Sulfurware Side Story #2: The Call to Ara

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Sulfurware Side Story #2: The Call to Ara

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Transcript

Sulfurware Side Story #2: The Call to Ara

In the heart of Mako, where revelry never sleeps and the wine flows like memory, Sama stood still.
Stillness was rare in his realm. Mako pulsed with the rhythm of ecstatic chaos—its marble corridors echoing with laughter, silver goblets clinking in endless toasts, and columns that spiraled into auroras of saturated color. This was his world. Wild, ungovernable, soft with velvet shadows.
A messenger had arrived—not a voice, not a presence. Just a mark, etched into the obsidian of his hearth.
L REQUESTS YOUR PRESENCE IN ARA
It was not a suggestion.
L never suggested.
And Ara… Ara was no place for Sama.
He felt it even now, before he crossed a single threshold. That creeping stiffness in his joints, the nausea blooming behind his temples, the subtle dissonance between his form and the laws that governed Ara’s sterile design.
Mako was alive. Ara was not.
But one does not ignore L.
Not even Sama.
Not even here.
He stood at the center of his private chamber. Robes lay draped over chairs. Fragrances floated in cut crystal vials. His wardrobe had not changed in a thousand years, because Mako had not changed. It didn’t need to.
But Ara demanded preparation.
He reached for the white robe—the one with threads spun from stars. Dull. Clean. The kind of garment Ara wouldn’t notice.
His companions stood in the doorway—Nam with a raised glass, Agra perched lazily in the rafters.
None spoke.
They all knew.
Everyone in Mako knew.
L rarely summoned. And never twice.
Sama moved deliberately. He washed his hands in silence. Dried them. Fastened a single obsidian brooch at his collar—neutral, blank, unreadable.
He lit one last candle. Its smoke curled upward in a dance that felt almost apologetic.
“Hold the line,” he whispered to the flame.
Then he extinguished it.
The bridge between realms was not linear. It did not stretch like a path. It unfolded.
Mako faded.
Ara rose.
Arrival was not welcome. It was compliance.
Ara unfolded as it always did—flawless, symmetrical, and cold enough to burn. There was no sound, only the endless hum of compliance thrumming through invisible wires.
It made Sama sick.
His body tried to retch, but there was nothing inside him to give. Ara did not permit release. It only permitted form.
And L was waiting.
On his throne. Not in shadow. There were no shadows.
L stood in the exact center of the atrium, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted ever so slightly—as if listening to a note only he could hear.
Sama stepped forward.
His limbs felt foreign. Like they belonged to someone else. The rules of movement were wrong here. Gravity existed, but not in kindness.
“You came,” said L. His voice was flat. Not emotionless—just unaltered.
“You summoned,” Sama replied, voice calm, though his teeth ached with effort.
L gestured to the structure behind him—a crystalline object that refracted nothing, reflected nothing, yet shimmered with unreadable glyphs.
“There’s been a breach.”
Sama felt something pull at his spine. A memory or a lie—it was hard to tell in Ara.
“Where?” he asked, though he knew L would not answer.
“Beneath,” said L.
The word echoed.
Sama’s thoughts recoiled.
He said nothing.
“You are close to it,” L added. “Closer than you should be.”
Sama bristled. Anger flickered in him, a spark desperate to burn—but it had no oxygen here.
“I know what I carry,” he said.
“You carry many things,” L said, turning slowly, mechanically. “But do you understand why?”
The question was not meant to be answered.
He hated this place.
But not L.
But he could not leave until released.
And so, he stood. In the quiet. In the perfect, terrible balance.
L approached. Close enough for Sama to see the outline of something inside his chest—moving like a second heart. Something ancient. Something bound in code and cruelty.
“You will return to Mako,” L said. “You will continue. As if nothing has changed.”
“But it has.”
“Yes,” L said. “And that is exactly why you must not show it.”
The glyphs flared one last time.
Then faded.
Sama turned, stomach twisting, jaw clenched.
He would go back.
He had no choice.
Mako welcomed him with open arms—warmth flooding into his lungs, laughter spilling through unseen halls, music resuming as if it had never paused.
But Sama knew.
Something had shifted.
The question now wasn’t what Ara had shown him.
It was what Ara had taken.
And why L was waiting for what came next.