Chapter 1: From Archid to Galimede

I adore these landscapes! These rugged and steep cliffs against which the waves of the ocean lovingly embrace, from their union arising those sublime white foams.

I have always loved them. As far back as I can remember, the young boy that I was contemplated the wonders of the world through these marine waves.

I used to sit cross-legged on the beach, gaze at the horizon, and let my fertile imagination wander.

I dreamed of other worlds, other planets bathed by oceans, their sky obscured by immense billows of cottony clouds of immaculate white, other peoples with strange yet familiar customs, other knowledge and powers than ours.

Since time immemorial, my family, natives of Tais, the fifth planet orbiting around the double star Archid in the Cassiopeia galaxy, holds the heavy burden of Imperial Mage. Our knowledge and gifts are the most advanced of our people, and we must constantly provide for the needs of our caste and those of the inhabitants of our planet.

From my birth, I was conditioned to assume this responsibility, trained in Parallel Arts, and in the contemplation and preservation of the Works of the Grand Architect.

How many times have I been « tested » by my tutors!

Trials of Materialization, projection of my mind through time and space, battles on the material plane and in the Ether with certain fierce elementals, nothing was spared me.

For everyone, even of high lineage, cannot access the knowledge of Hidden Things. One must prove worthy of it!

Between lessons, I enjoyed wandering among the aisles of the Imperial Archives for which my aunt was responsible, devouring all the « forbidden » works dealing with Magic, Science, and Religion. I even had to learn other languages to decipher them, and it was not without difficulty.

That’s how I became aware of the immensity of Interconnected Universes and the smallness of my own Being.

As time passed, the pressure exerted on me intensified, and I longed more and more to reach my adulthood to be able to leave this world that oppressed me and explore the vast expanses of interstellar space beyond the galactic wall.

I had expressed my desire to leave many times, but I was made to understand that it could not be realized, for I was the sole heir of my Order, and an entire people awaited me to fulfill my charge as best as I could.

Thus, with each mistake, with each disappointment, I came here, to this beach, to take refuge.

Rocked by the waves’ lapping, my mind wandering between two worlds, one day I fell asleep, and that’s when she appeared to me.

How beautiful she was! Mysterious! And yet so familiar! I felt like I had known her forever; I felt such a deep connection that I felt like our thoughts were one.

My whole being vibrated in her presence, so radiant with light and glory!

But where was she? In what time, in what world, in what galaxy did she live? The sky of her universe proudly bore several moons, and the waves of a calm ocean made her frail silhouette sway. I had never seen such an environment, and I was quite unable to locate her, to my infinite disappointment.

Years passed, the burden became heavier and heavier, and her image became more and more present in my mind.

When I reached adulthood, I was allowed to embark on a study trip to Galimede, at the edge of our solar system.

As much as Tais was a world dedicated to the spiritual, Galimede was oriented towards Science and Technology. I was delighted to momentarily extricate myself from my obligations and to study with their finest scientists.

Upon my arrival, I found landscapes very different from those I knew. Gigantic cities, vehicles moving in a laden sky, immense crowds moving in long arcades in such perfect order that one would have thought they were synchronized with each other. And indeed, they were.

The Galimedeans were all connected to a Central Intelligence that provided them with information and directives, and monitored their slightest physical and spiritual deviations.

No individual freedom on Galimede, but a collective consciousness acting in concert for the advancement of the community.

My tutors were stricter with me, even more so than on Tais, considering me as a « sub-being » because I refused to have the device implanted that would connect me to the Grand Whole, to the Central Intelligence of the planet.

As time passed, my despair and enslavement grew as my illusions faded, and the memory of her face faded away.

During an exchange with the Rector of the Academy to which I was assigned, I understood that mine had concluded a pact with those of Galimede. They wished to experiment on my being the fusion between a spiritual development at its peak controlled by a central intelligence, leaving little room for personal desires and aspirations. A fusion of civilizations and destinies, so to speak.

When I realized that the universe into which I had been sent was even more coercive than mine, immense despair overwhelmed me, but the feeling of revolt that inhabited me was stronger, and from then on, I sought a way to escape from this hostile and oppressive environment.

Through chance encounters, I met Xarath, a scientist who had worked on a spatiotemporal portal for the needs of the Grand Whole community. Xarath was not like the other Galimedeans, his implant being somewhat defective. We quickly became friends, and I shared with him my desire to escape.

By the favor of a millennial astral conjunction, Xarath decided to help me escape from his world. He led me to his laboratory so that I could cross the threshold of time and space through a colossal intergalactic portal.

Thus equipped with my spatiotemporal suit, I crossed the limits of that cold and soulless universe, without any regret.

An immense sphere of absolute black surrounded by a spiral of undulating flames appeared to me then, and as an immeasurable power drew me to it, I felt my entire being disintegrate fragment by fragment.

First, I saw my limbs distort and elongate infinitely, and I felt my mind fragment and scatter in all directions of space and time. For a brief moment, I felt intimately connected to the Grand Architect, knowing and feeling everything simultaneously.

I was all at once Azarion of Tais, my native planet, and a multitude: Urul from the Continent between the Oceans, Soptekh from Heliopolis, Blanche from Autun, Katerina from Prague, and Saul Rackett from London.

This fleeting impression gave way to a total obliteration of my existence when the absolute blackness engulfed me.

To be continued here: Chapter 2