The Hollow King (formerly Ezbihotz)

They gather.

Not as many as was hoped. Many have already sought their rapprochement with their former oppressors. A company have sworn themselves to the banner of a Liberty who doesn’t really exist anymore, and gird themselves to head out on an eternal, fruitless pilgrimage across the worlds. But, well, there are still a multitude here, at the gate back to the Plata Plains. Enough hard-bitten freedom fighters, zealots, orphans (those for whom it was too late; whose worlds died without them, no chance of a triumphant return), gathered here, heeding the call.

It doesn’t really matter, honestly. It’s not like the campaign depends on even one of them showing up. The one who brought them here today made sure of that.

Eraiki addresses them first. She doesn’t remember them, and they don’t recognise her at first, but the old kinship and years of struggle still count for something. She talks of necessity, and justice, and action. Of the obligations that emerge from being able to resist oppression. If you can – and we can - do. In his new armour, and with his new eyes (donated by a friend of the cause), he glitters with the promise of liberatory violence. They believe in her; but she’s just the warmup act, and it doesn’t matter if there’s a trace of her just going through the motions.

Once she is done, Ezbihotz comes to the fore, and delivers his address to the would-be liberators.

He doesn’t speak in words, but with the force of nature. His denunciation of the twin tyrants – Paramountcy and Progress – is the seismic rumble of the unsettled earth, felt in the bones as much as heard by the ears. Her intent to retake Jaia is the calving of icebergs from a melting glacier, inevitable, worldshaping, threatening to drown industrial lowlands and gleaming coastal cities beneath the rising seas. Their promise for the future – the vision of a reclaimed Jaia – is the smell of petrichor, sweet rain falling on dry and cracking soil.

And the act of speaking is an act of transformation. As he speaks, Ezbihotz everts, unmaking what he was, shucking it off and revealing the tool, the weapon, the razor-sharp stiletto of will and purpose beneath. The old body of soft mosses and lichens tapers, stretches, a slender skeletal lattice of gnarled and twisting roots, adorned with flowers the colours of sard, cintamani, and dried blood, and crowned with a halo of roots. Spare, rangy, there was not enough body in the old, soft, despairing Ezbihotz to reconstruct this apparition in full – it is a sketch of a thing, a scaffold, a sharp-edged apocalyptic purpose, without the rounding of a person.

The Hollow King looks to their soldiers, nods. Their body thrums with furious anticipation of what is about to happen. They extend a hand to Eraiki, who clasps it in their own earthen grasp. And then they walk through the gate. To the future.

‘Do I remember Liberation Day? Of course I do. You don’t forget the end of the world, even if it all grew back afterwards.

‘The gate opened over Plata-001, late evening. Bright atomic flash in high atmosphere, as Eraiki set off the EMP she’d brought back from Emporium. Just like that, every electronic device, every link and sinew of Progress’ fragile empire severed. They had contingencies for it, of course – scrambled the Community Security Enforcement drone flights, locked everyone down, started rebooting the network – but by the time they had anything in the air, they were already engaging the Knights the King brought through with him. A thousand orphaned demigods, fighting for Jaia to avenge the worlds they’d lost; Progress could have held out, but not for long.

‘And then, of course, there was the Hollow King himself. To describe what he did … it defies words. Every little thing. Every little structure, every little supply chain, comforting technological cocoon Progress had built around us, every chain of control and domination – he reminded us how very fragile they were. And then severed every one. No power, no water, no knowledge of the world around us … and with that, no overseers breathing down our necks, no threat of excision from webs of technocratic control, no fear of being dragged away by CSE drones. We stumbled out into the streets, bleary eyed, to see the King descend in majesty upon Progress’ central control hub, the copper, concrete, and silicon world quailing away from his presence … nothing could touch him, it was the most terrifying and most beautiful thing I ever saw.

‘And then she entered the control bunker, swarms of bees buzzing around her, through her, out of her. And then fifteen minutes later – despite all the automated defences, all the fortifications – she walked out, unscathed. Progress is dead, she said. I’m going to give you your world back. I’m going to restore Jaia for my children.

‘It’s not perfect, of course it isn’t. Eraiki could reshape the land, raise fissures that chewed away landfills and industrial wastes, for Jaia’s mantle to digest and spit out, clean fresh rock and river and icecap. But the Hollow King – he wasn’t made for times like these. Sometimes, he tries to reseed Jaia with the life he remembers – but he can’t, not really.

‘The plants he tries to grow – from memories of being a person who had memories of the world as it was – they are weak, unlively things, somehow even more artificial than the hydroponic and carefully-controlled green zones that Progress created for us. When she creates animals, they’re not animals as they are - but animals as we imagine them, like corporate mascots, or children’s toys. Soft, rounded, plastic-y. They don’t thrive. She rages against them, scouring the mesas and valleys she half-seeds with life … then returns, and starts again, a few years later. We know to stay away from those places.

‘But I think it’s a bit more complex than just that. I don’t think it’s something the King can’t do, but something he is. When he left, he was a creator, a caregiver, someone who couldn’t save us from Progress. When he returned from Emporium, he’d refashioned himself as a destroyer, a warrior, a conqueror. He’s remade himself a little since then, but the furthest he’s been able to go is to become a defender, a grim guardian and bulwark who protects Jaia from all the predatory forces that look at our world with barely concealed hunger. He can never stand down – never demobilise – never enjoy the world he made. And that eats at him, him and Eraiki.

‘But even more than that? I think the issue is that the Father of the Wild can’t recognise that their people are growing up. They castigate themselves for failing to restore Jaia as it was, saying that they’re no creator … but none of us, their children, remember what Jaia was like any more. They can’t give us the verdant paradise we had before Progress came, but, as we learn and rebuild amidst the ruins of Jaia and Plata alike, we learn to live with what we have, cultivating the wild grasses that grow up between the cracks in nearly-buried tarmac, and herding the pigeon-things that once adapted to Progress’ rule. The Hollow King doesn’t realise that they won. They freed their princes, princesses, and scions, and they have begun to outgrow their parents, master our own destinies.

‘Eraiki has an inkling; I only wish Ezbihotz was still around to see it. But I know that he’d be proud.

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Eraiki Simple Queen – whatever it is now. I don’t think Ron can manage to write this, so I’m unilaterally writing this myself.. The conversation you had with them; I don’t think they feel better about it, but it meant a lot to share memories of Ezbihotz together, and they’ll treasure that for a long, long time. Your plan to get them back … I don’t know what to say about this. It’ll work, if you can get close enough to the King, but if it does, you…

Well. My Queen. I don’t know if I should wish you good luck with what you’re about to set in motion, but I’m thinking of you two, all the same.''

String Infinite Lines
Executive Assistant to Ron/Bill/Vince/John/Rob/Tom/Bob/Phil, Brand Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary