He Would Be A God To Them Chapter 18 (Patreon)

XVIII

The Weight of a Different Sun

The interior of the Last House of El was a cathedral of light-though calling it built would be wrong. It had grown.

Kallen stepped past the threshold, his boots leaving prints of frost on a floor of packed ice and pale stone that gave way to crystal a few strides in, prints that vanished the moment they were made. The air inside was warm and still.

Great spears of translucent crystal seemed to have erupted straight up out of the black earth, twining between the trunks of trees so old and dark they might have stood since before the First Men, clustering and compounding at odd, deliberate angles-cube stacked on cube, spire fused to root and branch-the way frost blooms across a windowpane, but vast, patient, and alive with inner light. The chamber narrowed as it climbed, a great cone of glass and ancient wood tapering toward a distant point far above, where the tangled black canopy finally broke open, and a thin wash of starlight fell through the gap and struck the tallest spire, scattering into a hundred drifting colors that rained down softly over the hall below-blues and violets, and here and there a colder, silver current of light that could only be starlight, refracted a thousand times over.

Consoles of smooth, dark metal lined the base of the crystal formations, interspersed with towering monoliths of data crystals that glowed with inner fire, shifting slowly from blue to violet to a deep, banked orange, like embers breathing in the dark. It was a place of impossible geometry, grown rather than built, made not for the comfort of men but for the preservation of knowledge-every angle and surface shaped with a precision that made the maesters of the Citadel look like children stacking wooden blocks.

And he was not alone.

Standing motionless at various stations around the chamber were more of the metal men. They were identical in their fundamental design-broad-shouldered, blue-and-white alloy, faces of smooth, pulsing light-but each bore a different number upon its chest. Number Two stood near a towering crystal spire, its hands resting over a console of glowing symbols. Number Three was halfway up a crystalline stair carved into the base of another spire, holding a shard of blue crystal that hummed in its grip. Number Four and Number Five flanked the central dais, silent sentinels waiting for orders.

Kallen walked slowly down the center aisle, his eyes wide, his breath shallow. The ring on his finger pulsed in perfect synchrony with the light of the fortress, a heartbeat matching a heartbeat.

He reached the center of the room. A wide, circular platform of white crystal lay empty before him, directly beneath the shaft of pale daylight falling from the crown of the cone far above.

The light in the chamber shifted. The blue dimmed, and a soft, white glow gathered above the dais, swirling like mist caught in a sudden breeze. It coalesced, taking shape not through rough suggestion this time, but in perfect, unbroken clarity.

The phantom woman from the crater. His mother.

She stood on the dais, tall and luminous, her dark hair falling past her shoulders, her blue eyes holding the quiet, profound sorrow of a ghost. But here, in the heart of her own design, she was not translucent. She was solid. If Kallen had not known better, he would have thought she was made of flesh and blood.

"Welcome home, my son," she said.

Her voice was clear, resonant, and it broke something deep inside Kallen's chest. He stopped at the edge of the dais. The tears he had been fighting spilled over, tracing hot lines down his cold cheeks. He did not wipe them away.

"I have..." Kallen's voice cracked. He was a boy of ten, standing in a fortress of alien crystal beyond the edge of the world, and the weight of his own existence finally pressed down on him. "I have so many questions."

"I know," Lara said, her voice impossibly gentle. "And I will answer them all. I have waited a very long time for you to ask."

Kallen swallowed hard, trying to find his footing. "What are you? Are you a ghost? A spirit caught in the ice?"

"I am not a ghost, Kal-El," she said. "I am an Artificial Intelligence. A cognitive duplicate of Lara Lor-Van. Your mother."

Kallen frowned, his tears slowing as his mind grappled with the words. "Artificial Intelligence. Cognitive duplicate. I don't know what those words mean."

"It is a form of advanced technology, Kal-El," Lara explained, her tone patient and measured. "A machine that thinks. When I... when your mother lived, she mapped her mind-her memories, her voice, her thoughts, her love for you-and encoded them into this crystal matrix. I am a mirror of her. I am not the woman who bore you, but I hold everything she was. I am the keeper of her knowledge, and the guide she left for you."

