Adagio of Awakening (Song of the Multiverse Book 1) Read online

  “What… is that?” Lexi asked, her eyes wide.

  “That is your enemy” Torvix responded. “We call them hordlings, creatures born from pure entropy. This is what I brought you here to see, because these are the creatures that are seeking to undermine your world. The hordes feed on order. It’s purpose is to obliterate anything that gives structure. It will create mayhem, fear, and decay.”

  “You say this creature is already in our world, but why haven’t they moved yet?” Lexi asked. “Why haven’t we heard anything about them?”

  “They have moved” Torvix replied, casting his hand out before him as five holographic video feeds suddenly opened showing various scenes of the horde descending in packs on unsuspecting locations, and maiming, killing, and otherwise destroying and devouring all in their paths. “As for why you haven’t heard anything about them, the governments of your world are suppressing the news of them, trying to avoid panic and worldwide hysteria.”

  “I recognize that building!” Rin said, pointing at one of the feeds.

  “Ah yes” Torvix replied, spreading his finger and thumb as that feed expanded while the other four shrunk. “The Greater Metropolitan Power Plant. 483 people perished when the plant melted down last year. It was a tragic event. What your governments didn’t report was that it was a massive horde attack that caused the meltdown in the first place.”

  Rin and Lexi watched as the horde began gnawing and tearing on the central reactor with great intensity and vigor until suddenly the picture from the feed went white, then faded to black.

  They sat there in silence for a long moment, the realization that their world might really be in danger sinking in, until Torvix, perhaps in response to the sudden somber mood, looked toward the two guards, and gestured for them to remove the hordling. “But where are my manners?” Torvix continued.” I can’t bring you to a place like this and not allow you to take in its splendor! Go. Tour the city. View its majesty and wonder. There will be plenty of time with the hordlings when you get back.”

  Rin, Lexi, and Watanabe turned and left via the teleport pad in the corner of the office.

  “Are you sure it’s wise to let them wander the streets of the city without an escort?” Gunderson asked once they had gone. “Somebody is sure to recognize them.”

  Torvix leaned back in his chair and smiled as he steepled his hands together. “I’m counting on it.”

  IV

  “I just can’t believe it” Lexi said as they made their way across the lobby of white and gold. “Our reality, our entire universe in danger! Did the horde attack on your world, Watanabe?”

  Watanabe shook his head. “Not as far as I know. It was different on my world. Milandra hadn’t yet reached her current level of power.”

  “Those things look terrifying” Rin said.

  They opened the door, and walked out into the crowded courtyard at the foot of the Tower of Justice, unaware as the crowd all stopped and stared.

  “You!” one woman in the crowd cried, her eyes on Lexi, “How can you be here, you murderer!?!?”

  “But look who she’s with?” Another man cried, his eyes on Rin. “How can she be alive? How can they be together?”

  “Uh… Watanabe, what’s happening?” Lexi asked in a quiet voice as the crowd started to march toward them from all directions, and Rin instinctively stepped behind Watanabe, peering out from behind him like a small, fearful child.

  “Kill her!” another person in the crowd raged, “kill her now and avenge those she has taken from us!”

  Then suddenly, a loud, piercing, screeching sound was emitted from Watanabe. It was constant and relentless, and it drove them to cover their ears. Instinctively, both Rin and Lexi dropped to their knees; its piercing, unceasing noise stinging their audial nerves.

  Almost as one, the crowd turned and fled, and within moments, they were alone as guards came rushing out from the lobby of the tower.

  Then the sound stopped once Watanabe, the girls, and the guards were alone in the courtyard.

  Rin placed her little finger into her ear canal and wiggled it back and forth, trying to unplug her still ringing ears. “What in the world was that about?”

  “I suppose it’s time you knew” Watanabe said. ”But not here. Follow me.”

  Watanabe led them through winding flagstone streets to one of the city walls; a place of alabaster and gold that stood a silent, eternal vigil over this great city of order. They found a staircase leading up and marveled at the view. The gleaming towers of white and gold extended out beyond the wall as far as they could see.

