William is Dead

"What do we do now?"

Will looked around. Contrary to what they had seen through the rectangular portal, the city seemed to be empty. There was an eeriness to the entire place punctuated by the fact there was no sound whatsoever. He began to walk into it, followed by Emily. There was an ethereal beauty to it from certain angles; from others it looked like a mess of lines made by an angry artist. The faint edges had enough of a glow that it was easy to avoid going near any of the buildings themselves. There was a road, of sorts, not really marked out but more suggested because it was in the middle of two rows of buildings. There were curved paths and tiny structures on the sides, and eventually, as they walked deeper into the city, there were pathways floating above, extending from building to building, or curving around some of them.

"I just realised something, Will," whispered Emily, hushed by the alienation of being in such a foreign place.

"What?"

"What are these buildings for? What do they even do here? The one who Questions me told me they're unchanging. What, if anything, does an unchanging species do?"

Species. He hadn't thought of them like that before, he realised. They were a different species. Non-human. One of the dead back in the grand hall had referred to them as angels, despite being told those concepts did not apply here. Will had rolled his eyes, remembering the biblical depictions of angels he had read about as a child and been fascinated by; the strangeness of them. It wasn't too surprising to see the label applied to Shepherds, especially when the auras emanating from their backs sometimes looked vaguely like wings.

"Will! Look!"

Will looked towards where Emily was pointing. There, on a platform wide enough to accommodate a two-storey semi-detached house, were moving forms. They were humanoid and ranging from three to six feet tall. At first, Will thought it might've been a few of the Shepherds but the closer they got, he knew he was wrong. They approached the platform slowly before stopping a little distance away.

"Will, they're human."

He nodded.

The forms were humans. Golden in colour, see-through and very much reminded him of holograms. They were behaving as though they were talking to one another, but no sound came out. A couple of the forms were sitting, and one was gesticulating wildly. Another two stood and watched the entire scene.

Will looked around. There were still no Shepherds. He shrugged to himself and walked right up to the platform. Without realising it, he passed through some threshold that was five metres out from the edge of the platform, and suddenly there was sound.

The holographic forms were more detailed now, right down to his being able to see distinct faces and expressions. The detail was striking. The two sitting forms were teenagers, the standing ones were adults, except for two children watching from the edges. It was an argument. The teenagers had done something to upset the adults and were being reprimanded while the little ones looked on with amusement.

"Jesus," said Emily, next to him. "It's like... a scene from a movie."

"Yes," agreed Will. "But it's not made up, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

"All those questions we've been asked. Details of who we are, memories of events in our lives."

Emily gasped softly.

"They're playing a moment from someone's life," said Will, focusing on the embarrassment of the teenagers. The adults were shouting something about a lack of responsibility, about how thoughtless the children were.

"But why?"

"I don't know," said Will. "This is so..." He trailed off, trying to think of the right word to describe the scene.

"Mundane?" Emily suggested.

"Yes."

They watched for a few moments more before Will decided to move on. They walked down the path until Will spotted another platform. They approached that one. There was only one form in that scene. It was a middle-aged woman sitting in an armchair, her legs drawn up with her arm hugging them and her free hand holding a bottle of alcohol. She was sobbing.

Will and Emily exchanged glances, seeing their discomfort with the scene reflected in each other. They could not stay there long. There was another platform a short while ahead. That one had a couple. Two half naked women screaming at each other about disappointments and infidelities.

When they moved out of range enough that the sound cut off and the women became faint and hard to see, Emily frowned and said, "How many of these are there?"

It was the same question lingering in Will's mind. Very calmly, he stood still, slowly sweeping his gaze over the area around him, including above, near the walkways and outside of the buildings. There were smaller platforms, he realised. Some were attached to some of the buildings, jutting out of the sides. There were platforms near walkways. And if he looked long and carefully enough, he could see more faint forms moving around on them. He started walking, looking around as he went. There were more. Always more. He stopped counting at thirty.

"Will, there are so many."

"They're all moments from lives."

