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A Three-Star Problem
It was an auspicious and intolerable hour as we stood under the red eye of Ykal the Day-star, for we knew we each may have seen our last of the world. We curled tightly as the thick fluid seeped from us to form our Sequestration shells, all of us spaced before the glass spire that would make or doom us…
It had been just yesterday that we stood in a circle around the lecture center, each of us a student of distinction. The gathering was held above ground, on the roof of the ancient center, and we pranced about in anticipation, flexing our long ears, our forelimbs folded into trotting mode, heatcatchers folded against our sides, and bright red Ykal hanging in the sky above us with its long trail that linked it like a scarf to Snaum below the horizon. Soon the Instructors came forth from the caverns to direct us.
We all were divided into groups according to birth times, Ykal-born, those spawned under the great Daystar, gathered to the left; those born under Snaum the small Night-Star to the right. We assembled in formal stance, four legs parallel in respect. How light our hearts had been, for we were on the verge of fixing our choices, how we would serve Kyuci society henceforth, with whom we would select to Encircle and mate.
I cast errant eyes over to the Snaum-born group and considered my prospects. Saatuli was so elegant, her long ears extended to extract the most detail from the winds and from ground-harmonics. Her eyes were clear and perceptive and her voice spoke like a hundred sibilant and precise flutes. We had spent the most time in our intersecting projects, each of us knew the other’s mind, would she take me as one of her Alternates for Encirclement? If so, with whom would I be comfortable sharing her affection? I looked about my fellow Ykal-Born, Brhuem who currently stood to my right also seemed fit to stand with me in other service, but I knew that he and Saatuli did not mesh in entire harmony; perhaps I could interpolate between them.
Brheum piped quietly to catch my attention. “Something is off, I think… Do you notice, Vuakid? The Instructors are skittish and too perfunctory for such a joyous occasion.”
“All seems in order to me,” I said. “We are among the brightest and most skilled of our generation of Kyuci, would they not want the best for us?”
“In normal times, I would assent. But do you remember that Longweek ago, when a lone comet was seen at the ante-Ykal side of the sky? It was like the streaks that occur when Ykal is upset and utters a storm at the world.”
“But would not the ground shake, did Ykal direct Her force our way? My shadownook has remained undisturbed, the rocks unrustled.”
“I do agree,” fluted Brheum, folding his ears lower. “But this streak it is said did not strike the ground and rattle the caverns of the Kyuci, but it settled slowly over the hills. Some say that this is a prodrome, that the Mospuan may come forth from their solid Enclaves. And when they do, it is said that some Kyuci disappear forever from the world…”
“How old now is that story! My grandcestor told me something of the same that his grandcestor told him, and I lost count of how far back that even went. I hear that the Mospuan cannot even tolerate the warming light of Ykal and must cover themselves in dark apparel to hide their odd behaviors. What they do in a Snaum year I cannot fathom, perhaps fall flat on their bellies. Whatever they do in their walled Enclaves to care for and direct the power that sustains us all, I am sure I am glad that they do it, and I trust they will continue, but how could it impinge upon us? They ever conduct their business silently and keep our interests apart from theirs.”
We chattered on in this matter for some time as others conversed about us, for indeed the Instructors seemed to be taking undue time to prepare such an important yet straightforward ceremony. But soon we heard the deeper notes of command and we all stood to attention again, some hastily tucking their sensefingers away into their forelimbs or refolding their heatcatchers.
But all of us drew breath in shock and dismay, save perhaps Brheum who only blinked and nodded his head in sad confirmation.
Between the Kyuci Instructors clad in white, there was a dark figure double their height, striding in a loping trot with black mirrors on its flanks and limbs, its eyes gray and enlarged, all of its aspect laden with solemn purpose.
This was indeed a legendary time. The Mospuan were among us.
I stood in a daze of disbelief among the excited fluting of my classmates, and I joined the cries of dismay as the dark figure passed among us, inspecting each of us, then reaching to touch some with a small black disc that clung to the forehead. Each one so touched would keen in fear, futilely try to scrape it off, then sit down in confusion.
The Mospuan was soon before Brheum and I. We held breath, hoping that what we dreaded was not to be. We searched its large eyes for a hint of its thoughts.
