7Stone

By Joseph Gonzalez

7Stone, is an emotionally driven science fiction/fantasy epic which draws inspiration from works like The Dark Tower series by Stephen King and the classics The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri and Homer’s The Odyssey.

Lore tells us that long ago the great light fled from the land of Nod and left power over the chaos behind in the form of stones that hold together the boundaries of all existence; time, space, life, death, fantasy, and reality, and the beginning and end of everything. Where twin moons whip across the void in their chaotic orbit, an ancient war continues...

Now, after years of travel a man with no known past or future, driven mad by an endless desert and on the brink of death will soon end all life in our universe. Trying to prevent this end becomes its very cause, a revelation of truths that have been whispered to us between the lines of our most creative fiction and worship in this, the sounding of the first trumpet. The hope of all existence and humanity’s last chance now rest in knowing the 7stone, and deciphering the very nature of existence: duality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Gonzalez
• Release date: Aug 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476186658

Joseph Gonzalez

I see a door...​ There are two handles upon the door...​ Beyond... lies... truth... nothing... more... My name is Joseph Theo Gonzalez, one of many names I've had but I suppose it was the first and I know it will be the last. Born in Chicago and waiting for the other in Florida. Author, musician, soul-mate.​ There is more to this than what we see... if you decide to look then come find me.

Book preview

7Stone

PART ONE – THE TIMESTONE

By Joseph Theo Gonzalez

Copyright 2012 Joseph Theo Gonzalez

Smashwords Edition

Your support and respect for the property of this author is appreciated.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Adult Reading Material

*****

This one’s for Cecily. It’s yin—yang luv, it’s both at once.

This story has been with me half my life, and with any luck it will help me through the next half.

I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

*****

DAY ONE

THE ARMAMENT

*****

DAWN

Here is your comfort… separation is serenity, and solitude is contentment.

No bird sings from the branch of the dying tree before him, swaying leafless in the silent cold shadow of moonlight like a dancer with the wind, alone in the darkness. No wolf howls at those moons, two crescents, shimmers which race across the sky in preternatural chaos – here, there, anywhere. The sky screams. An eclipse of twin moons has blackened the earth and given everything a silver, ghostly shine. The stars are gone in that stark. It looks as if reality has folded in on itself.

One can see the sky folding. The sky is screaming because it is eating itself. From the center of that nightmare comes something solid and on fire, looking small and insignificant from its place in the heavens. It is not a falling star. The man who watches knows because even from miles away he can see the thing perfectly, with eyes well—adjusted to the dark; a black thing, metallic, and cylindrical. The moons separate as the falling ‘not—star’ comes crashing to the lands west, beyond this cold plain, this barren. He never hears it hit. Clouds separate and feeble starlight comes back into the land. They twinkle pointlessly overhead as though giving a reminder that the time for light has passed. If there were a sun in the sky it may have been ascending the western horizon, but there has been no great light for ages.

His breathing is tired. The dust of this place weighs heavy in his lungs as he presses onward, dragging the nothing on his boots and longing for its absence. In the dead of eve he is aware that he’s wounded but he does not remember the cause. The sword hanging at his side has drying blood on it, and despite the madness he feels, his senses have not left him; far from it, he can smell the coppery mess with revulsion, and pity. Someone has died, maybe in the plains he can see far to the east. He cannot remember where he is going or where he has been, and so he cannot know who. His eyes, gray and dry of tear, seek no refuge. Before them is death, and all he searches for is a place to go with it.

He crashes against the tree before him, aware of this lifeless husk only as he is grateful for the rugged crutch. The sound of thousands of years of pain and suffering assail him from all around, the air carrying with it an echo of the past that gives meaning to the name Blue Silent Desert—a warning of expectations. This place is a ghost and he wanders in its belly, certain there is no escape. To see it one would think him a lunatic. As the endless dilution of time quietly carries on around him he raves, wholly persuaded that the desolate sea of sand is not empty. He can feel the brittle bones of those who have braved this hell before him turning into the sand beneath his feet. His soul cries in place of those dry, gray eyes. Using strength he does not have he draws his sword, raises it above his feverish head and brings it down upon the tree’s only branch, cutting through almost easily and effortlessly. He needs a fire.

The snake is dead before the sound of it reaches his ears: the slow steady heartbeat and the rustle of sand beneath its dry, scaly underbelly. An unconscious act only an insane mind could accomplish. He turns to find his work unfinished; the sticks lay off to one side, the logs of the branch he has severed neatly piled in a circle tower of firewood. The slithery feel of the dead snake, its broken neck, a snake breed he has seen only once before in this very desert, enlivens him to one more score, one last bounty.

