Empires of Flux & Anchor

at the mercy of the flow, but, suddenly, she was plunged back into outside air and then fell into a roaring pool. She panicked, but then felt strong arms around her and let herself be pulled by them. She assumed it was Matson, but right then she didn’t care who it might be.

And then, quite suddenly, the roar and the wetness stopped and they were flung and dropped onto a spongy surface. The water itself struck the Flux barrier and crackled, and was converted into energy itself and added to the void. Wracked with pain, she passed out.

When she awoke to the same formless void, it seemed almost a familiar friend. She tried to move, and found every single part of her body felt broken. She must have called out, because Matson heard and came over to her. The sight of him was almost unbearable, as he’d removed all his clothes and laid them out on the ground to dry.

“You all right?” he asked, concerned. “You had a pretty bad time in there. I got sort of banged-up myself, but not like that.”

She saw that there were huge bruises on his arms and on the right side of his chest. He also had a nasty swollen place over his right eye.

“I think you got several broken bones,” he told her. “You’ve been out a while. We’re in Flux, though, so you’ve got your power back.”

“Yeah, Flux,” she responded weakly. “But the pain’s tremendous! I need to do a thorough self-examination and construct—agh!—the proper… formulae and con… centrate. The pain… makes it… hard to… concentrate.”

He nodded. “Take it slow and easy and one step at a time. Those forces out there got no place else to go, and I don’t think anybody knows we’re here.” He paused a moment. “Just don’t die on me, Cass.”

She smiled, and drifted back into sleep. It was a turbulent, nightmarish sleep in which she was back in that roaring tunnel once again, only this time not alone. Suzl and Spirit were there, and they were drowning and she couldn’t save them; the whole of Hope opened before her, but all the priestesses turned away from her and began worshipping statues, laughing statues, of Mervyn, and Krupe, and the rest of the Nine, and of Coydt and Haldayne as well. Matson was there, too; she kept trying to reach him for help, but the closer she got to him, the more out of reach he became.

She awoke again, and the pain was worse, but her mind was clearer. She looked around and didn’t see Matson, but that was all right. She remembered the horror of the dream and feared she might have been calling out things best left unspoken. She tried doing a diagnostic on herself and found that she was in fact in pretty bad shape. Some of her internal injuries were serious enough that she might well have died from them, and would, if they were not corrected.

She took self-repair in slow stages, shutting off all pain from any but the area she was working on. After a few tries, she realized she just wasn’t going to be able to do a piecemeal approach. She brought up and constructed a spell for a whole new body based on the old, a spell that was tremendously intricate and difficult. She almost passed out several times in doing it, but finally managed and put the spell into effect. She felt relief flow through her and lay there for a while luxuriating in that feeling.

Matson returned. He’d put on his pants, but little else, and they were still slightly wet. “I assume that’s still you in there,” he said after a while.

She sat up and smiled. “Yes, it’s me. It’s a body I designed for visiting Spirit in secret. The only one I could manage on short notice. It’ll give me time to concentrate on reforming me as myself.”

He nodded. “Well, it’s not all that flattering, but if it lets you conjure up something to eat and a way to dry everything out, that’s fine with me.”

With no references, time had little meaning in the void, but they got their food and drink and dried not only the clothes but the weapons and ammunition as well, and she managed to get back somewhat to a normal appearance. Well, not quite normal. She had felt herself eighteen again, out here in the void with just Matson, and somehow she had come out looking eighteen in spite of her vows or herself. She could not have him the way she wanted him, but they were together now, alone, in Flux, and for the moment that was enough.

In a while, they decided to risk forays into Anchor to see what was going on. Borrowing a trick from Haldayne, one of the Seven she’d bested before, she turned herself into a normal-looking bird and flew out and over the wall. Matson, too, could and did become transformed by her power, and together they scouted the area.

It would have been easy if she had been able to change back in Anchor, but she could not, nor could she be some human-sized flying beast, for that would require either too much wing to remain inconspicuous or too much weight to stay aloft and remain in touch with the required physics. Still, they were able to map out the terrain and get a look at the guard post and the Flux machine itself. That had been the one risky point, since the wizard operating it might well have sensed her power, and any observer who saw two birds fly into the void would be instantly suspicious of them.

Both became intimately familiar with the town of Lamoine and the military post on the wall. The town disgusted her. The natives there had discarded ways and attitudes of generations very easily, and both men and women seemed to be acting under the new rules automatically and without threat or supervision. She had expected some laxity, particularly among women off by themselves, but she’d seen none. Of course, their proximity to Flux and a wizard would tend to make them model citizens, she reasoned. Otherwise, model citizens could be made. Her opinion of the human race in general took something of a beating.

There were some large, predatory species of birds in the area that had been imported from some far-off Anchor generations ago to control a rodent infestation. These had strength and speed, and she used their form to perch right on the wall near the emplacements. They used this not only to steal some more palatable food by snatching it with strong claws, but to snatch items occasionally from the emplacement as well. They didn’t need much; once in Flux with one of them, she didn’t have to know what it was to duplicate it.

Still, they kept planning and putting off any real attack. For one thing, they hoped for some time that Suzl and Spirit would eventually show up, and they undertook long searches for them to no avail. When they didn’t appear, and had to be assumed captive, another problem arose.

“The Guardian said we needed the Soul Rider to knock out the machine,” she reminded him. “It obviously amplifies Flux power. How can we do anything without Spirit?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he replied, “and I feel we have to try. I keep going over that Guardian’s message again and again.”

“It said we needed the Soul Rider to knock out the machine and its operator,” she recalled.

“Uh-huh. I know we’ve been over this a hundred times, but I knew there was something not right about that, and when you said it, it just hit me. It didn’t say the machine and its operator. It said the machine or its operator.”

“So?”

“If we knock out that guard post, the guy in Flux won’t know it right off. The sound’s dampened, as you know. I looked over that machine again and again, and that open operator’s cab is only a little over one meter into Flux.”

“So?”

“If I can get my back cleared, I can take him. He’s like most all the wizards; he doesn’t think that anything can hurt him in Flux without being in Flux, and maybe he’s right. But I got a trick I pulled over twenty years ago on the border of a Fluxland called Rakarah that might just work here.”

But it would take two to work it all, and she was still undecided as to what to do. She simply did not want the specter of her homeland devastated, and she certainly didn’t want it on her head. It was so nice and comfortable being here, just she and Matson, no stress, no responsibility, and nowhere to go. He was getting restless, yes, but he understood her agony and was willing to wait a while.

And then, flying over Lamoine, they’d spotted a carriage coming into town with some brown-uniformed officer and his lady driving. A close, curious inspection sparked some familiarity in that woman, and when the pair picnicked near the wall, she was able to get a closer and more positive view.

It was definitely Suzl! Suzl, decked out like all the others, and acting just like they did, and seemingly not minding a bit. She watched as they packed up and walked up to the gate, then to the wall, then down the other side, and then saw, as they approached Flux and the big machine, another figure, casually dressed and in no uniform, come out of the small temporary guard station on the wall and descend to the