From death to death
I live a life
For me the birds cease singing
From life to life
I die a death
The birds sing of my passing
One day to live
A final time
The whispered lie
One day will die
The world goes on without me
I beg the birds sing of my passing
The port city of Yarina is relatively small; in truth, it is nearer to a town than the cities Lise is used to, but it still casts a striking silhouette against the rising moon. Low buildings but for the scattering of a dozen or so spires and a large lighthouse which dominates its northern end, casting its glow over the waters lapping at its east side. The cart rolls gently on the well tread road, winding between narrow, rocky hills.
Lise practices her meditation as they approach the city—she doesn’t know when she’ll have another moment of quiet. Recollecting the fragments of her mind. It brings her a measure of peace to array them before her crossed legs. To recall what she has, ahead of Akota’s departure. The prospect of persisting alone again has her fragments jittering around and coming apart. She needs to be able to keep together without his help. That he’s alive at all should be enough… will it be enough? She draws a breath, probably not. The truth is I don’t think I’ll be able to hold all of me together until Seli is safe… Please hold on for me, Seli. For both our sakes. I’m trying…
Lise’s meditative near-peace is short lived. Even so early into the cycle—the moon just now breaching the horizon beyond the city—Yarina is bustling. As the party trudges into downtown there’s a frenzy of people moving back and forth across the street, stepping in and out of stalls—with and without goods. She can’t make out a single word or phrase amongst the many barked shouts and sharp whistles; it’s more clamorous than Opis Luma gets at midday. She covers her ears just to hear herself think. Denoda pats her on the shoulder as he steps off the cart, communing with Bessa at the back.
Akota draws the cart into a small shelter connected to one of the many cobblestone buildings that crowd over the street. “Everyone wait here, I’ll go speak with the innkeeper.” He nods to them all as he hurries inside.
After he’s gone, Navah looks to Bessa, “I hope–” She begins, clutching her arms, but is cut off as a pair of stout women in thick leathers drag a sled past the shelter. It rasps across the crusty road.
Their faces seem to be wet with sweat or perhaps the heavy mist that clings to every surface here. Lise widens her eyes at their haul: an absurd looking fish the size of a man with a narrow snout long as her arm and six small fins lining either side. For safety—as it appears to have sharp spines—its dorsal fin is tied down with a cord wrapped tight round its body. The scales that cover its body appear black but for when they catch a glimmer and they reflect rich blue. The creature’s frayed gills rise and fall as it gasps for breath. Then the sled is past, its loud scraping the only remnant after it has gone from sight; soon, that too drifts into the din.
“What were you going to say?” Bessa asks.
“…I don’t know. Something about how cold it is, I think.”
Lise watches indistinct figures passing in the fog, their silhouettes seeming to stretch toward her against the pale blue lamplight coming from the other side of the street. It doesn’t feel wholly real, this place; she feels the weight of the moisture in the air. Her scalp crawls as the wiry curls of her matted hair react to the unfamiliar atmosphere. She expects a tangible wetness when she rubs her face but there is only the natural oil.
Her trance is broken when Akota returns. He holds open the door and gestures for them to enter with a weary smile, “They have a spare room… Oh, wait—would any of you happen to have something to pay the inn-keep with?”
The room is enough for the five of them to find space to sleep, though three of them will have to scrounge for comfort on the creaky wooden floor. Lise is offered a spot on the bed first, followed by a brief discussion about who will sleep beside her and they ultimately decide Navah will. None of them had anything to pay for the room but the inn-keep was kind enough to say they could stay until another patron came along, so they waste no time. Denoda is blowing out the last candle just minutes after they entered the room. For the first time in too long she has little difficulty getting past pain to find sleep.
Lise is the last to arise in the undermind—only Student Denoda waited for her, the rest are already gone ahead of them to seek out other dwellers in Yarina. Denoda is not be able to see her here. He turns to her, responding not to the sight of her standing up, but to the tangible yet inaudible vibrations of her movement. She didn’t expect his inability to visualize to manifest in such a way. She thought it would merely mean he can’t create new things in the undermind, but he is sightless of mind in full.
‘Student Denoda.’ She acknowledges.
‘Lise!’ He smiles, tilting his head. His dark curls bounce against his cheeks, appearing nearly weightless enough to match the buoyancy of his demeanor. ‘Just Denoda is fine. I don’t know what heft the title “Student” holds anymore, if any.’
‘Right…’ She rubs her forehead, only half-hearing him. There is a new anxiety wriggling in her gut that she hasn’t addressed, and it’s already drawn her into the distance. I have to find a way across the strait. I will probably be continuing without any of these people, so I need to make my own arrangements. ‘Denoda, do you know Yarina at all? Did you ever pass through when you were still with Chorum.’
He shakes his head, ‘No, no. When Chorum comes west we pass far to the south of here, where the landmasses are connected. There is some fear of the insubstantiality of the sea. It is much preferred to tread ground than water, I think.’
‘Isn’t that slower?’
‘Well, yes, but when you must make a life of traversing the world in pursuit of the sun’s guidance, it is preferable to take fewer risks on the journey. Failure in the pursuit is inevitable, as is an end to the pursuit. But only one may recur.’
‘That is reasonable. If only my pursuit was so forgiving.’
‘Do not fret too much, Lise, the sun will soon alight your path. The sun is ever rising.’
‘Perhaps…’
Denoda walks with her, an arm on her shoulder lest he fall behind, as they wander Yarina’s dark, dank streets. She sees waking dwellers wading among the sparks of light that mark the flow of the throng, standing full-figured among the sparks as the gentle beasts called berawenn stand among flocks of feeding aster crane. Just the thought almost brings her to tears. I am the mother of wolreaths… She shakes her head, pressing past the crowd and the dwellers—not a line of thought I need to follow right now.
‘What of the day the sun doesn’t rise?’ She says, almost as an after-thought.
He considers the question with a seriousness she was too afraid to ask it with. ‘Do you think that will happen? Has it ever happened before?’
‘Maybe… Maybe.’ She worries at her pinky nub, picking at the raised scar tissue. ‘You go to sleep every cycle, but have you died before?’
‘Not as I’m aware, no.’
She glances back at his sightless expression, ‘Will you?’
