Chương 37: Demiurge

"I always wondered why anyone would bother troubling themselves over the suffering that saturates the world." A distorted figure, steeped in red and filth, murmured into the luminous night on the mountain.

"So long as I kept silent, I was certain I could go on living as a spectator. A silent and hollow spectator." He pressed his fingers to the wound on his skull, now reduced to a meagre gash just above the temple. The burn marks and impact scars had vanished, buried beneath his silver hair.

"I was evidently mistaken." He drew from the holster slung across his shoulders a heavy hunting rifle encrusted with mud and earth. He examined it for a moment: the metal, in the few points untouched by grime, was polished enough to reflect his image to him, warped by the strange veins pulsing beneath his skin. The trigger was chipped, but not enough to prevent firing, and Grayson knew this well.

"I am so sorry…" These were the words that came to him when he understood the hunter was bleeding. He had wandered through the forest concealed beneath a dark, tattered tarp and coat. On the path up the mountain, he had come across a hunter who tried to help him.

"Hey, don't run, boy! You are seriously hurt!"

"I do not need your help!" He had exclaimed, shoving him aside. What he failed to notice was that in doing so, the only barrier between himself and the outside world had fallen. The hunter stepped back and raised the rifle with a trembling hand, both barrels of the old but capable weapon levelled at his face. Only when he saw the man's terrified expression did Grayson understand what had become of him.

His hands pulsed with a strange yellowish glow, his eyes radiated a violet light, and his entire skin was carved with dark, throbbing cicatrices.

"No… No, forgive me, I did not mean to." He murmured, drawing slowly closer. Drops of blood and lustrous black ichor slid from his fingers with each step. A violent flash struck his vision, followed by a sudden pain in his chest. A small metal coin fell at his feet, followed by a terrified scream. With horror, he watched the flesh, once pierced through by the lead shot, begin to reconstitute itself in a gleaming luminescence. On the ground, still in the dust, lay a scattered cluster of flattened pellets.

The man threw down the rifle and ran, abandoning even his vehicle on the road.

"At last, my form reflects what I am." He thought, walking and using the rifle as a crutch. He was exhausted, weakened, and bewildered, and yet that unsettling melody was still audible to him, wordless, nothing but the distant sound of an organ. He kept moving along the path, passing through the dozen or so dark-coloured walls that marked the entrance to what his colleagues had called the "reliquary." Dense stakes of braided metal perforated the grass like trunks, and heaps of debris crowned the sides of the route.

Through those gates, however, the most ruined thing of all was Grayson Dirac himself. Filthy, stained, and with a near-rotten soul.

"Among these ruins… I found what I needed for her tomb… Such fond memories." He smiled, driving the rifle into the earth and using it to haul himself higher toward the main building. Before him, anchored almost against the rock face, stood a vast dome encircled by a dense thicket of trees, destroyed and pierced through by every manner of debris imaginable. Long spines of grey stone, walls of once-molten metal twisted far beyond recognition into something spectral.

"In the end, I shall be able to create something… A new current of data." He smiled, letting more blood drip from his lacerated lips.

"A new sea of life, teeming with music and joy… Yes, a place where a god might be born." He whistled, shattering the nocturnal calm of the forest. With each step he took, every living thing chose to withdraw, frightened by his song.

"Every life shall be a tile, every soul a brick, every emotion a foundation." Small fragments of mortar slid down the slope, gouged free by the rifle. He stopped abruptly, glancing back over his shoulder. Far below, beyond the forest, he could make out the modest township of Catteridge. Few lights, few buildings worth noting, and yet enough to make its presence known in the night.

"So much presence for something so small. What magnificent and pointless splendour." He resumed walking, fixing his gaze at last on the ruined entrance of the complex. A faint reddish glow waited for him behind the door, an ethereal light, the fruit of unpleasant memories.

