Conjunction

"Why do you intrude upon this place?" it demanded, the tone of its voice so deep and gravelly that Caden had to concentrate to understand it. The beast had a consciousness, some kind of mind from which his translation spell was discerning meaning.

"W-what are you?" he asked in return, gripping his staff as he tried to overcome his alarm. This construct was different from the rest, the ones that they had encountered thus far hadn't spoken. "Are you the steward of this place?"

"It speaks with a foreign tongue," the construct boomed, shifting its gaze to Kadal. She was terrified, Caden could see her shaking, but she remained fierce in her defiance as she bared her teeth at the thing. "This one is not of the Alfar, but you...you are of the guard. Tell me why you have brought this jabbering creature to my vault, scaled-one."

Could it not understand Caden? He had only cast the translation spell on himself and Kadal, so it would have no way of knowing his language. It had been hibernating in this vault for thousands of years.

"The...the guard?" she repeated.

"You are protector, guardian, honored servant of my masters," it replied. Incredible, it understood what Kadal had said. Could it be that her kind had preserved their language for such a length of time? They were an insular people, they had been exposed to no outside influences that might have corrupted their native tongue.

"It wants to talk to you!" Caden hissed, his bewildered companion sparing him a confused glance. "It doesn't understand me, it doesn't know what I am, but it recognizes you! You have to convince it that we mean no harm!"

Kadal nodded, rising from her crouched position as she addressed the monstrous snake. He was tempted to advise her to lie, to tell the creature that its creators still roamed these halls, but perhaps it was better to just tell the truth. They couldn't guess at what it knew, whether it had slept in this dark vault over the millennia, or if it had been aware of every passing second.

"My people once served your masters, the Alfar," she replied, trying to control the wavering of her voice. "I have seen the statues and monuments in the ruins above. The city lies deserted, its people long since vanished. My kind endure in the Coral Sea to the West, we maintain our vigil, protecting the sanctity of this place from any who would dare trespass upon its hallowed ground."

The golem was listening, its glowing eyes still fixed on her.

"Then we are both relics of a bygone age," it replied, the sound of grating stone and clanking gears filling the chamber with its every word. "Your sworn duty is to defend the walls of this city, while my singular purpose is to guard the sunken star. That our masters are long dead does not release us from our oath, for our task is too important. The sunken star represents a power too great to be allowed to fall into the wrong hands."

"This man has traveled far in search of it," she added, gesturing to Caden. "He has overcome many trials in his quest, and I have judged him worthy of its possession. He is honorable, studious, his motives are pure."

Caden gave her an appreciative glance. It had not been so long ago that she had thought him evil, a monster that was set on ending the world. Now, she was pleading his case in front of a creature that could probably crush them like insects with one swipe of its tail.

The stone serpent's red glare turned back to him, bathing Caden in red light as it scrutinized him.

"None can possess the sunken star," the thing replied, its voice shaking the ground beneath their feet. "It cannot leave this vault."

"Tell it that the world's orbit is degrading, just as it did all those centuries ago," Caden insisted. "Tell it that if it does not let us make use of the artifact, all of creation will be extinguished."

"We seek only to correct an imbalance," Kadal continued, pleading with the golem. "The world is spiraling into the sun, and without the power of the sunken star, it will surely be consumed in celestial fire. Our masters forged the black stone to prevent that. If you do not help us, there will be nothing left for you to guard, it will be the end of all things."

"You are well-informed," the serpent replied, the innumerable gears that powered its stone body grinding as it brought a head the size of a horse-drawn carriage down closer to Kadal. "You are of the guard, you know the purpose of the sunken star's creation, and you know of the calamity that befell the masters. But do you understand the artifact? Do you know how to wield it, how it can influence mass and gravity? Do you understand the consequences of improperly manipulating a singularity in an attempt to alter the orbit of a planet? You might just as easily rend this world into a million shards, compact it down to the size of a grain of sand."