He cannot keep the dead out of his mind as he builds and kindles his pyre. He rubs two sticks together, a primitive camp trick, yet since there are no sulfur sticks or flint and steel it’s necessary. He’ll never know if he had them to begin with. It doesn’t matter. When the fire blazes and heat brings the night a shimmering obscurity, he drops his belongings and leaps in. It has grown too weary to continue on. As the flames catch on his long coat, white long—sleeve shirt, tattered brown suede pants, and the long silver—brown hair fluttering with the smoke, he finally smiles, finally finds solace.

A wind begins in the open as he has never known before. He looks up and notices with horror that the twin moons have moved to the opposite side of the world from where they were only a moment ago. There is a glimmer on the horizon, shadowy blue and enticing. Is that an oasis in the desert? One more glimpse to the sky above and he sees that the moons have returned to their former position. He is burning, but the eddy has formed a tornado. The wind dashes the bonfire apart as so many twigs and sparks in its path. Caught in that power, at its mercy, the fire is no longer consuming him, and for the briefest of moments he is sad. Propelled through the air, he is carried thirty feet above the hardpan below and finds new wounds created by the swirling blades the sand and wind have made. The cold has returned full blast as he finds bearing in the turbulence, he sees movement above what may or may not be an oasis. He passes more trees as limp and dead as the first, a straight line of equally distanced carcasses setting a path for the inevitable.

The creatures, extremely large, black, and obviously blind, run into each other ignorantly, as might bats if they had no natural sonar. The winged monstrosities gather around the eerie glow of the water hole like moths to fire, circling perpetually without meaning. When he comes crashing back to the land below, he is not alone: he centers his sights on one of the creatures and watches its declination as though witnessing the fate of Icarus. He watches in revulsion with eyes by which sight can traverse incalculable distance. It crashes into the oasis with audible polarity. He has time to wonder whether it has spotted food or met its own death before crashing back into the hardpan.

His hand seeks the comfort of the sword, oblivious to him. Again the wind takes hold, and he is no longer lying upon the ground in frustration but running along it, despite his inward screaming to cease whatever evil has brought this aversion of free will. An oasis, yes, the waters seem brightened from below, as if lamps burn there. Twenty five steps… thirteen… ten… he notices the rodent—like creature upon the ground has four wings, not two, and it seems a boneless and withered thing. When the wind dies and the man regains his equanimity he is standing predestined. The air holds a charge, electric in nature, which plays on the hairs of his arm, making him cringe with disgust. A white storm approaches.

The wind halts, and he is standing over the cool, brilliant blue wet of the spring in arrant stillness. He sees metal intertwined through mahogany as veins in a living thing, which this beautiful object may well be. An unnatural luminescence comes from below the surface of the pond as it gives off its own glow, as though calling to him.

A wooden staff rests below the water.

He dives in, and the sound starts the moth—like bat things. They stir with new greed, hoping that food has come to the surface for air whether it can breathe it or not. He does not even notice as he descends the depths to retrieve the piece.

The Krowl makes its way toward him. Those eyes, which could be mistaken for empty sockets, glare at him from their sunken rest atop a bloated, misshapen dome. Those eyes, which should be full of ignorance and instinctual intensity, are calm and knowing. Those eyes, which look at him so intently with emotion and thought, should be viewing him as dinner. Looking into the face of death in the form of an unpredictable anomaly, he swims back toward the surface.

Rushing into cold above that now bites at him, he realizes it is not cold but the teeth of blind carnivores. The sand clumps to hands that grasp for reassurance and flies through the air as he swats away his assailants. The warped thing emerges from the wet then; tentacles as wide as his own body expand from the hollow and reach for the ground in eight different directions. The bats that are unfortunate enough to be in the way are crushed like insects beneath a boot heel and spray blood for feet in every direction around him. The tentacles dig into the ground with their grip, forcing the body of a terrible mutilated muddle of skin into the night air. Water sprays him, washes the evil bat blood away, and he remembers baptism.

The creature carries the staff in its beak—like protrusion beneath that mushy skull.

He does not move. The Krowl seems to cackle shortly and starts toward him, and he does not move. One horrendous tentacle shoots out from beneath the monster and stops short of his face and he does not flinch. It hovers down the front of his body, takes hold of the rusted sword that dangles bloody at his side, and tosses it away. It catches in a whirl of winds from the approaching storm and breaks apart like so much dust to dust in the dark.

