PreCursive

  I…in my heart, I khat this couldn’t really be Earth. Only moments ago, I had been standing in a smoky void, speaking to a disembodied skeleton man. And before that, I had been in the middle of a city under siege by a colossal mohere was no feasible way, after everything I had learned about Precursors, that I had suddenly be returo Earth.

  But it didn’t matter in that moment.

  I couldn’t even begin to describe the emotions rolling over me as I numbly stared out at the ndscape in front of my eyes.

  It was…so, so real. The sights and the smells and even the feeling of the sun and wind on my battle-dirtied skin.

  But, gradually, something pierced the shock that had settled over both my outer and cs.

  The sound was off.

  Bae, this was a w-eighborhood. That meant there was always something going on, in the summer that I could feel and smell all around me. Children running to and fro, getting into all kinds of mischief. Parents and regur joes talking in the yard or cooking up a storm rill. Teens l on the sidewalks, pining about whatever had mao blight them that day.

  That was the problem. There were no people.

  That, finally, mao knock me out of my near awe. This neighborhood had never been this abandoned in my life.

  And right now, it was a near ghost town.

  I took a deep breath, and used my one good hand to unsteadily push myself to my feet. As I did so, a sneer worked its way onto my face.

  “Almost, Rhazal,” I said, fury growing inside my breast. “Almost, but not quite. You’re not going to break me this way.”

  “Is this Terra, then?” I heard a quiet voice speak to me then, in the bay mind. I almost wao instinctually sh out at it in my anger, but I reized it as Tzo. I nearly spoke out loud to address his question, but I didn’t dare. Rhazal could be watg me this very moment and I wouldn’t know. That would put the Lich that had already done so mue at eveer risk. “Surprisingly mundane, for such a mysterious locale. I must say, though, what etal carriages you possess.”

  I didn’t speak, but I did direct a sternated look at the stave I still held in my right hand. Since he could apparently perceive my surroundings, I was hoping he could see me as well.

  He got the point.

  “Oh, you just speak to me in your mind and I’ll hear it,” Tzo said dismissively. “I think the old boy is a bit rusty, in his dotage. He shaped this space from impression io your soul, and in doing so, he widehe, ah, ‘throughput’, so to speak. This gave me the ore directly ect to you, as long as you hold the stave. Su iion is only possible here in the depths of the cord.”

  I briefly wondered how a Lich would uand a cept like ‘throughput’, but just chalked it down to Language Adaptation. Instead, I tried to mentally speak to him. “Yes, this is where I grew up,” I projected at him, the anger I couldn’t curb with my missing middle ring c the tone of the thought. “But it’s wrong because there are no people.”

  “Unsurprising,” Tzo replied. “A creature like a Godbound was never born, and thus does not uand attats. It was never swaddled in the arms of mother, or supported by a steady father. It ot uand or quantify such things, when an engineered being such as Rhazal lives only for the desires of its creator. Thus is it incapable of poputing such a location with even facsimiles of people. Just more evidehat Ixiah is an inpetent sculptor, when eveon was able to instill the spark of true life into his Sculpted.”

  “Why even try then?” I said, a frown creeping its way onto my face, my eyes lingering on a nearby house. I had been friends with that family’s child when I was young, and I was uled by how accurate the house was. It was so lifelike that I could even make out the mistakes in the paint job on its brick fa?ade, from when I’d been paid to do it one summer.

  “Because it’s trying to ule you, of course,” Tzo said, deadpan. “To what end, I ot say. I suppose you’ll just have to explore and find out.”

  I snorted. “No need. If it’s trying to fuck with me, I know where to go.” Having said that, I took a step forward, the false asphalt under my feet g.

  As I walked slowly down the road to my destination, I kept my head on a swivel. It was just so eerie to see such a familiar pce so still and lifeless. I felt a chill run down my spine when I realized that it reminded me of zombie movies. I half expected old Mrs. Livingston to e shuffling out of her little house, arms extended and moaning about brains.

  I shuddered at the thought a moving.

  Before long, I had reached the end of the road aered into the cul-de-sac that I kneaiting for me. Once I did, I took another moment to stop and just…take it all in.

  Yep…there was my home. The house that I had grown up in, and…

  Where my father had likely beeo die after I had been spirited away to Vereden.

  It wasn’t rge, sidering my parents' ine when they bought it. Only a siory, and structed in a fairly generic Ameri style, it had, once upon a time, been painted a cheery yellow. The paint had been an idea of my mother’s way ba the day before I had even been born.

  But, by the time I had disappeared, it was old and faded. It looked more like a dirty white, than anything.

  Even before I’d been spirited away, I had thought it was sad. I just…hadn’t known what to do with it.

  I sighed and approached my house using the driveway. As I did, I let my hand ghost along the surfay car still parked on the pavement, a wry smile crossing my lips as I did so. It wasn’t anything special, just a generically painted silver eobox that I had sved away at a few dead-end jobs for. But it was mine, and I had loved it for its reliability.

