James

James stood before a rust-streaked rock nestled in a half-collapsed alcove covered in creeping moss and shrine markers. A typical prayer hollow by the looks of it, yet the brief he’d gotten from their spymaster called it Passage 9-L.

Now, where the hell was that door? He reached out, feeling the damp on his fingers, tracing lines that were probably natural.

“Hang on, what are you?” he murmured under his breath, his attention caught by a small indent that was not natural at all. “Oh, that’s how you’re hiding.”

He was nothing if not impressed with the subtlety of merging the door with the surroundings. Elegant, he could give them that. But where was the key? There was no handle, no key hole, no arcane lockpad. For a moment, he stumbled in his resolve before he caught himself.

No matter its technical prowess, this was the threshold to the home of the ancient enemy of his people. The people who slaughtered his kin to gain control of the Veil, taking systems not rightfully theirs.

Their blood, sweat, and tears had not gone into that back-breaking effort to unite the realms through Portals. Instead, the akati simply provided the key to make it work, and for that, they proclaimed themselves overlords over all reality.

A noise nearly made him jump out of his skin, moving away from the hollow as if caught with his hands in a cookie jar. An elven woman laughed at him as she approached, never slowing as she shot over her shoulder in common:

“We do not judge those who pray here, merchant. May the Fatestitcher light your way.”

“And yours,” James managed, his voice strangled, his smile sheepish.

She disappeared around a bend, and soon her steps receded into the distance. His heart pounded in his ears. Why? Was this doubt? No, it must be something else. Too much sugar, perhaps.

In the silence, a new sound of pebbles being dislodged echoed loudly. Thinking fast, he wiggled into a crevice barely fit for a man. A group of blue-skinned beings passed through the tunnel, chatting in clicks and whistles. James held his breath and slipped further out of sight just as the sound of padded footsteps grew nearer.

A temple worker wrapped in a brown cloak came jogging along the path, greeting the group of strange-looking beings with barely a nod. Hood pulled up against the wind outside, and a scarf tied around their mouth and nose made it difficult to discern their identity. But he didn’t need to know. All that mattered was that the person touched a spot on the side of the passage, and the whole wall slid open, revealing a soft glow further in.

Hardening his heart, James abandoned his hiding place and slipped in across the threshold, feeling the gust of displaced air when the door closed. Beyond the door was a narrow corridor, walls pressing in, covered in fading carvings. Scenes of gods weaving stars into threads, of titans plummeting from their power, of rivers flowing backwards. Dust hung heavy, and beneath it all was a low hum that felt wrong.

Hsi Ten, as legendary as Agartha herself, wound its way deep, its depth dimly lit by an unknown source. For all James could tell, it infused the very floors and walls themselves. As if the stone itself were luminescent.

Much to his relief, the person he’d followed hurried away without looking back. For being a well-protected and secretive nation, the Captain of the Insurrection was less than impressed. The passage led him further downward, deeper into the mountain. Time felt uncertain. The tunnel twisted, then forked. He chose the right-hand passage by memory of the blueprints he’d been presented with. There were no markings here, only the scent of damp ash and wilted leaves.

Finally, the tunnel widened, and he found himself coming in sideways to the official entrance to the fabled Shimbhala Temple. It was easy to see why they wrote songs about this place. Myths about monsters lurking in the shadows came unbidden to his mind.

“Yadda, yadda. Focus, James.”

The chamber was massive. At first glance, nothing to remember, but appearances deceive. The polished floor was tended to, yet covered with a faint layer of dust, making it impossible not to leave footprints. Evidenced by the person who had so kindly and unknowingly let him inside. It was a remarkable piece of detail he hadn’t thought of himself.

Little by little, the entrance chamber revealed more and more of itself. His feet planted where they stood, he had neither leaped for cover nor hightailed it out of there. It was all very curious.

High above, carved in three-foot-high akatian letters but in the common tongue, were the words: In Shadow, I walk the Pattern that was sown. Which did nothing to quell the storm of emotions that ran through him. Anger. Resentment. Awe.

Most of all, he hated how these people filled him with awe. How he felt so small standing in their home. Then there was the glee at an illevian having crossed their threshold without them knowing.

From where he stood, tunnels shot off left and right, diverging into an impossible labyrinth full of dead ends and narrow passages no fully grown person could squeeze through. A river rushed somewhere in the distance, but apart from that, the silence was deafening. And deceptive.

When James finally moved, it was with a certain amount of regret. Carefully, he stepped where the scout had moved through the dust, trying not to leave too many marks of his own. It wasn’t hard to figure out which way to take. The akati had never been a people who hid their intentions. Nor were they a people accustomed to subterfuge.

