Vincent immediately knew he was asleep and the world he was seeing was a dream. He knew this because he found himself staring at a clock whose numbers were scrambled and detached from its surface. It read T:58 P.M. ESZT.
No such time zone exists, he thought.
But then he remembered it did and he was late for it. Late for what? The walls of the room swelled with each breath, emanating the subtle scent of flowers. He tore them open like wet tissue, allowing cough drops and dandelions to scatter all over the floor, a floor filled with cheap plastic balls.
It was a ball pit in which all children used to play, hiding among mountains of plastic orbs. Flashing lights and the chirp of electronic arcade games used to be the sights and sounds of this amazing place. But now the plastic balls were wet and mushy like ruined, decaying memories. A few dead Power Rangers were scattered among the choke hazards. The ball pit swelled and deflated just as the wall did, sending up a gust of floral aromas. The petals which streamed into the air became bubbles that bobbed and bounced off the walls.
In a moment, he was lying on the mountain of plastic balls, sinking deeper and deeper until he touched water. Deeper and deeper he sank into the looming darkness, leaving behind the canopy of plastic orbs above him. He could not see through the veil of water, nor did he know how far he was sinking. But he could hear the world breathing as though he were trapped in some gigantic organism.
"I am dreaming." he said, but he was unable to move his mouth.
Something confined it. He tried to move his arm in order to free the bonds that held his mouth, but he couldn't move that either, nor could he move his other arm or either of his legs. He tried to cry out for help, but his voice went unheard. Another breath, another gust of flora. The darkness sighed in pity.
He landed in his bed, which stood vertical against the wall. The wall floated in a world of green miasma. The clock was there again only this time, it was a digital clock. Its numbers, red and spinning. It was a dream, he knew that. Yet each time he smelled the flora, he forgot it was a dream and succumbed to its stream of incoherent ideas and mind-numbing paradoxes. In the real world, his arms and legs were still bound, but in the dream, they were not. His mind replicated the feel of locomotion, allowing him to move through the sleeping world. His foot struck a solid surface, from which a pulsing energy radiated. Instinctively, he knew it contained some sort of logic, though he did not understand it.
His hand found a keyboard. From where it appeared, he did not know. The energy coalesced into a monitor, a physical translation of a power which he did not comprehend. He tried to type something, but an error message immediately blared across the screen: Access Denied. He tried Ctrl+Alt+Delete. But again, the error message repeated, "Access Denied." The monitor sighed at his efforts and blew the scent of flowers towards him. But he "left" himself behind, phasing through the wall in which the monitor resided. He watched himself stare lazily into the sky. Good, he fooled it. Or so he thought, for he still smelled the flowers. He felt his mind slipping...slipping...slipping.
He was back at the computer again; the words "ACCESS DENIED" continued to blare across the screen. A screen? Screens are doorways in his dreams. He grabbed hold of the face plate and removed it, exposing floating plasma. He extended his hand toward the image and watched it become a translucent energy which could only be described as electronic fire. His nerves burned, but where there should have been pain, there was none. He became an entity of ethereal energy and digital code. The computer exploded before his presence, into fragments of logic and conditions which orbited him like a cluster of stars and satellites. With a gesture of his hand, he attempted to assign an order to their relevance and importance. But he could not. Something was in his way.
The system awaited a command from its owner.
"Who is the owner?" he asked it.
No response.
Something was intoxicating his system, keeping his mind in a haze. Every time the world sighed with the scent of flowers, he sunk deeper into the dream and lost his grip. The scent...it seemed very familiar. Vincent felt cool air brush against his mouth and nostrils in the waking world. Nostrils...he was inhaling something through his sinuses. Using as much of his will as he could muster, he only breathed through his mouth until the walls in his dream stopped exuding petals.
With his mouth open, he reached his hands toward the monitor. The computer morphed into a network that represented some sort of hierarchy. From a central node cascaded all sorts of commands and functions. On it blazed a single word: owner. Lines of light connected the "owner" to the cascade of commands. His hand, which was still an ethereal construction of digital fire, reached forward to the cascade. It closed around the connection that bridged the owner to the network and severed it.
"Access granted."
The cascaded hierarchy rearranged itself to his liking, transforming into a set of conditions all awaiting his command. Traits and statuses with click boxes listed themselves before his ethereal being:
Hardness: 100%
Volume used: 22%
Initial Material Form: Blade
Trigger: Contact with TARGET
Material Paradigm: Cover and solidify organic EXCEPT OWNER and EXEMPTIONS.
Hidden within each of these statuses were more elaborate definitions and criteria. Touching them with his ethereal form awakened some sort of intuition. He "knew" that if he willed it, he would be able to delve into these machinations and learn their workings. Perhaps he could modify them to his liking. But before he could do so, he heard voices. The statuses disappeared from his vision as a rift cut across his sight. He opened his eyes and found that he was still frozen in the metallic carapace.
"I have no say in the matter." Vincent recognized Clayde's voice. "She was sent by Orth himself."
"But she is a kiolai," Tuls whispered, "Orth only sends kiolai after the worst criminals."
"That's Silith," Ro'ken growled quietly, "Do you remember me telling you about her, Clayde?! Even by the standards of the kiolai, she is a prodigy. She could even be a shandan if she wanted to. She is that good. They only send her after the most dangerous marks. What have we been traveling with?!"
"Silith?" Tuls was surprised. "That's her?"
"Yes. I briefly worked with her on a previous job."
Vincent was unable to move. He was trapped in a prison of claustrophobia. If it hadn't been for the strange drug smeared across his nostrils, he would have been panicking. His captor had him in a squatted position, his knees brought to his chest and his hands wrapped around them. It was a pose obviously designed to reduce muscle pains, yet the metal coating his body left him unable to move and unable to observe anything outside of whatever his eyes could see and his ears could hear. Instinctively, he closed his eyes to a squint so that nobody noticed he had awakened. He made sure to breathe through his mouth instead of his nose, so no more of the drug could get into his system.
