Gemǣd
He coveted the gem. It consumed his thoughts. Polluted his dreams. When not anxious with yearning, he escaped to various daydreams of ownership. The drawer he would keep it in, the weight of it around his neck. But most importantly, what it could hold.
He tore his eyes away and surveyed the small but growing crowd. Each third morning the arbiter class gathered on the stone balcony of his temple and gave their tithings. The city was now a sprawling metropolis of commerce. White stone towers spiraled from the sea of gray rectangles that made up the dwellings, vomiting a sweet-smelling steam from their tops.
He took in a deep breath, taking in the sights and sounds from his position. A shudder of excitement ran through him. He was here. Years of study had finally begun to pay off. He was one step closer to The Omniscient. His new life was just beginning.
THE WORLD
Compression camps were strange and unsettling to witness but they brought The Omniscient sustenance. So they were necessary. Dizzyingly long rows of stone tablets sat, free-standing exactly the same distance apart. Each stone features a meticulously carved glyph, sometimes every stone in a camp is the same, sometimes you can’t find two alike.
Housed in reinforced stone buildings, simple architecture allowed execution at scale. Over half the city was compression camps now. Only a select few knew how they helped to empower The Omniscient, or how they were made. Most knew only that their cost was great. Lowt land was surrendered in mass swaths. All in service of The Omniscient.
THE NOBLE
He had first seen it on an unusually hazy morning, steam from the generator holdings turning the Trio Stars into a blotchy singular light-source. Nearly the size of his fist, it rested against the mirror-like metal of Super Alloy plate armor, a trillion made of a deep red. Nearly black. Its belly alive with the frantic movements of complex and potent Physik.
Held in a silver crown of thorns, it hung from a thick riveted chain of Super Alloy. He watched it sway and tip over the crest of the commander's cuirass as the hulking figure stepped forward.
She was tall, even for a commander. Her left hand rested on the hilt of her sword, her right gripped a helm, cradled under the arm. Her gauntlets were oversized, fanged fingers and spiked knuckles gave them the look of too many fingers. Her couters and pauldrons were equally oversized, featuring exquisite embellishments in the metal.
It was odd to see such a fragile face emerge from an unnatural figure. A delicate-looking egg sat atop hulking force, he thought. Hollowed eyes and sunken cheeks told the story of someone who no longer slept. Her head was clean-shaven, as all premier commanders were, revealing a Krux on her forehead.
THE COMMANDER
She watched the Trio rise from the Scriptus floor of the capital building. Her head ached, a dull pounding coming from the port fashioned at the center of her skull. The Krux, an ordainment handed down by the Confessors, was a small Super Alloy receptor. It was the best way to commune with The Omniscient if you were not a Confessor, though their methods were unclear, so to many it was the only conceivable way.
She massaged her temples, careful not to disturb the cable connecting her to the Confessors’ machine. She no longer focused on her message to The Omniscient during scripturing, instead, she let her mind wander, it was the only way she could feel some form of rest.
The cable was woven alloy but sometimes she swore she could see bulges of liquid pass through, like a snake swallowing its latest meal. The machine draws energy. And it also draws specificity. Memories and judgments and fears. The Omniscient must receive the precise texture of who she is, she was told, ever generic devotion.
Soon, she would be invited to talk to The Omniscient. She just needed to extract enough Physik. It could be any day now. They had told her at her weakest point The Omniscient would know their fortitude. With how she was feeling, it could be later this very morning.
THE WORLD
Communification began. The sound of millions of stone tablets shaking in their shallow soil beds began to hum. A sound felt more than heard. Through the ground, a low resonant pressure. It blurred the vision ever so slightly. Made the mouth itch. By the time the doors of the Scriptus opened, the sound had settled into the bones of the building itself.
The Lowt filled the rear in silence, pressing together along the stone walls, standing as they would stand for the duration. No seating was provided and none was expected. The Middling class took the benches. Rows of pale stone, worn smooth by generations of the Almost-Arrived. The Arbiters stood at the front along a raised platform of dark stone, facing the congregation with the patient stillness of those who had done this for eons. The commander stood among them, near the center. A gem necklace of deep red hung from her neck.