But it reached to touch Brheum’s forehead, then mine.
The time after was a daze to us as we fought despair. At length, it completed its second circuit of the Snaum-born, and I saw that Saatuli escaped the same fate as us, my heart was both saved and broken by her evident relief and the pitying glance she gave to us! Then the Instructors gave the command for the class to assemble with them.
At this command most of the two circles complied and drew in around them, but we touched with the dark circle could not move. We strained and our legs would not follow our commands, though we sought another fate, to flee in fear, to give warning to others… The Mospuan gave one single direction like the barking of a gun, and this released us. In terror we gathered to it, for we had no other option under all the sunblasted sky.
Our classmates were led underground and comforted, darting sick glances back at us until they descended and could see us no more. Other dark figures came to us, and in short time, they led us away forever.
It was a long trek under the skies to the Mospuan enclave, and we looked with desperate longing back many times to our former home. On the surface there were few constructions visible, mainly mounds with solar collectors and cables running between occasional outbuildings built from melted and vitrified rocks. The true extent lay below the surface, buildings hundreds of feet deep to protect from the intense glares of Snaum the Nightstar, which cast the heat you felt in your bones long before it started to burn your skin. I reflectively raised my heatcatchers as if to ward it off as I remembered the last Longnight. Behind us lay the deep city where our grandsires and sires resided, where we had played as hatchlings, where we had thought to build our lives. But now over the heatblasted hills we walked on, twenty Kyuci with three Mospuan to guide us, dark herders moving amongst a sullen flock.
Soon the hills became sandy plains mixed with dazzling slabs of glass, and a sparkle in the distance seemed to promise the Enclave in the distance. Bhreum and I clung together to take comfort and we gossiped between ourselves and the other Kyuci around us, for the Mospuan strode silently and aloof, only guiding us along with that unseen pull, along pathways that must have been buried under shifting sands for millennia had they ever existed.
The building that had glinted in the distance was now seen as a squat broad structure of vitrified green and white bricks. Surrounded by directives, we were guided towards an arch in which a faint scintillance was perceptible. I felt the prickle of it wash over me as we passed through.
Beyond these walls were many buildings of similar construction, and beyond them, upon a plain that stretched even further beyond the Enclave walls, were numerous towers that seemed almost skeletal in their construction, glinting like metal but composed mostly of open space. These supported cylinders of some ceramic gleaming, hundreds of feet tall.
Brheum prodded me with his heatcatcher and unfolded a forefinger in excitement. “Look, remember I mentioned a comet that descended among the hills? Could this not be one such thing?”
We were suddenly all commanded to halt and gather together under the shade of a tall rampart. One of the Mospuan strode before us.
“You, what have you all been discussing? You cause yourselves much stress unneeded.”
Brheum made bold to summarize our speculations. “We deal in scraps and fragments of old tales. Most prevalent is that some of us will go skyward today to join the Dust of Pthual and not return, and our Sequestration spores will be inscribed with memorials to our bravery. Some of us will not return… but in a different way. There are scurrilous rumors, that we are to be consumed, or sent to deep places underground, or that there is a way to pass through Pthual and not join the frozen sparks of life force there, but to steal the glorious fire that extends from Ykal to Snaum and bring it back to the world, that all may partake of it…”
Under the mirrored stare of the Mospuan’s gray eyes, even bold Brheum had eventually to trail into silence.
The Mospuan showed little change to its stature, its face hidden behind the dark glass of its office. “Interesting. Before we take you on now to your fates, know that some of what you say is based on truth, but distorted by the eons. There is time now for a respite, we will bring you nourishment before transporting you, for you will need all your strength for this ordeal. I will explain more as you refresh yourselves.”
The Mospuan darted out a finger to the heavens. “See there in the sky, cheerful warming Ykal greets us and we partake of its life force! Yesteryear, morrowyear the reign of Snaum, which does not fill the sky with light as does giant Ykal, but whose jewellike intensity drives us under cover and into introspection, and occasionally into the shells of Sequestration to protect us from the light that burns unseen.