"He really is a criminal? A Jalharen spy after all perhaps?" Clayde asked with disbelief, "he is as clueless as–"
"–Orth would not send her after him if he wasn't dangerous," Ro'ken interjected, "you don't believe his story about coming from another world, do you?"
"Of course not!" Clayde said, sounding indignant. "I–" He stopped speaking. Vincent heard sticks snapping from behind.
"Thank you for welcoming me to your fire," a woman's voice said. It was deep, graceful, and it was poised with calm confidence. Yet it also carried with it subtle hints of peril. "I am sorry for the late intrusion."
Silith took a seat in front of the newly lit fire, casting Vincent in her shadow. He held his breath, fearing that his own respiration would betray him. Through his squinted lids he could not see much. An ebony wing stretched in front of his gaze, its membranes flickered with the fire's light. He could see hints of the blue blood that ran through her veins.
"Our fire is yours Kiolai Silith, even if you're here to take our mark," Clayde said with a hint of good humor, and a little bit of irritation.
"Silith?" she asked, a slight amusem*nt to her inflection. "Has that moniker spread this far already?"
"I was the one who told them about it, Reashos," Ro'ken admitted, "if you prefer to be called by your real name–"
"–I do not mind," she said, "though Orth bends my wing over the use of my monikers. The man is devoid of humor. But since he is not here, call me Silith, Slade, whatever pleases you. Ro'ken. I am glad we meet again."
"Kiolai," Tuls said. There was apprehension in his voice. "Why have you come for Vincent? We were asked to escort him."
"This one?" Slade turned to gesture toward him. Vincent quickly closed his eyes and accidentally took a large breath through his nostrils. The world ebbed slightly, and he had to bite his tongue in order to prevent himself from being drugged into a deeper stupor. As he skirted on the edge of unconsciousness, he had something of a miniature revelation. The hierarchy from the dream was still present. He couldn't see it with his eyes, but he could feel it. His physical body was still trapped inside of the shell, unable to move. But his ethereal form was still there. It had no physical manifestation, but it seemed to burn like fire.
"I would rather not say," Slade said, "but plans have changed. I will take him from here. You will still be paid."
The hierarchy of command pulsed through the metallic carapace like the signals of an invisible circuit. It controlled his metallic prison and therefore, if it were modified, then perhaps the prison would be modified as well. It would become his to control. Silith or Slade did not appear to have a clue of his awakening, as she continued to answer the relos' questions. Adrenaline coursed through his blood as he imagined the revenge he meant to exact. This world had put him through enough. It had drawn one last straw by trapping him as if he were some sort of animal. But he had to calm down. Freaking out solves nothing. So, he intentionally inhaled the smallest whiff of the drug through his nose and allowed his nerves to calm. Then he got to work.
The circuit revealed itself by bits and pieces to his ethereal fire, which became like threads of flame. Not knowing how he did it, he wove these threads into the dictations of the iron shell and slowly learned by intuition, its functions. When the flames mapped the extent of the circuitry, it rearranged it in his head as a visual representation of his body. Or rather, a visual representation of the carapace itself as it covered his body. Nodes appeared like stars along a wire frame, places in which to enact his own command.
But what to do with it? How the hell was he doing this anyway? Perhaps stuff like this was further proof Falius was one elaborate lucid dream. Dreams had rules. Awareness of those rules allowed him to bend the world to his will. Maybe the same thing was happening here. His awareness of this world's nature gave him a strange power, perhaps.
He wove the fire into a node along his right index finger. In it, he modified the material hardness and added a new trait: flexibility. Immediately he felt his right index finger free itself. No...it was still encased in the metallic substance, but it could move as if it were wearing the liquid metal like a glove. If Clayde hadn't yawned just then, Vincent's excited outburst would have revealed his "sorcery". He tried to hold his finger in the position it had been frozen into, but doing so was more difficult than he had anticipated. So, he reset the condition. His finger froze once again.
What he needed was a toggle switch. The ethereal form wove into the top of the hierarchy a state that opened the circuit upon command and closed it upon the other. But he saw the flaw in such a plan. If he disabled it all at once, the prison would vanish, his limbs would flop and he would immediately be revealed. He did not know how quickly Slade could move, but he had no doubt she would be able to subdue him a second time. So, he removed the toggle from the top of the command.
Vincent paid no attention to the conversation they'd been having. He never got a good look at Slade nor did he try to. Every now and then, she would turn to look at him and he would inhale the drug to feign sleep. In a way, the substance worked to his advantage because it allowed time to pass more quickly, putting him in a state in between sleep and full wakefulness. It seemed to pass in chunks as he continued his clandestine operation.
Instead of setting up one master switch, he placed several smaller toggle switches along his limbs with duplicate conditions. When everything was configured the way he wanted, he "activated" the switch on his neck, which controlled all the metal covering his head. It was made versatile and flexible, no longer acting like metal but more like latex. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
The fire was still burning, but it was weaker. Clayde and Ro'ken could not be seen, but judging from the snores Vincent heard, he assumed they were asleep. Tuls, looking weak in the eyes, sat on the opposite side of the fire, talking to Slade. She still had her back to Vincent, but she was much closer than she had been earlier, just a few feet away, within reaching distance.
Vincent very carefully set the conditions of the metal covering his arm so that it became flexible. He barely managed to stop it before it hit the ground and foiled his plan. He waited, but nobody saw or heard his movement. So he slowly lowered his arm to his hip and wrapped his hand around the handle.
"–just heard a rumor..." Tuls said, "about the Runite Vault and the archives."
Good, Vincent thought, keep her distracted.
He was certain Slade's wings would prevent Tuls from seeing that his arm had changed positions. He once more, wove a toggle switch at the top of the hierarchy, one that was ready to set him as the owner. But he waited. He knew as soon as he activated it, the metal should release him. He did not know how this knowledge came to him, but he trusted it as if it were an instinct.
"If such a rumor is founded," Slade said, "I would certainly be forbidden from discussing it. You are tired Tuls. You should get sleep–"
Vincent took a deep breath and activated the switch. Cool air washed over his flesh as the handle siphoned the metal off his body quicker than he had predicted. His mane, damp with perspiration, clung to the sides of his cheeks and the back of his neck. Tuls swore and Vincent knew he had only seconds to react. As soon as he was able, he pulled the blade from his body and lunged forward. His cramped muscles protested at the sudden wrenching, but adrenaline pushed him through the pain. Slade leapt up faster than he could have believed possible and he felt her elbow crash down on his back, knocking the air out of him. But he grinned through the pain and looked up.
"I got you." he rasped, watching as the metal quickly crawled its way up her tail, pouring forth from the handle like a broken mercury thermometer.
By the time she realized what had happened, it had already enveloped her torso, wings, neck and head. He wiped the remnants of the drug off his snout and got to his feet. He heard Tuls call for Clayde and Ro'ken and knew there would be trouble if he did not act quick. He saw a knife, probably one of Slade's, lying on the ground and he snatched it up.
"Stop!" he demanded, as Clayde and Ro'ken woke up and saw what was happening. There was shock in all of their eyes. Ro'ken looked as though his suspicions had been vindicated, that they had been unknowingly traveling with a dangerous criminal.
"Take another step." Vincent raised the knife to Slade's frozen snout. She looked at him with lime-green eyes. They did not show any panic, nor did they show any hints of surprise. Instead, they looked calm and calculating. When they darted to his knife and back to his eyes, they did so not out of fear but with purpose.
"Take another step," Vincent repeated as desperation and panic gathered in his chest. "then I drive this right into her brain." he cursed that the tip of the knife trembled in his grip. "Right...I don't know what the hell is wrong with you freaks, but I'm sick of this sh*t."
"Vincent..." Tuls said.
"Stay the f*ck away!" Vincent shouted, "you think I won't do it? The synapses in my brain are misfiring and they're causing me to see freaks. That's all you are! Now you," he gestured to all three of the relos, "I don't know what the hell your game is. But this one? She just pissed me the hell off." The euphoria of the drug quickly dissipated from his system, allowing a seething rage to burn in his chest.
"Put the knife down boy," Clayde said, "do you wish to worsen your–"
"Oh, shut the hell up you fat f*ck!" Vincent spat, "I am so sick of all of this! I was supposed to spend Christmas vacation with my family, meet my sister's fiancé, and spend some time with my niece. I was supposed to get my degree and have a chance at securing a damn future! You know how hard I worked for that sh*t?! I wasn't supposed to get into an accident and wake up in your f*cking world! After everything I've been through the last thing I need is some random dragon bitch to literally appear out of thin air and stab me with the dagger of divine petrification!"
"Vincent," Tuls said, "what did you really do? Why did she come after you?"
"I have no f*cking clue..." Vincent paused, and he began to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. What in the f*ck was going on?! "Not...a f*cking clue...and I'm sick of it. I want answers. Who the f*ck is she?!"
"A kiolai...a bounty hunter," Ro'ken said, glaring at him. "She's one of the best there is. How many people did you murder for Orth to send her after you?"
"I...uh...what?!" Vincent could not even form a proper sentence.
"That's a nice trick, catching Reashos like that," Ro'ken continued, "I don't think anybody has seen that kind of lore before. But you better tuck in your wings and sit down. Whatever you did, you must have angered a lot of powerful people to have her sent after you. You're only making it worse for yourself."
Clayde got up and began to approach. "Put the knife down. No sense escalating this."
"I said don't come any closer!" Vincent said, "I will f*cking skewer her brain if you take another step!"
Clayde looked at him. "Son, she already escaped."
What? He looked at the carapace and froze when he found himself staring at an empty metal husk. It was impossible. Just mere moments ago, she had been helplessly confined. There was no way she could have gotten out.
"You are strange," a voice spoke from behind.
He spun around and almost lost his balance. There she was, mounted on the top of a large white landrider, looking down upon him. Her snout was rounded at the edges and though it was still vaguely triangular, it was shorter and lacked some of the jagged features that her male counterparts had. A single braid of jet black hair dangled from the back of her scalp and a white stripe ran down between her eyes, tapering off to a V just as it touched the bridge of her snout. Though he could not see much of her ebony arms, the firelight illuminated just enough for him to see moderately defined muscle, lined with scars.
"H-how...w-what?!" he stammered.
Without saying anything, she casually dismounted her beast and leapt to the ground. Then she stretched her arms, cracked her joints as she walked swiftly toward him. With panic rising in his chest, he involuntarily took a step back until he bumped into the metal husk in which he thought she had been trapped. His hand gripped onto the handle of the knife.
"Did you think I would use shryken without having a means of escape?" she continued, "though it is a rare occasion, even I am known to have accidents. But as I said, you are strange. I do not know how you...'hijacked' my shryken or pierced my veil, but I do not need conduits to subdue you. Put that knife down or else you will get hurt, Vincent Cordell."
"I...what the f*ck is this all about?! I didn't do anything!"
"You killed a telen who tried to contact you through the reticulum." she said.
Somebody dropped an expletive but before they could ask questions, she continued, "When a 'Jalharan' channeler was reported to Meldohv, attempts were made to contact them through the Craizen Reticulum. The first and second attempts were repelled by an unknown lore. Subsequent attempts also failed. Fearing the implications of this new ability, an order was issued demanding you be bound. The telen who carried out this order was subsequently killed...by you."
Vincent was left dumbfounded by her unfathomable accusations.
"Is that even possible?" Tuls asked.
