Known Afterlife (The Provider Trilogy, Volume One) (31 page)

With a determined sigh, Muzar looked back to Stalling. "Over the years of my incarceration in this place, the priorities of things I miss most about
living free have changed dramatically. At first, I found myself dreaming of a perfectly aged glass of ice water or one of Patrone's hot subs, do you remember, stacked so high you could barely get your hands around it!" Stalling nodded with a laugh at the memory.

"Those desires along with all the other basic needs soon faded the day I left this oasis. As you and the rest of the world have observed, once I created the semblance of safety, my next desire to help others was fulfilled and affirmed by the people
who chose to join my crusade to improve our plight. Since, I have experienced levels of comradery and love I do not believe I would have ever attained if not for the circumstances. Now, as you find me here today deep within the hollows of the world, there is a desire deep within me, a reality, despite all I have been able to manifest up to this point, that I fear will never be slaked in this lifetime again. It is the one thought, selfishly at least, that brings me the greatest sorrow and source of long stretches of melancholy. A condition I will confess has been happening more and more frequently."

"What is it?"

"In the off season, shoot it started when we were kids, I would spend months in the wilderness alone."

"I remember. You would disappear for weeks. Y
our parents never seemed to worry that much, always cryptically explaining your absence as ‘he has gone to find himself’. Come to think to think of it, I remember chuckling at an investigative article written about you a several years ago titled 'Where on Antium is Muzar Tarcones' in attempt to explain your hiatus from the public spotlight."

"I never cared for the spotlight but that was not why I felt compelled to escape from the civilized world. It was both a genetic and spiritual need to commune with natu
re. To know what it means to be an equal part of a vast biological community is truly what it means to live in the hands of God. My heart aches with more desire than once imagined possible to wander the wilderness with nothing but a pack on my back and no other goal than becoming one with the world we live in."

"My hope and vision for peace will always dictate the action I take going forward. I believe in you Stalling and trust your vision is aligned with my own, making secondary the how it is accomplished
and the role we each play. But I tell you now, I stand before you a broken, desperate man that can only be saved by nurturing this desire—no, the need—to commune with the divinity. If you tell me once I have fulfilled my purpose, that I will once again experience life with nature, I will follow you now."

"Muzar," Stalling said, holding his friends eye, "I promise that need will be met in ways beyond our current conception."

Chapter 19

Conceived by their ancestors in the midst of the Deagron A
ge, when the need for Guardians to travel swiftly from one end of the Provider to other was at its height, another millennium would pass before Citizens acquired both the shifting skills and manpower required to construct the Guardian Trail. G-trails were an anomaly spawned from a rare fusion of powers; a vehicle made by Shifter ingenuity, powered by Guardian brawn.

The unique transportation system
—thousands of vines, assembled into pliable, braided cables, shifted the entire length of the Provider—single handily saved thousands of lives every year. What once required a Guardian to take a "leap of faith", jumping off the nearest edge, trusting in the Provider to show the way or worse, attempt an arduous climb wrought with danger, was now remedied by the G-Trail. Today, with every major bough, and most sub-branches, having at minimum one entry point to a trail, once a Guardian reached a G-Trail portal he was only seconds away from any region of the tree.

Steffor and his friends released a sigh of relief as the
y spotted the cable off in the distance. The G-Trail was still several miles away, a thread slicing the otherwise empty horizon, extending from Toliver's evergreen canopy down past the edge of the ivy infested bark peninsula they traveled. But sight of the last stage in their journey before reaching Razum was enough to lift the dark thoughts settling on Steffor's mind.

With one last powerful bound, the group finally came to a halt on a narrow ledge along the peninsula's sloped border. Steffor released his c
ompanions from his staff, giving everyone a brief moment to catch their breath and adjust to the precarious setting.

The ledge, shifted level to provide a flat surface in which to stand, overlooked a deep ravine that
dropped sharply away from them with the natural curve of the Forging Bough's circumference. A few hundred feet from where they stood, the vertical G-Trail wended over the dark chasm, down past the protruding lip of the adjacent bark peninsula, disappearing from sight as it penetrated the expanse of Sofelarus’s foliage and stems below.

After a brief moment to gather themselves, Steffor led the group single file along the ledge to a long cantilever jutting perpendicular over the ravine, then across the shift
ed beam before reaching the platform of which the G-Trail intersected through a round opening in its center. Steffor raised his staff and with a quick wink of intense blue light, brought forth the three dimensional map of the Provider. Razum City and the surrounding area was a throbbing black void that appeared to be expanding.