The desert is silent. He lifts his gaze skyward hoping to see nothing, but the moons are there and finally still. Clouds gather in the east where those winged vampires, deformed and despicable bat things, perch on their dead solace. His eyes return to the Krowl. The creature casts the shimmering piece from its beak toward him where it comes to rest at his boots. The staff, away from the vileness the Krowl exudes, comes to rest from its roll through the sand and grit with a different shape altogether, the shape of a sword.

The blade itself is almost like a liquid. It reflects all light, from the useless stars above to the impure waters of the oasis. Its weight seems perfect in his grip as he lifts it off the ground, and he thinks he can do anything with it. At the hilts end, a nook from which something is missing mystifies him. He returns his eyes to the keen blade. The mold is not like his last weapon. It’s a straight sword, perfect in its measurements, yet where it should come to a point, it splits off and comes to two, one noticeably longer than the other, the metal curving inward as if the thing might be used as a can opener or fish gutter. He touches the surface of the steel and at once the thing seems to come alive, glowing with its own inner light. Its shape changes shortly and he drops the thing, in fear it will strike him like a silent serpent in the grass.

The Krowl is angry now, and he notices that its eyes, which had been so calm and knowing, are becoming windows to an ignorant mind. It’s as if a being claims control over it and is losing its hold now. The anger in its eyes is leaving, though that constant reverting to instinctual mannerism never leaves them. The Krowl may well be grinning. With an air of mendacity, the horrible thing makes its way slowly around him, circling him with malevolence. He turns with that demon, allowing no action to escape his eye.

There is silence in the desert. The White storm comes on that provokes streaks of gray in his hair. The twin moons are gone behind that harridan, a convolution of no—color maculation, and the clouds burst forth with lightning that shrieks across the void with the vulgar rapaciousness of a harpy. The sky opens, and there within the glorious open vast is a mountain view of immense beauty, pinewood and snowy peaks from which a blue rushing water erupts. The world moves with and into that vision, and he can almost feel the wet fall around him as he pushes beyond the waterfall barrier and into the cavernous hovel behind, rocking with the vision as one would course through rapids. There, amidst the darkness stands a vessel larger than any barge he has ever seen. Still and vast, despite the waters rapping against its hull, trapped by some absurd legerdemain from which it might never escape. The world seems to move closer with the speed of the lightning itself, and before he knows what he is seeing he is upon its deck and standing steadfast outside its double entrance.

As if in a dream, he cannot read the words that grace the entry. He looks up and sees three masts reaching into the heavens beyond the clouds, too high to find their tips. The wood floor to his left and right is clean, but dry, as are the walls beyond the doors, all of the same wood as the sword—staff he now finds strapped to his hip. The doors meet in a carving, easy enough to read even within sleep. It is a bell, and realizing this awakens a presence within this pall as yet unnoticed. Workers scour the deck in tired swathes, pushing endlessly despite, and he sees they are no longer within a cavern but at open sea. Headed for a vast ocean, the apparitions pay no notice as they come within the pass; land against straight against rock. A demon lurks there, his center, his being, tells him so, yet they ignore it. A living memory: they allow themselves to move close to the cave mere inches from a gorge in the sea that will claim all that remain after its attack. The ophidian, a dragon with many heads, reaches from the mountains aside and takes its many victims before the whirlpool can draw the vessel into the oceans icy depths, so many shouts and such pleading go disregarded. Through his confusion the vision changes purely, and he is standing… no, falling into pure emptiness. Total darkness, nothing before, behind, below, and yet above there is a swirling, wet tunnel of light. In his hand, he holds a stone, a beautiful creation, such that all the power of the firmament flowers its fragile fashion. Its oval shape is nearly black, with crooked no—path lines of white circling it randomly. To feel a God! The infinity of it! Above is not just light, it is the antithesis of dark. He is everywhere and nowhere at once. He listens to the composition of totality, the concord of consciousness and unconsciousness as one hymn. Youth praying, crying, dying; weathered men and women begging, pleading, and despairing; elderly waiting, hoping, and ending. An uncountable number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia pass, full of the inquiry of mortality. Unbelievably, trees and crops and flowers and grass and weeds and seeds and pollen cry out in their way, questioning, while they brave storms and harvesters and mowers. The land itself and the temperament of nature above it even seems to wonder as it reshapes itself, drowns, terrorizes the life it serves. In unison, without fear or worry, ALL demands with one voice, undeniable and unanswerable, one query: WHY? Past, present, and future; everything that was, is, and will be; existence itself wonders… and an answer comes with a whisper. He nears obsession then, as though to leave that core of perfection and imperfection joined, without response, will end ALL completely. His expulsion of despair, uncertainty, turns his very soul inside—out. No sound escapes him when the twining of nerve and thought inevitably snaps. The White storm can understand this; the vision ceases, and he stands, absent of reason, facing the distorted mutant of an octopus—like beast.