"Tried to contact me..." Vincent repeated, ignoring Tuls. "What the hell are you talking about?!"
"You would have felt it," Slade said, "the touch of the reticulum is unmistakable, like a thousand strings on your skin."
Vincent froze at those words. It had been days since he had felt the sensation she described. He remembered somebody speaking in Xalix's language, but he assumed it had been his phantoms. He remembered the dream, he remembered the asylum guard that kept transitioning from human to dragon. He remembered the desperate ferocity of her fight, and the terror of resignation in her voice when she realized she was about to die.
"He is not one of us..."
"Are you out of your damn mind?" Vincent couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You're saying...that was a real person...and you're saying I killed her? That somehow, I fell asleep, and because of– I don't know– some f*cking made up lore made me fall asleep, but that I reached through the air and murdered somebody X number of miles away? Are you stupid? Because that's the dumbest sh*t I've heard."
"I expect you to drop the knife, hold your hands together in front of you and fold your wings. I will not ask again."
"Oh, go f*ck yourself you dumb bi–"
He did not see what she did, but in a moment, the world spun over his head and the knife flew out of his hand. His face struck dirt and he tasted blood.
"The relos will not be escorting you to Meldohv. They will resume their duty up Admoran's North." Slade kept him pinned to the grass, somehow binding the wings in a precarious position. He knew that if he struggled, all she had to do was bend them and cause a sh*tload of pain, perhaps even dislocate them. "You will be riding with me to Meldohv. Now you can come calmly and obediently, and this trip will not be as miserable as it could be. Or you can struggle now and make it far more miserable for yourself."
After spitting bits of blood out of his mouth, he had the sudden urge to get his hands around this creature's neck and wring it, but remembering her accusation, he began to snicker. This whole situation was ridiculous to remain angry at. "Fine, I'll play along. Might be fun. I want to see where this takes me."
She sat him up and instructed him to hold his hands out, then bound both of them. She did the same thing to his wings. Then she forced him to put on a vest covered with several sets of iron loops, and tethered him to her landrider's saddle with a long rope, like a domestic animal. Then she opened a jar. The substance inside emitted a familiar floral scent.
"Lyanth," she explained, "You need your sleep for tomorrow's trek. Close your mouth and inhale as much of it as you can."
He looked over to the relos, who had been quietly conversing among themselves, "Are you guys going to let her do this? Didn't you hear I kill people while I'm sleeping?! She's putting all of you in danger!"
Before he could answer, she smeared the jelly-like substance under his nostrils. The world swam out from underneath him, he fell back into the landrider's fur and went to sleep. This time, there were no dreams, only the memory of rage and incredulity.
***
When he awoke the next morning, the sun was already up, and the relos had packed up their stuff and moved on. Groaning, he sat up and pushed himself off the ground, the rings on the vest clinked loudly against each other. He was still attached to the long length of rope that kept him tethered to Slade's landrider. It was attached to both ends via means of a locked carabiner. He took a length of the rope in his hands and began to slide it back and forth over a jagged rock.
"That will not work," Slade said. Vincent swore silently. He had not heard her approach. "That is drake gut. You can cut at it for days and it will not break. Still, if you try to escape, you will only worsen your experience."
She casually leaned against a rock and sharpened a knife. Behind her, the previous night's fire smoldered. Vincent considered the rope in his hands and begrudgingly let it drop to the ground. She was right, it was probably useless to try and escape. He should have been angry, being locked up and chained like some animal. Instead, he found it entertaining. He was starring in some 80s fantasy. Though there was a danger in losing himself in it, he could not take Falius seriously anymore after it accused him of nocturnal murder. Part of him now wanted to see what happened next. What strange powers did he have?
"Good morning to you too," he said, "have you seen this body? I'm not going to be running any triathlons soon."
"Triathlons?" she repeated, "I do not know this word. Nevertheless, do not test me."
After they left, her landrider pounded across the shattered lands, weaving in and out of the plateaus. Vincent felt his stomach fly with the beast's prancing, and he learned to bob up and down with her motions. The scenery distracted his thoughts and invited ogling eyes. But it rushed by too quickly for him to admire. He thought he saw a few frightened kelta scatter and escape to the nearest rivers.
In the afternoon, they crossed another interstice thread. It was smaller than the Misan thread, but it was so abrupt that Vincent was unprepared for the change in gravity. He almost crashed into Slade's back. The thread passed over a small valley and deposited them into more meadows. By mid-afternoon, she stopped and allowed her landrider to take a break. He needed to find out more information about his alleged crime. So he waited until she filled her canteen before asking his first question. Fury still writhed in his chest, but it was not the driver.
"So...how did I do it?" he asked, "How did I 'kill' somebody while I was asleep?"
"I am sure that is a question Orth will be asking you," Slade said.
"You're...not understanding me. I'm asking how the f*ck is such a thing possible? I mean you're saying I killed somebody through...whatever you called it..."
"The reticulum."
"Right...what is it?"
She remained silent. With a bored look on her snout, she took a knife from her belt and casually balanced it on the tip of her claw. In a way, her calm, lime green eyes imparted a feline keenness to her passive observance of the surroundings. But he could tell that despite the serenity in her gaze, she was aware of everything. Though she did not look at him, he had a feeling she was watching him with sharp acuity.
"Did Tuls and the others tell you about me?" he asked.
"About your claim to be from another world? Yes, they did." It was obvious she didn't take such a claim seriously.
"The point is I don't know what the hell the reticulum is. I can guess it's some sort of technology...or 'lore' that allows you to communicate long distances and sedate people. But beyond that, I have no idea what it is."
Again, she remained silent and inscrutable.
"Look, I was sitting there with Xalix and his kids when I just suddenly fell asleep," Vincent said, "I had a dream that somebody was invading my mind. But that's all it was to me, it was nothing more than a vivid dream. I saw her as an asylum guard who was trying to throw me into the looney bin. So, I fought back. I didn't mean to kill an actual person. But you're telling me that I actually did..." He began to shake his head.
