board. No discussion.”

“How were they? The Wars, I mean.”

“What don’t you understand in “No discussion”?”

“I’m not arguing! Just tell me! Were you there? Amongst them? How come they didn’t have horsemen?”

"Didn't have…They would have been useless against warlocks and necroes... Can't fight fire with wood…"

“Ah! And why double pons?”

“Pff…sacrifice, rings a bell? Now do what I told you to do.”

“Just one more question!”

“No.”

“But…”

“No!”

“Okay…” said the Child. He licked his lips, concentrating. He drew the edges of the new pieces, and with a few words, the hollow shapes became full. Then he began to set the game smoothly, with method. But as the pieces were appearing and shifting, a king refused to move. The Guardian saw it. He frowned angrily, this time. The Child approached the piece. He saw it was stuck on the ground. A strange flake was under it, keeping it from rising to the board like the other pieces.

“Did you mess an edge? I told you the filling could only be contained by a geometrically perfect piece! Second law of metaphysical design! Don't you ever listen? Do you even know why I bother repeating this all the time?"

By the time the Guardian had come close to the piece, the leakage had started to flow harder. On the floor, a black and purple stain was growing, and glowing as well.

“Damn it!” said the Guardian.

“Very poor choice of words!” said the stain.

There was a loud explosion. Unnatural smoke spread everywhere. The floor cracked and some pieces fell into the void. It reformed, as it was designed to do, but with great difficulty, this time.

A Shade rose from the stain.

A Shade that didn’t obey any law, not even those of physics.

A Shade that hadn’t obeyed anything or anyone for ages.

It tore light and space, time and place. It had no proper color, but every one of them. No texture and yet it was burning, scratching and ripping off everything around it. It was both one and multiple, both present and absent. The Guardian was able to have a glimpse of it, but the image was messed up.

And the Shade spoke and remained silent all the same. It spoke calmly. It seemed confident. “Let one flaw in the glass and light will be distorted. Fill it up and it shatters. And thus, light fades away.” And it started a canticle. The everlasting silence was interrupted by sung sentences, and with great effort, the Guardian started to assemble the pieces of reality, to understand a little part of it. With great horror, he heard the canticle, and so did the Child.

At the sound of the most corrupted verses, the Child’s ears bled; his eyes also. The Guardian tried to scream, but he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t move either. He was in shock. He had never seen a Shade. But maybe his memories were distorted as well. Furthermore, the Shade didn’t belong here. In a thousand lifetimes, nothing had ever come to the Else. Nothing could.

The Shade moved to the board and started to command the chess pieces slowly. As it seemed to know the rules, it played a few rounds, then it stopped and laughed. It caught a queen and slammed it on the ground, apparently amused, but with an incredible amount of hate. It slammed and slammed again until the piece was reduced to dust. Or maybe there hadn’t been any piece in the first place. Nothing was certain anymore.

Then the Shade moved the other pieces, which soon formed a star with a circle around it. They melted into a thin disc, some sort of diagram. The Shade finished its canticle, and the diagram divided itself into nine pieces, each one bearing a set of unreadable symbols. The Child, unconscious, was grasped by invisible strings and started to rise above the floor. The Guardian saw it with horror, but he still couldn’t move.

The Child opened his eyes. They were glowing red and bleeding in and out. He opened his mouth also, but instead of his sweet voice, a desecrated whisper came from it, a voice both grave and acute. The Guardian was unusually pale, halfway from crying. He cried with no tears, both sad and happy. He was distorted too.

Then he screamed so as to regain some courage, and he came to his senses. He rapidly turned two rings, the blue ones, and a cage appeared around the Child, but it failed to enclose him. “How can it be…?”

The Child laughed. “Fear not, Guardian. The master never hurts the puppet. He just makes it dance. The Child is of no interest to me.” He lifted his hands, and nine diagrams got up.

The Guardian winced. He threw a thorny shard of steel to the Child but it was parried easily. He leaped forward, spread a set of glorious wings and summoned a spear in his hands. He rolled and leaped again, dodging orbs he thought the Child was casting at him. He couldn’t have known they weren’t there. His very sense of perception had been compromised. Still, he divided himself twice and started to mumble, in order to exorcise the Child’s body.

The Child spurted wings out as well and summoned whips with blades on it, sharp like razors. It threw them like tentacles, and they tied the Guardian up with his two copies. It forced them to merge. It looked like a giant octopus for a second, but the Guardian’s eyes were giving up their purpose, as nothing seemed consistent anymore.

"You cannot defeat us, for we are Legion, and you are none," said the Child in a thousand languages.

The Guardian tried to break free but the Child tightened the ties and forced air out of the Guardian’s lungs. Blood came out too.

The Guardian managed to eject another clone and fainted afterward.

The Clone said, "Hold onto your puppet!" His eyes filled with rage as he was gathering his memories and strengths. He saw the Wars, the Sacrifices, the Last Summoning, the Beast, and shouted as he spurted black wings. He summoned a mace and a shield and rammed the Child. He hit him in the chest, twice, but it had no effect.

The Child laughed and lifted the fainted Guardian up. He invaded him and sent him to fight his Clone.

The spear met the shield, the mace, and finally, the Clone’s chest.

The Child seized the wounded Clone and made him merge again with its master.

