— FROM LIFE —

Lise’s hands are clammy. With thumb and index, she tries to peel away the stickiness from between her fingers but it seems only to spread it. Wiping her palms on her pants never helps either. The only solution is to wash them. It’s just one more thing she deals with now. The pain in her chest has not abated, will not abate, and it causes strange problems like this. Always accompanied by a cold dampness—even now, as she rises from the porch step with a grunt, knees popping, she feels a sweat drop trickle down from her armpit and down over her side, leaving a cool trail that she dabs at with her shirt.

She hobbles along the trail now, a knot in her low back playing the rhythm of her limp. Her bare feet sink into the soft soil as she leaves the trail, seeking the creek’s company. She tries to find a spot that isn’t too far from the cottage—knowing that her sister’s wife will return soon and they’ll be preparing dinner.

The creek is clear—imperceptibly so, were it not for the gentle warping of light as the water burbles and rolls over itself; rising around stones polished by many years of what Lise stands observing for merely a moment. Were the waters stilled, I couldn’t appreciate how pure they are. I would not see a stream but a path paved with blue and black pebbles.

Careful not to collapse into it, she kneels beside the stream and washes away the sweat sticking between her fingers. The water is cold, her hands numbing as she cups them and carries the water to her lips. It leaks down her chin and down between her breasts. She winces, but the cool water is soothing on her scars, which had begun to feel hot as the pain inflamed from her stroll.

There is a half-submerged boulder not too far away, with a flat top perfect to sit upon. Moss—a blue-green variety—had crawled up from the soil on one side, softening the seat for her. She sighs, leaning stiffly against it. The walk, short as it had been, left her winded and trembling. It takes a few minutes to relax her body enough to move again. And with that comes the harsh awareness that, after dinner, she will have to rest and recover for hours and hours, maybe whole cycles, before she can do anything else.

Right now, though, she can yet move. Can yet remain here. Later. Later, she can suffer. Will suffer. Right now, she sits and listens to the silver-tongued creek speak its peace.

— TO DEATH —

Alone, Lise sits before the tree of death, dreadfully alive. There is silence, and small sounds stealing in and out. She sits before the tree of death, at peace with herself. There is silence. There is silence all around the sound. Suffocating silence. A sound’s life is brief. A sound’s life is briefest here, and silence sublime. Sit before the tree of death and know it. Silence is where Lise sits, awaiting NON.

— 1 —

Silence

\\//

I am the only person alive. Lise has always felt this way in the undermind. Even in populous areas, the undermind has an unnatural silence to it. Once, she’d found it calming—free from the overwhelming noise of life. Violence now renders that same silence suffocating.

Lise stands useless, listless, as shadowy fiends dash past her, ravaging the feeble remnants of the villagers’ minds. She watches as a dark figure crashes into one of the small, silver forms. It consumes the tiny creature, a weak light flickering within the dark haze before extinguishing with a suppressed explosion. She braces herself as the air warps and the ground rolls under her feet.

Violent death in tranquil silence.

So quickly it happens… So many innocents consumed by a pestilence they had nothing to do with… Any attempt to save them had been stamped out by a few stubborn fools. That was all it took to sabotage all her work—a few who were unwilling to save themselves. Stubborn, innocent fools. It’s become routine now, but that doesn’t make it any easier to face; it’s harder every passing second.

Another shockwave rattles her. I really thought I’d be able to save them this time, Lise despairs. Her gaze grows distant as the consequences of her failure weigh her down. She turns about, watching with unfocused eyes as more and more of the faint lights are consumed. When the shockwaves come this time, she lets them knock her off her feet. She almost doesn’t care that her own form is becoming less defined.

Feeling the soft gray earth on her back, Lise snaps back to reality.

//\\

Lise rolls out of the hammock, eyes already misting as she opens them. The pain of her bare palms smacking against the rough wood floor is enough to fully wake her. She punches the floor, not caring for the splinters digging into her.

“Damn them! Damn them to the fiends!” She roars, beating down on the floor until her knuckles are coated crimson. When it can’t overshadow the guilt she feels, she gives it up. “Damn them…”

Her eyes are dry when she eventually stands. She takes a deep breath, trying to compose herself before she goes to see what remains. I can’t continue like this, she finally acknowledges. She is so exhausted—and what does she have to show for her efforts? Nothing… Nothing but the cost. Giving up is so tempting.

Lise decides to leave the splinters alone and simply bandages her hands for the time being. She gathers her meager belongings from the room, taking her time. Though she’s seen it before, she is still reluctant to face what remains outside. If she just stays in that room she could continue to imagine everything is alright… I’ve never found respite in delusion.

She slings her axe sheath over her shoulder before pulling on her cloak. She marvels at the gold threads interwoven into the faded black; the sparse gold still shimmers despite the wear. The cloak once belonged to Rese. But she hadn’t taken it for any particular sentimental reason, her mother’s just didn’t fit her frame. After she picks her satchel from the floor, she has no excuse left to stay. Still, her hand hovers over the door handle.

She contrasts the memory of the inn’s boisterous patrons with the utter quiet of this moment. Just a few cycles ago they’d marked the sun’s departure and the beginning of the new quadrant with billows of smoke and bellowing laughter. Where people once stomped the essence of life into the floorboards, Lise creeps out gingerly. This brand of silence leaves her uneasy. It feels fragile. She feels fragile. Her heavy boots clunk on the wood despite her care, each bump and creak inching her nearer the edge of her nerves.

Ignoring the doors lining the hall, she pads over to the stairs. The steps are solid, and don’t make as much noise as the floorboards. Dread comes slowly. By the time she stands on the ground floor, her jaw is clenched painfully tight. The innkeeper’s room is behind the counter. She walks through the arrayed tables and chairs, feeling her shoulders tensing. Stepping over the small gate she waits at the door.

Her knuckles rap on the wood. It’s pointless, but she does it anyway. She flinches when the handle squeaks, but presses forward. The room is dark, but Lise can still see all it contains. A humble array of trinkets line the man’s desk, pressed against the wall by a disorderly pile of papers and scrolls. Next to the bed is a low table, upon which rests an incomplete toy puzzle.

The body lies prone atop the bed. The only noise in the room is the soft rattling of the bed-frame against the wall. In the darkness, she can almost imagine the body is completely still—but for that incongruous buzzing. She pulls the door closed. She leaves the inn.

Outside, the sky is still the soft indigo of early night. The village is dead. No one walks in the streets, nothing stirs. It is Lise and the fattened fiends lingering in the undermind. Time to leave. The fiends’ hunger will soon override their preference for the defenseless—though it feels callous to leave the bodies where they lie, shaking with the last vestiges of life, she has to walk away.

She leaves the village, feeling the weight of more lives on her back. She carries it, but knows it is only a matter of time before it brings her to her knees.

— 2 —

Lapse

//\\

Lise doesn’t stop until her knees begin to wobble and her boots fall heavy and uncoordinated. It is hard to say how long she walked—time during the beginning of the final quadrant of the year is notoriously difficult to keep track of due the thick cloud cover obscuring the moon—but she thinks it must have been a cycle and some. The land is rougher around here, with jagged rocks and rifts half-hidden by browning tree needles and the skin-thin patina of ice encroaching on every exposed surface. It is risky at the best of times, but she pushes herself to keep moving anyway. When she finally halts and takes in what she’s done she’s so tired that the miracle she wasn't injured is a distant realization.

The feeling absent from the thought, she thinks, Thank the land. Sheltering beneath an overhang, she makes a small fire from the kindling she keeps in her satchel, and falls asleep before her suppressed hunger can stir.

\\//

It can be difficult to orient oneself in the undermind when the mind is impaired, whether it be by the use or overuse of certain substances, cognitive clogs, or simple exhaustion in this case. In her state, Lise is unable to keep from being swept into a dream current. She is sucked down and inundated with imagery she can’t pick apart, familiar sounds in a cacophony of perceptions she can’t parse. Then, stepping out from the storm, she follows the phantom of her past, of her future. Seli… Hounded by countless fiends, the shadowy figure clutches her head as she runs. She is surrounded by them, unable to escape. They nip at her heels.

Lise tries to reach out to her, but she is so distant. If only she was quicker. She has to catch up…

The image warps, twisting into the remnant of the last village she passed through. With the initial frenzy settled, she can see all the fiends gorging themselves on what is left of the minds fragmented there. It will sustain them for weeks, but the area isn’t populous enough for them to persist long after. These few won’t spread. She feels numb, gazing upon that sight. So much death, and she was powerless to stop it.

Her vision shifts once more, and she is above the city she calls home. It is coated with black pitch. It oozes from every building, covering every painted stone of every street. Withering fiends sprawl in the steaming sludge, starving for no life remains to feed them.

Lise struggles to maintain her form under the immense weight. She is so exhausted.

I am Lise. I am a dweller. I must find balance.

It’s so hard, just to keep going. She’s seen so much death in these few months. More death than in the rest of her eighteen years. To keep focused she has to recognize her responsibility for this, but it is beating her into a savage depression.

I am Lise. I am the eldest. I must protect my sister.

No matter her attempts to save people, she’s accomplished nothing. She probably would have saved more in the long term by leaving the dying to die and the dead to lie.

I am Lise. I am responsible. I must right what is wrong.

//\\

Lise wakes with a start. How long has it been since the last time she completely lost control in the undermind? Years, she thinks. It’s been years since I’ve been so negligent. To have exhausted herself when she was already in a vulnerable mental state was beyond foolish. It could have meant death, or something akin, but again she is left largely unscathed.

She shakes her head, trying to lift herself from the lethargy that sets over when swept up in the undermind’s current.

“Where…?”

Taking in her surroundings as she sits up, noting the sleet that hits the ground with soft slosh sounds just outside the cover of the overhang. The fire she started before falling asleep went out long ago, not fed enough fuel to sustain it more than an hour or so. She sits and watches the icy water trickle down for a while, trying to decide whether to wait for safer conditions. After a bread roll and a stick of dried gobe, she knows she will have to leave now. It is too difficult to predict if the weather is getting better or worse—and it can get much worse, but not much better.

She retrieves the wax-coated poncho from her satchel and pulls it on over her cloak. With no more reason to remain, she leaves the safety of the overhang.

— 3 —

Precipice

//\\

Lise sits on the cliff’s edge, looking over the landscape before her. On the other side of the ravine, the once sharp silhouettes of mountains soften imperceptibly into the heavy drapes of a storm cloud backdrop. Spots of red-gray stone lit by luminescent flora fleck the mountainside. How long has it been since the night transition? She caught glimpses of the moon as she walked but she’d already lost track of what cycle it was by the time she saw it. Well, it’s all relative, isn’t it? It shouldn’t matter.

She leans over the edge, looking past her dangling feet. The cliffside disappears into the abyss. She tosses a rock, listening for it to hit the bottom of the ravine. The sound never comes.

“Oh…” Lise mumbles, looking at the layer of snow thickening around her.

Careful not to slip, she pushes herself back from the edge and stands. She will start her descent after she’s slept again. She decides it wise to set a few traps first, however. There was a plant she’d seen up on the plateau that might attract bazoles. Sure enough, she catches sight of one of the spiny creatures feeding on the broad leaves draped beneath the olea bush. It skitters away when she steps into the light. She ignores it.

Contrary to common understanding, olea bushes don’t glow like other luminescent plants. The light is produced by the julea beetles which hibernate inside its flower-pods during the night season. Julea beetles glow far brighter than any plant could alone. Lise suspects that they were the reason some day season plants are able to grow beneath olea bushes. This particular bush has dark blue flowers that cast the surrounding area in rich sapphire.

Lise touches the broad leaves the bazole had been eating from. They are limp, no strength to keep them off the hard stone. On closer inspection, this is a plant she recognizes. It was harder to tell because it is wilting beneath the insubstantial light. The reason it survived this long into the night season was because of the olea bush, but it won’t last.

Lise sets her traps and retreats from the bush’s light. Time to sleep.

\\//

As she slips into the undermind, Lise immediately feels a sense of relief. She didn’t lose control of herself. All is still well. Well enough, anyhow.

What was hard stone in reality is softer, less substantial here. A realm of few colors, the undermind is painted by human perception. A place as sparsely populated as the plateau would appear gray and hazy, just the vaguest shapes represented. The reason it has shape here at all is because she took the time to traverse the area a little prior.

In populous regions, the undermind is far more representative of reality, but also hard and uncompromising. Here, Lise has far more influence, but nothing to balance her perception if it becomes distorted. It can get out of control quickly. That is part of the reason she decided to stop early, so she could get as good a grasp on the surroundings as was possible in the dark.

She starts walking. The olea bush glows pale gray, lighting the barren stone. It is the single feature rendered distinct here. She takes a moment to look at it, recalling its vivid color. As she turns to move on, her shadow is framed by blue light.

The cliffside is blurred around the edge, but still stable enough for her to approach. She closes her eyes. A bridge… A crude bridge stretches before her. It pops out of existence. She tries again, holding an image in her mind. Another bridge grows from the hazy stone, stretching over the bottomless ravine toward the mountainside opposite.

Her first steps are tentative, but she grows bolder when she realizes it is solid enough to support her. She frowns as the bridge falters, but presses on. How did Seli cross this terrain? Did she?

A distorted vision of a girl with fiends surrounding her, devouring her, appears in the air. Lise can almost hear her howls… The bridge vanishes.

Lise falls into the abyss, mouth opening to release a scream that never sounds. Any second she will hit the bottom. There is no time to react. Any second… She never hits the ground. What? Falling, hair pulling at her skin so hard she thinks the wind might peel her scalp away with it, she vanishes into deeper darkness.

Why is there no bottom?! Her panic is dull, distant. She turns her head to look at the sky, finding that the cliffside is stretching rapidly downward to accommodate this unreality. The answer clicks into place. I never heard the stone hit…

Snow. I didn’t hear it because the ground is covered in deep snow. Deep enough that I would survive the fall. She holds that thought in her mind, breathing heavily. The bottom is right below me.

Suddenly, she crashes face first into white. Darkness. Ouch. The pain is everywhere. I’m still here, though. She can’t move. She struggles, but the snow is all around her, blinding. There is nothing for her to gain purchase.

The snow isn’t actually this deep, Lise asserts. She pushes herself out of the now shallow snow, slowly standing. Her whole body aches with the pain of the impact. Her hands, still wrapped in bandages here, feel oddly numb by comparison.

Far above, the sourceless gray light casts a dim glow on the walls of the ravine. Now to get out… She considers giving up on this expedition, but knows she needs to see beyond these mountains. Feeling about her, she locates the cliff wall in the darkness. She leans against it, trying to think of a way to escape. Could I imagine the bottom was higher up? Perhaps a pillar to raise me?

She attempts both—both require more control than she has at present. A ladder? She looks down at her wounded hands. No, not a ladder. Stairs. No, a step. Yes, that should work. She forms the image of a step projecting from the stone. Gingerly, she steps up. It holds. She makes another and steps up onto that one. The one behind starts to fade the moment she stops projecting it there.

Lise can feel her internal meter depleting step by step, but she perseveres. By the time she reaches the top she knows she doesn’t have long before she oversleeps. The mountain on this side is very soft, making it hard to stand on. She feels like she is walking into molasses when she first steps off.

Trudging through it would have been impossible as it was. She imagines the stone gradually hardening, and it begins to do so. It starts solidifying around her boots, but she manages to get free before it traps her. Atop the mountain, at last, she gazes over the landscape before her.

A vast carpet of gray forest extends from the diminishing hills and mountains toward the horizon. Most of the land is insubstantial: trees appearing more rain-cloud than foliage; hills and mountains like suspended waves. One area stands out—a single solid space. A lonely red tower, a town of washed-out browns and grays spreading from it, pale green trees growing mistier further from the tower. Black haze hovers over it like a swarm of carrion clickers.

— 4 —

Reap

//\\

Lise wakes with a start. She can’t recall leaving the undermind. Wincing, she pushes herself up on bandaged hands. I’ll have to tend to these soon… I can’t afford to ignore it much longer. But there’s no time now. That town is being devoured as she sits worrying about a broken knuckle and some splinters. It can wait until I get there. It’s foolish and she knows it.

She gathers her cloak and satchel, crawling from the narrow cleft in the stone. Immediately, she feels that something is off. It is hard to say what in the pitch darkness. The air smells… wrong. On her guard, she traces her way back to the olea bush. The pungent smell grows steadily stronger.

Eyes watering, Lise creeps around the cliff edge. She freezes. Deep gouges stripe the craggy stone of the plateau. She leans down, inspecting the marks. Three… There are more markings, each bearing three distinct lines several inches deep. Whatever left the tracks must have be immense. She looks closer, noting the pad shape in the thin layer of dirt. A smaller hole toward the back tells her more than enough. A raptor.

A chill crawls up her back. Such huge prints… Even at that size—she looks up at the night sky—she knows she won’t see it coming. Her ears are reliable enough, but she’s not had enough time to adjust to the night season yet. She is still relying on her sight too much.

Damn it. The olea bush has been trampled, all light gone from it but for two remaining beetles. Her traps are nowhere to be found in the wreckage. Snow has piled up here, though it has ceased snowing for the moment. As the moon peeks from its cloudy veil, its gaze falls upon something glistening in the snow…

Gore stains the white a burnt crimson.

Lise retreats from the scene, plucking the two remaining flower-pods from where they have been dashed aside. She hides their glow in her satchel and makes her way toward the ravine. Trying not to hurry, she begins to climb down. The edges are slick with ice, and all it takes is one slip. Had I known I’d be traversing icy mountains I would have brought an ice axe instead of this cumbersome battle-axe. She grits her teeth against the ache creeping into her fingers. Land, had I known I’d be encountering giant fucking birds I would have brought a catapult instead of a sling.

When she finds a suitable ledge to stop, she looks up to realize she’s already descended close to a hundred feet. She feels her hands throbbing with pain, even cold-numbed as they are. Trembling, she fumbles with the clasp on her satchel. She hesitates, holding the glowing blue flower-pod. Do I really want to know how deep it is? She wonders, peering briefly over the narrow ledge. Her fingers come away, and the pod drops into the ravine.

