Chapter 2

Countless aeons ago, Purity left what she called the Paradise realm, dropped down a single level in the Great Cosmic Sandwich and began to travel from world to world.

This is the plane from which my father hails, gentle reader. In my previous instalments, I referred to this plane as the ‘shadow realm’, which is an accurate but narrow term. It’s like describing our level as the ‘Tempestrian realm’. Just as Tempestrians are not alone in this plane, the people of the shadow realm – the Shadowkin – were one civilisation among many in that plane. As they advanced in their technology, they made first contact with some of them. Out of this contact came the stories of Angels, including visits from Purity.

From the moment she arrived, she took a form that resembled the creatures of that world and began preaching the worship of an Almighty god of gods: the Creator. The more she travelled that world, however, the more she was horrified by it. According to the stories, this was Purity’s first encounter with evil, and it shocked her to the core.

“Surely,” she considered, “the Creator could not intend for their Blessing to be bestowed on such an unworthy place.”

Withholding the Creator’s Blessing, then, she left that world and its evil behind, traversing that plane in search of others that would be deserving of such a gift. She believed that the first world she had encountered could only be an anomaly in an otherwise perfect cosmos, but the next world she came across was tainted by this same evil force. She moved on to more and more worlds, but try as she might, she could not find anywhere that was truly worthy of the Creator’s Blessing. None could compare to her home in the Paradise realm, sometimes called Heaven.

Over time, her attitude changed to one of sympathy for the good creatures of that plane. How terrible it must be for them to be surrounded by evil. To live such painful, miserable lives in the presence of such evil must be unbearable for them. She would spend time in each world, trying to encourage the spark of goodness, and trying to turn people away from the evil path, but no matter how she tried, evil always remained.

As more time passed, her approach changed yet again, as she began to believe she had misunderstood the Creator’s intentions. The Creator had surely seen that things had started to go wrong down here and sent her out to cleanse this poison. That was surely what the Creator meant. She needed to Cleanse these worlds. Only in that way could they receive the Creator’s Blessing.

No-one knows the name of the first world, or the first people to receive her Final Judgement. All that is known is that Purity went among them, telling them to devote their lives solely to the worship of the Creator and Cleanse themselves from the corruption of evil. When they failed to pass her unknowable criteria, she bestowed the Blessing of the Creator, Cleansing the world of all intelligent life, thereby eliminating the evil force.

Purity continued her tour of that plane of reality, travelling from world to world, each time delivering her Final Judgement, Cleansing it of all sapient life. It is even said that other Angels learned what she was doing and tried to dissuade her. They told her there was good in the cosmos. Purity could see only evil. The peoples of the worlds that Purity Judged implored her to see the beauty all around. All she saw was corruption.

In each of the worlds she encountered, some flocked to her, sharing her vision, spreading the word and trying to bring good people into the Light of Purity. Other people tried to get her to stop the killing. She insisted she was not killing, she was Cleansing. They begged her to show mercy. She insisted she was showing mercy – she was giving life a second chance.

She believed everything in the cosmos should be as it was in the Paradise realm, but everything she saw fell short of that. Hopefully, next time, life would get it right.

World after world fell to her power, but sometimes a few refugees escaped to spread the word, so the Shadowkin began to hear more and more stories of this nature. They lost contact with other worlds they knew, and they got the sense that she was drawing closer.

One day, it finally happened. Their world was bathed in Divine Light, and a voice sang out, “People of the Shadow Realm rejoice! For I am Purity, and I have come to Cleanse you all. You have suffered for too long, but now that is at an end.”

But the Shadowkin had not been idle as the threat grew closer. They had prepared, pouring their resources into high technology. They knew other worlds had tried to use inter-planar forces against her, but she had always managed to cut them off. No matter what they tried, the Angel always seemed to be standing between them and that power, blocking the path. Nothing could stop or even slow her. No barrier could contain her. She always seemed to have a way into every room, no matter how well-sealed they thought it was.

The Shadowkin had studied what they could of this and realised that the Angel existed in dimensions beyond what they could perceive, but some of their finest minds had begun to develop technology that could operate in those same physical spaces. They theorised further that it should be possible to create physical spaces that even an Angel could not perceive. If so, that could give them a tactical advantage. They gave these concealed physical spaces a name: pocket dimensions.

