Chapter Twenty Two.

We stood there silently for several minutes— Murgui content to stare with a happy smile, proud to have expanded on my knowledge, while I sat in growing anxiety at the ominous revelations he’d dropped on me and failed to elaborate. Eventually I couldn’t hold back any more.

“So… Murgui, I have a few questions.”

“Yes, friend?” He answered as he took a seat, solid rock flowing underneath him to form a surprisingly comfy looking chair.

“Ok, so in order: what exactly is the giant creepy sphere, why is it leaking, and should we be concerned about that?” I asked with forced politeness.

“Oh yes! That is the Heart-Ward, core of all ‘Haven’.” He giggled to himself at the inaccurate name. “Is whole reason for planet to exist, seals off a great rift in universe. Leaking because dummies poked a hole in it long time ago. Is not too bad, Heart-Ward has safety built in.”

Well that’s a relief.

“Safety?” I asked, curious.

“Mmhmm. If breach gets too big, then pop! Heart-Ward collapses planet around it to make new seal. Not as good maybe, but universe is saved!” Nodding along to his own words, he gave a short clap as my momentary reassurance evaporated.

“Safety!? How is collapsing the freaking planet a safety feature??” Shouting now, I couldn’t believe his nonchalance about sitting on an enormous time-bomb.

“Safety not for here, is for everywhere else! Stable rift to the Void lets in… bad things.” Murgui shuddered for a moment before continuing. “Void is infinite nothing. True infinite, but not empty. Place of no laws, no restrictions. Not real is real, time goes bad and power has no limit. You know how big a tiny piece of infinite is? Infinite. Even small void-god could pop universe like bubble, probably not even on purpose.” He cradled his head fearfully and I backed off, not wanting to push him further after witnessing his obvious distress.

Well that’s an unpleasant bit of news.

I stared upwards at the floating apocalypse-sphere, hanging in the sky like a sword of Damocles above the heads of everyone living on this world. They didn’t even know it was here, and one day—soon from the looks of it—the world would just end. The news should have been overwhelming, but honestly I was kinda whelmed out by this point. Earlier I’d felt alarmed, now I just felt tired.

“Shit. Uh… is there a way to stop it? Plug the leak somehow?” I asked wearily.

Murgui turned evasive at this line of questioning. “Eh… maybe. Two ways I can think of. Convince the ones who poked the hole to fix it—but they’re all very crazy now, very crazy. Or could try to fly up and plug hole in person but… that more crazy than the hole-pokers.”

He pointed up at the thorny darkness spreading out from the sphere. “That is void-space coming into real space. Not real, but trying to be. What you see is just void-touched air and already looks bad. Void-touched people not look so pretty. Can—”

Abruptly he stopped talking and whipped around, his gaze locked onto one of the needle-like stone towers jutting up a few kilometers away.

“Other problems too. Heart-ward doesn’t like corruption, activates small safety to reduce it. Hold on!”

Wind started to pick up around us and I felt Murgui erect a shield at our position to keep it at bay. The wind rushed towards the tower, swirling around it and bringing clouds of ash storming across the horizon. A deafening *THRUM* so loud my puddle-body vibrated swept out, and a ring of lights lit around the tower’s base. Moments later another ring lit up and the sound pitched slightly higher, still almost loud enough to hurt even through the shielding. The rings lit up faster and faster, the sound ascending with them until it was a continuous deafening screech and the whole tower glowed in the distance. Then it went totally silent.

A vertical bar of blinding light suddenly blasted silently from the tip of the tower, lancing up towards the leaking heart-ward.

“Brace yourself, friend! Is gonna get noisy!” Came a shout from Murgui. I watched in dread fascination as an expanding ring of flattened ash spread out from the tower—kicked-up clouds from the earlier wind reversing direction with much greater force.

The shockwave hit us like a truck, the noise and pressure almost knocking me unconscious despite Murgui’s shielding. It droned on and on for what felt like hours but was probably only a few seconds. When the beam hit the corruption spreading around the heart-ward it flared up like the birth of a new sun. Tendrils of void energy the size of small mountains writhed tortuously as they were seared out of existence.

When the last of the void energy was gone, the beam cut out and ended almost as abruptly as it had come. I sat there shaken, shocked in disbelief at the absurdity of the display I’d just witnessed.

“Yep. Happens every few hours now. Whole place here used to be garden zone before safeties came on, now only sea of ash left. Hard to work on problem when planet trying to kill you, yes?” Murgui chuckled happily into the silence following the devastating energy beam.

Screw. That.