  “It happened right here” Watanabe began.

  “What happened here?” Lexi asked.

  “Your sisters… well technically they are your half sisters… they battled each other here, and one killed the other; murdered her in cold blood. The crowd mistook the two of you for them.”

  “When I was a younger man” Watanabe went on, “I was happy. I had a wife, and two daughters. Their names were Dawn and Melody. Life was good in our blissful ignorance. But then I started to have these dreams… dark dreams of invaders marching through our cities. Over the next few months the dreams grew more frequent until one day, the invaders actually appeared. They came into my home, and took me and my family, escorted us through a portal, and there we were in front of the throne of shadows, and sitting upon that throne was Milandra. With a smile on her face, she slew my wife, and had my children locked away. She threatened to kill them if I ever denied her anything. I fathered two children by her – two daughters. The older daughter, Milaina, burned with an unquenchable, inner flame, but her mother corrupted that flame until she thrived on cruelty. She liked to torment Dawn and Melody, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was powerless to protect my own children. If I took it to Milandra, she would have them both executed. Finally, Milaina carried her bullying too far, and she killed both of them.”

  “Horrified, the younger daughter, Mina and I escaped Umbral Earth. We came here. I entrusted Mina to the Court of Order, where she was overseen by Prince Torvix, and after a short while, I fled into the shadow earths, where I came to your reality, and met your mother. Your sister meanwhile, here in Elysium, became the city’s greatest hero. Torvix had turned her into a weapon, just as I’m sure he is intending to do to both of you. I’m told she single-handedly repelled horde attacks, and led their armies to victory after victory in the shadow earths.”

  “Then Milandra launched a massive attack on Elysium, led by Milaina. The two fought right here, and Milaina killed Mina. Now you see why it’s complicated, don’t you?”

  “Girls, my reason for leaving you and your mother wasn’t because I didn’t love you” Watanabe went on, tears welling up in his eyes. “I left because I love you. I left to protect you. Milandra considers me a fugitive. She sent the devourer to destroy my reality out of vengeance for my escape, I’ve seen it in my dreams. I left because there is no place where I can settle down where she won’t find me. I had to protect you, and that meant I had to leave. I didn’t tell you I was your father because maybe if you didn’t know, there might be a chance that Milandra might never find out about you. I won’t let her do to you what she did to my other daughters.”

  Lexi, with tears in her eyes stepped forward, and wrapped her arms around Watanabe, squeezing him tightly. A brief moment later, Rin did the same, and the three stood locked in a long overdue embrace.

  “I’m sorry” Lexi cried, burying her head in his chest, her hot tears wetting his tunic. “I’m so, so sorry!”

  Watanabe cradled the back of his daughter’s head in his hand, his own tears flowing freely. “It’s okay Alexandra, You didn’t know the truth. I forgive you.”

  Rin and Lexi still didn’t understand much about their past, so they didn’t know why, but they both felt a great weight lifted off them. They knew that they were loved, and always had been, even if it had been from afar, and they took joy in the knowledge of that.

  ******

 
“First off allow me to apologize for that incident in the plaza” Torvix began as Rin, Lexi, and Watanabe stood in his office. Gunderson stood, leaning in the corner, his beard neatly trimmed, and dressed now in a suit of golden blast armor with a blue crest on the shoulder topped by five horizontal bars stacked on top of one another. Torvix now had changed his mode of dress as well, Wearing a knee-length white tunic and trousers, a golden belt, golden armored boots and vambraces, and golden pauldrons on his shoulders, while a golden circlet denoted his rank as a Prince of Order.

  “I had no idea our people would react so to seeing you.” Torvix continued. “Going forward a detachment of guards will be assigned to each of you whenever you leave the tower, to accompany you wherever you go and keep you out of danger.”

  “Now on to other business” Torvix continued. “I have prepared a demonstration. Follow me.” Torvix led them via the teleport pad to a testing range in the building’s basement.

