Page 45 of The Infinite Glade
Beautifully Terrifying
Cian flew the Berg as if he had been flying one his whole life.“Where did you say you were from again?” Isaac asked, looking at all the buttons and measurements on the pilot dashboard. He needed to know more about the two strangers he’d be stuck with.
Cian and Erros looked at each other before Cian answered. “South of here.”
“Do they all have Bergs there?” Jackie walked up and asked, eyeing the controls.
Cian just shook his head. Isaac wanted to ask a million questions, but first he needed to figure out how to tell Jackie and Old Man Frypan that he’d made up his mind to stay with Ximena to find the Master Villa and destroy the island’s coordinates from its records. If he left Ximena alone to do it, she might do something crazy and Cian and Erros could get rid of her before she was able to destroy any trace of how to get to their island. It killed Isaac to have to leave the others, and possibly never see any of them again, but he owed it to everyone back on their island. He had nothing left to go home to, but the others . . . they deserved to feel safe and be safe when they got back home. And maybe it was a way that Isaac could finally make his mom proud.
Heavy stuff to think about.
“You’re deep-frying something,” Frypan said, spooking him. Isaac would miss that old man the most. Somehow Frypan always knew when he was in his thoughts too much.
“Yeah, I am . . .” Isaac looked back at Ximena who had her head in her hands.Probably trying to use her second-sight somehow.“It’ll be okay though . . .”
“Never another option,” Frypan said with a half-smile.
“We’re close.” Erros pointed ahead, but what he pointed at caused all thought to escape Isaac’s mind.
“What the heck is that?” he asked. “More colors?” It was so green but bright, a color he didn’t yet have a name for, draped across the deep, deep sky.
“I can’t tell if it’s beautiful or beyond terrifying,” Jackie whispered in awe.
“Feels like both . . .” Frypan added. “This is the aurora?”
The way the colors radiated upward felt unearthly. “Are we . . . are we going to fly into it?” Isaac asked.
Cian and Erros just smiled. “The auroras have fully returned. It’s happening. The Evolution. All part of the plan, apparently.”
Isaac watched the sky in wonder as they flew right into the mash of flares. Translucent colors and vortex shapes of energy swirled around the Berg. Ximena finally looked up, a bit of wonder lighting up her eyes for once.
“The Borealis is spreading. A tornado of hydrogen and nitrogen in the atmosphere.” Cian said all this with great pride, all while he piloted the Berg. “Nothing to worry about.”
Isaac knew enough to know that when adults saidnotto worry, it meant there was usually something to worry about. Jackie grabbed Isaac’s arm as she looked straight ahead, her eyes fixated on the green swirls in front of them. Faint reds joined in, and they danced together like flames of a fire.
“The Sequencers would love this . . .” Erros said to himself.
A feeling of finality drowned Isaac. He would have given anything for Cian and Erros to fly them all the way back home to their island, but he realized as he looked at the colors moving in the darkness all around them that nothing would ever be the same. He couldn’tunknowwhat he knew.
“You okay?” Old Man Frypan asked. “It’s something, isn’t it . . . ?” He looked ahead with something like glee.
“Yeah . . .” The colors brightened as the Berg drew closer.
“The aurora means . . .” Ximena stepped closer to the window.
“The Evolution.” Cian and Erros answered in unison. “Welcome to the site of the Maze, home of the Evolution.”
The City of the Godhead. They’d made it. A bright orange glow shone from below, and it grew more solid in the darkness than the other colors floating in the sky. “We should have waited until daylight, how are you going to know where to land?” Isaac asked, looking down. “Wait, there’s an aurora on the ground, too?”
Ximena touched the window of the Berg right where Isaac was squinting to see the orange flares of light. “No . . . that’s . . . a fire.”
Isaac shook his head. “It’s glowing. Like the blue aurora we saw but red.”
Jackie and Frypan got quiet. The Berg flew closer and closer and the red-orange glow grew bigger. Cian pointed at something that Isaac couldn’t yet see. Erros erupted, “Shitstains of Shitstorms. . . . Those are fires of war.”
Cian pulled the Berg to the left without another word.
“All these years and now the Remnants strike?” Erros flicked one of the controls.
