Henre looked at the sky, then back down at his de-facto son, “Look, some may disagree with me, but I say as a rule of thumb you should usually follow your heart over your head. I’ve found in my many years of living that many have reasons for what they do, but few have convictions. You shouldn’t take that conviction for granted.”
There was a brief silence as Lyght considered Henre’s comments, feeling the warm breeze roll off the sea. He had a point…
All of a sudden Henre turned back towards Kona, motioning for Janna to follow. He looked back over his shoulder at the kid he’d raised these past ten years, “I know you’ll pick what’s right. We believe you’ll do what’s right for you; so you can count on our support, whatever you choose. I’ll see you at home tonight, right?”
It wasn’t a request; more of an expectation. Smiling slightly, Lyght nodded his head, “Thanks. Really, thanks for understanding. And yeah, I’ll come home.”
“Good”, Henre said smiling, turning to head back towards Kona. “Sleep on it tonight, I’ve always found that’s a way to solve a tough decision.”
Lyght ran a hand through his hair tiredly and allowed himself to relax some.
“Yeah, maybe sleep would do me some good.”
Chapter Thirteen
Darkness.
A gripping sense of vertigo, spinning down, down… Where was he? Who was he? He couldn’t see; couldn’t hear. Why? What was…
All of a sudden Lyght’s feet hit – hard – on some formless landscape, almost knocking him over. Lyght blinked rapidly, trying to clear his spinning vision, to little effect. He knelt down, panting hard, as if he had just finished some absurdly long race, or fallen from the atmosphere – or maybe a little of both.
He was painfully confused, he couldn’t think straight. His head felt as if someone was pounding on it repeatedly with a hammer. The scintillating light and booming soundwaves weren’t helping. He closed his eyes and covered his ears, teeth gritted as he tried to concentrate. After a couple minutes, breathing hard and hunched over, his system slowly stabilized to the point where he could uncover his ears and open his eyes to take a look around him. In a much less intense way than before, Lyght was confused by what he was seeing.
It was dark out – early nighttime. Why had he felt blinded by light? He thought he heard soft voices now, not the roar he had heard before. Standing up slowly, Lyght guessed his senses were back to normal. Speaking of which, what had thrown them off in the first place? Where had he come from, and how did he get here? Frowning as he looked up at the Dark sky, Lyght was concerned to find out that he truly didn’t know.
Looking down, he flexed his right hand curiously. Seemed real enough. He pinched his left arm – hard. That was real too, Lyght thought with his eyes watering. Pointing his right arm at the ground, he tried to draw on his Dreamcasting powers, only to recoil in shock.
It’s not there!
When Lyght accessed his power, he did so by reaching down in himself, drawing it from somewhere in his chest area. Even when he was completely drained, he could still feel the storage area there – it just felt like an empty tank in his body. But now, he couldn’t feel anything at all. Just empty space where something had been. Now that he was missing it, he felt like his body was missing a vital… charge or something that it needed to function. It was really very scary, like losing a limb, or having an organ ripped out of you. Despite himself, Lyght began to panic. What had happened to him?
“…and like I said, Dreamcasting is very dangerous. If you violate the 2nd law, you will die. I won’t risk that. I can’t risk that with you, Lyght. I’m sorry.”
Lyght spun, heart hammering. He knew that voice. He knew it all too well, and missed it with all his being. Problem was, that voice was supposed to be long dead.
Before he knew it, Lyght was sprinting full tilt, cresting the ravine he stood upon, and looking down into a little depression where two people sat around a roaring campfire. His long-dead father, and…
Himself. Lyght saw the eight-year-old version of himself sitting on a tree stump below, across the fire from his father. It startled Lyght a bit to see himself so young. He had the same long dark hair all over the place, the same face, the same – he guessed – build (albeit for an eight-year-old). He did, however, have that slightly-starved look that came from life on the run. Lyght still remembered long, hungry nights as a kid, winters when food seemed difficult to find. He never had seemed to mind though – because he was chasing after something truly meaningful and important, along with his dad. Or at least, he’d thought he was.