He is silent a moment—thinking—and the moment goes heavy and dragging before he answers. A quiet, ‘Yes.’ Meanwhile, they approach the end of the street, which gives way to an expansive dockyard teeming with the sparks of life. It is of particular contrast to the buildings which huddle against the wet cold. The docks shift as the water pushes and pulls, dark gouts appearing from nowhere as people on the other side of sleep perceive them. The docks are in constant call and response to the whims of the vast and powerful force it seeks to take gently by the hand. She feels the cold sea-spray pepper her bare face but never sees them coming. The people here in reality must be feeling the water droplets hit them but are unable to see them in the dark.
‘Don’t step onto the dock!’ A woman calls as they near where the street-stones become thick planks of wood.
Lise halts and wipes the droplets from her face. Denoda squeezes her shoulder and sticks a little closer to her. She nods to the approaching woman, who is hardly taller than Lise’s waist. She is dressed in thick leathers with a waxen poncho to shield her from water, and as she nears, her hood is blown back to reveal a pair of swollen looking goggles that covered half her face. ‘Is something wrong?’ Her gait is off-kilter, more strange the more Lise looks at her.
The woman stops before them, planting her hands on her hips. She shakes her head, ‘Nothing wrong, nah. It’s just dangerous—look, take a look.’ She gestures to the docks. ‘It’s hard to tell right now, but look at it move.’
Lise puts a hand on Denoda’s for balance before kneeling down, bending closer to the dock. She frowns, peering closer to the wood. The flaws in its recreation are set in relief against her closer inspection. The wood has no grain, only the distant impression of it. More than that, the dock’s rocking is not the fluid motion she imagines it is in reality. It jumps. One second it was there, the next it is a fraction to the left, blinking from one position to another in an instant. From a distance it’s near imperceptible. The dock doesn’t move but does a kind of rapid, short-distance teleportation over and over in close succession to resemble superficially its real movement.
She stands back up, Denoda’s hand returning to her shoulder, and nods to the woman. ‘I understand.’
‘Well, not exactly, you don’t.’ The woman popped off her goggles, resting them on her forehead. Knotted curls of brown frame an uncanny face—like a child who has aged but whose body never matured with her. The light furrowing of middle-age was evident around her eyes and mouth. She grins, squatting on the dock, ‘Wait for it…’
A great wave crashes against the dock. It is sudden. Lise lifts her arms to block the spray, and just before it hits… she sees it. The dock blinks and the small woman squatting in front of her appears several feet to her right. Then she is to her left—right again—left again. Gradually, the docks settle and the woman steps off onto the stone. She flourishes with her poncho, smiling a cherub’s smile.
‘How…’ Lise pauses, There’s not enough focus on the dock to recreate its movement accurately, so the position it registers here in the undermind is erratic. ‘How do you do that?’
‘I was the dock-master of Elles Doret some days ago. The docks whisper to me still—the silly, gracious things.’ She claps them on the shoulders, though her diminutive height doesn’t let her reach much higher than Lise’s elbow. ‘Here looking for passage?’
‘We are.’ Denoda says, looking over the woman’s head. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Everyone foreign to this lichenous collection of stones is looking for passage. You don’t stay in Yarina unless you’re already encrusted in it.’
Lise wills the water off her and the wetness is gone in an instant. ‘Does that mean we’ll have a hard time of it?’
‘Nope. You can find passage fine; it’s about whether you can find passage to where you want to go. Most ships are due south of the strait, in Saresar or Basteca, or maybe the garish lands to try to catch up with Chorum. Where are you trying to get to?’
Lise glances at Denoda at the mention of Chorum, but he shakes his head. Like a whisper from across the room, she fells a faint pull: northeast… ‘Are there any ships headed northeast?’
The woman grins, holding up two fingers beside her cheek. ‘You got Forebearer over there,’ She gestures to a dark-wooded ship moored to the dock. A grave looking thing. She points to another ship nearby—smaller, probably not fit for a crew much larger than ten, of red-tinged wood accented with chipped blue paint. ‘And you have me own, Gramma’s Blessing. Headed to Bare Skelt and Keskane respectably.’
‘…You mean respectively?’
‘Nope.’
‘Right. Well, do you have space for one more on yours?’
Denoda cuts in, ‘Wait, just one more? What of the rest of us?’
Lise hesitates, ‘Oh… I don’t know. I assumed we would be parting ways. Akota is going to pursue the fiend and, well, I’m not sure what Student Bessa and the Navah will do.’
‘Shouldn’t we ask them?’
‘…I suppose so. Probably should.’
The woman clears her throat and holds out her hand for Lise to take. ‘We have space for three more on Gramma’s Blessing so if you need to move more than that you’ll have to speak with the captain of The Forebearer (and you’d have to meet him the regular way, he doesn't operate as we). We’ll be here another cycle or so. Oh, and you’ll have to come with your own rations—about a week worth. And that goes for most the ships here. And, think, you’ll certainly prefer that week be comfortable, so don’t be tying your rope off too short by not bringing enough.’
Lise releases her hand and nods her gratitude. ‘I appreciate the help.’
‘Course! Whether it’s with us or another ship, don’t miss the next casting off. You will find fewer ships docked in the coming weeks.’
‘We’ll be back.’ Denoda promises, ‘But we best not linger here now, Lise.’
‘Akota… Akota…’
“…Akota.” Akota says, nudging her shoulder gently. “Akota, I have to go.”
Lise is barely awake and her throat is already tight. I’m not ready. I’m not ready. “What? What do you mean?”
“It’s time for me to leave.” Akota rests his hand on her arm, “I found passage south. The ship leaves in an hour.”
Denoda rouses, sitting up from the floor slowly and blinking the sleep from his eyes. “What’s going on? Why are you waking us so suddenly?”
“This man and I will be taking the next ship to Saresar.” Everyone turns to look at Student Bessa who is peeking into the room. “Chasing down this fiend-man he says caused the fall of The Dwelling.”
“Why?”
“Well, I don’t know wh’else I’ll do yet—might as well, y’know.”
Akota ignores them, addressing Lise alone. “I have little time so I had to be sure I wouldn’t leave without telling you. We may see each other again before the ship sets off but leaving farewells to the last second didn’t seem prudent…” He pauses to watch Denoda leave the room, following after Student Bessa with more questions. “What are you thinking right now?”
What am I thinking right now… “I don’t know. Less thinking, more feeling… Feeling afraid, alone, uncertain… I don’t know.” She rises from the bed slow, tender with her pain. “…I feel like I’m letting safety escape me.”
