Einception, and other stories

It is very hot today. The longer I’m in here, the less I can find. I wish I had a teacher. Someone who knows how all the parts go together.

“I could have told you that, exile!”

Einhar isn’t surprised she doesn’t respond. He has crossed paths with the exile numerous times. It must be the will of the First Ones. Einhar can tell in the exile’s frown, which is just as frigid as the cascades of ice she summons from her gnarled staff. Craiceann, First of the Deep, has her in a claw, whether she knows it or not. The entire scenario made a name for her, sleek and feminine, leap from the cool waters of Einhar’s imagination.

“Sturgeon! I have been here before!”

The exile glares at him over her shoulder while her chaos golems beat down a writhing mamba. They don’t have time for this. Memories don’t last forever, and already the gloom of decay lurks on the horizon.
A posse of proto-synthetes leap a nearby stone wall. Einhar pulls the pin on a grenade, lobs it at the advancing horde, and watches their delicate filigree and turquoise hearts explode into so much smoke and glitter. “When I was but a small Einhar, I wondered how many things worked. Not mechanical things like Niko, or gem things like gemlings, but living things! Small Einhar would think about this very much, until small Einhar’s eyes grew crispy! Father Frey would drag small Einhar back home and put him in a small, dark place, but he could not take the thoughts out of small Einhar’s head!”

Sturgeon turns around. This is it! Einhar thinks, Finally, she speaks to me!

Raising her staff, she calls an orb of electricity so hot the Beastmaster can feel it through his mask as it launches an arc of lightning past his face. Blinded, the filimite crashes to the ground. Einhar stomps on its casing, and all thought of acknowledgement vanish as he notices brain matter on the sole of his talon. He kneels and scoops some splattered mush into a pouch on his belt. Looking up, he catches a familiar sight.

It’s a cage, half-embedded in a dirt embankment. Einhar approaches it and kneels to the bars, grinning behind his mask. He lifts a hand in greeting. “Hello, small Einhar!”

The child in the cage, curled into a ball, peers out, takes in the hulking red cloth, black dreadlocks, and white, pointed beak, and asks, “How do you know my name?”

Einhar laughs. “I knew you would say that!” He looks behind him. Sturgeon, surrounded in righteous flames, is keeping the synthetic guardians of the memory at bay, but he remembers he needs to keep this brief. Luckily, an arm from some unfortunate monster, severed neatly by a blade of frozen anger, crash lands beside him. He picks it up, peels back its flesh, and offers the steaming pink underneath. “What do you call this?”

“Lunch?”

“Good boy! You have been eating well! Listen, small Einhar, have you heard of the First Ones?”

The child crawls closer to the cage door, eyes wide. “No! Tell me, strange man-bird!”

Einhar’s heart is so fit to burst with pride he nearly forgets what he needs to do. What a clever Einhar small Einhar was! he thinks, brushing the dirt into a blank canvas, Mind always working! Aware of the presence of a genius! Such a smart, sunburnt Einhar! He starts to draw with his finger, hesitates, wipes the slate clean, and starts again, careful to make his pictures upside down. “This is Craiceann, First of the Deep,” he explains, voice low with reverence, “Farrul, First of the Plains, Fenumus, First of the Night, and Saqawal, First of the Sky. They were the first of all beasts, and they watch us from the Great Grove, where the strongest shall go at the end of the world.”

As if on cue, the child says, “I want to meet them! How do I become the strongest?”

The Beastmaster wipes a hot tear from his face. He gets dirt in his eye like a silly Einhar, but the sting is nothing compared to the overwhelming love he feels for himself. This is what mother beasts in the menagerie must feel like when giving birth, with less screaming and hideous, red liquids.

He takes the child’s hand between his own. “Survive,” Einhar says, “Despite it all, survive. The years shall not be kind. Learn the ways of blood, build yourself a home, and give thanks to the First Ones, for they shall guide your path through terror and triumph alike. Only then shall you be considered worthy.”

Sturgeon cries out in pain, clutching her side. The pack of wrought reavers not occupied with attacking her chaos golems turn their attention to Einhar instead. Gold fangs and quills bared, they charge.

“Oh! One last thing.” Einhar crams a repeating bolt into his crossbow. Channeling his thaumaturgy – he needs to make this look life-changing for himself – he pulls the trigger. The reavers collapse in a pile of twitching limbs, mowed down in a hail of crimson spikes. He looks back at the child. “Make yourself a fine weapon! Tell it every day that it is a good weapon! The best that ever was!”

Gritting her teeth, Sturgeon waits for her energy shield to recharge. The memory decay is pouring towards her in waves. It’s too late to press on. If it hadn’t been for the feathered fool who raved about crabs and spiders at the slightest provocation slowing her down—

Was he still with her? It had been too quiet.

“Goodbye, small Einhar! Remember: don’t be a stranger!”

Sturgeon’s gut crinkles with frost as she is overtaken by blue.

-

When she returns to her hideout after what feels like twenty years of warfare, Sturgeon wants nothing more than to pry off her armor and crawl into a hole to sleep. Alva Valai catches her first.

“Did something happen to Einhar?” the time traveler whispers, “I sense a sort of fulfillment about him.”

Sturgeon shrugs her off. Across the snowy courtyard, the Beastmaster licks his pen in preparation for the poem he will write about the greatest day of his life.