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Sollvraell: Part I
Published: August 28
The comets and stars burn up and fade away, and the dust of their passing descends on distant worlds where life goes onward once again. The universe lies beyond and within, beating like a heart and pulsing silently like a brain that spans all time and space for eternity and infinity, striving for change as all possibilities become realities in the depths of its limitless mind. A tenuous strand of sentience stretches out defiantly through this vast void of space, holding back chaos as a spider's web would hold back an avalanche. Despite the threat of annihilation looming menacingly forever over the horizon, life perpetuates. It always finds a way.
Lightning cracked like a whip over the harsh land, revealing all in a fierce white flash where the gods held their gaze. Disparities between heaven and earth were settled by the snap and spark of the otherworldly power that leveled all else before it with a fleeting moment of truth to dignify its passing. For in that singular moment, a truth was revealed on the rocky shore of ice.
Where the winds carried hail and the darkness carried naught but despair, a white figure clung to life atop a wave tossed plank. Down below, beside the shore, the man wrapped tight in animal skins bit back the cold through chattering teeth. His numb blue hands clasped the wood, dead with cold but clinging, always clinging, to the promise of life and the hope of a new tomorrow. Yet for the lost, forsaken man, tomorrow was never a true guarantee in the unforgiving place.
Pushing back the darkness, the man turned his eyes to the frightening sky and bellowed aloud for all to hear, "By the gods! What have I done to deserve such a fate?" Not a soul existed to hear the urgent plea.
Coughing away the choke of sea spray as the waves rose higher, the man set his heavy bearded jaw in a grim line to brace himself as an impenetrable wall of ice materialized from behind the screen of hail. As the dark curve of water threw him sailing into the air, the inevitability of death loomed all too real before him. With the ice, all was brightness; then all was dark as his tiny raft slammed against the towering cliff. The body of the forgotten man slipped lifelessly into the sea.
As the echo of fates entwined reverberated through the ice, twin ice-blue eyes flashed open in the deep darkness of a cavern within. As the awoken eyes narrowed, their piercing sight saw all there was to see. The answer was all too clear. Very soon now, everything would change.
Part IISeptember 4
Antarctica was a foreboding place. A place where the air alone could freeze the lungs, where the waves could swallow the largest ship in the depths, and the wind itself threatened to strip away anything not firmly planted in the ice. Frigid land met black sea with a terrible gnashing of teeth, and where life could find a niche, it clung so desperately as to make the place all the fiercer. Antarctica was not a place to be meddled with.
The whaling ship Defiant Aeolus had been caught in the fiercest storm ever faced by the likes of man. When the Aeolus was thrown about by the waves and wind, broken apart by the icy fangs of the continent's coast, her captain had ordered the crew to abandon ship. Casting off the remaining lifeboat left intact, the surviving crew rowed for a distant harbor that would offer little more in protection from the angry sea. The captain himself? Ulysses preferred to go down with his ship.
"Ulysses?" called a disbelieving woman's voice, rich and melodic against the echoing hollow of ice behind. "Ulysses!" she called again, this time sure and hopeful. Yet the man sprawled on the icy lip jutting into the churning sea seemed to have little life left in him to rejoice over.
"You're alive!" she exclaimed, running forward, more to convince herself than anything else. She knelt down to take his hand, prying it from the board clasped tight in a death grip beneath bone-white fingers. It appeared to be part of the railing of the ship, torn apart by the storm. Turning her head to see what he held so strongly, she read the words aloud, "Defiant Aeolus," then beneath, "those who would rule the universe must listen to it first."
Ulysses choked, falling on his side and spouting out an unhealthy amount of seawater over the ice. The woman leaned closer over his side, placing a hand to his chest, "Let's get you fixed up." She smiled that same warm familiar smile of hers, then made as if to stand.
"Sara?" he stopped her, staring up into her deep green eyes set in that gorgeous oval face. Ulysses continued to stare, drinking in the vision of her angelic beauty, pure and vibrant even in the shadow of such a harsh place. "We made it through this?" he continued disbelievingly in his deep, gravelly voice. Why had he never asked her the real question?
"Was there ever any doubt, my love?" she grinned wider with the knowledge of his renewed strength as he surged to his feet.
The bear of a man propped himself up with the plank and limped forward, wincing slightly with every lift of his leg. Sara accompanied worriedly at his side, holding his arm close as he strode into the ice cave where the crew had set up camp. One side of the cave was solid black stone where a river of lava bubbled by the impervious ledge of ice. Dangerously close to the overhang, the fourteen-strong crew of the fallen Aeolus sat on salvaged timbers from their beloved wreck. Hearing Ulysses' noisy approach as he scraped along the ice in the echoic cavern, they turned around without any real surprise. Their Captain always won out over the wiles of any god in the end.
Part IIISeptember 11
As Ulysses approached the icy ledge and dropped himself down beside Crath, his first mate, the sailor leaned forward to seize the rope held under his heavy boot. He hauled up the cargo dangling into the fiery abyss, a fresh seal carcass roasting in the lively flames of the none-too-distant underworld, and looked up at Ulysses. "We knew you'd make it," Crath said matter-of-factly through his crooked grin. "It was only a matter of time."