The being’s eyes lose all rationality, and he sees what lies beneath: cold, relentless hatred and hunger. The bane’s tentacles come to life and lash out at him, trying to take hold of whatever it can on his person. Teeth, large as the claws of a bear, drip with the poisonous saliva he knows will kill him instantly within its serrated beak. If the already hideous features could contort further they do so now, bringing new life into a face that by all reasoning and sanity should have been dead. Even the few hairs upon its fragile skull come to life and feebly give their own efforts to take hold of him. He falls to the ground—the curse looms over him as a thing ready to pounce—and grips the hilt of the sword—staff even before he knows it is there beside him.

The weapon comes alive in his hands. It’s as if the hilt tries to consume his arm. It moves with the rush of water over his hand. The sword—staff becomes a part of him, a living being attached to every nerve and bone in his right arm. His grip is true and one, and abruptly it takes the cast of a claymore, forming itself as liquid metal poured into a forge. The double blades reflecting the oasis light between each other seem to make the object vibrate. The Krowl stops, confused and deliberating then resumes its bearing toward the newly acquired meal. One of its protrusions takes hold of his lower left leg, causing him to stumble to the ground. The sword—staff seems to know all of this, as the mere thought of an ax brings the thing into being. He uses this to sever the fiends hold on him, rolls his body to the right, and then struggles into standing. The claymore is again in his hands and he attacks.

The weapon buries itself up to the hilt in the mutilation’s thick neck, yet the thing does not yield. Having food so close to it, the Krowl tries to take hold of him with its spongy tentacle, excrescences which force their way out of its bulging top—half like a phallus through foreskin. He uses all his force to bury the sword down inside the thing, tearing through flesh and bone easily. The White storm above reacts, like it feels the beast’s pain, and sends white fire crashing around him. Howls of suffering and discomfort pierce his ears, sending waves of pain through his senses. Even before the thought comes to him, the weapon takes the form of a large shield within the Krowl, spreading throughout him as like it is a sunshade. The monster cannot scream; it has no lungs. It cannot take hold of him; its spine is torn free of its skull and now floats in the oasis like a dead log. He can hear the bats take wing, and soon they are on the Krowl, and on him. The pieces of that blowout now rest on his hair and clothing, and the bats attack him for it. The sword becomes a light machete, which he uses to cut through the bodies of the nuisances that now flutter toward him. Those which are already upon him, he takes hold of, tosses toward the Krowl, and attacks with the machete when they find the taste of the dead thing not as appealing as his. Defeating them proves more difficult than overpowering the Krowl had been. There seems no end to their numbers. One, as if knowing its brethren are in need of support, takes flight from the Krowl’s now exposed bowels and down a kamikaze path for him. The sword expands to a shield once more and the creature hits this dead on, killing it instantly with its own force against the metal. It falls against his boots, leaving a diseased smear of blood on the toes, and the battle is over as quickly as it had begun. He views the butchery as the winds of the storm attack him ruthlessly. Blood, of so many white, green and red color varieties, riddles the once dark blue hardpan around his heels, the bodies of the recently deceased already beginning to decompose. The desert echoes with their screams long after he resumes his footfall west, carrying the sword in hand. If there had been a sun left to the world, it would have been ascending the western horizon.

Dawn.

CHAPTER ONE: OUTRIDE

1

The bounty hunter gathered red sand on the North Shore as the twin moons began to rise in the west. His thoughts, cursed and disheartened, sank slowly into a whirlpool of surreal, mundane irrelevancy as he tasted the salt air… acidic, coppery. The tide of the yellow sea grew restless waiting for the time it would come in. Those waters, infinite in girth and deadly putridity, were a cauldron of blood and mangled corpses. The red sand was carefully scooped into the leather satchel and hung from his belt as like it were the decaying trophy of a savage headhunter. If the satchel had been anything but new leather, he would not have been able to hold the acidic element for very long. Such sand’s use was limited, and dangerous. The beach’s end was only minutes away where green marked the boundary to the forgotten grasslands beyond. He made his way up the beach to that ancient border, wondering when he had last beheld a sturdy boat for the voyage to the lighthouse. At one time there had been a stretch of land that reached the far shore on which one could course, but some calamity had buried that expanse within the swollen deep long past. He did not notice the red sands making their way through the rotted leather and into the soles of his boots below as the horrid graveyard beneath his heels quietly went about its work to claim him amongst the resting bones. All he could see was the lighthouse, which appeared to stand on water as long ago a man

(What man? Was he a man?)

had supposedly, miraculously, done. A