On days when his grief threatened to swallow him whole, the man in the cliffside contemplated letting the sea outside his rocky home do just that. Until a year ago, he’d lived in the humble crag with his parents and younger brother. They’d perished on an ordinary afternoon when a sudden spat of waves dashed their simple wooden boat against the rocks. Despite living by the ocean and relying on it for sustenance all those years, neither of the three were particularly good swimmers, not that skill or strength would have saved them in waters as unkind as those. For them, flight was made possible by generating electric current, rendering escape through the air a null proposition when surrounded by mineral-rich, highly conductive seawater. There were some forces one was simply powerless against.
The one left alive, a hardy fellow named Zol, hated to think of what he could have done to prevent their deaths. If anything, he should have been in the boat with them, he told himself. His small family had been his whole world for his entire, isolated life. And now, as a sad fortuity, he was the only one left. He’d ventured up onto the plateau to gather wood the day they died. Why couldn’t he join the dead instead of mourning them? Something about the mundaneness of their demise and his own absence from it left him in a particularly miry pit of despair, so much so that it drove him from his home in the cliff to something even stranger than suicide. On a day no more exceptional than the one that took his family, Zol went on a pilgrimage to seek spiritual guidance.
He hadn’t visited many places in his humble life, owing to the fact that his parents weren’t the social kind; a trait their sons seemed to inherit. But once or twice he remembered journeying together over the ragged, sparsely vegetated plain to the site of an ancient ruin. As he soared above the ground, leaving a trail of lightning in his wake, he recalled bits and pieces of what he what he expected to find. There’d be tents, a throng of people, and constant revelry surrounding the man of wisdom. Though he’d been too young to grasp most of the priest’s meaning, Zol was sure he knew things nobody else did. Could he understand the pain of suffering, or the purpose of a life after all of its meaning was stripped away?
The bloated red sun crested over the horizon halfway through his forty-minute flight. Better to get an early start before the afternoon storms kicked up, and better still to go the faster way instead of wasting time walking for half the day. For all of his time in solitude, Zol wasn’t concerned about his visible arc of power attracting the unwelcome attention of whomever else might roam the wastes. His strength was his confidence. Rather, it was understanding he knew he lacked, mainly the understanding of what good strength was if it couldn’t stop the inevitable.
When he landed on the edge of the temple complex, the ungainly remains of some once proud edifice were the same as they’d been in his memory. The massive pillars of dark stone jutted forth from the red, sandy, plain. Though millennia of erosion had surely taken their toll, it was clear to see these relics were both too large and too precisely crafted to have been made by anyone in recent memory. Sites like these were bound to draw the attention of those who searched for answers the practical world wouldn’t supply. Unchanged though they were, the same could not be said for the more recent additions to the scene. As Zol walked through the edge of the shanty town, pitifully little of it remained. This had been a place of joy and wonder, with hundreds of hopeful souls dancing under banners that were more colorful in his memory than the shabby, dirt-colored things flailing about now. Today, only a few dozen poor and ragged folk remained, huddled around their meager campfires and watching the newcomer with suspicion as he walked among them.
The sight of this long-decayed scene brought an odd stinging sensation to Zol’s eyes, as if a tarnished childhood recollection would make his family that much deader. But perhaps the sting in his eye was nothing. After all, it was an awfully dusty morning.
After a short stroll up what constituted the main ‘avenue,’ Zol found somebody to talk to. The woman in question seemed old enough to potentially remember this place’ s heyday, but young enough to not be completely closed off to speaking with a stranger. Zol tried his luck with her, with little awareness regarding the state of his unkempt hair and beard. She didn’t seem to take offense at his appearance, as most everyone else was in an equally poor state of grooming.
“Please, miss…” he started. The words sounded strange in his ear. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d said anything out loud. “…is there – was there ever – a man here who would talk to big crowds of people?”