The sailor knew better than to lend his Captain a blade. Ulysses fought off the burning in his hand as he gripped the seal to tear off a flipper separable only by an axe to any other man. "How long has it been?" he asked, ripping off a bite with his teeth. Sara sat contentedly at his side, eyelids readily soaking in the warmth of the flickering flames below.
"Just one day since the Maelstrom, Captain. December tenth."
Ulysses turned to Crath quizzically. Misinterpreting his movement, Sara continued, "We didn't leave you out there that long." She laughed as he turned back to look down at her, "And it was my idea to call it the Maelstrom."
"How fitting," he rumbled, staring into her vibrant green eyes, wide in the low light. "Very fitting indeed," he continued, turning to peer into the fiery depths of the lava stream. Ulysses fell silent a moment, and the whole crew could sense the tension as his mind began to churn. "What cruel twist of fate could send us to such a place?" Their eyes followed his gaze slowly into the fires, where they fell into the all-consuming silence as one.
Ulysses awoke late at night, safe under the benevolent gaze of the moon that shone down brightly upon them. Carefully equidistant between crashing waves and roiling lava, he lay beside Sara in the warmth of the cloak he shared with her. Ulysses brushed a stray golden lock away from her pretty face before smiling painfully, rising ever-so-slowly so as not to disturb her. Just lying there awake, taking in Sara's closeness and her beauty, her innocence and naiveté, was just too much for him to bear. There were things some people just couldn't understand. He could never bring himself to explain a world to her that she failed to see through mercifully uncorrupted eyes. The world was a dark place - a place that she would never truly see, if Ulysses could help it.
As quietly a man his size and persona could manage, Ulysses stepped away from his soundly sleeping crew and ventured outward into the darkness. An entire network of unexplored tunnels lay just beyond the lights of moon and lava; he turned toward the darkest shadow and followed the rocky floor's ascension where it led him skyward to the peak.
Everywhere he turned, the walls spoke of forgotten myths that even the great Ulysses had yet to lay eyes on - stalactites growing from the arching ceiling, ice glowing from the threatening promise of magma behind it, even the molten rock itself pouring forth and hardening before him on the trail, intent on laying new obstacles in his path. Through freezing cold and searing heat, Ulysses steeled himself and pressed inexorably onward.
Part IV
September 18
At last, after trekking determinedly through all hours of the remaining night, the icy path drew to its inevitable conclusion. The South Sea growled, churning like an angry beast some thousands of feet below, to either side of the icy precipice that stood like a natural bridge before him. And across that terrifyingly narrow span of glistening ice stood the peak, bathed in mysterious silver moonlight where it rose like a gnarled finger jabbing accusations at the sky. Ulysses, the man that he was, would never be expected to resist the temptation of that seemingly impossible crossing. Setting a grim line to his bearded jaw, he took the first step forward to stride resolutely across the harrowing ravine.
The chamber beyond was freezing, vast, and oppressed by the deepest darkness Ulysses had ever known. And in the center of that haunting cathedral, a single beam of purest moonlight lanced down through the cavern to set a wide length of polished steel alight. Ulysses stepped forward slowly, almost reverently, toward the flashing blade driven with such dedication into the center of that moonlit circle in ice. Moving closer, he gazed down curiously, warily, as if to reach for the milky white handle. A pair of glowing ice-blue eyes snapped open in the dense darkness just beyond the ring of light, seizing Ulysses with the intensity of that stare. As the Captain's attention shifted abruptly to meet the disembodied stare across the shadowed chamber, the voice of that most unexpected stranger rang out through the void. "Ulysses Janszoon Lawless. It's been quite some time since we last met. As if time makes any difference in a universe like ours," the low and level voice echoed, matching the unwavering intensity of those piercing eyes.
"Who are you?" asked Ulysses, wary yet holding his ground.
"My identity is not as important as the experience I represent. The culmination of that experience is contained within the relic that lies before you," said the eyes, so large and bright in the darkness that Ulysses could actually perceive their implied gesture toward the blade. Maintaining a careful stance, he tore his attention away from the pair of arresting eyes and himself looked down upon the dagger ensconced in ice before him. As if driven into an icy heart, the blade had not pierced deep enough alone to free the land from the cold darkness that possessed it. Stepping forward, Ulysses reached for the purest white handle.
"Think, Lawless," interrupted the voice. "That relic is the Veto. Accept it, and you accept its ideology - the experience within derived from a billion years, a billion minds, and just one dream."
"One dream?" the Captain questioned, exactly as intended.
"That the Veto will lead to a future brighter than our past and present. Acceptance of the Veto impresses a thought upon your mind that, once realized, cannot be denied. That thought is of a unity of purpose, engraved there along the Veto's handle. Gnothi sauton, omnibus caritas, veritas vincit - it is a language you were once quite familiar with." Watching the confusion play across Ulysses' face, the voice continued in a defeated tone.
"How far you have fallen, Lawless. Such a pity." The fiercest of ice-blue eyes pierced the man to the bone.
Jared Kenelm CollinsComments and criticism welcome: contact