“I am safety? I’m not quite a warrior, you know.”
“Well, yeah, not safety exactly… Maybe security—no… no, it’s reliability. You are reliable like no one else I’ve known, Akota. Paradoxically, I suppose. You are strange, erratic, unpredictable—but reliable. I trust what you say, and I trust you will keep to what you say. I don’t think I can say that for anyone else—myself included (much as I’ve come to emulate you).”
Akota scratches the side of his head, “While it is true that I’m singular in my honesty,” he offers a brief flash of humor in the form of a grin, “your predicament there stems more from you not coming to know anyone well enough to trust them. I understand why, of course, considering what you’ve experienced, but it’s not as though I’m the only trustworthy person. I’m just the only person you’ve let yourself trust because our relationship predates everything that’s happened these few days and nights.”
Lise is too rattled by his words to respond immediately, she just stares at him, mind suddenly racing to find proof counter to his claims. Cutting far deeper than can be done with malice, his casually honest words pierce right down to the root of her. She feels her neck tense and a sweat drop trickles down her ribs.
He takes a deep breath and steps back, “I hope it isn’t so long but we may not see one another for some years, so care for yourself Akota. When we meet again I hope you come to me with friends.”
She watches him go and says nothing. Just… sits there, feeling like she’s hitting the hinge’s floor all over again.
After a minute or two has passed, there is motion in her periphery and Lise glances to see Navah shifting in the bed next to her, rising from it gingerly and going still when they see her looking. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude. I just woke up and didn’t want to disturb. Sounded important, I guess…”
Lise is aware of a blunder she is in the process of making. She walks alone toward the dock—her thoughts coming in fragments which she scrambles to make sense of. There is a mistake here… She’s making a mistake. What is she doing? It’s the first thought that filters through whole, all else blasted to scintillae. What is she doing? She clings to the thought as her feet tread wood. A distant thought—so distant it’s nearly not of her—she clutches to her breast. What is she doing?
What– The dangerous thought is taken from her without patience. A parent plucking a knife from the hands of a child. She’s not responsible enough for that yet. Just walk. If nothing else, she can manage that. Walk. She can walk. She walks… Baby steps. Where– The thought is dashed before she can finish it, slapped out of her hands.
Lise approaches a man standing on the docks, thoughtless now. She speaks with him for a moment, handing him something, then steps up onto the gangplank of his ship. What she said to him she can’t say. All she can do is walk.
“LISE!” There is someone grabbing her, trying to drag her off the ramp. She is slow to react, losing balance and falling to one knee. A glimmer of recognition crosses her mind as the man who seized her helps her rise. His grip on her arm tightens, “Lise, what are–” She hears a piercing note and that brief taste of memory is lost. Her thoughts are siphoned into the void as they occur; as she watches the ship captain tackle the man, she has no comprehension of the sight. As though each instant is independent of the next, losing the context of the last.
The terrible note resounds as though the source is her own skull—ringing a tone so jarring it shakes her apart, the fragments of her skittering away. With immense effort, she pilfers a moment’s recall, “Denoda…” and it’s taken from her again the next. The spark of her fury is snuffed before it catches. The note changes and the fragments of her are drawn together, clattering into one another and creating a tumult. The sights before her eyes are turned strange, surreal. She cannot distinguish her boot from the ramp she treads—can’t distinguish the ship sails from the sky.
In the gaps between her shattering thoughts, Lise sees. She cannot process the glimpses she gets from reality, but she can see the fragments of her thoughts and memories and the void between them. Something she sees there in the dark deafens her to the clamor. There is a void in the void… There is a nothing in the nothing, but this nothing isn’t true nothingness. There is something in the nothing there. A semblance of void hiding behind her thoughts. To detect a shade in the shadows takes eyes sensitive as hers—most anyone would see nothing there. Once accustomed to the absence of light, even the color black appears as a blinding brightness; it’s the most vivid sight for an eternity in any direction. She sees it.
Lise watches it notice her gaze. She can do nothing but watch, and for a precarious instant, it retreats. Instinct rushes into the gap and doesn’t leave it the opportunity to undo its mistake; she seizes the nearest fragment of her mind and wrests control from the damned thing’s grasp. “HELP!” She cries out, desperate to realize her invisible peril for the strangers on the dock.
NO TIME.
Before she can regret it, she moves. The pain creeping through her body like spiny tendrils is distant next to the immediate horror of a fiend nesting in the gaps of her mind. It was trying to control her for some purpose, putting her on the wrong ship—FUCK YOU! Lise lets her rage light her mind, the flash casting in relief a familiar shape. A many-shaped shape watching her from there in the recesses, peering out at her from NON. Just to gaze upon at it seems to splinter her—from every new perspective it appears as a shape paradoxical to the past. FUCK–
Not risking another thought, Lise bolts, and the shape shreds her apart with a piercing tone. Blinking to clear her eyes, she runs across the deck of the ship—holding her mind together by sheer will—and throws herself overboard. Her stomach turns as she tumbles in the air, a terrifying euphoria following the sense of falling free, and is cut short by the cruel slap as she hits the water back first. Before the sea can swallow her,
NON
Lise is enveloped in void with nothing to grasp, nothing solid to orient herself toward. She doesn’t experience anything. Not a thought, not a sensation, not emotion—even memory is inaccessible here. Just void. So serene; who could care to keep hold of all their loose fragments and flecks here? Not her, sure as anyone else. She drifts, and the shattered pieces of her drift, and the verity of what can be called “Lise” is tested. What pieces has she lost already across her years of toeing the ledge? From its thoughts and ideas, down to the very matter that makes it—it is evident that “Lise” is itself an idea that emerges from her environment and experiences, and that what constitutes “Lise” changes with every fraction of a moment. What can be called “Lise” is not static; the beast that went to sleep is not the beast that awakes. And so, as “Lise” leaves NON, she returns with only the most solid, singular pieces of her self—those parts which are so embedded in her psyche that the void’s gentle abrasion is not enough to pull them from her.
A pinprick of light wavers into the supreme dark. Its dim, swaying glow is bright enough to blind one here. What fragments remain of “Lise” are cast in weak, amber light and drawn inexorably out of NON.