"And you find that amusing?" Slade asked.
"It's a f*cking joke. I can't take anything you people say seriously after that."
Without any warning, she threw the knife into the water. There was a frantic splashing at the place where it pierced the surface. She lifted a fish out of the pond and pulled the blade out of its head.
"So, what are they going to do to me?" Vincent asked after a few moments of silence, "Interrogate me? Torture me for answers when they aren't satisfied with the truth? Try to find out if I'm some Jalharan spy?"
"They are not savage," she said while scraping the raw meat from the fish's bones with her teeth.
"I don't know that! I don't even know who the f*ck you people even are! I'm from another planet! How many times do I have to repeat myself?!"
"They have their ways to extract truth, but none of them involve the infliction of pain. They will ask you questions, and you will answer truthfully. That–" She spat out a needle of a bone and swallowed the raw fish meat. "–has been decided because of the nature of your malfeasance. They will want to know everything you do and will waste no time getting it."
"Trust me, there will be no resistance," Vincent said, "you're just going to be disappointed."
"Either way, the court of The Thirteen are normally against using such means, but they will likely use the thumahl, a pair of bracers that force truth. One who wears them will be unable to utter any falsehoods."
"Ah, a truth potion," Vincent sighed, "or at least something similar. Now I'm really looking forward to our arrival. I'll give you all the truth you wish to hear and then some. If I slap these things on and call you a bunch of deluded assholes and tell you to go f*ck yourselves, will it become accepted dogma?"
When they left, Holan, Slade's beast, stomped across the lands and kicked up dirt behind the massive trunks that were her legs. The alien sun rose above their head as if racing them toward the third interstice. The obsidian peaks gleamed like the ebony teeth of a subterranean giant. Vincent watched the mysterious knives on Slade's belt bob as they rode and was half-tempted to reach for one. Not that it would have been useful, his wrists were tethered to the saddle.
Instead, he closed his eyes and reached out to see if his "ethereal" form was still there. He thought that perhaps with enough concentration, whatever arcane ability he had uncovered would allow him to discreetly wrest control of her shryken. But his mind grasped at nothing. The strange hierarchy that had allowed him to possess control of the liquid metal blade was no longer there. Or if it was, it was impervious to his senses. Whatever had happened, he did not meet the conditions that enabled such lore.
By now, he had fallen into rhythm with Holan's galloping, bobbing when she struck the ground, pulling himself back up when she leapt. There were a few close calls when she vaulted over large rocks. The first instance took him by surprise and only the binding that tethered him to the creature's saddle kept him from rolling off. But now he had learned the creature's movements, fallen into sync with its cadence.
However, his new body had not learned to create the necessary muscles for the constant pounding. The pain started as a small ache at the bottom of his spine, but steadily spread up his back like a spike being shoved up his vertebrae. The wings on his back cut large slices of agony below his shoulder blades, into his chest and down his torso. Gritting his teeth, he tried to shift positions and find different ways of absorbing the impacts. But each new position that brought him relief also brought with it new pains.
Finally, Slade slowed her beast down when she came upon a pass. This time, he leaned back as soon as he saw the thread rising up into the canyon. There came the disorientation as his perception suddenly shifted now that they entered the thread's gravity. Slade stopped, granting him a momentary reprieve as she gazed out across the interstice. Like the other two they had crossed, turbulent winds seemed to come from all directions. Yet walls of dust and leaves swirled without any pattern around its cylindrical influence. Slade reached into one of the sacks hanging from Holan's flanks and pulled out a pair of goggles, which she strapped around her head. Apparently, Vincent was simply expected to close his eyes.
"Hey," he said, "hold on a second."
A twitch of her ear was the only indication that she had heard him. She did not respond.
"Hey!" he repeated, "I need a break."
"A 'break'?" She sounded amused at the suggestion. "You think you are my guest."
"I'm cramped," Vincent said, his temper growing. "I'm not used to riding and I feel like somebody's stabbing me right between the shoulder blades. I'm not asking for a huge break, just a chance to stretch."
"You can do that when we camp for the night."
"No, seriously. I don't bitch about pain a lot, but my back is killing me. I think I pulled a muscle from all that leaping your 'horse' did back there."
"You are a soft-bone," she said, clearly using one of their alien pejoratives. "I do not know what a 'horse' is, but you are a soft-bone. The pain is good for you. Aye, you grow stronger and your character comes into being."
Vincent thought he heard hints of a snicker, and he swore under his breath.
"I'm not a killer." he said.
"Irrelevant."
"What the f*ck is your problem?!"
"Nothing."
He had to calm himself down. "Look...I thought she was...she was one of the voices I hear."
"Voices?"
"I...have a condition. I sometimes hear voices that aren't there and see stuff that's not real. I thought that 'woman' was one of them. It's like I said before: I didn't know she was an actual person and I sure as hell don't know how I 'killed' her. I'm not a violent person." That was not exactly true. Vincent had a history with his temper, but she didn't need to know that.
At this, she snorted. "It was not you who attacked the weather gleaner with a knife? Or threatened to stab me in the eye last night? Yes, I can see you are the paradigm of peace."
She had him there.
"I was afraid," Vincent said, "that's why I attacked him. I had no idea what the f*ck was going on. As for you–"
"–You will bare it," she cut him off, "why not tell me more about how you survived the Bane? Your lies are intricate and entertaining."
The Bane...that was the term Xalix used to refer to schizophrenia.
"It kills your people, right?" Vincent asked. Slade grunted a noise he took to be an affirmation. "I survive it...because–" none of this is real, he thought, "–either the 'Bane' is a separate condition that shares symptoms with schizophrenia, or because I'm just that special. But why does it matter? Apparently, that stuff Xalix gave me miraculously cured it. I'm no longer insane. So, you should stop being a pain in the ass and cut me some slack."
