16: Spirit Journey
Even for a being as biologically engineered as Alf, time seemed to have no meaning in the sensory deprivation tank. Touch, smell, heat, sound, and even gravity became imperceivable. The ponies had a level of engineering that he had not expected of them.
As for the flashes of taboo that were supposed to play in his mind like a movie, it never happened. He kept waiting for it though, but time passed with only a growing numbness in his head that signaled the destructive properties of the mind bleach starting to erode him from the inside out. Was I mistaken in the ritual? Or were those of the divine touch not forthcoming about the details?
Alf wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t summon the strength. So instead he tried the only other thing that made sense. Oh Rea the Polite Judge, hear my plea. I humbly request judgement upon this wretched and lonely soul. Speak your will, be it death or adaptation, mold me as you see fit.
Like a mantra, Alf repeated his prayer like a mantra without stop. The numbness in his head started to cloud his thoughts like cotton. Some part of Alf knew it was never meant to be a painful death, for Rea was just. Death was required or it was not, pain during communion never was. The sluggishness of his thoughts progressed to the point where he was struggling to remember the exact words. Some part of him feared his hosts might break the deprivation pod open in some vain effort to save him, but Alf knew he was dead the moment he poured the vial upon his chest.
Expectation of final death had yet to cross his mind when he heard a voice. Faint though it was, Alf started to think more clearly. The damage and cotton cleared from his thoughts as a weak presence wrapped itself around his spirit like a feeble vine.
“Is it true? After so long, the frozen one walks through time once again.”
Alf tried to open his eyes, but instead of the blackness of the pod, he found himself floating in a black void with a barely perceivable floor below him. The floor was hued blue, and was translucent so that he could see the void beyond it. He willed himself to land, a primordial part of him glad to be on somewhat solid ground. At this angle, the floor was more like a narrow bridge that extended beyond his sight with the edges only a few meters to either side.
At first, Alf was alone. He scanned his surroundings, finding no one until he circled the fifth time to at least see another of his kind. A transparent female that seemed to want to warp and shift into some other form, but the being fought to keep its original shape. A concept that transcended species and culture was a blindfold that covered her entire face. That alone told Alf who stood before him.
With elation surging through his cleared mind, Alf prostrated himself before the figure. “Oh, Rea the Polite Judge, I thank you for finding me worthy of an audience.”
Rea clasped two of her hands while the other two were held aloft. “He Who Walks the River of Time Once More, it has been an age since I have seen one of my people. I half feared I would be remade before you awoke.”
Alf looked up at her while climbing back to his feet. “Remade? So the Saviors failed. I failed.” He had suspected as much, but Alf had hoped more of his people had survived the Judgement.
“The weight of your guilt is small, Time Walker,” Rea spoke with a wavering voice, as if the air couldn’t properly carry her voice. “Not when the destruction of the Spark Bearers was the effort of so many. Your transgressions are lighter than your honor. You may pass the gates now if you wish.”
As if the weight of his species was lifted off his shoulders, Alf mirrored Rea’s arm gesture. “I accept your judgement, but not your offer. There must be some good I can do. Some act that will have meaning before this,” he thumped his chest, “spark bearer passes the gate.”
Rea was silent for a moment. She folded her arms to signal a contemplative state. “Balgrath’s Judgement,” she said with loathing so profound that her hate thrummed through Alf’s body, “was thorough, but ultimately only a partial success. The Spark Bearers have changed themselves, and my brethren and I are changing with them. Such is our bond.” Rea swept her hands at her own body as she briefly allowed it to reform into a more alien but indistinguishable shape. “All will be lost and need to be reformed again, lesser than what we were I fear. Perhaps greater, but the Spark Bearers will never remember their first selves.
“But as for you, Time Walker,” Rea calmed and gazed upon Alf as if for the first time. “You find yourself in strange company.” Rea stretched out two hands and glided forward to place them upon his head. Alf bowed to the floor and submitted to her will. Rea gasped at what she saw of his memories about the ponies. “They are not children of Balgrath. Be glad of that. But the tall one. She… she is an impossibility!”
