* * * * *
His surface thoughts were easy to find. It was the hidden that was hardest to reach. And beneath the hidden lay the subconscious mind, memories, and so many things she had never been able to see—
Hinev had helped her somehow into his thoughts, but now she was floating free, unable to find anything at all. Hinev’s surface thoughts and mind were nowhere to be found, and so was everything else. Where was she? A part of her still remained in her own mind, connected to her own mind, yet part of her was trapped now in Hinev’s mind, searching. And was she going to have to summon every part of her thought and disconnect herself from her own physical form to reach ahead and into the well of Hinev’s memory?
She saw an image ahead, a picture of a dark-headed woman beloved to him, a figure that represented a deep and eternal love, but with that love came a sense of despair, fear, and horrible, lingering melancholy.
Back in the laboratory, Hinev met her sympathetic, plaintive stare, but his eyes didn’t really see her.
Mother, Undina—Reneja—
She saw him retreating into the memories already, and he was trying to bring her with him. She could sense his pain and fought to keep her conscious from drowning in the waves of emotion that his anguished mind was projecting.
I am Alessia, she said. Not Hinev.
Hinev seemed immobilized by his unlocking memory; he seemed to lose contact with present reality. He was literally living now in his own past.
What could she do? She had to help him. After a moment, her strong, calm wave of reassurance assaulted his will, and he was once again able to view his memories with detachment. Alessia’s body had taken his hand and gripped it fiercely. Strength flowed into him at her touch, and he blinked, staring into her young, bright face with recognition and admiration.
In a moment, all thought would be revealed.
Alessia could hear all of her questions, past and present, echoing in her mind. The second stretched as though it contained infinity.
The second passed.
Now she had passed beyond those questions.
Out of the darkness of Hinev’s mind, the part no human ever touched except in dreams, a swirling cloud of oscillating nightmare faces grew larger as they approached her from a point of light ahead; whether they were phantoms of the past or visions of the future, she did not know. As they neared they leered at her, some exploding suddenly like bursting soap bubbles, others imploding like the universe at the point of collapse—only to reform into still more grotesque caricatures. What did these horrific faces know about her Fate that she did not? she wondered. And what were they?
Behind them came a shining light grid with a background of colored stars that drove the cloud of faces away. No, she thought, she had been the one moving towards them. The faces and the light had not moved at all.
What the light grid was or what it meant she didn’t know. She had formed no expectations of what she would find here in this realm of non-space, and she accepted all she saw as part of the reality of a dream.
In one cell of the grid, a surreal, three-dimensional image appeared, that of a young boy sitting under a tree. Her free conscious, presently unburdened by memories, stared at the movement of him, the colors of him, and myriad diversity of the bizarre reality it observed.
She had forgotten her own memories. Free and unattached, she could now only recall this place between worlds, this light her sightless eyes had once perceived before the constrainment. For now, there was no universal thought or action unknown—the universe was no mystery to her. The only mystery was this world that faced her, and with it, the puzzle of the physical burden, the only journey she had not yet made, the journey of physical life.
In her present state, the stark scene before her aroused a terrifying, nagging recognition in her as she approached it. It reeked of the physical world, all of its confining sights and smells. It made her doubt that she was still a light being. The images disturbed her, mostly because they were familiar. Mostly because she knew she was deceiving herself, that she didn’t belong here in the light, not any more.
Haven’t you left the light already? the images ahead seemed to ask her.
Left the light? For the constrainment that was physical life, life trapped in a physical vessel that knew only itself and its own confining space? No, she hadn’t left the light! The unaware part of her conscious rebelled in fear at the sight of the physical world. Why was it familiar? Had she been there? Did she want to go back to that? No, and yet she was being drawn to it nonetheless. She felt herself dragged closer to the image as the soundless voices she recognized in this, the edge of the tapestry of light, retreated.
The unwilling part of her soul that felt home here in the light finally succumbed to the inevitable journey of life.
At once the window descended rapidly, climaxing in a shattering collision of consciousness as her thought merged with that of the young boy, and she could see the world around clearly and wholly real through his eyes, feel his emotions, remember his memories, hear his thoughts.
It was a maddening shock.
I am Alessia! she repeated, now unsure how she even knew her own name. I can’t forget who I am here, or my soul will truly be lost. As she entered the child’s mind, her own identity began to come back. She remembered her own childhood, the face of her father and her mother Nerena.
At the same time, a distant part of her mind, almost independent, faded in her memory. Why had she never sensed its regret before? Yet she felt she had, long ago, back when she was a child. A curious child, a child that knew nothing of life yet. She had gradually forgotten, and with that, lost her sense of delight in this new world, lost it to the mundane.
She had forgotten this part of her that had existed in the tapestry of light, but it had never forgotten that dimension.
It was her soul.
Now, aware that as she had once been free, she knew she would never again be reunited with it. It had fled back into the void, the tapestry of light and the darkness, a world of solace and blissful oblivion.
It had abandoned her for the light when the serum took her body...
—Where was she?!! She forgot what had been such a recent cause of fear and regret. She had come here for a reason, and now she remembered what that was. This was the mindlink. Of course. For a while, she would be Hinev, the Hinev of the past, Alessia thought. The chirping of cukao birds grew louder in his and her ears. As long as she could remember herself, she would tolerate the separate reality.
For the moment, she would become Fynals Hinev.
And hope that she didn’t lose her own identity for good...
The Last Immortal : Book One of Seeds of a Fallen Empire Page 66