by Azalea Ellis
I went to sleep in the corner of an adjacent office, my head resting on my pack and a thin blanket wrapped around myself for warmth. Jacky was keeping guard, and the soft sounds of the others slipping into sleep lulled me on my own way.
I woke in complete darkness, the sound of my breath echoing strangely back to me. I reached for Wraith but found nothing. No Skill responded to me. I stiffened as my brain released chemicals in a spasm of fear, speeding my heart and quickening my muscles.
I lifted a hand, and met a solid surface about a foot in front of my face. Careful exploration revealed that I was within a rectangular object. A coffin, my subconscious offered. I took a deep breath of the quickly warming air within. I flexed my fingers and hoped for claws, only to be disappointed again. "It's okay," I murmured aloud to myself as I ran a finger across the too-smooth skin of my left hand and forearm. "It's just a dream."
It didn't feel like a dream. I pinched my nose shut and tried to breathe through it anyway. In a dream, that always worked. But no air entered my lungs.
I lay back, pressing my hands against what felt like smooth stone beneath me. "Calm down,” I told myself again. Last time, when I had died, I'd woken up. I gritted my teeth. There was no way I was going to let myself die. What if it wasn't a dream? I was already forced to take deeper than normal breaths as the oxygen ran out. My fingers scrabbled at the stone, first searching for a seam or a latch, then scraping ineffectually as if I could dig my way out. I kicked at the stone, knees bashing and bruising, fists still pounding. I strained, pushing upward with all my might.
The stone absorbed my blows, unconcerned, and I didn't even hear the hint of hollow echo that would mean my coffin was thin, or the grave shallow.
I reached for Chaos and let out a sigh as I felt it stir weakly within me. Not enough to bring my power to bear on the world, but at least it was there. I forced my limbs to obey me, to stop fighting something they were of no use against. I brought my left forearm up to my face and pinched at a small section of skin on the back of it, then bit down as hard as I could, till my teeth sank through.
Blood trickled out, and Chaos came with it. Tears slipped down my temples, running into my hair. "Oh, thank you, thank you," I gasped.
With careful concentration, I focused on the stone above me, urging Chaos to morph into the black flames and re-make it into oxygen. “It’s just a dream. You control it, you can make air if you want to,” I mumbled to myself. I couldn't tell if it was working at first, so I concentrated even harder, pushing my desperation and fear into the Skill. "Eat, and re-make stone into air," I said aloud. "Air. Make air."
I breathed easier as the fresh air fell away from where the stone above me had once been. I let out a sob of relief, and kept going.
Eventually, Chaos had eaten enough of the stone above me that I could sit up, and then, finally… finally, it broke through to natural air above.
I stopped and took a moment to rest, wiping sweat from my face. Then, very carefully, I used the normal misty tendrils of Chaos to disintegrate a thin line through to the surface of the stone, drawing a circle not so unlike the manhole the team and I had descended through that morning.
I waited, listening for any sounds of movement up above. When nothing happened, I stood, lifting the lid I'd created in my stone burial ground. Cold air rushed into my little hole, chilling my sweat and making me shiver. I poked my head out, only far enough so that I could see, and looked around.
I was inside a room, my head poking out of a hole in the polished marble floor. The ceiling was half transparent, letting grey light into the room. Around me were pillars and angled walls that served no discernible purpose except to create multiple different paths. They seemed to be made out of silver, or maybe mirrors, but were covered in cobwebs and grime and strewn with little bug carcasses, as if the place had been untended for a hundred years.
I waited, again, for any response, any indication that I was not alone. When nothing happened, I climbed out of the ground, settling the lid I'd created back into the floor carefully.
My reflection did the same, copied several times onto the grimy surfaces around me, so blurred that I was little more than a grey humanoid shape.
I shuddered, the cold biting at my exposed flesh, and crept forward. The room was maze-like, paths twisting and turning and crossing each other. Without Wraith, I had no way to tell what was around every reflective corner or column, and no idea where the exit might be.