“But sometimes in the course of eons Ykal and Snaum seem to come together towards each other and dance closer, and then half of the sky may grow dark enough to show Pthual, the blackness beyond, whose force is so small and sparse, like sparkles on sands. If you then peer carefully up into the sky, you may see a distant round redness, this is Iakauhl, that bides its time across eon after eon but then descends like a falling knife.
“Now when Iakauhl approaches our world Misul, then the fires are grim indeed. There is no carapace cover or Sequestration shell strong enough, no Enclave staunch enough, no cairncavern deep enough, to save the Kyuci from what follows, it is a true cleansing and those of Kyuci form are found unworthy to pass through the eye of its needle. Some say it comes to transport all Kyuci to a higher plane, but if so none ever return from there. Some say that Ykal and Snaum wish to rest a while and not share their life force with those on Misul and so they order all to be wiped away for a while.
“But imagine that somehow, someone’s egg was protected just enough so that we all could awaken again.
“This is we, the Mospuan. When the force of the stars together is such that even Sequestration cannot preserve us, then the Kyuci undergo a deep change. When the Sequestering shells break, they emerge as Mospuan, and so life clings to Misul even in the bitterest and most inhospitable of times.
“Now, over time, as the sky cools and the rock solidifies again, it will happen that a generation of Mospuan lets go its determined force and brings forth Kyuci, who thence bear the sorrows of the world until their time is spun and they under dire heat will enpurpose more Mospuan, so the spheres shed us like old cloaks and put us on as new forms…
“You all may know some of this from legends, of course. But what you most need to know now is that we the Mospuans are not normally supposed to live at the same time as Kyuci. We are a form born to hardship and survival, and we are supposed to be cast off from the world so that fair and happy Kyuci may return.
“Still, over the eons, the Mospuan have made much progress, creating ships like comets to explore the space beyond the sky, and to bring the fires of the stars down to the ground so that their power may enrich the lives of all. And so, it is desirable that Mospuans somehow persist even while the Kyuci hold sway, for the Kyuci as you can tell are not the most determined holders of ancient knowledge and their records lose focus over the eons.
“And so we Mospuans have developed a means to self perpetuate, with the assistance of a small sacrifice from the Kyuci. This is a custom that has been built over the eons for the good of all. Come now, we shall go to the glass tower together where your fates lie, and the remainder shall be revealed.”
With that, the Mospuan gestured to us and we arose. We walked out from the Enclave walls through the prickling scintillation and into a vast desert that stood beyond, with many comet ships and towers. We were made to board a wheeled conveyance that bore us still more rapidly out over the hot and glassy sands, until one lone tower stood before us like a silver needle with a large glass sphere at its top, like the egg of a star, and the sight of it filled me with a deeper dread than any I had felt yet that day.
The Mospuans bade us to form a semicircle a mile from this tower. In areas around us we saw old Sequestration shells that bore inscriptions and could guess what they meant. Each one had been the scene of not a rebirth, but a tomb.
The Mospuan took our attention again.
“So now, this tower. What you see here is a machine meant to take a certain metal drawn from the ground, and compress it so that it has no alternative but to release its latent power. And this power is of a similar intensity to that fire of Iakauhl the Destroyer-star, which causes the Mospuan form to arise from Kyuci.
“And so, here you shall all be made to start Sequestering as if it was a normal excitation of Ykal and Snaum, but when you are all encased, the device will be set off and there shall be this burst that first drives inward, but then shines forth as would a hundred Snaums together.
“Some of you shall not survive this. These shall find their full honor in the record and their names will be inscribed on the shells as with those you see around you. But you that do survive, you will become Mospuan as us, and we will welcome you. You shall live far beyond any of your classmates whom you were made to leave behind, and your future decisions shall guide what happens to our race. And in due course some of you may choose to join those who ride the starpower on a comet up into the sky, to know better the truths of the higher spheres.
“Now, settle and compose yourselves. There will be a shining of gentler radiation first to start your Sequestration phases, and when you are encapsulated, thence comes the burst. We wish all of you the best outcome and hope to welcome you as sisters and brothers for the eons to come. Settle now…”
Stunned and in no little disbelief, we sat upon the sands under the glint and gleam of the horrid tower, each trying our best to convince ourselves that this could not be the end of ourselves. Meanwhile the Mospuan present withdrew into a long low bunker and peered at us with blackmirrored faces.