It falls, further and further, dancing in the strong winds… She counts to nine before the glow vanishes. She breathes slowly, I wouldn’t survive this fall no matter how deep the snow was. Knowing its depth now she isn’t sure she can make it all the way down in one go, let alone get back up the other side, regardless of the fact that the opposite mountain is a couple hundred feet shorter.

Lise looks at her shaking hands, bandages crusty with old blood. Foolish… Death is so close she can feel its chill breath on the back of her neck. She continues her descent…

She has to stop again barely twenty feet down. Her fingers are losing strength, and she can’t trust her grip in the current conditions. She pushes herself as far from the edge as she can and tries to shelter from the blistering wind, but there is even less to give her cover here than on the last ledge.

The second flower-pod is half-crushed and already considerably dimmer than when she’d picked it up. Her fingers are paling, nearing frostbite. Her left pinky is swollen and dark. If there had been any doubt that it was fractured before, it is gone now. She will be lucky to keep it, if she survives. Her right hand is in better shape, but not by much. Scabbing denies any attempt to remove splinters now.

She curses her complacency, but doesn’t allow herself to despair over it. Of course she could have prevented this, but she hadn’t. “When death is imminent, self-abasement is a detriment,” she reminds herself. This adage of Akota’s is one she has difficulty keeping to.

The howl of the wind through the ravine is as chilling as the wind itself. It is nothing compared to the piercing shriek that suddenly bombards her from all directions. Lise hurriedly stuffs the flower-pod back into her satchel and draws her axe from her back, still in its sheath. Her unwrapped fingers wrap round the haft, weakly gripping it as she searches the darkness. She doesn’t see the beast coming.

The axe haft is nearly wrenched from her grasp but she scrambles and managed to keep hold, for better or worse. Her stomach flutters as she feels her feet lift. Teeth gritting against the pain, she holds on for her life as she is carried into the pitch dark. Her fingers are slipping…

Lise growls. Using what strength she has, she pulls herself up and grabs desperately for anything in reach. Feathers. She grips a handful and tries to climb further. The bird screeches and releases her axe. Its strap is tangled with her satchel and hangs precariously. Lise can’t spare a thought for losing it, too busy trying to wrap herself around the beast’s bony leg.

The landing is sudden and jarring. She comes loose and tumbles away, hearing something crack under the weight of her torso. Her back slams against something hard. Gasping for breath, she growls at the sharp pain in her side. Her body refuses to move for far too long. GET UP!

With a cry, she manages to push herself to her knees. Pain courses through her, but she is able to press past it for now. Feeling around quickly she realizes she’s lost her axe, but she still has hold of her bag. She draws the flower pod out and tosses it ahead of her. It reveals her immediate surroundings with its dying light. The shriek comes again, deafening her to the bluster of the wind outside.

A cave?

Fragments of bone and debris are scattered over the ground, and an enormous beak of deep brown appears mere feet from her face. Its once sharp tip is worn from age, and the beady black eyes that rest behind it seem to look through her with cold awareness. It snuffles at her, but makes no other move. She holds still, barely breathing—for fear of the raptor, and for fear of choking on the putrefaction mingling with the raptor’s moldy hay musk.

Even in the light, she can’t see it fully. It is at least twice her height, but that is as much as she can determine. Her body remains frozen but her eyes flick about, desperate for escape. Just at the edge of the light she can make out the strap of her sheath. Too far. She is still on her knees, and the beast will be upon her before she makes it to her feet.

Her right hand creeps slowly into her open satchel, fingers slipping smoothly around the sling, while her left hand searches for something to hurl. A knobby shard of bone is all she can find. I need to do it in one swing, she thinks.

The raptor strikes before she can do anything. It rams its beak into her, digging into her stomach. She feels it pierce skin. Her hands come up and she grasps for its eyes. It snaps at her left hand, flaying open the top of her forearm. She screams, her right hand slamming into its eye. It bursts under the pressure and the creature reels back with a squawk.

Lise scrambles after her axe. She tries to rise, but her right leg buckles the moment she puts weight on it. Desperate, she tries to propel herself forward on her knees. The raptor bites down on her boot, dragging her back. She twists, kicking at its remaining eye. Her foot slams into its nostril. The beast releases her, clacking its beak in frustration. Her hand wraps around the axe haft.

Lise can’t unsheathe it—no time. She rolls, avoiding the striking talons. Her arm moves. The axe comes up back-first, the exposed spike cracking into the great bird’s beak.

She rolls again, but not quickly enough to avoid the talon that stabs through her right leg. She feels it tear through her muscle. Her scream is imbued with mingling fear and rage. Not a thought crosses her mind, she moves purely by instinct.

Lise swings again, driving the spike into the raptor’s leg. Dark blood spills over its ashen scales. She grinds her teeth as it releases another fierce shriek. It stumbles, beating wings to keep balance. She tries to move from under it but her body is failing. Even dulled by shock, the pain cripples her. She roars, managing a final swing of the axe before the beast pins her under its injured leg.

The toes curl around her, into her, talons sticking her ribs. Her axe slams into its cracked beak, breaking a large chunk off the top. Its next screech trails off in a bloody gurgle. She bites down another scream as it staggers back, dragging talons over her torso.

She will remember the sight of its ridged tongue flicking through thick crimson. As it falls back, she tries to unsheathe her axe, but her left arm won’t rise. Using her teeth, she pops the clasp and shakes it off.

She almost expects the enormous bird to retreat, but already it is limping back toward her. There is an intent in its one eye that she’s never before recognized in an animal—spite. This old beast knows it will die, and it is going to make sure she won’t live to boast. It is going to kill her in contempt.

To death…

Her axe meets its falling claw, cutting deep. She pulls back as hot blood flecks her face and hurls the axe with all the strength she has left. It sinks blade first into its extended wing, cleaving through. The bird falls back, crashing heavily to the cave floor.

Lise sees motes of dust swirl and settle around the motionless beast. Her head falls back, and the sapphire light of the flower finally dies. She is lost in the darkness.

— 5 —

Swelling

\\//

Overmind, undermind; out of sight, out of time. Lise finds herself again in the undermind, caught in the current. She is in a cave, looking at a fading light. She is outside, sliding down the mountain. Gleeful, she prances through faint forest. She sees herself dying slowly, failing rapidly. Laughing. Laughing. Laughing…

As she reaches solid ground, her form blurs. As the undermind gains color, she darkens. The town is alive with pinpricks of light, dancing about her like faeries. She delights in them. She watches their frolic without partaking. Fiends follow them in a swarm, darting and stinging, biting but never feasting.

A lone figure stands among them, trying to shield the faeries but never able to hold all the fiends back. She is a young woman, wrapped in bright green. Lise knows her garb.

‘Good night, fellow.’ Lise calls. She makes no sound, but her voice reaches its target.

‘Eh? Who?’ The woman starts, pale face losing expression in shock. Her doe eyes blink. ‘Good night? Eh? This is no good night.’

Lise nods. The woman is right. ‘Yes. I will help.’

‘You’re not making sense, sister.’

Lise tilts her head. ‘I’m dying. I can’t help now, but I could.’

‘I… You’re dying? What do you mean?’ The woman glances frantically between Lise and the faeries.

‘Look.’ Lise points to her body, and blood covers her. She collapses, bones broken and flesh torn. ‘I’m dying.’

‘Good grace, you’re dying!’

‘Yes. I will help, if I can live.’

The woman looks about in confusion. ‘What do I do to save you?’

Lise looks at the mountain in the distance. A cave on the near side. Yes, that’s where she is dying. ‘There. Send help.’

‘I…’

//\\

Open eyes. Lise is blinded by pain. Her thoughts are scrambled. It is hard to breathe. So cold…

She can do nothing but lie there, shaking. Am I dying? Am I going to die? Fear grips her. Alone, far from home, powerless, unfulfilled. The end. She weeps for the cost. Thought blown away as a handful of dried petals.

— 6 —

Color

\\//

Lise drifts. Seli draws her in. Lise recalls a memory not her own. Without the presence of mind to avoid it, she falls in…

—4 Days Ago—

Seli dances. She likes to dance. She likes to go with the wind, with the music. Her arms move, flowing with the feeling of the song. Sand tickles her toes, the sun warms her bare back; it is easy to lose herself in the sensations.

Lise is watching her. “What are you doing?”

Seli stops to scowl at her sister. “I’m dancing!”

Lise continues staring at her with those deep indigo eyes. She raises an eyebrow, but her expression is otherwise unreadable. “I mean, why?”

Seli stops again, “I…” She frowns, “I just wanted to!”

Lise isn’t one to be deterred easily, however, “Yes, but why did you want to?”

Seli scratches her arm. “I heard the music, and I just felt like it, okay?!” She runs away before her older sister can ask another question, she can already hear it coming.

She finds herself skipping through Opis Luma, smiling at vendors and patrons alike in the street. It is great to be able to feel the warmth of the day season. Everything is vibrant. The ancient stone buildings which were just dark shapes in the night season are revealed as subtly colorful, swirling with browns and reds and yellows, with accents of raw silver filling cracks and verdant mosses embedded in the stone.

She loves the city’s liveliness during the day season. The light seems to bring with it a diverse group of strangers, some just passing through, others visiting for longer periods. The long abandoned outer districts of the city become home to thousands and thousands of temporary residents. Those ancient stone buildings were made to last—her father said—and all it takes is small restorations here and there to make them habitable again.

Seli skips past a variety of intriguing characters. She wishes to stop and talk to them all, but it isn’t possible. She can’t keep herself from stopping at least once, however, and settles on the most interesting person she can find. Rather, it is a pair of interesting people. A man and a woman, of similar heights, dressed in bright green robes.

She skids to a stop before them, her bare feet scuffing on the worn cobbles. “Hi!” She waves.

The woman frowns at her and says nothing, but the man meets her smile. “Hello, there!” He says. He has a strange accent, drawn out in a kind of unbroken hum.

“I’m Seli! Who are you? I’ve never seen someone like you before.” She says, bobbing back and forth.

The woman’s frown deepens and her shoulders draw up. The man stiffens as she hurries past Seli. She turns to watch her go before returning her attention to the man. He winces, but his smile soon returns when he sees that hers does not waver.

“Please forgive my sister… She is impatient, but she means well.” He says.

People glance at them with annoyance as they pass. Seli ignores them. “It’s okay, don’t worry.”

His smile broadens. “Ah, I’m glad. Well,” he holds out his hand, looking down at her, “my name is Pelezel, but I prefer Zel. I find myself fortunate to meet you Seli.”

Her cheeks hurt from smiling. “Whoa, long name!” She laughs, “I like you!”

“Perhaps we should walk, else I fear we might give cause to riot!” He laughs too, gesturing for her to follow him.

Seli skips alongside Zel, “What are you wearing those fancy clothes for? I like the silver shapes!” She pokes at the interwoven pattern of silver laced through his robes.

“These robes show others that I am a practitioner of harmony,” His patience is unfaltering.

“Huh?” She stops to look at a man wearing a thick brown cloak with his hood pulled up. His face is glistening underneath. She blinks, turning to realize Zel had kept on walking without her. “Ah! Wait!”

“Oh, my apologies. I got caught up in my speech, and I…” He slows for a moment, his expression gradually turning downward. “Hm. It seems I have lost my way. In more ways than one, now that I look around…”

“Where are you going?”

“An important question, but I must admit I’m not really sure. Elineal is better at direction…”

“You’re going to the silent house, right?” She points to what she thinks is the right direction. “This way!” She starts walking that way.

“Oh, well, not exactly where I was supposed to go, but it will work out.” He chuckles, “Elin will scold me again.”

“Are you going to stay for the solstice? I will be dancing again this year.”

“I would, but I’m sure Elin will have found some reason to leave by then.” He replies, following as she leads him into the inner city.

“That’s terrible!”

He chuckles, “Perhaps, but I don’t mind so much. I get to meet many different people when I let her drag me around.”

Seli shrugs her shoulders up to her ears, “If you say so. I rather do what I want.” She turns, walking backwards so she can watch his face. “Don’t you do anything alone?”

Zel frowns, “Of course I do things alone.” He sounds offended, and of course he should be.

She didn’t say it to offend, but she doesn’t care that it did. “Yeah, but you just go wherever she goes.”

He purses his lips. “That’s because I trust her. She’s focused where I am fickle, planning for the future while I rarely think further than the next week. Sometimes you have to admit that you’re not the best equipped for everything in life.” His expression settles when he is done speaking, satisfied with his response.

“I never do what my sister wants me to do. She always sits and does nothing.” Seeing the puzzlement on his face she elaborates, “She’s real lazy. Specially during day season.”

Zel scratches his head, still confused.

“Mom said it’s just her nature to be boring.”

He blinks, “That’s a… strange thing for your mother to say…”

“Well, she said it different, but that’s what it meant.” She turns again, skipping forward. “The place is over here.”

Looking around at the towers, Seli is always amazed by their colors and shapes. If the people here are boring, the buildings, at least, are not. It is mostly stone of a kind, but always carved and painted with ingenuity. She appreciates the brightest colors most, the brilliant reds and golds standing against the deep blues and violets. Maroon latticework facades interlaced with the lush greens of creeping gali vines, the purest white flowers appearing to shine in the day’s light.

She could stare up at the buildings here for hours, admiring the way the floors of that one spiral up, the way that other one looks like a scarlet flower, blooming from a thin black spire. She could…

“Is that the place you’re taking me?” Zel asks, nodding ahead.

Admittedly, she’d forgotten her purpose in coming here. “Oh, yes! That’s it!”

At the end of the street waits a single structure. It isn’t the tallest building, nor the most intricate, nor the most colorful. Really, it is fairly plain to look at. A simple, navy sphere. It stands out like a boulder in a delicate meadow. Somehow, still, she finds it curious—if, perhaps, only for its disparity.

A familiar figure strides toward it with purpose. Lise? Seli wonders, watching her sister walking straight into the silent house without a moments hesitation. What’s she doing?

The silent house is, despite its comparatively humble height, enormous in full. It sits balanced in the center of a broad courtyard, fountains reflecting shimmers of light onto the dark sphere’s underside. It reminds her of the bands of color they sometimes see in the sky during the night season.

Passing foreign and familiar people alike, she can spare no thought except for her intense curiosity. Even the man she led here is left behind. All she can see is the unmarked circular entrance into the silent house.

— 7 —

Orient

\\//

Lise becomes aware of herself slowly. For a time it is as though she’s dreaming, caught in the undermind’s current. Thoughts of Seli drift in and out. It must have been a memory but it was unfamiliar to her.

Where am I…? She wonders, sitting up. Her mind feels disjointed. It takes far too long for her to realize she is in the undermind. What happened to me?

She blinks several times but her sight won’t clear. Really, she isn’t sure if her eyes aren’t clearing or if the place she’s in is too dim to see. Seli… Why do I feel like I was so near? She rubs her face in the darkness, trying to draw her mind from this haze. When she pulls her hands away, she can see.

The room is almost empty. A dull gray-green stains the walls; the floor shimmers iridescent blues, waves shifting beneath her feet; high ceiling a distant yellow glow. The only objects in the room are two parts of an immense spheroid—one charcoal, the other pearl—suspended beyond reach. Lise stares up in wonder at the floating halves. She’s seen something like this before.

‘I don’t know what that is either.’ The voice seems to come from no direction in particular.

Lise turns to find a woman in emerald green garb entering a door she hadn’t noticed. She is surprised to realize she knows this woman. Well, she recognizes her face at least, and she definitely knows the uniform.

‘Who are you?’ Lise demands, wincing as her words come out harsher than she intended. She tries to soften her tone, ‘Where am I?’

‘I am Elineal of Harmony,’ The woman answers, expression severe. ‘And you’re in a town called Dejed.’

De… Dejed? Yes, she knows the name from maps, though she never thought to pronounce the ‘j’ like that. Wait, Elineal? She remembers this name as well, though she struggles to recall where she heard it. ‘Why am I here?’

Elineal frowns slightly more and her faint wrinkles deepen exponentially. ‘I had you rescued. No small task in these circumstances. I expect you’ll hold to your word?’

Lise looks at her, trying to figure what she’s referring to. Her stare doesn’t reveal much. Tentative, she begins, ‘I will do my best, but I don’t remember…’

‘If you won’t help, I will have to let you die. I can’t afford to spare panacea on you when I could use it instead to save those who would help; even if you are better equipped than they.’ Elineal goes on, not allowing her to get a word in.

Lise quiets and her vision grows distant as she tries to parse the woman’s words. It clicks. ‘I promised to help save the town in return for my life…’

‘Yes, and while you slumber still more are falling prey to the fiends.’

The memories of what led her here are yet to return, ‘Please be patient with me, I am disoriented. If you could explain what is happening, I could be more… useful, probably.’

Elineal stares straight at her as if trying to look through her. She shakes her head, ‘It will be easier to explain after you’ve seen it.’ She turns and exits the room, expecting Lise to follow.

Lise does as she expects. The door leads to a hallway that wraps around the room, left being the only direction she can go. Unlike the room, the hall is near colorless, only the walls retaining a tinge of beige. She has to take longer strides to catch up with the woman’s brisk pace. Long after she thinks the hall should have ended, it continues. A spiral.

Elineal doesn’t glance back once. Lise stops, turns, and wills a Lise-sized hole in the wall. It surprises her with how easy it opens up, considering the place is inhabited. She steps through, finding that the hall continues even further. She makes another hole and peeks through. The end is rendered to the left in the form of a heavy brown door.

Lise runs her fingers over the smooth face of the door; she imagines it is wood in reality, but the color is too flat and undefined to tell here. Interesting that that room was so vividly conceived, yet the hall leading to it is so thin. She pushes open the door and steps into the room.

It’s a broad room with a high ceiling, but its length is no more than twenty feet. Immediately before her is an altar that spans near the entire width of the room, leaving enough space to squeeze past. She walks along it, trailing her fingertips over the top of the altar. It isn’t so detailed as the room she awoke in, but detailed enough to feel the coarseness of the stone. She edges around it and leans against the frontside, waiting for Elineal to arrive.

