Eat

previously
Chapter 1: The Door
Chapter 2: The Pilot
Chapter 3: The Priest
Chapter 4: The Warmaker
Chapter 5: The Emperor

[Original fiction, 9k words this chapter]

6. The First Step

Stiff and sore, I nevertheless hunched in the direction of the new arrival, left hand glowing with the key as I extended my right cythorn. Saffa was exposed in space to my left; Dufore stood to my right, spreading their hands in a placating posture of surrender. I did not have spare thought to scorn their choice, my mind racing with what I might hope to do with only the power of my cystem against a chrononaut. I could see no more sign of the Emperor than had been left of Birleg.

"Who are you?" Saffa said, her high voice wavering. There were new tears in her clothing, some of them bloodied, from the explosion of violence that had knocked us all down.

The chrononaut looked at her. "You're not one of Lucius' tree people."

"I'm from the Commonwealth," she said, with a hint of what might have been hope.

"The fuck is that?" Their voice was deep and curt, unmistakably tired.

bumping this for the not-turkey-day-anymore crowd

also apparently it's itch creator day, I have a few short stories up over there that you could maybe check out if you fancied so doing?

previously
Chapter 1: The Door
Chapter 2: The Pilot
Chapter 3: The Priest
Chapter 4: The Warmaker
Chapter 5: The Emperor

[Original fiction, 9k words this chapter]

6. The First Step

Stiff and sore, I nevertheless hunched in the direction of the new arrival, left hand glowing with the key as I extended my right cythorn. Saffa was exposed in space to my left; Dufore stood to my right, spreading their hands in a placating posture of surrender. I did not have spare thought to scorn their choice, my mind racing with what I might hope to do with only the power of my cystem against a chrononaut. I could see no more sign of the Emperor than had been left of Birleg.

"Who are you?" Saffa said, her high voice wavering. There were new tears in her clothing, some of them bloodied, from the explosion of violence that had knocked us all down.

The chrononaut looked at her. "You're not one of Lucius' tree people."

"I'm from the Commonwealth," she said, with a hint of what might have been hope.

"The fuck is that?" Their voice was deep and curt, unmistakably tired.

[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:

previously
Chapter 1: The Door
Chapter 2: The Pilot

[Original fiction, 11k words this chapter]

3. The Priest

By the time Vittar managed to squeeze anything useful from their experiments, Saffa had begun to show signs of significant dehydration. Her lips cracked and cratered, and when I spoke to her to ask her condition, her attention strayed. There was no sign of her earlier intensity. The blanket we'd given her from our scrounged stock was tucked over her arms, but hung down her back, not over her shoulders.

What Vittar brought was a laboratory glass beaker containing a few centimetres' depth of a slightly sticky amber liquid. Its scent was more starchy than sweet. It clearly wasn't enough to meet Saffa's needs, but Vittar assured me they had more on the way. As I took the beaker from them the responsibility of carrying it struck me with a fearful severity, and my mind filled with images of the glass shattering between my fingers.

Watching my footing despite the perfect flatness of the plaza, I carried the beaker over to Saffa and knelt beside her. Groggily, she looked up at me, her head weaving atop her neck.
She tried to say something but her lips were too stiff to articulate the words properly.

"A drink for you," I said, putting the beaker to her mouth gently. "Don't drink too quickly."

She made no move to take the beaker from me, so I tilted it until the fluid reached her lips. Carefully, I let her take a few drops, seeing her tongue prod timidly forward. Then I held back until I saw the weak swallow run down her throat. I gave her some more, and even that little was enough to start to bring her round.

It was a few minutes, I guess, before she managed to speak, croaking, "Tastes like raw potato," in her own language.