"That red again… Revolting." He took a beam that lay across his path in both hands, shattered it, and hurled it aside. He paused to study his own hand, pulsing with violet, and began to laugh, at times with desperation, at times with frenzy.

"How much of the sea might these hands defile? I find myself wondering chiefly about the colour." The smile wrapping his lips still in place, he stepped at last into the dome. With each step the scientist took, the entrance filled with dust. A fungal, stale smell permeated the space. Glass was strewn across what had once been the floor, now reduced to a confused succession of mounds, craters, and tiles transformed into unsettling columns of ash. Grayson ran a finger along the greyish, near-black dust and smiled.

"Nothing has changed here. Absolutely nothing." He snapped his fingers, scattering more dust across the floor. He turned into the corridor, following memory, dragging the rifle behind him. Then, without warning, his smile vanished, displaced by an expression of absolute hostility. Below him lay the Demiurge's crater, an enormous pit in the rock connected to a gallery running toward the adjacent forest.

"There were stairs here once. Doors, and her as well…" He slid down the walls of the crater, making his way toward the tangle of cables and pipes that was the reactor. At the centre of that amalgam stood a cylinder of iron and glass, nearly as tall as a building in the capital. Despite the external damage, the machine's structure was perfectly preserved." There you are… You accursed harpoon."

His attention was fixed entirely on the enormous shard set into the apex of the glass cylinder: a vast fragment of Lambdite, discovered within the complex by himself and Erika. He turned his gaze, noting with a leer that the control room had been lacerated, but not wholly destroyed." Come here, Gray! Perhaps we can get it running!

"A pair of violet spectres danced in the air before him, borne on a breeze. Their forms were distorted and weightless, but he recognised the voice." Erika… Don't…" He could not determine whether the words were his own, those of his vision, or merely thoughts never spoken aloud. In that instant of remorse, the figures vanished, dissolving into the control room." Come back… Please come back!!" He lunged toward the room, heedless of everything in his path.

He stumbled over cables, striking his chin against the floor more than once. He pressed against a beam to haul himself upright, bringing an entire column down in the process. His body moved of its own accord while his mind was getting eroded.

"No no no no no no!" He threw the rifle aside and began shifting the rubble with all his strength. His nails shattered, releasing once more that pulp which should have been his blood. He struck the largest block hard, succeeding only in spraying more fluid from his body. Tears in his eyes, he drove his palm into the debris, twisting it with force. The space and air around the rock began to constrict around his hand, rotating and contorting. Fissures spread across the surface, slowly tearing apart its shape."

BEGONE!" The entire mass of rubble was cleaved by an invisible force, hurling fragments in every direction. Around Grayson, splinters and rocks floated at various heights, orbiting his body. He stared at his own palm for a moment, taking in his wretched state. The fingers had bent entirely back upon themselves, hanging from the hand by a web of flesh and violet blood. His wrist had followed that supernatural rotation; The bones beneath warped and twisted.

He smiled, converting his anguish into a deranged laugh, swinging what remained of his hand. He seized it with the other, straightening the fingers one by one, and finally the wrist. After a moment, everything resettled, the mass of flesh returning to its original form." Magnificent… I can finally see it… That sequence, so perfect." He extended his hand toward the ceiling, attempting to grasp the infinite strings of numbers and symbols drifting in the air.

The instant his fingers grazed one, the entire world returned to normal. Grayson watched it all dissolve, and from his eyes, tears began to flow slowly, tracing along that expressionless face He rose, resuming his walk toward the control room, slowly shifting the remaining debris. With a gesture of his hand, he moved a block the size of a door out of his path. He slid through the jagged spines of half-molten glass and found himself before the dusty, ravaged control section.

The table, laden with dozens of cables, instruments, compasses, signals, and coloured indicators, was in a pitiful state, cracked and exposed. On what remained of the wall, two boxes connected to the tangle of cables that was the Demiurge. One was a matte black, scratched in places, probably by the desperate attempts of the old personnel. The second was more substantial, bronze-coloured, connected to a further complex of gears and pistons, partly corroded.