“So much the better,” he thought.

The largest and widest tunnel continued forward and downward until he lost track of time and distance. Before long, he wished he’d spent more time on his cardio for the inevitable running escape.

In the middle of making a list of things he needed to do to improve future getaways, the tunnel gave way to a massive cave with a roof filled with silver veins supported by intricately decorated pillars. Each sculpted into one original Guardian of Agartha, surrounded by faint threads of shimmering light that crisscrossed the cavern in colors that had no name.

There they were. Alura and Eio to one side. Fahrain and Feya to the other.

He recognized them because even illevians were told the story in school. Of the time when the ill-fated Portal co-op began. Which, through a series of unfortunate events, led him to stand in the holiest of the holiest temples on a mission of no good.

Shimbhala rose around him. Once again, his throat went dry and his heart skipped a beat. The sensation was fainter this time. He ran his mission through his head, making five different plans to avoid surprises.

Carefully, he schooled his expression and looked around, committing every detail to memory in case it would turn out important further down the line. It was all he could do not to grin madly and punch the air. His report would be the talk of Sangora. He knew the status of his reputation and liked to keep it that way, but a little recognition didn’t hurt.

Sections divided the walls in equal parts, ledges jutting out in increasing depths until they reached the floor like a terraced garden overflowing with plants of all variations. A trickle of water flowed from one to the other into pools filtered through the earth.

James was no gardener, but even he could name some of these plants. Tundra Garlic and Ashwalts with their tall stems and white flowers the size of his head. Q’minyr, the miracle herb native to Ala and the former continent of Toura. Anneonder and bitter root, hemlock and feverfew and lavender.

One ledge was even covered with qattu guo. But the sight of a small patch of blood red flowers on black stems sent his skin shivering with sudden cold. Yijo Guo. When his lungs screamed, he realized he’d forgotten to breathe. That flower. So vile in this form, but the substance one could extract was sweet. Sweeter than anything this world could offer. It was everything.

Everything.

Pain shot through his palms where his nails had dug in. A drop under his tongue and the world would soften, slow, blur into warm forgetfulness. No pain. No fear. Just blissful dissolve of memory, duty, and identity. Gods. James groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

It had been so long since the drug had held him prisoner, but the traces were still there. Breathe in, hold, breathe out. He repeated the pattern till the yearning faded away in disappointment.

“I will walk in pain, for pain is not numb. I will walk with purpose, for purpose is not passive. I will feel, for if I feel I am alive.” The mantra Alex had taught him sang in his mind, over and over, until he was sure he was in complete control again.

Opening his eyes, he looked at Shimbhala’s temple chamber and saw that the majority of the garden was taken up by a vine with luminous flowers and petals which appeared to hold stars within them. It climbed where it could and crawled across the ground where it could not rise.

Here and there, luminescent nectar crystallized and petrified into ever-growing droplets. Blue light pulsating beneath layer upon layer of fine crystal growing with each coat of nectar, till they were perfectly round.

“Bingo.” James grinned.

Most believed that the Orbs that gave the akati all their power were crafted, but they were wrong. Grown right here, they sprang from the nectar of the Yllathar Vine. Plucked too early, and they die. Plucked too late, and they were said to dream, which he didn’t believe for one bit. But it was an evocative image to ponder over an ale or five.

While the gardens made up the peripheries of the temple, the open space within the circle of Guardians remained clear. Most of the floor was taken up by a large circle covered in soft, black volcanic sand glittering in the ever-changing light.

People were moving around. Workers and temple keepers. All dressed in a subdued earthen-colored robe with a hood most left down. Tool belts tied the robes firmly in place. So far, no one seemed to have noticed him, a visitor wrapped in shadows.

On the far side of the circle, a strange-looking pedestal caught his eye and stopped him in his tracks. It was solid, jet black, with red stripes and standing high enough to carry significance but low enough not to be mistaken for an altar. Placed between the pool of sand and the ornamental entrance into what he could only presume was the Akati Empire. His breath caught in his throat. The great empire of his enemy lay just a few small steps away.

Cold shivers ran down his back and didn’t stop until he averted his eyes.

Placed by the next pillar over, he spotted what he needed. The robe had been carelessly flung on top of a workstation. Practically an invitation for someone, anyone, to borrow it.

So he did.

Whoever it belonged to was unfortunately bigger than James. The tool belt didn’t fit as snugly as he hoped, but it would do. The belt hung at an angle down his hip, making the prongs of the tools collide with his thigh at every step. 