"Influence mass and gravity," Caden repeated, lost in thought for a moment. "Yes! Kadal, I can do this! I have mastered this magic, albeit on a small scale. It's how I am able to break stone with my staff, how I was able to raise the portcullis at the city gate. I have studied the Alfar orbital model, I know their calculations, I read the notes left by their magi!"

"What does it say?" the stone serpent hissed, glancing at Caden.

"He knows what to do," Kadal replied. "He is a skilled sorcerer, he studied the work of the Alfar in the observatory above. Please, for all our sakes, let him try!"

The creature considered, rearing back up into the air, its red glare turning back to Caden.

"I will allow it," it finally replied. "The sunken star cannot be moved from the pedestal, its weight is beyond measure. Ascend the steps, and place your hands near it, but do not touch it. To do so would result in your body being torn asunder by gravitational forces powerful enough to shake the foundations of the earth. If you are what you claim to be, then you will need no further instruction."

"Okay," Caden muttered, watching as the towering golem slithered out of his path. "Don't touch the orb, understood..."

He made his way up to the foot of the steps, then turned to look back at Kadal, his companion giving him a nod of encouragement. While he knew how to manipulate mass, how to manipulate magic to make something weigh more or less than it should, he had a feeling that this wasn't going to be quite that straightforward. All that he could do was try.

His footsteps echoed off the black marble as he mounted the steps, arriving at the top of the octagonal pedestal, the sculpture of the cupped hands standing before him. The black stone was even stranger up close, its surface lacking any detail, making it look like a two-dimensional ink blot that had soaked into the fabric of reality. The way that it bent light around itself defied all logic, giving him a feeling of nausea as his mind tried to make sense of it, the warped ring that surrounded the sphere following him wherever he went like the eyes of a portrait.

A powerful magic surrounded it, he could feel it lingering in the air, an enchantment that had been cast to contain this artifact. When he stared into that dark mass, blacker than pitch, he got a sense of its weight. It was incalculable, defying the laws of physics as he knew them, a mass that rivaled the planets themselves shrunken down to an object scarcely larger than his head. How had the Alfar created this? What arcane magic had led them here?

He lay down his staff, then reached out with trembling hands, pushing them through the tingling barrier of magic. The atmosphere around it was so heavy, thick like soup, as though whatever made it through the enchantment was squashed and compacted. His own hands were drawn to it, pulled in by a kind of inexorable magnetism, but he resisted it with the help of his staff's fortifying magic.

"Come on," he muttered to himself, feeling the gaze of both Kadal and the golem as they watched him intently. "This is a magical artifact like any other. It was designed to be wielded..."

Caden opened his mind to its magic, feeling the ebb and flow of its gravitational tides, the waves crashing against the shores of reality. It was so complex, like the eye of a hurricane, its currents churning in and around one another ceaselessly. There was so much, it threatened to overwhelm him, but he steeled himself as he pressed on.

There was a sudden sense of weightlessness, a jolt coursing through him, leaving him numb. His consciousness had left his body, ascending towards the domed ceiling, Caden vaguely aware of seeing himself standing on the pedestal far below. Was this astral projection? Some kind of vision brought about by the stone? He was soon whisked higher, through rock and sand, blue skies growing ever darker as he was catapulted into the heavens. He was quickly plunged into a sea of black, the cold pinpoints of stars twinkling all around him, clearer and brighter than he had ever beheld them.

When he looked down, he could not see his body, he could feel no sensations. He could not draw breath, he could not hear the beating of his heart, he couldn't so much as wiggle a finger. Beneath him was the world, an immense sphere of blue and white, covered in swirling clouds. He could see the oceans, the great expanses of water shimmering beneath the unfiltered glare of the sun, the continents more vast than anything that he had imagined.

It shrank as he climbed higher, soon no larger than his fist, the pale moon visible as it hung in the darkness beside it. He could see the sun now, a churning ball of boiling gas of such incredible size that it could have devoured the world a thousand times over, loops of plasma reaching up from its roiling surface. It was no pristine, untouchable sphere, it was in a state of perpetual chaos.

