Thresholder

I found myself in a city of glass that hung from immense trees like ornaments, each bulb connected by thin filaments I’d have found daunting to cross if not for my staff, which could save me from any fall. I was once again blessed with gracious hosts who did their best to tend to my wounds, though they had little in the way of proper healing. Instead they inserted a mushroom into my ear, and through the mycotic arts, I was able to hear again. They were delicate creatures, at peace with nature, though the glass they used exposed them to the world in a way that initially made me uncomfortable until I got used to their lack of shame. They were a different sort of creature from me, long-limbed and all of slender builds, delicate creatures, but they didn’t treat me like an outsider.

I fell in love there, maybe because I’d been battered and lonely. I have to imagine that most of us are lonely, homesick, or otherwise afflicted by our journey through the worlds. I was worried, because of what had happened some worlds ago, but my worries were soothed by my partner’s tender words. I don’t know if it’s like that for you, if you feel the need for companionship, if the woman you were with was something more for you, one of us or someone from this world. It’s possible you can relate, but the others I’ve run into so far have had stark differences in outlook, so perhaps you think I’m sad or weak or simply unhinged.

I had an amicable meeting with my counterpart, for a change. He was an explorer, an adventurer, thrilled with the opportunity to see the worlds, excited by what lay around every fresh corner. He spoke our mutual language with an accent, unplaceable, but he was happy and kind, letting me know that he’d come for me only once his adventure was finished. This was his third world, my seventh. He’d bested all challenges before him and outmatched me in the gifts he’d been able to take with him. There was no sense, when I spoke with him, that he thought losing was an option.

He said that he would kill me, and I asked why that should be the case, why he couldn’t just beat me to within an inch of my life so the portals would open. Apparently he’d killed the others he’d fought, and hadn’t known that not killing was an option. He wasn’t regretful though, just faintly amused at his misunderstanding of the ‘rules’, such as they were. I’d have said that he had a screw loose, but I’d met enough people from different cultures that I was guessing he might have been a typical specimen of his culture. After we’d had our talk, he disappeared, assuring me that he would find me when he was ‘finished’ with the world.

I stayed with my lover and tried to train. I wasn’t sure whether my counterpart would try to kill me, as he’d killed the others, or whether he would show restraint. There had been, until that point, some kind of power in the world, whether I chose it or rejected it, and I hunted for it in that world too, holding meetings with these people in their glass houses. Eventually I was able to attain an enchantment that would provide protection in battle, a choker held tight around my neck, but they could offer me no armor, and their only weapons were those adapted from cooking and gardening. As I’ve said, they were peaceful people.

My counterpart met me honorably, as he’d said he would, a month after that first meeting. I had worried that he would strike in the middle of the night, cutting the filaments or simply shattering the house and causing me to fall to my death, but he set out an invitation, proposed a battleground — something I thought was preferable to an all-out fight in the middle of the delicate city.

Our fight was on the forest floor, with the huge trees looming over us, in twilight. I’d done poorly in negotiating, since my legs had grown too familiar to the swaying bulbs I’d been living in and my eyes too used to the ample light up in the canopy. I hadn’t realized the grounds put me at a disadvantage. I had also never been much of a fighter, and the time my hosts had spent teaching me their entirely theoretical ‘leaf style’ of martial arts was mostly wasted.

I drew blood more than once, and my staff provided incredible defenses for me, but he had a large halberd that cut like the wind. After not too long I was bleeding from various cuts, the staff responsible for more and more of my defense, swinging even after my muscles had started to fail me. The enchantment helped, turned killing blows into glancing ones, but if there was a way to beat him, I couldn’t see it. He broke the enchantment, tired me out, then played with me like a cat with a mouse. He was a good sport about it, but I think he was testing the limits, or to see whether I was telling the truth about the portals. At a certain point I was barely able to stand, feeling light-headed from the loss of blood, begging him to stop, but he kept cutting me more, working around the staff that was still twisting in my blood-soaked hands.

And then, eventually, the portal did open, but for him, not me. For a moment I was afraid that he would keep going, inflicting further injuries on me. I could see in his eyes that he wanted to, though I had no idea whether it was out of some warped scientific curiosity or a belief that a proper battle should end in death. He was on the precipice of decision, and when he finally made up his mind — I could see it on his face — I lurched forward with a reserve of strength I hadn’t known I had. I made it through the portal as he attacked me, then lay on red sand, breathing hard, bleeding, hoping for rescue.

