The Twenty-Eighth Entry

There was a book in the library on Kanav that I often flipped open at night. Not for its passages, but its images. It had no cover - its front and back a hard dark purple surface. The images scratched and drawn as if the artist was drowning in madness. It depicted galaxies swallowed whole by a darkness, tendrils pouring into the blackness of space to drag into its abyss the only lights left giving evidence to existence. The words accompanying had little to no meaning, gibberish written to somehow explain the imagery. Some passages, even literal in nonsense. Perhaps both the writer and the artist were lunatics, but both seemed adamant in depicting something.

Mira had explained to me that the book was called Suffering: the end of all humanity.

And I explained to her: these are images of the Obelisk.

 

Entering Obelisk space was both seen and felt. Aberus and I stood on the bridge of the Harrower. The last jump into silence. I wasn’t sure if I had ever been to Obelisk space, I couldn’t recall a time, but everything in my being ebbed of memory. This was where I began. The cosmic oblivion that is Obelisk space is nothing but dim stars, shadowed by a veil, almost impossible to see and hard to understand that we were floating somewhere in deep space. The core of the universe obvious, there was nothing in its direction.

I could feel the harsh whispers of the Obelisk, biting and thrashing about in the dark recesses of my mind. Aberus and I shared a glance at one another.

“Is it speaking to you?” Aberus asked.

“Yes.” I answered.

“What is it saying?” Aberus asked.

“I do not know. It speaks, but it does not form words.”

“Then we are no different, I was never able to understand it either. It speaks perhaps, not to us, but our instincts. Compelling us. I wonder now, why it does not compel us to speak to it.” Aberus said.

We were silent, the whispers still speaking to us. Yet, its words felt like nothing more than words. It spoke but did not compel.

“We should hurry.” Aberus suddenly said and tapped upon the panel in front of him.

The Harrower propelled forward into the black and in a direction slightly away from the center of the universe. Something stirred within me as I stared in its direction, the Obelisk beyond view.

“I think I was a man once.” Aberus said.

“When?” I asked.

“A long time ago, like a fairy tale. A man who saw and knew too much. Who spoke too little, and wrote too few words.” Aberus said.

A’re and Yulthar walked onto the bridge, the door seeming silent next to the whispers.

“So, this is Obelisk space?” A’re rhetorically asked, “It’s worse than what mother spoke of, and anything I had imagined.”

Yulthar stood next to me attempting to hide his shaking hands as if a chill whipped over his body.

“Hold onto that fear,” Aberus said looking upon Yulthar, “It may be the only thing that saves you from this Oblivion.”

“Where are we going?” A’re asked.

“There’s a planet out here.” Aberus said.

“In all of this nothing? How are we going to find it?” A’re asked.

“I know where it is, somehow.” Aberus said.

A’re said nothing in retort, perhaps coming to terms with the unbelievable requests being made of him. To believe in things intangible, and unknown. Yet, his curiosity is perhaps what allowed him to be flexible. Looking upon him, I felt a sense of pride strangely.

The boy A’re was on his home world, estranged and entangled in thoughts of a dead civilization, was not the same as the being in this room. We’ve changed each other. Just like the boy always curious to understand new things – I could finally find my answer.

“We’re close.” Aberus said.

“That was fast.” A’re quipped.

“Time and space do not work the same as other universes here. The utter blackness could swallow you whole, becoming lost in the void. Knowing of a destination, however, guides you to it.” Aberus explained.

“So, you’ve been to this place before?” A’re asked.

“I think so, yes.” Aberus answered. “But it’s nothing more than grey images in my mind. They’re soon to be replaced.”

Like a candle in the dark, the planet’s horizon silhouetted against the blackness seemed to glide into view. Yet the planet was shadowed in darkness, there were no signs of civilization from a glance.

As we got closer to the planet, its bleak surface became apparent. Nothing but a dead world. No one, however, questioned Aberus’s decision to continue to move the Harrower down.

Scanning the surface, we encountered a large crater. The crater, however, turned into a hole – an entry way. Aberus shuttled us further into the dark, until a dim light shown through the black.

Beneath the bitter bleak surface, another world laid. Like a protective crust, the world beneath thrived in vast forests and lakes, rivers, and mountains. Above two pale moons illuminated the surface like a deep cold.

Aberus steered us towards a large mountain range that stretched into the horizon, the forests along its valleys deep and dark. And in a clearer spot he set us down in the dark bramble, the limbs snaping against the hull of the Harrower.

“We’re here.” Aberus said.