— TO DEATH —

i know nothing

that is all

i know

all

from nothing

all

i know

from nothing

that is all

i know

all the same

i know nothing

— 61 —

Silence Resonates Soundly

\\//

The land levels out again as they near The Dwelling, the terrain turning to rusty blue slate which splinters and sheds red dust. Spires protrude from the land at irregular angles, looking like the loose feathers of a raptor in its evening molt. She catches glimpses of the low city between the stone spires—the distant glimmers of life which flit in and out of sight granting her a moment’s gratitude.

Lise considers waking, reluctant to bear the full weight of pain again lest she lose herself in the sweep of its silent and unrelenting scream. No, not yet. She stands from the cart and runs ahead of them. Scaling a spire—tireless, breathing freely—she gazes upon the city she spent near two years studying. It is uncanny, seeing it now. Not even three quadrants ago she was here and still it appears strange. 

The Lise who arrived here two days past was the Lise who witnessed but one death. It was the Lise who had come to resent her mother and saw her father pitiful. The Lise who needed escape. The Lise who foolishly dreamt of mastering the undermind. The Lise who is reflected back painfully puerile.

As she looks down to the twin cities spreading out from The Dwelling on either side, all low buildings of orange and mustard clay and unpaved streets, she sees something which sets her bells tolling. Before the dome’s broad, arching portal, dwellers congregate. They are gathered in a semi-circle, nine of them, maintaining a barricade which seals the main entrance to The Dwelling. As she watches, a new shift comes and takes the places of the three on the left. What are they doing?

Lise is distracted from them when the cart passes below her, appearing more to drift than roll across the terrain—its wheels only begin to turn when Lise observes they should be. She leaps from the spire, willing a lesser spire to meet her halfway down. And instead of leaping off again she visualizes the spire retracting into the land, and manifests it. She steadies herself, the halt of the ground hitting her heels more abrupt than she expected, and runs to catch up with the cart.

They are near enough now that stopping for rest would be a frustration rather than relief, but Lise decides she needs to ask ahead of them. She approaches Pelanea, whose form has already developed further since she last looked at her—the pale shapes comprising her form shrunken, allowing finer delineation of her features. Fingers, toes, and the first impressions of facial structure. She is so near dwelling now Lise might be able to induce it deliberately.

She steps up onto the cart and places a hand on Pelanea’s yet hairless head, pressing her thoughts, Pelanea, it’s me, Lise. I’m in the undermind right now. If you can hear me, wave. Her figure startles, glancing back at where Lise’s body lay. Then, tentative, she waves. I’m going to go ahead of you and see what is happening in the city. Don’t enter before my return. Do you understand? Still looking back at the cart, Pelanea nods.

Lise hops from the cart and races ahead. Fleet as she’s ever felt, she runs her full stride—long legs propelling her until she reaches her top speed, and the effort falls away. Gliding, her toes touching down weightless, she crosses the distance in less time than it takes to lace her shoes. She doesn’t let reality hurt her here. Not yet.

The dwellers see her coming, and two of the three whose shift just ended wave her over from where they took up chairs outside the registry. When she first came here they had to wait in line at the registry and go through inspection but now not a single person stands queued for entrance to The Dwelling.

‘Good night!’ She calls as she slows her approach, and they return her greeting less enthused. ‘What’s happening here?’

Neither man can meet her eyes and she feels their answer before it is spoken. A silent shockwave kicks them off the ground and Lise staggers, putting out her arms to steady herself.

‘Fiends in The Dwelling…’

And she knows why they look the way they do. Of all the places she thought would ride out the ripples of the stone she cast, it was The Dwelling. In the same, it doesn’t shock her. ‘How–’

‘We don’t know.’

‘It’s not supposed to have happened.’

Lise looks toward the structure they manifest to stopper the opening, the color of a disturbed pond. ‘Where are the rest? Is this all who made it out?’ As she watches, what looks like a cast shadow skims past the barrier. Tracing up the inside of the sapphirine crystal panes it halts and appears to shift shape and drifts into the viscid dark deeper within.

One of the men follows her gaze, the other answers, ‘Those who’ve made it out have taken refuge in Loh Corone. Most, anyway. A decent deal of the expatriates headed home or otherwise.’

‘How long since the inception?’

‘I don’t know myself, but I heard the first fiends were spotted around a cycle before evacuation began, and it’s been seven cycles past. What are you here for?’

Lise shakes her head. ‘I’m not sure at this point. My companions and I had hoped… Well, we were seeking refuge and some otherwise. Is there anywhere we can go?’