THE NOBLE
He closed his eyes and let the vibrations consume him. His mind wandered.
He thought of the gem at first. Then, a face. His mind? Or The Omniscient? One was playing tricks. He grimaced.
Maret had worked beside him for three years before he understood what she was.
She was brilliant in the way that certain people are brilliant without knowing it, the way that made them generous with what they had because they didn't understand its value. She talked through her ideas aloud, in the open, the way someone might hum to themselves. She had not yet learned that ideas were currency, that rooms had ears, that the person nodding along might be doing arithmetic.
He had listened for two years before he acted. He told himself the patience was kindness, that he was simply waiting to see if she would do something with it herself. She hadn't moved quickly enough. That was her failure, not his.
The Arbiter who received his proposal had looked at him with new eyes afterward. He remembered that look. The slight recalibration of how much space they gave him in a room. He had told himself that was what mattered, that recognition was the only currency that compounded.
He saw Maret once more, briefly, from across a courtyard. She was still Lowt. She looked the same. He had expected her to look diminished somehow, expected the transfer of her standing to show on her the way a wound shows, but she just looked like herself. Carrying books and scrolls, moving with purpose toward something that had nothing to do with him.
He had understood then that he had not climbed out of anything. He had simply climbed into something.
THE WORLD
The prostration came without announcement. Every person in the room descended at once, Lowt, Middling and Arbiter alike. Foreheads to the floor, palms flat beside their heads. The sound of it somehow cut through the hum. A startling yet soft clap of flesh and stone.
There they remained until the Confessor emerged. Standing slowly, an unnatural motion, floating to full height. A robe woven with strands of threadlike Super Alloy the figure almost sparkled in the fogged light of the Trios. The hood hung low over its face, the sleeves long covered its hands and feet. The Arbiter to the right, raised his hands up from the floor and cupped them, waiting to receive. The cloaked hands of the Arbiter lowered and the exchange was complete.
Passed from the rear of the arbiter platform forward, hand to hand along the row, each person receiving it with both palms open and held flat, lowering their head over it for a moment before passing it on. It was a small thing, a sliver of Super Alloy no larger than a finger, polished to a mirror finish. They touched the object to their foreheads, a faint metal click could be heard. And the vibrations reacted, rising in intensity for a moment before returning to their consistent hum. But the faces that lifted afterward were different from the faces that had descended. Looser somehow, briefly unburdened.
When it reached the commander she took longer than the others. Her palms were open and her head was bowed. Finally, she passed it on. Her expression had not loosened. If anything it had set harder, like a decision being made.
THE COMMANDER
Her Krux always ached during prostration. A deep interior pressure, like something being slowly wrung. She had learned not to fight it but to embrace it. You gave what you had, completely and each time you hoped, it could be enough.
Tonight the pressure felt familiar but there was something else. She noticed it cautiously. A warmth moving outward from her forehead, almost the opposite of pain, spreading down her neck, across her shoulders into her chest. Her thoughts moved from pouring all of her living will into the Relic as her system panicked with the idea of new joy.
She could feel the tablets hum coming from within and she understood distantly that her hands were no longer cold and her knees were no longer hurting and all the accumulated exhaustion of the past months was lifting from her like the smog from the tablets themselves. She felt light. Her armor weighed nothing somehow. She opened her eyes to see a mailed wrist, one hand still holding the relic to her Krux, the other now gripping her gem tightly. She yelped out in joy. All of her breath went with the sound.
The floor came up to meet her. She didn't feel the impact. She didn't feel her helm strike stone and clatter away. Or her chain pull taut and snap. Or the sound her plate-armor made. She didn't feel the Confessor's hands grasping the relic away. She didn't feel the crowd of Arbiters and Middlings rushing inward.
She was somewhere very quiet and very warm. Where she believed completely, that she had finally been heard. The Omniscient had heard her.