She pulled her hands away, allowing Alf to look at her puzzlingly. “The Purple One? Are you speaking of their goddess? Colonial Princess Twilight Sparkle?”
Rea’s form started fluctuating wildly between her normal and alien form as her mind reeled from what she saw. “How? How!?” As soon as it started, Rea snapped back to a calm state. Alf was more disturbed more by the outburst rather than the emotional reset. Rea shivered one last time to look at Alf. “An answer you require?” while voiced like a question it was taken as a statement. “She is a being tied to the realm where we stand here and now, Time Walker, she is what should not be: Higher Being Made Corporal.”
“Is - is that wrong? Should I fear her?”
It took Rea a long time, minutes that dragged on, but eventually she bowed her head at Alf. “No. At least not from what I see. Forgive me, for I have not been myself in so very long, Time Walker. I have neglected your reason for calling out to me.” Again, Rea closed the distance once again, and placed her hands on Alf’s head. “Taboos. Customs. Rituals in all but name. So many clashes. You seek peace between you and them. Peace you can not create yourself. Do you wish for this peace, Time Walker?”
“If I am to live among them, then I do.”
Rea smiled at his determined half-scowl. “Brave. But with no cause. No purpose but to exist. Serving as a living fossil to these… ponies. Seeking a better meaning to mesh with existence. Noble. Understandable. Fair. I shall grant you this peace.”
Rea’s hands sank into Alf’s head, and completely paralyzed him as she worked to amend his taboos and sensibilities to match the bewildering culture that had awakened him. A long moment passed before she pulled her hands out of Alf. Once clear, he collapsed to the floor, still paralyzed. “It is done, Time Walker. Your weakness will pass in time.”
Unable to even lift a finger, Alf barely managed to move his head in thanks. “Oh Polite One. I thank you for your judgement.”
“Your deeds have earned you this reward.” Rea’s morphing face and blindfold made her unreadable, but he could hear her pleading tone. “Time Walker, if I may be so bold, I would request a boon of you.”
“Name it, and it shall be yours.” Alf wanted to sign his respect, but he could barely work his jaw to speak let alone move.
“You are the last of the original Spark Bearers. No others are observers of the river of time. You alone keep me from passing onto my awaiting existence. There is a vessel that crashed upon this planet. Within it are many of the Blades of the Forsaken. The very weapons used against those of the cloth.”
Alf’s breath hitched and looked up at her pleadingly. “You want to sever yourself from me!? To be denied your judgement?”
Rea bent down and caressed Alf’s cheek as a mother to her child. “I do not ask this lightly, Time Walker. Unlike the Purple Impossible One, my brethren and I can not survive with a dead people. We must pass on to another, but so long as you breathe, we are bound to you once more. I can assure you, the Gates will remain open to you when your time comes. I beg of you. Use the daggers and free us.”
Tears started to mist Alf’s eyes as emotion tinged his voice. “Why use a dagger at all? Death is better than life without the guiding light of the Divine. Take my life here and now. Please do not ask me to live a life without the Divines Above.”
Rea clasped her two hands and held Alf close. “Ah, but you will have a divine to light your path. The one not above, but level. The Impossible One.”
“Her?” Alf asked with mounting confusion. “But I am not of her people. I am not a pony.”
“No, but she is corporal, concrete. Weak though she is, and yet more powerful in so many other ways. Able to guide those that follow her without need of ritual, prayer, or even sharing the same Spark. I must confess that even I envy her greatly. Staggeringly so. And yet, if she would have you, you would have your light, and in that, I would thank her.” Rea paused a long moment to give Alf time to contemplate her words. He had originally humored the laughable ponies’ mentality in seeing Twilight as a goddess, but with how Rea reacted to the purple alicorn, he started to believe it himself. “Do you think she would have you?”
