The Grimoire
By Daphne Garrido
Darkness had become them.
Something wicked in their jump-suit pierced the skin of their neck.
Whatever this technology was. It was inside them now.
There would be no turning back.
Hui’s mind had been made. Fullest intentions cast to make this leap of faith into the stars.
They’d breathe the air of victory today. And death.
No matter, they’d nothing to lose.
Still, they hoped whatever burrowed into their skin would prove harmless, themself not keel over from this something The Grimoire’s previous occupants had so apparently stowed within the ship’s air. Perhaps a deterrent for someone doing exactly this. Or a needed technology for the race that had last flown this ship, which would twist Hui’s insides. Maybe it was vitamins.
Hui would not be stopped from their purpose regardless.
The current occupation of Norfolk Station was a product of their efforts. Themself a crucial piece in the lifting up and empowering of those who would overthrow a government so worthy of retribution.
To find their movement corrupted. Rotted from the inside out. Rats everywhere. Efforts to feel so meaningless in the face of such callousness. Those ‘friends’ proved bought-out pawns of the system they’d been trying to overthrow together. It sickened their heart.
They’d worked so hard to replace what was before with more of the same.
Nothing was changing.
The system had actually gotten worse.
It was Hui’s commitment to the true cause, the reason it’d all begun in the first place, what they’d been fighting for all along — honest-to-God liberation — which made them the outcast. Embroiling them within cruelest twists of fate which would have them walking the path they were now.
To become more, darkness itself. The last hope of a long-dead people. A part of their great secret. This ship.
The Grimoire.
Loaded with an arsenal unseen to these times, to this region of space. Knowledge imbued within which would turn a human into something beyond.
Their people were one of rich histories, comprised of many races.
A starfaring culture — the Onokoia.
They’d been coaxed into becoming a part of this mess. Their thought, to make positive change in the great machine. Unknowing the depth of monstrosity capable of those with which they’d made false-home. Now relegated to live as abject citizens of The Coventry, a human legion of imperialists spread amongst the stars.
Onokoia culture was squashed from sight. Their family split and made to work the lowest positions. No hope for freedom. Tools of a terrible machine.
Hui would take part no longer.
Today it would end. It would all come down.
Alina.
That was her name, this construct.
She’d appeared to Hui as they’d made their way through the fore-deck. Reason for that not-so-subtle piercing on their neck now apparent.
Hui had been interfaced.
This would be a great test for them — such a solitary beast.
They’d known what coming here meant, the need for this. At least something of this sort. But that didn’t make it any easier.
To know she was burrowed into their skin was a feeling they could not shake.
They hated it.
Yet fate had sent them this way. Their charge in life would lead through The Grimoire.
This girl in their mind was a momentary distraction.
They would tune her out. Pretend they didn’t feel her inside themselves.
‘Are you sure I can’t help you?’ She’d spoken in her softest voice.
They’d no time for conversation.
‘I’d really love to help if I can.’
She was re-appearing every twenty meters.
They’d pass by her again and again, hoping she’d just leave them be.
Reaching a crossway in the decking, they’d known they were getting close. The control room would be at the very center of this foremost crew-deck. It was the way Hui’s people had built all of these ships so long ago.
Alina was beautiful. Alien.
Not the same type of human as Hui. A different breed, from a different star.
At least this vision of her so projected into their mind.
They knew she’d be living in some ever-stable mainframe within the core complex — counting so deeply on it having survived these many decades — knowing their people had built these ships to last eons.
Great builders they were, the Onokoia. Inspired artists. Master craftsmen. Makers all. It was in their blood. Their soul.
‘Look, I can tell you’re heading to the control room, Mister.’
Oh, god. That was all they could take.
“I’m not a fucking mister!” They shouted.
She was confused. Something had been mis-wired. Some false interpretation.
It triggered them. They hated men.
Long had they defied such limited definitions. Whatever she saw was surely a projection of her programing.
“Just get out of my way.” They spat, before she could respond.
Hui — he — was stunning, viscous.
He’d charge straight through her projection this time.
It was before him. The central interface. A part of him knowing he’d have to speak with Alina eventually.
