then a bit of curiosity caught hold.
“How did they survive without it?” Howitz asked.
“Hmm ...” Yekel murmured with a pause.
“I mean ... how did they live?”
“Well,” Yekel turned around, “stories say our ancestors kept up their vitality through a process called consuming. You’ll find some reference in the scrolls, but the process was never fully explained.”
“Consuming? What’s that?” Howitz asked.
“It’s when you take another living thing and force it into your being, thereby converting it into life energy.”
Howitz paused for a second. The statement was difficult to wrap his head around at first, but then, “You mean killing?”
“Right, well, they didn’t call it that,” the man said with soft chuckle.
“It’s the same thing, though, isn’t it?”
“Well, you could say that. You might also say our benefactors didn’t have much of a choice at the time.”
“I guess you’re right,” Howitz answered. It was better than nothing.
Yekel leaned in close and whispered, “Listen, I know what you’re after, lad.”
“You do?” he replied as he stepped back.
“Like it or not, we can’t consume like our great ancestors. Once the boon goes out ... and it will ... somebody MUST light the obelisk,” Yekel said, shaking a single finger at him.
“There has to be another way.”
“Perhaps there is, but that answer laid to rest with our ancestors.”
“Our home shrinks by the suns, old man!” Howitz yelled. “What will you say when you are the last among us?”
Howitz could feel the tension like a sparking surge flowing up his back and down through his fingers. The pressure was numbing. This wasn’t the way to handle the situation, he thought to himself. He stepped back, grabbed up the scrolls and sped off.
He was extraordinarily lucky to have been born at all. Manifests were sparse, and he was the first for ten thousand suns. The boon allowed life to exist ... and to begin. He was shackled to a glaring beacon atop a stone pillar and, like all those who came before him, he could do nothing about it.
V: It Only Goes
Skies were completely calm now. No sands. Thick, gray, porous rock he could hardly recognize replaced the familiar surface. It felt odd to tread on it. It felt like so far away from home. Howitz checked his pulse again. Very low. His movements slowed, but he could see the Obelisk less than a kilometer away. It was massive, like a giant piece of rock etched into the wilderness of the beyond. There was no flame protruding from it, but there soon would be.
Howitz didn’t have a clue as to just how he was going to accomplish the task but neither did his grandfather. Fire was something he’d only heard of in stories. Strange, he thought. It was red and yellow and it consumed. That was just what fire did, not unlike the habits of his great ancestors ... a subject he knew very little about. Perhaps then, the obelisk was something that remained from the old era.
He pressed on through intense solar winds. Storms of light and colors shook his body to the core, but that would not stop him. His legs didn’t want to move, but he made them do so anyway. With each motion, he drew closer to his goal. He felt as if something awakened inside of him, like the spirit of his predecessor, the hand of his grandfather leading him with each step.
“Thank you,” he said.
Howitz felt the warmth of a buzzing sensation fill his body. The solar winds held no more a threat to him than grains of sand, but time was now his greatest enemy. The universe sought to wear him down until his body ceased to function. The obelisk nearly upon him, Howitz strode closer. His body was breaking. Less than a meter away, he placed a hand on the massive rocky structure.
“Just ... need to rest,” he said to himself.
He leaned against the rock and settled down. He gazed back on the horizon and saw the journey he’d taken. From the forest, to the sands, and then to this. It was all he could do to keep his light from fading, but it felt so good to close his eyes for a moment.
“Wake up!” a voice said.
Howitz’s eyes lit up, and he pulled his tired body from the ground. Not yet, he thought himself. No rest just yet. Madness or not, the spirit of his grandfather was guiding him. That much, he believed.
“Now,” he began, “How is it done?”
He walked around the pillar in search of a device. A groove, a marking, anything that might seem out of the ordinary, but he couldn’t find anything like what he was searching for. Nearly around the entirety of the obelisk, he started to wonder if this was even the obelisk. He scanned in all directions. Nothing. Nothing even close. For as far as he could see, this was the only object that rose above a tree. This had to be it! It had to be!
Once around, his hands caught hold of a finely carved groove and it wasn’t natural. His excitement turned to grimace, though, once he realized it wasn’t any kind of device. However, these grooves were definitely man made. Upon closer inspection, they were writing, runic symbols crudely carved into the rock. The tongues were eras apart. Some old ... some very old, and others new.
‘Go away,’ one read. ‘Turn back,’ said another. What did any of this mean? A particular message read, ‘there is no fire.’ No fire? How then was the obelisk lit? By what method? Was this some kind of puzzle? One more message in the mix of words caught his eye ... ‘it only goes in one direction.’
These were writings left here by those who came before. A hundred thousand suns worth of those who lit the obelisk. Why then was there not a single word on how to do it? What was the secret?
Howitz’s body couldn’t take it anymore. In a fit of frustration, his legs gave way and his body collapsed. He felt the warmth flow through his limbs and his core. It happened much more suddenly this time, but like the last, he could not will himself to move.
Something different happened this time though. His body started rising. It ... he could feel himself floating into the air. He rose higher and higher alongside the obelisk, and while his eyes were still open, he saw the beyond in full. He saw the rock, the desert, then the forest, and the place in it he called home. It was no bigger than the tip of his finger, but it was there.
His light was fading by the moment, and just as he felt it going away, Howitz saw the boon light up. It was far, too far away for him to feel its warmth. His body floated higher into the sky until it passed the tip of the obelisk. Howitz saw stars and from a single point of view, other lands just the same as his own. They were giant rocks, same in texture to those lands beyond the beyond. They were the same as the obelisk.
This was the truth, he thought to himself. His home was not unique, but it was small ... and growing smaller by the sun. In order for it to continue, someone had to be removed. Howitz closed his eyes shut for the last time and allowed his body to drift toward the stars.
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