“That’s gonna leave a mark.” He grimaced.

One thing about the pain was that it kept his bout of admiration to a minimum. But there was so much to see. It was one thing to hear about new Agartha, another entirely to experience it. No matter that now, James sobered up and set to work.

Like a shadow detaching itself from the inner corners of the temple, he hovered by the vines, scanning them for one no one would miss. There were at least half a dozen.

The intel he’d received estimated only four were given to the Guardians at the Awakening, meaning the others were spares that fuelled the wards around the borders.

One could ask why he, of all people, got tasked with taking one from the gardens of Shimbhala if an outsider couldn’t tell which worked and which didn’t. But he’d learned not to make such inquiries. It was the way the Insurrection worked. Besides, it was a straightforward mission.

“I want an Orb,” his brother-of-heart had said after an evening of searching for the bottom of a Varuvian moonshine bottle in celebration of James’s birthday.

“Sure, let me just pop over to the Empire and get one for you,” James joked, head comfortably buzzing. Alexandre didn’t crack a smile. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“Yes,” he said. “I want you to go to Agartha Nova and get me an Orb.”

“Come off it. You can’t be serious.”

“Do I look like I am joking?”

He did not.

In fact, James hadn’t seen his brother so serious since the day he announced the leader of the Syndicate a damn fool, claiming he could do a much better job. He remembered how that ended. Remembered the suffocating feeling of realization that his brother was the person responsible for so much death in the base.

It took considerable effort to wrap his head around the purpose of the Key and the necessity of an Orb, as Alexandre explained his reasoning, his master plan. Only so much cut through the numbness of the buzz.

But one thing he recalled. Alexandre’s fervent gaze when he grabbed him and declared: “We’re going to give them freedom, James. No more old prophecies with vague omens. No more Oracles. Just choice.”

He also vaguely recalled that Alexandre appeared strangely sober for such an evening and realized sometime in the middle of the night and in the middle of expelling the moonshine, that he’d been tricked.

There was nothing delicate about his constitution the next morning either. Every sound threatened to burst James’ head open and thank the heavens for a murky day. He’d promised his services, regardless of his ability to do so, and there was nothing to be done.

Next week, he was being strapped into the dragonfly ship with Arman barking rapid instructions at him. Alexandre grasped his shoulder, jostling him around a bit, wishing him a safe voyage before closing the hatch.

“Which one did you want me to get again?”

Alexandre barely smiled. “Whichever you lay your hand on, ódir. A ward one!”

“You gotta give me more than that!” But the ship was lifting off, and the ground crew waved him off. Alexandre had already turned his back and was walking away.

Eyeing the patch of vines next to him, he pondered his choices. Alexandre was adamant it had to be a ward Orb. How could he choose the right one if they all looked the same?

“Whichever you lay your hand on.”

Glancing over his shoulder, he counted the number of people in the temple. 35. They moved with purpose. Never rushing. Each plant nurtured, trimmed, and tended to. In the corner of his eye, he noticed the graceful moves of a younger woman walking around with a spray bottle, tending the green moss on the pillars. She was very thorough. And very appealing.

“Geez, get a grip.” He gave himself a mental slap.

Based on her pattern, she’d be by his side in less than two minutes. The longer he lingered, the more likely one of three things would happen: the pretty girl would talk to him and it would become acutely apparent that he did not speak High Akatian, there would be a headcount, or the owner of the robe returned.

His gaze snapped to an Orb hiding beneath the leaves on the second ledger from the floor. Strange. At first glance, he hadn’t seen it at all. Not one to argue with a rock, he drew closer, trying his best to emulate the stance that the other workers had taken when approaching an Orb.

At the last second, he caught himself, making the gesture of greeting that an akatian deserter had taught him over a drinking game in a tavern before he got himself arrested and hauled to god knows where.

James remained still, holding his breath. He might as well have stood on that pedestal, loudly announcing his deception. When no one spoke up, he went back to study the Orb that had caught his eye. In and out. Simple.

He crouched down, noting how it appeared smaller than the others and oddly shaped, like a spearhead, or the tip of an arrow. Far from a perfect sphere. It would amount to nothing, surely.

Without meaning to, James reached out, all thought of urgency dismissed from his mind. A light gasp slipped his lips. There was no temple, no mission. Only the Orb. And its depth was mesmerizing. He longed to touch it.

Maybe it was a spur of the imagination, but it was as if it called out to him with a thousand voices greeting him like a long-lost friend.

The surface was both cool and warm beneath his touch.