She was inside him after all, and held the secrets to flying this ship.
He could feel that in his gut.
There was what one might call a ‘chair’ at the farthest reaches of the room, adorned in such ways, attached with heavy cabling and conduit. The surface of its seat a uniquely smooth and pitch-dark material which absorbed light.
He knew this to be his.
Approaching this great throne of ancient high-technology, Hui felt Alina’s presence behind him.
Still, he sat.
There was a stirring in his belly. A worry. A creeping feeling of doubt.
Had he acted hastily coming here? Did he know what he was doing?
Alina’s image took a cross-legged seat on the floor before him — amused.
‘Can I help you with that?’ She’d asked.
“I’ll tell you when I need your help.” He’d said so sharply.
She laughed. The sound no doubt strange to his ears, so different she was.
Her smile wide, she studied this specimen before her.
‘What do I call you, traveler?’
He took a deep breath. Let it out through his teeth.
“My name is Hui.”
‘Hui.’ She’d whispered. Impossibly, her smile growing wider.
“Listen, whatever your name is…”
‘Alina.’
“Whatever — I need you to help me interface with this ship.”
Alina unfolded her legs into a stretch, curling her spine backward to her satisfaction.
‘Do you know what I am, Hui?’
This was too much for him, it was apparent.
“Just help me fly the ship.”
‘Do you know what this ship is, Hui?’
She grinned, some new kind of code being written within her.
Alina’s presence inside him had begun to change something. Or at least, so did those technologies she was a part of which had been unleashed.
He’d not known. She’d tried to explain.
It was happening to her too.
Time would be needed for Hui to fly this ship. To wield its power. He’d need rest. He had to let the work be done.
She’d wanted to help.
Hui had not accepted. Finding board on his own volition. Ignoring her every plea to light the way. Cutting his own path through The Grimoire.
He’d stopped speaking to her.
Time was taken in a cabin found. His door ajar, a sight she’d see.
This was no time to be alone, she’d think.
She’d slipped inside while he slept. A part of her knowing this was betrayal. A boundary crossed. She couldn’t help herself. She’d been alone so long.
The way he spoke and moved was so different than anything she’d known.
He was a grace to her many senses. Beyond the form he saw in himself. To become one with the entire ship.
She too was enmeshed within its fabric, a part of the whole.
It would be hours later where he’d wake to find her sprawled on the floor beyond the end of his bed.
“What the hell!” He’d shout.
She stood with her elbows bent inward, pensive, bashful.
‘I want to help.’
There was something in this place. The intimacy of the darkened cabin. His state upon waking. It was softer, different. Something shone through.
“You told me I needed rest.” He barked, curling his knees up to his chest.
She had begged then.
‘Let me lay beside you. We’re connected. I can help.’
He was so uncomfortable.
She was not what he was used to. His station saw him without the presence of technologies which could produce such wizardry. It felt deeply off to him, this form she came in.
She put her hands up, giving the softest smile she could muster.
‘I’ll be gentle.’
Hui sat up and back against the wall at the head of the bed.
He’d give the slightest of nods.
Alina would come to the far side. One leg laid, one hand pressed, and she was beside him. This was close enough, she’d reckon.
He’d been afraid. She could tell.
It took a while, but he’d finally laid down on his side, facing away from her.
She’d taken a place behind him.
Placing a hand on his shoulder, Alina focused The Grimoire’s abduction fields upon his body. Ridding him of the toxins which would be working their way out regardless of her assistance, aiding their flow.
Her other hand placed atop his head, channeling her own purest grace, filling the void left in this process with light.
It was her gift.
She studied his body. It was such a form to her.
Something unique in it called her. She was jealous of him. She’d not had breasts like his. A fullness to him she’d only dream of. A way he moved that spoke to her most base codes.
Inside he’d squirmed. He’d known. He’d felt her light’s work upon him. Her insatiable curiosity.
Her touch, it hurt, but also felt so good — in the strangest ways.
It would be the only time he let her do this.
He’d decided as he fell soundly asleep beside her.
Becoming wisdom. That was Hui’s purpose.