The steps leading up to the altar are hazier than the altar itself; retaining the mosaic pattern of reds and browns, but none of the texture. Idly, she begins to crystallize the individual shards of color. She has no way to say whether her recreation is accurate—whether the different shapes were meant to form a particular image—but with her help, they make up a beautiful structure. Independent, none of the shards are uniform, but together they form shapes; all coalescing to reveal, in incredible detail, two eyes; one open, one closed, they appear to swirl together towards the center of the room.

‘What the…?’ Elineal mutters, glancing back. She shakes her head. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Waiting,’ Lise answers, pushing off the altar. ‘What is this place?’

‘This is the temple. Once a year, the locals do their sacrifices here,’ She gestures to the altar. When Lise doesn’t say anything she continues, ‘They don’t slaughter—not these days. Mostly symbolic sacrifice. Old possessions, habits, the unnecessary. It’s a quaint little custom, really. Nothing to fear.’

Lise nods but remains silent. Opis Luma’s natives took part in such traditions. Each solstice you are expected to rid yourself of something inhibiting your progress. The day solstice is reserved for a material possession or habit, whereas the night solstice means shedding an obsolete view or belief; both to make space in your life for what is necessary. She remembers it being difficult when she was younger, but many of her latter sacrifices had come easier—she even anticipated them to an extent. Her last sacrifice, however—during the final day she was in Opis Luma—had been something of both.

‘Right, well, we can’t just wait around here forever. Lives are at stake, I must remind.’ Elineal says, cutting through the pensive silence.

She chafes at the haste but follows as Elineal heads for the double-door. Her irritation is gone as quick as it came.

A dark cloud hangs over the town; a swarm of insectile fiends. Then, position shifting, her understanding returns.

— 8 —

Contract

\\//

Lise watches the fiends whiz past, a thousand nebulous shapes darting towards the pinpricks of light. Where the fiends sting the lights flicker, but aren’t extinguished. ‘These fiends… I’ve never seen their type before.’

‘Nor had I; at least, not this specific type. They haven’t killed anyone—they just keep them weak, don’t allow them rest. But I don’t think that will last.’

‘My expertise is in handling a few strong fiends. Something of this scale is beyond me.’ Lise admits, thinking back to her recent failures.

Elineal growls, ‘You gave your word that you would assist me.’

‘I did give my word.’ Lise frowns, not understanding the sudden change in mood. ‘Don’t misconstrue me. As I said before, I intend to keep my word.’ Not that I have much choice. ‘I just don’t know how effective I can be here.’

Elineal’s demeanor is poised once more. ‘Good. I will keep you under until this town is saved.’

Lise’s eyes narrow. ‘You’re going to keep me unconscious.’

‘Not unconscious, just under.’ She clarifies.

‘I see. And you accept the danger you will be putting me in by doing so?’

Elineal meets her cold stare. ‘Of course I know the danger.’

‘I didn’t ask if you know the danger, I asked whether you accept that you are subjecting me to it.’

The woman hesitates, breaking eye contact. ‘One day you might understand.’

I see… ‘Show me what you want me to do.’ Lise says after the silence has drawn taut, struggling to draw the indignation from her gaze. There is more to this. The feeling is enough to keep her ire contained, but only just.

‘…This way.’ Elineal says, subdued.

A sphere of glass appears around them and she begins to lead her through the swarm. The fiends bounce off the glass and zip away. Some of the larger ones crack the sphere as they impact, but the breaks mend with ease.

‘They’re very weak.’ Lise observes.

‘Yes, but they act more… cohesively than any other fiends I’ve come across. They’re more dangerous than they seem.’ The woman has a peculiar tone as she says this that Lise can’t decipher.

As they meander through the village, more and more of the fiends seem to be aiming for them, reaching such a frenzy that Elineal struggles to exert her will. The sphere is in a constant state of cracking and sealing. They can hardly see, for the number of dark forms darting about them has become overwhelming. She realizes—distantly—that Elineal’s construct is going to shatter.

She looks back at Lise, and explains, ‘They somehow sense that we are all that stands in their way,’ sounding dubious of the idea that they have any degree of awareness, even as they observe it.

The glass bursts apart. Fiends surround her. Pain. Excruciating pain. They bite and Lise can feel their poison coursing through her. It burns. She burns. She pushes the burning outward. Fire erupts. Fiends are blasted to sand in the blaze. Solidifying. A new sphere of scorched glass forms around them.

Elineal gasps, heaving. Only a few seconds. Lise trembles with the memory of terrible pain—darkness subsuming her. It’s hard to say how much of it had been the fiends’ poison and how much is simply NON recalled.

‘How did you…?’ The woman looks at her, incredulous.

Lise meets her stare, face blank. ‘I just… reacted.’ She doesn’t understand the whole of it herself. Around them the swarm reforms, battering against the glass. It doesn’t crack. I should have helped the moment I noticed she was struggling, she chides herself. ‘I see why you called them more dangerous than they seem.’

‘Indeed…’ The woman appears lost, eyes gazing inward. She looks up, and her poise returns—though slower this time. ‘Let’s keep on. It’s safer where we’re headed.’

‘Lead the way. I will maintain it from here.’

Elineal nods, and for a moment she appears older. Her true age? Lise shakes away the loose thought and focuses on the sphere.

It isn’t too long before she halts again.

‘Here?’ Lise wonders, trying to see past the swarm.

‘No…’ Distracted, she shivers. ‘I must wake soon. Just ahead, though.’

They press onward, and she is able to maintain the sphere without trouble.

‘Here.’ Elineal stops her. The sphere begins to stretch forward; she doesn’t resist her manipulation. It opens up and a sharply-defined wooden door appears in the space. ‘Go.’

Hesitating, Lise releases control of the sphere, like… Like passing delicate glass to someone prone to clumsiness…

She doesn’t take any joy from the distantly amusing thought.

Hand on the doorknob; over her shoulder, she asks, ‘What is my purpose here?’

‘That’s not a question someone else can answer for you.’

‘Funny.’

‘You didn’t laugh.’

‘Nor you.’

Elineal shrugs, and again, for only a blink, the skin beneath her eyes is borne down by the weight of her years. ‘I fear even this wretched excuse for levity will be lost. It may be annoying, but when you’re without it you will regret its absence.’ Lise watches her and hears her, perhaps more precisely than the woman imagines. ‘Your purpose is to keep them from harm… I will return.’

Lise inclines her head, and turns to the door. She feels the absence behind as she pushes forward…

— 9 —

Brood

\\//

Lise stands frozen in the doorframe, unable to turn her eyes from the brilliant light. It must be near fifty of them, all grouped together in this room. Drifting around the room, floating at waist height, still unblemished by fiends. Children, she realizes. I’m to protect them?

She feels relief, to have something she is confident she can accomplish. Just keep these innocents safe while Elineal takes care of purging the mass of fiends. This must have been why she had been unable to do so already, she thinks; stretched too thin, trying to save everyone by herself. But with help… It’s the same difficulty she herself had dealt with in each village and town she passed through.

A tension that was within her since leaving home eases, and strangely, she finds herself smiling. Her doubts about Elineal seem petty in retrospect. The desperation of one struggling alone is all too familiar, and she should have been more sympathetic. Not to mention the piercing truth which casts the whole situation in horrible contrast.

I must stay mindful of my responsibility. Too easy to lose direction in this circumstance.

Looking upon the group of lights, watching as they flit about each other, she wishes she could see them as they were in reality. It seems so long since she’s seen children unbowed by the fiends’ influence. It is purifying, to bathe in their untainted light. So pristine, and so quick to tarnish. Children are the first to go, if unguarded.

Lise draws her eyes from the captivating glow to examine the room. It appears… strange, at first glance. And with each successive glance, the stranger it appears. The walls to either side slant outwards and the ceiling arcs over. Further back, the walls straighten and the curved ceiling flattens. The back wall is the most concerning part; it is blank white. Neither light nor shadow touch it as they do the rest of the room.

She approaches it, careful to avoid the flitting forms of the children. What is it with these weird rooms? The detail of the floor and the other walls slowly becomes more pronounced. Large slabs of stone make up the floor; the walls are wood, dyed a weathered red, grain swirling together in a way she has never observed in nature. Is it arbitrary? She wonders, Probably not. There must be some significance, I just haven’t realized it. Yet.

The back wall is a perfect square of white. Lise looks at it, trying to find the detail which is so present in the rest of the room. She can even see the children’s bedrolls, as impermanent as they are. But this wall, is nothing. Near enough now that it encompasses her sight, she looks into it. Her eyes find no grounding details. Her fingers find… no wall at all.

Lise draws back her hand, this is… empty space. An opening in the undermind where reality doesn’t reach. There was another empty space like this in Opis Luma and she’d been allowed access once; she’d been inside it twice. Her legs tremble, threatening to buckle. Breath coming short, she steps back. Calm… She breathes deep, trying to stop her shaking.

A form emerges from the emptiness, startling her. Before she realizes what she’s doing, her axe is in her hands. But it is merely the form of another child. She curses, releasing the axe; it blinks out.

Then she recognizes that this form is different from the other children. It has shape and color. A loose representation, like an artist’s stylized rendition of a child. It’s on the edge of dwelling. So young, and already so near. Lise was considered young for a dweller when she’d attained it at thirteen, but—based on height—this child can’t be much more than five years old. For a moment, she just stares, uncertain how to react to this new element. Not just the child, but the empty space as well.

She shudders as the child walks through her. Its warmth suffuses her for that brief moment. Coming into contact with it, she gets a sense for the person on the other side of this reflection. A boy. Joyful, unassuming. Deeper, she presses. There… At his center, fiendish resentment skulks, waiting for him to slip.

Lise gasps, drawing herself from him. Potential… She turns, taking a second look at the boy. He is older than she first guessed, but not by much. The way he moves past the other children says a lot. This is the one left in charge of the rest—probably the eldest.

She shakes her head, making her way back to the front of the room. Later. First priority is securing the structure.

— 10 —

Balance

\\//

Lise lets the glass bubble pop as she reenters the room containing the children. Reinforcing the structure was simple. It’s always easier to work with a preexisting construct than to create from nothing, but this building was already near impervious. All she’d had to do was fill in the small cracks where fiends might squeeze through.

After inspecting the building from outside, she determined it must be a sanctuary of some spiritual significance. The Home of Silence is similar, in that it’s as real in the undermind as it is in reality itself. Many people revere it, so it has that much more strength in the undermind. Then, she thinks, that should apply to that altar room in the tower, yet it was so indistinct. It might just be that people don’t enter but for a few times a year when they make their sacrifice, but that doesn’t explain the room in the center.

Lise sets aside conjecture in favor of focusing on what’s in front of her—for now, at least. It is more difficult than it sounds—as speculating seems to be her natural state of mind. Akota told her that it came from her mother, though Rese had claimed to be the source of her intelligence. She doesn’t care one way or another—she wouldn’t call herself intelligent in the first place. Besides, she saw where that supposed intelligence led him.

She shakes her head, realizing her line of thought had drifted away again. How long have I been under now? It’s hard enough keeping track of time in reality, let alone in the undermind where there is no moon to mark the passing cycles. Well, she had been able to see the moon in Opis Luma, but there were hundreds of thousands of people in the city, compared to perhaps a couple thousand here in Dejed.

How long have I been under now? She asks herself again, ever more worried as she feels her mind drifting off once more. If she doesn’t touch back down soon, she might just… Well, she’s relapsed this way before. She has a few cycles still before she is truly at risk. Probably.

Watching the children settle down, she is relieved to have a point of reference for time. Her growing worry deflates somewhat. There are other ways to stay grounded, she will draw it out as long as she can. Then, well, if Elineal doesn’t let her surface, she will just have to break her grip. It’s dangerous, but she has bigger issues. Compared to the greater scope, the death of this entire town seems minuscule. Yet, being here, it feels enormous.

Everyone in Opis Luma is dead, and that was only the beginning.

What relief she felt in finding a task she could accomplish is quashed under the weight. Hundreds of thousands—potentially millions—will perish if she fails to reach Seli soon. To attempt to count the lives lost is overwhelming; she has to focus on who she can still save. “When death is imminent, self-abasement is a detriment,” She reminds herself. Yet failure seems the only possible end. If she doesn’t keep it in mind, she may grow complacent. But if she focuses on it too much she edges on giving up. Death’s imminence doesn’t seem so intimidating then.

It is so difficult to resolve the apparent paradoxes in her mind. She’s been prone to depression since contracting ‘the NON’—as she’d heard the hereditary affliction referred to. She had described it to Akota as akin to walking a tightrope with no end. I keep moving forward, balancing precariously, but I will fall. It’s only a matter of time. Climb atop, start anew, fall again. She’d just begun to find the right balance, when Seli…

She takes a deep breath. I must find balance. The lifelong struggle, as Akota had described it. Grief strikes when she remembers that her friend had still been in the city. She’s avoided thinking about it—her only friend, dead.

Other than Seli, Akota is the only person she’s had unreserved care for in years. She cares about people in the greater sense, but on a personal level, they were the last two.

Lise feels her form faltering and cuts off that line of thought. This isn’t good. I need to wake up. I can’t relapse. She leans against the wall, watching the children without seeing them. Her eyes start to lose focus as she draws further and further into herself. If I relapse there’s no saying how long before I emerge, recalling her mother’s end, If I ever make it out.

Unable to stop her legs’ shaking she lowers herself, back sliding down the wall. What should I do? I need to leave. I need to catch Seli. She’s trapped. I need to get out, but I can’t just leave Elineal here to clean up my mess. She will fail. She and this entire village will die. I can’t do that. I… but…

She senses a solution to her problems is near, just in the periphery of her mind, but still can’t see it clearly. The situation demands speed, she demands speed, but the answer demands patience. Can she afford to wait on Elineal?

No, I can’t. I can help, but I must do it on my own terms. I promised my help, I said nothing about serving Elineal. Harmony might be her greatest ideal, but it’s not mine. If she resents me, so be it—but I will have fulfilled my end. She draws a deep breath, trying to settle her racing mind. Patience. Accept the answer on its own terms. If I can’t solve everything now, what are my priorities?

First… I need the freedom to act. In order to accomplish anything I need that, at the very least. From there, I can determine the best path.

Again, her thoughts return to Akota’s ‘saneness’, as he liked to call it. Really, they’d been a number of peculiar—rarely useful—wisdoms. This one in particular coming from a conversation about the common reaction to discovering you’re trapped.

“Skip the part where you thrash about and run head first into a locked door. You’ll only tire yourself, not to mention the damage you’re doing to your best tool for escape! Step back, find the vulnerability, then you can get out with some energy to spare for the uncooperative guard.”

She still hears the grin in his voice, and tries not to imagine his lifeless corpse.

— 11 —

Lurch

\\//

Lise prods around for a construct holding her in the undermind but finds nothing. Either Elineal is of far greater skill than she estimated, or she is keeping her under by some other method. She suspects drugs. It’s the simplest answer, seeing as she is in possession of other healing medicines.

Unfortunately—if her suspicion is correct—she can do nothing about it directly. I could hold Elineal under so that she can’t administer the drug… She shakes her head. Last resort.

She watches as the children begin to wake and move about the room. The child who is near to dwelling steps back into the empty space, and she surmises that there must be another room past it in reality. He is probably the shrine-keeper—or at least a trainee—seeing as none of the other children go beyond the empty space. In fact, they seem to be keeping their distance from that end of the room.

Perhaps I can talk with him, get an idea of what’s going on on the other side. She thinks, but remains dubious. If he were a dweller, she’d be able to communicate with him without difficulty, but she’s never tried with someone on the edge. It will probably be easier to do while he is sleeping, and she can’t afford to squander her energy just yet.

She approaches the empty space, considering using it. If she enters, she can create without reality’s interference. It would be more efficient to do so, but entering empty space is risky. And ever more so for the muddled mind. The simplest of stray thoughts could send her spiraling into chaos.

Lise steps into empty space. Fool.

She floats, weightless, in the vast whiteness. Fear fraught thought freezes her. Paralyzed by terror of past failure. She halts her mind, holding it from racing beyond her grasp. She withdraws.

Lise collapses to the floor, trembling. She can’t do it. She feels the desolation creeping up. Not worth it. Not worth it. Not worth it. Clutching her arms for a semblance of security—she silently begs the darkness to leave her.

Gradually, her composure returns. I can’t do that. I need to remain in control. I’m already on shaky ground and I’m doing myself no favors. She resolves to play it safer until she can wake up. Undue risk won’t do.

‘The empty space frightens you.’

Lise leaps to her feet, searching for the source of the voice. The door is open. A man? Her eyes dart to an indistinct figure, then widen. He steps in front of her, illusion cast off. He is a man of average height, fair skin, and pale brown hair. His eyes, yellow-green, stare through her. She recognizes his gentle face—but much as with Elineal, can’t recall from where.

‘I escaped her.’ He explains.

‘What?’

‘I escaped her,’ he repeats. ‘Elin tried to imprison me. I escaped her.’

Lise takes a step back. Something is off. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I can show you.’ He smiles.

‘Show me what? How to escape?’

‘How I was imprisoned.’

Before she can react, he reaches up and presses his hands to either side of her head. She tries to jerk free from his grasp, but she trips and falls back, pulling him with her into empty space. Control is gone from her before she can even…

— 12 —

Fall

\\//

Lise tumbles in empty space, drawn into his chaos. He laughs. She opens her mouth to scream as a memory not her own is forced on her mind…

—1 Week Ago—

Pelezel looks up at the clouds splitting around the colossal tower that looms over the small town; a gory dagger scoring the starless sky. He frowns at the dour sight, “Why are we here again? I don’t seem to remember you ever explaining our purpose in coming all the way up here.”

Elin sighs. “I did explain it, you were just too preoccupied with your own fingernails.”

He shrugs. “Guess I’ll just wing it, then…”

“Let’s not. We’re here because the town’s only dweller recently passed without someone to take his place.” He stares at her to indicate that isn’t enough of an explanation. She sighs again, “We’re just here to keep things under control until someone else can be dispatched—we’ll be gone before the end of the quadrant.”

“If you say so.”

She turns to him, narrowing her eyes. “If you’re only going to respond with a child’s petulance I’ll start to treat you like one.”

“You say that as if you don’t already.”