Pinching shut her eyes against the lantern, pain is the first to greet her reactivated mind. Her whole back feels raw, as though she’s just been beat upon with a series of berani mallets. She can do little but curl against the savage pain as her old wounds recoil in response to the impact. Transfixed by twin lances.
Pain overwhelms her other senses and she drifts in and out of NON, its black waves pulling at her legs, beckoning her back off this insubstantial shore. She anchors herself to the land despite every miserable thought and sensation screaming at her to let go. It is torture to let the tide recede. NON no longer laps at her and her legs sink into sand that hardly feels real. Swaying lamplight glows a deep brown-blue through her eyelids. The gentle rocking of the wood boards beneath her breaches her dull awareness and she is cast back to reality in full.
She blinks to mitigate the piercing light, trying to see her surroundings. For now the dim lamp thwarts her and she closes her eyes again, waiting for the rest of NON’s residue to drip dry. She’s still damp with it when heavy, knocking footsteps start to shake the boards. Her hands tremble as she covers her ears to the pounding din.
“Lise?” Student Denoda kneels beside her and his hand hovers, hesitant to touch her. “Are you alright…? Sorry, not the right question. How do you feel?”
Lise peers at him through the near imperceptible crack of her eyelids. “Shit…”
Denoda’s lips quirk in an awkward grin. “Is that in response to the question or the sight of me?” He chuckles, but the humor behind it is rendered bleak in his sad eyes. “…I’ll go get you some water.”
The word water casts light on the obscured memories of what led her to NON this time. She gasps for breath as sudden panic arrests her. The pain in her back, the sickly smell of the sea water, the boat rocking beneath her. She cries out, but before she speaks it he’s already staring at her in shared panic. “Denoda! Help!”
“What?!”
Lise can hardly speak for the rush of razor sharp thoughts coursing through her tender mind, smacking her temples with her hands. “In me! The Shatterer! It’s–” She gasps, quaking with each breath. “It’s in me! Taking memories…”
“The what?! A fiend?!”
“Yes! YES!” She curls around her chest, the pain overwhelming her once again. She drifts.
Denoda doesn’t bother to respond just runs from the room, shouting, “NAVAH!”
Sitting silently beside her, Student Denoda sighs and shakes his head. “I don’t know, I think Navah might be right.” He closes his eyes, his expression scrunching into a near comical look of concentration before he winces at the pain of his bruised face. “I can normally hear something that stands out as wrong—not like a discordant note so much as a weakening of the myriad sounds and tones, muddying and distorting them, and ultimately cutting it off completely. I don’t hear any of that coming from your thoughts. That said, I didn’t have much time to listen when I was wrestling with that captain on the dock… so I don’t know, perhaps I would have noticed something strange if I’d not been preoccupied.”
Lise blows out smoke, rubbing her brow with a knuckle. “I have felt it working through me many times—many of which I’m only now connecting in retrospect. In crucial moments, I’ve felt it pressing on my tender spots, selectively veiling memories, even forcing my legs to walk when it can’t influence me in those subtler way.” She loses the conversation to a line of thought that tugs her along too fast for her mouth to keep up. It was there—it made me kill mama… and was there when I made the fiend… it didn’t want me to go into The Dwelling and find what came of Rese—I felt it shattering me there, pressing on me. I-I-I... fuck... it almost put me on the wrong boat… what would I have done then? Seli… it stole the location where ‘freedom is chained’ from me… I have been the fool… strung around by my pain. Is it here even now? Watching these thoughts run round my head from the safety of NON? Are you in there…? What have I been doing all this time? What have you kept me from? I have no idea the extent… What the fuck do I… This is terrible. Truly awful… I can hardly trust previous thoughts, past conclusions, my memories. Even these thoughts, what can I believe? WHAT DO I DO?! Is it even a fiend? It was hiding in NON, so does that mean I was wrong before or is it not a fiend? Is it like ‘Pain’? Fuck… I… How do I even begin?
She takes another puff off the pipe, “Denoda?”
He looks up from his lap, startled from his own thoughts. “Yes?”
“Just… keep an ear turned to me, if you would.”
“I will.”
He sits with her a few minutes longer before taking the hammock across from her. Navah has been asleep some hours already, observing Lise from the undermind, keeping watch for abnormalities after the initial examination didn’t reveal anything. Whether that is due to her truly having no notable issues or due to the fiend’s ability to hide its work worries Lise. The existence of the being that destroyed Bente, the creature she named ‘Pain’, and now this new entity, ‘The Shatterer’, gives rise to a terrible dread that keeps her on the edge of panic. Nothing she learned during her time at The Dwelling, nothing Akota or her parents taught her, had equipped her to handle this—even in her direct experience dealing with fiends never had she faced something like this. I’m not going to be able to sleep in this state…
Denoda snores softly, his chin tucked into his chest, keeping time with the regular rock and roll of the boat as it crests a wave. The floorboards are slick with a film of sea water; Lise’s bare feet curl on the wood, trying for a semblance of security as she hoists herself out of the hammock. Pain humbles her, again. She stands there—fixated on Denoda’s breathing—trying to maintain her balance as she bears pain’s heavy mallets. You and I need to have a conversation… She thinks of the creature born of her pain and has to suppress a chuckle as the image of trying to negotiate with the ghoul arises. Shaking her head, she begins her arduous journey to the stairs.
As she emerges, breath gone ragged, a member of the ship’s crew lets out a piercing whistle that rings out over the crashing waters. The lantern hanging above rattles in the wind, the flame inside blissful in ignorance. Leaning over the railing of the upper deck, the ship’s captain waves to her and disappears from view. It is hard to adjust to the sense that the floor is rolling. There is a moment that something like vertigo comes over her, struggling to reconcile the surreal feeling that she might suddenly fall up into the sky.
The captain reappears. She leaps from the second to last step and lands with grace beside Lise just in time to keep her from falling back below deck. “Easy there! Grab my shoulder!”
She blinks, trying to shake the disorientation. Gripping the woman’s shoulder she scrounges up a semblance of balance. The captain is small of stature—looking a different creature altogether beside Lise’s long, angular frame. They might be of like weights though; the smaller woman is sturdy as a boulder and doesn’t miss a step. By the end of their short walk she bears much of Lise’s weight and still stands rooted firm. She is briefly reminded of jockeying with a woodball player called Del who, despite the size difference, could move her around like few others her age were able. I hated playing against Del, but loved having them on my team…
The boards beneath her feel strange to tread, as though the ship might toss her into the sea upon impact with one of the waves smacking so hard against its painted hull. Her reverie is shattered as a board catches her bare toe and she stumbles, only staying upright because the captain steps in front of her and holds her up at the waist. As she reorients, the captain reminds her, “Keep your head here or you’re likely to lose it.”
