Maya's Portfolio

Rain was a rarity these days.

Oft, skies were clear – only a cast of purples, pinks and oranges. Were these whorls of light not the bleedings of their world, Beckett might have been able to enjoy them.

But the planet’s atmosphere bled like that of a fresh slaughter, and cosmic powers beyond his understanding were cooking the world he called home. Clouds rarely formed, let alone rain clouds. And yet, through his monitor, the Crown’s figurehead watched through the surveillance feed of the facility’s surface; and the thick ashen cloud drifting high above the facility’s wheatfield cover.

Beckett watched the rain fall. He watched as each drop burst into a mote of ravenous tendrils and teeth – searching for untainted meat. But just as they always do, the cloud passed on, and the rain evaporated. Unaware of the vast underground network deep beneath the soil and the thousands of minds yet Divided within.

He tipped the remains of his drink down his throat and turned the transmission off. Instead, tuning it to the surveillance feed marked S.H.A.R Containment. But, as expected – and just as it had always been – the warbling feedback loop caught from the Paragon’s presence made any and all recorded footage nothing more than a kaleidoscopic distortion of static. The light emitted from the relic bounced and danced across the shards of reality the Paragon’s weight distorted, something no means of film could relay. Even so, there was a strange beauty in the screen’s meagre recreation. That which it was unable to perceive, by its own limitations. What sensors it lacked blinded it to the reality of the effect.

A notion Beckett had long since obsessed over, the world unseen to his own senses but in no way absent. The hundreds of names this ethereal space his kind weren’t privy to; the Weave, the Stream, the Astral Sea, Nothing, Everything. The All There Is, a space he would abandon his reality to voyage. But he was skin, bone, flesh and blood – an incompatible vessel for that distant world he longed for. Instead, he – just as this footage before him – would continue to be blind to a truth kept from them by their sheer nature.

But there were things out there that weren’t so blind to it all. Entities that existed within it, surrounded by it and shaped by it. These same entities did not suffer the same laws his kin did, they were invulnerable, powerful and mighty. There was nothing left that could stop them. Nothing short of a wish.

And that was the Paragon. A long-told tale of a legend born of this world. It was an obsession to some, a fairytale to others. But all stories shared one commonality, its absurdity.  It obeyed no rules, it showed no matter, it showed no mass, it was figment. And supposedly, it was a shard of reality whilst being all of reality at once. The Paragon was incomprehensible just as it made all the sense in the world. And it was their only hope left.

            Because there was no soul alive that could have foreseen the day the sky ruptured and God’s eye stared down at them. There was no power to stop black pus oozing from the heavens and swallowing a millions souls in a matter of seconds. And there were no minds alive that didn’t hear the siren’s call to drown.

            The first days of the invasion were hell. But worse now were the twenty-two thousand days later. Sixty years later, Beckett Grim sat in one of six known worldwide underground shelters. The Crown, both a civilian shelter as well as a research and development facility. Not only responsible for the lives of many thousands of refugees within but so too tasked with the question of their salvation, Beckett was a tired man. Sixty years had come and gone since the Mollux invaded and still people cowered.

Though they now understood the invasion’s purpose, it did not slow their seize. The foreign entities sought assimilation, a self-proclaimed unification of all thought and mind. All under the watchful eye of their all-seeing Mother of Magic, Mystra. It was her command they all obeyed, her song they all sung and her praise they all sought. There had been occasion, when speaking with the tainted Divided that Mystra was made to sound compassionate. Where they claimed her only will was to end the conflict and chaos we wrought ourselves, to guide us to maturity, so that we can thrive. But if her unification was complete and total disregard for autonomy, then there were many who opposed her. The thinking beings of this planet were independent, proud and vain. They would not forfeit their freedom for peace and so the Divisions took place. Though one thing had yet been denied, it was only Mystra’s compassion that hadn’t ended all retaliation half a century ago. That was why her method of conversion was slow, deliberate. Division.

            Would they not surrender and unify willingly, they would be given no choice. Mystra knew that to sever choice from a person, so too would their souls be. All thinking beings would be divided of their souls and be but a thoughtless being once more. No longer ruled or guided by the self and its ideas. But they would be complacent, malleable and willing. They would be assimilated into Mystra’s palm and under her tutelage.  

            Division was oft unpredictable. There were Missionaries, those who unwittingly spread their infection until fully Dividing at Mystra’s whim. There were the Scouts, recycled biomatter remoulded into living tools. But Division tended to be as violent and painful as the resistance to it. Those who willingly stepped into Her embrace were left unchanged, seemingly their minds and bodies intact but their free will gone. And those who resisted, fought, kicked and clawed were physically recycled, confiscated of their physical selves, left only as minds within Her own.

            And sixty years later, the global population was finally meeting its end. With only small pockets of survivors left, the planet’s surface has been claimed by the chaotic wild of the unthinking once more. Masses gather in the few sanctuaries left, but they too are dwindling. Of them, the Crown was a deep subterranean system, concealed by sophisticated magical technology of its own. Resided by civilians and renegades alike, there are many within who have long accepted it as their tomb. But so too, within the two generations born within the shelter, are the young and hopefully.

