Dome Chapter 26
The Return
It did not have to go this way.
Hugo stood over Terra’s sarcophagus. Nothing about this large, circular metal disk would make one think that a human was lying beneath it, but then again, Terra lost her humanity a long time ago.
That’s why it is so much easier to do this, Hugo chuckled to himself. He pulled a metallic thread from a spool on his belt and began feeding it through a small crack that split the disk down the middle.
The sweet and naive girl with the short temper. She was gone. Had been. Even before they constructed the Dome.
He remembered the day she left Zoraster and arrived at his home.
She was not sad. She did not break down and cry. She did none of the things that one would expect a woman to do.
Rather, she walked in, right past him. Determination. Focus. Like he taught her, honing that anger into passion. That should have been the first sign of her betrayal.
He felt the thread make contact with something, and with a quick snap, he cut it.
The first person to understand the beauty of technology. The person I gave everything to. You were my daughter, Terra. You were my best friend. I knew I was not the kind of man you would want, but that did not matter to me because I cared about you. And how did you treat me?
He plugged the string into a console on his belt.
This is what you get.
His plump finger tapped a button on his console.
The crack split open as the plate divided into two halves, opening up, revealing a dark hole of wires.
Come on out, you little bitch.
Steam gushed forth from the hole as a shadowy mound rose from the pit. The hot white clouds evaporated, revealing what looked like a large black tub covered in tubes and wires. A glass container was the last guard for what lay inside.
Hugo smiled as he peeked over.
A green light illuminated the shallow hollow. Inside a woman laid on her back. Naked. Her skin was a sickly pale white. Whether it was green from the light or beginning to show signs of decay was not clear.
Her emaciated arms crossed over her chest. Her breasts shriveled into something resembling two rotten onion bulbs. Her face is gaunt. The natural wrinkles of a woman her age were exaggerated, like stab wounds.
Large metal nuts stuck out from her abdomen, shoulders, and neck. Twisted into each nut a thick black cord that wound back behind her to some dark data-driven hellscape.
Her long black hair was now replaced with more black cords that seemed to stretch the skin of her face taut enough to slice off with a breath.
“You forgot my first lesson, Terra,” Hugo sneered as he pressed another button. “No one is worth your trust.”
The glass shield slid open.
From above, two long black robotic arms descended. They lifted her by the arms. Her body slumped forward as her arms were dragged up.
A crucifix in a cathedral of technological hubris.
This is who you always were. This is where your anger truly came from. Not from a fear for the children. Not from the injustices of the council. Not even against Zoraster, himself. No. You were angry because no one treated you like the god you believed yourself to be.
Hugo snorted a chuckle, “And here’s the last lesson, I never thought I would have to teach you.” He pulled out a small blade from his belt and, with surgical precision, made an “X” shaped incision in her chest. Putting the blade back, he then retrieved a detestable device, damned by the gods of technology. Anathematized by science itself.
A thousand black needles crowning a black rod. At the top, it sparked red. A burning red. A fiery red. The red of hate.
He lifted it up to the incision. The skin twisted and churned like a whirlpool. Then, as though a lance struck through her. A massive gaping hole erupted from her chest. Her flesh, her blood, her muscle, her bone, all present at once. Twisted within one another in a torturous orgy, forming a conical hole that led straight to the object of Hugo’s desire.
He stared at it.
He could hear the whirring of its gears. It had grown slow over the years.
With no one to maintain it, it’s a shock it lasted this long. However, being suspended in eternal slumber must reduce the need for cardiovascular activity.
Such information he would leave to wizards to talk about. What was before him, now, was the source of the Dome itself.
“Don’t believe your own lies.”
A massive thud shook the room.
Hugo looked up.
A white light met his pupils. His mind went blank for a moment. Stunned. Horrified.
Then anger.
No. Not when I’m this close.
The main entrance of the threshold had been opened, and the staircase leading down was manifested.