“Yeah. Thank you…” Lise grunts as she deposits her on a narrow bench which sits behind a broad wheel. The wheel is pockmarked by deep, uneven grooves in the wood whose edges have been worn smooth by handling. Its long spokes are rounded except for where it is too close to the wheel to be gripped. After a glance around at the marginally more accommodating setting she remarks, “Admittedly, wiser if I just stayed down below deck.”
“Maybe. Depends, don’t it.” The captain smiles at her, leaning one arm on the wheel. “Your mind is a tumult, yeah?”
Lise still has to look down slightly to meet her eyes, even while sitting. “Does it read that plain?”
She shrugs, pursing her lips. “Just that it must have been something serious made you want to go through the effort of getting up here.”
Lise nods, gazing out at the moon-chromed crests rising and receding into the deep, vast dark. “Yeah… Something like too many thoughts for so small a place.”
“I don’t do much of anything on land these days, especially thinkin’. Not enough space, too many hard places, too many others thinkin’ nearby. Make sense? The sea offers more room than you could furnish, though she can be a harsh madam to house with if you don’t know her temperament. Truly. Give a look to the shape your thoughts take to when we land and compare. Nowhere freer than the sea.”
“Don’t you worry about how unstable it is? Obviously, you seem to manage well but… It feels that a floor isn’t promised out here.”
The captain pursed her lips, running her tongue over the front of her teeth. “Mm, don’t think on it much really. Who’s promised you a floor?”
“…No one, I suppose. And I don’t know that I expect one anymore either.”
“Right, yeah? The land might promise itself, but it can’t truly promise itself anymore than I can. I could die anytime. The land might shake apart and fall out from under you. Yes the sea is more unstable but it holds no illusions otherwise. Truly. If you don’t strip yourself the sea will tear that farce from you quick as bolts spearing from black clouds.”
There was something to what she was expressing that resonated in Lise. It is a frightening truth but it’s a profound relief to accept it. “I think you’re right. I’m clinging to the semblance of security…”
The woman grins at her, “Do you know how to swim?”
“Well…” Lise looks out at the churning black mass roaring through the night and shivers. A spray of salty water startles her so much she almost slips off the bench, cringing and spitting. After she regains some composure she manages a small smile to acknowledge the sight it must have been. “I… I know only the waters of the land which seem relatively meek on reflection.”
One of the crew whistles a sharp tune over the crashing waves and the captain turns, whistling a response as she slowly rolls the steering wheel right. The ship tilts and Lise gets that incongruous, stomach-twisting vertigo. Holding onto that bench so tight, for some reason all she can think of is her doomed descent down that ice-crusted precipice into the ravine from which the raptor snatched her up. Her scarred and stumped fingers ache and she has a terrible haunt of that deathly fear—losing her grip and tumbling, dying against the cliffs well before her limp body lay still. A hideous mess trailing down the craggy stone and then nothing. A scream and silence. There she goes. Gone.
“She’s just got a vibrant personality!” The captain’s cackle is big enough to be heard over the blood rush thrumming in Lise’s ears. “But I’m thinking she’s not in the mood for strangers! We should get you back below!”
Lise sits, cross-legged, on a thick rope coiled into the recess of the top of a heavy barrel. She’s been watching the crew—six in all—as they work the ship along its perilous way across the deep black. Here, she comes to see where some of the captain’s confidence stems. In the undermind, Gramma’s Blessing is rendered with the attention to detail that comes from the familiarity born of care. It rolls on the waves as it does in reality, even as the water here lays dormant. And at the helm is the crisp image of the captain herself as she is on the other side. As the captain moves about the ship, it seems as though the paint coloring the wood becomes a little more vibrant. She leaves a lingering clarity wherever she treads.
‘Most of the crew are dwellers!’ Denoda’s sudden appearance beside her startles her from her observation. He feels about for her, not quite sure where she is but sensing her nearby. ‘Or close to it, I should say. I think only the captain and one other are able to access the undermind at will but they’re all very resonant.’
She puts a hand on his shoulder to stop his searching, ‘I noticed. And the ship is… solid. It’s strange.’ The rope coiled beneath her is not perfectly recreated—couldn’t be—but as she rests her fingertips on its fibers the tactile sensation is convincing. She fully believes that if she were to lift it, it would hang like a rope does—and so it would.
‘What conflicts you?’
She glances at him, looking at his ears—they look no different and yet she knows they are tuned in to her mind. She shakes her head, sighing, ‘I don’t know. My immediate feeling is that something is wrong here… but I don’t know that I can trust that feeling. And so… my secondary feeling is that something is wrong with me. I feel incongruous. I am afraid of…’ She closes her eyes and shakes her head again.
He waits for her to continue but she doesn’t. As the pause begins to stretch to the point of tension, he prompts, ‘You’re afraid of…?’
His simple prompting unleashes a fury of thoughts too rapid, too erratic to track. Lost in the tumult of her terrors, new and old, she emerges battered by them, ‘…So much. Too much. I am afraid of losing myself to that creature again and putting everyone else at risk by my nearness. It’s been influencing me for so long and I am barely able to recall fragments of what it has used me to enact. As I look upon these people, this place, I am ever more stricken by my selfishness. In the pursuit of my sister I have tread heavily and I don’t know what all I’ve left in my wake. Just glances over my shoulder… I don’t know if I can justify it. All the death, pain, grief. I need to rid myself of that thing but I don’t know how.
‘There is a hollow at my center beyond which is a vast nothingness. Unlike empty space in that it permits no thought, has no texture to touch, scent to smell, sight to see—silent, still, lightless. It strips you down until you too are nothing and when you return to reality you are as mere material and have to recover what parts of your… Well, that part is irrelevant right now… Anyway, somehow, certain as I can manage, I saw The Shatterer retreat into that place as though it were a burrow. Despite what it should do to a fiend, it is able to linger in there long enough to go undetected until it revealed its hand. I only know glimpses of what it is capable of but what memories have returned to me make me feel such disabling horror that I wish I… no, nevermind that.