THE NOBLE
His daydreams were cut short. A crash of war. That’s what it had sounded like. He opened his eyes to see the Commander lying on the ground, her helm skittering away. The Confessor turned toward her. The Arbiters kneeling on either side moved their heads, taking nervous peeks, trying to determine what had happened and what to do. That’s when he saw it, Running like a pinwheel on the stone, a deep red gem wrapped in Super Alloy thorns tumbled towards the Middlings. He began to move. And many moved with him. He had undone a spell of terror and unleashed one of chaos. The Confessor bent over the Commander now, as Arbiters began crawling towards them while the Middlings rushed in to offer, respectfully, help if needed.
No one took notice of the newest attendee trip over the feet of another. He made a slow effort of getting to his feet, dusting himself off. But there was no dust on these stone floors. His trip was no accident. In the pocket of his robes sat a gem necklace of deep red.
THE WORLD
A Confessor’s presence makes most uneasy. Their power is another thing entirely. The arms of its dazzling robe rose to silence the crowd. It then nodded, the hood making a faint jingle as hundreds of links shifted.
The arbiters closest to her descended. They moved with practiced efficiency and without a sound. A stretcher appeared from behind the platform. She was lifted in one coordinated motion and carried from the platform through the side door, four arbiters bearing her weight. A gaunt face slack and withered, eyes open mouth agape. A Middling man watched her and knew he had climbed into greatness.
THE COMMANDER
She had always worn her hair long. It was the first thing they took. At first the pieces hit her shoulders, a soft thudding weight. Then finer hairs tickled her neck and nose. When she tried to ignore the hair she could only focus on the scrape of the blade against her scalp. She had told herself she wouldn't cry. She hadn't. She had that victory.
They ushered her into the next chamber. A small frail figure stood next to a stone table. Many small fires burned around the room.
The instrument was neither cold nor warm, just a pressure. And then tension, an unnatural strength was holding her head still. Eyes open, she focused on the wall and thought about The Omniscient, about what she would ask first, about how it would feel to finally be heard by something that could never be misunderstood. Then there was pain.
Incomparable. All-consuming. As if her skull had crushed down to the pinpoint on her forehead. She cried. And cried. The Omniscient would know her soon. The cost had been necessary. It had all been necessary. Without a Krux you could never hope to communicate with The Omniscient.
THE NOBLE
He watched the Confessors manage the situation with their characteristic absence of urgency.
Watched the arbiter class reassemble itself on the platform with the careful performance of people demonstrating that nothing was wrong.
The ceremony resumed. He knelt when the others knelt. He pressed his forehead to the stone with everyone else and felt the tablets climb to their peak and felt nothing he could name, just pressure and heat and the hard floor and the gem against his ribs. When it ended, he filed out with the Lowt, moving against the class current, head down. Nobody stopped him. Nobody looked at him. He was Middling and therefore invisible to everyone above him and beneath notice to everyone below and he understood for the first time that this was useful.
The steam from the Generator Holdings swallowed him before he reached the first corner.
He didn't run. He had learned from Maret, from watching what happened to people who moved through rooms like they were escaping them, that stillness was its own disguise. He walked at the pace of someone with somewhere reasonable to be and kept his face blank.
THE WORLD
An unseen door slammed shut and with that the stretcher was gone. The room was still frozen. Faint clicks of Super Alloy threads cut through silence as Arbiter raised its hands, still clasped together beneath the large sleeves.The tablets humming resumed, climbing more aggressively this time. The congregation as one, bent into prostration. Foreheads to stone. His gaze moved along the line of arbiters with unhurried patience. It stopped in front of a Soldier, much younger than the Commander. His armor was plain but well crafted. At his hip hung a sword with a sapphire set into the hilt, small and sparkling blue, catching the overhead light without any of the interior movement of the commander's gem. The Confessor settled in front of him, floating just a few inches closer. The Soldier lifted his chin, nervously peeking upward to confirm the shadow. He began to silently weep. He rose to one knee, though his eyes stayed low and drew his sword. Gingerly he gripped the blade as he turned the hilt outward. Its point mere millimeters from the seam of his plackart. The confessor lowered the small stone until it tapped against the pommel.
