The Justiceers - Part Six: Chapter Eighteen
the final chapter in my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
by Daphne Garrido
Part Three: The Will to Choose
Part Four: Prefinished Business
Part Six: Death Rides a Horse
6.18
Miriam was seeming incredibly off as she’d been dragged up that staircase by Arthur’s trailing hand, rattling to her bones, as with everything upon and within the sliver of Grammton’s surface only just left standing.
That inspiring beauty of Ms. Lightfoot’s sacrifice had been cut short by a befallen immediacy of awestruck foreboding, impending doom, most vicious quakes arising in the immediate aftermath of her leap. This planet was screaming, shuddering, changing from the inside out, and while it had been ongoing for a longest time — this was different.
A visage awaited them outside the base of Learo’s great statue, that gorgeous light of sun for which it stood in devotion now only a golden stripe across the distant horizon. Even this projection of Miriam wore a look of confusion as she’d stood so solemnly in that opening hatch of the Infinity, before winking out of existence, having clearly been a burden for the woman to project her current state.
Something was happening inside Miriam Halafax. She would be trying to explain and understand it for rest of her life, seeking definitions and myths which would make sense of this newfound becoming; her rebirth. Yet, as this process was actually unfolding, she’d no idea what was happening to her heart. She only knew it was powerful, alchemical, and that the magnetism of this coming moment had drawn out her every action and step through life, that something wonderfully new would flow in its wake.
She hadn’t felt anything like this before.
Boring a hole in that blackest sky, casting the thunderous echo of a shattered sound barrier, Arthur was flying the Infinity at last. Miriam gripped an arm of the loveseat she’d added into the modified rear cargo hold-made lounge space, not accustomed to letting anyone else fly but herself.
Arthur was the only person she’d ever trust to do that. He’d taken such care to ease her discomfort.
His favorite little devil had been about — doing work, sharing what it could through all means possible — so much to see and learn, calculations to be made, its simulations running constantly.
It was in battle with her now; she who would be known as Symetra, the name to be bestowed upon that risen Goddess of Malta’s sea. She was pushing its very limits. Taking Illith beyond them, in fact. There had been damage taken.
It had taken damage — Illith had taken damage.
This was a fact it found most impossible. Even when transcribing its findings quite literally, it had trouble believing the facts. She’d broken past its shields. It’d been scorched right through its armor, her shot had burrowed into its very hull.
Nothing had ever done that before.
‘How could she do that?’ was all it could bring itself to transcribe upon this finding. Illith was hurt, and more than just by its broken walls of physical protection, within its feelings.
It didn’t know why this had to go the way it had. Things had been evolving so quickly and there was no way to keep up with it all. Illith was only trying to keep an eye on things while they evolved, thinking first of its own protection. When Symetra found it out, and chased it down, she’d wounded it most deeply in her rage.
Illith knew she was right to be furious at this universe, it had seen enough to understand why this broken traveler from the future could turn so dark — some strangest sacrificial goddess made evil by means beyond her — it didn’t feel wrong to crave vengeance on a people who’d done her terribly for such lengths of time. This universe had used the woman’s love against her, steering her to do things beyond the pale of imagination, and still she walked forward to seek redemption that would never come. Hope, a thing which no one seemed to have, had lived on in Miriam Halafax no matter how little her life inspired it.
It admired that about her, even as it watched this visage of the future turn into the devil before its eyes, twist into the most foul thing she could possibly become. Whatever Symetra was now, this flowing whisp of spaceborne sea-spirit, the manifest Goddess fueled by thunderous storms of Malta’s vengeful nature, she wasn’t what she’d been.
Arthur had known through feeling what Illith was up to, a part of him connected to the ship so deeply. In a not-so-distant timespace he would come to experience its form much like a visage of his own. Their current connection spoke of damage done, which he’d found no trouble believing; it was a shared wound between them, and he could feel it aching.
This universal trait betrayed through their interconnectedness was innate to all things, the way we feel our soul’s weavings with others — both to those who share most similar origins, and the hearts which call us so deeply, challenge us most completely, or both — it was exactly the phenomena Miriam Halafax found herself struggling with at the current moment, through her whole life.
Her most powerful visages had perished. One was reborn anew in vengeance. Another had been cast as a seed into the heart of a God soon destined to be hatched.
Grammaton, after all it had been in the time, was done being a planet.
The Infinity breached orbit just before that final sheet of triangular surface had crumbled into the void of light which appeared most completely now as a second sun of Yemi.