  They stood inside a control room, protected behind a forcefield as the doors on the other side of the range slid apart, and two armored guards brought in a hordling again. They hit a control, and it’s collar unfastened, then the guards retreated, exiting the range. The hordling growled as it spotted them on the other side of the forecfield, and then leapt forward, thrashing and biting.

  Torvix stood unflinching with his hands clasped behind his back. “These forcefields are heavily reinforced. Still, given enough time, a single hordling could gnaw his way through. Gideon!”

  “Greetings Prince Torvix” a disembodied voice said in response to Torvix’s call.

  “Gideon is the testing range’s user-interface artificial intelligence.” Torvix explained, turning to Rin, Lexi and Watanabe. “He controls the forcefield, all the weapons systems, the atmosphere… everything. Gideon, firing solution one.”

  A pair of blaster cannons popped out of the ceiling on the other side of the forcefield, loosing volleys of blaster fire on the hordling. The lased particles seemed to splash harmlessly off its armored hide.

  “You see?” Torvix began. “This is the difficulty that your governments face with the horde. Conventional blaster weapons don’t affect them at all.”

  “So how do you kill them?” Lexi asked.

  “The hordlings are creatures created from dark magical rituals, and birthed deep in the pits of entropy. Because of this they are virtually unkillable by any means we have attempted. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be contained. Gideon! Firing solution two.”

  Another cannon-like device popped out of the ceiling, spraying a grayish liquid all over the hordling. As the hordling continued to thrash and bite at the forcefield, the grey liquid hardened, holding the hordling completely stationary as it formed into a shell around it.

  “Dark magical rituals?” Lexi repeated in a skeptical tone. “What, you mean like hocus pocus, abra cadabra, and all that kind of nonsense?”

  “I assure you magic is very real” Torvix replied. “Myth and magic are the foundations of power for Chaos, just as science and technology are the foundations of power for Order. And as you can see, our hordling is now an unmoving statue; one less entropy creature in the multiverse to worry about. Proof of the superiority of science and technology.”

  Torvix’s eyes fell on Watanabe, and the Prince of Order allowed himself a momentary smile of smugness. But as the two men locked their gazes on one another, Watanabe’s mind became filled with an image of himself walking down a hall. Suddenly 6 men dressed in black ambushed him. The vision faded, and Watanabe glared across at Torvix, knowing his precognition had just shown him a scheme out of Torvix’s plans. So Watanabe lashed out with the power of his will.

  “I know what you’re planning” Watanabe said, speaking directly into Torvix’s thoughts. “Go ahead. Try to tell Gideon or Gunderson to attack me. You can’t can you? That’s because I’ve taken hold of your medulla oblongata, and I’m blocking any signals in or out of it. At this moment your very life is in the palm of my telekinetic hand. If I wanted to I could crush it, and leave you an incontinent vegetable for the rest of your very short life.”

  Tovix stood frozen, his expression unchanging, but his mannerism somehow growing urgent. Lexi and Gunderson didn’t notice their gazes fixated on the frozen hordling, but the exchange was not lost on Rin, who looked back and forth between Watanabe and Torvix.

  “Just a little demonstration of my own” Watanabe continued. “I want to make sure that you know that if you send men to kill me they better finish the job, and if you harm my daughters in any way, I don’t need to be near you to end you.”

  Then Watanabe released Torvix suddenly and he stumbled forward, and fell flat-faced onto the floor. Next Watanabe, reaching out with his hand took telekinetic hold of the hordling and closing his fist, crushed the now statuesque creature. It imploded into broken bits of stone. And as Gunderson rushed to Torvix’s side, Watanabe made for the door and exited.

  “Lexi, Rin” Watanabe called, “let’s go. The demonstration is over.”

  “What was that about?” Gunderson asked as Rin and Lexi followed Watanabe out.

  “Watanabe” Torvix replied as Gunderson helped him sit up, and the Prince of Order rubbed the back of his throbbing neck. “He somehow sensed what I was planning next since turning the rabble of the city against them didn’t seem to cause any rift between him from his daughters. He threatened me.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Gunderson asked. “Want me to raise the guard?”