It was not an overall difficult question to answer. The lengths that the ponies had gone through to understand and accommodate him was far and above what his people had done for the Balgrath, at least as far as he knew. Even Twilight had spent considerable effort to understand him, a mentality that he originally thought unbecoming of a god. Alf grimaced as he tried to move his big toe, if only to get some control back. “The Corporeal Goddess comes from a world that was teeming with many intelligent species and cultures. What is one more to the likes of her?”
With a silent bow of the head, Rea exuded relief. “The Blades still resonate with the Astral Plane. I still have enough strength to make it call out in the form of gamma radiation for a time. Can these ponies’ technology sense that?”
“I think so, but only because I would think starfarers would not get far without that knowledge.”
“Good. I will wait four rotations of the planet so you have time to recover. Before I send you back to the Concrete Plane, did you have anything left to ask?”
Alf nodded as best he could. “These blades. Was it part of the Judgement? Was it an instrument of deafening us to your wisdom?”
Rea lowered her arms with palms down, a sign of sadness since she had no face to convey it. “It was but one of a great many. But where once it was used to silence my brethren from the those of the cloth, now it can break our chains, and let us drift once more upon the Great Cycle. Let not your new allies fret, for it was tailor made to use against those who held the Divine Spark. The Concrete Goddess has nothing to fear.” Rea had sniffed out Alf’s question before it was voiced, giving him some measure of reassurance. “My strength wains, Time Walker. Seek out the daggers, I beg of you.”
Before he could say anything else, Alf awoke with a start back inside the deprivation pod. His deep muscle weakness followed him, giving him cause to know he had not experienced a mere dream or vision.
With a grimace, Alf forced himself to speak a key-phrase, “Rea’s will is done.” Due to such stark silence, his voice sounded painfully loud, along with the mechanical click and hiss of hydraulics that followed. The agonizingly bright white light of the laboratory glared down at him as the pod cracked open.
He gave in to his weakness and let sleep take him as indistinct limbs reached out for him.
Some time later, Twilight Sparkle leaned against a chair next to the bed supporting Alf’s mostly limp form. They were in Alf’s quarters with the midday sun beaming down from the glass ceiling. He was made comfortable in that bed, with chilly air making the toasty covers all the more appealing. As for Twilight, she still remembered how to quietly cope with the chill of a frozen world, even after nearly a year in this temperate climate.
The four armed alien had spent the last hour going over every detail of his meeting with Rea, save for Rea’s question on whether or not Twilight would accept him in the light of the Divine. It was a question he could not bring himself to voice.
Twilight had remained silent by in large, scribbling notes away on her personal display. By the end of it, half of her vision was cluttered by text.
When the last of his tale left his lips, Alf sagged low in his bed. His final words leaving a stark silence behind them. For all her years, Twilight was at a loss for what to say. The scholar, the scientist part of her was running a million miles a second trying to glean all she could about this new theology, and yet the rest of her mind was hung on one simple truth: Alf’s gods wanted to pass on. Twilight was by no means an expert on gods from other cultures, but knew the the general idea. An eternal being wishing to die. This Judgement was a genocide on a higher level, killing not just the people, but their gods as well.
For a brief moment, the scale of her fallen daughter’s crimes seemed paltry by comparison as Thorn’s words echoed in her mind. ‘What is a massacred village to the destruction of an entire star system?’
And yet, Twilight couldn’t bring herself to feel much pity for Alf’s people, Genocide answered with genocide. An exchange with no winners. Regardless, as far as I know, Alf had nothing to do with the first and tried to stop the second. “Do you wish to be alone?”
Alf stared at the ceiling, lost in directionless thought. “Yes. Grief should not be shared by those who do not feel it.”
Twilight initially wanted to comfort him, but how? She knew some of his bigger cultural issues, but nothing on this aspect. So she was left with only one option: complying. Twilight stood up and dismissed her notes. “Let the assistants know when you want something."