Brheum nosed my neck. “Vuakid… Take heart, they chose us because we had the best chance to join them. What luck I have I share with you. We will rise again together!”
I nosed him back. “It will be such a change to stand with you as a dark power, what a future we might have, beyond whatever Saatuli may have dreamed. May she also live her best life.”
I stopped speaking then, because the preliminary glow was then issued and we each felt the base urge of it, the instinct to cover one’s self for the long season of harder radiation ahead. The fluid seeped from our skins and we rolled about in the sandy earth to coat ourselves and accelerate the accretion of our Sequestering shells. A film thickened over my eyes and my breathing slowed. Internal rhythms took a sedate pace within me and I slowly fell into what felt like a light doze.
I know not how long I lay in this state, probably a Longweek at least, and my shell was dry and hard around me. My eyes were sealed by the inner material as I lay coiled up, my life and my breath and most of my thoughts suspended.
Then I saw even through the shell the impossibly bright flash and seconds later heard the crack. The glass device on the silver tower had burst and the Star-Upon-Misul was shining over all of us. I felt the hissing and clattering of scattered sand and gravel against my shell and my bones felt the fire. I tried for long after to recapture the moment when I first knew. I felt my slowed heart falter, then sink to silence, and there I was ready to forgo all hope.
But then instead of beating, it started to burn. It was a tingling fire that spread through the rest of me and touched something that swirled through me like a whirlwind of glass shards. It was a new world of pain and I could not even squirm or cry out.
In the depth of my tormented senses I caught a desperate vision, of worlds born of fire, of life cradled forever at the edges between freezing and burning, of the light and dark that create the twilight in which all that hopes to live finds the space to be, to coalesce from chaos and keep just that touch of madness that gives one scope to love and to reason.
And I saw a deeper flash of the vision of the Mospuan forms, rising from the Kyuci, working with each other over eons to preserve what had been plucked from the fiery dance of death in which our world ever spun. Such deft and selfless cunning!
It would be another Longweek before I could stand a chance to emerge from my hardened shell. But it was then, then that I knew.
It had been just yesterday that we stood in a circle around the lecture center, each of us a student of distinction. The gathering was held above ground, on the roof of the ancient center, and we pranced about in anticipation, flexing our long ears, our forelimbs folded into trotting mode, heatcatchers folded against our sides, and bright red Ykal hanging in the sky above us with its long trail that linked it like a scarf to Snaum below the horizon. Soon the Instructors came forth from the caverns to direct us.
We all were divided into groups according to birth times, Ykal-born, those spawned under the great Daystar, gathered to the left; those born under Snaum the small Night-Star to the right. We assembled in formal stance, four legs parallel in respect. How light our hearts had been, for we were on the verge of fixing our choices, how we would serve Kyuci society henceforth, with whom we would select to Encircle and mate.
I cast errant eyes over to the Snaum-born group and considered my prospects. Saatuli was so elegant, her long ears extended to extract the most detail from the winds and from ground-harmonics. Her eyes were clear and perceptive and her voice spoke like a hundred sibilant and precise flutes. We had spent the most time in our intersecting projects, each of us knew the other’s mind, would she take me as one of her Alternates for Encirclement? If so, with whom would I be comfortable sharing her affection? I looked about my fellow Ykal-Born, Brhuem who currently stood to my right also seemed fit to stand with me in other service, but I knew that he and Saatuli did not mesh in entire harmony; perhaps I could interpolate between them.
Brheum piped quietly to catch my attention. “Something is off, I think… Do you notice, Vuakid? The Instructors are skittish and too perfunctory for such a joyous occasion.”
“All seems in order to me,” I said. “We are among the brightest and most skilled of our generation of Kyuci, would they not want the best for us?”
“In normal times, I would assent. But do you remember that Longweek ago, when a lone comet was seen at the ante-Ykal side of the sky? It was like the streaks that occur when Ykal is upset and utters a storm at the world.”
“But would not the ground shake, did Ykal direct Her force our way? My shadownook has remained undisturbed, the rocks unrustled.”