The other is yet to turn back around, the same man answers her, ‘I mean, I’m sure there’s someplace in Loh Corone you can stay but I don’t know of any specific. Crusty shit-hole, but you should be fine long as you don’t do nothing dumb as. I think you sh–’

Still staring at the dome, the man starts tapping his friend on the arm, ‘Oi yo! Look at this. You see that?’

Lise looks where he is pointing. Something approaches the arch from inside the enclosure; amorphous black spanning the entrance and thrice its height, a shade’s hand presses flat on one triangular panel. A second hand joins it, spreading fingers stretching beyond human. Another hand smacks against the crystal. Another. The pane pops out of the structure and five scrawled hands slide smoothly out, six-fingered. Bending its long, many-knuckled arms the fiend pulls itself partway free. Haze obscures inky skin—billowing as though wind-blown.

Lise watches terror’s seed spread and in a moment of prescience (if but a semblance) knows disaster’s dawning. She runs toward it.

— 62 —

Lapse (Although Benignant)

\\//

Lise shoves one of the men into motion, meeting his wild eyes for a moment, ‘We need help! Go!’ She runs on past heedless now to all but imminent death.

The fiend’s protuberant body spills from the gap, spindly limbs prying, pulling. All at once, its body shifts properties; like an insubstantial water skin, it pours itself from the narrow opening, rolling down the dome and landing with a contained splash and she almost thinks it will break and splatter before it bounces back up a few feet and lands again. Its body jiggles, shedding haze, thin limbs flailing in the air as it rolls around to find its bearing. Extruding a formless head, its eyeless aspect tears wide and sends a mute howl to the sky.

Lise recalls the pane of crystal in its place, resealing the dome behind it. She slows her approach as the fiend rises on its tangled limbs, tripping over itself; the axe haft is smooth in her hands. The fiend, form turning weightless, startles and flees…

It is absurd to see. A big bag of wind sprinting westward on wheeling arms.

Following her bafflement, she has an odd pang of pity for the strange being—watching it run toward the only end. It will starve out there if it doesn't reach undefined land first and simply come apart. The feeling is brief, however, and she turns back to the other dwellers, breathing relief.

‘I think this is maybe too obvious to say but the dome won’t hold here on its own.’ She says to the silent group, still in shock at the fiend.

Her axe, she realizes as she hangs it over her shoulder, has been on her back since she’s been in the undermind; her cloak as well, though her satchel is missing. The feeling so familiar she hadn’t noticed its weight. There is significance to this realization, but she dreads what it demands. I can’t keep on like this. She knows and yet strains against her meager limits.

She turns to the remaining man, ‘You wouldn’t happen to know a man with pale skin and inset blue eyes, would you? He’s a dweller.’

He looks at her and blinks, ‘Uh… You’d have to be more specific.’

‘He’s a bit eccentric—you would know it if you’d seen him. No? Then nevermind. Do you know who’s organizing any kind of effort regarding… all of this?’

He shrugs, eyes hollowing. ‘I’m not too sure. It’s all happened so fast and it was a struggle just to get this many to help.’

She nods understanding, ‘If no one else will it’s going to be an easy feast.’

His gaze curls inward and resentment crosses his expression. ‘Yes, it will.’ He shakes his head. ‘Had that fiend not just run the massacre might have begun with us.’

‘Maybe…’

Akota, please be safe…

— 63 —

Pressed and Passive

//\\

Lise regrets reality. “I’m back.” She says, grinding the words between her teeth. She lifts her head to look for her companions and regrets that too, feeling the strain in her chest. They appear before her silhouetted against a starlit tapestry.

Eclait says, “Well? What’s going on?”

“Fiends inside The Dwelling.”

Pelanea gasps, clutching at her coat, “What?! The whole city?”

“Just The Dwelling… The dome.” She elaborates, realizing they are as unaware of the distinctions as she’d once been. “The cities around the dome are sort of a separate thing, but not entirely. It’s hard for me to explain—I never ventured outside The Dwelling while I was here. I knew some dwellers here who would trade for their services in the outer city, so there’s some interaction but they don’t treat each other as one city for some reason, even though most of The Dwelling’s population come from just outside it.”

“I don’t care about all that.” Eclait cuts. “What’s the plan? If there’s fiends there, where do we go?”

“We’ll have to go to Loh Corone—the stretch north of The Dwelling. That’s as far as I’ve gone regarding plans.”

“Let’s go then,” Eclait says, gesturing for Pelanea, “I’m hungry.”

The wheels creak over the hard ground, cart-bed juddering painfully. Lise grits her teeth and keeps from complaining; she is as eager to arrive—if not for the same reason. As they near the city, veering north between the dark spires, they come to a road leading them in and the cart starts to roll smooth. Thank the land… or rather, thank the people who paved this road.