How? I sabotaged the main terminal. Even if Winsor got around the Beast, the moment he touched the console, it would self-destruct. The horn. It had to be, but his knowledge of technology was so limited that there would be no way for him to know the makeup of the console.
It had to be something else.
It had to be–
The thought turned his heart into a mud puddle of resentment.
Magic.
When the light had faded and the forms were clear, he was able to judge the situation fully.
Descending the stairway was a Unicorn.
The Unicorn.
The Seal of House Tao.
He could see it again.
The Pearl White Unicorn for the Goodness of Order. Framed with the Gold of Glory. The Red Streak of the Blood of the Valiant draping and The Blue of the Noble Heart of the People flowing next to it.
These symbols once meant something to him. When he was a little boy. They filled his chest with a puff of air. He felt that puff again, and it filled his eyes with tears. His desire to serve the Great House Tao, the king of Dento, and his son, Hugo’s friend, Clive, who loved him like a brother. The only person who did not care about magic and would rather look at frogs down on the river and stare at blades of grass for hours.
He loved him.
He loved Dento.
That was why all of this happened. To prove that even someone who did not have the power of magic could give something. Could make the world better. Can make Dento better.
All the more reason why I have to do this.
He reached his hand into the hole and, feeling the beating heart, ripped it out.
How far the Scream reached is still hard to say. There was a scribe who had recorded the claims of peasants as far as the edge of the Great Sea. They reported hearing a woman’s distant scream, but seeing as there was no telling where the source of the cry came from, it was assumed to have been the call of a distant Siren.
However, it did reach Nadia’s ears, for as the sound passed through her, she dropped a small clay bowl of tea on the table she was sitting at in Zoraster’s workshop.
What is this? Another trick? No. This is real.
It rattled through her like an earthquake. Her stomach dropped like a child’s when their mother shouts. Fear shot through her heart and passed as quickly as it came.
Zoaster was at his desk when the sound came, and at its arrival, he stood like a stone attacked by a wave. “My doom has come.”
Nadia did not hear him. Her mind was still reeling from the Scream. “What was that?”
Sullenly, Zoraster approached the table. “Someone has stolen Terra’s heart.”
Heart?
Stolen?
“I don’t understand.”
An exhaustive sigh escaped Zoraster’s lips as he sat across from her. “The Dome is about to be destroyed.”
A knife stabbed Nadia’s heart.
The Dome. Winsor. I can’t–
She leaped to her feet and ran to the door.
Zoraster spoke in a voice that made Nadia more aware of what a father is. “Where are you going?”
Whether it was a spell he knew or the spell a father has on his daughter, it froze her in her tracks.
I don’t have time. Winsor is going to die.
She turned; defiance blazed in her eyes. “They need my help.” She could feel a Spirit pass through her, into her arm, and up her staff. It felt familiar, like the Spirit she felt when she faced Urdhu. It possessed her, and unconsciously she smacked the ground with her staff.
The sole door in the workshop popped open, but it was not the Temple of the Elders on the other side. No. It was a dark forest.
Zoraster pursed his lips with bemusement but in a flash returned to the stern countenance of a father, “Everyone inside will die. There is nothing you can do.”
“Then I’ll die with them.” The words left her before she was even aware of what she was saying, but it felt right. It is who she is. She will not run when others need her. No. Winsor saved her, and if it means sacrificing her life to save his–that is the greatest good.
She turned to the door, but before she could take a step, it slammed shut.
“I will not let my daughter throw her life away.”
Daughter? What even is that? By what authority does he think he has to tell me what to do?
She turned halfway, the words forming in her mind as she spoke. “Daughter… Father… Mother… I don’t even know what these words mean. I barely understand what a man and a woman even are. I thank you for your vision. It filled in many of those empty places. Answered questions I was forming, but if it were not for Winsor, I would not have known that there were even questions to ask.”
She turned toward Zoraster to ensure he heard what she would say next: “The only reason why your daughter is here is because of him. For that, you owe it to him to help me.”