“I do agree,” fluted Brheum, folding his ears lower. “But this streak it is said did not strike the ground and rattle the caverns of the Kyuci, but it settled slowly over the hills. Some say that this is a prodrome, that the Mospuan may come forth from their solid Enclaves. And when they do, it is said that some Kyuci disappear forever from the world…”
“How old now is that story! My grandcestor told me something of the same that his grandcestor told him, and I lost count of how far back that even went. I hear that the Mospuan cannot even tolerate the warming light of Ykal and must cover themselves in dark apparel to hide their odd behaviors. What they do in a Snaum year I cannot fathom, perhaps fall flat on their bellies. Whatever they do in their walled Enclaves to care for and direct the power that sustains us all, I am sure I am glad that they do it, and I trust they will continue, but how could it impinge upon us? They ever conduct their business silently and keep our interests apart from theirs.”
We chattered on in this matter for some time as others conversed about us, for indeed the Instructors seemed to be taking undue time to prepare such an important yet straightforward ceremony. But soon we heard the deeper notes of command and we all stood to attention again, some hastily tucking their sensefingers away into their forelimbs or refolding their heatcatchers.
But all of us drew breath in shock and dismay, save perhaps Brheum who only blinked and nodded his head in sad confirmation.
Between the Kyuci Instructors clad in white, there was a dark figure double their height, striding in a loping trot with black mirrors on its flanks and limbs, its eyes gray and enlarged, all of its aspect laden with solemn purpose.
This was indeed a legendary time. The Mospuan were among us.
I stood in a daze of disbelief among the excited fluting of my classmates, and I joined the cries of dismay as the dark figure passed among us, inspecting each of us, then reaching to touch some with a small black disc that clung to the forehead. Each one so touched would keen in fear, futilely try to scrape it off, then sit down in confusion.
The Mospuan was soon before Brheum and I. We held breath, hoping that what we dreaded was not to be. We searched its large eyes for a hint of its thoughts.
But it reached to touch Brheum’s forehead, then mine.
The time after was a daze to us as we fought despair. At length, it completed its second circuit of the Snaum-born, and I saw that Saatuli escaped the same fate as us, my heart was both saved and broken by her evident relief and the pitying glance she gave to us! Then the Instructors gave the command for the class to assemble with them.
At this command most of the two circles complied and drew in around them, but we touched with the dark circle could not move. We strained and our legs would not follow our commands, though we sought another fate, to flee in fear, to give warning to others… The Mospuan gave one single direction like the barking of a gun, and this released us. In terror we gathered to it, for we had no other option under all the sunblasted sky.
Our classmates were led underground and comforted, darting sick glances back at us until they descended and could see us no more. Other dark figures came to us, and in short time, they led us away forever.
It was a long trek under the skies to the Mospuan enclave, and we looked with desperate longing back many times to our former home. On the surface there were few constructions visible, mainly mounds with solar collectors and cables running between occasional outbuildings built from melted and vitrified rocks. The true extent lay below the surface, buildings hundreds of feet deep to protect from the intense glares of Snaum the Nightstar, which cast the heat you felt in your bones long before it started to burn your skin. I reflectively raised my heatcatchers as if to ward it off as I remembered the last Longnight. Behind us lay the deep city where our grandsires and sires resided, where we had played as hatchlings, where we had thought to build our lives. But now over the heatblasted hills we walked on, twenty Kyuci with three Mospuan to guide us, dark herders moving amongst a sullen flock.
Soon the hills became sandy plains mixed with dazzling slabs of glass, and a sparkle in the distance seemed to promise the Enclave in the distance. Bhreum and I clung together to take comfort and we gossiped between ourselves and the other Kyuci around us, for the Mospuan strode silently and aloof, only guiding us along with that unseen pull, along pathways that must have been buried under shifting sands for millennia had they ever existed.
The building that had glinted in the distance was now seen as a squat broad structure of vitrified green and white bricks. Surrounded by directives, we were guided towards an arch in which a faint scintillance was perceptible. I felt the prickle of it wash over me as we passed through.