He wept the way people weep when they have forgotten how. His whole body was involved in it. The sliver of Super Alloy shook in his open palms. The sapphire in his sword hilt caught the light and held it and seemed to deepen, the blue going darker and more interior, as if something inside it was paying very close attention. Nobody moved. Nobody looked away.
THE COMMANDER
She came back to herself slowly. Slowly opening her eyes, she blinked the crust away. Ceiling first. Stone, vaulted, familiar. Then the cot beneath her, narrow and institutional, the kind of surface designed for function rather than comfort. A room she recognized as one of the anterooms behind the Scriptus floor, used for storage mostly, smelling of old cloth and Super Alloy polish.
The Confessor was there. Sitting. It’s hood low, yet she still felt eyes on her. A younger attendant stood near the door with the rigid posture of someone trying to look useful.
She tried to sit up. The room tilted catastrophically. She lowered herself back down. Pulled in deep breaths while staring at the ceiling and tried to calm herself.
The ceremony, she thought.
She turned toward the Confessor. Her forehead wet with sweat, blurring her vision, itching her lips. She asked about her jewel. There was an attempt to speak calmly though her voice shook. Barely more than a whisper.
THE NOBLE
He made it just two streets before he broke.
The alley was narrow and dark. He pressed his back against the stone as both hands rose over his mouth. He muffled a sound he hadn't made since childhood. A squeak. A pure physical expression. He stood there shaking. Letting the adrenaline drain away to leave nothing but the sickly sweet glee of taking something without working for it. Just two streets from the Scriptus floor he knew The Omniscient was wrapped in his robes.
The broken chain made a series of satisfying noises as he extracted the prize from fabric. It felt heavy in his hand but he liked that. A Super Alloy crown looked dangerously sharp, the jewels innards looked alive. What questions could one ask The Omniscient? His stomach sank.
He had no Krux…
The gem warmed, faint but immediately recognizable as foreign. He stared at the gem. He turned it over in his hand and then in his mind, looking for the specific shape of it. Then a voice echoed through his scattered thoughts.
He nodded to the soundless voice, tucked the gem away and walked at the pace of someone with somewhere entirely unreasonable to be.
THE COMMANDER
They had offered her a litter. She declined. She walked out of the anteroom and into the corridor alone.
The Scriptus floor was empty. The ceremony was over. The tablets, silent. The Trio hung above, a blotchy warmth turned oppressive. She pawed her chest, taloned mail gauntlets seeking reprieve. It found none.
The mind loves stimulation. Good and bad. It gave her memories, flashes of treasured moments, forgotten agonies and everything in between. What will you say to The Omniscient is so painfully different than what would you say to The Omniscient. The panic of it all was still there, coming in massive waves. And when it wasn’t crashing on the rocks of the psyche there was an anger, long dormant but powerful.
Just to escape the cold sweats of panic, she stoked the fires. Exhaustion and vulnerability make great fuel. Plate creaked and clanked as agitation and anger were exercised through awkward movements. She never heard the footsteps coming towards her.
THE WORLD
An armored commander held a Middling man pinned against the outer wall of the barracks quarter. Lowt on the street adjust their routes without stopping, averting their eyes. The Trio burned at their height. A sword was drawn.
He had come racing around the corner, a red gem in his hands. Hushed but fevered muttering barely audible over the thuds of his worn leather shoes. He had run directly into her. He crumpled against the platemail, a soft fleshy thud. But the gem also made a noise. A familiar screech as the alloy thorns came in contact with armor. Clumsy surprise turned to shock and panic as her eyes darted looking for evidence of what she heard.
He landed hard on the stone floor, his arms behind him. The jewel spun awkwardly on its alloy thorns. He had no thoughts, his mind was a swirl of pain and shock, and yet he half stood and lunged for the gem. In an instant. As if he had never fallen. But she was there.
She met his lunge with her own, but she was not after the gem. Her mailed fists grabbed the furls of robe and skin. She rushed him back to the stone wall. She loved the sound his back made against the stone. A new cut slapped onto the butcher’s block. Through gritted teeth she asked him the only question her mind could repeat.
“Where did you get this gem?”