Grayson tore the panel off the first, ripping it clean from its hinge and dropping it to the floor. Inside sat a heavy iron lever, as thick as his entire arm. Just below it, scorched into the metal, the inscription: EMERGENCY RESET. He returned his attention to the scattered array of levers, buttons, and dials on the central table. He began working one of the wheels in silence, forcing it until it groaned.

Suddenly, the entire complex seemed to tremble, as pipes buried beneath the rubble began to glow a fierce red, as though traversed by molten iron. The liquid began to condense inside the cylinder, without touching the black shard positioned just above. Again the silhouettes of himself and Erika appeared before him, this time watching as the cylinder filled. Grayson smiled and reached toward them, but before his fingers could graze those shadows, they dissolved, as though attempting to flee his grasp.

He lowered his gaze and returned to the controls. The temperature began to rise rapidly, followed by a powerful, trembling light contained within the cylinder. Bolts and sparks ricocheted against the glass, straining to escape their confinement and releasing a blaze of incandescence.

"The readings are stable… Perfect… Perfect… Perfect!" A drop of sweat struck the dark, blackened glass of one of the indicators, climbing swiftly toward the darkest point of its scale. All the other gauges, of varying size and shape, began climbing as well. In his frantic joy, he made the error of raising his eyes. Erika's spectre stood before him, smiling. Within that unsettling nebulous mass, he could make out dark wounds, yet her smile did not waver.

"You were not here that time…" He drew back, but for some reason could not move far from that figure. Trembling, his eyes flooded with tears, he seized the lever panel"WHY DO YOU STARE AT ME?!" He struck Erika's spectre squarely, sliding to the floor as he watched that violet cloud expand and dissipate.

"Erika? I am sorry… I… I…" His eyes seemed to him terribly heavy, as though coated in a ferrous film. He raised his hand toward the last violet gleam, finally managing to brush it. He slipped thus into a state of torpor and stillness, fixed within his own memory.

"Come on, Gray… I am certain it will work today." A woman's voice roused him from his morning stupor, taking him by the sleeve and dragging him up the hillside.

"Erika, slow down, please…" He murmured, careful not to stumble and fall. On the mountain, the air was glacial, and the gusts of wind did nothing to make the experience agreeable. Remarkably, the nature around them seemed perfectly at ease with the environment, chirping and darting between the trees.

"Nothing you can do… Today, I shall prove to my sister that I am capable too!" She turned, offering him the most enthusiastic, joyful smile he had ever been given. Grayson had no choice but to accept in silence, returning it. Before them stood a powerful construction of dark stone, divided by several metal entranceways, partially damaged and dented. Cracks ran through it in several places, and around the building lay dozens of scattered fragments of debris, devoured by vegetation and time.

"Does this place not unsettle you?" He asked, quietly withdrawing his hand without drawing attention to it. Erika stopped, turning again to look him over as she was accustomed to doing.

"Please… This is the last time we should need to come here, I promise." She begged, bending slightly and clasping her hands. She tidied her hair in front of him and began winking. Grayson retreated and, with a sigh, conceded defeat.

"It is only that this place gives me the impression of… Death." He murmured as they drew ever closer to the main structure. Everywhere he turned lay dozens of small mounds in the earth. Every irregularity in the ground suggested to him a vast cemetery, though he managed not to dwell on it. Stolen story; please report.

"We discovered this place some time ago, and you are still fretting over it?" Erika scoffed, flicking him lightly on the face. Grayson stepped back, caught off guard. She smiled, returning to that expression.

"I know how much effort you put in every night for my sake… I am grateful for it." He found himself both confused and embarrassed, choosing to return the sentiment and to walk ahead of her.