Pelanea grunts, “Are we going to be alright here? This whole fiends in the city thing seems more concerning than… well, how we’re acting about it.” 

Eclait is quick to say, “You want to head home?”

“That’s not what I’m saying but home’s no safer, is it?”

“Speaking of,” Lise clears her throat, “what happened in Kellean? In one of your memories I remember seeing some people dying of fiends.”

“One of your memories…?” Eclait turns to Pelanea.

“Oh, um, I’m not the best person to explain, I only saw that much. If Bente… Well, The Kelle had everyone go to the caves early, but everyone still in the city—most everyone, anyway—died all at once. Me and some of Harmony’s servants survived it… Oh, and you, of course, Lise. I didn’t see it or anything though. I don’t know.”

Lise frowns, “You didn’t hear of anyone else seeing the fiend that did it? It just killed and was gone?”

“I don’t think anyone saw it. I don’t know how fiends are supposed to act—is this not normal?”

“That fiends are killing at all is abnormal. It’s happened in the past, from what I’ve been told, but before the outbreak in Opis Luma fiends were as often benignant as malignant. Memory loss, paranoia, trouble sleeping, anger, depression—those kinds of manifestations. Nothing so severe as what we’ve been seeing. They still killed from time to time when neglected, but a visit or two from a dweller and you’re fine. Now I can barely protect myself from them. They’ve changed in some essential way, adapting and multiplying more rapidly than we can. If The Dwelling is bloated with them I don’t know that there’s any place safe.”

“Damn.” Eclait grunts, tugging the cart with a little less enthusiasm. “Sounds… not good.”

“Humanity will live on though. Right?” Pelanea adds. 

“Sure, but in what condition? What position?”

“But if we work together we can overcome this.”

“If.” Lise agrees. “Small groups of resilient individuals working together might preserve themselves, but as it is I don’t see whole cities persisting. No one was ready for a catastrophe like this.”

Eclait laughs, “People call me a pessimist.”

Lise would shrug if it didn’t hurt so much. “I’d probably call you cynic. I’d not call myself pessimist—fatalist, maybe.”

“Is there a difference?”

She stops her shrug again. “Perhaps less than a pedant would permit.”

“What’s a pedant?” Pelanea asks.

“Someone who is over-concerned with meaningless things.”

“So, Pelanea?” Eclait cackles alone.

“No. Me.”

Loh Corone’s light captures them and shed behind is their wild dark. Voices and other noises of the city wash away the mental residues of their relatively lonesome travel. The road broadens and they move past the first buildings, formed from porous clay. Lise manages to sit up, looking round through lidded eyes. The flush of people move along and past them, little more than life’s routine stresses weighing their expressions.

Lanterns hang from every doorway and from poles of crooked brown cane, lending a warm surreality where their light swims over faces of people and buildings alike. Shadows perpetually shifting, fire flashing and never stilling. Lise can’t fix a single face in her mind as with each moment’s passing their appearance changes. She blinks as they blur, trying to find form.

One thing the outer city has in common with The Dwelling—the people move as though ‘hurry’ is the singular pace. It makes moving through the relatively narrow roads difficult. Eclait’s yelling is compensating some… until an old man starts yelling back. By the time Pelanea manages to pull her off the man, whatever gains they made by her belligerence are lost.

“Looking for an inn!” Lise calls to them over the throng. Shit… I don’t know what an inn is supposed to look like here. She points, “Pull into that alley there!”

As they block the entrance to the alley with the cart, a ragged-looking woman sitting inside it looks at them askance overtop an odd twist of glass pipework. She dips it into a small pot of fire, sucking on the other end. Breathing out smoke, she dismisses them with a polite, “Fuck off!”

Eclait returns, “You fuck off!”

Lise cuts in, “Let’s not do whatever you’re thinking about doing.” She turns to the woman, “Sorry, we’ll just be a moment.” But by then the woman doesn’t seem to care anymore.

“Where are we supposed to find anything in this place? All the buildings look the same.” Pelanea laments, leaning against the cart.

Lise lifts an eyebrow but lets it lie. “I’m not sure. We can ask someone else for directions…”

“Can’t you do something in the undermind or something?”

“I could do something, yes, but whether that something would be worthwhile is another matter. Not to mention getting to the undermind in the first place. I’ve found recently that when I try to grasp it, sleep slips away. You might say pain has been scaring it off.”

Pelanea sighs. “Well… great.”

A girl giggles. The two of them turn to the sound. Eclait and the woman are sitting shoulder to shoulder, passing the pipe back and forth. The woman whispers to her and Eclait giggles again.