  “No” Torvix replied, waving that suggestion off. “His daughters are too valuable. And Watanabe is too dangerous to make any move against directly right now. I was hoping to turn his daughters against him so that we could cut him out of the picture entirely, but he seems determined not to allow me to do that this time. Unless I can come up with a better option, we may be stuck with him.”

  *****

  “What happened in there?” Lexi asked as they mounted the pad, and in the flash of an eye were in the lobby.

  “Nothing to worry about” Watanabe replied. “Just a gentleman’s disagreement.”

  Rin looked at Watanabe, and it struck her in that moment that she and her father were very much alike. They were both quiet, thoughtful introverts, and neither shared their experiences readily. With Watanabe, she knew, there was always far more going on under the surface than could be seen.

  “Are you hungry?” Watanabe asked. “This building has a commissary. Shall we get some lunch?”

  Sitting at a small table in the corner of the room, they dined on baked chicken, assorted melons, which had been cut into orderly cubes, and stacked into blocks with patterns of different colors and flavors, and a few slices of what appeared to be French bread accompanied by a delicious sweet butter spread. They didn’t realize until they started eating just how hungry they had been.

  “Something interesting happened when we took Torvix’s portal this morning” Rin began, “and I was just wondering if either of you saw it as well. I felt like I merged with the multiverse, I heard its music, and I could feel its joy. This might sound weird but… I think the multiverse might have a will of its own.”

  Watanabe nodded. “I know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do?” Both Rin and Lexi asked at once.

  “I’ve felt it in my dreams.” Watanabe explained. “I believe the multiverse is alive, and it does have a will. Whether you choose to believe that it’s due to the laws of physics, a creator God, or the multiverse itself being a sentient living entity I will leave up to you, but personally I choose to believe that all 3 of them are one and the same.”

  “You believe in a creator God?” Lexi asked.

  “Sure why not?” Watanabe replied with a shrug. “What is the multiverse? It’s a universe containing other universes. Think about that; there are universes within universes within universes. Your own body is a universe of organs, composed of atoms, composed of subatomic particles, composed of strings that vibrate in tune with the universe aro
und you, creating the very resonance that allows you to exist within it. Its design is genius. Why is a creator that is responsible for all that so far-fetched?”

  “Because the science doesn’t bear that out” Lexi protested. “Science is constantly making new discoveries in every area. With each generation we learn new things about how the universe… excuse me, how the multiverse works. But still, after tens of thousands of years of searching we haven’t discovered any traces of a creator God.”

  “And I don’t think we ever will.” Watanabe responded. “Maybe there is a reason for that; love, faith, obedience, these things demand a choice. Maybe we will never find proof that God exists because God doesn’t want to be found, he wants to be chosen. When you have proof that he exists, then choice becomes irrelevant.”

  “Maybe” Lexi replied, her tone making it clear that she remained unconvinced. “but for me without proof there can be no belief. I don’t put my faith in fairy tales.”

  Rin sat back and thought about it. What did she want to believe? She believed that somehow the multiverse was reaching out to her to hear something that few could ever hear. It was a glorious, beautiful thing, this music, this gift she had been given, and it gave her strength, and courage in a life that seemed to be getting weirder and weirder every day. But did that mean that there was a bearded gentleman in white robes hiding behind the curtain, pulling on levers and controlling it all? And in the end, as long as she made herself open to the music, and to the will of the multiverse, did the definition of it really matter?

  Then as Rin looked across at Lexi, continuing her scientific debate with their father on the existence of God, Rin realized something. She had been chosen. But why her and not Lexi? Why not Watanabe? Or her mother? Or Torvix? Why did she hear the music when nobody else did?

  As Rin sat pondering this question, separate holomessages popped up in front of her, Lexi, and Watanabe all at once. “Please return to my office after you finish your lunch. We will be introducing you to some new weapons you can use to fight the horde. Regards, Prince Torvix” the messages said.