"The Mysticnet around Razum remains blocked," Steffor reported. "Once there, I should be able to extend my power to create a mobile version of the net in order to contact any Guardia
n in the area."

"Is it the Deagron Maker causing the disruption, creating the blackness?" Martna asked, biting her lower lip.

"I am not sure," Steffor said. "But instincts I am still struggling to familiarize with tell me the two are related but separate in and of themselves." Steffor could tell by the round of faces that his honest but cryptic disclosure only added more anxiety to fast approaching events. Calivera, the only one to meet his eye, walked to his side, grabbed his hand and beamed him a warm smile.

With the rest of the Mysticnet still intact, he did a quick survey of the Guardians located outside Razum. Once done, he calculated the approximate time it would take each to reach their own respective G-trail portals and concluded what he had already
feared: of the Guardians residing outside the capital—the vast majority—only a handful had arrived in Razum by this point.

"According to our last scan, before losing the Mysticnet feed over Razum, all twenty one Razum Guardians were accounted for, in addit
ion to Teuton Traiken. As we can see," Steffor said, highlighting the Guardians to denote them from the millions of other blue dots on the map, "the bulk of our brethren are at best another ten to twenty minutes behind us. Once we arrive above Razum, we will gain the best vantage point, assess the situation and take action." Each nodded with understanding. Surely twenty-two of the Provider's knights will be enough to hold the beast at bay until more help arrives, Steffor thought with a sour bubble swelling in his stomach.

Without further delay, Steffor once again extended his power to the group and coupled it to the vine cable. The sudden union of the two snapped each person off the narrow ledge and ringed them around the six-foot thick cable. Pointing feet
first, with backs clamped securely to the braided vines, a powerful burst of Source shot them down the trail.

The subtle curves, bends and strait-aways of their passage blurred by without incident as the G-trail navigated them through leaf and branch at bl
azing speeds. Steffor had only a brief second to recognize the maze of man-sized, three prong leaves and interlacing twigs indigenous to Sofelarus before their confined surroundings vanished and gave way to open sky.

Centered below, rushing toward them, sp
rawled Razum City. Steffor angled their decent to the east, toward the Trunk. Over twenty miles away, Steffor enhanced their vision to get a closer look at the jagged rupture. Maligned Source oozed from the gash, black smog seeping down the Trunk, leaving a wake of charred bark and xylem. The vast cityscape blocked their view of the destructive flow past a few hundred feet below the hole but their collective imagination shuddered at the damage it would cause once it reached the city, if it had not already.

They soared toward the wounded Trunk and within a few minutes were hovering but a few hundred feet above the tallest buildings, at which point Steffor began to deflect the Source off to propel them forward. They fluttered over the remaining miles in this
manner and in those moments surveyed the activity below. The recent mayhem at the Trunk side of the city had created a mass exodus of Citizens toward the other side, inundating the complex grid of catwalks, bridges and roads connecting the magnificent structures with thousands of terrified people.

To their relief, they spotted several Guardians supervising the mass retreat. More than once, they witnessed the safe and acrobatic rescue of victims, accidentally shoved in the rush of bodies, flailing in the air
for several long seconds, snatched by a Guardian at the last moment. The heroic scenes were an unexpected but welcome boost in their morale.

Steffor recognized the disparate group of Guardians as the few who had managed to reach Razum before them. Applying
the power of his staff to create a mobile Mysticnet hub, he locked onto the group and hailed them. "What news of Traiken?"

"I am the only one of us to have seen Traiken before he and the Razum troop rushed off to confront the creature," a young Guardian n
amed Delvid quickly replied, the image of his handsome face appearing before their collective mind's eye. "At the time, they were overwhelmed with the rush of people trying to escape. Upon my arrival, he delegated me to take his place with instructions to recruit any others coming from the outer regions and estuaries. That was over twenty minutes ago."

"What direction did he go?"

"Due East, toward the rupture in the Trunk."

"More are coming. Send all newcomers to where Traiken went and we
go now. The rest of you must keep the flow of people moving as far away from the Trunk as possible. Do not stop until you hear orders otherwise. Do you understand?"

"Aye."

As they moved to within a half mile of the Trunk, the disconcerting chaos caused by the rush of terrified Citizens had diminished but a few people still occupied several of the buildings and transit systems. To their dismay, the majority of these stragglers appeared badly wounded. The sorry lot plodded along as best possible, leaning on their neighbors for support, adrift in lethal shock and trauma. Makeshift litters carried those too decrepit or unconscious, or already dead Steffor detected via his omnipotent senses. He could not locate a Healer amongst them.

