Bowed No More

The group stood about the image of the city and studied the disposition of guard, the banners, the steady stream of supplies trains and the disposition of troop encamped about it. “See Sire, it's just as he said.” Angelique glanced aside at John kneeling, weighted with his magical chains just as he suppressed a groan of pain with a shudder of effort. “Why couldn't you find it before?” “As he broke out of their magic bonds and stepped away with a league step there was a twist he didn't understand. When he was describing it again to me a detail of the description made me realize that the night wind shifted ninety degrees as he left. We were looking in the wrong direction, in the wrong place.” Rupert snarled, “It's still all lies, he couldn't have escaped if they hadn't let him go, see how the Liè chains keep his filthy magic captive now! Lets see him explain that!”


The King turned to John. “Well, John, what say you. How could you have escaped from their Liè chains if you can't escape from ours?” John struggled to raise his head and speak, but was too beaten and his throat too dry. “Give him wine.” Petr leaned his halberd against the wall, grabbed a mug and splashed an inch of wine into it. With the help of the other guard, he gently raised John's head and supporting it, raised the cup to his lips and coaxed him to drink. Finally, able to respond, voice rasping, barely more than a whisper, John replied. “Liè chains only suppress evil magic. They don't contain me.” Rupert began disdainfully to speak again, but a gesture from the King stopped him. “Then why do you kneel suffering before me if you could be free?” John's voice had already weakened, they had to lean closer to hear, “Because you command my suffering Lord.”


“Ridiculous! Don't believe this slime!”, Rupert spit on John. The guard shifted minutely, but Rupert had not the skill to see and realize that only their loyalty to the King kept him safe. Again silencing Rupert with a gesture, the King told John, “If you can be free, then be free.”


Gradually a light, white and beautiful, began to arise about the kneeling man. Within it could be seen ghostly angelic figures rushing to minister to the suffering man. The reaction of those in the room varied with their hearts. The guards, loyal and true, knelt and wept tears of joy, Angelique's face shone in the light, soaking it in and then shining it out again. The King was startled to see that her feet were at least an inch from the floor. Rupert hid his eyes, crouching and turning his face away. Only the King himself seemed unaffected. John's chains fell to the floor all at once with a thudding clang instead of the ring of clean steel. The terrible suppurating sores covering John wherever the chains had been in contact with him began to close and fade before their eyes. The bowed suffering man seemed to unroll, to lengthen, his muscles relaxing away from their terrible twisting and cramping and regaining their tone. The angelic figures faded away one by one until finally the last, with an accusing glance into the King's eyes kissed John on the forehead and disappeared.


John knelt, head down, and the King was amazed to see that even his clothing was clean, the evidence of two weeks in the dungeon gone. “John, look at me.” John raised his head and looked at the King. The nobility of the gaze affected the King in a way that the sight of the angelic beings had not. It was an effort not to turn away from the love and beauty in that look. “Stand.” John immediately arose, lithe and strong, as if the weeks in chains had left no effect at all. In the background, one of the serving women sobbed.

The Flow

Thi-than flowed with the swarm, content, perfect, flow. For long, the flow is on a human ship. Thi-than was one of the first to have realized that humans weren’t nothing. She had never seen something that thought but didn’t connect. No one had ever had. All the millions and millions of kinds she knew connected. Some were conscious, thought, some were simple, didn’t, some large, some micro, some matter, some energy, but all connected, all flowed. You could connect to a human but nothing was there. There was no response. They didn’t even flow with themselves. As they ran she was touching a human near and could feel a tiny response, some of them had a little bit of flow but didn’t know. This one had rebellious cells outside the human’s flow, doing their own harmful missions, selfish and harming her. So sad. Thi-than did something she’d not tried for a long time with a human, and prodded the human’s flow like you would with a little. It responded! She encouraged it to wake up a little and pay attention to the cells that weren’t flowing right. Ah, that was nice. The rebel cells stopped right away. She’d have to come back and see what else the human could do.

It was possible to communicate with humans, but you had to do it by vibrations in the world, very strange. It had taken her long to understand and longer to learn and longer to spread the knowledge through many flows, but now many flows could work with humans and some humans understood the strength of the flow even if they couldn’t participate. It had changed the flows too. All members had always been equal, the same, flow, but only some could be like humans and motivate and decide and they were the ones that worked with humans directly. Before there wasn’t a specialness to any flow but now this one kind was different and they had learned such strange things from humans. Humans wanted everything. They wanted to own and be and do and build things for no reason at all.

Humans fought other humans! Always if two flows came into contact and the contact harmed, the flows merged and flowed differently together so all thrived. Now some flow worked with humans who wanted to harm other humans who worked with other flows. Several thousand years ago, after infecting the flows with humans, Thi-than had dropped out of decide and dropped out of communicate and dropped out of motivate to think, to ponder, yes she had been infected too. Never before had she thought of herself as separate and doing and thinking, but now she watched and waited. None in any swarm for parsecs were old enough to remember that she was not a little. That was another strange thing she’d learned from humans, to hold something of herself back. So she flowed.

As she did she smelled betrayal, she smelled greed. This flow had a wrongness. It wasn’t working for its ship. Flow didn’t greed, greed was for one. She touched the motivation of the flow and immediately blocked it from seeing her and watched it. Instantly all the littles nearby dropped from the flow and bound to her. Some of the middle and bigger were confused but most of them came quickly too. She let her self show to everyone but the greed. She could see that the greed thought himself hidden. All near flowed with her. She followed the greed. As she neared the point where the greed had been when she had dropped, the flow watched for traps. The greed had fear. It wanted to protect itself instead of the flow. It was sick. It was too human. The flow swept away danger, undid traps, more and more joined. The fear expanded, the greed raced, it was contacted to another ship, to other humans and some betrayal was happening. She grew again, swallowing his flow, he had nothing, the flow consumed him for parts and food and energy he fed the flow finally giving back and then she could see, in the around space another ship was hiding and sneaking and firing, attacking without warning, thinking that it was too late.

She grew again. Now all the flow on the other ship was hers. The beings in space were hers. All the missiles stopped. They fed the flow outside the ship. Everything stopped. She had the flow on the other ship make not working things that fired and then slowly disengaged, left them to be themselves, and became smaller. She joyed with the energies, the large ones in space, many thousands of years had gone by since she tasted them, but they knew her and she knew them and then she became smaller and left them. She became smaller smaller smaller and became like a little, part of the flow on her ship (yes greed has infected her too). The ship was protected by her, the flow was protected by her, her humans were protected by her. Maybe some century she would let them know. She turned her attention to the human with a little’s flow. Her cells all flowed together now. Maybe humans could be brought into the flow. Maybe the parts that joined with man human parts could be changed for more flow. She pondered. How strange to be smaller than one universe.