She nodded, her eyes flat, as she shifted the clay jar she carried from one hip to another. Zol’s odd way of expressing himself gave her pause, but she still responded as politely as she could manage. It wasn’t like they got many pilgrims these days anyway. “Jowyn’s in. You might even catch him awake if you go now.” Her gaze wandered over her shoulder to a large tent nestled against the exterior of the smooth, temple wall.
Zol nodded in thanks and shuffled off in the direction indicated. He couldn’t help but think Jowyn was an awfully odd name, not that he’d heard a great deal of names before. As he reached the tent in question, where allegedly dwelt the man whose wisdom he might not be able to do without, a sudden sense of unease came over him, as if he’d be better off stopping before things really got started. At once the flap whipped open, revealing a sight more disappointing than the surroundings themselves. The man who lurched before Zol now, squinting at the unfamiliar face, was at least a half head shorter than his visitor, with long, gray-streaked hair and a beard that was equal parts patchy and stringy. Whatever hostility the old priest was prepared to dole out to the petitioner was soon replaced by the poignant realization that no one had come around in a long time. He loosened his grip on the spear he leaned on and ushered Zol into the tent with a half-hearted shrug.
“Are you uh… Jowyn, Sir?” Zol asked warily as he followed the man through the maze of odd stuff coating the floor. Never had he seen so many things in one place. Half of them he couldn’t even name, being not much of a materialist himself.
The man only grunted in the affirmative as he lowered himself onto a pile of old fabrics roughly resembling a seating area. A person-shaped dent indicated a purpose other than seating. He motioned for Zol to take a seat on the opposite side of the pile. “It’s not often someone stops by to hear my tale of woe… or did you have one of your own?” he coughed. The air inside the tent was hazier by a measure than it was outside.
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“Well –” Zol muttered, twiddling his large thumbs as he perched awkwardly in the small space. Already he felt embarrassed for even coming. He hated to explain anything, much less something so personal to a stranger.
“I’ll save you the trouble,” Jowyn interrupted, to Zol’s relief. “It won’t matter who you are or what you’ve been through or even why you’re here, because I only have one thing to say, and it’s the same thing I say to everyone. Those poor idiots out there have heard it so many times I’m sure they know it better than I do. Why they stay, I can’t reason. Maybe they don’t have anywhere better to go…” he trailed off. After an odd pause in which he didn’t even seem to breathe, he inhaled sharply and picked up his focus once again. “A long time ago I lost everything, more than you could possibly imagine. And I mean, I really had it all… fame, power, insight like you wouldn’t believe into mysteries no one can fathom. I’m talking about the answers to questions you wouldn’t even think to ask. But then… but then…” he faded out once more as he raised a withered hand to his eyes for a moment.
“But then?” Zol asked.
“It all fell apart almost as quickly as it began. Just a few short years of bliss and majesty before these last two decades of rot. The fact of it is that I didn’t build any of this on my own, none of us did. Everything you see around you was made by someone else, and it’s been so long none of us remembers who they were. Shouldn’t be an issue to how you live your daily life, right? Doesn’t seem like it’s been for you. Anyway, the problem – or what used to be the solution – arose when I heard the voice reaching out to me from the crystals underneath the floor of the temple back there.”
At this turn in the story, Zol’s eyes widened. It never occurred to him to even consider entering the ruined structure, but after hearing what the priest said he especially didn’t want to. Clearly the old fellow was taking some bizarre assumptions for granted. Whoever heard of a crystal… much less one that talked to people?
“The voice I heard came from far away, from another planet, if you can believe it,” Jowyn continued. Zol did not believe it. “Our world and people are but one of many, and there are countless others among the stars, some who mean us harm, and some who are in just as bad a shape as we are. Matter of fact, you ever look up at the sky and wonder what those big ugly things are floating up there for?”
Zol shook his head warily. It only just now crossed his mind to notice the rings high up in the atmosphere. He felt he was in over his head for not having considered their significance before.
“It doesn’t matter now. The voice told me our greatest enemy had nothing to do with the purple devils who put our whole planet in jail. He even said the day might come for our people to work with the ones who locked us up in order to defeat the real threat! Can you believe that!?” he half shouted, half pled as he kicked over an unfortunate piece of junk in anger. “And to top it all off, one d ay he just up and disappears. It was almost twenty years ago he left, and I haven’t heard him since. He told me he was already a ghost. How’s a ghost go and die again!?”