"I just don't understand why," said Emily.

When he stopped at another platform, where a scene played out of a family crowded around a dying old man, he realised they all had something in common.

"Emily, they're all sad."

"What?"

"They're all scenes of sadness. Strong emotions on the negative side. I haven't seen a single happy moment in any of what we've seen."

"You're right. Maybe... maybe they're sad because they're what we've been shedding in the Questionings."

"What do you mean?" Will asked, turning to her.

Emily went quiet, a deeply thoughtful expression on her face. "Luc," she said eventually. "He was content. Calm. Happy. Nothing sad or anxious or worried or anything like that. Maybe they literally took all of that from him, or he somehow shed it into those orbs we speak near. And maybe they're using those to create these scenes."

"That's a pretty good guess."

"I just don't get why."

"Because they're all strong emotions. They're the ones that linger and they're always the ones that feel like they're going to last forever. It's much harder to focus on happiness and think of it as long-lasting. But whenever you're sad, especially if you're used to it and it's around a lot, it can feel like forever. Stretches time out."

"You're implying that all the dead we came with are all... Wait," Emily stopped. She held her arm up halfway as if she were trying to literally grasp her thoughts. "You said you killed yourself."

"Yes?" Will frowned, wondering why she was bringing it up. "And?"

"I died of cancer. It was a long illness. Suffered a lot. A slow death is something I wouldn't wish on anyone. Luc... if I remember right, he died by drowning. Two of the others who have gone now, one of them was stabbed and the other was killed during an armed robbery."

"So... horrible deaths. Is that what you're saying?" Will's eyes narrowed at the thought of it.

"Violent deaths. And long-drawn-out illnesses. A lot of sadness. What do you think the chances are that when we go back and ask the people who are left, that not one of them had a natural death from old age?"

They were both silent, letting her words sink in. Standing there and thinking about her words yielded nothing. His normally overactive brain had nothing to take hold of and nothing to offer him in the way of insight.

"What are you thinking?" Emily asked.

Will shook his head. "I don't know."

"Maybe this is just how the Ritual works. Everyone has to shed their sadness and then once all that is left is the happiness, and the good feelings, and the contentment and all that stuff, they're able to move on."

"Maybe," said Will, unsure of whether he agreed. "I'd believe that if I could see the Ritual itself. But this entire place is empty."

"Do you want to keep exploring?"

"Yes."

They walked slowly. Every time they saw a platform with holograms nearby, they would stop to watch for a few moments, and every time they did, Emily's hypothesis gathered evidence weighted in its favour. There were scenes of arguments, people suffering from illnesses, people witnessing death, people mourning, and many scenes of people alone and struggling with their personal demons. It wasn't long before Will and Emily decided they no longer wanted to watch any more of them because it was beginning to affect their moods.

As a result, it meant they could move more quickly.

Neither Will nor Emily were sure when the trembles in the ground started. It grew more pronounced and made them stop and look at one another.

"You feel that, right?" Will asked.

"Yeah."

They looked around. It was Will who saw it first; an odd, tall shape in between buildings. It was moving.

"Hide," said Will. His voice had dropped and the change in it made her pay attention immediately.

They ran towards a short, small building and went around the corner. Carefully, they peeked out from behind it.

"What the fuck is that?" Emily whispered.

"Shh."

She just about stopped herself from exclaiming out loud.

He understood. The shock was palpable.

His heart hammered as he watched the giant creature moving slowly. He tried to focus as much as he could to commit the form to memory, because much like the buildings, it had some vague outlines.

It was a long dark body, at least sixty feet long, and the limbs attached to it were many. Will could count a solid eight from a glance, but there were hints at more. On one end was a short tail, swaying side to side slowly, and on the other end, was a head of sorts. It was elongated, mouthless and cluttered with shapes just like the aliens. The arms and legs had unusual joints which made them look badly drawn. They only made sense once they watched the creature sit, at which point the lower four limbs created a sort of shallow bowl in front of it, while the torso was near vertical, leaning over the lower limbs. Its arms, if they could be called that, were free to move around, though the lower pair touched the ground with their excessively fingered hands, to keep the creature stable. Will guessed those arms were almost as long as the torso. The other pair of arms crossed in front.