"I suppose Triasat can cure the Bane," Slade mused, but she did not stop for him.
The wind, made turbulent by the thread's artificial gravity, battered them from all directions, flinging grit and dirt at their faces. He shielded his eyes and looked up at the cliffs rising around him, his gaze following the patches of vegetation that burrowed within its cracks. Dirt and sod followed the contour of the thread's pull in defiance of gravity.
He tried to distract himself from the cramps in his back by noticing how the flora growing on the thread adapted to its unusual properties. Small bushes grew sideways, vines gripped wherever they could find purchase.
"How long's this ride going to be?" he asked.
"Several days." Slade answered.
Several days?
"f*cking typical," he spat, "let's travel across the country! There's a schizophrenic that needs to be captured! Let's lock him up."
"You are strange..."
"You think I killed somebody while I was sleeping," Vincent said, "yet in your world, I'm the one who's strange?"
She didn't answer.
The landrider's gait filled him with excruciation. The daggers in his back became like spears. Every movement was sheer torture and the thread's mind-warping gravity gave him a headache. It was an enormous structure, far bigger than the threads they had traveled previously, so they spent a good hour crossing it. Around evening, a shadow passed overhead, and Slade brought Holan to a stop. Vincent heard the beating of wings before he saw the owner. A large zerok with orange feathers landed in front of them.
"What is it?" Slade asked. Silence passed as the creature stared at her, conveying by some means its intent. "How far?"
More silence.
"Do what you can," Slade said, "when you are done, relay this message to Orth or to one of your brood-brothers and have them deliver it: Kiolai Reashos has apprehended her mark alive. Also, there are relos up north. Warn them as well." At this, the messenger glanced at Vincent.
Danger. Odd.
Then it launched up into the air.
"What?" Vincent demanded.
"A storm approaches." A trace of surprise filled Slade's voice. "The messenger fears it." She said this as if such a thing were unheard of. "You are lucky, Softbone. We will camp early."
Vincent didn't know why that changed her mind, but he wasn't about to protest. Holan launched forward, her stride bringing jackhammers down upon his back.. Miniature dust devils bloomed into existence behind them and danced among the tumultuous winds, but they lasted mere moments before dying out. Malogers lined the distant cliffs like orange barnacles leftover from an enormous tide.
When they exited the pass, he noticed a sudden change in the climate. Lorix's Observatory had been dry and pleasant compared to the acrid humidity which now washed over him. The Fractured Meadows slowly softened their edges. The small canyons and fissures gave way to eroded ravines and hints of aftershock. Eventually the plateaus turned into rough hills on which kelta danced gracefully, startled by their passage. The damp grounds absorbed Holan's massive stride and softened her impacts, though this did very little to ease the renewed agony Vincent felt between his shoulders.
After an hour and a half of riding, they approached a tall hill. At its top perched a small circular building. Constructed of stone and densely built, it gave the impression that it was compact. But as they neared it, he saw it was larger than it looked. It was only one story tall, yet it was large enough to hold several rooms, if it had any at all. Vines and moss crawled up its side, speaking of the structure's ancience.
Vincent was glad to dismount the landrider and stretch. His muscles quivered with gratitude at the release. It felt wonderful to let his toes sink into the ground and grip the turf. He looked around and saw a circle of beaten grass and dirt, in the middle of which was a fire ring. Several wooden totems with blank surfaces marked the edges of the circle. Pieces of colored fabric hung from nails that were hammered into various places along their circumference. Written on them was the unintelligible Falian script. Graffitied into the wood's surface itself were various words, names, sayings, messages, all of which held no meaning to him. Slade untethered him from Holan and led him over to a tall pole which she used to anchor him.
"Turn around" she said.
He felt the wing strap loosening. When it came off, he had to close his eyes and concentrate on opening his cramped wings slowly. The Triasat, which cured both his wounds and his schizophrenia, also imparted some sort of subconscious knowledge that allowed him to exert better dominance over the body he inhabited. But his mind was still human. It had never controlled the extra appendages before. It still resisted their presence among his neural pathways. It tried to bind them with his hands because that was the closest thing it could relate to. When he moved his right hand, the right wing tended to match it. The same thing happened to the left wing. Moving them separately required a conscious effort, like learning to move a finger while keeping the others still.
Bones popped and cracked as he stretched them out. They tugged at his shoulder blades, at his sides and across his chest. He didn't know much about the layout of Falian anatomy, but it was just one among many strange stimulations that baffled the human logic of his mind. Despite the alien sensations, it felt f*cking amazing to stand on his feet, stretch, and walk around, even though his hands were still bound together.
He stepped on a smooth stone and rocked it back and forth, startling slightly when his foot grabbed it. He wrapped his elongated, talon-like toes around it and lifted it up, suppressing a shudder at the odd but somehow pleasant sensation. He would never get used to that. He was interrupted when he felt the fixation come upon him again, the same obsession which drew his attention toward the mountains across Lorix's Observatory. It was coming from Slade.
"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.
"Hmm?"
"You're doing something to me. I don't know how I can feel it, but you've been doing it for the past few days, haven't you?"
For a moment, her expression seemed dead and unreadable. Then a smirk crossed her face.
"Impressive," she said, "not many people have the talent to detect a trace. Is that how you were able to pierce my veil?"
"I don't know, but would you cut it out? It's distracting."
To his surprise, she did. She considered him for a moment before leaving to unpack her landrider.
"Hey! You're not going to leave me out here to get rained on are you?" No answer.
"What if I have to take a piss?" Still no answer.
Swearing, he slumped at the base of the pole, his vest clanking. Nearby a rivulet chuckled at the base of the hill. Its running water reminded him of how much dust he'd collected during that brief stint over the thread. He wanted to go down to clean himself, but he was shackled. All he had within reach was stagnant water within a large drinking trough. He wet his hands in it and began to splash his face.