The rescue never came, but the sand responded to my blood, moving toward my wounds, caking in place and melding with my skin. I would find out later that it wasn’t sand after all, but particles of dragon scales from a dragon thought to be ten times the size of the world. It was hard to know what to take at face value from these people, but that was what I was told, and the world was possessed of its own magic, so it’s possible, I suppose.

The dragon sand was imperfect and left dark red stripes where I’d been cut, which was most of my body. Those took six months to heal properly. I was light on blood too, without water, and thought that I might die anyhow, despite getting through the portal. I also didn’t know whether I was in the world ‘meant’ for him, if such a thing was possible. I think I’ve come to the point where I mostly accept the worlds as they come, having been through so many of them, but that portal felt dodgy somehow, worrisome.

I walked toward black smoke on the horizon, noting the skeletons in the red sand on the way over. There were too many of them, like a war had been lost there, no flesh on the bones, no metal from armor, no wood. There were skeletons of animals and people both, and some of huge creatures whose names I could only guess at.

The village I came to was hesitant to take me in, especially with my wounds. I explained that I would work for a place to sleep and some food, if I could have a day to rest and recover, though in truth I knew I needed more. I demonstrated the staff for them, explaining that I could be useful, and the village elder, a withered man in leathers, told me that they had a need for a strong warrior.

For three days I rested. When the slavers came by, I tried to speak with them, but it turned violent when they made for the chieftain's daughter.

I have some sense of you now, through the battles we’ve fought, through the things I know you’ve done in this world. You’re a killer, through and through, and I suppose I only have luck to thank that you didn’t kill me when you first found me. There’s a trail of bodies in your wake.

I didn’t find it so easy. I battered those men with my staff, but I left them clutching limbs and groaning. I was going to let them go. The villagers explained that these men had a camp some distance away, a place where there were hundreds of men just like those. If they were allowed to leave, they would return with more. I had made myself a wanted man by defending the village, had endangered the village … but only if those men returned home.

There was a long conversation on the matter. Too long, probably. You would have just killed those men, if you had helped the village at all. We talked through all the angles, but the village had no capacity to keep them imprisoned, and we couldn’t take them at their word that they would run for the hills, not that it would be a much better outcome.

It was the village elder who killed them, after much discussion. He’d been hoping that I would be the one to do it. His movements were swift, economical. I’d seen him use the same motion when killing chickens for dinner.

I stayed with the villagers, even helped to bury the bodies in the endless sands. For all the fighting and war I’d been through, it was as close as I’d been to violence through that whole time. I needed to recuperate, and didn’t like my chances elsewhere, so I spent time with those people until I was better. I put in the work, when and where I was able, and the next group of men that came by to take them away for a life of slavery were driven off without the need for anything but posturing.

I left in the middle of the night, once I felt able. I had seen enough of the pattern, the counterparts, to know that there was another out there. If he was tracking me somehow, I didn’t want the villagers to be able to point him in the right direction. I used the staff to fly, so I wouldn’t leave a trail.

Bones were different in that world. I don’t know how or why. They didn’t decay, they couldn’t be broken, there was nothing that ate them or whatever happens in normal worlds. It had something to do with the God of Bones, I guess, and the deep cosmology of the world, the historic battles of deities that were long outside living memory. There were many places where large things had died and oversized bones stuck up out of the forests or had been used in architecture, though I never saw hide nor hair of any living megafauna. It sometimes seemed as though the entire world was choking on bones.

I found a city and moved there, though I was treated with distrust. I had an accent, and some words didn’t translate quite right, but I’ve always been agreeable, and this time around I had some experience integrating with a foreign culture. There’s a balance to be had between doing as the locals do and not behaving like you’re simply ‘one of them’ and so far, I’ve tried to lean more toward imitation. Sometimes the locals like to show their hospitality, or they enjoy the vicarious thrill of having you try things they’ve known their whole lives. This world, there was a bit more unease with me, more suspicion.