My footsteps and breath sounded loud to my ears, and bounced off the surfaces around me. It was consoling, in a way, because I thought I would probably hear if anything else moved, though I probably wouldn't be able to tell which direction it came from.
I turned to the wall next to me, my eyes drawn almost involuntarily to my featureless, blurry reflection. I shuddered and stepped away, then hurried on, a bit faster than before.
I pulled up my VR chip Window, to see if there was any difference from what it had shown the last time.
PLAYER NAME: EVE REDDING
TITLE: BEARER OF TESTIMONY
CHARACTERISTIC SKILL: SPIRIT OF THE HUNTRESS, TUMBLING FEATHER
LEVEL: 38
SKILLS: COMMAND, WRAITH, CHAOS, VOICE
STRENGTH: 25
LIFE: 76
AGILITY: 33
GRACE: 28
INTELLIGENCE: 32
FOCUS: 25
BEAUTY: 16
CHARISMA: 33
MANUAL DEXTERITY: 10
MENTAL ACUITY: 29
RESILIENCE: 71
STAMINA: 27
PERCEPTION: 35
Other than the handful of Attribute levels I’d gained through training, it hadn’t changed. I closed the Window and looked around carefully, feeling exposed without Wraith to watch my surroundings in all directions. I couldn't help but feel that something was watching me. I had been walking for a long time, and still had not found anything resembling a way out of the maze.
I turned in a circle, within a group of walls that created a room-like opening with four paths converging on it. My eyes caught on my reflection again, and I shuddered as I realized what was wrong with it. When two mirrors face each other, each reflects the other's reflection, creating an infinite, repeating tunnel of sorts. That wasn't the case, here. Each reflective surface showed only one blurry form. In fact, they didn't seem to show the other walls or columns at all.
I fought down the urge to run, as the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck rose up in alarm. I stepped forward, questioning my own idiocy as I did so. But I knew I couldn't keep wandering helplessly, searching for an exit I was beginning to suspect didn't actually exist. I lifted my hand and rubbed at the wall, clearing away the obscuring grime in a little patch.
I brought my hand away, revealing my face. I jerked backward with a gasp, stumbled, and fell to the floor, scrawling backward as a moan of horror escape my lips unbidden.
My reflection did not copy me. Instead, it remained standing. Its smooth, featureless face seemed to stare down at me, despite the lack of eyes, nose, or mouth.
My back hit the wall behind me, and I turned to look up, then screamed.
The wall behind me had a clear spot, identical to the first. The thing I had thought was my reflection stared down at me through it. It, too, had no face.
I scrabbled forward, then brought my hands to my own face frantically, searching to ensure I had a nose, a mouth, two eyeballs. My features were there, intact. I let out a sob of relief and pushed myself to my feet, moving to the center of the clearing, as far away as each wall as I could get. I spun around, watching as all four forms looked out at me from the clear patch at my head-level, even though I’d only cleaned one wall.
One of them lifted its arm and knocked silently on the surface, twice.
I froze.
It rubbed two little dots into the surface and drew an upside-down arch below them. A smiley face.
My legs were shaking. I whipped my head around to look behind me, half-certain that the
wall behind me would be stretching as the thing reached out to attack me. It wasn't. In fact, the faceless creature stood still and inscrutable. No smiley face.
I looked forward again.
The thing stared back at me. My brain wondered inanely if it even counted as staring if it didn't have any eyes. How did I even know it could see me?
It reached forward and the metallic mirror rippled like the surface of a pond, and then began to distort, stretching outward as it kept pushing, forcing its body forward. The mirror hugged its form like a film of shiny plastic just about to break.
My breath came faster. A bead of sweat dripped into my eye, burning. I dared not blink. I thought of running, but knew it wouldn’t improve my situation. Panic would only make things even more helpless, in a room like this, against a creature like that.
