PHANTASIA

by R. Atlas

  “Ow, sorry!” Red whispered when he accidentally stepped onto a hand.

  “It’s okay,” S replied.

  “What happened?” Butz asked from above both of them. “Why are we stopping?”

  “There’s something down there,” Magnus called back from way below. Hold on, follow my lead.”

  As Red went further down, he noticed what had caught Magnus’ attention. Down below at the end of the passageway was a bright blue light, too radiant to be the glow of Cron. When they got to the end of the chute, they each gripped unto the ceiling of the cavern the pathway opened up into, and then swung their bodies over to hang from the ceiling of the chamber below, like human spiders.

  At first, Red was sure that his eyes were deceiving him. If he had thought any of the chambers they had crossed before were enormous, he wouldn’t know what word to use to describe this one. The place was big enough to house a city. Down below, as best as he could make out, were hundreds of thousands of creatures, or plants — he wasn’t sure which — that looked like giant toadstools and swam around the gulf of the cavern like busy colonies of fungus. Their movement wasn’t a walk, nor a glide as he may have expected, but an abrasive way of swimming through that flazb that soaked up the foam as they went. Floating eerily around the space of the cavern were lone brown clouds of umbriel, an effect that Red associated with the unique conditions of the chamber. An internal atmosphere. On the far opposite side of where they hung, he noticed a cluster of the clouds, raining umbriel down below like an isolated storm.

  Spread around the cavern were wide spires that were so tall he was sure some of them could match the super structures of Echidna in height. He gasped sharply when he took a closer look at them, and after hearing everyone else do the same, he was sure that his eyes weren’t fooling him. The spires were littered with thousands of bodies, mostly critters of various sorts, but a few of them were human. They were all securely wrapped up in a mixture of flazb and other fungal substances. Some of the bodies were old, and had already lost their flesh, leaving only the skeleton of a corpse behind. Others looked fresh, recent even. He could feel the fear begin to pound in his chest — Raven’s stuck somewhere here. A few of the bodies even had academy uniforms on, and Red imagined that this was where most people ended up if they fell through one of the whirlpools on the surface like they had. What is this place?

  At the center of the canyon was a single blue crystal that hung weightlessly like the clouds around it. Its radiance was blinding, but magnetic — a dazzling light that pulled Red’s attention away from the rest of the room. Just as he was about to stare into it, to get lost in its radiance for only a moment or two, he heard S shout a warning.

  “DON’T STARE AT THE CRYSTAL!”

  “What? Why not?” He was surprised at how disappointed his voice sounded. He didn’t realize how much he was tempted to do exactly that.

  “I know what this is… I know what this place is supposed to be,” S replied hurriedly.

  “That’s an ainmosni crystal.” Magnus said while gesturing to the center of the room.

  “Yeah. That blue crystal in the middle, if you stare at it, it puts you into a trance-like deep sleep. Those things — the mushroom like things, I’ve heard of them, in a story about blood elves once. In their homeland in Karth, to ascend to their highest caste, certain members meditate in these caves with creatures that are supposed to make your nightmares come true. This must be a cave similar to the ones in the stories. Those toadstool things, they’re like parasites of your dreamscape. They feed on your imagination by circling you through your nightmares.”

  Red stared at her wide-eyed, imagining that he knew exactly which nightmare he’d be stuck in if he gazed into the crystal. The thought made it easy for him to avoid its light, no matter how tempting the aura. S fixed her microAI over her eyes, and then shifted the device to its vizor mode. Red heard a click as the gadget strapped around her head, and then watched as she scanned the entire room, zooming in and out of different regions. Eventually, she motioned towards the second spire on their left. It took them several hours to climb across the ceiling, careful as they were not to accidentally pull a rock loose and drop to the bottom of the chamber. When they were directly above their target spire, they let go of the ceiling and used an air resistance cast to land softly at the cusp of the tower. Red calculated that he’d make it halfway to the floor of the chamber, if he dropped straight down from the top of the spire, before he ran out of energy (a bearing that can cause death on its own). Every second of an air resistance cast drained exponentially more energy to match the increasing velocity of a fall. A few minutes after climbing down from the top, S motioned towards a fresh looking gap in the spire, one that looked like it had recently been disturbed. Red held his breath as she clawed out its inhabitant.

  Raven had her eyes marginally open, with a passive but slightly disturbed expression glued to her face. Her pupils looked cloudy and lost, like she had accidentally wandered too far into a daydream. Red immediately shook her, intending to pull her out of her sleep, but she remained unconscious.

  “You can’t wake somebody out of the sleep of an ainmosni crystal. The only way out is if they escape their own nightmares,” S said bleakly.

  “What does that mean?” Butz asked.

  “I’m not sure, I think it depends on the nightmare, and the person having it,” S replied. “There’s a story about a blood elf that feared the stars, and to overcome his nightmare, he had to fly into the center of our galaxy with his eyes open. He awoke only after an entire month, and they say the experience had left him mad - always ranting about a place called star world,” she added grimly. “The crystal works by keeping you trapped within cycles of your own negative energy. If you can stop the flow of the energy, find another way to channel it, or eliminate the fear all together, you can free yourself from the nightmare.”