"Let it work this time, Erika… I have no wish to be scolded by Lug yet again." The two finally reached the entrance. They had to push hard against one of the fallen beams, though fortunately it did not appear to be wedged in place. The corridors smelled of mould, and on their palates there seemed to form a stale, dry taste. Erika complained more than once, while Grayson endured that squalid sensation in silence.

"We are nearly there. You have everything we need, yes?" Grayson asked, gesturing ahead toward the circular staircase. The bottom was dark and its depth difficult to determine, but both of them knew it was only around ten metres down. Erika nodded, sliding the bag from her shoulders to her arm. Grayson nodded in turn and began descending the stairs. A heavy smell of burning permeated that shaft, irritating them both considerably.

"What do you suppose happened here?" Erika asked, directing the beam of the lantern ahead of them. The grim steps, marked by thick, dark, and blackened cuts, appeared far more unsettling in the reddish light.

"I can't be sure…The collapses and the burn marks suggest a fire, yet it is all far too well preserved." Grayson had noticed as much the first time.

"This entire place is a ruin, but why is it so well preserved? Doesn't it feel strange?"

"And here we are before our experiment!" Erika exclaimed, surpassing Grayson and making her way toward the control apparatus. She blew across the levers and buttons, releasing an enormous cloud of dark dust. The corridors to either side had been entirely blocked by a vast landslide. The entire room was in a state of total abandonment, the ceiling losing fragments of itself by degrees, yet the equipment had been left in impeccable condition.

She paused to study the enormous glass cylinder, inside which was submerged a colossal shard of black rock, almost lustrous, vaguely blade-shaped in its form. Erika ran her fingertips along the entire surface of the container.

"If that is Lambdite… I dare not imagine what it was used for." Grayson focused on understanding the purpose for which that machine had been constructed. Dozens of cables, exhaust pipes, a heat hood, ventilation fans, all of it driven by an intricate system of gears and pistons.

"It is a reactor, Gray, not unlike the T engine." Erika took his hands, her pupils lit with a gleam of joy and excitement. He quickly redirected his concern, fixing his gaze on the partially open summit of the cylinder. All along the surrounding wall, unnatural burn marks resembling lightning bolts wound through the debris.

"I imagine it requires Taumite to function." He murmured, inspecting one of the pipes at their feet. Through the few transparent patches, he could make out various crystalline forms, a deep red in colour. Erika nodded, gesturing toward the control booth.

"The reservoir is still functional. There should be enough for two or three ignitions." She brought Grayson to the control panel. The lights were pristine in condition, ready to flicker. He noted the two levers on the sides and the box of gears and apparatuses"Something is not right here…" He began gently touching each of the controls, cleaning every label one by one. On his fingers, a greyish, near-black film formed.

It was granular, and yet his skin could not shake the sense of damp and filth that the substance transmitted.

"Erika… This is not ash nor dust." He showed her the dark stains on his hand. Erika studied them for a moment before returning to work with the instruments. Grayson tried to stop her, but the instant he touched her arm, she fixed him squarely in the face, this time without a smile.

"It appears to be a mineral, but I cannot determine what. This place is not safe, we ought to-" He was interrupted abruptly, seized by the lapel of his coat.

"I know what you want to say… But I cannot abandon this now, not at this stage. Do you think I am unaware of how dangerous this may be? I know, Grayson. I know." She tightened her grip on his garment, almost pulling him toward her.

"But the thought of casting into the fire all the time I have spent on this study frightens me more than anything here…" She sighed, drawing closer. He understood that she was trembling and pulled her close.

"Erika… I do not want something to happen to you… But I do not want to see you like this either." He moved her gently aside and took possession of the controls"A forty per cent injection with an exposure time of five… No, four seconds should produce acceptable results." He drew on every piece of knowledge his mind could hold, calculating every possible variable.

"Total output… Product decay… Container stability… All within normal parameters." He adjusted the instruments one by one, calibrating entirely by hand under Erika's astonished gaze.