More than simply seeing, Caden could feel these objects. He could sense their size, their mass, the forces that they exerted upon one another. More planets crept in at the corners of his awareness, until he was visualizing something that looked very much like the sculpture in the observatory, the celestial orbs spinning around one another at speeds that he could scarcely comprehend.

But as overwhelming as it all was, he understood it intuitively. There was a simplicity behind their complex interactions. It was all driven by nothing more than physics in its most basic form, no harder to grasp than an apple falling from a tree.

The complex charts and calculations of the Alfar magi made more sense to him now that he could witness their mathematics in action. The sweeping curves of the orbits, the predictive models, it all fell into place as he felt the masses tug at one another across the void. He could see where his planet's orbit would take it, like water spiraling down a drain, and he could see what must be done to correct it.

The sunken star was a tool far simpler than he had anticipated. Its immense mass could be projected, modulated, focused in one place to influence the objects around it. The fabric of reality was like a blanket stretched taut, and the planets were as marbles sitting atop it. The heavier the marble, the more of a dip it created in the blanket, and the more influence it exerted over its neighbors. Caden just had to press down on that fabric, to create a new mass, one that would nudge the world back into its intended orbit.
He was going from manipulating masses that might weigh as much as a blacksmith's anvil, to masses that exceeded the weight of suns, but the principle remained the same. Just as he willed the magical strands in his staff to increase its weight, so too did he call upon the sunken star, knowing intuitively where to concentrate it. He was as a God, he felt as though he could have held the world in the palm of his hand, the unfathomable power getting the better of him for a moment.

Caden quickly reigned in his emotions, focusing on his task. He saw the Master in his mind's eye, he could smell the musty library back in the tower, he remembered how green the fields and forests of his homeland had once been. He thought of Kadal, the taste of her kiss, the coolness of her smooth scales beneath his fingertips. If this was what being a God was like, adrift alone in an immaterial plane, devoid of all sensation, then he wanted no part in it.

He commanded the sunken star, feeling the influence that it exerted over the world growing as its mass increased. He could see the path of the planet's orbit with such clarity that it might well have been drawn on parchment, gradually shifting in response to his actions. It was like balancing on the edge of a knife. Too far from the sun, and the world would freeze. Too close, and it would burn. The singularity had to be near enough to nudge the planet, but not to send it hurtling into the frozen expanse. Large enough to change its orbit in time to make a difference, but not so large that its gravitational tides would tear the world apart.

What had caused this imbalance, he could not say with any certainty. It was as though another mass had disturbed the orbit of the world, something introduced from beyond the sun's reach that had come under its influence, something foreign. It must have been flung far beyond his sight by now, its orbit carrying it out into the dark expanse. Perhaps it would take another five thousand years to return, and it would once again wreak havoc upon the world. For now, he knew what had to be done to fix the problem.

Inch by inch, a million leagues by a million leagues, he gently eased the world into a stable orbit. The temperature was right, the tilt of the planet would bring the seasons as he remembered them, and the days would return to their normal length. He had added a few days to the year, but he could live with that...

His task complete, he willed himself to return to his body, plunging through wispy clouds as he fell. If he still had a stomach, it would have been turning, the desert below rushing up at him as though he had jumped from the top of the world. In a flash, he was back in his body, Caden sucking in a gasping breath like a drowning man surfacing for air. His first reaction was to tear his hands away from the sunken star, losing his footing in the process, and stumbling backwards towards the steps. Kadal was there to catch him, cradling him in her arms, her amber eyes brimming with concern as she peered down at him.

"Caden!" she exclaimed, "are you alright?"

"I...I did it," he replied weakly, all of the strength drained him his body by the ordeal. He felt dizzy, weak, like he could barely keep his eyes open. "I...fixed...it."

"It is done," the golem said, its booming voice filling the vault. "Your business here has concluded, you must leave now."

"Wait!" Kadal said, the snake turning its red eyes on her. "There are so many questions that I wanted to ask you, about the Alfar, about my people!"

"I know no more than my station requires," it replied, starting to slither back into the circular recess in the stone floor. "I shall sleep until I am needed again."