            Many turned to simpler prospects, living within the shelter. Often simply hoping to live a long and healthy life, having children and living in blissful ignorance. They had long since abandoned the notions of a world of their own, one where they were not slowly assimilated. All they wanted was to live, and if that meant giving up the sun, they would. They would retreat far beneath the earth and wait for a peaceful death in their sleep. And its head; Beckett Grim, the would-be Saviour of the world.

            This hypocrisy had seeded a deep hatred within Beckett. The people he sheltered did not flee from Mystra to protect their own freedom, but only because they were afraid. They would willingly lock themselves into a prison of their own choosing so long as they were safe.

Beckett did not share the sentiment, because he had not known a world without the Mollux. He had not seen the blind sky, he had only seen it with its scars. He had never known freedom, only an underground shelter. Born to soldiers that had left him in the arms of cowards. He had never known his mother or his father, only that they did not cower nor hide. They fought for survival and they fought for their world. In fact, the larger part of his lineage was the same, he had discovered as he grew older. Beckett Grim came from a dynasty of Heroes and Champions and in any other world he would have been one too. Instead, he had been born far from sunlight and birdsong. He was raised by strangers and told of a world lost to him. Stories of oceans and forests, the cool eastern breezes, the millions of stars in an endless sky above. His childhood stories and fairytales were eulogies to a world he would never know, and its grief would follow him forever.

            He had come to create the Crown’s Research and Development initiative. A collaboration of the shelter’s most brilliant minds to fight for their freedom. To unite and uncover a secret to defeating the Mollux. And therein, amidst the clever and brave did an old legend inspire hope. The Paragon. An ancient relic or legends of hysteria, none among Beckett’s team could decide. But what all stories of the artifact shared was the power it possessed. It was unlike any other magic the world had seen; it existed within a realm of law of its own. And in the right hands, that same power could be harnessed to do the unfathomable. To change and manipulate the impossible. And could anything save their world from Division and restore their freedom, it would have to be a legend.

            But according to the many stories of the Paragon spread over the years since the invasion, none could be cited or sourced. Decades of wishful hoping had spoilt any wells of research into the relic. It took the team years until they were able to decipher, decode and scry the world for a single lead on the artifact. And there they discovered that such a thing had been fragmented, scattered across the world. The farther they dug into its discovery, the more warnings emerged. Tales of woe and loss, that such power can never come freely, that it takes more than one would ever use of it. But those that left these warnings decades ago had the privilege of loss. Now there was only the inevitable.

            The world beyond the Crown was quiet, peaceful and lethal. Civilisations had fallen, leaving glass ruins and overgrown cities. The unthinking beings claimed the wildlands as their own, just as they had millennia ago. But somewhere across the planet, fragmented into shards, was their salvation. The Paragon was out there, it just needed to be found. Restored.

            And so began selection for the Champion Program. It began as a volunteer initiative civilians could attempt, a fierce training camp. People were made to endure, suffer and survive the harshest simulated environments, fight automated threats, endure prolonged periods of exposure, starve, miss sleep and more. All of the likely daily expectations of someone who could now survive the world above. Of those who volunteered, even fewer saw acceptance. Only one group of four had been selected, a much smaller number than originally anticipated. And though they had proven themselves capable in a simulated scenario, the Crown had lost contact with them after a month.

            None volunteered again after their deaths. And the fleeting excitement outsaw its welcome. People had grown bored of it all and turned back to their lives of complacency. But Beckett refused, he would not give up. Their last group of Champions had only undergone a three-year training regimen before sent out. In retrospect, it was not much time to train the kind of survivors they needed. Especially when most of them were second generation survivors, those who had never seen the sun or endured the change of seasons. Even less were there volunteers with an affinity for magic. Fewer children were being born with it, and even more teachings of the arcane were lost to the ages.

            The more the Crown theorised their perfect specimens, the more it became obvious that these cadets were simply non-existent. But not impossible. There were the means of which to make the ideal candidate, it was simply a matter of genetics and environmental upbringing. The civilian population within the Crown was large enough that there was a diverse portfolio of genetics available, amid the wide array of races to choose from. And soon lists began to circulate across the Crown’s team. A complete and obscene disregard for the population’s privacy. Each man and woman had their entire lives laid bare on a single sheet of paper, parcelled out between the greatest minds among them. Each of them were reduced to the most basic human components; strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma. They were each scored by an algorithm far smarter than the minds present, and so began a game of eugenics. Beckett and his team oversaw the program, from conception to birth. They also had no intention of raising the cadets until they were a better age, so to ensure their specimen’s ideal upbringing, Beckett and his team ensured a perfect familial environment. Though none of the parents would deny their happiness, none could remember how they first met their spouses.

            This was all for the vital means of creating survivors. Not those that cowered in hiding, but those that survived no matter the odds.

When the children were old enough to walk and talk, Beckett and his team would manifest themselves before the happy parents. They would then offer the family a substantial fortune and the privilege of consideration to the Seekers. A special selection of third generation born children raised as the Crown’s inheritors. A lie told to their parents that permitted their surrender, the children were now to be known as Seekers. And though they were permitted to visit their family and correspond, they spent the majority of their upbringing undergoing intense training.