The creature sat there, its head slowly turning from side to side. The head was pulsating slightly, and there were small tubular forms protruding from almost every gap between the facial shapes. The tubes on its scalp and the back of the head were thicker and longer.

Will wondered if it was looking for something in particular. Then he saw the centre of the torso. There was a deep indent in the body itself, and from it ran several faint glowing lines spreading out into the rest of the torso, like the spokes of a wheel. It was the hollow that kept his attention.

"Em?" Will whispered.

"What?"

"Look at its torso. The middle of it."

"Why? What—Oh. Am I really seeing that?"

"I'm not just imagining it, am I?"

"No."

"It's shaped like a human being with its legs and arms slightly spread out," whispered Will, his disbelief deeply apparent.

"Yes."

The ground trembled a little as the creature got back onto all eight limbs and continued to lumber down the wide avenue.

"Let's follow it," said Will.

---xxx---

The Ritual

It took some effort to keep up with the creature unseen and by the time it slowed, Will was thankful that he could not end up breathless or suffer any stitches. Behind him, Emily kept pace, occasionally letting out a curse.

They rounded a corner and quickly backpedaled when they saw the view.

It appeared they were in the middle of the city. The buildings stopped where they were and they could see a great circular space with a colossal structure, wider at the base, tapering to heights unseen as it faded into the sky. It looked to Will's eyes as though it was directly underneath the centre of The Source.

The structure was gorgeous. It was white and gold with smooth surfaces. Draped around it and going up in a helix, was something resembling a cluster of glowing cables intermingled like a braid, but far more complex. Will's eyes could not follow which parts wrapped around which other parts. What he could see were smaller braids of cables peeling off the main braid and fading into nothingness. Will suspected they were joined to something unseen.

Near the top of the central structure were more braided cables spreading outwards like a web stretching as far as the eye could see. From those braids, long, thick single cables hung at seemingly random spots, disappearing into the mess of the city. When Will looked closely at one of them, quite some way from the centre, he realised it hung directly over one of the platforms where holograms performed the minutiae of human life. He guessed that the structure was perhaps some sort of power station.

The surface of the structure began to glow moderately strong as the creature stopped in front of it. It sat down.

For a while, nothing happened and neither Will and Emily were sure what to do. Will began to entertain thoughts of leaving, but the thought was eradicated when the air began to shimmer around the central structure.

Slowly, the Shepherds began to appear in clusters. Dozens of them at the base near the creature and around the structure itself. All of them faced the centre. Will looked around to see there were some that had appeared above buildings, near some of the hologram platforms, and some hovered isolated in the air.

Every one of the Shepherds had their auras fully on display, their arms folded in front, and the auras from their backs flaring.

He felt tense as he stood there, and clearly so did Emily; she clutched his arm tightly and pulled at him. He looked at her and saw the worry plastered on her face.

"What if they see us?" Emily whispered.

Will looked around. None of the Shepherds seemed to know they were there; they were all too focused on the central structure.

"I don't think that's an issue," Will whispered in reply.

Emily's grip loosened. Now that it was relaxed, Will decided he rather liked having her holding onto him. She said nothing else and turned back to watch the proceedings.

A rectangular portal appeared in a small clearing in the crowd near the base of the giant structure and out stepped two of the humans, one female and one male, and the ten-foot-tall Lead Shepherd.

The Lead Shepherd rose in the air and its auras began to pulsate wildly in time to the pulses on its facial shapes. It was showing excitement, thought Will. All Shepherd faces turned to the Leader. Strands of soft light appeared on the great creature's body, stretching its entire length.

"We are here again," came the booming voice of the Lead Shepherd, far louder than Will had ever heard it before. He felt Emily's grip tighten a little.

"The Ritual begins anew. We have our new offerings. They will Ascend like the ones before."

