LIGHT

He remembered the eastern moon and how it lit up the sky at night in the mountains. He lived there for many cycles until he was called down from his home to the oasis that used to inhabit a sprawling metropolis. It came without a warning and covered everything, causing the moon to fade into the white light and disappear in the cloud of dust. After it settled, the only thing that was left was the scorched earth below.

But the mountains remained unscathed. The settlers there, having broken their bond with the rest of society below, didn’t seem aware of anything other than the spectacle that took place that evening. They dismissed it as more pointless chaos from the people they once lived among.

But the boy could not forget the things that he saw. He grew curious. It was an instinct that his kin had left behind on their way up the mountains, replaced with a peaceful complacency that became the backbone of their philosophy. They lost their mythology by killing their heroes and starving their idols. As they fell, a new way of looking at things emerged — struggle was replaced with ambivalence; a quiet submission to the will of the land that they refused to oppose. Their fate became intertwined with their habitat and they created a mild form of happiness to replace the tumultuous existence that came with chasing desires.

As the days passed his imagination began to grow. He began to wonder what it was about the event that caused his moon to disappear. He asked the elders and they responded with dismissive shrugs and ambivalent riddles. His curiosity grew.

He traveled past the village, to the edge of the mountain, where the terrain was harsh and the elements unforgiving. His body grew stronger with every challenge his environment posed. Each time he returned, it was as if he was being discovered anew by the people who knew him all his life. He became strange; not all at once, but incrementally, and suffered his inevitable fate by losing the people closest to him slowly. At first it was the neglect of strangers; it was followed by the abandonment of his family; it ended with his exile.

When there was nothing to come back to, he marched forward, afraid of what he had done to himself and unsure of what was ahead; he was running away from himself just as quickly as he was moving towards his future. When he arrived he saw emptiness. There were collapsed artificial structures resembling the mountains he had just left, but different in their own right. Sharp edges that contained geometric perfection and encased reflective surfaces, the backbones of designs conjured into reality by the minds of the people his ancestors abandoned.

At the center of the ruins hovered a perfect circle, bigger than anything he had seen before. It housed a blue light that pulsed and radiated with an eternal electrical current; absorbing anything that crossed its path.

The boy walked around the perimeter created by the force in the circle. He made his way behind it. There was nothing on the other side. He moved closer and studied the structure. The metal that formed the ring was adorned with symbols that lit up in different sequence with each blast of light.

He scorched his hand when he dared to touch one of the symbols and immediately recoiled. He surrendered to his fear and began to run away. Clumsily he made his way back to a far enough distance where he could continue to observe the strange object. Hours passed and he remained motionless and silent, watching the symbols dance in front of him as they lit up in random succession. Those hours turned to days and the randomness began to take form and become patterns. He did not know whether his interest kept him there or if the mysterious force from the object had imprisoned him, but he didn’t care. It was like asking if he had been dead before he was alive. The question seemed irrelevant in the context of his rebirth.

He read the symbols and gained knowledge of something foreign, but he could not understand much of it. When the symbols emitted sounds, he tried to mimic them with his voice but couldn’t match the tone. He realized it was not possible for his voice to replicate what he was hearing. Intuitively, he tried a different approach, and he discovered a way to harmonize with it. Each sound he heard had a complementary sound that his voice could emulate. He created a sister language to the one that was spoken by the object.

The boy spoke what he heard in his own voice and the sounds that came back in response began to change. The patterns ceased and a new series of notes emerged. He wasn’t communicating with anything. It took him a few more weeks to realize that he was commanding the object. The words he spoke created a specific reply and he was able to control the light through the sounds he made. His power grew and he tested its limits carefully, making sure not to disrupt his surroundings any more than necessary.

In a flash of inspiration he used his ability to manipulate the object towards the heavens. He wanted to bring back his moon. The object released a sonic wave that crashed through the planet’s atmosphere and caused the sky to light up again. The light brought darkness in an instance and when he woke, the object was gone. In it’s place stood a small figure, too far for his naked eyes to see. He rose to his feet, ignoring the pain in his body and the haziness of his mind. Slowly and methodically he walked towards the small figure and as he did so, he began to recognize it as something similar to himself, something alive and organic. A person, much like himself, but very different.

The being stood there encased in light, creating shadows on the ground that danced of their own accord. He reached out to touch it but his fingers felt nothing. It was light that took shape and beauty, but not form. The light spoke gently, in the words that he taught himself; the words that he created to interact with his former master…

“Charos you fool. They have seen you and now they will come for you.”

“I know this. I don’t know how, but I know this. I am learning.”

“The war will come with them if you want it to.”

“I am not afraid.”

“Fear is not something that we can know enough to speak of. It is unpredictable that way.”

“I know this too. I am learning. I am ready.”

“Then my work here is done.”

The image faded while the light around it remained. Charos looked at the earth beneath him and saw a necklace with a pendant attached. It was the circle with the blue light, now dim and fading, but still pulsing erratically with whispers of the great power it once had. He placed the object around his neck and his eyes went white, slivers of blue passed through them in random patterns. Above him, an army of warships converged and cast shadows on the ground — shadows that he could no longer see. His vision had surrendered to something greater and he could feel the light of everything that he came in contact with. The shadows grew larger as the fleet descended from the heavens.

Charos did not look up. Charos did not move. Charos did not fight. He understood these things. He understood all things.

Charos whispered, “I am not afraid. I am learning. I am ready.”

The pendant that hung from his neck released a flash of blue light towards the sky. Within moments, the sky flashed back with millions of blue lights from across space and time and galaxies; all converging slowly towards the singularity that was Charos the Curious. All making their way to a new battlefield.

The war had begun.