“…Pelezel, I don’t intend to belittle you, but your behavior recently has been erratic at best. I can’t always be the one expending the effort to understand what the problem is, I need you to meet me halfway.” Her visage, pulling on a facade of empathy, casts him down. She condescends to meet him halfway… “To me, it seems you are losing touch with harmony, placing your own feelings above the needs of others.”

Pelezel scoffs and shoves his hands into the pockets of his robe. “When does it end, Elin? When can we stop running from one place to the next? I feel like we only care about others. What about you? What about me? I feel like I haven’t done something on my own terms in years. Waiting on her holiness’ summons, only to be sent off again. How long since we spent longer than a quadrant in Kellean? I barely recognize my family, my friends, my home.”

Elin pulls her fur cloak closed around her robe as the chill of early-night wind roars through the valley. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Zel.”

He blinks, “I don’t want you to say anything. I just want you to understand.”

She frowns, and for the first time, seems genuinely bothered. “I… I don’t know if I can.”

“Then perhaps you aren’t as good at this as you thought.” He says, and starts toward Dejed.

Pelezel sits in his room, contemplating his fingernails, when the knock comes. He figures it must be Elin so doesn’t pull on his robe, wearing just his pants and undershirt. Instead, as he opens the door, a different woman shoves into the room. She shuts the door behind her, dark eyes peering down where he landed. She’s tall—taller than him—and still the thick coils of black hair hang to her waist. It is hard to make out her features in the dim room, but she appears young.

“Who-Who are you?!” He stammers as he staggers to his feet. “And why are you barging into my room?”

“Hello Zel, it’s me,” she says simply, “I am Seli.”

Despite her apparent familiarity, he is on guard. “I…You…?” He racks his brain, trying to recall where he knows her from. He hedges, “I think… You’re the girl from Opis Luma, yes? What are you doing here?”

“I am just passing through.” She replies.

Something’s off. He takes a step backward. “I see… And how did you find me?”

“I saw you.” She taps her temple.

“You’re a dweller?!”

When he met her last she was barely into adolescence and seemed of a particularly flighty disposition. Now she is far taller than he, and has the most unsettling gaze he’s met yet—and The Kelle herself has gazed upon him.

“I was unblinded, yes. It is great, isn’t it, to see as we do.” She smiles, voice distant but eyes transfixing. “I have attained freedom now.”

“Er, yes, it is great…” He says, uncertain what this situation has become. “But why approach me like this?”

“I thought you wanted to be free?”

“What do you mean? Freedom is important, of course, but…”

“Your obligations.” She cuts through his attempts to process what’s happening. “You suffer from them. Cast them off, and be freed. Come with me, and I will show you.”

My obligations? How does she know of this? He hesitates, “To where… do you intend to go?”

“To the place where freedom is chained.” Saying this, she growls with barely restrained rage. Her tone is placid the next second, “Come with me, and I will show you.”

Freedom? Chained? He looks up at her, trying again to piece all of this together. “I… I don’t know, Seli. I’m not sure what’s going on here.”

Without a second of hesitation, she kicks him in his stomach. He doubles over, bile rising in his throat. Her knee cracks into his skull, and he is out before his face hits the floor.

When he awakens in the undermind—evident by the fiend feasting on his arm—he starts. ‘Agh!’ He cries out, trying to break free from its vice grip. He reaches for the first thing he can think of, and slams down on the creature with the heavy spade that appears in his other hand. The fiend leaps off him, jaws dripping with his essence.

He can’t help the indulgence of horror as he looks down at the shredded remnant of his arm. It takes a moment to gain his bearings, reminding himself that he is in the undermind. His arm flickers, then a new hand sprouts from the wound. No time for relief, however, as the fiend lunges for his throat.

‘Get back!’ He shouts, jabbing his shovel at its gaping maw. The spade lodges in it. He lets go and runs.

A manic bark of laughter escapes him. What is going on?! Out the open door of his room and round the corner he runs, but he’s never been the fastest guy around, even here where he can will otherwise. Elin! I need to reach her! He can feel the fiend on his heels, and desperate, he imagines a false wall around the next corner.

Pelezel pivots and runs straight through the wood slats. A glance back reveals the fiend turning about in confusion, but he can’t maintain the illusion long, and it’s right back on his trail. Being unable to hear it behind him terrifies him. How close is it? He dares not look again.

‘Elin!’ He calls and crashes through her door.

He throws an illusory door back in its place, giving him enough time to close the actual door. It is only after he leans against it that he takes in what awaits him in the room.

‘Pelezel… I’ve come to a conclusion.’ Elin sits on a chair in the back corner, holding her bent legs tight to her chest.

‘Elin! There’s an enormous fiend right outside!’

‘Yes.’ She says, and for the first time he sees that there are fiends inside as well. They are small, flittering in the darkened corners, hovering around Elin herself.

‘Elin…’ He can’t breathe. His chest is so tight. ‘Elin, what’s happened?’ He recalls her first words to him here. ‘What conclusion…?’

Fear… Fear coils around. It squeezes from him every breath.

‘To betray harmony is evil manifest. My dearest friend, Pelezel, I must not allow you to be corrupted by selfishness.’ She speaks placidly.

Pelezel, without a second thought, turns to open the door. For whatever fiends wait behind it can’t possibly approach the terror he feels towards Elineal right now. Her fiends are upon him before his hand reaches the knob. He screams silently as they take of him.

— 13 —

Uncontrollable

\\//

She writhes in his grip. Her mind reels. His laugh is hers. They become indistinguishable. Darkness encroaches. Do you know it? They wonder. I know it. Spinning. Whirling. Breaking. Parting. He pushes her away.

Lise hits the floor of the room hard, jarring her back to consciousness. She can hardly think. What she saw… how can she resolve it in her mind? Seli… She despairs—for her sister’s portrait was rendered dim indeed. Yet it seems there is ever more to unravel.

When she finally looks up, she is struck with fresh horror. A shockwave lifts her from the ground. Another bucks her arms, sending her chin first into the floor. She can’t make it to her feet for the succession of waves blasting through her. It rattles her to the bone. The fiends take their fill.

Tears welling in her eyes, Lise lashes out wildly. She wants them to burn. She wants them to feel pain. Curling up on the ground, she lets loose. Gouts of fire burst from her, burning the buzzing fiends with the heat of the expiatory flame. Bloated of gorging, they do naught but hiss and pop.

She bellows as the heat scours her of clothing, hair, skin. She feels its burning in her marrow, but she doesn’t let go until she is gone with it…

Twinkle of light

blinks last

dead.

— 14 —

Under

//\\

Lise feels pain, then opens her eyes. Her memory is immediate this time, but her attention is quickly drawn by the fact that… I’m awake. Blinking, just to be sure, she tries to push herself up. Cutting pain shoots up her left arm. She grunts—taking her weight off it—and lifts it to her eyes. Bandages wrap her entire forearm and hand. Her right hand is bandaged as well, each finger individually wrapped so she can still move them some.

She tries again to rise, this time without the use of her left arm. Her abdomen is so tender she has to be careful, but she manages to prop herself up. Sitting on the floor of an unfamiliar room, not waking in the tower as she would have expected considering that’s where she’d originally come to consciousness here. It’s dim in the small room, the only light sources are a few guttering candles on a low wooden table next to her.

More bandages encase her chest and stomach, along with her right thigh and a splint on her knee. Can I walk…? Though she’d come out the victor, that raptor had done damage she might never recover from. In truth, she didn’t know how bad she was hurt, it had all happened too quick. Or it seemed like it had.

Morbid curiosity leads her to unwrapping her left arm. A fat, silvery-blue scar trails from her inner wrist over her forearm and ends at the side of her elbow. It appears much further along the healing process than she believes possible in such a short time, but it hurts terribly. When she finishes unwrapping her hand, she finds several healthy fingers, and a pitiful, scabby nub where her pinky would once have wiggled. More scarring stiffens her knuckles, but the actual pain there is minimal.

“If seeing that bothers you, I wouldn’t unwrap your torso.”

Lise’s head snaps to the source of the voice. Veiled in shadow, a young man sits in the corner, arm resting loose on his propped knee. Not a young man, still a boy…

“Where am I?” She asks, ignoring his comment.

“My master’s meditation room.”

“You brought me here?”

He shakes his head, then pauses to brush his dark hair back from his face before speaking. “You think I’m strong enough to carry you? No, the man brought you here.”

“Pelezel?”

“If that’s his name, yes. The one that came with her—the lady with the fiend in her eye.”

“Then yes. The man is Pelezel, the woman is Elineal,” she explains.

“Names are nothing.”

His response halted her question for a moment, “I understand, but names are practical.”

“Master said that names aren’t real.” He replies and he sounds offended.

She pauses. She doesn’t know why he would be offended by that, so she decides not to enter that territory. Not worth it. “What do you mean by ‘the lady with the fiend in her eye’? Something else your master said? Who is your master?”

He stares at her a moment, then blinks and looks away, “My master didn’t say it… I can’t explain it right. Sometimes I just see it in people’s eyes.” His vision stretches into the distance for a moment, then locks back onto her even sharper than before.

She clears her throat, “And your master? Who are they?”

“My master was Dejed’s master. He isn’t here anymore.”

“What do you mean ‘Dejed’s master’? The governor?”

“No. He was…” He leans forward, struggling for the right word. “He was like you. And like the other two.”

“A dweller,” she nods. That makes sense. “That would make you the almost dweller.”

He tilts his head. “What do you mean?”

She waves it off, “Later. What is happening? I’ve been conscious in the undermind, but I don’t know what has been occurring out here.”

“People were celebrating Belez’s death until a couple moons or so ago.”

“Look, I’m not from this place, you’ll have to elaborate a little more than that.” She suspects that he is being deliberately opaque. “I can tell you’re annoyed by my questions—stop making me ask them.”

He grumbles and a dark look creeps into his stare, but she can’t make out any of his words. “Fine. Belez is—was—the evil beast of the mountain. We’ve hated him for over a hundred years.”

“Ah, the bird that tried to kill me.”

He frowns, “What?”

She lifts an eyebrow, “What do you mean ‘what’? How did you think I got hurt?”

“I didn’t think about it. You got lucky that woman was here, you would have died.”

She nods, “I figured it must have been her who healed me. What did she use to expedite my recovery?”

He shakes his head. “No, my master healed you. She only killed Belez.”

“…What?”

“It was my master’s panacea that healed you.”

His response isn’t in regard to what she is bothered by, but it might as well have answered both questions.

“I see…” Her eyes widen, and a thrill runs through her as she realizes the implications.

Before she gets carried away with the revelation, he cuts in, “What do you see?”

She blinks, looking up, hand falling from her chin. “Oh. I’ve just had an insight.” She chuckles, wincing at the stabbing pain in her ribs. “You see, Elineal made it sound like she was the one doing the healing. If what you say is true, that means she deceived me. Much as she seems to have deceived you.” The boy frowns.

Lise gestures to her bandages, “I killed the beast. Not her.”

— 15 —

Unending

//\\

The boy stares at her, disbelieving, considering, widening, and settles on awe. Another time she might have felt some satisfaction at that, but something strikes her, watching the unguarded emotion cross his face. So innocent… She recalls what she had last witnessed in the undermind.

“We’re in the room beyond the empty space…” She realizes, and looks at the single door.

“Wait… what…?” He sounds far off.

They’re gone. All of them. Her eyes refocus on the boy before her. All but you… Her breaths come quick, throat tightening painfully. She presses her lips together, holding back the anguish and the dread that trails it.

“Is something wrong?” He asks, scrambling to his feet. He grabs a box from the ground next to him and sets it on the table before her, clumsily unfolding it to reveal an array of vials and packets, herbs and powders, elixirs and pastes.

She hesitates, then nods—glad for the excuse. “Just the pain getting to me.”

“I… I’m sure I have something for that. Just… hold on a moment.” He glares at the spread with clear intent, and equally clear uncertainty.

Lise plucks the packet of scozel leaves from the box with her good hand, pops the button off, pulls out one of the thin black leaves with her teeth, and slides the pack smoothly back into place. She chews the leaf, suppressing a grimace at the bitter taste of the oil, and swallows. “Thanks.”

“Right…” He murmurs, awe renewed.

She doesn’t bother to say that was one of the only herbs she’d recognized in the case. “Scozel leaf. Pain blocker.” She explains. “Tastes better brewed.”

Nodding, he slowly folds up the box. When he turns, Lise starts to push herself to her feet. Her knee throbs with dull pain, but she manages to stand without too much trouble.

“Careful! Your knee was just dislocated!” The boy says, frantic.

She leans against the wall, “I’ll be fine. Hand me that stick.” She gestures for the staff leaning in the corner. “Where’s the rest of my belongings?”

He jumps for the staff, handing it to her. “I don’t know, the man only brought you. Your shirt was ruined—and your undergarments. Your trousers had a couple tears, but I patched them.”

She looks down at her trousers, right pant-leg rolled up to her thigh. Hints of a blood stain peek from the folds. “Cloak?”

“Right,” he kneels and reaches under the low table, drawing out her cloak. The faded blue-black fabric is intact, still aglitter with flecks of golden thread that reflect the flickering candlelight.

She takes it from him, resting the staff against the inside of her left elbow while she pulls the cloak around herself. Her first step is perhaps too ambitious, as pain shoots up her right leg. Stumbling, she manages to catch herself on the staff. She shrugs off the pain.

“Caref–” He cuts off as she looks at him.

“Stay here. Do not leave this room until I return.”

“I… Wait, I should come to show you the way!” He pleads.

She shakes her head. “I’m not going far, just stay in here. This room is safe, for now. There are fiends out there that will get into your head before you even realize it. Even I am vulnerable to them. Trust me on this.” She holds his gaze until he nods acceptance. “What’s your name, boy?”

He chuckles weakly then coughs, “I’m Fiiso.”

“Fiiso…” She says, testing the sound. “I should be able to remember that.”

“…And what should I call you?” He asks.

“Lise.” She tells him, and makes sure to obscure his view with her cloak as she steps out the door. It shuts with a click.

Their brief conversation had muffled it before but this sudden quiet is full of dread. I don’t want to move… If I could just… She doesn’t turn from the door, nearing a minute before she musters the courage. If I could just be still. Slowly, so as not to disturb, she looks…

Their corpses litter the room. They shudder along the stone floor, limbs pattering softly. All of them, gone. Some still in their bedrolls. This was my responsibility. She weeps in silence, unable to come to terms with her failure. I shouldn’t have… She tries to cease that line of thought before it spirals out of her control. Complacent fool. I can’t believe I reveled in the ease of this task.

She sets aside the staff. The pain of lifting the first child feels inconsequential in the face of what her inattention had cost. Looking into his lifeless eyes she feels the grief gripping her, and the char of her faded fury grown tender to the sight. Hobbling toward the door, she wishes for pain many times worse, for this is not near punishment enough.

Hardly able to see past her tears, she lays the small body to rest round the back of the building. She stands there, looking down at him as his jerking grows feeble and finally ceases. Unable to meet their condemning gaze, she closes his eyes. She can’t handle it anymore.

The pain becomes truly excruciating with her exertions, until she can hardly think for the storm of agony. Her motions become rote, and when the forty-third and final child was laid to rest, she finds herself lying beside them. Last day she could have said she had never seen a corpse. How the smallest of blunders changes everything. Now, every falter leads life to end.

To what end.

— TO DEATH —

She pushes off. Life ends. Reality ceases. Current carries her away. Drifting. Drifting. I remember a night the way forward was so bright, but this day I have seen the way cast bleak. Ever further, growing darker. Though I cannot go, I yearn for past light; it’s the last I’ll know. I stare so, but its warmth doesn’t touch me. I cannot bear the sight ahead—a way without solace. Yet, I cannot but walk as I will walk, compelled by being. To the only end.

— 16 —

Unaffected

//\\

Lise pushes up slow, the pain forcing her to try several times before succeeding—if such a stumbling rise can be called a success. She stands with her hand against the building, taking a final look at the line of dead—their faces obscured by darkness—and draws on the sight to sear the ever darker product of her failures into her mind before turning to go back inside.

When she rounds the building, she finds an unfamiliar man staring at the front door. He wears layers of clean, dyed leathers and furs. His dark, thinning hair is greased and combed back from his forehead. The expression on his face is disturbing, dark eyes cast in the front lamp’s stuttering glow, a half-snarl twisting his spit-flecked lips. He reaches out just as the door begins to open from inside.

Fiiso’s eyes first widen in surprise to see her, and further again as the man’s hand wraps around his throat. He yelps as the grip tightens. Lise stares in shock as the life of the last is wrung from his frail form. Tears squeeze from his eyes.

Lise tries to run, falls, scrambles up, howling at the pain in her leg. She shouts something that isn’t words, and crashes into the man. His grip doesn’t release, and his elbow bends back on the half-open door as she pushes against him. The impact of the fall jars her wounded arm and she chokes on the scream.

She slams her fist into his nose, then grabs his arm, which somehow still clutches Fiiso by the neck. Wrenching his forearm out and she shoves up against the elbow until the inside splits and crimson bursts from the broken skin. She feels tendons snap and the bones slip out of place. He flails and Fiiso falls free.

The man writhes beneath her; yet, despite the pain, he makes no sound. She strikes his nose again. Blood spurting, eyes watering, his remaining arm reaches up and grasps for her neck. She bites down on his hand, tasting salt then sour metal. Shoving the staff against his neck, she uses his hand to muffle her scream as she pushes down with both hands.

He thrashes, kicking and foaming at the mouth. Broken arm flopping uselessly as she bears down. Kicking became quaking, trembling, fluttering, stilling…

Blinded by tears, she rolls off him. Indistinct, Fiiso staggers to his feet. She hears him sobbing, but can do nothing but lie still as the pain consumes her. Emptiness fills her and reality fades into the background. Darkness enveloping all. Suspended…

NON

Blinking. Blinking. Blind. Blinking. Still. Flick. Flick. Flicker. Light.

“Lise… Lise… Lise? Can you hear me?”

She can’t speak. Her body doesn’t respond. Mind, without.

“Please… Just say something!” He begs.

Dancing on her veil, a glimmer reaches deep. She seizes the sight, dragging herself, hand over hand, out of that place. At last, she sets foot in reality again. The candlelight is the only thing she can see for a while as she adjusts.