They also developed weapons technology. Weapons that had the means to channel the energy of their own essence from within – the light in a box. In this way, the Angel could not block their powers as she could with any external power source. The force of these weapons would be determined by the power of the individuals who used them, and with the right training, that power might – just might – be enough to stop an Angel in her tracks.

A swarm of Shadowkin flew towards Purity with purpose. She scanned all the dimensions for concealed weapons: they had none that she could detect. Perhaps they were here to welcome her, she thought.

Well, it was certainly a welcoming committee of sorts.

As she watched, cannon-like weapons appeared out of nowhere and shot her with energy beams, causing her searing pain. She’d never experienced pain like that before. It was a kind of power unlike any she had previously encountered and, try as she might, she couldn’t block it. She tried to fight back, but other weapons were brought to bear, each imbued with that same strange power. In the end, she was forced to do something she’d never had to do before: retreat.

From that day, these Shadowkin fighters became shadow warriors. The first known beings to stop an Angel. The Campaign of Cleansing moved on to consume other worlds, but the Shadowkin knew it was only a temporary restbite. Purity of Angels would return, and they needed to be ready. To that end, their entire civilisation shifted to a permanent war footing and the ranks of the shadow warriors swelled.

Every time Purity revisited their world, the shadow warriors managed to turn back the attack, but the war was a costly one. Each assault claimed many lives. Boxes were torn open, their light extinguished forever.

One desperate plan by a Shadow Champion named Kullos had gone horribly awry. He had developed what he claimed was the ultimate weapon to force the capitulation of the Angel from Paradise, aptly named Heaven’s Surrender.

Purity had been horrified at such a weapon, sensing within it the power of True Destruction. There was only one place such power could come from – outside the Creator’s cosmos, in the vast nothingness that was home to the IT Entity. That power could unmake everything the Creator had made. There would be no second chances. In fact, there would never have been a first chance, for the cosmos would never have existed.

Many shadow warriors were killed in the battle for control of that weapon, and it took every scrap of power the Angel possessed, but she managed to secure the device and take it away. She had wanted to Cleanse the one who created the technology – she could sense ITs presence in him – but the weapon had been her priority. She would return for the maker of this weapon of evil later.

However, by the time she could return, Kullos was gone. He lived, she was sure of it, but she could not understand where he was.

You see, gentle reader, Purity could not perceive any of the planes below the one in which she was fighting the shadow warriors. She had no concept for them. Though that plane was only one level below Heaven, to her, it seemed like Hell.

Things continued in much the same way until, while she was busy Cleansing yet another world that was rife with evil, she sensed IT once more. Just briefly. Like catching a scent of something on the breeze. (This was the moment my mother unlocked the Nameless Book and had to deal with IT, imprisoning IT in her staff.) That scent was snatched away in an instant, but she had got a direction. A direction that didn’t make sense: down. But there was no ‘down’. She was already in Hell. There was nothing below that. There couldn’t be. Could there?

A moment later, from an Angel’s perspective, a blue light shone upward through the planes, displaying symbols on the surface of the membranes that contained them. (This was the formation of the Guardianship. The first time those blue symbols in the sky fully resolved.) That was proof. There really were planes below the ones she knew, and some kind of creature down there had just lit a beacon. It was gone before she could get a fix on any co-ordinates, but she was sure it had come from the same place as the sense of IT.

Then, not long after that, as she fought another battle against the shadow warriors, she felt shockwaves emanating through the layers. It felt like Creation magic. (In fact, she was detecting the presence of the original Tempestria through the Cosmic Rift.) But that was forbidden. Only the Creator had that power, and they had used it only once. Using it again could overwrite what the Creator had done. Replace it with a copy, a facsimile world. That was the ultimate blasphemy. These creatures, whatever they were, needed to be stopped. They needed to be Cleansed.

That day, the shadow warrior leaders received a report from the field: Purity had abandoned the battle and Descended to the lower planes. They didn’t know how she’d done it, but somehow, she’d found a way through Alycia’s Barrier. From the readings on their technology, they were convinced she had bypassed the realm of the Ysirians and several other layers, travelling beyond the Pantheon, where those who styled themselves gods resided. She stopped Descending only when she reached the material plane of the mortals, where she began her search for the facsimile world.

But the material plane of the cosmos was vast, so the shadow warriors believed Tempestria should remain hidden, as long as they kept to themselves, but if those mortals made too much noise, they might just draw her attention.