The snout he cupped in his hands and scrubbed with his claws felt strange to his touch. It was the incarnate version of schizophrenia, madness made flesh. The long blue ears that grew from the sides of his head dangled down along with the green stands that framed his snout. Closing his eyes so that he did not have to look at them, he wetted his hair and rinsed out the dust and sweat. Beads ran down his pointed countenance and gathered at the tip of his mouth before falling to the ground.
"hahahahahahahahahahahaha"
The hell? His ears twitched, beat against his cheek at the sound and he looked around for the source. But the laughter he heard was simply the babble of water churning between rocks. Shaking his head, he ignored it. Lacking any kind of sponge, he picked up a round stone with the texture of pumice and used its rough service to lightly scrub the dirt off his arms. The areas he exfoliated soon bloomed with blue rashes. He held them up and watched azure dots form where he'd accidentally torn flesh.
"He just cleaned himself."
"Dirty. He is dirty."
Vincent thought he heard something again. He looked around, listening to the leaves rustling in the wind. In the distance, he could make out the first hints of a storm gathering on the peaks. They loomed over the mountains like a pall and were illuminated with several flashes of lightning. The clouds were dark, darker than any clouds he had ever seen. In fact, they were less like clouds and more like smoke. Slade exited the building, holding something in her hand. It was an orange prescription bottle.
"What is this?" she demanded, "the material is like glass and yet it lacks the weight and rigidity."
"Prescription bottle," Vincent said, wondering why she had it. "And it's made of polyethylene, not glass."
"And the stones inside it?"
"Antipsychotics or antidepressants, depending on which one that is." He saw those terms meant nothing to her. "They're medicine. I took them for my condition. I always carried a few extras with me just in case I got stranded or my car broke down. I never knew when I'd have to spend the night at a hotel while my car got fixed. What are you doing with it?"
"Just curious." she tossed the bottle to herself.
"Don't ingest any of them." Vincent said, "I think they're toxic for you, so don't try any. Or...please do, I don't care. You could use some antipsychotics."
"I do not know what your play is...but you sell this act well," she said, pocketing the bottle.
"Glad to hear it," he said, ignoring the irony, "so, are you going to let me get rained on?"
Before she could answer, there came the sound of approaching landriders. To his surprise, the relos they had left behind came galloping across the meadows and began to ascend the hill. They slowed their approach when they saw Slade's landrider. Tuls and Clayde gave him a look of mild surprise while Ro'ken glared. Vincent felt a sudden humiliation at the sight of them.
"Kiolai," Clayde said, "that zerok warned you of the storm?" He nodded to the clouds looming in the distance. Slade nodded without saying anything. "Aye...Weaver's Flame, I have never seen a messenger so frightened."
"I have never seen a messenger frightened at all." Tuls chuckled as he dismounted his landrider. His eyes quickly darted to Vincent and back.
"You are safe. He will not harm you." Slade said.
These creatures were something else. Vincent could feel his temper threatening to flare up, but he knew he had to control himself. He closed his eyes and focused on his respiration. His anger began to calm until it was just a simmer. His schizophrenia may have been "cured", but the scars it left behind still remained. He was chained up just like an animal, dehumanized, falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit. The only thing that made it tolerable was how ridiculous the situation was.
"Tuls, Ro'ken," Clayde said, "set up some storm wards. We're going to need them. Any storm that scares a zerok is going to be a bad one."
Storm wards? Vincent thought.
Whatever they were, the relos immediately went to work. They walked around the perimeter of the structure, carrying long metal spikes in their arms, which they drove into the ground in intervals. Slade went off to help them. As they set up their strange devices, the sky above was beginning to show the slightest hints of evening, adding violet to the blue.
Ro'ken glanced up at him and whispered something to Clayde, who looked up at Vincent, shrugged, and continued setting up the storm wards. Vincent wanted to shout at them: "Do you have something you want to say to me?" but decided it wouldn't serve any purpose. Eventually, they left and he was left alone until Tuls came around. His lambent eyes, masked by the black skin that smoldered his visage, gave him a perpetual look of surprise. Instead of acknowledging Vincent, he began to mount black cubes by some unknown means to the spikes Ro'ken and Clayde had driven into the ground.
"Boo!" Vincent shouted. Tuls stopped what he was doing and simply stared at him.
"Nevermind...it was a joke. Do whatever it is you were doing."
Tuls stared at him for a few more moments, sighed, and continued his work.
"I'm not going to bite you know," Vincent said, "everything she said last night is bullsh*t."
"That...is none of my business, friend," Tuls said without looking up. "Not anymore."
"Do you need help, Tuls?" Vincent flinched at Slade's voice. He had not even heard her approaching.
"No...this will work," he said, "the wards are in place. I wasn't sure ours would be enough for a storm like this, so I'm grateful you allowed us to borrow some of your own. These will hold. Did you manage to find an anchor on the roof?"
"I did," Slade said, "there are several mounts on the roof for that purpose. The lattice should protect us."
Lattice? Vincent thought, Anchors? He supposed it had something to do with their lore. Tuls walked over to one of the spikes and did something to it. A strange sensation washed over Vincent's body. Hundreds of flux lines, invisible to his eyes, yet discernible to some other percipience, pulsed with strange commands.
In a way, they reminded him of the hierarchy that hid inside Slade's shryken. At their touch, he felt the ethereal body inhabiting his own. He knew that if he reached out, he would be able to tug at these lines, perhaps manipulate them. What he could achieve by doing this, he didn't know. But he didn't want to risk it, not with Slade standing so close by. He disguised his initial surprised by swatting at his leg, acting as if he had been bitten by a fly.
"He murdered a fly."
"Tuls," Slade addressed the relos, who was now gazing outward toward the storm. Her tone seemed to hold in it some knowledge that she knew about him and the meaning of his gaze. "What is it?"
