(So alive, I think again, and this thought sends a shudder through the network, because Gaewha was thinking it, too, and Dushwha, and it is Remwha who takes us to task with a crack like a slipstrike fault: Fools, we will die if you don’t focus! So I let this thought go.)
And—ah, yes, framed there on-screen, centered in our perception like an eye glaring down at its quarry: the onyx. Positioned, as Kelenli last bade it, above Corepoint.
I am not nervous, I tell myself as I reach for it.
The onyx isn’t like the other fragments. Even the moonstone is quiescent by comparison; it is only a mirror, after all. But the onyx is powerful, frightening, the darkest of dark, unknowable. Where the other fragments must be sought and actively engaged, it snatches at my awareness the instant I come near, trying to pull me deeper into its rampant, convecting currents of silver. When I have connected to it before, the onyx has rejected me, as it has done for all the others in turn. The finest magests in Syl Anagist could not fathom why—but now, when I offer myself and the onyx claims me, suddenly I know. The onyx is alive. What is just a question in the other fragments has been answered here: It sesses me. It learns me, touching me with a presence that is suddenly undeniable.
And in the very moment when I realize this and have enough time to wonder fearfully what these presences think of me, their pathetic descendant made from the fusion of their genes with their destroyers’ hate—
—I perceive at last a secret of magestry that even the Niess simply accepted rather than understood. This is magic, after all, not science. There will always be parts of it that no one can fathom. But now I know: Put enough magic into something nonliving, and it becomes alive. Put enough lives into a storage matrix, and they retain a collective will, of sorts. They remember horror and atrocity, with whatever is left of them—their souls, if you like.
So the onyx yields to me now because, it senses at last, I too have known pain. My eyes have been opened to my own exploitation and degradation. I am afraid, of course, and angry, and hurt, but the onyx does not scorn these feelings within me. It seeks something else, however, something more, and finally finds what it seeks nestled in a little burning knot behind my heart: determination. I have committed myself to making, of all this wrongness, something right.
That’s what the onyx wants. Justice. And because I want that too—
I open my eyes in flesh. “I’ve engaged the control cabochon,” I report for the conductors.
“Confirmed,” says Gallat, looking at the screen where Biomagestry monitors our neuroarcanic connections. Applause breaks out among our observers, and I feel sudden contempt for them. Their clumsy instruments and their weak, simple sessapinae have finally told them what is as obvious to us as breathing. The Plutonic Engine is up and running.
Now that the fragments have all launched, each one rising to hum and flicker and hover over two hundred and fifty-six city-nodes and seismically energetic points, we begin the ramp-up sequence. Among the fragments, the pale-colored flow buffers ignite first, then we upcycle the deeper jewel tones of the generators. The onyx acknowledges sequence initialization with a single, heavy blat of sound that sends ripples across the Hemispheric Ocean.
My skin is tight, my heart a-thud. Somewhere, in another existence, I have clenched my fists. We have done so, across the paltry separation of six different bodies and two hundred and fifty-six arms and legs and one great black pulsing heart. My mouth opens (our mouths open) as the onyx aligns itself perfectly to tap the ceaseless churn of earth-magic where the core lies exposed far, far below. Here is the moment that we were made for.
Now, we are meant to say. This, here, connect, and we will lock the raw magical flows of the planet into an endless cycle of service to humankind.
Because this is what the Sylanagistines truly made us for: to affirm a philosophy. Life is sacred in Syl Anagist—as it should be, for the city burns life as the fuel for its glory. The Niess were not the first people chewed up in its maw, just the latest and cruelest extermination of many. But for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress. And now, if nothing else is done, Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them. There’s not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone must suffer, if the rest are to enjoy luxury.
Better the earth, Syl Anagist reasons. Better to enslave a great inanimate object that cannot feel pain and will not object. Better Geoarcanity. But this reasoning is still flawed, because Syl Anagist is ultimately unsustainable. It is parasitic; its hunger for magic grows with every drop it devours. The Earth’s core is not limitless. Eventually, if it takes fifty thousand years, that resource will be exhausted, too. Then everything dies.
What we are doing is pointless and Geoarcanity is a lie. And if we help Syl Anagist further down this path, we will have said, What was done to us was right and natural and unavoidable.
No.
So. Now, we say instead. This, here, connect: pale fragments to dark, all fragments to the onyx, and the onyx … back to Syl Anagist. We detach the moonstone from the circuit entirely. Now all the power stored in the fragments will blast through the city, and when the Plutonic Engine dies, so will Syl Anagist.
It begins and ends long before the conductors’ instruments even register a problem. With the others joined to me, our tune gone silent as we settle and wait for the feedback loop to hit us, I find myself content. It will be good not to die alone.
But.
But.
Remember. We were not the only ones who chose to fight back that day.
This is a thing I will realize only later, when I visit the ruins of Syl Anagist and look into empty sockets to see iron needles protruding from their walls. This is an enemy I will understand only after I have been humbled and remade at its feet … but I will explain it now, so that you may learn from my suffering.
I spoke to you, not long ago, of a war between the Earth and the life upon its surface. Here is some enemy psychology: The Earth sees no difference between any of us. Orogene, still, Sylanagistine, Niess, future, past—to it, humanity is humanity. And even if others had commanded my birth and development; even if Geoarcanity has been a dream of Syl Anagist since long before even my conductors were born; even if I was just following orders; even if the six of us meant to fight back … the Earth did not care. We were all guilty. All complicit in the crime of attempting to enslave the world itself.
Now, though, having pronounced us all guilty, the Earth handed out sentences. Here, at least, it was somewhat willing to offer credit for intent and good behavior.
This is what I remember, and what I pieced together later, and what I believe. But remember—never forget—that this was only the beginning of the war.