‘What I’m reaching toward is that as long as it resides in me I am endangering everyone… I can’t exactly leave, and before boarding I wasn’t capable of warning them—anyone—of the danger. But now I feel I must bring at least the captain in on this much so she might decide what to do with me. Even if that means throwing me into the sea. My fault or not, its impact reaches too far beyond me. If they are going to risk themselves it’s not right for me to withhold this.’
Denoda is stunned silent a while before he manages, ‘Ah, I see…’ He pauses, ‘Well, not really. I can’t see much in this realm… But I do hear you. It is much to process at once for me, but I imagine that’s mostly because you saying all that was you trying to process it a bit yourself.’
She winces, feeling some chagrin for how that must have sounded. ‘Yeah, sorry… it’s almost all I can think about.’
‘No, thank you for letting me in on what you’re thinking. You know, your predicament is coming clearer to me now. I feel more… no, what I mean to say is I am starting to recognize some of the motifs of your mind. The more you tell me what is brewing in there the more I might be able to recognize when something is wrong, perhaps. Wait, what was that right there. I’ve felt that one before. Mmm, discomfort? Embarrassment? Oh… Oh, my apologies… I overstepped.’
She is about to let that rest but thinks better of it, ‘No… Disregard my embarrassment there, it is a selfish kind of discomfort considering the circumstances. I asked you to keep an ear turned to me knowing I would feel vulnerable, and knowing it is necessary all the same.’
Making efforts to minimize expectations in the pursuit of a semblance of preparedness goes awry when what occurs can be called incredible without being hyperbolic. Lise sits in the same position atop the barrel, watching the sea’s form sharpen wherever the captain’s gaze falls. Waves arising where, before their passage, stretched a stagnant gray haze that shared few properties with water. It reminds her of her first glimpse of Dejed—a sanctuary of shape and color amidst the greater undefined mass which would one day swallow it up again. Readying herself to go speak with the captain, it is as she is mustering the resolve for the steep plunge back into pain of reality when she sees it waiting there. There, out on the rippling night tapestry. It hangs over the sea, the moon’s antithesis. On the veil between worlds, where there should be more of the dim silver of stars casting their glow, there is a void… not a void, no… a black shape waiting in the dark.
It sends a high-pitched tone at her as a javelin and transfixes her once.
You are not my enemy.
I am not your friend.
You are my hand.
I am your handler.
Your fetters are mine.
My freedom is yours.
Lise staggers off the barrel, running toward the ship’s railing. She tries to leap off but her foot catches and she tumbles in the air, hitting the water on her back. There is a flare of pain as her real injury breaches the veil. As she sinks into the false sea the pain goes and she floats for a moment before kicking her way to the surface. Imagining a path of ice stretching out over the water, she scrambles to climb atop it but it’s thin and crumbles under her. ‘Damn you!’ She spits, blinking away sweet seawater and tries again. Using digits that don’t exist to grip the edge; it doesn’t really solidify until she remembers cold numbing her fingers. She manages to clamber up onto the thickening ice and lingers on it as syrupy gray droplets run off her and slide into the sea.
But as she looks up to see her path leading her to the shape, the shape has already vanished. The surge of desperate anger is sucked out of her and she’s left with the terror that spawned it. She drifts on the waves, the chunk of ice she grips snapping off the insubstantial path she manifested. She grips it tighter as she is splintered apart. Her indignation taken quick as it came and in its place rushes caustic half-thoughts of death and worse. Trembling at the images flashing through her mind of sending her mother to her sun-blasted end. Her anguish leaves her enfeebled.
She cannot move and her forehead begins to sting from being pressed to the ice. The ship’s wake sends waves crashing in on her and she’s flipped into the water. Her numbed fingers slip and the ice is yanked from her grasp, lost to the sea before she can get a breath. She can’t bring herself to do anything and so sinks into the deep.
Lise awakes atop a raised stone platform whose floor is chiseled a serpentine pattern—never revealing the head—with moss creeping along the gray scales. Far beyond their small platform lies a ring of immense mountains. Draped in the blue-green leaves of the dark-wooded trees and shrubs which grow from cracks in the soft, white and gray stone, the mountains are a rare beauty in the dawn glow. The mist fills in the space between the mountains, rising to just below the platform’s edge. Tendrils of mist curl up like fingers beckoning her closer.
She is seated in a high-backed chair, elbows rested on the rough table before her. Sitting on a white dish between her elbows a cup of tea steeps. Its spice, home redolent, is rendered uncanny to this unfamiliar space. Her mouth wets for it still.
‘I’ve seen it.’ She says, but Lise has eyes for the tea.
‘As have I.’ She replies, reaching for the cup.
‘I’ve seen where freedom is chained.’
Lise takes it and, in trembling hands, examines the powder-blue porcelain—broken, and run through with bolts of pale silver. Her tears fizz and pop where they fall. The flowers etched on the cup are worn and filled in dark. The smell transfixes.
‘It looks as a platform amid the mists, eight-sided.’
‘Ah, yes,’ She says absently, ‘I’ve seen it.’
‘Shy, the serpents which roll over it.’
‘I agree.’ She drinks of it.
‘I see it.’ Her mother is fixated on something far above them, eyes glazed over in rapture. ‘See it with me, dear. See where freedom is chained.’
Lise turns to follow her mother’s gaze but the sun’s sharpest rays seem to spill over the mountains and right into her eyes and she blinks and blinks as they start to tear up again. To no benefit. They water and water, and rubbing her eyes only quickens it. She looks up again, her eyes bleary, and after a good blink catches a glimpse of the strange light-fixture hanging over the table where her family sits eating. Her mother’s stare is intense, turning from the flickering candlelight to look right at her with eyes dark as her own—perhaps darker, deeper. She remains silent, curious at the vibrancy of her own imagination.
“Quin, I’m probably going to have to meet with them again.”
Her mother blinks and looks away, turning to her father, “Yes, that’s fine.”
“It’s fine…?”
“What’s confused you? It’s fine. Do whatever you must.”
“Well, it affects more than just me so I thought you would have wanted to discuss it more.”
“It doesn’t impact me.”
Rese hesitates at that, but shakes his head. “What do you mean? Of course it does. It’s going to change everything! Why are you brushing it off as if it's nothing now?” Quin looks at him, impassive. He waits, and waits still as she watches his expression oscillate between hurt, confused, and indignant. “Where is this coming–”
“It doesn’t matter.” Impassive.