No, the real difference – and it seemed glaring to eighteen-year-old Lyght – was the difference in demeanor. Lyght considered himself a relatively quiet and reserved person. He didn’t seek out attention, and only really confided in those he really cared about. He thought he had always been that way.
This was clearly not the case. Young Lyght was jabbering away to his father, asking questions and moving on to another one before they were answered, moving around the camp excitedly and motioning into the air while he spoke. He punctuated each question with a “Right?”, before moving on the next apparently rhetorical question. Thinking out loud, his dad always called it. Lyght had forgotten he had done that. Back then, he had never really grasped that he did it so much, but he did clearly remember his father telling him and others frequently that one was never in doubt about what Lyght thought, because he would tell you.
When did I cease to be that open?, Lyght thought to himself. The only reasonable explanation he could think of was that one night almost a decade ago. The night when his father… well, he didn’t like to think about it. That was his rule. He had found that sticking to it caused him a lot less pain. Or so he liked to think, anyway.
But hang on… Lyght slowly came closer, trying to figure out why this particular scene seemed so familiar to him. He couldn’t even count how many nights he had lived just like this one, around the fire with his dad before the pair of them went to bed, preparing to rise early the next day. Why should this one stand out?
And on that note, why was he here, anyway? This was clearly the past. Did he somehow go back in time? Was any of this even real? Nothing seemed to make sense at the moment.
That first question – why this seemed so familiar – was answered when his father stood up, laughing, and held his hand up to quiet his talkative son. He put his hands on his hips, examining the excitable kid in front of him. This was a bizarre sight to see for the eighteen-year-old Lyght – it was like watching an older version of his current self look at a younger version of his current self. Lyght realized all of a sudden why this night in particular seemed so familiar, and knew what was going to be said next a second before it was.
“Alright, so you want to be a great Dreamcaster? Try it now.”
Young Lyght looked confused, yet excited all the same. “Really? Actually, now? Yes! You got it… OK, what do I do? How do you do it? I…”
Lyght’s father Lucent held up his hand again, to stop his son. “I’m going to tell you, and you’ve got to listen to me very carefully, alright? Even if you are a Dreamcaster, which you’re probably not, you probably won’t be able to properly control the power or even use it at your age. I’ll be watching very carefully to see that you don’t overdo it, if by some chance you are successful. If I get the sense you’re not following my directions, we’re done. Understand?”
Young Lyght nodded his head eagerly, and Lucent sighed, resigned to the inevitable. Lucent’s son had emulated him since a very young age, always wanting to be like him, to do what he did. This test had to happen eventually. As much as Lucent had tried to avoid it, this moment was always coming. To this day, Lyght did not know whether that decision to run this test had affected what happened immediately afterward, but he thought it had to. It was too big of a coincidence otherwise.
“Alright”, Lucent said, motioning for young Lyght to stand up and looking down at his son, “Close your eyes, and point both your arms
, palm open, down at the ground.” Young Lyght did this, and older Lyght saw himself trembling with excitement, even from this distance. Lucent continued, “We don’t know yet, if you somehow are in fact a Dreamcaster, which arm is your dominant one. We’ll try both. Obviously, I don’t need to close my eyes when I Dreamcast, but it will help you feel it out and draw upon the power if you have it.”
Lucent paused before speaking again, a stern note in his voice now, “Remember, do just as I say, and only what I say. Overusing your Dreamcasting capacity can kill you, by the 2nd law. You’re still young and not near full height – you will have a small capacity if any at all. All you should be able to do, at best, is something like tracing lightly in the ground.”
“Ready?”, Lucent asked. Young Lyght nodded his head, a look of intense concentration on his face. “Alright, point your index finger down on both hands.” Young Lyght did this. A few moments of silence went by.