"Release me Steffor, I must
help those in need," Calivera commanded. Caught by the same impulse, Steffor landed the group on a small observatory deck atop the next closest building. Without pause, Steffor grabbed Calivera by the hand and escorted her down the small set of steps that led to an open hatch on the otherwise empty rooftop.

He turned her around to face him, "Do not...." The forceful press of her trembling lips cut his words short. With vigor more intense then the last, Steffor lost himself in her embrace and allowed the res
t of the world to fade from consciousness, if only for a brief moment. Calivera was first to initiate their separation, however reluctant, saying over her shoulder as she hurried down the stairwell leading into the building, "I will not move any closer to the Trunk than I already am. Please be safe Steffor, I cannot bear the thought of losing you, not again."

Steffor took a few more seconds to watch the top of her golden locks disappear down the dark passage before turning back. He nearly ran into Leanor as
he did so, the mysterious woman having followed them down. "Don't worry Steffor, I will go with her. The two of you will be reunited soon, this much I have foreseen." And with that, she followed in Calivera's direction. Relieved but as confused as ever by the strange woman, Steffor, once again, did not have the liberty to contemplate the meaning of her words or role.

Rejoining the anxious Guardians, he locked his power with the group. "We are one lunge away. We will assess the situation on our descent. Onc
e I am in range, we will sync with Traiken and his team and coordinate all efforts going forward. We cannot afford to hesitate, are you all prepared to do what must be done?" The three, the weight of their recent covenant with Steffor leaning heavy on all of them, each answered with a firm nod.

Within seconds of their leap, Steffor tried to establish a connection with Traiken and his Guardian troop. For unknown reasons, they could only receive audio feedback. A disturbing dissonance immediately flooded thei
r hearing, Traiken's commanding, desperate barks of "HOLD! HOLD!" and "NOW! NOW!" interspersed with familiar sounds of the Source shifted into power bursts and shields, all predominated by ferocious growls and snarls. Steffor detected the battle rapidly sapping the troop’s energy. Razum’s Guardians were fading fast.

"Help is on the way!" Steffor conveyed to the defenders.

"Hurry, we cannot hold the creature much longer!" Traiken's strained voice replied.

At the peak of their jump, they had not yet crested t
he last line of tubular skyscrapers that blocked them from the action below. First revealed was the suburban homes that populated the tiered mesas of the mighty limb, the steep stretch of landscape that demarcated Trunk from limb.

Near the center of the la
st plateau, a ridged band of wood and bark sprawling north to south the entire width of the buttress, they discovered the initial destruction caused by the Deagron Maker: an impact crater several hundred yards in diameter located directly below the hole ripped into the Trunk nearly a mile above.

Steffor amplified their aerial view of the disaster area. Along the cliff edge that ran parallel to Sevorist Avenue below
—the primary road from which all streets running east to west along Razum’s foundation grew—Steffor attempted to identify anything that resembled small homes and shops that once occupied the space. They were mortified to find nothing but an array of mangled bodies intermixed with ruble and splintered wreckage.

"The power required to reach there fro
m the Trunk…" Vejax's astute observation cut short as they started to descend, broadening the perspective below to expose the bulk of destruction wreaked upon the forest of buildings before the cliff. A meandering swath cut through the city, three times the width of the widest street, left a measure of devastation in its wake beyond record.

Of those buildings with the misfortune of being directly in front of the creature's violent path, all that remained were hacked off hallow stumps; in some cases the only
discernable remnants of the structures were the exposed alleys and chambers shifted into the limb creating the expansive subterranean network connecting every building to its neighbors.

Steffor scanned the debris strewn in every direction of the path in a
ttempt to ascertain the collateral damage caused by the Deagron's rampage. Tangled like pick-up sticks, the larger portions—some as long as fifty stories—lay haphazardly amongst their shattered foundations. Other portions, lopped off with such force they flew for miles, twirling projectiles wreaking secondary havoc on the city, brutally sawing off sections of neighboring buildings that would in turn contribute more damage as they toppled down.

Steffor's staff compiled the data and projected rough schematics
of the hundreds of buildings affected by the wave of destruction. He soberly concluded that if Shifter assistance did not arrive soon, many more would collapse due to the structural damage. Citizens appeared within the scanned area: the living depicted in signature electric blue, the wounded a brackish blue-red, varying in shade by their condition, while the dead registered dark crimson.

By his hurried count, Steffor estimated over forty thousand fatalities and another eighty thousand wounded. "So many!" G
rimlock cried, aghast by the senseless carnage. It was as they surveyed a particularly large aggregation of those dead and wounded, positioned near where the Deagron first entered the city, which finally led them to find Traiken and his team.