Beyond these walls were many buildings of similar construction, and beyond them, upon a plain that stretched even further beyond the Enclave walls, were numerous towers that seemed almost skeletal in their construction, glinting like metal but composed mostly of open space. These supported cylinders of some ceramic gleaming, hundreds of feet tall.
Brheum prodded me with his heatcatcher and unfolded a forefinger in excitement. “Look, remember I mentioned a comet that descended among the hills? Could this not be one such thing?”
We were suddenly all commanded to halt and gather together under the shade of a tall rampart. One of the Mospuan strode before us.
“You, what have you all been discussing? You cause yourselves much stress unneeded.”
Brheum made bold to summarize our speculations. “We deal in scraps and fragments of old tales. Most prevalent is that some of us will go skyward today to join the Dust of Pthual and not return, and our Sequestration spores will be inscribed with memorials to our bravery. Some of us will not return… but in a different way. There are scurrilous rumors, that we are to be consumed, or sent to deep places underground, or that there is a way to pass through Pthual and not join the frozen sparks of life force there, but to steal the glorious fire that extends from Ykal to Snaum and bring it back to the world, that all may partake of it…”
Under the mirrored stare of the Mospuan’s gray eyes, even bold Brheum had eventually to trail into silence.
The Mospuan showed little change to its stature, its face hidden behind the dark glass of its office. “Interesting. Before we take you on now to your fates, know that some of what you say is based on truth, but distorted by the eons. There is time now for a respite, we will bring you nourishment before transporting you, for you will need all your strength for this ordeal. I will explain more as you refresh yourselves.”
The Mospuan darted out a finger to the heavens. “See there in the sky, cheerful warming Ykal greets us and we partake of its life force! Yesteryear, morrowyear the reign of Snaum, which does not fill the sky with light as does giant Ykal, but whose jewellike intensity drives us under cover and into introspection, and occasionally into the shells of Sequestration to protect us from the light that burns unseen.
“But sometimes in the course of eons Ykal and Snaum seem to come together towards each other and dance closer, and then half of the sky may grow dark enough to show Pthual, the blackness beyond, whose force is so small and sparse, like sparkles on sands. If you then peer carefully up into the sky, you may see a distant round redness, this is Iakauhl, that bides its time across eon after eon but then descends like a falling knife.
“Now when Iakauhl approaches our world Misul, then the fires are grim indeed. There is no carapace cover or Sequestration shell strong enough, no Enclave staunch enough, no cairncavern deep enough, to save the Kyuci from what follows, it is a true cleansing and those of Kyuci form are found unworthy to pass through the eye of its needle. Some say it comes to transport all Kyuci to a higher plane, but if so none ever return from there. Some say that Ykal and Snaum wish to rest a while and not share their life force with those on Misul and so they order all to be wiped away for a while.
“But imagine that somehow, someone’s egg was protected just enough so that we all could awaken again.
“This is we, the Mospuan. When the force of the stars together is such that even Sequestration cannot preserve us, then the Kyuci undergo a deep change. When the Sequestering shells break, they emerge as Mospuan, and so life clings to Misul even in the bitterest and most inhospitable of times.
“Now, over time, as the sky cools and the rock solidifies again, it will happen that a generation of Mospuan lets go its determined force and brings forth Kyuci, who thence bear the sorrows of the world until their time is spun and they under dire heat will enpurpose more Mospuan, so the spheres shed us like old cloaks and put us on as new forms…
“You all may know some of this from legends, of course. But what you most need to know now is that we the Mospuans are not normally supposed to live at the same time as Kyuci. We are a form born to hardship and survival, and we are supposed to be cast off from the world so that fair and happy Kyuci may return.
“Still, over the eons, the Mospuan have made much progress, creating ships like comets to explore the space beyond the sky, and to bring the fires of the stars down to the ground so that their power may enrich the lives of all. And so, it is desirable that Mospuans somehow persist even while the Kyuci hold sway, for the Kyuci as you can tell are not the most determined holders of ancient knowledge and their records lose focus over the eons.
“And so we Mospuans have developed a means to self perpetuate, with the assistance of a small sacrifice from the Kyuci. This is a custom that has been built over the eons for the good of all. Come now, we shall go to the glass tower together where your fates lie, and the remainder shall be revealed.”