"But...your masters are gone, the city lies deserted."
"Few are so privileged as to know the purpose of their existence," it said, its red eyes starting to dim as it lowered its head. "I will fulfill that purpose until time renders me unable."

It closed its jaws around the tip of its stone tail, the grinding of its gears going silent, the ruby glow of its eyes vanishing to leave only the light from Caden's staff as it lay on the pedestal at his side. The great serpent had become no more than a statue now, a part of the room itself, no more animate than the cold stone that surrounded them.

"Caden," Kadal whispered, turning her attention back to him as he lay in her arms. "Are you hurt? Should I fetch your staff?"

He reached up to cup her cheek in his hand, running his fingers across her cool scales.

"I'll be fine," he replied, giving her a weak smile. "I'm just...a little tired."

He felt her lift him with one arm, Kadal pulling off his cloak, wrapping it around her hand before stooping again to pick up his staff. The corners of his vision grew dark, Caden fading in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware that she was carrying him back through the stone passageway. By the time they had reached the steps that led up to the Alfar observatory, he had passed out.

CHAPTER 12: LOOSE ENDS

Caden awoke to bright sunlight bleeding through his eyelids. He opened them, his muscles stiff and sore, his mind clouded. He was lying on his bedroll in the observatory, the Alfar model of the solar system slowly rotating above him, the opening at the peak of the pyramid revealing blue skies. His cape had been draped over him like a blanket, and he pulled it off as he sat up, looking around for Kadal.

"Caden!" she exclaimed, rushing to his side. "You are awake!"

"What happened?" he grumbled, rubbing his temples as a dull ache permeated his head.

"After you used the black stone, you passed out, and I carried you up to the observatory. You have slept for hours. I was starting to worry that you might never wake, that the stone had incurred some terrible cost."

"No," he replied, "it was just very taxing. Acting as a conduit for that kind of magic, seeing the things that I saw...it was draining."

"What happened to you?" she asked. "All I saw was you placing your hands near the sunken star, then you seemed to freeze up, like your body had turned to stone. After a few seconds, you fell backwards, as though it had rejected you."

"A few seconds?" he repeated, giving her a confused look. "I was gone for minutes, at least. My soul...my consciousness, it left my body. I was carried high into the sky, beyond the clouds, until I was amongst the stars themselves. My memories are...fuzzy, but I remember seeing the world from above, I remember using the black stone to alter its course."

"Did you succeed?" she asked. "The great serpent told me that the task was done, before becoming as stone once more. I pleaded for it to stay, to tell me the history of my people, but it would not."

"I did what I could," he said, staring up at the golden sculpture. "We can only hope that time is on our side and that we will not suffer the same fate as the people who built this place. Imagine it," he added solemnly. "To have devised such a marvelous artifact, to have saved all of creation, only for your civilization to perish regardless. Were it not for the Alfar, we would never have existed at all. Our world would have ended thousands of years before we were ever born."

"I believe in you," Kadal insisted, Caden smiling at her. "The Gods are not so cruel as to have us come all this way for nothing."

"We shall have to wait and see," he sighed. "Where is my waterskin?" he added, looking around their makeshift campsite. "I'm parched, my tongue feels like a lump of wood."

She fetched it for him, and he took a long draw, feeling the liquid slide all the way down to his stomach. He covered his mouth as he coughed for a moment, then took another drink.

"What happens next?" she asked, Caden handing the vessel back to her. "Your quest is over, you have done all that you can. What will become of us now? I cannot return to my village," she continued, a touch of regret creeping into her voice. "While I might be able to explain what has happened to the Shaman if I could reach her, the other tribes are still hunting for us. If they learn that I have led an outsider into the heart of the sacred city, they will show me no mercy."

"What if we just...stayed here for a while?" he suggested, Kadal cocking her head at him. "There are more books here than I could ever read, more artifacts than I could possibly catalog. I can make water for us, some of my supplies yet remain, and you know how to hunt. We have shelter," he added, gesturing to the sloping walls of the pyramid.