“What are you doing?” Pelanea asks. Lise turns and catches a choler coloring her cheeks. “Are you smoking her drugs?”

Eclait looks at her, perplexed. Glancing to the woman beside her, “It’s not like I’m stealing them. She’s selfless enough to share.” And she giggles again.

Pelanea trembles and her nigh translucent skin spoils a splotchy red. Lise watches, disturbed, as she tries to speak but splutters.

Eclait shakes her head, “What the fuck? What’s your issue?”

“You… You’re supposed to be The Kelle’s physic and…” She doesn’t seem able to continue.

Eclait waits, “…And?” Then, appearing to understand, “Ah! Just a moment.” She whispers to the woman for a moment before turning back to them, “Lise, would you like some to ease your pain?”

Lise sits straighter. “What is it?” She asks, holding out a hand for the pipe.

“Just some reek.” She says, first handing the pipe back to the woman for a refill. “Good shit, though.” She pulls down her cheek to show the whites of her eyes have turned florid and giggles again. “Don’t worry, it’s just a flower. Cain’t hurt you. Opposite, in fact.”

Lise takes the pipe, holding it gingerly, and examines in brief the crushed jade flower bud, crusted crystalline. It smells sharp—akin the darker evergreen needles found north of Opis Luma, but too sour to be the same. Eclait proffers the can of fire, and Lise dips the bowl in and sucks on the stem. The flower lights and she pulls the pipe out of the can as she draws on it. Tickling her throat, her lungs, she breathes out slow her shallow inhale. Wispy smoke blooms and disperses.

“C’mon, get yourself a better hit than that.”

Grimacing a little at the taste, she breathes once before trying again. She draws on the pipe, watching the green go incandescent, the smoke coursing through the swirl of tarnished glass. Her lungs burn and she chokes. Suppressing the coming coughs has her heaving, hacking, and coughing still despite her effort. It is excruciating. Then, it hits her. “Whoa…” She croaks.

Eclait roars with laughter, “Right?” She shoves her new friend on the shoulder. “Damn good shit ma’am!”

Lise sits back, breathing careful not to hurt herself, and sees the expression on Pelanea. She looks like she just watched her friend die. Guilt crosses her mind, seeing that pain; but as her pain recedes, she finds less to regret.

Eclait grins as she drops fresh tinder in the fire-can, “Such discordance I see in your eyes, dear Pelly. You really should try to get along with others.”

“Harmony!” Pelanea growls, derision disfiguring her face. “I hate you!”

Eclait looks genuinely caught off-guard, “Why?” Then, unable to resist maliciously reinterpreting her words, “Why do you hate harmony? We three have joined in sharing this gift from the land, hand in hand with harmony, and you, so hateful, would crush it in your brutish, hateful hands? Why not harmonize with us?”

Lise, catching the stench of violence, puts a hand on Pelanea’s shoulder. “Why are you upset?”

She grabs Lise’s arm and throws it aside. “Don’t touch me!” And as their eyes meet, the derision is the same.

Wincing, she takes back her arm. “Very well. Whatever your reasoning, the way you are reacting to this isn’t fair. Unless you want to discuss your qualms, sit and be silent.”

“Or fuck off,” Eclait adds.

Lise looks at her, “As much as I agree with what you’ve expressed, you’re not being helpful.”

“I don’t care to be helpful for her. She needs to help herself to some better beliefs.”

“Might I remind you, you believed the undermind a farce.”

Eclait nodded, “Yes, I did. Then I saw some shit that didn’t make sense. Fixed myself, made sense, moved on. I don’t hold to that which don’t work anymore. This bitch is still clinging.” She blows smoke at Pelanea to punctuate it. “Come back after you figure it out. Or don’t, just quit killing my high.”

Pelanea stands stiff in the smoke, seething. Lise thinks she might attack Eclait, staring, a tensing silence stretching taut between. The stranger holds her pipe out for Pelanea. Strreeetching… Silence shatters with a lone snap. The pipe hits the side of the building and falls in two.

Eclait rises, rolling her left shoulder, and backhands Pelanea off her feet. When she turns to retaliate, Eclait shoves her hard and sends her tumbling over the cart. “If you climb back over that cart I’ll snap your forearm and let you beg me to set it for you.”

Slow to stand, Pelanea is hard to recognize under the mortified scrawl of impotent rage writ across her countenance. She glances at Lise, who struggles to present anything on her face but her rising disappointment and even something approaching disdain. She turns and runs. Head down. Into the throng she runs and is gone. They watch her go well after she disappears.