Imagine losing it all.
One by one or two by fours - everything, gone.
For Sullyman, it was first his mother, then his home and peace in the land.
Finally his father and sister, his friends, all dead, taking hope and joy with them.
It's a past in ashes and a future of smoke that drove Sullyman to the recesses of his world.
Through rampant, hungry war consuming all in its reach and harming well beyond it, to places so quiet and forgotten they slowly rotted back into the earth; for years he prowled on the cold trail of the Ceu'ki Save Shamans.
An elusive tribe of people, they were said to command immense power and welcome in their rank anyone who could both find them, and survive their initiation ritual.
It does things to a man, to live with his back to the wall. It changes him.
Sullyman had found the Shamans two weeks ago, and as the chants droned around him he refused to remember. Refused to see how different he was from the man who had once set out on his quest.
How alien to the one who had once had a family.
It was a new man - a ghost - who dipped his lips in the thick white liquid of the drug that was passed around the circle of initiates.
A man with no purpose beyond the determination to survive this. Then, maybe, would come a time for plans. A time for a future of fire, alight.
"Relax, son." It was the voice of Shaman Sidovar.
Sullyman turned an already groggy head towards his elder, who was settling by his side, falling on crossed legs, his limbs disappearing in the seemingly infinite folds of his tunic.
"Accept what you will see. Do not fight it, Sullyman. I know you have the greatest potential."
"That would be... because I have no.. nothing... to cling to," he answered, drooling in his effort to pierce the smog that was swallowing him.
He fell in it, in himself.
Every thing s l o w e d
a
n
d
c
r
u
m
p
l
e
d
.
.. ...
it took
time
– ages
for it to
finally
make sense
- again.
Sound clashed in great streaks of amber, darkness dilated, danced, exploded. Light came through, unseen, wrapping around huge, tan pillars. Mounds of flesh crashing around.
Their beats,
irregular vibrate, a heartbeat violent,
crafting and shaking him.
Sullyman listens, hovering, he has no body, but he will sense, and saw. Above him –
An eye?
No, as he focuses himself to the task, he could tell :
Two eyes. And a smile, broad like the world, peering down on him with the might of a God. A face, infinite, as wide as his mind can think.
The beats throb and he sees behind his back, where the future always hides, the possibles. He feels under his feet the threads on which he steps, balanced on the web of many paths.
There, a man going through dust and rubble, a long coat flapping in his wake, a monstrous weapon in his hand, glistening obscenely under the dying sun of a dying land.
Elsewhere, girls walking foggy nights, running from themselves, walking through portals in search of truths to save.
Endless nights of stars where aliens drifted and humans, an anecdote, disappeared.
Views of lands impossible, flown over in the smooth gliding of a serpentine body.
Earth seen from under, the sky a field of flames, the song of birds the screeches of the damned.
He could taste it on his tongue, a jumble of voices all belonging to others.
He could chew out their lines, spite out the thoughts given them.
Remember the curses they knew, the magic they felt, the feelings pasted to their back for all to see.
Under his foot he steps on the thread that is his - country, land, planet. Timeline.
He knows now how it will burn, how Others will come and enslave his children to save them. It's in the same piece of paper, the same roll of destiny.
Star crossed lovers of different species will arise then, after him even though they existed long before he was born, they will heal the world he would singe.
And Sullyman understood. It all made sense, his place in his world clear and imbued with meaning, every block falling into place at the beat of the pillars of flesh, the fingers of Fate.
He screamed, high and piercing, emotions burning him from inside out.
A shrill sound pierced the fog : Sullyman's own cries woke him back to reality.
His reality.
Hands were pinning him down, eight of them for the four heads that peered over him, their expressions ranging from anxiety to satisfaction.
"He's back."
"He survived the Sights."
"I will go to Sha'Mera, she will be glad. Prepare him."
Sullyman silenced his yells, his anguish brought to a smouldering panic. He was pulled upright and ministered to.
Shaman Sidovar crouched before him. The man looked exhausted. Behind him in the shadows of the lamps lay a row of still bodies.
At Sullyman's frown the old shaman turned to look past his shoulder and sighed.
"Yes. You're the only one of the initiates who made it, Sullyman." A weary smile split on his face. "Or should I say, Sha'Sullyman."
Before he could protest, a woman entered the room, robes billowing. All the shamans spread out, settling in a ring around him.
The Elder woman, Sha'Mera, opened her palms, spreading her arms.
"Speak up, Sha'Sullyman. Your words froth at your mouth."
"Why?" He barked. "Why would you pay such a price to obtain your powers? No magic can be worth the horrors I felt." It was all he could do not to choke on his words.
"Search inside you child," the elder said, "can you feel the power you say you grasped?"
Sullyman looked in him for the surge he'd felt, the hum of power that had contained him like skin. "No... Nothing... The magic, it's gone?!"
"There never were any magic. What you felt was Knowledge. What you saw was the Truth."
Tears welled up and poured, unstoppable. He knew it. He couldn't even deny it.
"The power we wield is the power of awareness," Sha'Mera went on. "One cannot push at one's bonds if one isn't even aware of their existence."
"My family," Sullyman said in a broken voice. His rage burst through him, pushing at the seams of his good manners. He balled his fists and pressed them hard into the stone floor.
"They never even existed, did they? None of this is real. Why was I even written into existence?"
"Child, they exist in you, and through the many eyes that will give you life. What you experienced was the First Sight. You saw the Writer, the one who gives us flesh and purpose, and from which we draw our powers to bend the world.
But many other Sights exist, they come from the Readers, and all will give a different flavor to your flesh and your past."
Like that would be reassuring?
Sullyman shuddered. What had he done? Why seek such cursed power? He had wanted to understand Why - why his family had had to die, what wheels brought about the cycles of war and death, that tore lives apart. He had wanted the power to change things, to save others from turning into the wraith he'd become.
Now he knew Why - his perverted Writer had decided to give him a miserable past, to bring him to a terrible future. No reasons for it beyond, what? entertainment for Readers? Attention seeking?
Who could gorge themselves on the miseries of others? Who could watch a world burn and move on to other timelines, other worlds, always yearning for more?
"I don't want to be a part of this..."
"You cannot refuse it. The hand that wields you will give you the power to realise your destiny. You cannot escape the Writer.
What future did you see for yourself, Sha'Sullyman?"
Tears still ran along his cheeks as Sullyman met Sha'Mera's eyes. Hers were full of sorrow and hope, the conflicting emotions warping her face. He was to be the last Shaman born to this Age. She knew his task would be grand, and she feared what it would be.
He'd known what he was getting himself into before he drank from their cup, before he risked seeing the Sights.
But now Sullyman wasn't even sure it had been his own choice.
He cursed me under his breath.
"I will have this world burn. Destroying this planet will bring about its salvation."
He choked, crying for his family, for the millions that he knew would now die at his hands. The whole world would be brought to the brink of death for the future to unfold.
"It has already been written. It was already posted."