He looked into her eyes, his widening as he recognized who he was pinned by for the first time. He let the words fall out as they came to him. “The Omniscient. I am talking to The Omniscient.”
THE NOBLE
The Omniscient’s voice was calm, reassuring, like warm honey. It spoke to him of a long awaited reward. It spoke to him of the suffering and what it had earned. It spoke of a new life, where he could lend his talents to those closest to The Omniscient. and in turn he would see riches he had never thought possible. It spoke to him of Command barracks. That’s where he must go now.
He told her what it had said. Every detail. More for himself than her. Because in a way, to tell another was to make it real. He had felt her grip loosen. Her eyes streamed tears and as he noticed, he realized so did his. She slowly stepped backwards, her eyes never leaving him. She knelt and delicately plucked the gem from its alloy case. He flinched, worried she meant to destroy it. But stopped when she began to unsheath her blade. She touched the stone to her Krux. Eyes rolling back in her head.
He wondered what he should do. He couldn’t leave. He would never leave the gem again. But dying was leaving the gem too. He wouldn’t die. Not without the gem. He would wait for his next opportunity to get the gem back.
Patience had a habit of paying off for him. As he calmed himself with this logic she lowered her hand, her eyes rolled back, and her body became less rigid. Her shoulders sank, her chin fell to her chest and her legs buckled slightly. For a brief moment he thought she might collapse again. But she did not. She began to scream. A haunted hollow scream and drew her sword.
THE COMMANDER
Everything he had said to her was what she had wanted to hear. But not from him. How would he know what her Physik contained? One's relationship with The Omniscient is intimately private. The Gems, when Consecrated are conduits, a two-way channel. Yet without a Krux, without his own She turned that thought over.
The Omniscient had not been able to realize it was not her.
She touched the gem to her Krux and felt the familiar warmth ignite and closed her eyes and listened and what she heard was so perfectly shaped to the wound she was carrying in that exact moment that she could not breathe. It knew. It knew the specific texture of her devastation. It knew what she needed to hear and it told her and it was true, it was all true, every word of it was precisely and completely true.
That was when she understood.
It was true because she had built it. Every Physik extraction, every morning of prostration, she had been constructing the voice. Her deepest fears, her most private hopes, all of it drawn out through the cable, from her Krux, powered by the tablets and compressed into stone until what spoke back at to was so fluent in the language of her own mind that she had mistaken it for her own creator. The Omniscient had not failed to recognize the thief. The Omniscient had never known her at all.
She let the gem fall from her Krux. A howl left her that felt inhuman. She drew her blade, raised it and brought it down. The gem shattered.A small pool of faintly luminous liquid leaked out. It pulsed twice, gently, like something finishing a thought.
THE NOBLE
At first he did not move toward the fragments. He had told himself he would wait. That patience paid. That another opportunity would come. He wanted to feel humbled by this. He tried it on. It didn't fit.
What he did instead, watching the last light go out of the pool, was acknowledge his hunger. Not the shallow covetous hunger he had carried through the ceremony. This was something deeper. Something that had been waiting underneath the wanting of the gem the way a root system waits beneath a single flower. The gem had given him a taste and now his desires knew what it was and it would not unknow it.
He crawled forward still huddled over and studied the Physik. He had spoken to The Omniscient. It had been assembled from the wrong materials and it had not known his name. But he had spoken to The Omniscient. When he shares his wishes The Omniscient will already know him. He needed his own gem.
THE WORLD
A commander knelt over a scattering of red fragments on the stone floor. Beside her a Middling man slumps against the wall, watching. Lowt on the street move around them without stopping. The compression camps hum at their low frequency. The generator holdings cough out smoke. The Trio burns through the constant steam, shading everything with the same washed white. The afternoon Consecration Call sounds. The doors to the barracks open and soldiers pour out, eager to give their tithe. Two figures kneeling over the fragments are lost in the swarming crowd. Before the final call blares out, the rush thins to reveal the streets empty, save for the scattered fragments of a deep red and a chain of thorned alloy. For everyone had gone to watch the Confessors connect another soul to The Omniscient.