Then, with a soundless pop, the mirror broke into a thousand little shiny granules, and the thing that had been my reflection stepped forward, metal rippling around her till she once again resembled me in every way. Except she was changed by the Seeds, while I was reverted to my original, normal human form. Her footsteps left behind bloody prints. My features coalesced on her face, smiling like a wolf, all teeth. “Welcome back,” she said.
I swallowed, skin tingling, hair raised up, heart racing. There was something wrong about this. It wasn't that something else was wearing my body. It was that something else wasn't. She was me, in every way that I could tell.
Around me, the mirrors reflected neither of us, as if they weren’t really mirrors at all.
I lunged forward and slashed at the air with the arm I’d let bleed, attacking with a vaguely sword-like line of Chaos.
She laughed, even as the skin crumbled off her bones. The black flames of Chaos surged up from her fingers, sweeping my own efforts aside like one might bat away a fly. Her fingers reformed under her flame, and then the air rushed toward her like she’d created a vacuum.
Loose strands of my hair whipped at my face in the artificial wind, and I had to brace myself against the sucking pressure. My mouth opened like a fish as I gasped for air and found nothing. Was this how she meant to kill me this time?
The pull stopped suddenly, and I stumbled back and had to regain my balance. Another surge of power left a long black sword in her hand where once there had been only air. My eyes widened. "Who are you?" I said, my voice cracking a little.
She scowled, lips pulling away from her teeth. "You're asking the wrong question. I know a better one. Who are you?" She swung the sword forward.
I dodged, but she was much faster than me. The black sword scored a line across my arm, cutting through my skin but just barely ripping into the muscle below.
Instead of pressing the attack, she stepped forward languidly, flicking my blood off her sword. It splattered against the ground, washed-out red against the dirty stone. "What are you," the other Eve's voice whispered in my ear, even as she stood across from me.
I urged Chaos up through the fresh cut, and shot it toward her with the new technique I’d learned when the Remnants ambushed us. It built on itself like a muscle, fibers attaching and interweaving as it shot forward, the pieces behind feeding power and speed to the ones in front.
This time, she was the one who tried to dodge and failed, losing a chunk of her sword hand to my attack.
She laughed. “You’re half-clever. But, even when you’re dying, I still want this more than you do. Where you’re going, there’s no space for weakness. If you can’t even beat me, then what use do I have for you? I’d be better served taking your place.” She waited a moment, for the full understanding of her threat to settle in my mind. Then a lunge brought her in range of me again, so fast I could barely respond.
I leaned back, pushing Chaos at her sword, trying to force it to crumble away in the easiest use of the power I could manage. I wasn’t fast or powerful enough.
The black metal pierced through my chest, cutting through skin, then muscle, then bone and organ.
My chest heaved as I gasped, and my impaled lung filled with blood. For an instant, the world stilled. I looked into her ice-blue eyes, reached up, and gripped the blade of the sword with both hands. If the little wound on my arm was a tap, the sword had created a spigot. I let Chaos spill out into the wound, urging it to become the black flames of re-making. I could heal this wound just like I’d healed my injuries down in the dungeon cell. I felt it start to work, skin melding with metal, metal turning malleable and mimicking the flesh around it even as Chaos ate it away, leaving behind something I could work with.
She smiled. “Good girl.”
I spat in her face, the metallic taste in my mouth showing as pink-tinged saliva on her skin.
She didn’t even seem to notice. “You died last time. You will die again here. If you continue to die, I will make it permanent. You will stay here, trapped inside the palace you built in your mind. I will wake up to the real world, to a body made of blood and bone, and do your job properly.” Before I could respond, she brought up her free hand in a swipe. Long, razor-sharp claws whistled as they parted the air, and then my throat.
My head tilted back unnaturally, as the muscles keeping it upright were no longer connected to each other. Blood fountained out like a pulsing geyser. My world went red as the blood coated my eyes, and then black.