“You don’t understand–”
With that, she had heard enough, and striking the floor with her staff, the door burst open. “You don’t understand. My mother and my father want to control me, but Winsor–he wanted to free me. And I’ll fight for him with or without you.”
The fire of conviction, the flame of love, smithed the steel of duty in her soul. She turned on her heels and stepped out into the night sky.
Her father followed.
A bright full moon hung over the clear night sky. Stars glittered all around her. The vast colors of the cosmos cracked the blackness of the night like a geode.
What if this is a Dome, too? How many Domes can there be? Do they end?
A bright blue streak in the sky extinguished the thought. Schicksal was making her way to her.
“Is that your familiar?” Zoraster asked as he approached her.
More words she did not know.
She deliberately kept her eyes on Schicksal. “I don’t know what that means.”
His head tilted as though accepting that response. “Is that your friend?”
“She is.”
He smiled. “Friends are often a reflection of those who choose them. She is a Phoenix; they are very powerful, but, more importantly, very loyal. Just like my child.”
Nadia’s heart fell. She was formulating a better idea of what a father is, and her entire conception of a mother had exploded wide open, but there was something about this man standing next to her. This man who waited for her. He must have loved her.
She turned toward her father.
Schicksal landed; a light breeze puffed past them.
“There is still a lot you need to teach me, father.”
He grabbed her arm as though he just wanted to know what she felt like, “Too much, but there is no time.”
“You’re not stopping me?”
“Nothing can be stopped, Nadia. We are merely actors on a stage, performing a ritual. One that has gone on as long as the universe and will outlast you and me, but we will see each other again when our parts have concluded.”
Her heart was overflowing for this man. A golden liquid pouring out, mixed with both sweet and bitter, but the bitter only made the sweetness sweeter.
“Come with me…” her heart begged, though her voice asked.
“I will, but the time is not right.” He helped her onto Schicksal’s back. “But please take this.” From out of his sleeve, he pulled out a long red sash. He wrapped it around her bald head. “There,” he said as he tied it, “now your mother can see you.”
He held her face in his hands. It awoke something in her. Made her feel small. Made a word inside her. One she was not sure if she should say, but it was floating away like a bubble with only seconds before it was out of her reach to pop it.
“Daddy,” she whispered.
Tears poured from Zoraster’s eyes as he held her. “I love you, Nadia,” he choked out.
They cried together.
When their hearts had emptied into one another’s, enough for the journey ahead, Zoraster stepped off Schicksal with the respect of one who deals with powerful beasts. He looked up at Nadia, and she looked down at him.
“I will return,” her voice calm but the vow true.
His response was a small shrug. “I won’t be here even if you do.”
Her stomach pinched at his words, “Will I see you again?”
A smile appeared as though fading through a fog, “Those you can’t see are closer than those you can. Go now, Nadia, and meet your destiny.”
Nadia could have stayed there forever, and it seemed as though Schicksal knew, but time was not on their side. Raising her head aloft, unfurling her enormous rainbow wings and sprinting, the mighty bird took to the night sky, leaving a piece of Nadia’s heart behind.
The black sky was illuminated by the moon's bright white light. It was not fluorescent like the Dome’s light. While the moon itself was enormous and its light strong, as Nadia looked down, she saw it gave the earth below a very faint ultramarine tint, but it was a beautiful blue. The color of sapphires.
She could see moments when the land gave way to water as the moon reflected back up to her, shimmering like a broken mirror in love with its fractures.
The wind pilling and dragging across her face like smooth ethereal hands caressing her. Preparing her for what was to come, and she let them. Let them soothe her face swollen in tears. Soothe her body, broken by a journey that was approaching its climax. And then, without her knowing, as though an invisible hand reached around her head and undid Zoraster’s knot, her scarf blew away free in the wind, but released from Nadia’s head a river of black hair that shimmered in the moonlight.