Silence was the only answer she received, and expected little else. Without further preamble, Twilight departed the condo sized room, but gave Alf one last look over her shoulder. He remained silent and motionless, save for voicing a request to Voyager to dim the lights.
Feeling as though she was inches from intruding on much needed privacy, Twilight departed fully. Once within the confines of the observation lab, she noticed the staff were disabling the cameras. “Let me know when he’s ready to discuss the matter of those Blades he mentioned. We’ll find them together.” I just hope this Rea person doesn’t go too crazy with that gamma radiation.
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Gotta say I'm having a hard time picturing what Alf looks like other then the four arms, I've totally forgotten his description.
Interesting direction as well, wasn't expecting his gods to be real.
8109941 I just picture an X-Com Etheral, they seem close enough.
Interesting... so Alf's pantheon was in fact a real existence, an ethereal one, but a real one. Spark Bearers... spark of a divine? Wonder if the Ponies have a similar ethereal pantheon beyond the Alicorns.
Twilight, being an ascended Alicorn is something of a gap between them. No clue what really happened to the rest of Alf's species, if they infact converted/reverted themselves into the creatures which populate the planet or at least ancestors of said creatures, or the linked bio-sphere or 'Gaia' that controls life on the planet.
Plus, no real clue how ponies are going to co-exist with the existing creatures, if they are going to attempt for cooperation/adaptation or domination, or possibly a 3rd path linking the rest to their divine nature?
... actually... one question that always interested me... what happened to Discord?
That took a while for only 2 thousand words. Whatever, story developments!
Nice to see one of Alf's gods, that's good.
Twilight Sporkle is at a loss.. not good.
Not much else.
:P
8109995 but with actual meat in their bones. Ethereals are too scrawny for physical labor.
Gotta say, wasn't expecting one of Alf's gods to physically appear in the story. That was...really cool.
8109995 I cannot unsee.
8110154
Did we really meet her though? Locking yourself in a sensory deprivation chamber and taking a drug that might create an altered perception is a recipe for hallucination. Magic makes it more likely true, I guess the discovery of these Blades will be the concrete proof. Hope they're not in Griffin territory or things might get rough.
Needs end " marks.
________________
I started re-reading this when I got the notification of the update last nightish. And while super short. Was a good chapter that tied in with the last and gives a good transition to the next.
I really can't wait to see what happens next. You really did an awesome job on this so far ... but a question. Like "The Hive Series" is this going to be a multi-part series? If so that'd be so freaking BAMF!
8110438 While you raise a good point, I think we did, in fact, actually meet Rea. Alf was just expecting images of the taboo to appear, right? And he clearly knows what the drug is supposed to do. He wasn't expecting to appear on some astral plane and directly talk with one of his gods.
Yay pony civ be!
I like your idea for the godness passing to another race
8109941
Same here as far as remembering the description goes, but I recall he has 4 arms, so I just imagine those guys from the 1st Unreal game. Nali? Or whatever they were called.
*brief google search*
Yep, Nali. And they look like this. Would that make him have 4 nipples? Does his specie even have nipples? So many important questions and yet so little answers...
Just how much gamma radiation are we talking about, here?
img09.deviantart.net/cb76/i/2012/275/3/3/pony_queen_by_bastonivo-d5gk53o.png
It LIVES! I've missed this story!
8109941
8109995
8113522
static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/generalgrievous_2_4263.jpg
here is a mug shot for him.
here is a more accurate depiction. Just try to imagine the male form.
So basically Alf told Twilight that his gods think she is a goddess? I wonder what she made of that!
8118179
It's kinda hard to notice that this one isn't a male one, you know... :P
8109941 I find this is always an issue with stories that take their time in updating. The price for a good story I suppose. Though it doesn't have to be a negative thing.
8137950
Pornagraphy, fuggeddaboudit!
8114647
You mean this Fluttershy?
But yeah, a race of FlutterHulks would be awesome.