“And?”, young Lyght asked, eyes still closed. Lucent laughed a little self-consciously, raising a hand to the back of his neck, “Sorry, It’s just kind of hard to explain how I do it. It just feels so natural. I guess, just… mentally search for a small space inside your chest cavity somewhere, it may seem to be crackling with energy. You have to know where it is, exactly where, to access it. Just search around for awhile, and if you find it, draw a circle in the air with both index fingers. If you are a Dreamcaster, and can actually use your power at such a young age, an identical shape will be traced on the ground by whichever is your dominant arm.”
After a good minute of silence, young Lyght’s eyes snapped open – blazing. “Hey”, Lucent said frowning, “I thought I said…”
He got no further, as young Lyght flung both arms out to the side in a flash. A massive chasm – at least six feet deep and a few feet wide, ripped itself into the earth on his right side. It just kept going and going until Lucent jumped forward and grabbed his sons arm with a shocked but pleased look on his face, saying “OK, Stop!”
As soon as his dad touched his arm, the chasm stopped tearing across the loamy ground, although the earth still trembled slightly at the sudden assault. Lucent stepped back, speechless for a moment. Gathering himself, he looked his son in the eyes, still intense from the burst of power a moment ago.
“Well, there you have it, Lyght! You were right, and I was wrong, you are a Dreamcaster. What are the odds, two in the same family with the rare ability? Although… you shouldn’t have been able to do that. That level of manipulation should only become available after a few years of extensive training and use. I’m by no means an expert in these sorts of things… but from what I just saw, you’re a natural, Lyght.”
Young Lyght just laughed, and shook off this information as if it were expected. Older Lyght just frowned – that seemed like something Mikael would have done. He kept pressing, “Can I go again? I feel like I haven’t really even tapped into it yet. I can do more, I know I can.”
Lucent frowned, “What, you’re not out? Incredible as that was, it should’ve drained you.” Lyght shook his head, so Lucent thought for a moment, then shrugged. “OK, fine then. I’ll let you try one more thing. This is a bit higher level, so again… well, we’ll see. Alright, no need to close your eyes, now that you’ve found the spot. Raise your right arm in the air.” Young Lyght did so, somehow managing to keep still despite the anticipation.
“Now, flex your hand to connect to your power, and heat the air.” Lyght looked at his dad, confused. Lucent just shook his head and smiled “I really can’t explain this one. There is no specific way to do it; you kinda just have to do it by feel. Like I said, at this level you probably can’t…”
He trailed off however, as young Lyght began moving his right hand in a tight circle, instantly making the surrounding air palpably hotter. Eighteen-year-old Lyght saw a trail of shimmering heat spiraling up into the atmosphere, and knew all too well what happened next. He had always wanted to see it again, just to make sure he hadn’t been seeing things. Problem was, Lyght didn’t want to see what he knew happened after that.
Sure enough, the wavering heat wave began to reach the Dark above – for it was one of those nights – and made it waver, somehow, just as the air particles below were doing. A moment hung in the air, where Lucent looked at his son in astonishment, and young Lyght looked up with determination, eyes narrowed.
It broke all of a sudden with an explosion. The heat wave dissipated, spraying in all directions, as an actual hole opened in the Dark above. Lyght looked up anxiously, looking to see if it was the same as it had been that night. Indeed, it was. As Lyght looked up, he saw that, miraculously, tiny white dots hung above, shining through the mysterious hole in the sky and twinkling down at the shocked father and son below.
So, older Lyght thought, looking up at it with wonder for the second time in his life, it was real.
Lyght had always thought this moment must have been a figure of his imagination, an anomaly, arisen from the traumatic memory of this night. He had never understood what had caused the black sky to suddenly dissipate, or what those lights were above. For the Dark became the night sky, which came down to enshroud the land every other night. On alternate nights, it became dark in the sense that there was no light, but it was not Dark; that shifting ultra-black mass was suffocating in a way that a regular night could be. It was an entirely different experience.
Yet somehow, Lyght had ripped away a piece of the world, as an eight-year-old. If a piece could be torn away, then by logic, it wasn’t the top. What was above it? What were those shining white dots?