  Was. Was mine.

  It had probably been junked by now, with my disappeara’s not like Dad could use it.

  I looked away a walking up to the door, with its peeling paint. Ohere, I y my hand on the doorknob and tried it.

  Locked.

  My eyebrow twitched at the pettiness of it. “Really? Really?” I said out loud, looking up at the false sky. “Yoing to lock the door on me?” I shook my head.

  For a wild moment, I sidered just breaking the door down. I was certainly strong enough to do it, these days. But the idea of defiling even an illusion of my childhood home in such a manner felt…wrong.

  Instead, I let my gaze fall on the doorbell.

  I shrugged.

  Couldn’t hurt, I suppose.

  I pressed the button, and the y doorbell that my dad had installed before I was even b out ihe house. I think the sound had been from some eighties movie about close enters with aliens.

  Would you look at that. Rhazal had even gotten that right.

  I was a little startled when I heard footsteps approag the door from ihe house. I braced myself, though. That had to be Rhazal. If there was nobody else in the neighborhood, and he wao ‘parley’ with me, then this must be how he wao do it.

  I thought I was ready for his monstrous appearance writ small to be standing in the doorway.

  But that wasn’t aiting for me.

  Instead, it was my father.

  Only…

  How he had been before the act that had robbed him of the life he had built.

  My father hadn’t been a tall man, and by the time I was eighteen, I had outgrown him by a full head. On his own head, he still had the full head of long, blohinning hair that had fallen out after his act, pulled ba a ponytail like he had all those years ago. Striking green eyes peered up at me from behind thick, coke-bottle gsses, and a smile graced his thin lips like I hadn’t seen in years. I barely paid any attention to what he was wearing before I shut my eyes and grit my teeth.

  Before the repliy father could even speak, I preempted him. “Is this how you parley with others, Rhazal?” I spoke slowly, doing my best not to lose my temper. I was dearly missing my middle ring right now, because it was a struggle. “You torment them with images of those they have lost? Before this proceeds any further, I demand you assume another form.”

  Silence, for a moment.

  Then a deep, inhuman voice, a quizzical transtion of Rhazal’s iion from outside from a spiritual oo the physical, rang out. “Does this satisfy then, Precursor?”

  I cracked open oo see what he’d ged into, only to hurriedly squeeze it back shut. But…not before I caught a glimpse of long brown hair, and a g, motherly smile.

  My grip on Tzo’s staff tightened. If this had been anything other than an a Lich’s staff, I’m sure it would have snapped in half at the force I lying to it.

  “No,” I hissed. “Anything other than those two. Join me ireet when you’re done pying games. I will not treat with you ihis building.”

  I refused to sully even an imitation of such a precious pce with such a…vile presence, any longer.

  At that, I spun around and marched away from my family home into the ter of the cul-de-sac. As I did so, I heard Tzo’s voi my mind once again.

  “As I said,” The Lich said quietly. “He ot uand his own bsphemy.”

  I shouldn’t be surprised, that the dead were more empathetic than the monstrous.

  After all, Tzo had been human.

  Once.

  After a time spent staring up at the sky and struggling to trol my emotions, I heard footsteps approach me from behind. I braced myself before I turned around. If this thing looked like either of my parents, I repared to call this ehing off, sequence be damned. If I caught sight of soft brown hair once again, I would immediately attack, even if it did nothing.

  There was only so much I could take.

  But, it washer of my parents waiting for me behind my back.

  Instead, it was Grey. The illusionary form of the mentor I hadn’t seen in weeks was standing there on the pavement in his full Order armor, Stelrum sheathed at his waist and Erux held in his right hand. ‘He’ was leaning oaff and smiling at me, in that knowing way Grey teo do.

  Irritating, but tolerable.

  I suppose this thing thought I was more likely to listen to it if it affected the form of an authority figure in my life.

  Hah.

  “So, oh son of Rot,” I said, leaning on my own borrowed stave. “You wished to parley. Make your pitch.”

  The facsimile of Grey hadn’t blinked once, si had taken up position in front of me. That didn’t ge when an imitation of Grey’s own voice exited its mouth, devoid of all humaion. “I shall be blunt, bde of the System. Why do you fight for them?”

  I bli the odd question. “Excuse me?”

  “Why do you fight for them?” Grey-Rhazal asked me again patiently. “Why do you involve yourself in the wars of Vereden, when you are alien to them? Why do you champion the causes of a people who you have no stake with?”

  “Because…” I said slowly. “I am alien to them. I have no pce here but what I make. And I have made a life here, that I am ing to care for.”

  A fsh of Sylvia’s Mithril face ran through my mind, but I pushed it away.

  An expression finally crossed the imitations lips. An almost empty smile. “Exactly. A life, on this world sn to you. If it is a life you desire…”

  “I, and my mistress, give you a better one.′