“I’m back.” She says, half-response, half-surprise. “I’m… I’m back…”

Fiiso sighs, sitting back.

“How long… How long was I gone?” Lise asks, glancing around as she slowly returns to her center. She’d been leaned against the tilted wall inside his master’s home.

Fiiso hesitates, “About just less than half the cycle, I think.”

Lise breathes in, out. “A miracle, perhaps, but still too long.”

“I’ve locked the door, more people were coming, and they all have the fiend in their eye.” He adds.

“I… I didn’t kill that man, did I?” She asks, trying to remember.

“I don’t think so.” He says, glancing toward the door. “I haven’t heard anything. I thought someone would come by now.”

Lise looks at the bruises that had appeared on his neck, just visible under his ruddy-brown skin. “You’re okay?”

He turns back to her. “Yeah, I’m all fine. Why?” Truly, he appears unaffected; in the eyes, at least.

Her brows draw inward, but she quickly flattens her expression. “Just checking.”

“Your… Some of your wounds are bleeding again.” He says, pointing to her chest.

She looks down, noting the dark flowers that had bloomed in the cloth bandages. “Right… Help me up.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“No.” She gestures for him to do it anyway. He helps her to her feet, handing her the staff. When she feels the pains in full—some new, some anew—she falters. “Bring me another of those leaves. Hurry.” And as he runs to the other room, she calls out in a rasp, “Make it two.”

She takes the proffered scozel and chews it up quick as she can. The foul taste is hardly notable under the overpowering flavor of agony.

“Your wounds were mostly healed by my master’s panacea, but you must have broken them open when you attacked Azzolio.”

“You knew that man?” She manages to choke out, still unable to take a step.

He looks confused, “Yeah. He’s from here.”

Lise takes that to mean Fiiso knows everyone from Dejed, so of course he would know the man. “Any…” She stiffens as sharp pain pierces her chest. It felt like she’d just been stabbed again, but nothing had changed. She manages to pry her jaw open to speak again, “Any reason he would try to choke you?”

“No. He was always good to me. Gialo is my friend.” He explains.

“Who?”

“Oh, Azzolio is her papa.”

“…I see.” She tries to ignore the tightness in her throat. Hazy flashes of the children’s lifeless faces go through her mind, unable to settle on a single one. Which one was Gialo… “And wish I didn’t.”

Death is imminent. No, it’s already come. She forces herself back to the present. Responsibility. Protect him, save who I can, continue after Seli. Nodding with renewed will, she breathes again.

“I changed my mind. I need to sit back down.” Slow, she lowers herself with his help. “Just turn away for a minute while I check my wounds.”

He starts, “But I’ve already–”

“Then you don’t need to see again.”

“But–”

“I can handle it myself. Turn away.”

At last, he turns around, and Lise begins to unwrap her chest. A little beneath her collarbone she gets her first glimpse of the wounds. Another layer unraveled and she can see the thick line cutting down the inside of her left breast, rendering her once supple flesh deformed. She is silent, watching as each layer removed reveals more scarring. The longest of which continues down and veers to an end at her ribs, broken skin seeping fresh scarlet. Two others run parallel to her ribs, with another raking along her right side. A dark splotch of silver distorts her stomach, silky scar tissue where her naval had been.

Lise feels the horrible realization that her body had been irreparably altered. Even though she’s never been vain—in fact, her appearance would never have been called beautiful—but now, her body is definitively grotesque. She tries to swallow the lump in her throat, I can’t change it. I have no control over this now. Just accept it…

I can’t.

She pulls the cloak around her. “I-It’s…” She clears her throat, “It’s not bleeding much anymore. Bring me something to clean it and new bandages.”

Fiiso nods, still averting his gaze. He hurries into his master’s meditation room, returning with a swab and a bottle of solution, and a fresh roll of cloth. She waits for him to turn away again and carefully treats the trickling wound. She rewraps her chest, then has him help finish covering her stomach.

“I don’t think all these bandages are necessary anymore, but I don’t have any other clothes. What did you say she used on me? What kind of panacea heals such deep wounds so quickly?”

“Well, my master never taught me to make it. I don’t know what it is. He only had four bottles left.”

“And how many are left now?”

“She only brought back two. There’s just a tiny bit in one bottle and one full bottle. May as well call it one bottle,” he says with a shrug, “had to use a lot on you. Your wounds were real bad.”

“Do you know where he might have kept the recipe?”

He scratches his head, “He had a cabin out east, but he never really went there. That’s the only place I could say, but he didn’t like to write things down, I think.”

She nods, “That would be useful knowledge to have. Things have changed somehow, and I’m not sure how dangerous it will be from here on.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m going into the undermind to get an idea of what’s happened. Wake me if someone tries to get in.” Lise leans back against the slanted wall, pulling the cloak around her. She closes her eyes, allowing her attention to rest on her breathing. It doesn’t take long to slip under.

— 17 —

Unseeing

\\//

Lise stands, pain free, and looks down to find her wounds gone. Wiggling her pinky finger, she wafts a hint of dread. Not a good sign. I need to spend some time to tend to this… but this is not the time. Though the consequences of pushing back meditation are fresh in her mind. She shakes her head. I’ll set aside an hour or two soon, but not right now.

The last time she was here, she’d witnessed the deaths of forty-three children and lost control. But just before that, she’d been in empty space with Pelezel. She’d returned without him. Looking to the white wall where the master’s meditation room is in reality, she sees no sign of him. Did he lose himself in there?

Seli’s brief passing had set all of this in motion. If I’ve put it together properly, it was her influence that pushed Elineal over the edge. Pelezel’s behavior leading up to it had made it possible—but ultimately, had Seli not shown up, Elineal should have been able to step back and resolve the issues and none of it would have happened. Pelezel wouldn’t have ended as he had, the children would still be laughing and playing. Lise knows a deeper truth. It happened because of me.

Fiiso’s child-like depiction sits before her, indistinct colors coming together the longer she looks at him, morphing into her image of him. He’s very close. Maybe one step from slipping under. In other circumstances, she wouldn’t mind guiding him through it. She’d be a liar if she said she had never fantasized about being the wise mentor described in so many of the storybooks of her youth. A bit ambitious for someone who wouldn’t even measure up to the ‘responsible elder sister’. She shakes her head, this time at her own folly. Not the time for daydreaming.

Approaching the door, she wills one of the knots in the wood to pop free. She peeks through and sees a frenzy of fiends buzzing outside. Too many. So many they could chew through her constructs in moments. For some reason they hold back.

Lise pops the knot back into place and returns to Fiiso’s shifting shape and rests her hand on his head. She wills her thoughts to reach him, I am going to see if I can find any survivors. If your thoughts begin to twist, hurry into your master’s room. It’s safe there. Wave if you understand. He doesn’t move, and she considers waking just in case. He lifts his hand and waves a moment later. She nods, satisfied, though he had turned to look at where her body rests, rather than where she is in the undermind.

Good. I will return soon.

Heading for the door, she constructs glass sphere around her, then, rethinking, imagines it with the properties of rubber. Testing it with the edge of her axe, it rebounds and leaves only a shallow notch which she fills in. She adds a layer of glass beneath, just in case the idea doesn’t work as well as she hopes. The view outside her sphere is warped by the thick layers, but not so much that she’s rendered blind.

She would have snuck out through one of the walls, rather than go out the only exit, but the structure is still too solidly formed for her influence alone. It is difficult, but she manages to make the glass phase through the door, allowing her to open it without worrying about the fiends getting through. By the time the door shuts behind her, she is surrounded by them.

Distorted by the glass, the dark figures completely obscure her sight. She is relieved to see that they bounce harmlessly off her uncrackable glass, though she doesn’t feel so secure that she releases the backup layer.

I can’t see where I’m going. Unfortunately, she can’t see any solution to that either, so she just presses through, blind. Land, if I can’t see anyway… She takes a moment to imagine the new construct, then replaces the rubber-glass with it. A layer of steel—thinner, coated in spikes—appears. An involuntary grin slides over her expression as she feels the telltale pops of fiends skewering themselves on her spiked sphere.

Sightless, she runs ahead with reckless speed. More of the weak vibrations rattle her shield, but begin to peter out. These ones can learn… if slowly. That realization alone sweeps away her satisfaction.

She slows, and replaces her metal shell with the rubber-glass. For a few seconds, as the fiends buzz around, wary of her, she can see the tower. She points that direction, and switches the shield out once more as the fiends dart back in at her. More fiends perish on her barbs, but again they withdraw, this time in mere moments. Frightening.

Projected inward from the glass sphere, she aligns a rod with the tower that she needn’t worry about losing the direction. Again, she runs on. She knows, already, that she will find no survivors. Unless they are in the master’s sanctuary or the tower. Too many fiends now for them to sustain long on what few might remain exposed to them. The man Azzolio is certainly dead by now—one way or another, wounded as she’d left him.

When she swaps the steel for rubber-glass again, she sees the tower just a block away, staring at her over the home she that nearly barrels straight into. The fiends shy away long enough that she is able to get right up to the tower front before they strike again. A wave slams into her. They must be desperate now, for they attack in even greater numbers and with a vicious fervor. Before she can react, another wave batters her the other direction.

Although her constructs hold, the rubber-glass is being pounded hard enough to crack the inner layer of glass. Lise sprints for the entrance, fearing that they will collapse her shields in on her at this rate. They swarm in after her, chewing through the relatively insubstantial exterior of the tower. She leaps over the altar, pushing past the door and into the spiraling hallway. She casts a steel door in its place, spiked as her sphere had been.

Before the fiends break through she is through the wall and half-way through the next. She drops her hold on the spheres, and they disappear. She dives through the door, falling, kicking it closed behind her. Just in time for the fiends to come battering against it. Even as dozens on dozens of fiends rupture on impact, rattling the door in its frame, it holds.

Breathing heavily, Lise staggers to her feet. At last. What hope of finding survivors she’d had gone from her, she comes to her true purpose here. Her gaze falls upon a lone woman whose emerald robes cascade down her to spread over the lapping waves, knelt beneath the two floating forms.

Elineal stares through her, at the door from which she’d come. Still as stone.

— 18 —

Unravel

\\//

With heavy feet Lise steps up to Elineal who kneels on what could be mistaken for a gently rippling pond. She towers over the woman’s already-small frame, hand hovering above her head. Answers at her fingertips, she wonders what answer she seeks. Many; but not all itches are within scratching distance. Her hand touches down and subtly sinks into Elineal’s skull.

—7 Cycles Ago—

Elineal weeps, “I’m sorry! Good Harmony I wish it could be easy!” She feels fit to burst, fat on torment. How much she endured. “I’m so sorry… sorry… sorry… Pelezel.”

He writhes, mouth open to scream. Only the rasp of his crackling breath, his broken voice. But he is not done. Still he tries to wriggle from under her palm. If he would just fall in line, to become harmonious once more. “Please, Zel. Just accept it! The pain will end… we can be one once more…” She begs him to stop, just to allow her in a moment. How evil had taken him so firmly in its grasp. If she can just pry these false beliefs from his heart, she can save him.

Looking into his eyes, she can still see a flicker of goodness under the pain and hatred. He is there somewhere, if only she can kill the evil suppressing him. But it seems the more evilness she wrests away, the greater the pain in his eyes. When she finally collapses from exhaustion, she still has yet to pull him free. More remains in him, holding him back from the truth, the good.

It is so deep in him. How she had been so inattentive to allow such thorough corruption—she couldn’t understand it. I’m a failure. My own partner so corrupted, all happening while I dismissed his objections for prattle. Uprooting a weed so entangled, it seems she will end up tearing out his roots as well. So ingrained as to be indistinguishable; sometimes she thinks they are one and the same. But she couldn’t have misjudged him so… He is good, somewhere. Some of these roots must be free of rot.

Elineal weeps for the pain she inflicts on Pelezel. I can’t… I can’t give up. I must press on, for his sake. The pain she causes here will be worth it in the end, if she can just save him. How long has it been? Three cycles… four? How much longer must I go?

She had observed the villagers—how quick they came to bite one another. The simplest of issues grow into full-on brawls in mere moments. Those strange swarming fiends must be the source of it, there is no other explanation, but she doesn’t understand. They never seem to touch her, even when she wanders the undermind unguarded. She’d thought it miraculous, that she could quarantine the children without issue; they were usually the fiends first filling.

They feed on the adults, sustaining their number on nibbles, so Elineal must take advantage of the time she has. Though she knows it can’t last—as long as they aren’t dying, she can afford to focus on the person who needs her most. She dives back into her task with feverish urgency, feeling failure on her heel.

“Master Elineal!” A young man rushes into the altar room. “Master Elineal! There’s been a murder!”

Elineal turns from Pelezel’s prostrate form, leaning heavily on the altar. “What? A murder?” Even she can hear the exhaustion in her voice now. For so dire a circumstance, her empathy has run dry.

But with sleep she is rejuvenated. At last, she is nearly done. Another cycle, and she thinks Pelezel will be rid of the evil influence. Before that, though, she thinks it necessary to clear away some of the fiends. Though they are yet to kill anyone directly, they are causing enough turmoil that the people will end up a murderous mob without her interference.

She was doing just that, when another woman stumbles up to her. Elineal starts—another dweller? Where did she come from? She is tall. Very tall. And bears a striking resemblance to… Who?

‘Good night, fellow.’ The woman calls. She is… strange.

‘Eh? Who?’ She blinks, unsure how to respond. ‘Good night? Eh? This is no good night.’

The woman just nods, her expression empty. ‘Yes. I will help.’

Elineal stares at her, trying to regain her composure. ’You’re not making sense, sister.’

She tilts her head. ‘I’m dying. I can’t help now, but I could.’

Yes… It fits together so perfectly, this is the just the thing she needed. Wait. ‘I… You’re dying? What do you mean?’ She glances toward the twinkling lights of the townsfolk.

‘Look.’ The woman points to her body, and suddenly she is covered in blood. She collapses, bones broken and flesh torn. ‘I’m dying.’

‘Good grace, you’re dying!’ Elineal holds her head, trying to keep it still.

‘Yes. I will help, if I can live.’

‘What do I do to save you?’

Looking down upon her, wounded and fading, they meet gazes for the first time. Her eyes are deep blue, and briefly, Elineal feels herself pulled in. A vision of a cave. In the mountains to the west. Left wounded by a beast of some kind. She blinks and rebounds into herself.

‘There. Send help.’

‘I…’ Elineal begins—staggering dizzily—but by the time she steadies herself, the woman is gone.

Pelezel squirms in her grasp, but she has a firmer hold on him now. Though he is not rid of evil, and isn’t aligned of his own volition, he can still be turned in the pursuit of harmony. She will use him to retrieve the dweller, so she can remain to make certain no one is lost to the fiends.

‘You will find her here…’ She presses the images into his mind, the sense of the location as the woman had given it. ‘Or she will perish there.’

She can’t be certain he will be successful, his psyche is fragmented by the damage the evil has done him. It can’t be set again properly until all of it has been rooted out; refilling the hole before the weed is killed, surely the stubborn thing will just regrow. But it can’t be helped. Perhaps what remains of him will still understand the necessity here.

He returns while the town is asleep, a body in tow. She holds a lantern over the form, confirming it is the woman she’d seen. Pelezel pulls the wagon into the tower, following her guiding light. She hums to herself, feeling some faint relief, As it should be…

“…beckoned death dread emboldened…”

Elineal freezes. Pelezel, halting too late, bumps into her. He sways, expression blank, but his eyes are weighed down by exhaustion. She steps around him, taking another look at the woman. The gaping wound in her stomach tells Elineal she shouldn’t be breathing. When Elineal meets her eyes, she starts in shock. They look through her with knowing derision.

“…dreaded follows dearest failure…threatened thrashing thrashing thwarted thing singing sorrow sweetened sickly…”

The words flick off the tongue with hardly a twitch of her lips. Elineal stares into her eyes for an eternal moment, but it is impossible to see beyond the flame reflecting from the surface. Yet it seems she could see forever. A chill runs up her spine. She shakes her head, angry at the fear this woman inspires in her. It is pure foolishness. The words are meaningless; the words of the dying.

Yes, the woman is dying—soon, by her estimation. Perhaps it is better that way. It probably is. There is something about her that struck Elineal as evil. Evil, yes. Yes, that evil is what she felt. Fearing evil is natural. Any good should fear its corruption.

But… But, no. I need to be sure. To be sure, I need to verify. I can’t just let her die. The thoughts feel heavy, hard to keep atop her mind. Every part of her begging her to release them, let them fall, let her die. All but the thoughts themselves.

“T-Take her… to… to the center room. I’ll be back…” Elineal says with force, squeezing the sounds from her throat.

She returns with several bottles of panacea. The boy had tried to deny her, stubborn as stone, but she’d pried them away from him without too much issue. She’d had to make a hasty retreat, by the looks the other children were giving her, but she’d taken the opportunity to lay the foundation for a useful untruth while dispelling their ire.

Pelezel sits still, sleeping silently against the wall. The wagon is in the center of the room, the woman left alone atop it. Elineal approaches her, pulling the bottles from her robe pocket. In the ethereal glow, she goes to work. It is hours before she can rest—peeling away layers of cloth and crusted blood.

On first inspection, Elineal thinks it peculiar that the hole in her chest is hardly even bleeding—until she feels inside the wound. After washing away what blood there is, she feels around again. There is something hard lodged in her chest. She has her first inkling of what it is long before she can extract it. Is this… a claw?

She procures a pair of pincers from the carpenter and returns as quickly as her fatigue will allow. Actually pulling the thing out is difficult for her—even with the tool. She spends a good half-hour slowly prying out what she soon discovers is indeed a talon. It had pierced her breast and hooked between her ribs, its worn tip touching the inside of her sternum. That her lung wasn’t punctured amazed Elineal.

She isn’t one to throw the word ‘miracle’ around, but if anything is deserving of it, this woman’s survival will be. The pincers fall from her trembling hands, talon clicking against the floor, leaving red where it touches.

