Ezthamic's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

The sphere still beat in Ezthamic's hands when it answered in riddles. He asked where the path led deeper. It gave him fractured words about a womb of memory. He gripped it harder and demanded a straight answer. The red core pulsed, then pulled. Roots parted around him. A low arch opened in the chamber wall, and the sphere's light dragged him toward it. He stepped into a round chamber of black stone and bone. Vein-like light crawled through the walls. Dark flowers grew from the floor, their petals clear as glass. Inside each petal moved a trapped moment. He saw people he had never met. He saw a burning village. He touched one bloom, and its image poured into him. He was no longer confused. He was reading. The sphere had not lied. It had only spoken in pieces, and now the pieces lay open. Then one bloom went black. A shape climbed out of it. Liquid flesh pooled and rose into a man's height. Its head was a smooth black sphere with no face. It watched him, then copied his stance. When he raised his fist, it raised the same fist. Its arm split and hardened into a blade, mimicking a trick he had not yet made. This was the watcher from the corrupted memories, and it wore his own shape against him. Ezthamic willed his arm to change. Skin tore. Bone forced outward into a long spike along his forearm. The mimic did the same, faster. They struck together. Their spikes screamed against each other. He bled. It bled black. He learned its rule quickly: it copied only what it saw. So he stopped fighting like himself. He dropped low, rolled under its swing, and drove his spike up through its featureless skull before it could mirror the move. The black body collapsed into slush and went still. Breathing hard, he saw it. An egg of bone and roots rested where the mimic had stood. Inside sat half of an ancient mask, cracked and old. A gold mark curved across its brow. He lifted the broken mask. The chamber shifted. A bloom opened wide and showed a man wearing the mask whole. The man had his face. His dreadlocks. But scars covered him, and one arm was a living blade grown into the bone. The figure in the memory turned. It looked straight at Ezthamic, though centuries stood between them. Its red eyes fixed on his. "Don't let it finish you again," the figure said. Then the bloom dimmed. Ezthamic stood alone with half a mask in his fist. He understood now. The sphere's riddles had all pointed here. This was not his first life. He had worn this mask before, and something had finished him. The path deeper was open. But the warning changed everything he thought he was chasing.