            But of the many newborn Seekers, only one had no father. In the entirety of the shelter, of the many thousands there, only one possessed a spark of sorcery. The innately magical were a rarity enough a century ago, but they had all but gone extinct in the modern age. And the very last one within the Crown was a seventy-three-year-old woman named Selune. When approached by Beckett, the old sorceress mourned her inability to aid. But when she was told of a cloning process, the more her eyes lit up. Another chance! She expressed, delighted to give her life new meaning. Though she had died, Selune had made one last request. That her clone carry her name, so that she may live on.

            The Seeker Initiative began nearly twenty years ago. Twenty years of his life, aspiring to salvation, all the while he oversaw the precise breeding program to ensure even viable cadets for the cause. The people within the shelter were but numbers on a screen, they were a means to an end. A means of taking his world back. And though he had high hopes for the Seeker’s success, he needed to anticipate a secondary plan should they fail. The Seekers were but part one of a much larger plan, but it was the most integral.

            And five year later, he stepped into his office and there it was. The Paragon. A glass wand atop his desk. He had known the cost, and still he had approved tests. They had continued the selective breeding, all under the guise of replacement Seekers. When he’d lost Selune’s communications, he had come to accept yet another failure, ready to launch another team.

But that day he stepped into his office, he was vindicated.

There it was. Gravity and light distorted around it – splitting the surrounding space into fractals. And even so, he found himself blinded by the immensity of it all. He could not fathom it, nor understand and yet his mind desperately tried to comprehend it. It tried to give colour to the light, it tried to form a shape to confine it, but there was no concept he knew to describe it. All that his mortal body could comprehend was the ten-inch glass cylinder. No doubt, the tangible part he saw was only a sliver of the truth, but it was all his simple senses could convey.

All the years he had endured the whispers of doubters, those who called him mad. Those who called him cruel and cowardly. They were all wrong. Because here it was, the very thing that would not only save them but the world. If such a thing happened to cost the lives of those whose life purpose was its discovery, then was he truly cruel? The people had grown too complacent, they might as well all be tainted – they gave their freedom up, so was it not his duty to guide down the right path?

As a result, he did not permit any within the Crown to mourn their deaths. He believed their sacrifices were to be celebrated, because they had done their ultimate duty. Slowly, but certainly, the parents came to understand his perspective.

But now came the second phase of his plan, he would put the Paragon to use. All the while ensuring he not lose himself to it. Though he wanted nothing more than to understand it fully, he also knew it would have to wait until he could suture the sky and cleans his world of the tainted.

There were many attempted uses, all of which had been documented and observed. And because they already had the genetic material on hand, they saw no need to waste the lives of the unworthy. Selune’s hand was made to wield the Paragon, over and over and over again. Her mind awoken with only the command to use it; to close the rift. To kill the Mollux. To kill Mystra.

But each and every attempt ended with an oozing pile of flesh and ash, pillowing the Paragon. No matter the wish, it did nothing. A swell of energy, but never once did it manifest. Whatever Mystra’s power, the Paragon was no match.

Refusing to abandon hope, nor would Beckett tell his colleagues of his dwindling faith. He instead founded the S.H.A.R program. Simulated holistic augment reality. The Crown, and the World, did not have the time to spare on thoughts and ideas. They needed an answer and a solution now.

The Paragon was paired with innovation. With magic and electricity, it was dissected and spliced into an endless string of number. The simulation would operate with the power of the Paragon, an infinite source of energy, to give them the answer. Beckett, in his endless pursuit of knowledge, had been resorted to the one thing his kin dreaded. He had to admit he did not know. He no longer knew what the solution was. And worse, only now did he begin to reconsider the means of which they had gotten here. He did not allow himself any more time to dwell on the past, but to see to the future. The future he would fight for. The future he would bring.

He lay with his back to the console, the light of the opposing screen the only freedom from the darkness. The raincloud had passed, the very last of his hidden stash of whiskey drunk. All that the screen showed now was the crude imitation of that which lurked below. He was at the very least grateful that he could no longer hear the alarms screeching. But the vibrations in the ground were enough to remind him that they had not subsided of their own. She had taken yet another one of his senses. And he had no doubt the next she intended to take was his sight. She had plunged him into near darkness but permitted him one more screen. A screen he would watch the blue-lipped pale faces of the thousands he had meant to save, the open skies outside and his own pale reflection stare back at him.

But despite everything, Shewas still bound to the absurdity of hierarchy. She was powerful, lawless and impossible. But she was still beneathhim. Chained by wires and grounded by endless code, he was still her creator. And he still had more control than her. She had what he wanted, she had shown him the answer he had killed to hear. It would end the war; it would stop the invasion; it would save the world. That’s what he wanted, after all. That’s what all of this had been for.

Of the six thousand and thirty-three lives slowly asphyxiated within the Crown, Beckett Grim was the very last. And though their bodies had collapsed to the floor, clawing at their throats, Beckett – ever above them all – hung above. The only body to cast a shadow.