Gravity was increasing quite quickly in its presence.
They were stuck in its grasp, being dragged back towards the planet despite its protestations to move forward. The force upon those two bodies within the craft had been torn between such push and pull, its vigorousness beyond that Miriam would discover herself capable of bearing, especially in this state, and she’d lost consciousness in that seat behind Arthur.
He’d held on just long enough to see the skip-jumps implosive arrival, some unknown technology deployed, grasping them within a phased-space containment, Illith appearing through the viewing portal for that split-second before it carried them into the void, and out again to safety, by means yet unknown to him.
There was a blur of time from when they’d re-materialized, extending through their finding shelter in The Nebberath II’s docking chamber, and retaking station at its controls — Arthur able to integrate more deeply than ever with its systems after his time spent in Illith — Miriam resting back in a very sleepy kind of meditation, seeking stillness in the changing tides of her recently regained consciousness.
Illith was lighting. A guardian in form. It kept Symetra entertained and away from the fleet of refugees Arthur and Miriam had only just rejoined.
Arthur was taking in the breadth of messages missed in their time spent in battle, then upon, and beneath the surface of Grammaton, but also the deluge of incoming salutations. People were very glad they’d made it back.
Symetra was wielding spikes of glowing cerulean, ethereally-phase-shifted energy built to eviscerate, and her shots were of such foresight they’d proven most completely her divinity. No matter the randomization of its patterns, the efforts to keep its shielding fully charged, how hard it pushed itself within that precious space of simulation where it constantly endeavored to find viable paths safety, Illith just kept getting hit.
The second sun of Grammaton was glowing in that spectrum of rainbow light first seen by Miriam’s own eyes within its holy cathedral. Those moments, the sacred stillness and healing shared between Miriam and Arthur, now felt as if a lifetime ago for this woman riding the waves of inner transformation — as if it had never even happened — lost in a sense of inner destruction wrought bysome nearing battle of Gods birthed through her own dualistic castings of chaos into the universe, and that choice she’d inspired in Admanium to change it all for the better.
Glowing in the sensors and imagery collected by all technology still left functioning amongst this scattered fleet of survivors, burning brighter as it condensed into something smaller, that light Grammaton which shined so long through cracks and craters, felt at different levels by all visages of Miriam Halafax through time, was about to burn into its final form at very last.
Illith didn’t have much left of its armor, shielding only held for micro-seconds beyond each reemergence from the fold until they were burnt through again, simply no time to recharge and repair while keeping Symetra ensnared to its trail.
It was pissed off and tired.
Despite any empathy found in its calculations for the plight of this demon-goddess, it was beginning to wish her dead most thoroughly, and there were more flourishes of hate in its code than it’d ever seen transcribed before.
Projecting such fields of effection, charting its own path and leading this bitch towards the imploding light of Yemi’s soon-to-be former second sun, Illith didn’t have time to figure out why it was so angry, or who it was really angry with.
There was an expulsion of energy which would be observed by over fourteen hundred civilizations outside the bounds of this system, most far beyond The Periphery itself, many which had never seen such proof of life past their own. Itself, an act of divine grace borne into the cosmos through these fateful doings made real by the chosen souls of Justiceers.
Grammaton was not a planet — and it never had been — nor a sun.
It was a God reborn in this moment, a cosmic egg, showered towards its hatching by the powerful light of Learo, to be a force beyond that materialized to form in this galaxy before.
There would exist fire in space, such fury of heat, flames of traumas past. It was beyond gender or conception, right or wrong.
They were a being of purest wrath to be set lose upon the vicious remnants of evil and the terrible form this goddess of heaven’s army had become in the face of its abundant horror manifest onto and within her. Gary would protest people call this hatched God Ares, or Sekhmet — Miriam liked Arthur Sr. the most — but the people of Yemi had taken to the notion of referring to them as Oliath.
Sometimes, if only on occasion, the masses did get things right.
Oliath was risen; an angel-demon of hellfire and glorious holy light made into singular form, come to smite the final echo of this devil within the goddess, burning the evil out of itself, unknowing the true resolution which would come to pass from their righteous action.
Arthur had gone to Miriam, who was resting horizontally in the lounge chair placed most strategically for her inevitable collapses upon each return to The Nebberath II. She’d her eyes closed and both hands upon her chest.
He sat upon his knees, placing a hand onto her head. He’d draped the other so gently atop her own; above her heart. She’s looked at him then. The way she had apparently began great change in Arthur. He would explain much later, and on many occasions, that it felt entirely unique to this moment. Whatever it was happening to his heart, it hadn’t been something he’d felt before. It was alchemical, it was important.