"I grant you one single test, and then we leave." He said, his expression shifting at once into a smile. Erika pulled him fiercely toward her, nearly lifting him off the ground despite the difference in their builds.

"THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!" She cried, tears in her eyes, and headed out of the room to observe the machine. She gave Grayson a signal through the glass, and the scientist nodded. He pressed the ignition button and threw back the drainage lever. Every pipe lit up in luminescent blood-red, rapidly filling the cylinder. Then, without warning, the temperature began to climb at speed, and he broke into a sweat"This should be forty per cent… Why is it rising so fast?"

Before him, dozens of lights ignited, all tinted a deeply troubling shade of red. Without anything he could do to prevent it, the black shard began to submerge into the liquid. Erika stood watching, motionless.

"ERIKA, COME HERE!" He rushed out in desperation, seizing her by the hand and trying to pull her away, but her gaze was immovable from the reactor. Grayson tried to shake her, and no reaction crossed her face. One of the control cables snapped free, striking him full on. All the heat discharged onto him, though only for an instant. He groaned in pain, rolling through the dust. §"GRAY!" Erika returned to herself, staring with horror at her companion writhing on the ground.

She rushed toward him, but in doing so, committed one fatal error. Her eyes fixed on the shard for a single instant. In that single moment, Erika was transported elsewhere. Impressed into her eyes was a sequence of images, a lightning-swift succession of scenes from a distant age. Death, blood, tears, and screaming were the only things her senses could register for that mere second. She collapsed to the ground, weeping. Her eyes sealed shut, scorched by those visions.

Grayson found the strength to raise himself, trying to reach her, but Erika's cries prevented his voice from reaching her.

"It was not supposed to end like this… The calculations were correct… I had studied." He tried to stand, feeling his body burning from within. He seized Erika, trembling and impossibly cold, and began dragging himself toward the control room.

"If I stop it now… I can still…" A smile of hope formed despite his groaning. He held the girl close and hauled himself toward the centre of command. He was only a few metres away when his hope vanished. A metallic crack, followed by a violent crash, forced him to turn. The last thing he managed to see was the entire shard plunging into the vat of boiling Taumite. They were both engulfed in a white flash. Erika disappeared from his hands, and he found himself adrift in a landscape enveloped in white.

In the distance, a succession of cries, weeping, desperate tears." What is this?" His thread of a voice dissolved into the void of that pale desert. Studying the wax-like sand, something drove itself into his eyes: a figure, motionless upon a vast rock. Grayson would have sworn it was weeping, but he could not be certain given the mass of dark filaments surrounding it.

The figure seemed to regard him from afar, and its gaze drove itself into his mind, excavating away what remained of his sanity He threw himself to the ground, breaking the silence with a cry like a howl. Before him, numbers, codes, and formulae seemed to drift, everything he had ever learned over the course of his life.

"I must… Find… Erika." He tried to rise, but his legs began to appear liquid, while all the blood in his body seemed to freeze. He slid into the sand, struggling in pain. He moved his hands furiously until he felt a different sensation beneath them, something more solid. He had awakened in a vast crater, filled with patches of molten rock and glass. Dozens of beams and columns had crashed to the ground in an aberrant spectacle.

The smell of smoke and chemicals was nauseating, and Grayson could barely preserve a glimmer of reason.

"Erika… Erika, where are you?!" He forced himself up on legs that were numb and weak. His knees trembled at every step, struggling desperately to support the carcass that was his body. The capillaries of his eyes had shattered entirely, sending rivers of bloody tears along his cheeks. He staggered toward the heap of rubble, sliding across one of the iron bars that were still hot. His senses were deserting him, painfully slowly.

He felt the back of his hand grow wet with something warm and sticky, while his ears caught a faint breath.

"Gray… Is that you? Are you all right?" With horror, he became aware of the scene just above his head, as a drop fell onto his brow. On the pile of debris, Erika had been impaled by one of the beams. The Taumite was already cooling on her shoulder, and he dared not even imagine the state of the flesh beneath"Erika!" He seized her hand and, with sickening panic, noted that it was cold.