  “What now then?” Red asked despondently. “Can we pull her out and bring her back to the surface? There must be a cure for this type of thing. I can carry her myself.”

  “From what I know, there’s no way out — besides getting over the induced nightmare. It’s an eternal sleep,” Magnus answered thickly. “Moreover, someone can only wake up while they’re exposed to the glow of the same ainmosni crystal that put them to sleep. We have to wait for her…there’s nothing else we can do.”

  Red looked back and forth between Raven and his team, hoping that someone would come up with a solution. The eye comes a voice in his head said. The sound of umbriel dripping rhythmically unto the floor below suddenly reminded him of a ticking clock.

  “I have an idea,” S began, as the other three jumped in unison with an excited “What!?”

  “The mental connection healers share with their team members or those they’re close to, I’ve heard it being used to enter someone’s dreams as well. It’s a method of curing people of deeper mental complexes that manifest themselves as physical ailments. I’ve done something like it before… with Raven nonetheless —”

  “Raven has nightmares?” Butz asked.

  “She’s never mentioned anything about them to me,” Red added skeptically. He wondered briefly if they were something she had wanted to hide.

  “You can connect to her dreamscape? You can help pull her out then!” Magnus exclaimed after the two of them.

  “Exactly. Not just me, a healer’s connection can span multiple people. I think I can get all of us there. We can use the crystal to enter into the same deep sleep she’s in so that we won’t accidentally wake up and leave someone behind.”

  “That’s risky,” Magnus replied. “We’d be bringing in our own fears as well…”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Butz replied. “We can’t just leave her here, and she’d do the same for us.”

  “Butz is right,” S answered. “We have to give it a shot. Plus, it will still primarily be her dreamscape. I’m sure our influences will be negligent.”

  “What do we do then?” Red asked, look
ing directly at Magnus. Magnus looked surprised to be suddenly given charge over the decision, but hesitated for only a second before replying.

  “We’ll give it a shot,” he sighed.

  “How will it work?” Butz asked.

  “It’ll be just like any of the connections I’ve made before, it’ll just feel more powerful. Don’t begin staring at the crystal until I tell you to,” S replied. The healer planted herself right next to Raven and dug deeply into the flazb until she was securely strapped inside. The other three did the same right after her.

  “Okay, sure,” Red said. “What if these toadstool things notice us?”

  “They won’t feel our presence until we’re asleep. They can only sense you in the astral plane. Raven must’ve stared into the crystal before realizing what it was,” S replied. “And anyways, all they’d do is stick us into these spires, and we’ve already done that for them.”

  In the next few minutes, Red felt the familiar sensation of his own conscience meshing with S’, recalling emotions and memories that he knew weren’t his. He was somewhat used to this, having gone through the connection several times before, but soon felt Butz, Magnus, and Raven as well — an overwhelming wave of emotions he wasn’t expecting. His vision blurred, and he felt as though he were sharing their physical senses as well. I guess she wasn’t exaggerating about this one being more powerful, he thought to himself as he struggled to distinguish between his own sensations and those of his team.

  “Go!” S shouted softly, catching everyone by surprise. As he stared into the crystal, Red felt the thrill of his consciousness slipping away for the second time during the field test.

  “Does anyone have any idea what her nightmare is going to be about?” Butz asked in a dazed voice. “It occurred to me, we have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into.”

  “I do,” S replied. “Brace yourselves, and pray that it doesn’t feel too real.”

  Chapter 5: Gnashars and Nightmares

  The rocky interior of the cavern had vanished behind a thicket of ghost white pillars with skeletal branches that extended from the ground like frozen claws. It took a moment before Red realized that the pillars were trees, albeit gaunt and desolate looking ones that resembled nothing he had ever studied. Each of their branches were finger thin and shaped into elaborate spirals like the braids of a miniature galaxy. He looked down and saw that his body was waist deep in a pool of slush. There was no solid ground anywhere in sight, only a vast marsh steeped with carpets of a black algae and estranged bits of floating ice. The land stretched on like this for as far as he could see — a frozen everglade that conquered its horizon with a collection of eccentric flora. He looked to his right, where he saw Butz, Magnus, and S, all of whom looked equally bewildered, and then up, towards the sky, where something seemed to be off. It took a moment for the question to register in his head.

  “Why are Avalonia’s stars so far away?” he asked out loud. From where he stood, both stars were mere specks in the sky, shrunk against a backdrop of misplaced constellations. Their unusual distance created a dimmer daytime atmosphere than what Red was used to. The blue star, Aleph, seemed disproportionally closer than its red sister, Gama, drowning the hue of Avalonia’s usual starlight into an ultra-blue tone and rooting the sky into a perpetual state of twilight.

  “Because we’re not in Avalonia anymore,” Magnus answered in a dazed tone. “We’re in the glacial swamps of Takis,” he added while intently observing their surroundings.

  “Takis? We’re in Takis? How did we get here?” Red asked curiously.

