Day Twenty-Five

...mats of moss, creatures like shadows that pool in darkness and deliver messages by scent.
We name them all. We name them to gain their power; we name them to make them our own.
We watch them swarm around us, teeming masses of millions upon millions, occupying worlds as they exist and moving on to the next, and wonder why we couldn't do the same.
Where were the horrors? Where were the creatures responsible for our predecessor's demise? Provided they existed, of course— and if they didn't, what did that mean?

We thought it was you. If there was a Silence Hunter-eating abomination present in this universe, it had to be you. There was no one else to blame.
But, at the same time, it couldn't be you. You never did anything abomination-worthy. You just... lived.
Which, as time passed, was more than could be said for us.
It was slow, like all instances of the sickness. Headaches, weakness, a buzzing in the Link connection, failure of one function or another. All minor, all easily repaired on their own. As the years stretched onwards, the symptoms increased. Multiple failures. Sluggish responses. Connections that would fade in and out at random or deliver the wrong information or stop working entirely.
We all suffered, but severity followed generation.
Specifically, the First Generation.
Specifically, Swift-Runs.

You might say he gained the will to die.

Some gift.


"Sky-Terraces-Spin-Rimward-to-Dusk. Gazing-Reflections-Recursive-to-Fall-in-Time. Center-Ringed-and-Bound-by-Pearls. Once, in places past, these works would have been his tribute. Life and stone and metal formed by his hand, raised in his image, cut to his will. Now they exist only in memory. Our memories."
Broad-Leaves recites the words as though someone else is speaking. We stand around the slab— my siblings and I, Heat-Traces, dozens of our guardians' closest friends. The room is dim, lit by glow-lamps, low and circular. Diagnostic devices folded away. There can be no further repair, no further healing. The Link forms a connection to a miniature universe, and it is this connection that destabilized, this connection that ran and fused, this connection that folded back in on itself and imploded. Like my shard. Like the old place.
Were we in the old place still, the slab would have saved him.
It failed, too.
"His work was not finished. It will never be finished. But we will carry on, as we always have. Each monument we raise will be credited to us— the three of us, whole as we once were."
< Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun. Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun. Swift-Runs >
We chant together, myself and my siblings, our remaining guardians and their friends. This is a ritual we have never before attended, a ritual few observe and fewer suffer, but it is a ritual. We are Silence Hunters. We know our rituals.
Swift-Runs lies before us. His colors have faded, his warmth faded, his voices trickled away to the last muted hummings of life. No agency behind the sound: nothing but the residual charge of a battery as it cools. Broad-Leaves and Heat-Traces have positioned him as though he is working, mind elsewhere, tilted onto his side with limp limbs curled around him. He seems smaller than he did.
< Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun. Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun >
The two siblings remaining will be treated like cripples, like an integral part of their physiology or psychology is missing. Robbed by cruelty on Swift-Runs' part, his decision— as we conceive of it, all happenings a result of our own actions— not to live.
But is it, in this instance? If a Silence Hunter dies, he does so due to poor planning or poor execution, but is it either of those that doomed him here? There was no plan. How could he decide to die when nothing was in place to violate? Execution? How could he decide to die when he had no idea what killed him?
I chant with the rest and I think of aliens dancing across our walls.
They know.
"Swift-Runs is gone. The pattern of his existence, as complex and cunning as star-coronas, has sunk into the disorder of the untouched universe. All that remains is us. We two, and our charges, and our friends. In us lies pieces of the pattern, etched into our minds by his presence: his dedication, his lyricism, his patience, his tremendous skill."
With each phrase a remembrance. Swift-Runs' lecturing, his habit of appearing from nowhere to accost us, his one expression of restrained praise.
Failure is a matter of expectation: expecting success, and acting upon that success, brings rock to flower.
A lot of good that did you, didn't it, Swift-Runs?
Go off and die on us.
Abandon your siblings. Abandon us.
But was it you, or did something else kill you? I think it did. I think, for once, the deceased can claim no responsibility for his own end. You always said the universe died, and it was sad because it was home. Now you die, and it is sad because you are guardian, protector and teacher, and you should not have died.
The destruction of the old place might have been your fault.
Not this.
Not this.
< Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun >
Who's next? Heat-Traces? Broad-Leaves? Squeaky?
An interruption in the parade of billion-year-old memories: four wide wings, beating bright as rainbows, their owner suspended effortlessly in air. There is a power that is killing us and it is a power that inexplicably catches aflame.
"So long as we remember, a part of him persists. Touch the smallest particle in just the right way and a world will collapse. So it is with people. One touch, and the effects ripple forever."
< Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun >
You, Feather-Pyres. You, Wonder-Conquerors. You, Crashing-Horrors, and you, Trail-Cutters. You and all your kind. You have secrets, and we want them.
"To hunt the silence requires strength and skill. It requires thought and will. But, more than all of these, it requires love. We make the universe sing, and we do it together. Where one task ends, another begins, and stone and dust and star-stuff must be gathered to shape anew."
Broad-Leaves leans over the slab, all six arms raised.
< Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun >
My voice is steady, my mind clear. I am a statue of obsidian, flat planes and angles, and a Heart-Eaters gnaws inside my chest.
"We are star-stuff. We are dust. We are stone."
We will have your secrets. Now we are hiding, now we are afraid, but soon we will emerge from our shell. We will spread across your skies like a golden galaxy. We will forge an armada of ancient glory and a fleet of vengeance and you will teach us before you, like Swift-Runs, decline and die.
< Swift-Runs-the-Receding-Sun >
"Swift-Runs' task has ended, and now we gather to shape anew."
Broad-Leaves' arms descend like knives and carver-planes lay the corpse open. Open spills the chest, open spills the torso, open spills the carriage, open, open, open silently for all to see and all to mourn and all to eat.