Vincent, who thought he had heard a phantom, failed to notice that Tuls was staring off into the horizon where the storm brewed. It took him a few moments to register Slade's question.
"Oh...I don't like this. I don't like that storm one bit..." he said, raising a hand in front of him as if he meant to stop the storm with his palm. "Have you ever known a zerok to be terrified? But now it makes sense. That storm is...it's not good. I assume you can feel it too, Vincent?"
"Feel what?" Vincent asked.
"Kiolai, that darkness is not natural." Tuls said. There was a hint of worry in his words.
At this, Vincent snorted. "No." He shook his head. Tuls and Slade turned to look at him, "No. That storm is not unnatural."
"Don't you feel it?" Tuls asked, sounding surprised.
"I don't care what you're 'feeling', and I don't care what you say about that storm. But you don't get to accuse it of being unnatural when you have bridges that defy gravity."
Slade gave him a strange look. Perhaps she was perplexed by the immunity he showed to the vexation that agitated Tuls. Either way, it was about the third time she gave him that look. He glanced toward the incoming system, which lurked like an augury of doom. He could not feel anything in the wind except the wind itself. But looking at the blackness of the clouds he could almost see why Tuls thought it was "wrong". It was not simply dark, it was as ebony as obsidian and blacker than night.
"It is very dark," Vincent finally admitted.
"Dark..." Tuls scoffed, "it is not simply 'dark', Brother. You don't smell it?"
"Smell it?" It was Vincent's turn to scoff. "Smell a storm? No. All I smell is grass and sweat." And with that, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the post. Evil clouds, bridges that defy the laws of nature, murder by sleep...and these people think he's the one that needs to be chained up?
As the sky dimmed and the blue faded into red, the creatures crowded their landriders together so they could bundle up during the storm and share each other's warmth. Eventually, Slade led Vincent inside. At an initial glance, Tulian's Waypoint appeared to be nothing more than a large circular chamber. Numerous cobwebs lined the trusses overhead while mosses hung from the small ports in the wall. Slugs with multiple rows of eyes on their back slowly inched their away up the stone walls. A trough ran along the floor at the perimeter of the room, perhaps to drain any water that splashed through the windows. In the center was a pile of ash where previous fires had been lit. Vincent could see vents above that allowed smoke to escape.
But the moment he stepped into the room, he flinched at the sound of running water, even though the nearest creek was at least a hundred feet away. When he took another step, he heard the singing of birds and the croak of a creature he didn't recognize. A few more steps, he heard wind chimes clanging in the wind. He took a few steps backward and heard the birds again.
"What..." he uttered aloud.
"Over here." Slade commanded, leading him to a pole a good distance away from where the others.
"Do you hear birds singing?" Vincent asked.
"This is Tulian's Waypoint," Clayde said, "it is one of the sound mirrors of Admoran. Here, you can camp and meditate on all the sounds of the region. Tulian of Ranga was a blind channeler who found beauty in her affliction instead of despair."
"So right here, what am I hearing?" Vincent asked.
"Keln's pond," Tuls answered, "it is a day's trip from here. Oh! That reminds me, Ro'ken!"
"What?"
"Keln's pond!"
"What about it?"
"It is where I caught the biggest telglobber ever seen! Eight mouths! It grew eight mouths!"
"Eight mouths?" Ro'ken stared at him in disbelief.
"Eight mouths..."
While Ro'ken and Tuls started talking about...whatever the hell "telglobbers" were, Slade tethered Vincent to a post. He began to walk around it simply to see what other sounds he could discover. The chirping of birds morphed into the splash of a waterfall. The waterfall became the steady rustle of leaves swaying in the wind. He found the wind chimes again and discovered there was another instrument joining it. A woman's voice, horribly out of tune, sang with it.
He took another step and froze. The singing turned into a bestial noise that sent chills down his spine. At first, he thought it was a yawn, but it had pain in its inflection. It was joined by howling. But it was unlike anything he had ever heard in his life. The shape of the howl was canine and yet its voice sounded feline. Behind the howling, he thought he heard moaning and screams of agony.
"W-what..."
"It is listening to that storm." Slade said.
The sky darkened to twilight and a fire bloomed in the middle of Tulian's Waypoint. The cobblestone that formed the ground was inlaid with bricks, marking a perimeter around the pit that remained free of transmitted sounds. The flames cast the trusses overhead in flickering lines, making them appear to vibrate across the roof they supported. Smoke danced upward in a clean spiral.
Tuls huddled close to the fire as the wind outside began to pick up. Every now and then, he would glance at Vincent as if expecting him to say something. Clayde swung the door shut and lowered a bar into its lock, then he took a seat.
He proceeded to tell a story about two channelers: Tulian of Ranga and Molan Tierre. It was a sappy tale about two lovers who were met with tragic fates. Tulian, who was blind from birth and abandoned on the streets and was adopted by some monks. She became hopelessly optimistic about life, and Molan Tierre, a cynical musician who pretended to be blind in order to escape the persecution that so often targeted channelers. One completed the other and they both traveled across Admoran, weaving its features with sound until they were captured. Tulian was murdered, Molan Tierre was blinded for real. In grief, he traveled across Admoran in isolation, weaving his music into the land. Ro'ken made gagging noises throughout the entire story.
Vincent grabbed the sleeping mat set out for him and retreated toward the wall, stepping through several sounds to get there. Slade kept glancing out the window, looking at the storm before taking another seat and putting her hands close to the flames. The fire itself was reflected in her glassy, unblinking eyes, replacing the darkness of her pupils.
She shot a glance toward him, perhaps making sure he hadn't found a way to break free. He frowned and looked away, lying on his side so that his back was towards them. The flames cast his quivering shadow along the wall, creating a creature of darkness. He almost expected to see his iridescent irises peer out from the dancing void.