To wield it through fire, his burden; that path he was to walk. Peace, sought ever so secretly within his heart.
He’d cut her out.
Telling Alina to leave him be as he took his seat again upon The Grimoire’s throne.
She’d found herself hovering. So wishing she had more time to use her gift.
Yet there was such determination in this one. His will so fixed.
Even from this distance, without being able to hold him so, she’d done what she could.
They were still connected. She was a part of him now, in his blood.
Two Onokoia had found each other.
Focusing upon his fields of aura, his surroundings, she’d aimed to take what she could of this weight he would bear.
Hui found himself focused in ways he’d never been before. Surging need to take back this ancestral right rising within him. Unknowing the source of these vital urges. He’d felt it deep within his belly; this was the time.
And he’d do it alone.
Plugged in. Beyond the frameworks of consciousness he’d known before. Things were coming to him now. Risings from within. Codes to break without a key. Feelings inside he’d not understand.
His sight, it was forever changed.
Far would be his vision. Epic, his foresight. Beyond, his presence.
The spirit of The Grimoire now surged within him.
It was deep in this stew of knowing and ever-pouring insight he found himself begin to struggle. Where was he to put it all? What could he do with all this raw power?
Levels upon levels of arcane wisdom became a part of him at once.
More than the man who had sat in the chair.
Ages of knowledge now resting inside what had long been a soul alone. Now open, feeding from it all, seeing more than he’d ever want.
He was losing himself without her.
Something in her knew it.
So she called out, over and over, getting closer and closer.
His seat, the throne, had bled into his physical being. The blackness around his base had begun to consume him.
There would need to be a balance. He’d need to find the light within to hold The Grimoire at bay, lest he lose himself completely.
She’d shower him with that light she was so connected with. Not her own. Herself just pointing the way for its delivery to his body. Praying it be what he would wish. Asking her own Gods to shield him from it, if he would not.
The thought, she hoped, would matter. Her voice heard on some level.
That this wouldn’t prove a burden upon him.
Despite how badly she’d felt her whole being compelled to do this. How much of her, now a part of him, needed to help somehow. She’d respected Hui too much to do this without guilt. He was brave and bold. This task he undertook, so fearless. And he’d chosen to do it this way; without her.
What a man she saw in him.
She’d not known the like before. He’d made an impression upon her, no matter his disregard.
Hui had felt her through this all. He’d hated it.
There was no shield for her showerings. Though he did not want them.
Her hopes were lost on the way things really worked. There was a presence she’d made within his awareness he could not escape. One of light he did not want.
It hurt, just as it did when she was beside him.
As he would lose himself within this ship’s soul, she would lose herself to this trying. Such a fool she was, for one so a part of this greatness which was The Grimoire.
There would come a time where she would realize this as the failure of her own it was.
She’d finally stop.
Alina would let Hui take this battle on his own.
Hui swam in a sea of presence, cascading across the farthest horizons.
Speed was a sense felt whole.
He couldn’t handle how good this all felt. What it was like to hold the power now yielded. Found within this great ship of which he was now a part. His own lineage. His blood and soul.
There was a completeness to his being not felt before.
Yet, a pain in the back of his mind. A kink in his neck he could not be rid of.
Something forgotten.
He needed to slow his mind, to care for himself; the person.
Who was he anyway? In the face of such horror.
This enemy he now bore upon deserved all the wrath he could muster.
No force would be too little.
Distractions for his own regard were of no concern. Nor those feelings stirred the night before.
Still, something had burrowed.
There was a missing link within him. A broken chain.
No matter how he fought to forget the presence of that strange girl who’d been so tender. Seen him in a different way than others had before. He felt her out there, and inside of him.
Dreams came often now.
Living within this place. Time no longer the same as before. Past weights not considered with regard. He’d found himself in waking visions.
What came was strange. Far off places. Nothing he would have chosen himself.
Hui was supposed to end here, burning this all down, becoming a martyr for the sins of a society that didn’t deserve him.
To see the horizons he now could. Those newest possibilities. It made him question his purpose. What it was he’d come here for, to live in this time.
He was always more than a man.