I ended up living above an apothecary, in an apartment that was only a single room. I loved it there, frankly, in spite of the overall rudeness of the people and unfamiliarity of the environs. There were unseemly aspects of their society, though perhaps that’s putting it too lightly. The slavers I had fought off on first arriving weren’t some aberration, it was the way that things were done in much of the world. It was difficult to see, and I had half a mind to fix it, if only I’d had the means. Alas, I was a single outsider with only a magical staff. There was an abolition movement, and I became involved with it, but there was little I could contribute, especially since most of the work was either in manumission or writing new tracts.

I heard rumors of my counterpart before I ever saw him. There were a series of deaths in the city, always of people walking alone at night, swift and brutal killings. They were missing pieces of themselves, different ones, arms and legs, innards.

I stayed in my little apartment, working my little jobs, but I knew he was coming, that he must be. I didn’t know how he would find me, and made no move to seek him out. My thought was that he might never find me, that he might continue what he was doing and it would never come to a head. There is a theme, in some stories of my land, of the hero refusing to pick up the sword to fight the monster. I wasn’t playing that part, only trying to find out what would happen if I didn’t intervene, seeing whether it was destiny that we fight each other.

I suppose I’ve danced around the idea of power. I’m not sure why. Every world has had something for the taking, large or small. Sometimes it takes effort, other times it’s freely given, but there’s always something. In the world that felt like a zoo, the people could bond with aquatic animals, and I resisted the opportunity to have an octopus permanently fused to me, something I now consider a mistake — I should have taken the octopus. There was the staff, of course, and the enchantment I had from the tree people that was broken before I took the portal, and the moving sword that shattered. Language is one of the constants, but it felt like the power was too, and I had decided that if I wanted to survive, to keep moving between the worlds, I would need to start taking power at every opportunity.

This particular world was one steeped in the history and power of its gods. I’ve already mentioned the bones that showed up in such quantities that they were hard to ignore, but there were other gods, many of them, some old and some new. It was the first time I had been to a world with proper gods, those that reached in and touched physical reality. I’d been a follower of the Fist of Men in my home world, though with only middling conviction, going to the crypts for the solstices and singing the old songs, but not feeling it in my heart.

I became a cleric of the God of Water, thinking that all the worlds I had been to had water of one kind or another, and that if I could carry the power with me, I would be set up well. By the time two months had passed, I was able to control a small ball of water, which moved across my skin like a squirrel, bounding and playful. It was a minor power, as these things go, minor by the standards of that world, but it had been the best I could do without knowing how long I would be there, and the schedule of prayers wasn’t too onerous. It was also legal, which meant that I could use it out in the open and gain help from others, not in the way of those gods who were locked off by the city’s guilds or forbidden by their knightly orders.

My counterpart was still killing his way across the city. I had been hoping that it wasn’t related to me, that it was simply another aspect of godly magic. I knew, deep down, that he was a world hopper like me, and that he would keep up his reign of terror as long as he was allowed to. As the weeks passed, the city was locked down, doors and windows shuttered after the sun had fallen. They were searching for him, and I kept hoping that they would find him. He was stealing a collection of body parts, for what purpose, it was difficult to say. I had the sense that he was gaining power too, and while I had a small water spirit, whatever his collection was for, I doubted it would be nearly so weak.

My counterpart escalated. He started killing the armored men who patrolled the streets at night, tearing them apart even though they went in two and threes. When the patrols stopped, and people were left to hide in their homes, he began ripping those homes open. I saw one the next day, the slats spread apart like a child ripping the tissue from around a present.

More than a hundred people died before I acted. I feel great shame about that.

I had no idea what I was going to do, how I was supposed to face such a creature, but I went out into the street, staff held in front of me, and called for him.

He approached with a pounding against the cobblestones, but was only a man in a cloak, at least as I first saw him. He sniffed the air and regarded me. Things moved beneath his cloak, rippling and swaying. I’d thought that we would have a dialogue, that he would explain himself, but he attacked as soon as he knew that I was the one he’d been waiting for. The cloak came off and what felt like a thousand limbs burst forward from beneath it, so many that my staff could barely deflect them. He used no weapons, had no armor, but I was incapable of doing anything but defend myself, and that for not too long.

He nearly killed me. I suffered some of the worst wounds I’ve ever had at his hands. I lost consciousness, in fact, from the pain and suffering, and when I woke up, I was only barely able to get myself to the portal. Of my counterpart, there was no sign.

