Multiverses by Preston Grassmann

Author:Preston Grassmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

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Ythna foundered, unable to see, hear, or touch anything for an age, until those same tiny hands grabbed her and shoved her forward, into the light.

For a moment, Ythna was dazzled and had pins and needles in her hands and feet, then she slowly regained her sight. She was lying on the floor of a long high-vaulted chamber, open to the air on one side and closed off on the other. A giant terrace, or balcony, then. The walls to her left were incredibly ornate, with what looked like molded silver encrusted with countless priceless jewels—and yet, someone had gone to great trouble to make that opulence look as ugly as possible. The silver was smudgy gray, the rubies and diamonds were as dull as you could make them. To Ythna’s left, past the railing, she could see an endless phalanx of people in retainer outfits, not all that different from what she wore every day, marching forward to the grim, repetitive droning of horns.

Next to Ythna, Jemima was on her knees, covering her face with one hand, and saying “No, no, no, no, please no,” over and over again.

“What is it?” Ythna said. “What’s wrong?” She put one hand on Jemima’s epauletted shoulder.

“This is the worst place,” Jemima said, uncovering her face and gesturing past the balcony at the thousands of people walking in neat rows. “I’m sorry. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have brought you here. I wanted to help you, and I’ve just made everything worse.”

“What place? Where are we?” Ythna was still having a hard time thinking straight after the disorientation of passing through the senseless tangle of threads.

“Roughly seventy years after your time. The Glorious Restoration. The worst period in the history of the Gaven Empire.” Jemima straightened up a bit on her haunches. “An attempt to restore traditional values to an empire that had grown decadent. They’ve probably executed another Chief Officiator, and that’s what made the door we just came out of. And those people down there? They’re marching to the death camps.”

“We’re in the future,” Ythna said, and now she was pulling her own hair to try and get her head straight.

The whole thing sounded mad. But they weren’t at the Tomb of the Unknown Emperor anymore, and the more she looked at the scene outside, the more she noticed little incongruities.

Like, the retainers marching forward across the square wore simpler uniforms than she’d ever seen before, with a different insignia. The banners hanging on the outer wall of the courtyard, opposite the balcony, listed a different Imperial Era: the Great Rejoicing Era, not the Bountiful Era that Ythna was used to. So there was a different Emperor on the throne. But the banners looked old. And the Obfuscators herding these retainers across the courtyard wore helmets with weird spikes on them, and their chestpieces were a blockier design as well, aimed at protecting against a different class of weapons. Their valence guns were much smaller and could be carried with one hand, too.

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