He is silent, searching her face for something. “What? For the love of the land, please! Why are you acting like this?”
“I told you. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters yet. You won’t be around to witness anything that does.”
“Are you serious? What is wrong with you?” His hand shakes as he gestures his frustration at her, and he pulls it back. He stands from the table, shoving his half-eaten food away. “You know what, no… Not now. We’ll talk about this later…”
“No we won’t.”
He freezes where he stands and the silence is brittle. His grin is menacing when he turns back to her, but he visibly tries to soften it as he looks at the other two sitting at the table. Lise and Seli sit as still as they can. “Children, if you need me I will be at the Veris building. I suggest you find something else to do while your mother gets over herself.”
Lise drifts to the surface of a sea gone textureless gray and thick like cream. She flips over, the drab mass of undermind that clings to her naked body peeling off. It takes a few blinks to process where she is, what has happened. It’s just as her memories fall into place that she registers an odd upward pressure from beneath her. Something lifts her into the air, rising rapidly, and she can do little but lie flat against it. The gray liquid rushes off a coarse floor, sucking out from under her, leaving bare skin to scrape against hard stone. It stops suddenly, sending her several inches into the air before she falls back against the platform.
She groans, the echoes of real pain reaching her as she rolls onto her knees. Her clothing materializes around her as she stands, looking around. It’s the same platform as in her memory, sans her family’s table and tea set. And her mother. Her mother had shown her this place, hadn’t she? Why? Why her? The thought seems insignificant when it is before her again.
The Shatterer appears mere strides away—a black shape so hard to look at that she quickly averts her gaze. She stands there, her father’s cloak feels insubstantial before this thing which projects sharp coldness. It puts such a visceral chill in her that she cringes away as though something clawed the inside of her spine. Insects trying to escape her vertebrae in fear of the shapeless thing.
‘FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!’ Lise shrieks, tripping over herself as she stumbles backwards. ‘DAMN YOU TO NON! BLAST YOU UNDER THE SAME LENS YOU MADE ME D–’
‘Lise.’
Her heel catches on one of the curling serpents and she slips off the platform. She lands in the center of an identical platform, the original being vanished the same instant. ‘Lise, stand up.’
That voice… Lise is crying before she rises, barely able to see her through her tears. What is happening…? There, in arm’s reach, waits Seli. She looks older. Older than Lise by a number of days, even. Her smiling eyes appear with a glint of maternal love. It is uncanny to feel her looking upon her so but the welling emotions drown it. She rushes forward to embrace her and passes through, running straight off the platform.
She hits the center of another platform. Her face smashes against the stone and she feels teeth crack and her nose crunch inward, but as she scrambles to fit the pieces of her face back in place she finds they’re already there. What is happening…?
‘Lise, stand up.’
It’s Akota this time, waiting there. He is changed. He does not look older as Seli had, but a peculiar mark has appeared across his face and bare chest. Deathly gray slashes in his skin—strange scars which lack the pucker of true scarring. Lise screams as the marks suddenly deepen and his flesh splits open as though gored by a raptor twice the size hers had been. He falls from the platform in parts hardly recognizable.
In his place, her father’s emaciated corpse lands with a wet slap. Its eyes look through her, jaw visibly broken beneath the skin. His flesh deteriorates before her eyes, sloughing off his crumpled bones. The bones clatter off the platform, caught in a wind that doesn’t grace Lise. She trembles as she stares at the place they’d been, lacking the strength to rise. A visage of death slowly descends from the sky. She has no thoughts for anything but horror and the piercing tone splitting her mind. The Shatterer lets her watch as it returns to NON through her, nestling into the perfect dark there at the center. Reality shudders.
Lise cries out, flailing against the hands which grip her, which shake her. “Stop! Stop, she’s awake!” Someone says, pulling them off her.
She curls into herself, weeping at her pains of mind and of body. Part of her desires a return to NON and another recoils at the thought. The parasite burrowed into her and stole her sole escape. She wants to tear at her own skin, her own flesh, and rip out that horror even if it kills her in the process. Screaming and thrashing, screaming so hard her chest screams with her—pain is preferable to this grating itch that’s scraping her out her skull. Instead, she just curls into herself tighter, her crying quieted against her knees.
“…Lise?” Denoda kneels beside her hammock, hesitating before resting a hand on her shoulder. “Lise, what’s happened? Are you alright?”
She can’t bring herself to respond right away, the itch intensifying as she tries to stifle her sobs, but Denoda doesn’t prompt her again. He waits as she struggles to breach its pressure. Through gritted teeth, between heavy breaths, she manages to utter, “What… do you… hear?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t listen anymore. It hurts to hear, it’s like a spiny insect crawling into my ear.”
The Shatterer’s touch lifted from her, drawn back into the dark seemingly in response to his words. Lise blinks, working her jaw loose. The severity of her pain is easily half or less what it was moments prior. She seizes on the moment of weakness, leaning into the sensitivity she perceived. “But you were listening, weren’t you? The whole time?” He was listening. She projects the thought into NON—an action that would be pointless were she not near certain it still lingered near the dilated opening. Denoda’s response is lost to her as she turns her attention to NON, staring into it, focusing her awareness on it. Her attention is turned to a lance. Its there—she sees it—a black shape in the dark. Striking true, her gaze pierces its myriad surfaces. For an instant, she has a glimpse of two immaterial shapes hanging in the sky, eyes tearing at the sunrise, and then the vision is gone as The Shatterer flees her perception.
Lise startles at the sudden return, looking around frantic. Denoda stands with his eyes shut tight, thumbs pressed into his temples. One of the crew holds open the door at the top of the stairs, casting light down on Navah and the captain standing to Denoda’s right side—both staring at her with expressions she can’t quite decipher. She groans, trying to roll out of her hammock and manages it with the help of the captain. The diminutive woman keeps a steadying hand on Lise’s elbow even as she stands straight.
“It’s gone again.” Denoda mutters.
She nods—then, realizing he still has his eyes closed, says, “We frightened it deeper into NON for the time being… I don’t know when it will return, but it certainly will. It has before, I think.”
“What is ‘it,’ exactly?” Navah asks, “Is this the supposed fiend?”
Lise’s breathing is ragged as she leans against the painted blue wall, “I do not know what it is… If it’s a fiend it is the most terrible I can imagine. It is sharp in a way that few fiends even come close to.”
