Blazing Flux: Book Two of The Flux Catastrophe by Jonathan Weiss

Author:Jonathan Weiss [Weiss, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Helixic Books
Published: 2024-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter twenty-three

The War Machine

Ryza expected little more than tantalising hints when he raised his thoughts with Archarus. The journey back to the bunker proper stretched on longer than it had first seemed, so even the futile conversation was worth the passing time.

‘What did you want from the flux, anyway?’

Archarus curled his lip as he pondered the question. ‘To understand it.’

‘Then?’

‘Nothing.’

‘There must’ve been something.’

Archarus simply shrugged. ‘Not that I am aware of. I am… I was a scholar, Ryza.’

‘I got told there was a report about this place.’

The shadow dancer made a face like he was sucking his teeth, but no sound came out. At least not one Ryza could hear over the rattle of his vent mask and the distant grind of machinery.

‘The last thing I wanted.’

‘Why?’ Ryza asked.

‘It creates a closed mind. An understanding from which none of what surrounds us would be possible.’

Ryza wanted to chuckle, but his mask wouldn’t let him. ‘What’s around us is the opposite of understandable.’

‘And isn’t that fantastic?’ Archarus said. ‘We may observe it in its true form. Controlled by the whims of one rather than many.’

‘He wanted the machines…’ Ryza said slowly. ‘I wanted the flux not to blaze.’

‘Precisely the point. It doesn’t just mimic the form of those it contacts. It mimics the mind as well. The dead want for nothing, which is why the autominds are so inert, yet when the flux is grasped by the living, it takes another form.’

Ryza stopped on the footbridge. The machinery was only just visible at the far end, the dying glow orbs a speck among the faint smoke. Looking into the flux below his feet, his own reflection stared back.

‘But why isn’t it destroyed?’ Ryza asked. ‘I want nothing more than that.’

‘It’s not about that. It’s about what you want for yourself. What everything with a spark in their mind desires.’

‘To live. To control their life. But that goes for you as well, doesn’t it?’

‘Perhaps it does. But I see no way back from what I’ve become. You, on the other hand, have done the opposite. I believe that at the moment you controlled Revance, that fraction of a second of pure resonance, you used the flux to live. Tied yourself to it. You wanted it to save you, and it did.’

‘No!’ Ryza said quickly. ‘That isn’t what happened! There were autominds! I used the autominds!’

‘What difference do they make from controlling the flux directly?’ Archarus shot back. ‘Why should the flux behave as you demand it to?’

The realisation was terrifying. Painful. But for Ryza, it was not new.

‘Because I controlled it.’

Archarus’ form faded to shadow, then nothingness as Ryza grappled to suppress the revelation.

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