In the next world I spent time in a hospital, with endless rounds of surgery and the prayers of clerics, whose healing magic was weak and limited. I think if there’d been no magic, or no high technology as on the space station, I would have died.

Eventually, after some months, I was ejected from the hospital and put in government housing, a huge apartment building that was beset by problems. I had tried to explain that I was from another world, but after the second time being told that was utmost blasphemy, I kept it to myself. I was still only mostly healed when I got out, and I worried that I would be fighting with a handicap throughout the whole affair, but it turned out that I had more time.

The government was run by a monolithic religion, all-powerful, with the head priest also being the head of state. They were in a period of waning power, and I, once again, found myself falling in with the opposition, the same as I had before. These were no disorganized rabble though, they were indigenous people whose land had been stolen away from them. Attempts had been made to kill their culture, to murder their children, but the current state of affairs was one of simple oppression. The culture of these people had been largely destroyed, and they were building up a new one, which lived in stark defiance to theocracy. Spray paint, skateboards, clothes that screamed of rebellion like a primordial howl. Many of them had come up through state-run orphanages, cut away from their parents, leaving a generation of boys and girls who had found their own way.

I’ve worried in writing this — and I suppose in reading it — that I’m giving you an excuse to kill me, not that you need one. There’s enough variety among our kind that perhaps you hear that I was helping indigenous people fight against a colonizing force and think that I should have been on the side of the colonizers. Maybe you’d need to know what color everyone’s skin is, or some nonsense like that. Or perhaps none of those words mean anything to you, and the conflict is only a conflict, the reasons hard for you to understand.

The other world hopper had come in before me, which took me quite by surprise given my long recovery. She was religious, deeply so, and saw an echo of her own religion in this place. Through sheer force of will, not to mention physical force, she’d positioned herself as a holy person, latching onto a prophecy or perhaps just a few lines of their holy book. I spoke with her a few times, both over radio like we’re doing now, and quite a few times in person. She was possessed with a fervor that only the worst of the religious are gripped by, perhaps in reaction to our situation. She believed, I think through a doctrine of her own creation, that her god was the god of all worlds, that she had been selected to bring proper belief to them, or maybe to fight the enemies of her god and act as his instrument. I don’t think it was entirely coherent, to be honest, but I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

We fought. I was a vanguard for the rebels, ready to pitch in on the dangerous missions, and she was the stalwart defender of a government she should, by rights, have no allegiance to. On one occasion I went with my companions into the government records office in the dead of night, and somehow, she was there as we tried to make our escape, glowing with golden light. We hadn’t tripped any alarms, and I never did find out how she had appeared there. She was cagey about what her powers actually were. That was the first time we’d come to blows, and would be far from the last.

I didn’t want to hurt her, despite our differences of opinion. She didn’t really want to hurt me either. Every time a fight ended, I thought it would be with one of us beaten to a pulp, but we kept letting the other escape. I did it because I felt deep empathy for her, but I don’t fully know why she did the same for me. There were times it felt like we were building to something, as though she was only one more fight away from dropping her delusions and switching sides. Maybe she felt the same about me.

I haven’t been relating everything to you. I think that might be cause for distrust, but I’ve been forthright, since I do think there are things to learn from each other, and if we’re to fight, then at least we might engage in some trade of information first. Still, I had an exchange with her, shortly before our final battle, that I think is worth recounting in full here, and while I can’t say that it’s verbatim, I believe the spirit of it remains intact.

“You feel a misdirected righteousness,” she said to me, a long sword with an elegant curve in her delicate hand. She was glowing, wings spread wide. “There is a glory to the True God, and it has touched you. Yet like many, the glory has been corrupted, turned aside toward ill purpose.”

“I’ve seen the sides,” I replied to her. “I’ve seen the graveyards, looked through the records your people have made of their own misdeeds.” It was hard not to talk like her, when we were facing each other in that way. I had my gauntlet and my staff by that point. This was how we had most of our talks, with our weapons held in hand, waiting for a fight to break out, but I knew her well enough by this point to know that we could end up talking for quite a while like that, all tensed up.

“Misdeeds are one thing,” she said. “But the core of this society is sound, the religion intact, their people prosperous.”

It was hard to hear her say such a thing, knowing how false it was. It made me think that there was no hope that we could ever find reconciliation, that we would have to keep fighting until one of us was dead.

