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I admit, even I could not have expected this. The birth of the big moon destroyed my physical body, and I ended up in a worm’s space. More precisely, I – is too big of a word. There was no self left. Only presence remained. Although I could observe the worm and even feel it moving in the passages it had dug in this unusual space. The worm crawled along them, slowly moving its heavy body, then getting stuck and tossing, then sliding into giant cavities. It's not just the top and bottom were mixed in them, but the dimensions could also increase and decrease their resolution. And it is me telling you this, an immortal who has never set foot in a four-dimensional consciousness.
In the end, the worm curled up into a sphere in one of the “grottoes" and froze. Fear, struggling with curiosity, were bursting me to the point that I touched him with my presence. Energy was circulating inside the worm. Curiosity finally won out, and I penetrated it completely. My consciousness filled the creature, although it would be more accurate to say that I let the worm into my consciousness. And then conception happened.
I woke up in a bed in the middle of a military hospital. The wounded were moaning nearby, and the male nurses wandered among them, giving injections to the especially struggling ones, after which they calmed down and became quiet for a while.
“How did you end up here, sister?” said one of the bedridden, half-asleep looking at me from the next row.
Not finding what to say, I just blinked stupidly, examining his mutilated face.
“Concussion?” he asked sympathetically, “And I was torn apart...” and the soldier lifted his veil, showing me only half of his body.
Nausea rose in my throat, and I turned to the side, where there was a bucket next to the bed, where I immediately vomited.
Under the roar of the cannonade, I was thrown out of the hospital as soon as a new batch of wounded arrived. They gave me someone's torn dress several sizes bigger, and I went out into the blinding light of both suns. There were tents everywhere you looked. Those who angered fortune and found themselves on the front line in the wrong place and at the wrong time were brought here from all over the front.
There were no memories of who I was and where I came from at all. But I was good at simple work, and I got a job cleaning beds and washing the wounded. At first, the disgust was overwhelming, I couldn't hide my horror. But the compassion that woke up in my chest overcame me, and I got down to business.
One unfortunate man called me Strife, by the name of his beloved, and the name stuck. They fell in love with me, these crippled souls, pulling the sprouts of their hands to my heart. And I fell in love with them in return. Only the male nurses caused me fear and consternation. I have heard stories from other women who accidentally got to the front, how healthy men raped them at night in barracks, came in a crowd and relieved the stress accumulated over infinitely long days. Those women did not grumble. But for some reason their fate bypassed me.
The same soldier who gave me the name introduced me to the context of what was happening. The War of the Moons had been going on for a good dozen years. “We” fought on the side of Khanate of the Dial, which invaded neighboring Iria. But during the war they were pushed back into the depths of their own territory and now were trying their best not to let the enemy capture the Maneian heights, from where the road to the capital opened. Our hospital was located in one of the settlements at an altitude 372, and on the neighboring mountain there was an artillery battery of the sixth Guards regiment. And I realized what kind of noise it was that woke me up at any time of the day or night.
The Guards had already started packing their guns, and that was a bad sign. But, according to my informant, not everything was so smooth on the side of the enemy. Iria also suffered heavy losses and their victories came with a lot of blood. A special blow for them was the formation of a new moon and the loss of the tenth brigade of towers. In fact, this event buried the combat capability of harad Manusp, one of the largest nomadic cities. But the cunning Iryans managed to take advantage of this event as well. With the help of ancient levitation platforms inherited from their distant ancestors who fell from heaven, they managed to deliver their artillery to the newly formed moon, which threatened the safety of the hospital and the sixth Guards regiment.
A few months later, the soldier's wounds healed, and I found out that his name was Kaplan. He was an idealist and a dreamer. He wanted to overthrow the government of the Khanate and establish a republic. That he told everyone around him in the hospital. Many laughed at him, and someone even promised to write a denunciation. But there was no one to write to, the entire high command had long since fled to the capital. But there were also those who listened to Kaplan. Soon their meetings and discussions became permanent. And I've been to almost every one of them. Kaplan spoke with such inspiration that a flame of revolution was born in my chest, kindled by sparks in the eyes of those who came to listen to him.
At the same time, I started having strange dreams. I dreamed of a darkness that consumed lives, and that I was serving it. In my dreams, I worked on an unusual machine that launched living people into this darkness. And my heart was filled with unbearable sadness from this work. One or two would have been fine, but these dreams became so frequent that sometimes I couldn't figure out what kind of life I was living. Here, in the hospital, or there, on the... launcher. Where did this word come from in my head?
But every time I listened to Kaplan in the evenings, I forgot about the launcher and the hospital. His dreams captured me, and I felt myself becoming his words and flying through the desert to sweep away the old and build a new world in its place, free from the Khanate and harads.
It all ended with the arrival of winter. Our circle was dispersed, and several “instigators and troublemakers” were arrested and immediately executed by the military police. They didn't touch me, because a lot of wounded people came that day, and I just didn't have time to meet this sad fate.
I grieved for a long time and my dreams became sharper. There were characters in them now that I recognized. A disgusting old man, a stupid old robot and a man in white clothes. Sometimes the whole dream consisted of us arguing with him, but in the morning, I could not remember a word of these otherworldly conversations. The grief of loss gripped my heart with each awakening and squeezed it as if it wanted to squeeze it out like moisture from a cactus.
But one such night I woke up from a touch. I almost screamed, but someone's hand covered my mouth. My eyes darted around in horror, expecting that my turn of dishonor had finally come. But Kaplan's face appeared in front of me, putting his finger to his lips.
“Hush!” He whispered, “Let's go.”
“Where to? O moons! I thought you were dead.” I whispered.
“To get out of here. I'm not that easy to catch. We will be helped.”
“But...”
“What do you have to lose besides this cage?”
I really had nothing to hold on to, and I nodded. Our shadows slipped between the tents of the sleeping guards, and we found ourselves on a mountain path descending towards the desert, beyond which lay the capital.
There was a cart pulled by selectosaurs at the bottom, and there was bread in the bags, which I pounced on as if I had never… And then I remembered the taste of bread on Lithius' satellite. It was a couple of parsecs from the launcher, and I flew there… The memory stung painfully below my chest, and I froze with bread in my mouth.
“What happened?” Kaplan asked, guiding the animals through the sands.
“Uh, nothing, some kind of bad delusion," I mumbled, and bread fell out of my mouth.
Ashamed of my own clumsiness, I put it down and began to collect crumbs from my dress.
"Fear penetrates deeply," the young man nodded, "but you can't let it control you.”
I nodded stupidly. He leaned over and kissed me on the lips. My head started spinning, and my heart was pounding like crazy. Next moment Kaplan was thrown into the air and hurled somewhere far into the desert.
In horror, I looked at the horizon, where the only person close to me had flown away. And something began moving behind my back. And with each such movement, I remembered and remembered. I remembered how I got here from the launcher; I remembered that I have been a biological immortal man, I remembered about the worm and about the imprint, about the moons and Rob...
“A-a-a-a!” I grabbed my head and shouted to the whole desert, “What is all of this for?”
ns 172.69.6.127da2