Once, long ago, the shadow warriors had thought mortals merely products of their dreams. If Purity ever found Tempestria, then in the future, those mortal creatures would once again exist only in dreams, for they would be Cleansed.

The shadow warriors were still cut off from the mortal plane by Alycia’s Barrier, so at first, there didn’t seem to be anything they could do. But then came a report that the Renegade, Kullos, had reactivated his control device. That created an opportunity, a link between the planes, but Kullos wasn’t who they needed to speak to. They needed the other one – Daelen StormTiger, their legendary Champion. They called in their Chief Technical Advisor, Daelen’s mother, Farrella, and consulted her. She told them that although her son had Descended without a control device, if he were to get his hands on Kullos’ device, even for a moment, then it would be possible to send a message. It would be mostly subliminal. There was insufficient bandwidth for full telepathy, but the Ysirians had developed a technique they called ‘sympathic communication’, projecting concept images and ideas. That should get through. Then maybe Daelen could do something to help keep Tempestria hidden. Modern Tempestrians knew the cost of interference from higher planes, and Farrella could only guess at how much damage her people had done to that innocent world as Kullos and Daelen fought. If Tempestria were to be Cleansed, then the Shadowkin would surely be at least partly responsible. She would not allow that to be their legacy. Not if she could do anything about it. She appreciated the irony that she was planning to interfere, to try and make up for past interference, but the only alternative was to sit by and do nothing.

At last, their technology recognised Daelen’s touch on Kullos’ control device, and a message was sent. In the blink of an eye, they were cut off, and the feedback signal from the control device fragmented and scattered. Further telemetry gave the impression of a massive explosion – a Heaven’s Surrender blast – and a renewed sense of IT invading that realm. There was nothing more likely to attract Purity, but then something very strange seemed to happen to Time. The Shadowkin technical people could not make sense of the readings, but somehow, the Heaven’s Surrender blast and all trace of IT were just…gone. It seemed Purity was equally baffled because she still could not locate Tempestria, but she was getting closer. It was only a matter of time.

One of the technicians called out to the Chief, “I’m sorry, but I think…” he trailed off.

“Yes?” Farrella demanded. “What is it?” From the colours of his aura, shining through from within, she could tell that it was nothing good.

“It’s Daelen, Ma’am,” he began, hesitantly, “I think…from the readings…I think he’s dead.”

Farrella hurried over to see the readings for herself. It seemed it was true – his mortal body had sustained irreparable damage, but with a cry of “Wait!” a female technician rushed to her side and took control of the technology herself, fine-tuning the readings in a way Farrella had never seen before. A small light flashed on the display.

“There!” cried the technician, pointing triumphantly. “You see? There’s still hope yet. A chance.”

Farrella wanted to wrap her aura around her, but remained professional, asking her name.

“Alycia, Ma’am,” she replied, her aura blushing slightly.

“You bring honour to the name,” Farrella told her.

“Thank you, Ma’am.”

“But how does this help?” asked the male technician.

Farrella did not immediately respond as more strange Temporal readings displayed themselves, but when they settled down, she could tell her son’s mortal body had been moved and placed within technology that was compatible with theirs. A stasis chamber of some sort.

“Never underestimate mortals,” Farrella murmured to herself, shaking her head in wonder. “She always said that. I’m beginning to see what she meant.” She cleared her aura – she couldn’t afford to get distracted by such thoughts. She had to focus on trying to save her son.

“Maintain a low-level energy field,” she ordered. “Just a trickle. Nothing traceable. That will allow the technology down there to keep Daelen’s mortal body viable.”

“For how long?” the male technician wondered, incredulously.

“For as long as it takes!” Alycia snapped back.

Once again, Farrella approved. What a ridiculous question.

“As long as what takes? It’s not as if the mortals are going to know what to do!” he scoffed.

“Don’t underestimate them!” Farrella admonished him. “I’m certain those mortals had a hand in stopping Kullos, Heaven’s Surrender and even a breach attempt by IT. If they know enough to do all that and they know to keep my son’s body in stasis, then they know enough to collect and reassemble the control device fragments together in that same place for safety.”

She couldn’t be sure if her message had got through to Daelen, but as young Alycia said, there was a chance, just a chance, that a world and perhaps a son could yet be saved.