If she had beaten me badly enough that the portal appeared, I wasn’t entirely sure I would go through it. I didn’t particularly like the world, it was too embroiled in strife for me to want to be there because it was a good place to be, but I cared about the people in it, the friends that I had fought alongside, people who had died for the struggle. My gauntlet had belonged to a close friend, and remains a symbol of him, something that I’m proud to carry with me.

“To hand this country over to the heathens would put this world beyond recovery,” she said. “I have seen fallen worlds, spoken to fallen people, it feels impossible that god’s light would forever be darkened, but this is my purpose, to bring the light forward.”

“They’re corrupt,” I replied. I didn’t say to her that I didn’t believe in God, nor her proto-God. I knew her well enough to avoid that misstep. “If you can’t see that the seed of darkness lies inside of them, that you will never be able to root it out —”

“I haven’t been making my progress public,” she replied. “If your people knew, they would give me thunderous applause for those who are now in the ground. But they don’t want the rot cut out, they would rather throw the entire enterprise in the fire.”

This was true. They had their own plans for a new government, a new society that they would build in the wake of the bloodshed. They called it the Great Divorce, though always with the understanding that the ‘marriage’ had been against their will.

“I’m helping these people,” I said. “I’m not helping them in the way that I’m forcing my help on them, I’m asking them what they want me to do and then doing it. They don’t want to be governed by your people. What’s the end of this? Subjugation? Conversion?”

“Absolutely,” she replied, as though that was obvious. “They will see the light of god, even if it’s through eyes held open.” There was a long pause. I didn’t know how to respond to that. She had never outright said it before, that this was the long-term plan, the destruction of an entire people. Until that point, she had skirted around it, denied that was what it might take. “I have been gifted these weapons, put forward on this journey, for a purpose, yes, but also to be tested, honed. I see now the lesson of this world, the trial that was intended for me.”

I knew then that I needed to bring an end to this, that we had somehow moved into a different phase of the campaign. She had been tested, yes, and decided that she was going full-throttle to the ends of the world.

I beat her, then and there. The fight lasted a long time, with no small amount of collateral and interference, but in the end, I had her beaten and broken. She was taking shallow breaths as blood dripped from her mouth. The portal opened, and I realized that I didn’t know whether it was for me or her. She crawled to it, holding in her guts, and I let her. I felt awful about hurting her, and awful about letting her go, but I knew her too well to deliver death.

I did my best to prepare, not knowing how long I had. I didn’t know what governed the portals, though I had been through a number of them by that point. I had enough time to think about what she’d said, what her ‘purpose’ was, and ultimately, what my purpose was. I grabbed books, one of which you’ve already seen, books about science and technology, mathematics, knowledge and processes. In the end, I had only just enough time to pack a backpack, and then I was off. I wish I knew what had become of the revolt I’d been a part of, but I can’t say for certain, only that I left them with quite the coup, the sainted woman brought low on live television.

And that brings us to today. I came through the portal with my backpack on, staff in one hand and gauntlet around the other arm, a parting gift from the rebels. I caused quite a stir, but was able to trade away a few simple things for regular clothes in short order, and I’d been in places that were outwardly rougher. It didn’t take long for me to stumble upon Cormorant Wesley, who took what I said at face value with what I’d initially thought was suaveness but now think was simply a peculiar unflappability.

I hope you get this message. If not, it felt good to write, at least, which is something. I’ve avoided saying much about our current situation, the mutually exclusive friends we’ve made, but I suppose you expect that. I hope this was what you wanted, and that we can keep talking, right up until the end.

I’ve said before that I’m tired of losing. I think I might actually be stronger than you, which is a change of pace for me, given how much I’ve been on the back foot through this whole thing. We’ll set a time and place, and we’ll have it out, but the work that I’ve done here, the gifts I’ve given, seem to have done their work. From what I know of your side, I’ve chosen the correct one, but you don’t seem the type for debates on philosophy or ethics. Perhaps you just fell in with them.

I’ll do my best not to kill you. I hope you show me the same courtesy.

I do wonder if you’ll run into any of those others somewhere out there, if it works like that, if there are repeats or few enough of us that you’d expect to run into one of them. I keep wondering about what happened to the others, whether they’re okay out there, whether they survived. Even the ones I thought were lunatics, I wonder about.

At any rate, I send my regards.