By the end of the third day, the One had completed his restoration work within the Infinity Chamber. Once more it glowed with light, and once more the power of Infinity powered the One’s soul.
He exulted, then left the pyramid.
This was an adventure for the One, and a revelation.
He strode along the internal corridors of the pyramid, his green glassy form reflecting shadows from the fused black glass which lined the corridors, and gloried in the physicality of movement.
Then he emerged from the pyramid, and discovered the warmth of the sun, and color, sound, scent, and wind. For a moment all these different sensations threatened to overwhelm the One, but he took a deep breath ( feel the warm, scented air fill his lungs!) and he absorbed these varied sensations, and they became at one with him.
He turned slightly, enough so he could see the pyramid rising high above him. This was a strange feeling, to look back on that which had contained him, which had literally been him, for so many thousands of years. He reached out a hand, touching a plate of green glass.
His hand blended with it (into it) perfectly.
Feel how smooth, how warm.
“Master?”
The One blinked, momentarily angered by the intrusion. He blinked again, and saw that it was a Skraeling.
He didn’t like the Skraelings. But they were necessary, and they would prove useful.
Behind this single Skraeling the One could see many of the creatures, almost an infinity of them, stretching along the riverbank beyond the pyramid.
“Master?” the Skraeling said again.
“Yes?”
“It is good to see you again. We thought you had forgotten us, crouched so deep within your glass mountain.”
The One thought this was presumptuous of the Skraeling, and did not deign to answer.
“Have you been talking with the Lealfast?” the Skraeling said.
“And if I have?” the One said.
“You should not trust them,” said the Skraeling. “We are their fathers, yet they affect to despise us.”
The One did not find that very surprising. He would expect nothing less than that his Magi should despise creatures such as these.
“One day,” said the Skraeling, “they may affect to despise you, too. They have no great sense of loyalty. Unlike us. We are your true servants.”
“And you have my gratitude for that,” the One said, loathing them, and hoping that they did not intend to whine at him for hours. He waited, expecting the Skraeling to drift away, but it still stood there, clasping its claws in anxiety and looking at him with those disconcerting watery silver orbs.
By Infinity, they were disgusting!
“Was there anything else?” said the One.
“We are hungry.”
“Hungry.” The One pondered this. What was hunger?
“We need to eat, please. We’ve come a long way. You said you’d feed us.”
“Kanubai said he would feed you. I am the One. I am not Kanubai. I am perfection incarnate.”
“We still need to eat.”
“You may not eat me!” the One roared.
“Of course not!” said the Skraeling, springing back to what it hoped was a safe distance. “We’d like to eat flesh, please.”
“That is such a weakness, your need for flesh.”
“Nonetheless…”
“Well,” said the One, trying to work out what the Skraeling wanted him to do about this apparently overwhelming hunger—by Infinity itself, the whole horde of them appeared to be slavering! “Can’t you find some flesh around and about to sate your hunger?” He waved a glassy hand about vaguely. “Does not flesh populate this land? I have been aware of much flesh these past few thousand years. Much and very annoying flesh.”
Like Boaz, who had once worshipped him, but who had then presumed to plot to destroy him.
“Yes,” said the Skraeling, who had now crept back a little closer, “once flesh did walk this land. But the land on this side of the river,” the Skraeling’s face twisted with fear as it said the word “river,” “has curiously little flesh about it. We think the man Isaiah—”
Now the One’s thoughts coalesced about the man who had spent hours sitting in the Infinity Chamber—Isaiah—and some of the hate that the One felt for Boaz managed to transfer itself to Isaiah.
Isaiah was trouble, too, and Isaiah was still alive, which was worse.
“—emptied the land this side of the river before we came,” the Skraeling continued. “Nasty man. Now we’re hungry, and we think that there is much flesh, much vulnerable flesh, waiting over the river.”
As if to underscore the point, the Skraeling turned its head and looked longingly over the River Lhyl where stood the palace of Aqhat.
“It looks fairly empty to me,” said the One.
“It was full when first we arrived,” said the Skraeling, “but it has been days now, days and days and days since we arrived, and in that time people have been escaping east and north and south and we haven’t been able to chase them!”
“Why not?”
The Skraeling hung its head. “We’re afraid of water.”
The One smiled. “What water?”
The Skraeling frowned, then looked again at the river.
It was gone, replaced by a glassy surface, rippled in patches where the water had struggled against its death.
The Skraeling drew a deep breath, then moved so fast its form almost blurred.
As it moved, so did its millions of comrades, and within a heartbeat the rigid river was lost beneath an undulating tide of gray wraiths.
The destruction of Isembaard had begun.
The One crossed the glassy Lhyl several hours later, once the initial fuss was over. The Skraelings had mobbed the palace of Aqhat, finding little save one old bedridden man whom the fleeing servants had forgotten, rats, a score of dogs, and a few cats.
From Aqhat they swarmed eastward, fanning out over the countryside, the leaders running with their noses close to the ground, sniffing out the trails of the people who had fled as soon as they’d seen the Skraelings appear on the other side of the river.
The One knew he’d have to call them back eventually, but he was coming to understand the need to feed, and so for the time being he would let them roam.
It wouldn’t do any harm.
There were still a few score Skraelings snuffling around the reed beds of the Lhyl, perhaps hoping for a river lizard or two, and for a time the One stopped and watched them.
They were truly horrid creatures, but they would serve his purpose well.
There was a sudden commotion within the reeds, and the One strolled over to see what was happening. Had the Skraelings found a water lizard after all?
No, as it transpired. They had found a cat with a litter of kittens.
The mother cat had tried desperately to defend her litter, but in vain. She was now dead, torn between two of the Skraelings and ingested. The litter had consisted of seven kittens, but in the moments it had taken the One to walk over, the Skraelings had devoured six of them, leaving only one blood-spattered corpse which, just as the One stopped, one of the Skraelings reached for.
“Stop,” said the One. He was curious about this creature, and picked up the bloodied corpse himself.
It lay in the palm of his hand, limp, damp with blood…and then it suddenly moved, and sank its teeth (or at least, it attempted to sink its teeth) into the meaty flesh at the base of the One’s thumb.
The One jumped in surprise, almost dropping the kitten. He steadied, raising his hand so that he might study the creature more carefully.
Skraelings surrounded the One, wailing in frustration at the scent of blood and flesh so close.
The kitten rose on its paws, hissing at the One.
The One hissed back instinctively, but there was no malice in it. Instead he found himself confused by a strange sensation that began in his belly and rose into his chest.
It was…emotion, he realized, but he could not identify it.
“I might keep it,” the One said of the kitten. “It requires further study.”
As one, the Skraelings hissed in frustration.
“It was not dead at all,” said the One, “merely covered with the blood of its siblings. Now all that remains from the litter is the one.” His mouth curved and his eyes glinted as he realized the significance. “The one…”
The One studied the kitten more closely and noticed, as it flattened its ears and hissed at him again, that its teeth were tiny replicas of the ones the Skraeling had crowding their mouths.
“It must eat flesh, too,” said the One. He lifted his free hand, pointed it at one of the Skraelings, and the next instant the Skraeling dissolved into finely shredded strips of meat.
The One bent down, retrieved a strip, and dangled it over the kitten.
The kitten’s ears quivered, then pricked forward, and it reached for the meat.
The One smiled.