In Kellean, this operation would never have happened; the cost for panacea of this quality, she realizes, could afford her a manor in Grade. She holds the bottle over her wounds, yet to uncork it. She feels a precious intensity towards the pale silver-pink liquid—a feeling furthered by a subsequent fear which arises when she glances toward the closed eyes of the evil thing. She clutches it to her own chest, but the very motion sends a shiver of revulsion through her. The woman is beyond saving without it, and harmony would dictate no other action than to spare her this grisly end.

Liquid glimmering under the lamplight, Elineal pours the panacea into the wound and watches a moment as it begins to softly bubble. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she allows a moment’s respite before she returns to her work. She still needs to tend to the smaller wounds after sewing shut her chest. Having removed that talon, she feels nearer the end than she probably is given the tedious stitch work that still needs to be done. She has Pelezel pour water into her mouth so she won’t bloody the leather and returns to the woman to continue the work.

Leaning against the wall near the snoozing Pelezel, she cannot pull her gaze from the woman. The voices in her mind demand her death, for she is evil—truly evil. Nothing like her partner, who has been corrupted by evil, she is evil. She is a good judge of character, and has learned to trust her gut regarding it, but there is something off about this woman in particular that gives her pause. It is as though her gut and her mind are in disagreement, and she can’t tell which is which.

But there is one thing that sticks with her. She always verifies her suspicions before acting on them. It had been one of her hardest lessons, the first time her gut had been wrong. Funny, it had been Pelezel who she had once so thoroughly misjudged that…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-ah…” Elineal blinks rapidly, trying to… what?

There is still more work to do. More wounds to tend to.

Elineal rubs her temples, looking at the reflection in the mirror. She doesn’t look herself. Something about that bothers her, but she looks better. She is young, she still has time.

She looks over the town from atop the tower. She can’t see it anymore. The haze is so thick.

She walks around the spiral. Right. Left. Left. Left. Right. Left. Left. Left. Right. Walking walking walking. Why?

Staring at a door. Elineal remembers her purpose in coming here. The woman, she must wake in the undermind before reality. The door opens. The woman stands, staring up at the two shimmering shapes. Really unreal.

‘I don’t know what that is either.’ She says.

‘Who are you?’ The woman demands, glaring at Elineal. ‘Where am I?’

‘I am Elineal of Harmony,’ She answers, keeping her composure. ‘And you’re in a town called Dejed.’

Seeing the woman in her natural state is… strange. She is tall, even taller than most of the other northerners she had met, who are already known for their height. A dark cloak drapes her willowy frame, flecks of gold flickering. Elineal thinks she’s seen such in Opis Luma, but doesn’t know its significance or if it has any.

Her body language is peculiar, leaving Elineal even more unsure of her. Her posture is off balance, arms hanging loose at her sides, her expression forbidding. It’s the piercing eyes she feels peeling her apart layer by layer which hold her though.

‘Why am I here?’ She asks.

Elineal frowns, not sure what she means… ‘I had you rescued. No small task in these circumstances. I expect you’ll hold to your word?’

The woman’s head tilts slightly, her already sharp eyes narrowing further, ‘I will do my best, but I don’t remember…’

Elineal feels rage boiling in her chest, and can’t keep it from spilling out her mouth, ‘If you won’t help, I will have to let you die. I can’t afford to spare panacea on you when I could use it instead to save those who would help; even if you are better equipped than they.’

Her expression flattens, ‘I promised to help save the town in return for my life…’

‘Yes, and while you slumber still more are falling prey to the fiends.’ None of what she says is entirely true, but she can’t afford to have this woman just run off after she’s spent so much to save her. If promises aren’t enough to keep her dependable, guilt and the fragility of her life will have to do.

Hearing the words her gaze falls away, face tightening in an expression unrecognizable to Elineal. ‘Please be patient with me, I am disoriented. If you could explain what is happening, I could be more… useful, probably.’

Elineal stares straight at her, trying to figure her out. Trying to peel her apart the way she’d felt peeled apart. Is she evil? Is there something I’m missing? She shakes her head, unable to say one way or another, ‘It will be easier to explain after you’ve seen it.’ She turns and exits the room, and the woman follows.

She walks around the spiral. Right. Left. Left. Left. Right. Left. Left. Left. Right. Walking walking walking. She realizes what she will do. She will have the woman watch over the children. Then if she kills them she will know if she is evil. Walking walking walking…

‘You gave your word that you would assist me.’ Elineal growls.

‘I did give my word.’ She answers, frowning. ‘Don’t misconstrue me. As I said before, I intend to keep my word.’ Her frown deepens, ‘I just don’t know how effective I can be here.’

‘Good. I will keep you under until this town is saved.’ Elineal says, trying to remember what they’d been speaking of. How did I…?

‘You’re going to keep me unconscious.’ Her tone is suddenly flat, void.

Elineal hesitates, realizing her slip. ‘Not unconscious, just under.’ She clarifies.

‘I see. And you accept the danger you will be putting me in by doing so?’

She turns and meets her cold stare, trying to keep control. ‘Of course I know the danger.’

‘I didn’t ask if you know the danger, I asked whether you accept that you are subjecting me to it.’ Eerily blank; gaze intent, but she remains opaque.

Elineal turns away, something off in her mind. ‘One day you might understand.’ She struggles to resolve the two…

‘Show me what you want me to do.’

‘…This way.’ She forms a glass sphere around them, that the woman won’t grow suspicious.

Evil evil evil evil evil evil evil… It is irremovable. The thought is a single, continuous line. She rides it, hearing its splitting whine. Responding mechanically, her mind grinds along. Vision twisting. …evil evil evil evil evil evil evil…

She realizes suddenly that the fiends are actually attacking her shield. All of them. They must be after her. Harmony…

She looks back at the woman, trying to get her mind to stopppppppp, ‘They somehow sense that we are all that stands in their way,’ It doesn’t make… Broken.

The fiends bombard them. Elineal screams. But… they only rush around her, never stinging. A blast sends her robes flapping up against her.

…eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…

Elineal gasps, heaving. Excruciating… She feels like vomiting, but nothing comes up. ‘How did you…?’ She looks up, noticing the scorched glass surrounding them.

‘I just… reacted. I see why you called them more dangerous than they seem.’

‘Indeed…’ Her thoughts are losing themselves in themselves. She looks up and tries to regain her poise, but it is difficult. ‘Let’s keep on. It’s safer where we’re headed.’

‘Lead the way. I will maintain it from here.’

She nods, feeling ever more the weight of life. It is all she can do just to keep her bearings now.

‘Here?’

‘No…’ Distracted, she shivers. ‘I must wake soon. Just ahead, though.’ It must be that she’s been under too long. How long though? ‘Here.’ Elineal stops. Forgetting the sphere isn’t hers, she wills it to stretch forward. It opens up and the sharply defined wooden door of the sanctuary appears. ‘Go.’ She takes hold of the sphere to allow her to enter.

Hand on the doorknob; over her shoulder, the woman asks, ‘What is my purpose here?’

‘That’s not a question someone else can answer for you.’ It is all she can think to reply. Her purpose here is certainly different from Elineal’s purpose in placing her here.

‘Funny.’

‘You didn’t laugh.’

‘Nor you.’

Elineal shrugs, and for the first time in a while, she wishes she had Pelezel’s tender heart to warm her. ‘I fear even this wretched excuse for levity will be lost. It may be annoying, but when you’re without it you will regret its absence.’ She wants to cry, but before that she gives her a proper answer. ‘Your purpose is to keep them from harm… I will return.’

Reality. She opens herself to the flickering lantern. A brutal ache throbs behind her eyes. Resisting the light. Pelezel is gone. Pelezel is gone. Pelezel isn’t in the tower. He is gone. Gone, and the wagon bearing the woman gone with him…

Elineal shrieks.

— 19 —

Bode

\\//

Lise falls back. Her thoughts are slow to come, scrambled by the series of incoherent memories. It’s hard to extract herself from them. Too much to process. Yet she feels as though she needs more. There’s patches unpainted in this picture. Elineal’s perception was so wildly different that pulling away leaves her disoriented. And what she’d done to Pelezel… Nauseating. She sits still, trying to stop her head spinning.

Elineal rises to her feet, looking about blindly. Her lips move but the sound never reaches Lise. It is harder to see what her expression is, but she can still make out most of her details even though she isn’t under. When she moves quickly the details become indistinct, features coalescing to reform her face when she slows.

Lise watches her from the floor, waiting, allowing realizations to fall into place on their own. Elineal dashes about the room, clutching her head. It is an eerie sight: seeing the shape blur across space, glimpses of an open mouth—an anguished screech beyond her hearing. A single step away, it seems. Still, silence reigns.

Can I save her? The fiends are the source of this, surely, but how?

She remains a moment longer. She rubs her pinky, trying to figure the best course of action. Nothing with any solidity arises. She returns to reality with something less than hope.

//\\

Opening her eyes, she finds Fiiso staring at her. Before she can think to say anything he is already halfway through a question, “–d you see? What happened?”

Lise holds up a hand, “A moment. I need to think.”

I need to keep in mind that his entire life, everyone he’s ever known, is dead. Looking into his eyes, so frantically curious, she feels deeply guilty. Rubbing her closed eyes, if only I had better control…

“I don’t have any good news.” She admits. I’ve never been good at this kind of thing. She takes a breath before speaking, “Elineal has been corrupted by fiends. She’s… Well, I can’t explain it all very easily. There’s more happening here than even I can perceive. And of what I can, less I understand.”

She realizes she is avoiding what needs to be said and purses her lips, steadying. “…I think that everyone in the town is already dead—other than you, me, and her.”

Fiiso continues staring at her, but his face loses its fragile filament of excitement. An uncomprehending silence falls over him…

“The other kids?” He finally asks, voice strained.

Lise… nodded. “I’m sorry…”

Candle flame washing over his eyes, she sees the warping of the light as tears form and can no longer hold back her own. Like a statue—sat so still—tears stream down her face. He turns away, rubbing at his face, trying to suppress sobs but he can’t hold them in and they escape him angry and anguished. He wails and she stays and hears him in silent, ashamed desolation.

I’m sorry… I’m so sorry. It is overwhelming. She can’t move, hardly think. To look back at her actions, the events, how they’d come about—she had failed at every turn. If only she’d foreseen. If only she’d had better control. If only she’d died that day. Don’t dwell on the past. It has been the source of her pain for so long. But if I do that, am I not denying my responsibility? I… I don’t know what to do.

She stares at her hands, fascinated by the contrast between her uninhibited right and grotesque left, and averts her gaze from the true wounds. What can I do? Every time I try to save, protect, progress, I fail.

— 20 —

Embolden

//\\

Lise pounds the floor. Fool. I’m responsible for the deaths he’s weeping for, and I weep with him. She feels flash of self-loathing. I can’t change what’s already done, but I can still save him. Not all is gone, but it will be if I succumb to my failure. I will save him. I will save Seli. It’s not over…

Leaning on the staff, she rises. Her body is tight, creaking at each movement. The pain is terrible but she must push through. Cheeks still damp, wetted again in her efforts to move; she grits her teeth against the weight bearing her down and stands as straight as her wounds will permit. We can’t afford to wait out the fiends. I need to get Fiiso out of here and somewhere safe, so I can continue on.

…Elineal. Can I afford to risk Fiiso’s safety in confronting her? Can I afford to risk her carrying the fiends to other places? Another thought comes, then. From where she doesn’t know but its urgency cuts through. She’s coming to me.

Her eyes widen with the realization. “Fiiso! Your master’s room! Run!”

The front door flies open. Darkness meets her stare. Behind her, she hears a sharp intake and the quick patter of feet. He yelps. Lise winces, glancing back for just a moment. Fiiso staggers. Just feet from the door. No.

She turns and lurches forward, trying to run—failing. He drops to one knee, hands clutching for his head, creeping across it, crawling. No. She can feel the fiends trying to latch onto her. Slick. They can’t. Abandoning the staff, she wraps him up in her right arm. Standing on her left leg, she reaches out with her free hand, precarious, trying to grab the knob. A lance of fire slashes up her arm. Crying out, she falls into the room with Fiiso held to her side.

He rolls away from her, hands still clutching at his face as tears trickle between his fingers. No time to check him, she twists. The pain grows distant, her entire body coursing with energy. She shakes with it, struggling to rise. Leaning against the door frame, she watches.

Sliding from the abyss, a pair of waxen hands, pulling her out the thick dark outside. Elineal appears, wretched. Age deepened furrows contort over her face. They meet eyes, and Lise sees the fiend Fiiso had found there.

“YYOOOAACHKIKIKLLLL!”

Lise closes the door, shaking her head.

Not a good sign. What do I do? They are safe from the fiends here, for now; however, Elineal being there physically brings its own complications. Trapped. Elineal alone would be no issue, but she’s let the fiends back in. She briefly wishes she’d stayed in the undermind—she might’ve been able to do something about the fiends there. Before she can chastise herself she hears a click and stills.

Elineal opens the door.

Oh! Lise punches her. She winces at the give of her soft flesh—she thought she’d held back enough… The woman falls back, stiff as a board. Oh.

“What–” Fiiso turns, face flushed, to find her dragging the unconscious woman into the room. “What’s happening?!”

“A lot.” She grunts as she bites off a groan. Breathing heavily, she nods to him, “Shut the door.”

She props Elineal up against the wall, but she just topples limply to the side. Whatever. She leaves her like that.

“Ergh,” She falls back against the wall. Shaky, she breathes, trying to steady herself; the pain is returning to fill the hole fear had vacated. Gesturing for Fiiso, “Scozel. Please.”

He pulls out the leaves and hands her two. She chews and swallows, and drags herself onto the bed mat. Letting out her breath in a taut hiss, she tries to relax her muscles. Lying there, the complications that have fallen upon her start to set in.

“Do… Are we safe?” He asks. “What do we do?”

Lise continues breathing—slow, shallow, trying to keep the pain at bay long enough for sequential thought. She feels like she’s been stabbed anew. “We’re okay for now, but we can’t leave. It might come down to who starves first, if…” If I can’t conquer my fear.

— 21 —

Embers

//\\

Every second spent lying here allows Seli to grow further from me. She feels the time passing over her—so incredibly tangible—wanting desperately for it to do anything but. By the time I reach the next village, town, she’ll be beyond the next city. Wading through corpses, so far behind, no chance to save them…

“We can’t just stay here! I… I don’t want to just wait to die!” Fiiso cries, verging on panic.

Lise tries to keep calm. “I understand,” She says, voice rasping. “But we can’t just leave. There are fiends everywhere out there. You don’t understand.”

Whispering, “I don’t understand…” bitten-off words he spits out bitter, “I don’t understand anything that’s happened. Everyone is dead. All the little kids, my friends—I was meant to take care for them, and they’re all dead and I don’t even know why. All of nothing, just… gone. Everything. I don’t understand, and I hate it!” The last words come out in a quavering yell and he falls a raging storm of tears, beating his fists hopelessly against the floor.

Lise remains silent, wishing she could console him, but shame holds her rigid. I have to do it. I owe that much and more. The inevitability of it doesn’t make it any easier. “I wish I could explain everything to you. I wish I understood everything too. I have answers, but I don’t have all the answers.”

“I just… I want to know why! Why did all this happen?!”

She closes her eyes, “There’s no reason behind the fiends. They feed. Then they breed. If not dealt with, they will lead to death.”

“But why are there so many out of nowhere?! All of nothing people just start dying? It doesn’t make sense!”

Silence.

“Why won’t you answer?”

“…I don’t know what to say.”

Shame.

— 22 —

Embrace

//\\

“What good are you if you can’t even tell me that?” He demands. “You’re a ‘dweller’ aren’t you? You need to know!”

“You don’t understand what it means to be a dweller.”

“Then what does it mean?”

“Nothing. It means nothing. It is a name for a phenomenon nobody fully understands. There’s no ritual for initiation. Sometimes one first dwells in suffering, others bliss, and sometimes it just happens with no apparent reason. It’s… It’s simple, and yet so much more. Purging fiends is not the purpose, meaning, or goal of a dweller, unless they take that upon themselves. A dweller just is. Everything else comes after.”

He goes quiet for a time, pondering her words. “And you? How did you first dwell?”

Lise hesitates… “It was something… different. All and none of those. I can elaborate later, after we’re out of this predicament.”

“You say that as if we’re going to survive.” He says, dejected.

“We are. All three of us.” She believes her words as much as she doubts them, but from her mouth they come confident—if pain-laden.

“How?” He still sounds miserable, but there is hope lingering.

“…Give me some time to play it out in my head. I know what I must do, I know it’s possible, but I have to think it through a few times. I have the big picture, but I need to piece together the details still.”

“Well, can’t you just tell me that part? The big picture?”

Lise blinks. I suppose there’s nothing stopping me… But she isn’t used to sharing her plans before she is sure it will work. She shakes off her discomfort, “If I go in the undermind, on the other side of this room, there is ‘empty space’…” At his lack of response she continues, “Empty space is a sort of place where, in a sense, anything is possible. That’s not exactly true, but for the sake of understanding bear with me. I will go there and construct something capable of getting us out of Dejed.”

“…That’s it?”

“I simplified quite a bit, but yes.”

“But what will you–”

“GRaghH!”

Lise lifts her head a moment to see Elineal has awoken. “Close your mouth and sit back down. If I have to get up I won’t be as gentle as last time.”

“I-Wait what? Where am I?” The woman glances around the dark room, eyes brushing over Fiiso where he sits in the corner, grazing the lone candle, finally resting on Lise.

“You’ve had your mind twisted by fiends. About a week by now. This room is empty space in the undermind, so the fiends cannot reach us here.” She explains, watching her reactions closely.

Elineal’s expression goes blank, gaze turning inward. “I… remember something… I don’t know what’s happened to me. I don’t feel right. Something is wrong in my head. I-I-I have to find Pelezel! He’s in danger!”

She’s not under their direct influence anymore, but the damage is done. Lise closes her eyes, I pity you for what truths I may have to tell when the time comes… if the time comes.

“Pelezel is gone. He was ravaged by fiends and what was left of him was lost in empty space.”