Unfortunately, older Lyght ran into the same problem he had ten years ago. He didn’t have more than a few seconds to think about it, as another loud bang – deadened compared to the eruption of seconds ago – sounded all around. There was a swish of dark cloaks, and young Lyght and his father were surrounded.
What happened next though, older Lyght saw in fast forward. He saw his dad first try to speak with the sudden newcomers, then back up in alarm as they closed in on him. Whipping his sword off his back and jumping over their heads, Lyght’s Dreamcaster father landed in a cloud of dust and attacked furiously. His bold move was made even more astonishing to watch by the increasing speed at which older Lyght saw the fight progressing. It was like time was being warped forward, and he along with it.
Lyght began to see flashes of blackness and color; began to feel dizzy and confused again. His father yelled, jumping in front of young Lyght to block a vicious stroke at his son’s head. Going on the attack, Lucent sliced an attacker’s arm off and whipped his own right arm through the air (holding his sword in his left), sending the wounded man’s sword arm flying at one of his comrades, cleanly chopping his hand off. Further vertigo gripped Lyght as he fell to his knees, coughing. What was going on? He tried to see.
At the pace the battle was flying before his eyes, it was coming quickly towards its inevitable conclusion. Lyght, through his darkened and blurred vision, saw the young version of himself backing up in fear, eyes wide. One of the attackers charged at Lyght while his father was occupied with four other attackers, leveling his sword at eight-year-old Lyght for the kill. Young Lyght tried to run, but his foot struck a tree root, sending him sprawling onto the ground. Pushing himself up onto his hands, young Lyght yelled as he saw it, throwing his arms up and ducking as the silver flash blazed at his head. Older Lyght saw his life flash before his eyes, just as he had back then.
All of a sudden, a massive, earth-shaking gust blasted the chaotic encampment, sending everybody flying – including Lucent. Now, for some reason, the scene slowed down to a crawl in older Lyght’s eyes as his vision stabilized. The explosive gust threw Lucent off balance as he was performing a complex spinning-jumping maneuver, and he landed wrong – slipping on a pile of wet leaves and hitting the ground with a thud. A dark, cloaked figure adjacent to him barely maintained his balance by crouching low to the ground and pivoting with the gale, right towards where Lucent hit. The enemy seemed
surprised to find himself in such a position, but drove his sword down all the same, a silver bolt of lightning cutting the Dark surrounding them…
And stabbed Lucent in the heart.
Lyght’s vision and senses exploded in agony as he fell to the ground too, on the verge of blacking out. For a split second, it almost felt as if Lyght were in two bodies – his own adolescent one, and his younger one as he looked over at his father’s shocked face. The pain was almost unbearable as Lyght, through his younger eyes, watched his father mouth a few words, blown away by the wind. He never heard them.
With a blast of pain, a roar of blackness overcame Lyght, whoever he was, and he fell down… down…
Darkness.
Chapter Fourteen
Lyght’s eyes snapped open and he bolted up with a sudden yell, throwing the covers off and looking around wildly, panting. His heart rate was through the roof, his head swimming as he tried to figure out what was going on. Putting his right hand over his pounding head and closing his eyes, he tried to orient himself. Why was he so upset? What had happened? After a few minutes with his eyes closed, his pounding headache lessened into a dull pain between his eyelids. Opening his eyes and blinking in the sudden light, he looked over at his clock – eight AM. He sat, still breathing hard, looking at it in confusion for a bit before it hit him.
Hang on a second… eight? That can’t be right!
Lyght jumped up and out of his bed, feet hitting the wooden floor of his bedroom, and made his way to the window, every bone in his body aching with a sharp pain. Grunting, he threw open the curtains. Daytime. What was going on?
Dreamcasters only needed six hours of sleep a night at most; the extra two a normal person would need was compensated by the full two hour spirit limit. Lyght had gone to bed at midnight, so he should’ve gotten up at six at the latest. But it was clearly eight, the daylight streaming through the window making his eyes water was clear indication of that.
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