Kallen looked at his hands, then at the glowing consoles, the numbered robots standing in silent vigil. He thought of the maesters in Oldtown, of their astrolabes and their chains of metal, of how they believed the world was understood. And then he looked up at the light of the woman who claimed to be his mother's mind.

"A machine that thinks," Kallen whispered. He didn't fully understand it, but he understood the shape of it. A soul poured into glass and light. "You are her. But you are not her."

"An accurate summary," Lara said, a faint, sad smile touching her lips. "You have her mind. You see clearly."

Kallen took a breath. The question he had carried for ten years, the question that had lived beneath every strange gift and every terrible accident, rose to his lips. "Where is she? Where is my real mother?"

The smile faded from Lara's face. The light in the room seemed to dim, the blue pulse slowing to a solemn, mourning rhythm.

"She perished," Lara said softly. "Along with everyone and everything we ever knew. Your homeworld is gone, Kal-El."

Kallen felt the floor shift beneath him, though the crystal did not move. "Gone?"

Lara raised a hand. From the tip of her fingers, light spilled out, not as a beam, but as an image. A holographic projection bloomed in the air between them, casting no shadows but filling the room with a sudden, vast panorama.

It was a world. A planet of stark, terrifying beauty. The sky was a deep, bruising red, illuminated by a massive, bloated red sun. The landscape was formed of crystalline spires and white, geometric cities that dwarfed anything Kallen had ever seen-towers that scraped the heavens, bridges of light spanning bottomless chasms, flying vessels moving in silent formations through the crimson sky.

"This was Krypton," Lara said. "Our home. The Kryptonians were a people centuries ahead of the world you reside in now. We had conquered disease, engineered our climate, and mapped the very fabric of the stars. We believed ourselves invincible."

The projection shifted. The crimson sky cracked. The ground heaved, massive tectonic plates tearing apart, spewing geysers of green fire. The beautiful crystal cities trembled and shattered.

"But our power blinded us to our fragility," Lara said, her voice heavy with grief. "Your father, Jor-El discovered that the core of our planet had become unstable. The very engines that powered our civilization were poisoning the foundation of our world. He calculated that the pressure would build until the planet's crust could no longer contain it. Krypton was going to explode."

The image shifted again. A grand, sweeping chamber filled with robed figures, arguing, dismissing the frantic pleas of a dark-haired man standing alone at a podium.

"Jor-El begged the governing body-the Kryptonian Council-to evacuate. To abandon the planet. But they were arrogant. They believed our technology could fix anything. They ignored his warnings. They condemned us to death."

Kallen watched the projection, his chest aching. He saw the man-Jor-El, his father-working frantically in a laboratory, piecing together the dark, glassy pod.

"He had no time to save the world," Lara said. "He only had time to save you. He built a vessel capable of interstellar travel, loaded it with a repository of all Kryptonian knowledge, and encoded my AI into the matrix. He sent you away in the pod, aimed toward a planet light-years away. A planet called Earth."

The projection showed the pod launching into the red sky, escaping the planet just as the surface fractured and the world imploded into a storm of fire and ash. Kallen stared, his jaw tight, his eyes burning.

"He had no time to make a copy of himself," Lara whispered. "He gave his life so that you might live. His aim was for you to reach Earth. A planet similar to this one, but far more technologically advanced. A world that had begun to chart the stars. He knew that on Earth, you would be safe."

"But I am not on Earth," Kallen said, his voice rough. "I am here."

"No," Lara agreed. "During your journey across the void, something diverted the pod. A spatial anomaly, a rogue gravitational eddy. I do not know exactly what. The navigation systems were damaged. The pod was knocked off its calculated trajectory, and it fell through the atmosphere of this world, crashing into the forest where you were found."

She lowered her hand, and the projection of the burning, dying Krypton faded, leaving only the soft, shifting light of the fortress.

