Colt: The Cosmic Prayer (Hidria Book 1)

  COLT

  Joseph Williams

  Aidric Publishing

  Copyright © Joseph Williams 2017

  Copyright © Aidric Publishing 2017

  www.JosephWilliamsFiction.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0692657997

  For Cathy

  With special appreciation to my parents,

  Sharon and Mike Williams.

  1

  It began in darkness. A holo-projector sighed to life on a platform overlooking a deep, shimmering pool.

  The Great Colt.

  She was more imposing than he’d imagined. Indifferent. Hands crossed behind her back, shallow mouth barely moving even as she began to speak. Her stare burned through his skull as though she were truly standing in front of him rather than a universe away, ready to pass judgment or lend a helping hand.

  Like God.

  Like Colt.

  An indistinct form. A voice. A shadow.

  “You are surrounded by poisonous microscopic creatures. The human body cannot withstand more than twenty-seven seconds among them, sixteen in a cloud of this particular concentration. You’ve already inhaled their toxic breath. A human will be dead within ten seconds.” Her eyebrows rose slightly. They showed neither malice nor benevolence. They were simply elevated. “You, therefore, must not be human.”

  He couldn’t find the voice to respond. His senses were awash in the emergent spectacle: gaseous shadows illuminated by the wavering twinkle of the hologram over the pool, searing pain as the creatures bit into his esophagus and lungs. The end. Staring down death through a long, lonely corridor. A kaleidoscope of colorful pain reflected in her eyes, and she withdrawn to clinical observation as though she didn’t care whether he lived or died. Perhaps she didn’t.

  I am not human, he thought, scrambling to remember his training. Regulating his breaths the way the Duri Master had taught him high in the mountains on a dark, rainy day that had seemed to last forever.

  “You will die because you do not know God.”

  It was not the accusation he’d expected but the sacred manual had warned him to be prepared for improvisation. One out of every five Called warriors was dealt a change in the ritual, and evidently, he was that one. He wondered if the designation should be a source of pride or concern.

  Pride dwells in the tongue of the dead man.

  A nonsensical saying, perhaps, but one which had been sufficiently drilled into his head between the manual and the Duri teachings to be sacred in its own perverse way. It stuck to the roof of his brain like solta butter and wouldn’t budge no matter how hard he tried to drive it out through meditative exercises.

  This is nothing like I expected, he thought futilely, praying that the Great Colt hadn’t spotted the hopelessness creeping over his face. I will die before reaching the end.

  “You will die either way.”

  Again, she probed his thoughts. Reaching in with hooked fingernails and peeling apart his insecurities to examine on her throne at the end of reality.

  Time was running out.

  “There’s no such thing as time,” she countered.

  Another seemingly nonsensical saying that boasted profundity while never quite achieving it. Part of the test. Part of seeing what he was made of and whether he had the intellect to wade through the illusions and archaic chants of his religion to find a greater truth than any living creature had ever known.

  I can do this, he reminded himself.

  He was one of the Called, after all, a solemn charge awarded to precious few. If he succeeded in the trials, he would inherit the mantle of the most revered warriors in the universe, the enlightened purveyors of Justice and Truth who served the Great Colt in her infinite wisdom.

  He would become Hidria.

  But for now, he was going to die.

  “You must not die,” Colt told him. “You must not be human.”

  Steeling himself, he breathed deeply of the toxins and surrendered his body to helplessness despite the searing pain. Pain, after all, was human, and he could not allow it to take hold of him in this strange new world.

  I cannot show weakness.

  His blood boiled as the creatures wormed through his veins. A gasp escaped his lips before he could draw it back into his lungs. Yet Colt did not appear behind him with her fiery sword, nor did she stab him through the heart and spit on his corpse as the manual had said she might at the first sign of unworthiness, so he assumed he was still in the running. Still malleable in her estimation.

  I am not human, he reminded himself. I am Hidria.

  The moment the thought entered his mind, the sense of poison in his body faded and ecstasy consumed him as completely as death. The contrast was too overwhelming to effectively process. His brain began to overload.

  “You are not human,” Colt said firmly. The platform disappeared and he was suddenly kneeling in a thick jungle before a thundering waterfall. The sky was a psychedelic swirl of purples, blues, and greens. The wind blew hair softly across his forehead. “You are Hidria.”

  Reborn at the hands of the Great Colt.

  “Not by my hands,” she corrected him, “but by your own. By your own, and by God’s. Nothing can be done without God.”

  But I don’t know God.

  “If you survive, you will. Humans cannot know God, but you are Hidria. You are the Called.”

  This was entirely different. The landscape shifted beneath him and he was suddenly in deep space with no visible planets or stars and no spacesuit for life-support.

  “You will know God or you will die.”

  The Great Colt appeared before him once again but her face was now a rotting skull with maggots squirming through her eyes and mouth.

  This is how we all must appear, he thought, not knowing why.