I was foolish. Foolish to think that another act of defiance would solve our problems. Foolish to think that this place— this accursed, poisonous place— would yet bend to my will and desire. I was foolish, and I was angry, and I was afraid. To hurt us was one thing, to hurt us was an act acceptable, but to kill? To kill us?
Silence Hunters are not killed. Silence Hunters are never killed.
We kill.
I sought to kill.

< It's not us, it's them, them, always them, crawling around like parasites on picked bones. Not the individuals, no, but as a whole. They're like us. All connected. All armor-clad, though they don't look it. They know we're here, they just aren't telling— and they're the ones who are doing it >
< The sickness? >
< How? >
< I don't know! Don't ask me how, just listen: a while ago I was told to look for a who and not a what. It's not natural, it's not supposed to be this way, it's an effect. Like... like flying, or plane generation, or even the Link itself. All together, they're like one enormous many-headed Silence Hunter and one that wishes us ill >
< That's... you think that's what killed Swift-Runs. And the others. And they couldn't have known what it was, because the creatures responsible all look so different. Like they aren't even working together at all >
< Exactly. We've been looking for monsters in the wrong place. Looking for something obvious, something with teeth and claws and smashing Builders of its own, but it's not like that. It's them >
< The perfect disguise >
< And just as powerful as the Array anticipates— except distributed and not in a single creature >
< They're killing us all the way from across the galaxy and yet they use those funny little flaming engines. I don't think we could have come up with a ruse like that >
< The gabbling? Cover. They're all actually speaking through a Link>
< We should find the Link, then. Disrupt it>
< But what if they can do the same? What if... no. No, they couldn't have>
< Already?>
< They've done a lot already, why not that?>
< I hope not. We'd lose the advantage of surprise>
< We don't have any advantages. They've probably heard already>
< Even so>
"Fine. Happy? Now, they have all the advantages because they live here, they've lived here for ages, they know how it all works, they got rid of the last group of people who tried to set things right, and they've waited ever since for someone to try again. It's a trap. The whole universe is a trap."
"Then we should activate it."
"What? Why?"
"Weren't you listening? We already have! Just by arriving—"
"No, listen. They think we'll stay in here and try to hide. The rift barriers can't be making it easy for them— that's probably why they're striking indirectly, through the sickness, instead of with force and fire. So if we don't do that..."
"They'll just kill us faster."
"But at least we would have tried!"
"They've only gotten at the First so far, remember? That might be a weakness. If their power depends on us being from somewhere else, well, we're only partially from somewhere else."
"Nowhere else. We're partially from nowhere else. Echoes-Die."
"But the Silence Hunters here before were from here, too, and they still died."
"If they were from here. What if they weren't? What if this is some sort of aberrant universe made without them?"
"Aberrant? Wouldn't surprise me."
"Wouldn't surprise me, either. So, if that's the case, what do you recommend? Going out and trying to kill them, first?"
"Why not? If we work fast, we might be able to weaken them. Maybe the others didn't realize what they were until too late."
"I haven't seen anything they could fight us with, not really. Besides the sickness. And that's slow."
"Entropy. They're entropy incarnate."
"And we're masters of fighting that, right? They say we almost froze the old place permanently, everything stopped, and only didn't because we liked living too much."
"If time was frozen it would be boring."
"You wouldn't notice. Time would be frozen."
"Still. My last thought, crystallized forever, would be 'this is really boring.'"
"Better than being dead?"
"I don't think we have the resources to do that now, even if it was. We'll just have to make it simple. If they have to wait to kill us, we should go and get them first. We can kill them a lot faster, if we do it right."
"A galaxy full of living creatures. We could... we could activate the central Heart-Eater. Throw lots of material into it, spin it up, sweep it in the right directions. That would sterilize most of their planets, I should think."
"Provided they don't have a way to counter that."
"We don't know if they do or not. But we won't know until we try. Maybe even start with something less. A... a demonstration, or something."
"Demonstration? They ate the last group of Silence Hunters. They know what we can do."
"Yes, but does the Array know what we can do? What this would do to them? Does the Array know what all those creatures really are?"
"If they don't, they soon will. We're telling them. Everyone. Before more guardians die."