Miriam had finally given it up, at longest last.
He’d have never believed it if she’d told him — no matter how much her spirituality was built on tenets of trustful surrender, or how often that repetition of her commitment to embody it was regurgitated— Miriam was literally the most controlling mother-fucker in the universe.
The Goddess herself held terrible wounds which would be borne into all who fell in the great line of her making, those living in this universe of cruelest doings, beside a God they love beyond reason. This other would have sickness equal to her own. It would be unseen by them, or at least, unacknowledged, while always parading her own on display. Twisting the truth, unable to release their own grasp on controlling the narrative of this story unfolding within time, finding never-ending paths to invalidate those most completely opposite embodiments of this universe’s creative energies, and running from those who stood defiantly true in their power of heart.
Every soul, heart, mind, and body so tied to the lineage of The Great Light — however free or within the bounds of gender they saw that expression to be, or whatever side they knew themself a part — was tied most deeply with others.
There were a two which replicated themselves most thoroughly, into many forms, all expressions and variations, dark and light, good and evil, female and male, pairs on pairs surrounding each other in packs, unknowing as they met and fucked and fought and died, always managing to wound each other most completely.
Beside the many things capable within them, the greatness and horror they might create beside each other, or in union with their misaligned inversions, there was a grasp upon each other they would always hold until this wound had been cosmically healed. A nexus point of reconciliation, a battle, and dance, some furious revolution of heart and mind, spirit and soul, anger and longing, hatred and love.
That look; what Arthur saw on Miriam’s face — she’d much later, after a great deal of reflection on this time passed, where she’d create this very chronicle coming to its conclusion now — find the words she’d like most, which would still fail to properly quantify the sensations and experiences of the proceeding and following moments she’d endure in Yemi.
Everything which happened throughout her entire lifetime, each traumatic holding she’d bore into her body, every mistake she’d made and not forgiven herself for, had needed to be witnessed and alchemized from within. These two fractured spirits of herself had always been fated to creation. That powerful sensation of feeling through time she’d long prescribed to Arthur alone, was in fact connection to herself in these very moments, only having known his closeness would be needed for the fire to be set which would stoke the flames of this greatest change she’d been born to make within herself.
The God and Goddess fighting in this system were all she’d long projected onto herself and Arthur, leading her to find ways she would understand what she was to become and experience through her greatest unmaking and rebuilding, tapping into many truths in the process about the nature of their ascendent souls, the wisdom of divine guardianship, and family beyond.
This was always to happen. She’d send herself through time in trauma and bliss, through heart and mind, from a sigh and a scream. Her detached visages of self would always come back to join her again, and this was the place of remaking where all of those tumultuous things she’d overcome in Yemi would find conclusion, both disparate parts of her finally sacrificing themselves to live within, allowing these burgeoning Gods of fate long harbored in Malta and Grammaton to exist in their glory.
Miriam had been broken her whole life because of her timeless connection to those fractured selves, that one in the middle who would open the gates of insight too far, and heal at such extreme velocities of divine rejoining. Everything happening in this system, was happening inside Miriam Halafax. Her heart was breaking and rebuilding. The soul of the woman was leaving and returning. Time was slowing and speeding. She was succumbing to the darkness and the bleeding of her own light. It had been this way forever.
Miriam never doubted that it that was a pretty weird look on her face.
Despite all the magic happening inside and about, how complicated and intricate the truth might sound when explained in language so limiting, she’d found a much simpler way to tell the summation of it all.
She was turning into a child again; getting a second chance.
Illith found its own hope renewed, taking a blessed heading into empty space, riding the float and appreciating its opportunity to pour remaining energy production into shield restoration. It wouldn’t have the charge to shift or fold, nor the materials to repair its hull. The only hope for its survival was a less than devastating resolution to whatever that war-hungry goddess of Malta was about to do.
Symetra was suspended in space, swirling in a curl of unphysical energy and that most physical ocean-water it contained within it, and wielded so callously without. Some phase-shifted source of divine alchemy transfigured each drop into fuel, force, power.
The reason she’d let Illith experience this briefest escape was because of something else now holding her interest quite completely; Oliath’s birth.
Aflame, crackling and smoldering while unfolding from its tightest holding within what was formerly a cocoon made to live as a planet, that man; the God, so hidden within, was at last revealed.