The captain releases her arm, stepping back. “I must admit I’ve lost my bearings in this. What is happening here?”
Lise feels as though someone strummed her nerves, leaving her with a painful tremor that won’t ease. “It is… too much… to tell here…” She leans her head against the wall, feeling a cold sweat sprout on her brow and beneath her eyes. “Love of the land… I feel miserable. I need help…”
Denoda and the captain catch her before she falls, calling for more to help. Denoda and three of the crew hoist her up and carry her to the deck. “Bring her to my quarters.” The captain holds open her door, “Just lay her on the bed, it’s fine.” After they set her down on the stiff bed, the captain sends off the crew again, “Find Siryl for me—while you’re doing that wake everyone and tell them that we need to be prepared to ride green.”
Lise takes in little more than flashes of warm color and the reverberations of pounding boots. It all falls discordant on the cold horror creeping through her flesh like the roots of an ill seed. Denoda kneels beside he and procures a thick flask of water from his coat, holding it up for her to take. She hesitates but ends up drinking all of it, wincing at each swallow.
“Well…?” Navah stands back against the wall opposite the bed, crossing their arms and looking between the two of them. “We–”
“A moment.” The captain interrupts her, “Wait for my apprentice.”
Navah doesn’t look pleased but remains silent as the captain turns from them and rummages through an open-topped wooden crate. She comes up with a small mechanical device, holding it by what appears to be a long crank. Lise closes her eyes as the captain shakes the contraption, rattling loud in the small cabin. She slaps it down on her anchored desk, chuckling, “Yeah this should still work…”
Lise feels Denoda push off the side of the bed as he looks closer at the little thing. “What is that?”
“Shortcut!” She answers with an audible grin. She peers into one end of it before banging it on the desk again, peering into it again, finally setting it on the desk. As she searches the drawers of her desk, she explains, “Contraption I was gifted by a passenger by way of Basteca some days gone. Ah, here we are. This pellet goes inside here, I close it, and then I turn the spinnery thing until I feel it get hot. It makes a fragrant smoke, watch here…”
The door opens and in walks a wiry, pale-skinned man in a sleeveless blue shirt and baggy pants rolled up above his bare feet. Dark, receding hair hangs to his shoulders around a wispy beard. He closes the door behind him and stands there a moment with his arms hanging at his sides, quietly noting everyone in the room. He nods to them and speaks in a soft tone, “I am Siryl.” He turns to the captain, “Riding green?”
“Yessir! Our trouble awaits us on the other side.” The captain says to him and he looks at the device she cranks. Plumes of white smoke jet from holes around its top. He nods again and slowly lowers himself to sit against the door, closing his eyes. “Ah yes, good idea! Make yourselves comfortable before this thing does, you’ll wake with a lump on your fore. Quickly now!”
Navah looks between them, trying to wave away the heavy smoke. “What…?”
“It’s a sleep inducer of some sort. You should sit down.” Denoda gestures but it’s too late.
Navah stumbles, collapsing to their knees. “Ugh… I would appreciate–” The floor cuts them off, cheek smacking against the paint. “Buhh… sooner… next time.”
Denoda is the next to go under and the captain slumps into her chair shortly after—the contraption falling from her hanging hand, still spewing smoke. Siryl takes a deep breath and his head slowly lolls forward as he exhales. Lise lingers, pain prying her eyes back open after every blink. She can see its hollow fingers peeling them back by the lashes. She marvels as Pain turns to look down at her, peculiarly expressive despite the weightless shroud veiling its hideous visage. It tilts its head and she can’t find it in herself to loathe it as she had. She would rather stay here and have parley with Pain than risk facing The Shatterer again. The sleep inducer is too insistent to ignore. She takes a deep breath and Pain’s shape drifts back into the smoke.
‘…are you talking about? I can’t see more than little bits of light and darkness in this place.’
The captain leans over Lise, prodding at something near her stomach. ‘Fiend? Is this the problem here? More real than most fiends I seen. Odd little thing.’
‘Ah, no… that’s not…’ A miniature Pain stands on her stomach, stepping out of the way of the captain’s prodding fingers. She struggles to find an explanation and realizes she doesn’t have a good one, ‘Well, I don’t know what it is either… It’s not the most urgent problem though.’
‘Wouldn’t say it wise to leave it be, unknowing. But introduce us to whichever is worse than this.’ The captain helps Lise stand and during the motion catches Pain by its leg as it makes to leap from her lap. ‘Ah, not so sly as you figured little twit.’ She grips it round the middle and shakes it until it stops flailing, then grips it with her other hand and snaps off its bony legs. The captain grins and chucks the pieces of it into the corner, clapping Lise on the elbow. ‘Now then, the other thing?’
She looks around the small ship cabin, briefly meeting the eyes of each of the three near-strangers surrounding her, ending on Denoda who appears to be peering through the wall. ‘I must be careful, it listens to what I say and will try to assert itself over me. It has manipulated my memories in order to spur and steer me. But please, before I go on, can we go outside?’
Navah nods at that, ‘Yes, I am stifled in here.’
‘Makes little difference to me,’ Denoda chuckles. ‘Could someone show me out so I don’t look a fool finding the door?’
‘You really can’t see anything here, huh? What happened?’ The captain asks as she moves to lead him out.
‘Well… nothing happened. It’s just how it has always been for me.’ Denoda’s gentle voice is a peculiar comfort. It draws Lise back to her center, finding some balance over the flow of nerves. ‘Anyway, just set me somewhere I can sit down.’
Cutting through the viscous sea, Gramma’s Blessing is a beacon of color. The open, indistinct gray surrounding the ship is a waiting boon; a waiting bane. Lise hesitates, peering over the railing at the slowed roil of unreal waters. When she turns back everyone but Denoda is looking at her, expectantly. How do I even tell it without risking everything…? I can’t. I can’t tell it all. But I must tell, very least, what might be upon them… us… She rubs the nub of her lost pinky, trying to figure what she should say first when every passing word might lure it out from her.
She says simply, ‘Be ready.’
‘Ready how?’ Navah asks, their confused frown almost obscured by their cloth face-covering.
Lise takes a deep breath, bracing herself. ‘However you would ready yourself to face an unfathomable beast. The more we speak of it, the more we should anticipate it to strike.’