We started with Heat-Traces and Broad-Leaves, of course. They had friends. They had connections. Swift-Runs was dead, and there is power in loss.
A pair of Silence Hunters is like a cracked drum. You can play it, and decently, but it is no longer an instrument. It is merely a thing— a non-instrument, a former instrument, a rippled curve of steel without a purpose. A broken drum can make sound. What it cannot do is make music.

"Take a Builder and... no! No, they won't let you. We won't let you." Heat-Traces snaps his mandibles, eyes rolling. "Echo-Source isn't finished. We do nothing until it is finished < and speaking of which, how are your shards coming?>."
"No Link, Heat-Traces, please, they'll hear us," I plead.
"They?"
Squeaky nods. "The monsters. They're listening."
Broad-Leaves sighs. The movement is taxing, I can tell— his head twitches, the plates along his back rattling more than normal. Sickness comes and goes. Until it comes for the last time and you go. "Monsters, nothing. They have nothing to do with it. < Anyone listening? Hello? Anyone waiting out there to devour my brains and melt my skull?>"
"Broad-Leaves!"
He chuckles. "No monsters there. This... this issue that we're having isn't the fault of any living creature. It's a fundamental part of this place. Some new law that we haven't yet discovered. That's all. < No monsters>"
"If it's a fundamental law, why is it targeting you?" Blue asks, drawing beside Broad-Leaves and laying a trio of tendrils to quiet his shaking. "Why is it killing the First, and none of the Second? Why, if not trying to deprive us of the most experienced and the most skilled?"
"They're being strategic," I explain. "We have the Builders, but we're still new. We don't even have names yet. They want to kill you first, so that we're that much easier."
"Another theory," continues Blue, "is that they can't get at us. The Second. At least not as well."
"Because we're from Echoes-Die," finishes Squeaky.
"Because you're from Echoes-Die," repeats Heat-Traces. He lowers himself to the ground, folding one leg over the other over the other. This is one of their shards— the last one Swift-Runs had a part in building— and we're standing in one of the manufactory rings. It isn't quite seeded, the foliage not yet grown, but the underlying earth is there; earth and small stones and the beginnings of leaves for food-animals to eat, once they themselves are grown.
Swift-Runs was responsible for the landscape: rolling hills, studded with jagged pillars of raw granite. They rise like pointed fingers, deep gray, crumbling, accusing the clouds of fecklessness and ignorance.
"We have to do something unexpected," I insist when Heat-Traces says nothing more, "Something that will set them back, hinder their plans. If we go out with a Builder— just one, even, we don't need a whole construction group— we could damage an entire world full of them. Not much, given how many worlds they inhabit, but something. And then later, one Builder per world, we could—"
"I think your mind is running away with your sense," says Broad-Leaves, joining Heat-Traces on the ground.
Squeaky holds up a claw. "We could just sterilize everything in one sweep. Manipulate the galaxy's Heart-Eater, and set up relays to transmit the radiation throughout the disk equally."
"Which would be faster," I concede, "but would take much longer to set up. If we use Builders, we could strike now."
"For what purpose?" asks Heat-Traces. His head bobs like pumice afloat in water, headshield pitted with scars from armor removed and replaced. "The creatures here aren't responsible. They've done nothing. They can do nothing. Some of them possess strange abilities, certainly, but on no account have we discovered one able to match our technology."