  A whole new universe had opened to his mind and he needed only to endure this peculiar cosmic suffering to attain it. A trial more terrible than any battlefield or enemy dungeon imagined in the most corrupt minds of the troubled galaxies. A sonic prayer culled from his cries of agony, and the hope that the God of the universe would not turn a blind eye to him in his time of need.

  I do not know God.

  Eyes bulging. Heart stopping. Skin freezing and sloughing off. Or maybe that was just his imagination. Maybe it was all a trick, an effect of the sacred drugs he’d ingested prior to the Calling. It felt real, though. It felt like his soul had been ripped from his body and stuffed into an insidious celestial womb that would inevitably strangle him stillborn.

  He would be cleansed. He would be Hidria or he would die.

  I cannot die. Hidria do not die.

  Suddenly, he was seated before a long stone hallway with a laser sword in his right hand and the severed head of the Evil One in his left. There was no way in or out as far as he could see, only forward.

  The trials begin, he thought.

  Already, he could hear the murmur of some wretched beast deep within the winding corridors. Already, he felt his constitution shifting within him as though his body were tearing itself apart and rebuilding for a nobler occupation.

  To know God and thereby know the universe.

  To die and be re-born as the m
ost feared and revered warrior across the galaxies.

  To be Hidria.

  You must not be human.

  He inhaled deeply and allowed his mind to settle into the transformation.

  2

  The first Watchman appeared before he’d taken ten steps down the hall and that was sooner than they usually arrived. He already sensed how the stakes had been raised for his trials, and once again, he didn’t know whether to feel pride or despair.

  Shadows rippled off the turquoise walls, hinting at a liquid luminescence nearby that was otherwise hidden. Another subtle illusion designed to distract him from the truth.

  I am not human, he reminded himself. Distraction is human.

  He clenched his jaw and tried to regulate his breath, but the sight of the Watchman disturbed him. He supposed that was to be expected. After all, Watchmen were gatekeepers to the afterlife, wraiths who either stole your soul for Tscharia or granted you passage into the Great Unending. Every man and woman feared the Watchman’s arrival and prayed for mercy when it came. It was the oldest fear among humans. A fear of death. A fear of eternity.

  I am not human.

  He held the laser blade in front of him and calmly tossed the severed head of the Evil One down the hallway toward the apparition.

  “An offering,” he said.

  The Duri Masters frowned upon open confrontation with the Watchmen as they were extraordinarily powerful in the dark arts and quick to anger, but he was not afraid. He could not afford to be. Fear was the great death.

  Fear cannot exist within the Hidria, Colt’s voice assured him. The Hidria are above fear because they are above death. They are death, as they are life. You cannot fear what already exists within you.

  Circular thought, it seemed to him. Circular teaching. But what was the real message and what was merely the design of the Evil One to distract him?

  “A bargain,” he continued, forcing his legs to remain steady as he crossed the stones toward the hooded figure. There would be a red mask beneath that hood, he knew. A representation of evil pervading the universe despite the presence of Hidria. In direct enmity to them, in fact. The Hidria existed to oppose the Watchmen and it was likewise said that the Watchmen existed because of the Hidria. The Duri taught that they were one in the same, but the declaration befuddled the warrior. Once he’d told his Duri Master as much, how it was like saying that his weapon and his enemy’s weapon were one when they sparked against each other on the battlefield. He’d expected a maddeningly vague response from the Duri Master about how all things are one with each other and eternally angling towards communion, which was the sort of extravagant refuse the Zarlytes fed to the hapless masses, but the answer had surprised him.

  “It is more like saying ice is solid, liquid, and gas at once.”

  Because they were all different states of the same being. Good, evil, and apathetic: the three states of existence according to the Duri.

  “Where will you take me?” he asked the Watchman.

  Slowly, the hooded figure bent and retrieved the head of the Evil One from the floor, carefully brushing blood and dust from the dead thing’s horns. “By the end of this day, you will know the face of the Devil,” the Watchman growled deeply. “Not tricks. Not illusions. You will know what it means to have your soul ripped from your body before your eyes. You will see the agony of Tscharia.”

  The warrior continued forward unabated, flexing his fingers over the hilt of the laser sword and preparing to attack if necessary. “I will know God,” he said, drawing the glowing blade over his shoulder for a strike. “I am Hidria.”

  The Watchman stood to his full, imposing height and roared. Baring his teeth and digging his boots into the cracks between stones for purchase, the warrior drove forward until he skirted striking distance, then leapt into the air and slammed the blade down at the hooded creature.

  The Watchman was one step ahead of him, though. Before the laser blade found its target, the abomination fell to the ground and kicked out his right leg with lethal grace.

  Should have seen that coming.

  The warrior braced for impact.

  The blow connected heavily with his sternum, hurling him headfirst to the ceiling before he crashed to the stone floor in a heap. His breath left him again, just as it had when Colt transported him through deep space.

  I am not human, he reminded himself as he gasped. Humans need to breathe, but I am not human.

