[original fiction, 10k words (this chapter), idthink this needs any content warnings though they do walk along the edge of a very deep shaft for a bit at one point]
1. The Door
You do not understand time as I do. It is possible that you are reading these words many thousands of years before I write them; that I write further in your future, as you reckon such things, than any text you regard as ancient lies in your past. Some of those who lived in the times between ours coined the term 'incient', the inverse of ancient, for texts from my time or later. I am personally of the belief that this began as a lazy joke, with which my language is now sadly burdened.
It is also possible that you read this many thousands of years in my future, but if that is the case I can do less to accommodate your understanding. We may differ in our understandings of the asymmetry of time, but my one privilege, in the scale of the history I can describe, is the absolute certainty that time is asymmetry. Though I or my words might visit your time I cannot grasp it as I would any point in my past.
Whatever temporal distance lies between us, know this: I have touched an anciency that dwarfs it. Our universe is old. It was old beyond comprehension even when the tree of life we share as origin took root. The world that was our cradle is, as I write this, four and a half billion years old. I am reasonably confident that this is as true for you, in your time, as it is for me now. To my knowledge, no member of my species is born at a time at which that world was noticeably more or less than four and a half billion years old.
But our lost homeworld – of which you may nevertheless be a resident – was not an early riser at the dawn of the universe. Planet formation predates even the sun around which that world orbited by about twice our homeworld's age. In my time we know little of such life as those older worlds may have nurtured.
That they nurtured life, however, is now beyond my capacity to doubt.
If you've been enjoying my current story about a profoundly ominous unopenable door, you might also like my old serial The Second Realm, which is just FULL of ominous unopenable doors:
The figures appeared in the bubble again. Through Clearsight, Rel could clearly see the resemblance between the human and Van Raighan; the same thin face and pointed features. The man in the bubble was taller and broader than his brother, but brothers they were. So where was Van Raighan’s lie?
The angle was strange. Witnesses could only record what they’d seen, but if Van Raighan had seen that view with his own eyes, he’d been dangling from the roof of whatever the cave was. Clearsight pierced the depths of the abyss, but only enough to reveal just how far down it went - miles, if not more. Again, Van Raighan’s brother - Rissad? - slid across the rough stone floor and slammed into the back wall, and Rel’s enhanced sight told him something broke in the man’s shoulder. Rissad was Gifted, more strongly than his brother; to Clearsight, the rock behind him shone with the reflection of his aura.
There was some sort of old machinery on the back wall, a hinge of some sort, surrounded by rods and piping. A hinge meant a door, but there was no door, unless the entire back wall... Even as he thought it, Rel saw the shape of the concrete slab that would slide out and swing open. It had to weigh tons. If it opened, it would sweep Rissad and the Wildren clean off the ledge.
The Sherim looked like an ordinary wooden door, standing upright without a frame on the wind-swept grass. To either side, the ground fell away, to the Federas valley on one side and towards Nursim on the other. Ahead, the brow climbed to the low top of Aruls beyond the Sherim. Not that you could walk a step past the Sherim in that direction.
The Gift made Rel’s eyes ache as he walked down to the door, and he stifled a yawn. Focussing on the door kept his attention off the strangeness at the corners of his vision, but he was used to it anyway; the slopes to either side, if glanced at carelessly, seemed to ripple, almost to flap like wings.
A few feet short of the door, Rel stopped, turned to his right, and began to circle it. This wasn’t the only Sherim to be marked by a door - the clash between First- and Second-Realm logic threw up some strange patterns - but at none of them did one open the door to pass through. Some doors simply didn’t open; some, like this one, would, but all anyone would tell Rel was that there were dire consequences for doing so.
...suddenly he was stumbling onto a tiny ledge, staggering forward and pressing himself to the cliff face as gallons of water lashed at him.
Behind him was an open expanse of blue that could only be called sky, except that it went all the way round from above his head to below the ledge. In front, the cliff went on as far as he could see in every way, broken only by the plain steel door that opened onto the ledge.
You could open the door, according to Dora, but that way didn’t go to the Court.
All three of these are in the first episode and that's without even mentioning to the magic power that's Basically Just A Portal Gun From The Hit Videogame Portal 2 because that's what I was playing when I had the dream that kicked this project off >.>''
Anyway the degree to which Person Can't Open Door is a tic of my writing is beyond comedy, but The Second Realm is still the biggest project I've ever finished and, despite occasional rough edges, I'm still very proud of it.