"She has merely lost sensation, it is nothing, she is fine…" He murmured with a smile, until by reflex he registered that he had drawn his fingers away from the boiling mass on her body. His gaze went dark, fixing on her grey eyes. He felt her stroke his cheek, forcing him to face reality.

"It is not your fault… It was an accident." Even in so horrific a scene, her face still managed a smile. The red river began to dilute in his tears as he watched the colour drain from Erika's face.

"Your calculations were perfect. It was my fault for forcing you here." Grayson collapsed entirely, sliding into the pool of their blood.

"IF I HAD ONLY DONE BETTER, THIS WOULD NOT HAVE…" His lips halted, seeing her dying face. Her weakened arms drew themselves around his neck, pulling him close. In the frailty of her breath, he managed to hear a sob.

"I am only glad you are alive…" She kissed his forehead, holding herself close against his neck. Grayson's breathing grew rapid, nearly giving way, yet he did not fall. Her body began slowly to vanish, while the shard in the cylinder continued to glow.

"I love you, Grayson Dirac, but this is a farewell." These were her last words, followed by a caress. From his vantage, the only things he saw were violet sparks and her necklace sliding to the floor. He awoke at last in the room, lit by a burning white radiance. The black harpoon was beginning to make contact with the liquid in the cylinder. Grayson stared at his own hand, then smiled with nothing sane in it.

"Ah… AHAHAH!! SO THIS IS WHAT THE PAST WAS?!" He began to laugh, and yet his face began to trace itself with crystalline tears.

"My guilt did not reside in the numbers…But here." He pointed to his own head, clutching her necklace, now dark with that black, viscous powder. He rose from the ground, staring at the boiling Taumite as it fused with the black of the shard.

"I failed in the calculation, and as a human being. This is the sole certainty in my equation." He tried to step back, halting just before he turned away entirely.

"If you are listening… I beg you to grant my wish once you have arrived, Architect." He began moving toward the exit when a roar to his right forced him to turn. Heavy blocks of rock fell through the opening, admitting the glacial winter air. A flash struck the room, followed by a total lock on the reactor's coupling. Grayson stared with wide eyes. A sound of footsteps rang through the air, like the swarming of flies.

Then, abruptly, a group of creatures armoured in heavy iron plates and gears forced their way into the room. Their scales were black, their hissing somehow capable of carrying more chill than the mountain wind. Their sharp jaws were clamped shut by heavy iron muzzles.

"Ascan has done quite excellent work indeed." A man made his way through the mechanised soldiers. A figure wrapped in a heavy black greatcoat. The gleam of medals and ammunition glittered in the white light of the room. A thin layer of snow had gathered on his shoulders. Between his thin, dark lips, a nearly spent cigarette"You again?!" The scientist snarled with all the fury remaining to him. The military man smiled, pulling back his hood.

"How are you, Grayson?" He smiled, stubbing his cigarette out against one of the metal plates of his soldiers. His black eyes glittered with a malicious light. The heavy ice axe drove itself into the rock, sending a few fragments of the face tumbling into the misty void below. Gripping a ration bar between his teeth, Lance Klint made his way toward the summit.

"I can see it, a few more minutes and I will be inside the facility." His spectacles had fogged and scratched themselves more than once, while his shoulders were beginning to feel the weight of his ability. Even keeping Vergehen's amplification to a minimum, his body was struggling to keep pace with the undertaking.

"These are not bad at all… Lucas ought to have given me more of them." He thought, swallowing the last bite of the bar. He seized another outcropping with his glove, scraping the surface with his claws. With every metre gained, the rock face was scored by a long succession of incisions. Gusts of wind made his coat billow, heavy with snow." Grayson… I hope you are still there." He murmured, making out at last the crown of a distant tree.