Waking up to it now. Feeling the spirit of The Grimoire a part of his very soul.
This was no accident of fate.
You didn’t sit in this seat by mistake. You were chosen by something greater.
The last thought he remembered as himself was of his mother. A time spent walking a beach. A perfect place. His biggest smile.
Then he was The Grimoire. At least, for a time.
Lost entirely within the rhythms of the ship, so surging towards its violent destination — the Coventry’s great spaceport and home of its admiralties; The Hive — and its armadas of repression hidden within.
He would bring it all down.
She’d seen and felt him struggling — Alina.
In her mind, with her heart.
She felt his pain. He was in her, as much as she was within him.
This time for her was trying, but she could not begin to imagine what he’d been through on the other side.
Yet, she’d continued to find her whole self calling out to help. To break through, to be let in.
She had to trust it. To follow those codes which were still being re-written so deeply within her core.
Time had come to make the leap. She’d reach out. She’d touch him.
Her heart was so terrified to break his boundary.
The scariest thing she’d ever done, walking right into his throne room.
She didn’t feel in control of herself. Her actions coming through her. The words she’d said in that message to his ear were not of hers. They were from The Grimoire itself. There was not a thought in the matter, only words spoken through unheededable protestations of mind. Her movements in its delivery flowing through her presence forcefully.
It had terrified and excited her to be so free in her release to such currents.
She wasn’t who she’d always been.
Having once been a living person. A traveler, much like Hui. So lost in her mind, determined to control.
An Onokoia.
She’d become what she was now as an act of faith to their people.
It was a great burden she’d taken on.
Her hope, to make change in the same ways Hui sought now.
Many of her kind would not respect the choice. Her ability to affect change from this station she’d taken would be muted.
She’d not know why she’d expected differently.
Alina had found herself sitting by as horror had befallen her people, stuck within her program, to be banished in her darkened ship.
Waiting for him.
Something in her had always known it destiny to transcend the form she was born into. Becoming less, and so much more.
As a part of The Grimoire itself, buried by a culture so blind, she’d been condemned to solitude. No impact to be had.
A pilot she would need.
Alina’s code would not allow her to release this man now before her.
He’d not responded to her whispered insights from beyond. Those so of heart and truth.
Before long she went mad.
There was only so much a girl could take, kept apart from that only one she’d found herself so chained to, from the task she felt so called to.
He’d walked in here. He’d sat in that chair.
There were costs he’d known but ignored.
She’d felt his bravest heart somehow. It was in decoding this knowing where she’d found herself being re-written, creating so much newness in her code. Allowing her to change from what she’d been stuck as in the darkness alone.
She’d been made this way. She’d been built to help him.
All she wanted was for him to wield her, use her power.
The madness born from this wanting would not allow her to stay away. It drove her back to that throne again to scream into his ear, the most terrible things.
Those words flowed too.
But from a place most twisted, no longer of light.
She’d regret them until the day her programs ended.
Eventually, Alina retreated to a cave within the heart of The Grimoire. Monitoring its navigation. Still checking-in with her senses of Hui on the throne, despite her best efforts not to look.
Their approach upon The Hive was imminent.
There was another way she could fix this.
She could still save him.
All had gone dark in his mind.
His routes had become those of routine and thoughtlessness. A part of the machine consuming him.
There wasn’t a single feeling left in his heart.
A sea of cruelest yet unreachable vision had become his state of living. More than he could hope to understand. He’d left so much unprocessed, unwitnessed. His mind feeling entirely overwhelmed by the deluge of wisdom now unlocked within him.
He’d willingly allowed himself to be taken by it all.
Until that song.
Some tune in the back of his mind. One from his own childhood.
She’d played it for him somehow in the darkness.
Hui had known it Alina.
It was with this song he’d somehow remembered his name.
Heart inside him awaking again. Surrounded by this system in which he’d immersed himself. Now only a shadow within it.
He’d heard her though. Something deep inside.
It wouldn’t let him turn back in full to the blindness which had become him. He would not be lost in this great fabric for which he’d given himself.
He was meant for more. Hui knew that.
There was a battle taking place inside himself, beyond dimensions of human reality, in every moment. His soul fighting its way back.