This was officially so far beyond my paygrade it might as well have been another solar system.

I’ll figure out how to get out of here and up to the surface. Let Veris figure out how to stop the world from imploding, I’m out.

“Point taken. Fixing the planet is somebody else’s problem.” I said. He nodded gravely and turned to walk back into the open half-circle entrance of his home. I followed him and a few minutes later we were seated back in his ‘apartment’. I’d managed to craft myself a kind of mini-bowl chair from the floor—with Murgui’s permission. Curiosity rose up in me once again as I thought about the circumstances outside.

“Why did somebody poke a hole in the heart-ward?” I asked after an uncomfortable silence. He squirmed in his chair for a bit before answering nervously.

“Ha ha… Probably just stupid. Nothing important!”

I glared at him suspiciously, or at least I tried to convey suspicion in the way I leaned my blobby puddle-body. Some subtleties of the expression were likely lost— what with lacking eyes or even a face— but it still managed to be effective as the silence stretched out and he squirmed further.

“Is not a very good story, not very fun. Doesn’t change things now…” he mumbled under his breath.

“Murgui… what happened out there?” I demanded.

He seemed to deflate, the peppy energy he’d possessed since I’d met him draining out like someone had pulled a plug.

“Ok… are you sure?” His voice was plaintive, but I hardened my heart and nodded— dismissing a small pang of guilt at the friendly creature’s distress. With a final sigh, he began to speak.

“My people are nomads, most just call us that. We walk between worlds, looking for new things. We build Sanctuaries to make peace and safety, and try to help when we meet people. This place already old when we found it, but the builders left things behind so we knew what it was.” A wave of his hand pulled up a piece of stone from the floor.

“This wardstone. Builders made most of planet from it. Very strong— more of it in one place, gets stronger. Is why planet is hollow!” He smiled briefly, enjoying teaching me something before he slumped again. “But the Void… even sealed, attracts things. Dark things. If too many come then can maybe break seal. Would take a long time, but dark feeds on dark. Something strong enough to make it would come. We think that why builders bring people here, to protect the seal. Made world beautiful for them…” Dropping the stone he shook his head.

“Something went wrong. Builders vanished, monsters didn’t. People lost legacy, history, everything. Spent short lives hiding from hungry things—like the Corruptor. His kind were many those days. When the strongest of the survivors found Sanctuary, they begged us to help. We could not fight— against our nature. But… we could not let them die alone, in dark. So we taught them.”

Giving me a severe look he spread his hands.

“Not of weapons, or armor. Not to kill. We taught truth of this world, their heritage. And we taught them secret of working wardstone, even their ancestors didn’t know.” A hint of pride came into his voice as he leaned back, reminiscing about times past.

“When they came out of the dark, they were mighty. Drove back monsters, built great cities the void-drawn could not approach. Brought safety and light back from surface all the way to heart-ward. Named themselves Achorai, ‘the glorious return’.” Saddening again, he paused for a minute.

“One came to me, he was… my friend. Wanted to learn more. Wanted possibilities. I… I love to teach. Saw Achorai and saw wisdom, saw peace, strength. Thought they would be like us… thought my friend would be like me. I was wrong.”

I sensed grief radiating off of Murgui’s slight frame and I immediately felt guilty for bringing this up. As fascinated as I was by the story, it just wasn’t worth putting the poor thing through this amount of pain to me. Before I could interrupt him, the next words spilled out like a dam had burst.

“I gave it to them! I gave them the possibilities and they saw too far… saw one of the great truths before they were ready. And I broke them.” Weeping openly now from his enormous eyes he continued. “My friend changed. Achorai changed. Where they were kind, now they were harsh. Cruel. Saw their doom writ in fate and became… worse. Now no cost too great to escape fate—but can’t escape from inside. So they looked outside… into the Void. Built a great city for all Achorai beneath the heart-ward and gathered for great ritual to sever fate. I tried to stop them. I… I tried. Would not listen. Called me betrayer, said I hid truth from them and cast me out. Their ritual succeeded. They broke fate, but broke the seal too. And the Void… was waiting for that.”

Murgui’s grief began to subside as I sat there in stunned silence, listening to his dwindling sniffles. I felt like I’d just kicked an entire box of puppies for forcing this.

“Murgui, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed.” I said, ashamedly. He acted like he hadn’t heard me, mumbling to himself now more than anything.

“My fault… so when others left, I stayed. My mistake, so I will watch over them. Make sure when end comes… my friend is not alone.”

He finally fell silent, and the silence was almost as deafening as the tower’s blast from earlier.