The Forsaken Grove

The clearing was surrounded by a fence of branches, woven together through the centuries. The mesh of white wood reached a dozen meters to the sky before separating into terminal twigs with leaves. They glistened and glowed through the cracks and crags of bark. The ground surrounding the trunks was covered in pastel moss. No other flora was visible through the network of branches. The austerity screamed that there was an active hand maintaining the landscape. But nothing moved except the treetops in the calm breeze.

The center of the clearing was a small plateau that seemed to have grown out of the earth below. It appeared crystalline in composition, Sa’li was no geologist, but it was semi-translucent and contained an ephemeral glow within. It didn’t appear to stop within any short meters. Descending like infiniti into the depths of the earth below. The only breaks in the lattice were the branching form of roots which reflected the reaching of a tree that grew out of the platform slightly off-center, and a metallic pillar which seemed to descend through the plateau into the earth below directly in the center of the small mesa.

The tree was oddly familiar and strikingly alien in equal amounts. It took the form of any of the pear trees from the horticultural levels back home, including a single pear-shaped fruit hanging solemnly from a low branch. But its composition matched more closely the trees surrounding the grove, the wood of the branches was white and luminescent under the bark, the leaves opalescent and pastel in an ombre of blues and pinks. The pear, if it could be called that, was a faceted crystalline shell surrounding a tiny blue-hued swirling nebula with a point of void darkness at its center. Sa’li stared into it, transfixed. The glimmering looked like an entire galaxy.

There were bodies surrounding her. Seemingly frozen in time. Scattered at the periphery of the plateau. She hovered next to the pillar, leaning against it. Her legs were weak. Her hands trembling. A light atop the pillar seemed to recognize her presence and illuminated her face from below.

**

“Where do we go from here, Sybil?” the Countess inquired absently.

Sybil looked around the clearing dramatically before announcing, “well, I can’t say for certain, but my informed opinion would be to follow the only path out of the clearing,” the Countess returned a bemused stare.

The group had come through the void unscathed and stepped out onto a small platform that appeared metallic and took the same form as the floor of the room they had just come from. The void remained open, peering into the submerged ruin of the repository for some minutes before it blinked from existence.

“Will we be able to get back?” Antonia attempted to sound nonchalant in her inquiry, but the tension in her voice lurked below the surface.

“Don’t you worry Toni, I have the sequence to get us back,” Sybil chided while tapping her right temple with her finger. Not one among the party trusted Antonia with any more than was absolutely necessary.

The Countess stepped down from the plateau onto the path. The path was paved with pentagonal stepping bricks the same composition as the metal of the arrival plateau. At the treeline, the composition of the bricks began to include an occasional crystalline brick seemingly placed at random. Between the bricks was lushly filled with a mosaic of pastel mosses.

“It is a pity we couldn’t bring the levicar through the transit,” the Countess bemoaned as she pulled a misstepped foot from the mud beneath a patch of trampled moss. She daintily shook her foot. Sa’li could see Sybil roll her eyes before moving past the Countess to the front of the group.

“So what are we looking for, Researcher Groundshatter?” Antonia queried with mock esteem. Sybil looked to the Countess sideways, she arched her brow. The Countess waved affirmation with her hand, and Sybil took a breath.

“Metaphorically speaking, as close to a translation I can get from the documents is a ‘Great Source of Power.’ Though what that power does or enables remains to be seen. Physically speaking, there is an access terminal accessible via the pathway we took to enter this world. Presumably, at the end of this path that we are following,” Sybil explained academically.

“And what do we do when we get there?” Antonia probed.

“You will do nothing child, Sybil and I will decipher the access sequence and acquire whatever this power is."

*

“Sa’li, I think we got off on the wrong foot,” Antonia had drifted back with Sa’li, trailing out of earshot of the Countess, Sybil, and the guard, “I know you don’t trust me. But the Countess is making a play for more power when she already holds so much. I know that it must feel like we are of different worlds, but compared to the Countess, we are both about as important as ants.”

“Sure, what is your point?”

“She has too much power already. Where is ours? We struggle at the bottom. Some more than others. Some more than either you or I. All the while the Countess galavants around the known worlds on the backs of people like us. Hells, she has had you acting as her stand-in for months of unpleasant treks! I’m sure she promised you something, maybe a lot. But whatever she is offering you is a raindrop from the ocean of her wealth, influence, and power. We could take this power of the Lost Ones. We could take it and be her equal. Her rival. Maybe even her better.”

“And what if we can’t do anything with this power?”

“What if she can’t? It is an ancient alien artifact whatever it is, who’s to say what secrets it holds.”