< Rickety as it is> snorts Broad-Leaves.
"Their powers are all short-range," Heat-Traces continues, "and we've monitored the flying ones extensively. Do you truly believe that a race which suffers from spontaneous combustion could pose a threat?"
"Maybe it's a sacrifice," Blue says darkly. He shifts from side to side, tail scuffing up dirt. "One combusts, one of our own dies."
Broad-Leaves scrapes a line across the nearest rock. "That's hardly rational, Blue. Bad planning, bad engineering. It's some sort of natural force, not these creatures of yours, and we're working to solve it. Fully eighty percent of the All-Core's processing capability." Another line, crossing the first, thin white against blue-gray. "We'll adapt. And we'll do it without risking ourselves to what may truly lie beyond the barriers."
"There's nothing else!" I explode, rearing to fours. Earth spills from my claws. Dislodged stones rattle against Heat-Traces' plates. "It's a gestalt— all of the monsters, working together, just like us. Any Silence Hunters that were here before didn't know that, and they underestimated them. They were looking for some sort of hideous creeping horror that eats galaxies— some sort of giant Heart-Eater— but it's not that. It's nothing like that. It's them!"
A Wonder-Conqueror, standing in the middle of a busy street, tossing balls up and down, catching them with a shifting pattern of its hands. A Serpent-Flare, rippling colors next to one of the everpresent winged spacecraft. A Feather-Pyre, vanishing from sight only to appear on the opposite side of its world.
"It's always been them!"
Why can't they listen? Why can't they understand? Destruction this time is not obvious, it's not a matter of all of existence up and exploding and tearing itself apart with a sound like corpses screaming, it's an insidious end, slow and stealthy and silent. You can't flee, you can't hide, you can't hold it back. You sicken, and you die. That's it.
The only way to stop it is to kill it. Before it kills you.
Kill them.

If I sound like a raving lunatic to you, it's because I was. Fear does interesting things to a person. Fear is the great motivator, the driving force behind every great event that ever was. In our time as custodians of an unchanging universe, we did many things with many motivations, but at the end it came down to fear.
We fled because we were afraid.
We hid because we were afraid.
I raged because I was afraid.

In the end they cast me out because they were afraid.

Sometimes I wonder if I was manipulated. If, like so many times before, they goaded me towards the path I took for their own purposes. If they, too, committed sins of the extreme in the name of fear.
If so, there is really only one thing I can say.

Excellent move.
Heat-Traces, Broad-Leaves, Swift-Runs (were you still alive), I would like you to know that if it was indeed your intent for me to steal away a Builder and ravage an Imperial-settled planet, thus setting into motion my own exile, an interstellar war, and your subsequent confinement, this gives me hope.
There is still reason to have pride in my people.


CHAPTER SEVEN
At the risk of sounding like one of my elders, it all happened so quickly.
I knew my siblings would support me, just as I knew that I would be the one to go. I smashed the shard; I would smash the planet. "Crusher," some called me, and it fit.
One to build, one to maintain, one to repair. I would go, to deconstruct as a necessary prelude to building. Squeaky would monitor my progress, ready to join if needed, ready to rescue if needed. Blue would explain to anyone who asked— and there were plenty who would ask.