COSMOPIL's Arc

Chapter 5 of 6

The wrecked saucer's hum sharpened into a shriek, and the tear it had opened began to widen. Cosmopil stepped outside the Nexus. Around the tear, jagged black stone had grown in the time it took to seal the courier's contract — a crouched shape of obsidian plates studded with dozens of glowing eyes, pink and yellow, ringing the opening like a sentry that had built itself. The eyes all turned toward Cosmopil at once. From inside the tear, something pushed against the stone shell and made a sound that was not a word in any tongue Cosmopil had ever bound. Cosmopil walked to the boundary line and laid a binding stone on the dirt. It was a smooth oval of onyx, blank except for a single watchful eye set into its face. Cosmopil had carried it for ages without using it. A contract needed language — a want or a fear the signer could not lie about. The entity behind the stone shell pushed again. A bolt of gold light cracked from the tear and struck the ground beside Cosmopil's foot, leaving a jagged scar burned into the dirt that kept glowing. Then another. Each bolt scorched a shape into the ground and held there, refusing to fade. The entity was not speaking. It was marking. Cosmopil knelt and pressed both palms to the binding stone. "I cannot read you," he said, plainly, to whatever was listening. "So I will offer the shape beneath reading." He did not try to translate. He opened the stone's eye and let it watch the bolts as they fell. Three more struck. Six. The scars on the ground began to repeat — the same jagged shape, over and over, burned again and again into the same places. Cosmopil understood then. It was not a language. It was one cry, repeated. A creature pinned in the tear, afraid of being unmade by the crossing. Its oldest fear was the crossing itself. Cosmopil spoke that fear into the binding stone — not in words, but as the shape beneath the bolts. The eye on the stone blinked once and held open. The shell of obsidian eyes shuddered. The tear narrowed around the entity until only its outline pressed through, held in place by the binding rather than torn further open. The bolts stopped falling. The shrieking stopped. What remained on the ground was the burned signature of the contract, glowing faint and steady, and a creature half-bound at the threshold — not loose, not free, not yet named. Christo Sophus came to the doorway behind Cosmopil and said nothing. Cosmopil stayed kneeling. He had bound a thing without a shared tongue. He had also bound a thing he did not yet understand, and the stone shell around the tear was still watching him with all its eyes.