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Back Woken Furies
Chapters (56)
  1. PROLOGUE
  2. PART 1
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. PART 2
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. PART 3
  24. TWENTY
  25. TWENTY-ONE
  26. TWENTY-TWO
  27. TWENTY-THREE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. PART 4
  33. TWENTY-EIGHT
  34. TWENTY-NINE
  35. THIRTY
  36. THIRTY-ONE
  37. THIRTY-TWO
  38. THIRTY-THREE
  39. THIRTY-FOUR
  40. THIRTY-FIVE
  41. THIRTY-SIX
  42. THIRTY-SEVEN
  43. PART 5
  44. THIRTY-EIGHT
  45. THIRTY-NINE
  46. FORTY
  47. FORTY-ONE
  48. FORTY-TWO
  49. FORTY-THREE
  50. FORTY-FOUR
  51. FORTY-FIVE
  52. FORTY-SIX
  53. FORTY-SEVEN
  54. FORTY-EIGHT
  55. FORTY-NINE
  56. EPILOGUE

Transition, oddly enough, was a lot smoother than I’d expected from the surroundings. At the heart of the holosphere, an oscillating figure eight formed and began cycling through the colour spectrum. The sonocode droned counterpoint. In a few seconds the lightshow expanded to fill my vision, and the sound in my ears became a rushing of water. I felt myself tipping towards the oscillating figure, then falling through it. Bands of light flickered over my face, then shrivelled to white and the blending roar of the stream in my ears. There was a tilting of everything under me, a sense of the whole world being turned a hundred and eighty degrees, and suddenly I was deposited upright on a worn stone platform behind a waterfall in full flood. The remains of the oscillating spectrum showed up briefly as an edge of refracted light in faint mist, then faded like a dying note. Abruptly there were puddles around my feet, and cold, damp air on my face.

As I turned about, looking for a way out, the air beside me thickened and rippled into a sketched doll of light that became Jack Soul Brasil.

The pitch of the waterfall jolted as he solidified, then settled down again.

The oscillating spectrum raced through the air again, departed again. The puddles shimmered and reappeared. Brasil blinked and looked around him.

“It’s this way, I think.” I said, pointing to a set of shallow stone steps at one side of the waterfall.

We followed the steps round a rock bluff and emerged into bright sunlight above the waterfall. The steps became a paved path across a moss-grown hillside and at the same moment I spotted the monastery.

It rose among gentry rolling hills against a backdrop of jagged mountains that vaguely recalled parts of the Saffron Archipelago, seven levels and five towers of ornately worked wood and granite in classic pagoda style. The path up from the waterfall crossed the hillside and ended at a huge mirrorwood gate that shone in the sun. Other similar paths radiated out from the monastery in no particular pattern, leading away across the hills. One or two figures were visible walking them.

“Well you can see why they went virtual,” I said, mostly to myself. “It beats Whaleback and Ninth.”

Brasil grunted. He’d been similarly uncommunicative all the way over from Akan. He still didn’t seem to have got over the shock of Nikolai Natsume’s renunciation of the world and the flesh.