“And what if I agree and you decide to stab me in the back anyway?” Sa’li saw a false concern wash over Antonia’s face, “Seems like a lot of risks.”

“Oh, are you still fearful of those news reports about me killing my parents? Like I have said repeatedly, it was not me. That is exactly the kind of trite political scheming we can put a stop to. But no risk, no reward. As they say,” Antonia took a few slow breaths as the pair strode along the path, “Consider it Sa’li, we could own the known worlds.”

Own the known worlds? Why would Sa’li want to own the known worlds? That would be owning the lives of quadrillions of souls. Owning the power and responsibility to make their lives heaven or more likely hell. Sa’li didn’t want to own the known worlds. If she had the power, Sa’li wanted to free them. She began to realize that if either of these two ended up with this power it simply meant a further consolidation of means at the top, and further subjugation at the bottom. Disparity bred disparity her parents always preached. If she helped the Countess, it was a sure thing, she would be set for life. Maybe have the means to help her parents if they were in prison instead of dead. If not, she would at least be set for life, no more toiling in the weeds. If she can’t upend the system, she might as well live comfortably within it. And whether or not Antonia turned on her, she would not trust that sociopath with any power, regardless of which story about her parents’ deaths turned out true.

The path had become more crystalline step stones than the metallic ones it began as. The treeline walls opened into a clearing ahead.

**

Antonia had somehow gotten a gun and left the guard bleeding on the ground, incapacitated or worse. So much for the Countess’ protection. Antonia stared down the barrel at the Countess, rage had boiled to the surface. Her monomania was locked on her nemesis.

“You thought you could handle me, old woman? Do you think your powers are infinite?” Antonia raged. “I have taken what I wanted before, and I will again.”

“Oh child, you may think that you have won, but how will you return without our help? How will you get off that frozen waste? What ship will take you back to known space? What will you do with this artifact once you get there? I see your drive, you remind me of myself when I was younger, but I own half the industry of the known worlds. Something that will be necessary to unlock the power locked away here,” the Countess had an almost imperceptible smirk on her face, and Sybil stood to her right with a nonplussed look.

“Oh, I’ve managed before, I think I can manage again,” and she pulled the trigger.

Shock rolled over the Countess’ face as she realized her miscalculation, blood began to pour down her abdomen out of a hole in the center of mass of her suit. Sybil’s eyes darted to the Countess before turning and sprinting down the path back the way they came.

“Come back here!” Antonia turned to pursue her, firing wide to attempt to scare her into submission.

Sa’li saw the only feasible point of shelter from Antonia’s fire as a small pillar in the center of the crystalline plateau and ran towards it. As she crossed the threshold she felt the breath knocked from her lungs and a deep reverberation propagate from around her. Her feet kept moving under her, taking her towards the pillar. She became aware of shouting behind her and looked back to see Antonia yelling at her through a shimmering wall of nothingness, rage consuming her, gun aimed directly at her. She fired three times in quick succession. The shimmering barrier alighted and rippled between Sa’li and Antonia. The brightness faded and Antonia knelt on the ground, gun at her side, bleeding from multiple points of contact on her body.

Sa’li turned her head back forward. It felt like she was running through water. Resistance in the air making her movements slow and stuttered.

She found herself hovered next to the pillar and leaned against it. Her legs were weak. Her hands trembled. A light atop the pillar seemed to recognize her presence and illuminated her face from below. The tree on her other side began to glow from within. The pear took on a deeper brightness and complexity.

She looked down to the pillar and found a recessed spot in the shape of the fruit. Without considering the implications she reached out and plucked the fruit from the tree. She turned and placed the fruit on the pedestal. The crystalline shell shattered and formed a shimmering cloud around her hand and forearm. The nebula inside swirled out and formed sharp streaks in the air. Then all of the pieces descended into the flesh of her arm. A sensation of glistening warmth flooded through her for moments. It spread up her arm and sparked every nerve in her body. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them, she was standing in an unfathomably large space constructed of the same wood that the Countess used on her ship. It was formed into intricate logical patterns. Unlike the decorative pieces in the Countess’ possession, the walls of this building seemed to have a purpose of design not unlike that of circuitry. And the wood was alive in a way she had only seen in the groves surrounding the planet she came from. Visions flooded her mind so fast they became a kaleidoscopic wave battering at her consciousness. It became overwhelming and again she closed her eyes.

When she opened them, she was on the Countess’ ship, the Vast Meridian. She stood in the receiving bay, surrounded by the carved, dead, white glowing wood. Her arm was laced with a filigree of crystal and light. Sybil, and a number of the crew knelt before her.

“My lady, how may we be of service?” Sybil said with deference.

“Take me home.”