  He sensed the Watchman’s heavy, curled fist bearing down on him before it was visible and spun to his right, driving upward with the laser blade at the same time. Neither blow landed—his nor the Watchman’s—but that was all right. If there was one thing the Called approached confidently during the trials, it was combat. The most difficult aspect of the vision-quest involved finding God amid a never-ending labyrinth of illusion, false prophets, and temptation. In comparison, combat was simple and automatic.

  As if on cue, a jolt of reflexive, manufactured tranquility shot through his body with such fierce determination that he could hardly move. It was the battle calm, a numbness drilled into each of the Called from the outset of training so they could stare Death in the eye without blinking. This time, however, the shocking serenity that instantly settled his soul far exceeded his considerable combat experience. Exceeded, even, all the Duri Master had taught him on the windswept mountaintop before he’d known his true self.

  This was Hidria. This was Colt.

  The Watchman roared and lunged forward, clutching at the warrior’s throat, but he easily evaded the attack and recovered well enough to jab the end of the sword through the Watchman’s stomach. It happened so quickly that the demon set his feet and prepared to strike again before realizing he had been gutted. He growled at the warrior defiantly.

  “Tonight, I will see you in Tscharia.”

  The warrior withdrew his glowing blade and sliced through the demon’s neck in one deft motion. Its head fell noisily to the floor, bouncing once off the stone tiles before rolling to a rest against the wall.

  “You will never see me in Tscharia,” he told the corpse, “because you aren’t real.”

  The words were true—at least, he believed they were—but unsatisfying nonetheless, as was the creature’s death. The fact remained that he had killed another being, no matter the form it had taken to manifest in the trials, and he was still no closer to knowing God.

  “Patience,” Colt’s voice drifted to him from a shadowed corridor jutting off to the right. “To rebuild, you will need to tear down every aspect of yourself.” A wisp of smoke twirled over his shoulder and swept down the hallway, beckoning him onward with sweet-smelling memory. “You are still human.”

  If he succeeded, he wouldn’t be for long.

  Hidria, he thought.

  As he understood the term, it was a state of being paradoxically superior to humans through its subservience to humanity. A position of no power which necessitated great power. Access to anything and everything one’s heart could desire, yet lacking the capacity for desire. An executioner who eschewed violence.

  Hidria. God’s great paradox.

  Not human, he told himself. I am not human. He couldn’t imagine the words ever being true.

  Pressing the switch to retract his blade, the warrior followed Colt’s essence down the hall. Distractions enticed him from every wooden doorway they passed; castle chambers lit with blue flames where monsters and abominations dwelled, marble fountains of exquisite beauty overflowing with spiced wine and glacial cascades of honey, patients awaiting appointments with physicians, accountants, or politicians.

  All distractions. Irrelevant. Human.

  “You still have a long way to go,” Colt repeated.

  So he followed her without looking back.

  3

  The warrior had once been a boy named Nurisarma who lived on a planet called Dublokee. Before his extraction, he’d had hazel eyes, black hair shaved to stubble, and arms and legs as thin as the straw he fed blue-mane
d Trulup horses in his family’s stables. The hazel eyes had remained but his hair and beard had both grown wild while his arms and legs filled out to accommodate the heavy weaponry carried by the Called. After years of Duri training, the boy was unrecognizable even to himself.

  For a time, Nuri lived an idyllic childhood in the lush paradise of colorful forests, wide prairies, and rolling mountains surrounding his home. His parents had made a living by caring for indigenous wildlife in the world-spanning animal preserve and they enjoyed the work. Dublokee, after all, was every bit a pleasure planet. It was often referred to as True Eden in advertisements, and given the natural beauty of the landscape, the designation wasn’t much of a stretch. In some ways, that made the world an ideal place to set down roots, but it also meant that its people relied heavily on galactic tourism from wealthy politicians and entrepreneurs to survive.

  Out of necessity, therefore, it was more than just exotic fauna that gave Dublokee its reputation as a utopian pleasure planet, and it was those ‘seedier’ elements which eventually drew the eye—and the ire—of the Duri Masters from their seats atop the Blessed Mountain. By the transitive property, Nuri figured, those same elements had led to his abduction. Having caught wind of the gambling and idol worship among the tourists, the Duri Masters journeyed to the planet in the clay colored, cross-shaped vessels of their order and deemed it a corrupted hellhole rife with sin and distraction. A few among them indulged in the nuances of the culture but they quickly left Dublokee and warned the natives—Nuri’s parents included—to repent their evil ways or the wrath of God would soon descend upon them.

  But the concept of God and damnation wasn’t the same on Dublokee as it was in Duri-occupied space. Nuri had never heard of one supreme, omnipotent being that controlled the lives of every creature in every universe for all time. His parents shrugged aside the threats of the Duri Masters and persisted with their daily chores just as they had for as long as Nuri could remember, and, he imagined, long before his arrival.