"I have given this planet a designation in my databanks," Lara said, a faint, almost amused lilt entering her voice, a ghost of the woman she had been. " You have landed on G.R.R.M-15, Kal-El."

Kallen blinked. "G.R.R.M-15."

"It is an arbitrary designation," Lara assured him. "But fitting. It is a world of iron and blood, of swords and dragons, where men still pray to the weather and burn witches at the stake."

Kallen studied her for a moment, frost still cooling on his lashes. "How do you know all that? You've been sealed under this ice for eight years."

"When your pod entered this world's atmosphere, it did not arrive as a single, silent stone. Fragments of its systems-small sensor drones-scattered across the width of the impact and beyond. In the first year after your arrival, once the fortress itself had restored enough of its own systems to spare them, I sent what remained of those drones outward, north and south and across the narrow sea, to watch, and to listen, and to learn the shape of the world that had caught you. They do not think as I do. They do not judge, or interfere, or choose sides in your wars. They simply see, and what they see, they send back to me, thread by thread, to be woven into what I know."

Kallen looked down at his hands. He thought of Duskendale. He thought of the Wall exploding when he sneezed. He thought of the bones he had seen through the crowds at Maidenpool, and the beams of fire that had carved through stone.

"Am I..." He hesitated, terrified of the answer. "Are these things... are these powers normal for Kryptonians?"

"No," Lara said firmly. "Your abilities are not a trait of our biology. They are a result of this world's star."

Kallen looked up, confused. "The sun?"

"The star that this planet orbits is yellow," Lara explained. "Krypton orbited a red giant. Our biology evolved under the radiation of a red sun. We were a highly advanced people, but physically, we were as fragile as the humans you live among. A Kryptonian on Krypton could bleed. A Kryptonian could die."

She stepped closer to the edge of the dais, her blue eyes locking onto his.

"Under the radiation of a yellow sun, however, your cells act as living solar batteries. They absorb the radiation, converting it into energy. The density of your molecular structure increases. Your hearing expands. Your vision alters. You generate a bio-electric force that allows you to defy gravity, and when threatened, your body can expel that stored energy as thermal radiation. You are not a god, Kal-El. You are a man standing under a different sun."

Kallen let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. It was a sound of profound, shaking relief. The weight of divinity, the terror of the cradle, the paralyzing fear that he was some terrible, divine monster-all of it cracked and fell away. He was not a god. He was not a demon. He was a boy from a dead world, standing in the wrong light.

"I'm not a god," he whispered, a smile breaking through his tears. "I'm just... different."

"You are different," Lara agreed. But her tone hardened, the softness giving way to the cold pragmatism of a machine built for survival. "But you are on G.R.R.M-15. And on G.R.R.M-15, different is dangerous. This is a primitive world, Kal-El. They do not understand science. They do not understand biology. They understand only fear, and faith, and the sword."

She looked at him, her gaze piercing. "I would encourage you to let them believe you are a god."

Kallen's smile vanished. "What?"

"Faith is the only shield this world offers," Lara said. "If they fear you as a deity, they will not try to cut you open. If they revere you as a divine being, they will not hunt you. You have seen what happens when men fear what they cannot understand. They will call you a monster, a demon."

"I won't lie to them," Kallen said, his jaw setting. "I won't pretend to be something I'm not. I'm not a god. I'm a man."

"A man who can melt stone with his eyes and freeze fire with his breath," Lara countered. "To them, there is no difference. I am not telling you to conquer, Kal-El. I am telling you to survive. The people of this world are superstitious and cruel. Let them think the Mother touched you. Let them think you are a spirit of the Seven. It will keep you safe, and it will keep the people you love safe."

Kallen looked away, his stomach churning. He didn't like it. It felt like a betrayal of the oath Aldric had taught him-the oath of honesty, of standing between the cruel and the kind without deceit. But he also remembered the bandits in the woods, the way they had looked at him. He remembered Daemon Targaryen, who had tried to kill him simply because he existed. He did not argue back. He just let the silence sit between them.

Lara watched him for a moment, reading the conflict on his face. Then, her expression softened.