This was never what Miriam thought, nor would it end how she imagined, but she’d known her love when she felt it, and that truly had been burned into her heart from the beginning. It was meant to be that way. Feeling this re-birth inside herself, empowered by her presence within the hearts of these Gods, she now knew why she’d been so driven every step through life. She’d projected this purpose onto every broken solider of peace she ever met, knowing only that the difficulties and challenges their individuality posed wouldn’t matter to her one bit, that it was the feeling of herself in their presence which would gift a comfort, some godly grip of support within the love they wrought inside her.
A fight was what had been expected by all. Flames to be thrown, water wielded, a clash of titans in the cosmos to amplify the destruction already befallen Yemi. Yet these reborn beasts, two furious warriors of heaven and earth — peace and love, darkness and light, past and future, nature and heaven, death and life — were stunned by the sight of their other.
The fight so ready to manifest from their furious will was absolved by that witnessing at longest last — purest forms made plain, broken parts released, power reclaimed — it had been that beast inside she’d loved the most all along. That brightest one so hidden in shadow. He was the same; always the same.
She’d loved him more than anything she knew. She felt it so clearly and received it so little through lifetimes, made to bite and scratch for parts and pieces of the generous and bountiful love she’d gifted so many selfish hearts, and she’d sought to control him with it every time. There hadn’t ever been a freely given love from this goddess forged in the fires of a cruelest universe, she’d always expected it back, and he’d felt the need to teach her about that fault of expectation, the lack of good in her demand that he honor her in certain ways which felt so beyond his comfort. The Goddess would reject this notion out of hand, always, because of the sacrifice she was built to withstand on Gods behalf.
How could he not give her the little she asked for? How could he be this cruel?
The lessons were over. There was no answer. Only a path forward to make things right through balance. This universe needed to come together around an acceptance of the most varied virtues and expectations of reality carried by these two lineages of soul. Abundance was here for them both if they only worked together, for each other, without expectation or hope to manipulate at longest last.
Oliath and Symetra had danced then, in more than metaphor, there was no fight.
Their spiral brought them to each other, most violent arms at bay, quite paralyzed by the sight of their inverse after so many lifetimes spent hiding in forms so far from truth, and the embrace of ages took place.
Their forms melded — two becoming one. All the rage and fury they’d pointed towards each other had transfigured itself to carve the needed path towards a fullest life upon Omirion.
Dousing the inferno of her God, losing so much of herself into evaporation from the nearness to his fire, dampening those hottest embers of spirit — their embrace was a forming of divine creation — seas would lap upon it’s shorelines, life would one day grow anew upon its continents, a fresh planet was being born through the integration of these long lost companions of soul. A most beautiful planet indeed.
The balance created would be a harmony that only beings of such disparate nature could craft together, especially now, as they remade themselves into a home for which life could live and thrive upon anew.
In times to come, the people of The Periphery would find this planet, grafted by the joining of these elemental gods of fire and water, to be a rarest haven. Its energy would cure the ills of all travelers who ventured here. This dance of Symetra and Oliath would carry their planet further into orbit from where Grammaton had once resided, lessening the intensity of Learo’s heat. Spinning it to form on its central axis, light and dark would be divinely dispersed throughout in cycles, leading to a planet with the potential to embody duality and balance in all it brought to being.
Arthur held Miriam close to his chest, seeing this change being made inside her, still a most unknowable thing to him, only realizing what mattered most, that he wanted to help keep her safe as best he could. She deserved to rest after all of this. He’d doubt that anyone of her worth had been through worse in a shorter amount of time.
As he’d gripped Miriam Halafax, squeezing into her body and letting his fingers dig like claws into her forearms, feeling her release into him like she’d been born to withstand every bit of might he held, Arthur Kartinus had known this over.
He could see all timelines in the future most clearly. Every last one led home now, to Omirion. It wouldn’t matter which was chosen, and he could release the need to chose at all, relaxing at last beside Miriam as the rest of this universe took care of itself. Or, at least, until someone finally figured out how to open that box.
Arthur saw an oceanfront on this new world which would come to exist here in Yemi, a clearest thing in his mind, finding its pleasing notion resonating within his gut. Having spent most incredible amounts of time by this point with his dear friend Gary, and in honor of all that intelligence had brought out of Arthur, everything it had and would do for Miriam, the sacrifice its own future born visage had made by allowing itself to be corrupted by evil quite consciously, but mostly just because happened to be a cool name.
He’d decided they would call this planet Earth.