I woke, gasping. I shot to my feet, claws out and scrabbling at my own throat. They slid off the crystal symbol and cut shallow lines into my skin. But I was alive.
Large hands grabbed my wrists and forced my claws away from my throat. They held me still till my breath stopped heaving and my eyes were able to focus.
“You dreamt,” Torliam said, looking down at me in the darkness. “I could feel your distress, but I could not wake you.”
Flashes of the other Eve attacking me played in my head, and I closed my eyes against them. I reached for Wraith, and my awareness rushed outward in an eager pulse, comforting me with knowledge of my surroundings and a sense of control.
He pulled my head forward till my forehead rested against his chest. “Be calm. You are safe. I would not allow you to be harmed.” When my breathing slowed, he said, “You often have nightmares, but they have been growing stronger, lately.”
I pulled away from him, willing my fingers to stop trembling. I hadn’t known my troubled sleep would be so obvious to him, and the normal nightmares had become so commonplace I hardly noticed them anymore. “Yeah. Maybe it’s just the stress. I’m fine now. Er, thanks.”
He stared at me in silence for a moment. “Are you sure you are alright? I know dreams can be impactful, even if they are not real. If you wish, I will stay with you, till it has faded from your mind and you can rest easily again.”
“I’m fine,” I said again.
“It is no trouble,” he insisted, sitting down on the thin bed mat beside me despite my protest. “Let us talk about brighter things.”
I sat back down too, but couldn’t think of anything to say. When the silence dragged on awkwardly, I cleared my throat. “Why do you think the humans never found the lost god, if he’s been on Earth all this time?”
He shrugged, a human gesture he’d probably picked up from us. “Perhaps they have, but have forgotten it. Human lives are so short and your people so technologically stunted, stories of the god could have faded into myth long ago.”
I frowned. I wasn’t very knowledgeable about various cultures’ mythologies, so couldn’t say if his theory was likely or not.
“It is even possible that your human government is aware of his existence and has chosen to keep it a secret. However, if a god truly does not wish to be found, there are few mortal means which could succeed in revealing them.”
“Is your Skill one of those methods?”
He cleared his throat. “I believe so. There is no point to doubting ourselves now.”
I leaned my head against the wall and sighed, some of the residual tension flowing out of me. “Right.”
I caught a hint of his s
mile in the darkness, and, after a few more minutes of talking, he left me to go back to sleep.
I sat in the darkness for a while till I felt tired again, then lifted the cover to slip back under it. I stopped at the sound of small pebbles or maybe sand shedding onto the floor. My heart started beating a little harder, and I took a deep breath to calm it. I reached into my pack, which lay under the head of my mat like a lumpy pillow, and took out a small flashlight from one of the pockets.
With the flick of a switch, light beamed out of it, reflecting off the shiny metallic granules spread over my bed mat and the floor around me. “Oh, shit,” I said aloud.
Chapter 22
Now there’s a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky.
— Pink Floyd
I could think of two obvious explanations for the metallic granules, which were the same as those created in the dream when the mirror image of me burst free. The first was that the metallic granules had been there before and somehow my subconscious noticed what my higher mental functions didn’t and inserted them into the dream. The other option was that somehow they’d been placed there while I slept, either by someone else as a subtle threat to me, or by the dream itself.
I scrambled up from the bed and moved to go after Torliam, but, as I was walking past the room where Chanelle slept tied up to the table, a dark form caught the corner of my eye. My first thought was that someone had intruded into the building and was sneaking around without anyone noticing. Maybe the same person who’d left the metallic granules on me.
Then I recognized Sam. He looked up at me from where he was crouched over Chanelle’s prone form. His eyes were empty, black. He blinked, lids closing over the darkness of the abyss for just an instant, then stood. When his gaze met mine again, something in them ate at my insides, taking away my fear and leaving me with a weariness so deep I couldn’t even cry about it.
I blinked rapidly and looked away. I then turned my extra-sensory awareness to Chanelle, dreading what I would discover.