  “We’re in Raven’s dreamscape, Red. You can’t forget that — this isn’t real,” S answered while pinching him. It seemed obvious now that he thought about it, and he wondered how he had forgotten. None of this is real, he repeated to himself. He looked down at his hands. He had both of them. Takis. Takis. Suddenly, he realized what Raven’s nightmare was going to be about.

  The glacial swamps of Takis loosely referred to a collection of arctic wetlands encircling the planet’s equator. The subzero temperatures of the forested region spawned a diverse set of ecosystems with creatures that exhibited an extreme tolerance for cold and acidic environments. Takis itself was the first planet to be colonized beyond the metroid belt, even before Iris, despite being further away from the center of their solar system. Roughly about twice the size of Avalonia, Takis was too cold to be habitable anywhere beyond its equatorial regions, where hundreds of major cities had formed around major Cron deposits. Speculations were made that underneath Takis’ beds of frozen ice, warm oceans could have given birth to underwater civilizations like the mnes of Eaut, but nothing of the sort has ever been confirmed. Like the three other outer planets, Takis’ sources of Cron led to a rapid pace of colonization, and after only a few centuries, its population exceeded that of Avalonia.

  “We’re supposed to find Raven in this?” Butz groaned. “At least I don’t feel the cold.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Magnus replied quaintly.

  “What do you mean? I feel fine, and I’m sitting in half frozen water. My body’s not using mana to warm up the area around me either, isn’t that what happens if you’re in an uninhabitable environment?”

  “Your body is releasing energy - in the real world, because it thinks that all of this is real,” S answered. “Luckily we’re wrapped in flazb. That explains how people are preserved in this state for so long within their nightmares, and also why Raven’s energy level was in flux. She must be using up her energy in her dreamscape, and then having it restored by the flazb.”

  “What happens if we die here?” Red asked. Should’ve known the answer to that before I jumped in here, he mused to himself.

  “It cycles you into a deeper state of the nightmare,” S replied. “And if you die there, even deeper. Each level a more raw state of Raven’s subconscious, where her fears and thoughts take on more abstract forms.”

  “But we’re all connected to a single dreamscape —”

  “So you’d get stuck in a combination of Raven’s mind, and bits of ours, inside the composite folds of all of our thoughts. And if you didn’t understand what the fears were because they’d be more abstract, you would have no way out,” S added darkly. “And if she wakes up before you can get out, to be honest, I have no idea what plane you’d be stuck in. It would be a broken dreamscape made up of fragments of our minds.”

  Butz gave a long whistle after her reply and then began wading through the mire. The algae clung to his waist as he tread along, like shards of a thin molasses floating on water. Although his sense of smell was off, Red could tell this place had a sickly sweet aroma that combined with the sting of the cold to electrify your nostrils. It was a memory that he had — or that Raven had — that he now shared with her. Beyond that, he could feel a mix of other emotions, a familiar combination of fear and wonder, terror and fascination, dread and curiosity.

  “Wait! Do you know where you’re going?” S shouted after him.

  “Yes, of course,” Butz replied with a pep as he continued. “Haven’t you all studied the maps of Raven’s subconscious?”

  “There should be a city somewhere nearby; Takis is where Raven grew up before Avalonia. This must be close to where she lived,” S remarked. Red knew that Raven had grown up in one of the outer planets, but not that it was Takis.

  “Fantastic, let’s just find someone to ask for directions then, shall we,” Butz replied sarcastically. Deciding that moving in any direction was better than standing still, Red, Magnus, and S eventually followed behind him. Moving through the algae proved to be particularly difficult; the substance was much heavier than it seemed. It had been concentrated to thicker and more efficient colonies over the course of many years. Linx tread through the swamp right next to Butz, and it wasn’t for a while until Red imagined how peculiar the cat’s presence was. He realized, then, how difficult it was to recognize the irrational in his current state of mind.

  “Butz…why is Linx here?
” he asked curiously.

  “And why is he so big?” Magnus followed up. Red looked at Magnus for a moment and thought it was odd that he was wearing a white crown on his head, but could not remember if he had it on back in the caverns. He decided not to ask.

  “I don’t know…” Butz sighed. “Linx why are you so big? And why are you here?”

  “Obviously because this is how you see me in your mind,” the Aeyz Cat replied matter-of-factly. His fur now flashed a spectral jade green, reflecting the light around him like the body of a phantom. Red thought he had a funny voice, like that of a highly intellectual scholar, but held back from laughing for the sake of being polite. The cat looked at him glaringly right then, as if it had read his mind. Why didn’t he ever talk before, Red thought as they all kept trekking across the swamp. Must’ve been difficult to have been hiding it for so long. The cat had a broad and nasal accent. It reminded Red of what elves sounded like, but with a far more deliberate tone.

  “There is something watching us, I should add, since the lot of you are too dim witted to notice,” Linx added rudely.

  “What?” Magnus choked. “Where?” They looked around haphazardly until they saw it — a pair of beady eyes half submerged in the shallow mire, watching them patiently from afar. Linx laughed softly to himself as he watched the four of them freeze in place, unsure of what to do about the hidden creature. Its eyes were small and yellow, but Red was unwilling to bet that the creature was of a similar proportion. Nearby, a wide curving trail in the water snaked its way to them, betraying the approach of another of its kind.