Somehow, Elineal’s face goes even paler than it already was; she is cast a withered phantom in the dim candlelight. “That can’t… That’s not true! Should I believe you? Why? I don’t. You’re… You’re… e-e-e-evil? I…” She rubs her hands over her knees, feverish. Sweat glistens on her neck. Eyes searching, searching, searching for an answer that doesn’t exist. “We… Zel and I… We’re going back home. He missed home. He missed home. I… I miss… I will bring people together! Harmony! Me he we foster faster…”

Lise carefully pushes herself up, pain dulled by the medicine, and slowly approaches the quivering woman—this pitiful remnant, left as fragmented as she had her friend—and wraps her in an inelegant embrace. Elineal weeps into her shoulder. I’m sorry. Even as she thinks it, she realizes how absurd it is. This woman who had brought so many to death. Who had torn an innocent man apart piece by piece over some falsely-perceived evil.

I’m sorry… Always in the back of her mind, it lurks. In the end, this is her responsibility.

— 23 —

Embroil

//\\

“What are you doing?” Fiiso asks, sounding angry. “Isn’t she our enemy?”

Lise releases Elineal, and turns to face him. “Not by my will, no. I may have been her enemy, but while I’m not unwilling to fight, I will not harm a person who is not actively trying to harm another. As of now, I bear her no ill will. That said, circumstances are always subject to change…”

“You’re not my master.” He replies, crossing his arms.

“I don’t know what you mean by that.”

“Don’t talk down on me.”

She frowns, “I assure you, I did not mean to give the impression of any such thing.”

“Do you always talk like that when confronted?”

“I was not aware I was being confronted.”

“You keep talking like that.”

“If you have a problem, tell me. I can’t have you continuing to act like this.”

“Shut up! Stop talking down on me!”

“You don’t underst–”

“SHUT UP! STOP SAYING THAT!” He leaps to his feet, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.

Lise remains seated, taking a breath to think as he fumes. The deaths are getting to him. This isn’t a good sign. “Again, I am not trying to talk down to you. If I was, you would know. I am not subtle about it. I really don’t understand what I’m doing to make you angry, and I would stop if I knew.”

Fiiso grasps at the air, but finds nothing to grab onto. “I don’t know how to say it! You slow your talking like you’re talking to a kid!” Although he tries to maintain his fury it begins to falter.

“I see. I tend to do that to allow myself time to think, especially when someone is upset with me for reasons I can’t quite reach. I’m trying to understand, not trying to treat you like a child. If my speech sounds slow and overly-analytical, it is only because I’m trying to bridge the gap. ‘Caution, for the fall into misunderstanding is deathly,’ Akota told me that.”

He slumps back to the floor, drained. “…Akota?”

“Yes?” She’d thrown that detail out in hopes it would distract him; still, she is surprised when it does. “Sorry, Akota was my mentor. Then my friend. He was in Opis Luma when… I don’t know if he lives.”

“You were friends with your mentor? How… old was he?”

Lise chuckles faintly. “I have no idea. He was my mother’s friend from when she studied abroad, and that was many nights before I was born. She didn’t know his age either, I don’t think. He was… strange.”

Fiiso rubs his elbow, “If you say he was strange I don’t know whether he was normal or just really really strange.”

She tilts her head, then grins when she realizes what he meant. “The latter.”

“What?”

“The second one. He was very strange, even compared to me. Well… you would’ve had to meet him. He was a strange kind of strange, if that makes sense…”

As she trails off, Elineal’s murmuring becomes audible for the first time. “…child… I treated him…”

And instantly Lise’s brief levity is lost. The memory of Akota, mingling with memories of Pelezel, stretches her out over past and present, ever more fearful of her empty future. It’s time. It has been for a while now. I can’t keep pushing it forward, the abyss is so near, I may push it off the precipice.

“Keep an eye on her. I’m going under…” Already she is beyond the moment; her voice is flat, but not level. “If I don’t surface before that candle burns out, leave this room. If you feel the fiends attacking you, run for the forest as fast as you can. Consider me dead. If you don’t feel them, return to the room and wait for me to wake.”

Fiiso hugs his knees. “Okay, but you will be back, right?”

Lise tries to keep her breathing steady as she lies down. A last tight breath escapes her, “I will be back. I will…”

It is somewhat awkward then, when she doesn’t immediately fall asleep. She pushes past it, and after a time of focusing on her breath, she finally manages to slip under…

\\//

Emptiness

— 24 —

Empty

\\//

Lise is surrounded by… nothing. Here, even her form is lost. Only her mind, unbodied. Her plan, as it had been, escapes her in panic. Don’t think about last time. Don’t think about last time. Anything else. Anything else… Akota! He wasn’t there. She is so afraid of losing herself, so afraid of NON. Anything that would save her from it. She flails. I can’t think. I can’t do it. I… I have to use something I know. What do I know? Remember!

Before she has the presence of mind to realize, she is lost in her own memory. If nothing else, it is a relief that it isn’t of the last time…

—4 Days Ago—

Lise strides toward The Home of Silence, as excited as she’s felt since…

She hurries on, too impatient to appreciate her surroundings. Whether it is what awaits her or eagerness to get out of the sun; she can’t divorce the desires from one another, they are both true. She steps in and blinks and blinks as she waits for her vision to adjust. Inside the massive blue sphere, an elderly woman sits cross-legged among a small group of visitors, speaking with muted enthusiasm. She moves past, nodding briefly to them.

Sitting directly in the center of the cavernous structure, a man waits alone. Just above, another sphere hangs in the air—perfectly still despite a lack of support. This one tenebrous, hard to look at. A shadowless orb. As captivating as she remembers; she nearly forgets the man beneath it. She slows in her approach, feeling uncertain now.

The man beckons her with a gesture of his hand—smile lopsided but welcoming. She has seen him before, even spoken with him briefly, but always by her mother’s side. Here she meets him on her own terms for the first time.

He is dressed crudely, a tattered leather shirt with the collar’s drawstrings hanging loose, baggy pants rolled up to expose his bare feet. An azure gaze glints from dark, inset eyes. Auburn hair frames his round face, untanned skin undertoned by copper blush. A large man, but his presence is unassuming to the extreme. She has a hard time imagining him angry.

“Hi.” He says as she comes near enough to hear his low tone.

Lise stops a few feet away from him, waits a moment, then sits, glancing surreptitiously at the intimidating object suspended above them. She remains silent, expecting him to say something else, but as the quiet stretches past a minute, she snaps.

“Um, I’m Lise… Niulan, I mean. My mother–”

He cuts in, “Who?”

Lise blinks, “I… What?”

“A test.” He can hardly contain his grin.

She quiets… “I don’t get it.”

He guffaws, filling The Home of Silence with his laughter. It trails off into a giggle, wiping tears from his eyes. “Brilliant! You passed.”

“Okay.”

“You’re not going to ask what the test was?”

She looks at him, “Was there one?”

“Fair enough.” He shrugs.

It’s been a while, but I don’t remember him being this weird… I wish I could’ve asked mom…

“What do you do?” He asks, scratching his wrist.

“Depends…”

“On what?”

“…Circumstance?”

“Oh? What kind of circumstance?” His grin is immovable.

She tilts her head, weighing her response. “All of them, I suppose.”

He nods, thoughtful. “Hm… How about this one?”

She is having difficulty deciding whether this is the most incomprehensible conversation she’s ever had the misfortune of having—but somehow she still knows how to answer. “In this circumstance… I exist.”

“…Man, what are we even talking about?” He laughs again, to her chagrin. “This is great. I like you.”

Her momentary embarrassment is dispelled by his enthusiasm, “I am very confused.”

“I thought you said you were Lise?”

“That’s not a funny joke.”

He laughs anyway. “You don’t get it?”

“I get it. It’s just not funny.”

“You don’t get it.”

“What is there to get?”

“Nothing.”

“Then how is it that I don’t get it?”

“Get what?”

Her thoughts halt… Again she tries to parse what is going on, and in doing so is left feeling ever more muddled. “Can we speak normally?”

“What does that mean?” He seems to be getting more and more amusement out of this, but she feels only frustration.

“I don’t know… Like proper introductions and stuff.”

“Have we not been doing that? Do you not know me yet? I surely know you.”

“We haven’t even exchanged names.”

“Well I only have the one, I’m a bit reluctant to exchange for a name not mine. How’s we just share one?”

She is exhausted. “…What?”

“I don’t have a spare, have you?”

Fine then. I have one… “Akota.”

He shares a knowing smile with her, “A fine one I have, then… Akota. Very well, we are Akota. What next, Akota?”

“What?! I thought you meant you wanted me to give you a nickname.” She is mortified, not only by his smug smile, but by bearing such an insulting name. She can already tell he will call her nothing else.

“I didn’t mean anything, but I’m more than satisfied with this outcome. Now we have a name for each other.” Akota waggles a finger at her, “Best not boast of it though, lest we reveal us as… dare I say it… literate.”

“Right…”

“Right… Wait, you came here for a reason, right?” He seems to have remembered just then.

She suppresses a sigh. This man isn’t going to be the easy solution she’d hoped for. “Well, when you came to our home despite my father’s loathing for you, and told me that you could show me the answer to my problem… yes, I came here hoping for that.”

“Right…” He makes an… expressive expression, though what it is meant to express is lost on her. “I said that, but I have no idea what your problem is.”

“I see.” She pushes herself to her feet. “Goodbye then.”

“Bye Akota!” Akota calls, causing the elderly woman to stare at him in shock.

She leaves disappointed and more hopeless than ever before. How had such a pointless encounter rendered her so empty? She’d come seeking answers and walked away with nothing. He hadn’t even known the damned problem he’d promised an answer to. Fool. She doesn’t know whether the label is on him or herself… Both.

Her circumstance feels harder to bear than before she came to him. I exist… for how much longer. Empty.

Gradually, she reopens her eyes, adjusting to the sun’s blinding light. Perpetually squinting at her surroundings.

“Hey! What are you doing?!” Unmistakeable, it is Seli’s voice. This voice being the one she uses when she feels like she’s missed something interesting.

“Nothing.” She replies, darkness casting her tone colorless. She doesn’t see her sister’s reaction, walking forward blind.

She just wants to lie in silence. She’s lost her purpose. She’s lost the will to bear this weight. She feels like if she just… released, reality would simply cease. She misses darkness. She misses suspension. She misses nothing. The very thing that first stole reality from her. She misses NON.

“What do you mean nothing?” Seli is insistent.

“I mean, nothing you would care to hear.”

“I want to know! Why even did you go in that place at all?”

“It had sounded promising…” She runs away before her younger sister can ask another question, hearing her intake as she prepares it. She can’t bear another thought. Can’t bear another word.

Through slitted lids she watches the ground; rough, rectangular stones—repainted so recently—blend into a tapestry of russet and cobalt, blurring together in her tearing eyes. Stones turn to gritty soil as she runs and runs. Runs back. Beyond the living city. Back beyond the sparse forest fringe. Running beyond the broken buildings. Back… there.

There, beneath the blasted boughs of a storm burst bracken, she ends. The remnant of a beautiful tree, its limbs sprawling over small fronds and delicate crystal florets. Blackened and crumbling gray, no flower is sustained on its charred remains. Yet its empty vessel stands tall, still sheltering the sensitive surface from the sun’s unforgiving glare.

Lise stumbles up to it, weeping. To her knees, basking in its shade. Grateful for it giving her sight once more. She leans back against it. It is familiar, understanding. Here she feels at peace with her return. This tree, even in death, remains formidable—and despite appearances, forever benevolent. Brushing her fingertips over the sprouts surrounding her, cushioning her, drifting with them in the breeze, insubstantial. The fall comes easy.

When she opens her eyes, the world begins gray, and gradually, as perception paints her surroundings, she stands. Turning, she expects to find the tree represented here—so hallowed it is in her mind. Instead, she is greeted by the purest white she’s ever seen. As if the tree has been cut out of the world, and a hole in space is all that remains to indicate it had existed at all…

I… has it always been this way? She realizes that, although she has visited the tree in reality many times since resurfacing, she has never done so in the undermind. Is this the source of my preoccupation? It must be related somehow… right? It is too bizarre not to be. Is this what caused it?

She approaches it tentatively, reaching out a hand. It passes through. ‘AH!’ She jerks back her hand in surprise. Nothing happens. ‘Ah… weird.’

‘Huh. Did you do this?’

Startled, Lise twists round to face… Akota. ‘What are you doing here?!’

He frowns at his palm, rubbing at it with one finger. ‘Hm? I followed you.’ He says without looking up.

‘Why? And why ask if I made this?’ She really doesn’t like him being here. ‘Don’t follow me.’

‘I ask because I wonder if you did it. And as for the first, Quin told me to. She said if I told you I had the answer that you would lead me to the problem. That was about all I got from her, the rest I’ve been figuring out along the way.’ He explains, finally looking up from his hands. ‘I admit I haven’t kept up with the goings on in Opis Luma since I was here last, but when Quin asked me to help, I came. I have a lot of saneness to share; I imagine that’s why she asked me when she did.’

It is the most sense he’s made since she met him, yet she doesn’t want his help anymore. He can’t help. He just won’t understand. ‘Two days past, NON—my mother’s same affliction—fell upon me. That’s my problem. Can you fix it? No, I imagine not, or my mother would be fixed too.’

He pushes his lips out, making a peculiar expression. ‘Well…’ He begins, hesitating, ‘Hm… How do I explain? Hm… Well, what if I were to say, what you think is the problem isn’t the problem? How would you respond?’

‘I would respond indignantly, unless you could provide a proper reasoning. What’s the real problem?’

‘I don’t know for sure yet, and I wouldn’t want to speculate aloud. We would need to discuss more. I did the same with Quin way back when.’

‘Okay…’ She is skeptical, and really doesn’t like the idea in the first place. She doesn’t want to talk with him. ‘Wait, how did my mother even tell you that first thing? She’s been… She’s been unresponsive since before I was afflicted.’

‘Oh, well she told me that stuff a while ago. I was in Grade Epostal when she contacted me.’

‘Grade Epostal…’ She stares, baffled. ‘You’ve been to Grade? That’s like all the way on the other side of the world… How long ago was that?’

He scratches the stubble on his chin, ‘Mmm… It’s been a while, I can’t really remember.’

I think I’ve come to understand my father’s distaste. ‘I don’t want to talk to you anymore, please leave me alone.’

He smiles, ‘Alright, see you later Akota.’ Then he turns to leave.

‘Wait, before you go, what’s happened to this tree? Do you know?’

Akota trips and falls in turning back, but stops halfway to the ground. He remains in that position, hovering at an unnatural angle, ‘It’s empty space. It’s the undermind with reality’s influence stripped away. A more basic state.’ He slowly rights himself, then drops back to the ground. ‘It can be useful if you can use it.’

‘You could say that about anything.’

‘Even nothing?’

‘…Yes.’

‘I agree.’

‘Great. How do I use empty space?’

‘Simple, the same way you do anything here. You just have to be careful because there’s no floor in there. Or walls. Or ceilings. Or anything. Only space and time—full of the first and little of the latter. You can go in it if you want—just don’t stay forever, or you really will.’

She nods slowly, ‘Okay, but how did it get here?’

‘Sorry too late I’m gone,’ He was there, and now he isn’t. Vanished.

Inconvenient, she sighs, now I’m going to have to talk to him again…

It is then she realizes that she had decided not to return. Not yet, at least. Even if she doesn’t like it, she cannot in good conscience give up when an answer may yet exist. ‘What if I were to say, what you think is the problem, isn’t the problem?’ She doesn’t think he is right, but what if he is? It’s too much. I just wish I knew the answer…

— 25 —

Strand

\\//

Lise tumbles out of empty space, straight into the fiends’ embrace. Failure. She got lost in a memory and, in struggling free, lost time.

Before the fiends can devour her, defenseless, she leaps back into emptiness. Followed. The fiends grow exponentially in mere moments, losing shape, pulling themselves apart by their directionless will. Pop pop pop they become nothing. But for one, which bites into her, latching on—growing beyond her, consuming her.

NO. She grows with it, past it, ripping its wriggling form from her side, sunken teeth tearing away. In both hands, she holds it, pulls it, twists it, and, in halves, it falls from her open palms. Its bane is in her, threatening to rend her. Unable to stay—for empty space’s ungrounded potential will lend that poison power it lacks outside—she steps back out of it.

Breaking from the sanctuary’s structure, splintering wood and cracking stone, she emerges anew. Looming over Dejed, tall as the tower itself, Lise brushes debris from her giant shoulder. The fiends are an indistinguishable black haze hovering around her knees, obscuring her view of the town beneath. They swarm, converging on her in a wave, rising, rising, they attempt to consume her.

Well this is an outcome I’d rather have avoided. Altering the form of one’s body is dangerous, risking dissonance when reality sets in once more. I should be fine as long as I don’t remain like this…

With explosive force, she claps her hands together, scattering fiends in the wind. The air clears for a moment, and the fiends attempting to engulf her are blown away with ease. She swats at them; it’s like trying to hit a plume of smoke.

Damn. She keeps them at a distance, blowing them away when they come too close. Some few make it near enough to latch on, but they are so small to her now she hardly feels them. Where are they? Did the candle go out by now? Are they still in there? She runs from Dejed, drawing the fiends with her. If nothing else, she is a good distraction—but, to what end?

She stands in the forest, feet shrouded in foliage, turning to face the fiends. Her axe comes to her easily, sized appropriately. She hurls it at them. It passes through as harmless as her hands. Her sling comes next, wrapped round her right hand, a perfect sphere of metal forming in her other palm. No time, she runs further into the wilderness. Oh, she thinks suddenly, there’s an idea.

Her long legs carry her far, fast. Far enough that the trees become indistinct gray blobs which cling to her feet, seeking shape, slipping back into formlessness the moment she turns her gaze. Far enough that Dejed is a single finger touching the sky… a mere needle… a hair… cresting the horizon and gone. So far now that the earth clings to her, drawing her down into it. She lets it. Sinking… Shrinking…

The fiends hover over her, watching hungrily, hopelessly, as she slips beneath the surface. Before those still clinging can take their fill of her, she vanishes.

//\\

Silent but for her shallow breath, Lise opens her eyes to a dark room. Chilled.

— 26 —

Body

//\\

Lise pushes herself up, groaning at the aches, grunting at the pains. Her back is stiff as a board, legs creaking like an old woman’s. She can’t see anything in the pitch-dark room. Feeling about, she finds the door and opens it. The dim glow of a single wall sconce is all that is left to light the empty sanctuary. Legs shaking as she stands, she leans heavily on the staff. Where’s that medicine gone… Gone.