A humming sound began, low-pitched and low in volume. Will looked around for the source of the sound before his eyes settled on a few Shepherds nearby. The pulses of their auras had changed in rhythm and he saw their bodies were partially shimmering, as though he was seeing them reflected on the surface of a lake. Upon looking at all the others, it was clear the humming was coming from them.

The creature shifted again, turning a little to the side, two of its arms keeping it stable. The folded legs began to pulse with their own light.

"The preparations are nearly complete," said the Leader, its head lowering to look down at the humans. It slowly descended until it was hovering a few feet away from them. "Are you both ready?"

The humans nodded eagerly. Will could not see their faces, but he imagined they were both smiling the way Luc had.

"Remember, we are grateful for your sacrifices," said the Leader.

Will frowned and looked at Emily. She was frowning too, more from confusion than anything else.

"Sacrifices? What does it mean?" Emily asked.

Will shook his head.

"We thank The Source for bringing your kind to us," said the Leader. "Please, hear our stories before you submit to the Ascension."

The humans nodded.

"Once, we were worse than your kind. We were crawlers without body nor light. We slunk low and hid from the very light that existed before The Source, as wan as it was. There was no Golden City, nor was there the Converter," said the Leader, gesturing to the giant creature. It was apparently interested in something else entirely, as it looked around beyond the crowd. "And yet we persisted. Then, the light began to fade. We did not know what we were, only that the darkness was coming and our potential was not realised. We had nothing, were nothing, knew nothing, and we wasted away."

The humming grew louder.

"Then The Source appeared. It spoke to us in its own tongue. We could not understand, but it did not matter. We were drawn to it. Its light bathed us in warmth and understanding and kindness. It reached out and we allowed its embrace to take us slowly. Many of us believed it was insidious, but they were vanquished for the unbelievers they were. So they were."

"So they were," came the reply from the other Shepherds.

"We were left," said the Leader, gesturing to the other Shepherds. "And we immersed ourselves. Its embrace fuelled us. We began to change, to grow and attain these forms. But moreover, The Source gave us more than we could ever imagine. It gave us your kind. It gave us your dead. It gave us your memories and your energies. Oh, your light. How we crave it now, its abundance and its power. Oh, your light, stripped from you and given to us."

Will was surprised to hear emotion in the Leader's voice, matched by the humming taking on a tone of urgency. The humans looked restless, shifting weight from foot to foot. There was a subtle sizzle in the air around Will and Emily. He looked up and saw tiny sparks appearing in mid-air, in a wide sphere around the structure large enough to encompass the crowd.

"The Converter waits," said the Leader. "Oh, your light, stripped from you and given to us."

"Given to us," murmured the others in response.

There was something very wrong here. Will did not like those choice of words at all. It was the darkness that had been stripped from the humans, had it not? He felt an uncomfortable tingle travel down his back and his breathing hitched a little.

"This feels wrong, Will," whispered Emily, her fingernails digging into his skin.

Will nodded.

Far above, several of the Shepherds floated near the creature, that he now knew to be the Converter. They hovered between the Converter and a braid of cables descended out over it. The Shepherds took hold of the cables and attached them to the Converter's head, into those tubular structures Will had noticed earlier. Some were attached to its sides, upper arms and its back. The Shepherds floated back to their original positions, while the Converter was suddenly still, its face focused on the humans in front.

"We are ready," said the Leader.

The humming intensified, loud enough that Will had trouble thinking. It sounded like a chorus of electric voices.

"Ascend now," whispered the Leader, but it was a whisper that reverberated throughout the air and gave Will goosebumps.

It was only then that Will realised the humans had been witnessing something he and Emily couldn't. The male suddenly began to run away from the Converter. None of the Shepherds moved.

It was the Converter who reacted. The upper pair of its arms reached out and grabbed both humans with all the grace of a cat, and it held them up. The humans were struggling. Will could barely see their faces but his mind went wild imagining the contorted expressions of pain and fear.