YOU MADE ME THIS WAY

Your horse comes to a stop.

Carefully, yet somehow still clumsily, you dismount. For the first time in what must be years, since you were a little fledgling researcher, you felt a familiar sting sliding against your mask. You’re not there yet, but you’re close. The intoxicating smell of the valley’s flowers is already in your nose.

Down, down, you go. Carefully treading rolling hills of knotty vines and soft soil swaddled in the grip of the long roots of ancient trees. You dodge the sunlight where you can, leaping between the shadows of tall, broad canopies. It can’t see you until you are ready. Until you are where you can see it, too.

The walls of the valley begin to loom tall over you. Crowning them are willows whose sorrowful branches seem to reach for thousands of feet into the canyon below, playing host to their own little ecosystems of insects tangled in their leaves. Once upon a time, you’d spent hours at the top of the valley, just inspecting the goings-on of those hidden little worlds among the branches. They all make little shadows on the valley walls, long with the arc of the sunset.

The treeline opens up.

The yawning gorge ahead is terrifyingly bare to the setting sun. It peers between the valley walls perfectly, casting shadows that reach so very far across it from the few ancient and sacred buildings that dared to occupy a place where the prying gaze of the Architect was closest. They are standouts, delicately carved marble and ivory standing tall among otherwise flat, rolling plains. The wind barrels across tall grass and flashes of gorgeous flowers, growing in great tangles and clusters that had been left untouched for centuries. There are no paths, no roads. Any building here is meant to occupy as little of the Architect’s gaze as possible… all, but the Pedestal.

Holding your mask tight to your face, you begin to descend further.

While others would interpret it as a cool, calming breeze, the wind billows against your mask like searing solar wind. It pulls against you, as if it intends to drag you from this place all on its own. But with steady footing and careful maneuvering, and the aid of your thick robes, you withstand the brutal gaze of the Architect. Its glimmering, golden light has overtaken the horizon, framed well by the cliffs above. It is the only thing you can see when you look out. Where others would see a gorgeous sunset, even behind the darkened lenses in your mask, it burns like a torch being rammed into your eyes.

Still a distant speck to its gaze, you keep trudging. You are careful not to step on any flowers in spite of the pain you feel, starkly aware of the sacred ground you are in. You wind between them with limping steps, and the valley seems longer than ever before, its Judgment so far away even as it seeks to burn you into ash.

The rest… disappears from your memory as soon as it is over. You are burning, sweating, exhausted, hunched over and flat against… stone. The cold marble of the Pedestal soothes you, and for a moment you curl up desperately in its shade, feeling the heat still sticking to your skin. The light that pours over this worn structure is still blinding, even when you cannot see the source. You just cover your face, and hide, for a while. You’re not ready yet.

There are only rudiments of the intricate and loving carvings that must have once dominated this building. Faint shadows, extolling love for the Architect in words just as forgotten as their writers, all worn away by the winds, dyes and paints bleached by the Architect’s glare.

Four pillars, a cylinder of solid marble, and a long staircase.

When you are ready, you begin your ascent.

The architect’s light begins to crown over the top of the structure as you get about halfway up. It is brighter and hotter than you have ever felt before. It burns so brightly that even as you raise your arm to cover your eyes, you wonder if it might render you blind. There is no escape from its scouring gaze.

But you keep walking. You drag your burning, condemned, cursed form up those jagged stone steps, one at a time. Until, all at once, you are at the top, in its Judgment.

You lower your arm. You stare into it, directly into it, as you have before. Each time before, it was a brilliant experience. The depths of the Architect’s infinitely wise mind would unfurl into your awareness, and for a moment, you would join with It. That was the glory of the Pedestal; it brought you before the Architect’s judgment, and if you were worthy, its wisdom would be yours, even if only for one life-changing moment.

But it has no wisdom to share with you. Only malice. The teeth of its judgment dig into your skin, and slip past the fibers of your dark clothing and the lenses of your mask. Its golden light becomes pure, hollow white, burning so brightly that you are sure that you have gone blind. You find yourself kneeling in the center rung of the pedestal, heaving, pleading incoherently for something. For its mercy. For its forgiveness.

Until the truth of your feelings leave your mouth.

“Why!?” you shout. You turn from cowering to looking directly at it, even as the light threatens to burn the very eyes from your trembling skull. You struggle to speak under such overwhelming power.

“Why do you hate me?! I became this thing in your service!” you scream into the yawning sky, your howling voice echoing so loud through the valley that you wonder if it might truly hear you.

Slamming your fists into the marble, you keep hollering. “You made me this way! You did this to me, and now you cast me aside!”

Something overtakes you. Your shaking fingers rip your mask from your face, the strap snapping. All at once, it grows from an unbearable heat to fire streaking across your face, ardent white. You scream nonetheless through the flames. “Look… at me! You did this to me… and now… you condemn me for it!”

Only as the fire begins to touch bone do you throw yourself down, cradling your burning skull in your own shadow. The sun-fire disappears all at once, and you have the time to hold your mask to your face again, sobbing and quivering in pain. Holding it to you as carefully as you can, you begin to rise to your feet.

“Fine… so be it,” you say.

You turn your back, and begin to walk off the pedestal. The heat against your back is intense, but you can see the open valley all the same. Your horse sits, waiting, at the top where the trees disappear over the horizon stretching into the night. The pain is worse than anything you have ever felt, bright and sparking and relentless, but the depthless well of your defiance keeps it at bay long enough for you to disappear from the Architect’s gaze and into the cover of the canopy.