She breathes, wishing she could just separate herself from the pain, lose herself in… Shaking her head, Stop thinking that way. Defying her frailty, she steps forward and remains present to the pain in spite. They’re not dead. They’re not dead. I can save them. I will save them.

New pain preys on her the moment she set foot outside. Fiends… There must be some that hadn’t followed her out. It isn’t so many that she can’t survive it—her mind is too resilient for a couple of these small ones to corrupt quickly, but if she leaves herself exposed long enough they can chew away at her will until she’s just as dead as the weakest willed would be. With that in mind, she knows where she must go first.

The last time she’d set foot outside this sanctuary, it had been to hide the children’s bodies from Fiiso. This time, as she pushes open the door, the moon—peeking through thick rolling clouds—lights the path, and the corpses surrounding it. Near a thousand of them, all arrayed in a half-circle around the front of the structure. Old and young adults—the entirety of the remaining villagers lie completely still before her. Dead as their children.

Lise looks up at the moon, hating it for what it shows her. Glaring down, condemning. Failure’s ugly face is reflected back at her. She turns her face, unable to look long in so revealing a mirror. As fast as she can manage she moves past the dead.

“When death is imminent, self-abasement is a detriment,” she reminds herself. And ever more it feels inadequate. She can’t even look upon their faces, for fear of the condemnation that is surely there—potent in a way that her self-degradation would never be.

She keeps her eyes on her destination. Death. The tower is hope’s last bastion.

When the smell of them is only a memory she lets out her held breath. To move numbly past so many dead, too many to recall, is surreal. Once, the sight of a single body would have made her blue in the face and left unseen scars to remember it by. Even the details of that first death, writ permanent red on the mind, is rendered illegible now under the blood staining her.

“One foot in front of the first.”

As she walks, her aches soothe, pains sharpen. She has to stop several times, for succumbing to the pain of each breath is leaving her short of it. If they still breathe I will bless the land with my tears. For my own power has led only to death. Even if they live it is no success of mine, simply fortune that my failure has not killed them. It is the most profoundly grim thought she’s had in a while. In moonlight the things which skulk behind night’s veil cast shadows, given shape, revealed. Failure is inherent to this path… No, this path is failure—drawn along, diffused.

All this is merely a show, the appearance of responsibility taken, to distract herself from… what I am responsible for. She is terribly self-aware, and all the more a failure for it. I despise myself.

The tower leans over her, listening closer with each step. Where minutes before hope was preserved, Lise can feel only dread. For the first time in reality, she sets foot inside Dejed’s lonely tower.

It is different than she’d imagined. The mosaic floor—even in the dark she can tell—has no discernible pattern. A high ceiling remains unseen, only the walls stretching into shadow indicate anything but darkness exists there. The dusty altar itself is craggy, cracked and filled in silver, covered in odd trinkets, scrolled notes tied off in an assortment of colors, outgrown child-cloaks—even one adult-sized. A clearing in the dust, roughly the length of her forearm, and beside it, a blood-crusted talon.

Lise lifts it with two fingers, knocking a scroll off the altar in the process. She scrapes away her old blood, and slips it under her bandages. Leaning down—awkward with her splinted knee—she plucks the note from the ground. The note is without a bow to close it, already half-unfurled. A glimpse of the manic script hidden within draws her curiosity.

The paper is old, but the ink fresh. A hole is burnt in the center, leaving only fragments of legible glyphs. In truth, the hole is hardly necessary, for the writing is so crooked and all-over-the-place that it would’ve been nigh impossible to read as it was anyway.

Scanning it with her eyes, she struggles to pick out even one full sentence, ‘kill… hate h… disown the fiend-touched… son of fie… father… kill… finall…’ She tried until she reached the bottom, but found all of it to be the ramblings of a poor fool under the fiends’ influence. Ascuszeo Masan. Mouthful of a name. A little guilty that she pried, she takes care to roll it tightly and sets it back in place.

Reminded of where she is, she shakes her head. If she isn’t careful those fiends will convince her to forget their presence. Not the time for messing about. She strides, stumbles, then continues at a hobble around the altar and into the spiraling hall.

A lonely candle remains hanging on the wall; for a diminishing wick, a flame dances its last.

The walls are made from latticed wood pressed on either side of a single sheet of thick, rough paper. On the paper is an array of simple markings, broad strokes of ink, but she can’t pick out what they are as she walks past.

As the light of the candle is left behind, she feels something wet under her bare foot. Her breath quickens—she dares not stop, dares not know. The door just ahead, her dread rises to her throat, choking. Until she looks, all her hopes are as real as her fears. Reaching out, hand trembling, she opens to the ethereal glow of the tower’s central room. Red taints the blue tide. Blood.

— 27 —

Around

//\\

Lise looks upon a room so familiar, yet so peculiar. The light seems to have no source, giving the room a resemblance to the undermind itself. A cobalt sea beneath her feet, shimmering in the glow—the walls a dull gray-green. It appears so like it had before. All it’s missing is the floating halves, glistering above.

But there are also elements that had not been here before. Take the blood, which paints the blue a gory crimson; the slumped painters themselves, unmoving now that their efforts are over. Fiiso, his greasy brown leathers, Elineal, her rich green robes—darkened by their blood.

She stands in the doorway, unable to move until she sees their chests do the same. Both are alive somehow, despite the copious blood spattered around them. By the look of it, the fight had begun before they’d made it all the way in, trailing it in behind them.

Lise goes to him first, kneeling gingerly. He lies flat on his back, arms splayed out as if he was merely exhausted. Surprisingly, that seems to be the truth of it, as he sits up in shock at her sudden appearance.

“You!” He cries out, pointing up at her. “You said to leave when the candle burned out!”

She ignores it, “What happened here?”

“She started talking and whispering to herself as soon as we left the room! I thought it was safe! Then everyone was dead outside and she started getting weird again! She ran to the tower, and I was following her, but then as soon as we were here she tried to choke me!”

Lise nods, trying to parse his nervous speech. “I was too slow. Yet you seem mostly unharmed. Did you not feel the fiends? No, before that, where’s the panacea?” She stands again, scanning the room for the old dweller’s medicine case.

Fiiso pushes off the floor, “Why?” His tone is flat.

Lise, hobbling over to Elineal, turnes slowly and stares. “I’m going to keep her from dying.”

His face scrunches into an expression she has never seen on a child’s face. “No.”

She breathes, careful for her tightening chest. Something is wrong. “Fiiso, something is wrong. Very wrong. I can see it in your eyes.” Though nothing obvious has changed she can sense his hostility.

“She’s evil.” He says simply.

The air goes from her, a sigh, tired from this weight. “I’ve been called evil too… Not so long ago, really. And, personally,” she looks into his eyes, and into the fiend behind them, “I’ve only ever heard it used to justify harming another…”

He reveals a short sword smeared with blood. “If you save her after what she’s did then surely you’re evil.”

“Again, you don’t understand, Fiiso. She has been under the fiends’ influence all this time. The actions were not hers—the responsibility is not at her feet.” What do I do? New problems are appearing by the second, and she can hardly keep up. The fiends had left her the moment she’d entered the room but somehow one still has a hold of him.

“I’MDONEHEARINGTHAT! NOMORE!” He screams, and charges straight for her.

Damn me to death! She braces herself, gripping the staff in both hands despite the pain.

As Fiiso swings the sword up at her, Lise sidesteps and slams the staff down on his wrist. The blade clangs against the floor. He yowls, drawing back. Almost immediately he roars and tries to tackle her. He crashes into her, arms wrapping round her legs. She grits her teeth against the pain, but remains in place. As terrible as her condition is, he is only half her height and not particularly strong.

Lise drops the staff and pries his arms away, holding him still. Shit… What do I do with him now? “Stop it!” She presses his arms against his sides, “If you don’t do as I say, you will die.” It is probably true.

He ceases his writhing and gnashing, glaring up at her helplessly. Something to tie him up… She searches her periphery for anything that might work. Damn it…

Lise gives up and does the only thing she can think of: she head-butts him. He stiffens for a moment then sags, unconscious, and drags her down with him. The impact is brutal on her wounds. She rolls away from him, gasping at the pain spearing her. It is unrelenting.

“FFFFfff…” Tears leak from her eyes, black and white flecks dancing on the waves. “…uck.”

There isn’t much she can do but lie there, catatonic. Damned fool. Fuck…

— 28 —

Save

//\\

Eventually, she is able to force herself up, dripping sweat, the pain has her muscles clenching tight. She sees the medicine box, dropped just to the left of the still-open door. The crawl back feels years longer. Scozel is the only reward for her efforts; three leaves left.

She hesitates, all three in one palm. It is among the hardest challenges in her life, to consider future pains when the present is so demanding. One too little, two too much, three what I need. She splits one down the stalk and pops half into her mouth with an additional whole leaf. Carefully placing what remains back into the pouch, she slides it into her pant pocket.

Bitter taste turning sweet with time. The wait for its freeing numbness draws long but at last, it kicks in. It doesn’t kill the pain, but it holds it back enough that it won’t impair her completely.

Finding the will to move again is easier than she expects. That Elineal is bleeding out as she lies there is motivation enough—with the scozel’s assistance anyway. Medicine case in one hand, Lise begins the precarious crawl over to her, only able to use her left leg and her right arm. Jaw clenched so tight she might crack teeth, she strains against her limits. If she saves one life… just one… please…

The robe sticks to her gut, soaked in blood, rising faintly with each fading breath. Lise undoes the buttons down the side, fingers slick and shaky. She gives up after it slips from her grasp a third time and tears it open. A wound trickles fresh blood over the woman’s pudgy midriff. Angled up, it seems like it was headed straight for her lung, but her breathing isn’t impaired—just feeble.

Lise wipes her hands on the robe and unfolds the medicine case, scrambling for the final bottle of panacea. “Where is it?!” She grabs a bandage and stuffs the wound with it, still rummaging through the case with her right. If only I’d seen where it was kept!

“…il…”

She stares at Elineal, watching as she suddenly moves. Just one arm weakly rising, falling limp on her chest, fingers grasping. Leaning in, Lise tries to hear what she is saying…

“e… evil…”

Her hopes fall—not that they had far to.

There might be something she can do to save her, a different medicine… but she knows not what potential the case contains.

Still, the woman’s fingers grab for something, finding only her own skin wrinkling in her grasp. Lise watches as her fingers flutter and go still there. It occurs to her that she might have been reaching for her robe—a pocket, perhaps.

She sets her arm aside and pulls the robe back over her chest and feels around the place Elineal had been reaching for. Sure enough, a small pocket is sewn just inside the collar. With her first two fingers, Lise draws out a vial of bruise-blue liquid. She isn’t sure what to think.

Fiiso isn’t there. She notices it just then, out of the corner of her eye. No! She turns and Fiiso is there.

The sword swings for her neck. Her arm rises to meet it. Hit; cutting. Shallow. She hardly feels it. The sword falls from his grasp. He runs…

— 29 —

Aground

//\\

Blood dripping between the bandages on her forearm, she watches him run. Even if she could’ve followed, she wouldn’t have. Failure. She watches it happen again, helpless. And she turns away from it.

So the last child dies.

“When death is imminent…” she grinds her teeth, wincing at new pains, “self-abasement is a detriment.”

And death is. Elineal will die by her hand or live by what she holds in it. Panacea pours.

It’s out of my hands now…

Lise lets her head fall back, weary of life and the death immanent to it. To what end? The question is always there—answered, but never satisfied. Meaningless.

In this unreal atmosphere, she can feel the end as if it were real. The divide is diaphanous where it would be dense otherwise. Impassable, still, but no longer opaque.

She stares to the top of the tower.

\\//

Its appearance doesn’t change as she slips into the undermind, but for the two shapes revealed above. Lise doesn’t need the confirmation, however, as pain’s disappearance is the more immediate. She stands. Even in sleep, I don’t rest.

The blood is gone, the medicine box, sword, everything but the two of them. Lise almost doesn’t notice at first—here, Elineal is sitting up, watching her. It startles her, though she supposes it shouldn’t have. Elineal’s lips move, but no sound escapes them. She waits for the woman’s eyes to gain sharpness, an intent of some kind, but they just linger on her with dull inattention. Involuntary to an extent, it seems her gaze follows without thought.

‘What… What are you saying?’ She poses.

When she doesn’t respond, she approaches slowly—trying and failing to catch her words. She tries to read what is spelled on her lips; it is illegible.

Lise draws her axe, rounding the kneeling woman, holding it ready as she places her other hand on her crown. A broken vessel. The fiends have done irreversible damage. Yet she is not gone, just in pieces.

What can I do? Even with the fiend gone… the fiend gone… She hesitates, feeling again. The fiend is gone. Something about that fact feels more pertinent than ever…

She looks to the door, following his path forward, then halting, backward. Oh… The realization hit her violently, sending her to the floor. One thing is blatantly clear to her now. Whatever fiends had been inside Elineal had abandoned her for Fiiso. There are still missing pieces and all her blind grasping isn’t working. She has the what, but not the when or how.

Distinguishing the natural reaction to emotional distress from when the fiends’ influence took hold is nigh impossible in such extreme circumstances. It requires extensive reflection, which requires time—something she does not have. I’m sorry Fiiso. I’ve failed you.

— 30 —

Homebound

\\//

Lise wipes the tears from her eyes as she stands up. She wants to chase after him, try to do anything to help him, but she can only foresee failure. If she falls again, she doesn’t know if she can get back up—and Seli still needs her. It is the worst feeling, to accede to her limits. Knowing if she were only a bit better, a little stronger, she could have saved everyone this pain.

I can still save Elineal. How? She can’t say. She’s never tried to mend a person’s mind, it would normally just heal with time and care, but this is an extreme situation. It demands an extreme solution. What if I put her back together wrong? What if she’s not ‘Elineal’ anymore? Whatever comes of it, she thinks, it will be better than simply ceasing to be altogether. Or it won’t.

The truth is I don’t know who Elineal was before the fiends. Even she doesn’t know anymore, or it’s distorted to the point that making the distinction is a barren endeavor. But there are still memories there… in pieces, but not gone. She takes a deep breath, preparing herself as she returns to where the woman kneels. This is going to be more complicated than I’d hoped…

As she rests her hands on Elineal’s head, she recalls tell of a memory, half-remembered from a memory not her own. Pelezel…

—13 Days Ago—

The sun hovers over Kellean, beaming bright off the white city. Plain, near square buildings of bleached clay cluster the bustling streets. From the plateaus to the north the sprawling city looks like bone-shards spilt over the black-blue sands of the Bereun Expanse.

Elineal peers over the city, trying to see her home. The streets themselves are winding, but they are still arrayed in a traceable pattern—a net tossed but not pulled taught. She gives up shortly; while they aren’t uniform in shape, from a distance the houses are too hard to differentiate.

“What are you looking at?” The boy asks.

He has a manner of going about in a way she doesn’t like. That is about as specific as her feelings are on the matter. There is a sense of him, that she perceives distantly, of not wanting to be wherever he is at any given moment. Probably looks out of place in his own room.

“Just trying to see my house.” She replies with composure.

Fortunately, he leaves her alone after that, replying with barely a grunt. He is several years her junior and still he talks to her as if they are peers. Technically, they are—to be fair to him—but she thinks they shouldn’t be. She has been among the top of her class for years, yet she gets paired with a malcontent slacker two years younger. He hadn’t even graduated.

Elineal sits, hanging her feet over the plateau’s edge, feeling as unenthused as she’s ever. She’s been striving towards this for three years, to learn under The Kelle’s finest, but now that she’s here she just wants to go lie in her bed and sleep away the day. All the times she’d come so close to giving up, buckling under the sleepless cycles, the endless essays, the stress of writing and revising and rewriting, always grasping for perfection and never satisfied.

And now that the weight is off her, now that she is here, she doesn’t even care. That this is what she struggled for all this time, only to find out she could’ve accomplished the same without ever attending class. Pointless.

She scrubs the tears from her eyes, she doesn’t want to cry. But her throat is so tight. Her breath comes in shuddering gasps as she tries desperately to regain her composure. Desin would think me a child if he saw me now… The thought doesn’t help the pain in her chest.

Perhaps that’s it… Without Desineal, she has no one to keep her honest, encourage her aspirations. But then, she should’ve faltered before now. She’d persevered, working harder than ever even after his death.

“Good day!” Someone calls from behind. “You didn’t wait too long, I pray—though you probably did.”

She takes a moment to turn, trying to rub the puffiness from her eyes. The woman who approaches is familiar, but only as a practitioner. Those green robes are instantly recognizable. So this is who’s meant to teach us? She hardly looks older than we are. She has light brown hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her slender head. The robes look large on the bony frame poking past the folds. Her amber eyes appear clever, but no more—too much of her smile touches them for the sharpness of one truly gifted.

“You brought enough water? I know it’s a bit of a hike to get here, I promise it won’t be too frequent.” She shrugs, “But it makes for good practice!”

“Who are you?” Elineal asks, impatient. The boy glances at her, surprised at her tone, but stays quiet.

“Right! I’ve gotten ahead of myself! My name is Aleen. Though I’ve been told Ascrawny would be more apt.” She pauses. “Well, that was a joke, but anyway we’ll just move past that… I’ve been assigned to raise you two into full practitioners. I assume you’re Elineal, and you’re Pelezel, yes?”

They nod but offer little more.

“Alright, well maybe we should start by sharing a bit about ourselves? I’ll start. As I said, I’m Aleen of Harmony, my favorite food is spiced gobe with cream, and I have a pet nell called Freak.”

“I’m Pelezel.” Says the boy, oddly pleasant. “I don’t have a favorite food or pet, but I have six sisters and a father. I only like some of them.”

“It’s good to meet you, Pelezel.” She says and sounds genuine. “Do you have a favorite toy? Something you do that makes you happy?”

He appears taken aback, “Um, I don’t know… I like finding cool bugs. I like my friends. I like exploring. Does that count?”

“Certainly!” She answers with a broad smile. “Well, how about you Elineal?”

“No.”

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