With that, the Mospuan gestured to us and we arose. We walked out from the Enclave walls through the prickling scintillation and into a vast desert that stood beyond, with many comet ships and towers. We were made to board a wheeled conveyance that bore us still more rapidly out over the hot and glassy sands, until one lone tower stood before us like a silver needle with a large glass sphere at its top, like the egg of a star, and the sight of it filled me with a deeper dread than any I had felt yet that day.
The Mospuans bade us to form a semicircle a mile from this tower. In areas around us we saw old Sequestration shells that bore inscriptions and could guess what they meant. Each one had been the scene of not a rebirth, but a tomb.
The Mospuan took our attention again.
“So now, this tower. What you see here is a machine meant to take a certain metal drawn from the ground, and compress it so that it has no alternative but to release its latent power. And this power is of a similar intensity to that fire of Iakauhl the Destroyer-star, which causes the Mospuan form to arise from Kyuci.
“And so, here you shall all be made to start Sequestering as if it was a normal excitation of Ykal and Snaum, but when you are all encased, the device will be set off and there shall be this burst that first drives inward, but then shines forth as would a hundred Snaums together.
“Some of you shall not survive this. These shall find their full honor in the record and their names will be inscribed on the shells as with those you see around you. But you that do survive, you will become Mospuan as us, and we will welcome you. You shall live far beyond any of your classmates whom you were made to leave behind, and your future decisions shall guide what happens to our race. And in due course some of you may choose to join those who ride the starpower on a comet up into the sky, to know better the truths of the higher spheres.
“Now, settle and compose yourselves. There will be a shining of gentler radiation first to start your Sequestration phases, and when you are encapsulated, thence comes the burst. We wish all of you the best outcome and hope to welcome you as sisters and brothers for the eons to come. Settle now…”
Stunned and in no little disbelief, we sat upon the sands under the glint and gleam of the horrid tower, each trying our best to convince ourselves that this could not be the end of ourselves. Meanwhile the Mospuan present withdrew into a long low bunker and peered at us with blackmirrored faces.
Brheum nosed my neck. “Vuakid… Take heart, they chose us because we had the best chance to join them. What luck I have I share with you. We will rise again together!”
I nosed him back. “It will be such a change to stand with you as a dark power, what a future we might have, beyond whatever Saatuli may have dreamed. May she also live her best life.”
I stopped speaking then, because the preliminary glow was then issued and we each felt the base urge of it, the instinct to cover one’s self for the long season of harder radiation ahead. The fluid seeped from our skins and we rolled about in the sandy earth to coat ourselves and accelerate the accretion of our Sequestering shells. A film thickened over my eyes and my breathing slowed. Internal rhythms took a sedate pace within me and I slowly fell into what felt like a light doze.
I know not how long I lay in this state, probably a Longweek at least, and my shell was dry and hard around me. My eyes were sealed by the inner material as I lay coiled up, my life and my breath and most of my thoughts suspended.
Then I saw even through the shell the impossibly bright flash and seconds later heard the crack. The glass device on the silver tower had burst and the Star-Upon-Misul was shining over all of us. I felt the hissing and clattering of scattered sand and gravel against my shell and my bones felt the fire. I tried for long after to recapture the moment when I first knew. I felt my slowed heart falter, then sink to silence, and there I was ready to forgo all hope.
But then instead of beating, it started to burn. It was a tingling fire that spread through the rest of me and touched something that swirled through me like a whirlwind of glass shards. It was a new world of pain and I could not even squirm or cry out.
In the depth of my tormented senses I caught a desperate vision, of worlds born of fire, of life cradled forever at the edges between freezing and burning, of the light and dark that create the twilight in which all that hopes to live finds the space to be, to coalesce from chaos and keep just that touch of madness that gives one scope to love and to reason.
And I saw a deeper flash of the vision of the Mospuan forms, rising from the Kyuci, working with each other over eons to preserve what had been plucked from the fiery dance of death in which our world ever spun. Such deft and selfless cunning!
It would be another Longweek before I could stand a chance to emerge from my hardened shell. But it was then, then that I knew.
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