In the end, all remained a half-winged Guardian with a spear across the torso and empty eyes.

The Child grinned. “Now you can listen… I have ground-breaking news! Your clerks have surrendered, the Church has fallen! And as you remove the strings, the puppet starts its own dance. Look, Guardian, look: I’ve been given power on Earth. I have come to claim what’s mine. Your time is up, Guardian, and now Earth is dancing to my music!” The face of the Child was insanely jubilating.

The Child seized the Else and bent it to his will. The endless horizon rose and ends rejoined. It was both marvelous and horrific. Then it was as if they all were in a sphere, floating, surrounded by the nine diagrams.

"Look, Guardian, this joke is finally coming to an end! And a hilarious one!”

The Guardian coughed. “You don’t know it, but you cannot win this…This is just a moment, a drop in the oceans…”

The Child laughed again. “Hope! This is wonderful! You are just like them! You don’t see!” He turned two of his fingers into pikes and poked the Guardian’s eyes. “Now LOOK!”

The Child snapped his fingers, and the diagrams turned to breaches, and the Child moved the Guardian in front of each one of them. The Guardian cried silently as he felt famine, war, and plagues. Plots, crimes, and pain. Floods, droughts, and earthquakes. Each breach showed a world in pain, covered in ashes. It showed fire, steel, and blood. It showed it for a time that no one can count. Then the breaches disappeared, and all of a sudden, the Guardian stood alone.

The floor was plane again, almost. Smoke had disappeared, so had sounds, except a broken and painful panting. The Guardian stood up with great difficulty. He was not really sure what had happened. He was both wounded and intact, blood flowing in and out of his wounds. Reality was blurry, the Else had been twisted too much. Its floor was in an uncertain condition.

The Child was lying a few feet from the Guardian, apparently untouched. The muscles on his face were stretched, though.

As he managed to focus a little, the Guardian saw he had lost a wing. Blood was flowing down his back and he had cuts everywhere else. He limped to the Child, following the sound of his moaning and absorbed his remaining wing in a painful cry. He sat by the Child. With an exhausted movement of the lips, he cast a healing spell to him. A weak one. “Pathetic…” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “I don’t have long, now.” He coughed blood. “Dammit…” He still had his spear across the chest, and it couldn’t be removed without assistance. Furthermore, he could feel his body refusing to heal.

The Child coughed too and opened his eyes. He tried to stand up, but the Guardian stopped him.

“Keep your strengths. This will not be easy to take.” The Guardian took another deep breath. “Pay attention. Listen carefully. From now on, you will have to be alone.”

“No!” said the Child in despair.

“Mood…”

The Child shed a tear.

“This will have to do I guess…” said the Guardian. “This is your last lesson. Things you know, things that are new to you. My time has come.”

He coughed again and grumbled in pain. He touched the Child’s head, and both of their eyes turned white. The Child looked stunned. It was a big hit, for such a young apprentice.

The Guardian started a litany. The rite was clear, written a lifetime ago. It had been tested by the Augurs, approved by Fate. It was unstoppable, even by a Shade, although there wouldn’t be any more there by now. The mumbles and the gestures were precise, holy and full of certainty. After an undefinable time came the last verse.

“In the beginning was the Word, as you have read. The Word said, “Let there be light”, and the first light shredded the old darkness. As darkness didn’t receive light, it fell into the void, and it swore to take man down with it. So, the Word missioned a being to watch over them, and to learn from them. The being did not know why. He did not know how. He could just watch and learn. After the first age, he understood the world. So, he created arts and sciences and gave them to man. And man waged war and unfurled the old darkness' corruption. Since then, the being has tried to correct them, to understand a little more. One day, the being was given an apprentice. He did not know why, but he knew his time would come soon. And I don't know nothing beyond that point.”

The Guardian took his rings off and gave them to the Child. He drew wings on his back with blood and with nothing but a word, wings spread. The Guardian blessed the Child and joined his hands.

“You know more than I knew from the first light, but your time will probably be shorter than mine. As a Guardian, you will have to guide them, to inspire good deeds, help them in any way you can. You might even have to go live amongst them… The time is near: the Church has fallen, the Thrones will follow soon. I'm afraid there won't be much order any more. The time is near, Child, and your turn has come. Until the last light shreds the new darkness.”

He opened his hands and blew on them. The hands turned white and glowed. His face had no expression. His eyes didn’t betray anything. He had done his time and not even he knew what was to come. He touched the Child’s head for the last time and performed the last rite.

The Child received the light and the pain that comes with it. He fainted, of course. He was young. Out of time and space, he aged centuries in a second.

When he woke up, he was alone. The Else was quiet and empty. The rings were attached firmly to his fingers and not one of them had a single scratch. After a moment of focus, he turned one, the grey, “For gates of stone, wheels of steel and spears of silver”, and summoned a door. He went back in the observation room and the door vanished. “No waste of energy”, the Guardian used to say.

Hands clapped, a breach appeared. A much cleaner one than the last. With@ a quick look, he knew the revolts had ended. Wars and diseases, natural disasters, all the darkness that had been unleashed had faded away.

Amongst the fields were still good and bad seeds. A few souls were starting to organize a new order. Some others were helping, some were still lost in their own desires. But the order was rising still. A much cleaner one than the last. He sighed and smiled.

“Let there be light again.”