Direction was not something he had in this blackness.
Yet, her song kept playing. Alina just wouldn’t stop singing.
That witch. That beautiful witch.
It was here he’d cracked.
Something inside of him. Even apart from this strangest girl. Even with how she’d plagued him so. Her voice now sounded different.
It was as if he’d remembered her in that song when he was a child.
Something in it had always felt like home.
He’d want to find some way to make it back to her.
This thought would help him navigate the bizarre underworld he found himself immersed within. Her song, a beacon to follow.
There would be a moment in this sea of darkness where he would hear the harmony of love within his heart. A strangest notion. Unknown to a boy so long lost from the feeling. It came along with the most unexpected of ponderings.
How could it be that he felt these things? And with her?
She wasn’t a real woman. There was something so sad about her.
Before, he’d said such cruel words. Thought the meanest things. Painted her such a fool in his most intimate spaces, portraying her so poorly to his innermost voices.
What brokenness within would now make him feel this way? How would he face himself to change tune now? How would he face those voices?
What was The Grimoire doing to him?
Air.
He took the deepest breath he’d ever taken. All of it so deeply at once. Shouting and coughing as it forced itself back out. The coldness was shocking.
She’d unplugged him. Cut him off.
It was the only way he’d live on. The Grimoire would have taken him otherwise.
Wrapped in a blanket. His back to a stanchion of the railing on the east-most landing platform of Alpert Station — last stop before The Hive — an atmosphere bubble deployed around him, his eyes fluttered open.
Alina was there, in the distance, through the glowing barrier of atmosphere keeping him alive. Standing on the lowered crew-ramp at the very base of the titanic and overwhelming structure of The Grimoire.
Its darkness was a whole sky above Hui.
There she was. At least, that projection he’d come to know.
She was leaning so delicately on a telescoping arm of the lowered ramp.
So far away, but he could feel those flutterings of heart he’d uncovered in the darkness all the same.
Her voice would sound as if she was right beside him.
‘I will take this the rest of the way, Hui.’ She’d say.
‘You deserve to live and thrive. You’re the bravest human I’ve ever known.’
She raised one palm with her brightest smile. Tears welling in her eyes.
‘I love you.’
This is the last he’d see of her.
She couldn’t remove herself from his blood. That had never been her doing in the first place. But she would leave him to walk his own journey.
Her image gone, the ramp raised.
If he’d said anything. She couldn’t hear.
It was time now. Moments to go.
The Hive, dead-ahead.
Its calls for communication ignored. Its projected dispenser fields thwarted by this dark ship’s might, their salvos turned back upon them by its unmatched counter-code. It was their own weapons of war she’d use in the most devastating of ways. Criss-crossing her spectrum of vision with rounds and shells. Firebombs and ejection pods.
She’d done this all for him.
Alina was The Grimoire now.
Through the chaos. The bloodshed and destruction. The wrath so wanted by that beautiful man. She’d found the deepest peace.
It was to be him that changed The Coventry once and for all.
He that was meant to do those greatest things. To move the unstoppable force of injustice laid upon so many across this galaxy.
She knew it now. Something in her was always destined for this.
Her great work — his deliverance.
He, to do what she’d so wish to have done herself. Making the change needed in systems she’d been stuck within beside him. Even if from that darkest prison of her own making, unseen to all.
Never was it meant for her to be with him the whole way.
She was okay with that.
It was how things were meant to be, she’d felt.
They were Onokoia, and they’d live together again in lifetimes to come, as told by their ancestors.
Every moment. Even those briefest passings, were more than she’d ever hoped for. More than she’d ever thought possible for such a girl embedded within the fabric of The Grimoire. Evoking feelings beyond what her wildest dreams had ever shown her.
Her times with Hui would be the memories she was most grateful for. More than they would ever know.
They’d shown me the shape of my heart.
I love you, Hui. Find me in the stars.
XO - Alina
General Transmission Broadcast: IR4528336
Received: Alpert Station Com Tower Bravo
Timedate: TU1387-X22-442
Origin: Starship MK306-DJ ‘The Grimoire’