At this point, Zol knew he was thoroughly lost, and no longer blamed himself for not being able to keep up. He remained quiet and let the old man’s words wash over him like a wave.
“I heard his voice for the last time right as he… right as he told me everything we’d worked for was about to fall into place. He told me he had the last piece, and that it’d all come together soon. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe he went silent because I didn’t tell him the truth, in that I’d lost my half of the deal.” Jowyn lowered his head into his hands and very nearly started to sob, as if whatever wound he carried was as raw as the day it was made. “My woman and child had gone from me nearly three years prior… and I didn’t even know why… I couldn’t even tell him… couldn’t tell him the truth. Somehow I always felt he knew, even if he didn’t say it out loud.”
For a while the old man continued spiraling and repeating himself. On and on he moaned about how the silence from beyond must have surely been his own doing. Zol wasn’t sure what was sadder, the fact that his child’s disappearance paled in comparison to the disappearance of this disembodied voice, or the fact that he talked about his lost daughter as if she were still a baby. Dead or alive, Zol was positive her infancy was long past. In fact, the only thing of which Zol was positive was the assurance that this detour had been, if nothing else, a distraction from his own pain. After so long on his own, the sound of someone else’s rambling was like thick nectar dribbling over his ears. He tuned back into the meat of the monologue right as Jowyn was finishing up.
“– And there you have it… our greatest, most ancient enemy, still at large, and I have no idea where I stand anymore in terms of how to help. The bastard ghoul never even told me what a Human looked like, or what to do if one just fell out of the sky one day. I supposed I’d stab it like I would if I saw one of those purple devils that put us all in jail…” he gestured to the spear at his side, more of a support than a weapon these days.
At this point Zol looked for a polite exit. Being confined to this dank, cluttered tent wasn’t entirely comfortable. He started to think the place was smaller on the inside than it looked on the outside. After another overlong bout of silence, he said the only thing that came to mind. “That’s the craziest thing I ever heard.” It was the truth, but he wasn’t sure it gave the most respectful impression. Thankfully, the priest seemed to agree with him.
“It is. And I’m afraid it’s all I’ve got… well, and this.” He reached into another pile of stuff beside the spot where he would usually lay his head. From it he produced a light wooden cylinder with a couple of holes in it. He held the instrument in one hand while using the other to pack one of the holes with some kind of rank-smelling dried leaf he pulled out of a rough cloth pouch. With a spark from the tip of his finger, he lit the thing on the far end and inhaled from the other, letting the smoke fill the space as if there weren’t another person present. “Want some?” He offered out of obligation, hoping his guest would say no.
“I think I’m good,” Zol coughed. “I wouldn’t know how.” He started to rise and unravel from the stiff, little knot into which he’d twisted himself, more ambivalent about his own lack of decorum than he’d once been. “Better get on back before the storms roll in, and uh… thanks I guess.”
“Just try to learn as much as you can, son. Promise me that. Don’t stay in one spot like those braindead chumps out there and don’t just give up and die like I did either. Grasp onto whatever knowledge is out there. Maybe you’ll be luckier than I was.” These were Jowyn’s final words to Zol as he stretched out on the pile of fabrics and lost himself in his diversion.
Zol nodded and took one last look at the pitiful creature. The man didn’t even meet his gaze, perhaps he hadn’t the whole time. With nothing more to be gained from this odd, and disappointing encounter, Zol turned to leave, careful not to step on anything on the way out. When the shock of the fresher-by-comparison, but still dusty, air hit him, it occurred to him he’d barely uttered a word in the presence of the one whose help he’d come to seek. The man had just talked about himself the whole time. What an off-putting and weak thing, Zol mused, to feel the need to burden others with one’s own suffering. Though he tried to brush off the encounter and not take it too seriously, more of it remained with him than he realized.