"However, you do not have to stay here, Kal-El," she said. "The robots can repair the pod. We can construct a new vessel. You can leave G.R.R.M-15. You can travel through the void, as your father intended, and reach Earth. A world of medicine, of science, of reason. A world where you would be safe among men who understand the stars."

The offer hung in the air, vast and terrifying and sweet.

Earth. A world without the Red Keep, without Daemon Targaryen. He could leave the mud and the blood and the iron behind.

Kallen closed his eyes.

He saw the green door on the Street of Flour. He saw Rosey's weathered hands handing him a heel of bread. He saw Tomlyn's broken nose and his fierce, unyielding loyalty. He saw Melisandre kneeling in the mud, trading her god for him. He saw Aldric, sitting by the fire, explaining what it meant to be a knight. He saw Myla, and the boys at the Citadel, and the mother clutching her babe in Lannisport.

He thought of the voices he heard every day. The cruelty, yes. The taxes, the beatings, the silence of good men doing nothing. But he also heard the laughter. He heard the songs. He heard the steady, stubborn rhythm of ordinary people trying to live their lives in a world that gave them nothing but mud and expected them to make bread.

He opened his eyes.

"No," Kallen said. His voice was quiet, but it carried the weight of absolute certainty. "I'm not going to Earth."

Lara tilted her head, the light shifting across her features. "It would be safer. It would be easier. It is what Jor-El wanted for you."

"My father wanted me to live," Kallen said. "And I am living. This world is hard, and it is cruel, and it is dark. But it is my world. I grew up here. My family is here. I have a duty to them, and I have a duty to the people who can't fight for themselves. I can't abandon them to go live in a place that makes sense. This place doesn't make sense. That's why it needs me."

He looked up at the ghost of his mother, the machine that held the soul of a woman who had sent him into the dark to save his life.

"This is my home," Kallen said. "And I am staying."

For a long moment, Lara said nothing.

The light of the chamber pulsed once, then again, slow and deliberate, like something considering its own held breath. Kallen almost thought he had angered her - that some cold, calculating current beneath that borrowed voice was already searching for the next argument, the next lever to pry him loose from this world and send him toward the safer one. But when she spoke again, the hardness had gone out of her entirely.

"Your father said something to me, in the last hour before your launch," she said. "He said that if you grew to be even half the man he hoped, then no world would be lucky enough to keep you against your will, and none would be foolish enough to try. I did not understand him then. I was still learning what it meant to carry a heart that was not entirely my own. I believe I understand him now."

The platform beneath his feet rose smoothly back into alignment with the great hall above, carrying him with it, and Lara led him to an alcove at the base of the tallest spire, tucked behind a curtain of hanging, faintly luminous crystal formations like icicles grown crooked with light. Number Five was already there, having gone ahead unseen, and in its hands it held a garment: dark, supple, woven of some fabric Kallen had never felt, that shifted color faintly the way the walls did, blue to black to blue again. Across its breast was worked a sigil in a paler thread-two curved lines, crossing and rising together like a flame caught mid-flicker, or a river forking around a stone.

"This is the crest of the House of El," Lara said, and for the first time since he had entered the fortress, her voice carried something that was almost reverence. "In our tongue, El means star. It was your father's house sigil, and his father's before him, back through generations longer than the written memory of this world you love. On Krypton, every great house bore such a sigil, much as the houses of Westeros bear theirs on banners and shields. But ours, when translated, does not mean strength, or fire, or blood, as so many sigils on this world do."

"What does it mean?"

"Hope," Lara said simply. "That was always its meaning. Your father believed, even as our world burned around him, that hope was not a foolish thing to leave behind for a son he would never see grow. I did not entirely agree with him, when I was still flesh. I have had eight years now to reconsider my position from a considerably more patient vantage point, and I find that I agree with him completely."

She did not ask him to wear it. She only nodded to Number Five, who folded it with slow, careful motions and held it out.

Kallen took it in both hands. It weighed almost nothing, and somehow felt like the heaviest thing he had ever carried.