PHANTASIA

by R. Atlas

  “He’s a shaman,” Raven remarked when she noticed Red staring at him in annoyance.

  “He’s clearly lost his mind, why is he on the rafts? He couldn’t have passed the bentham, look how old he is.”

  “It’s not a perfect test, even if it’s the perfect test. And anyways, he’s a Maurak Shaman, they’re considered important to certain groups of people on Takis. Most of them are mad, or at least half mad. They’ve lost most of their senses from suffering from too much psychedelisis. But they have a devout set of followers, people who believe psychedelisis is a form of enlightenment. He has, or had, this weird looking igloo home at Rockmire where he collected artifacts. Everyone who wasn’t a follower, including me, still visited to hear his stories. They were entertaining.”

  “Well, sounds better than history class.”

  “Yeah, and you couldn’t separate the historical accounts from the fictional ones. It made things more exciting.”

  From afar on board the raft, Red could see a Xenosite that looked to be the size of a small island, but he had to take out his microAI and zoom in to confirm that it was a single organism. The beast was of a strange breed. It did not seem to be violent. It peacefully tread along the top of the swamp as several other Xenosites clumped around its body. The hull of its shell formed an enormous dome shape against the sky and when its head was submerged, it looked more like a bulging landmass. Everyone on the raft broke out into nervous whispers as soon as they had noticed it. It made a noise like a deep bellow, similar to the screech of its cousins, but far lower in tone and louder.

  “They’re nicknamed planet rippers — that breed,” Magnus broke in. “The invasion of Takis was the first time they were discovered. They’re a strain of Xenosite that specializes in terraforming different environments to make them more habitable for their hive clusters. They use a host of different methods, from releasing noxious chemicals into waters to fertilizing grounds with strange plants that nourish Xenosite. The plants are currently being studied in Avalonia; some say they’re just seeds of regular flora that have been infected.” A few other passengers on the raft listened in as Magnus continued to explain how Xenosites changed their environments.

  “I thought the Xenosite could adapt to any environment,” Butz cut in at one point. “Why do they need to terraform planets?”

  “They can survive in almost any environment, even ones with extremely limited resources or harsh conditions, but the ones they’re creating are more ideal for evolution.”

  Of course Red thought to himself. He had felt it, in that brief meeting with the queen. Stagnation is the enemy, imperfection must be purged. Must evolve. Always evolve. He shook his head in a puzzled expression as he realized the previous thought wasn’t his own.

  An announcement overhead said that the raft was going to take a detour to avoid a possible intersection with Xenosites and that their arrival at Nyle would be delayed. Red tried to listen to the details of the announcement but the shouting of the shaman had become louder and he resisted the urge not to swear at the man.“THE KYRONS HAVE COME, THEIR RETURN BRINGS DESTRUCTION!” he shouted restlessly.

  “Is he confused about the Xenosite?” Butz asked, turning to Raven. “Is he calling them ‘Kyrons?’”

  “No, he’s in his own world. He’s talking about a story called ‘The Sign of Ikb’Setp.’ He thinks that the Xenosite are actually the return of an ancient race called the Kyrons, a species so devoted to achieving a perfect form in mind and matter that they became cursed by their ambition.”

  “Cursed?”

  “They were visited by a diety called ‘Drah’kar’ — the false one. A cosmic entity from the void that promised them their perfect form if only they were willing to use the void. I don’t know the rest to be honest, but the Kyrons ended up being cursed.”

  “You don’t think its real?”

  “I didn’t say the story wasn’t real, but that doesn’t mean that the Kyrons are the Xenosite. The Kyron’s had their own civilization. Cities, architecture, inventions. They weren’t…hives,” she replied, unable to find the right word.

  “What did Drah’kar want? In the story?”

  “Drah’kar is an entity that tricks people, or sometimes entire races, as in the story of the Kyrons, into using the void to achieve their goals. But the void can’t be touched without being tainted.”

  “But what did he want? What was his goal? And what did being tainted mean?” Red asked. His question was interrupted as the shaman stood up and bellowed above the crowd. “BEWARE THE EVIL EYE!” he shouted. All five of them exchanged a stunned expression with each other as the same thought crossed their minds.

  “What did you say?” Red shouted back instantly. He walked over eagerly as everyone followed behind him. Can’t be a coincidence he thought to himself. The shaman had a peculiar outfit on, a cloak that looked to be made from the scales of dead sea creatures and a headdress carved out of ice and bird feathers. He held a staff made from the bark of the spiral trees they had seen in the swamps, and stood on the raft barefoot with the stems of several plants wrapped around his ankles. He had the face of an incredibly old man, and a hunched body, bent and twisted like a tree.

  “Worlds will be torn apart, galaxies will burn…” the man whispered softly while waving an ominous finger as they approached. The crowd that was listening to him seemed to be annoyed that Red had the audacity to interrupt him.

  “Galaxies do burn…” Butz remarked matter-of-factly, barely loud enough to be heard. The crowd suddenly focused on him and the sudden surge of attention made the falconer’s eyes dart nervously around the raft as if he were looking for an escape. “Well I mean… you know… they’re stars and what not… they do burn…” he said while awkwardly clearing his throat.

  “Please ignore him,” S said to the shaman as he studied the five of them curiously. “Could you go on about the evil eye?” she added politely. “Or whatever it was that you were talking about.”

  “The evil eye…beware the evil eye…” the shaman continued cryptically. Just as Red was about to badger the inebriated man for more details, the raft shook violently to steer away from an enormous sea creature that emerged from behind them. It looked like a whale of sorts, with a long horn that stretched out from its snout. Judging from its slowly morphing body, it had just recently gone through infection. The creature was big enough to swallow the raft whole, and all three hundred people on board.

  “Well there’s no fighting that thing,” Magnus said as they all kneeled down to grab onto the floor of the raft as it swerved across the swamp. “I don’t even know what it is.”

  Slink leaped out of the water from the side of the raft and attacked the creature. The Gnashar’s sharp teeth dug into the side of the creature’s head as its tail whipped around its neck. As Slink dived back into the water to avoid the creature’s retaliatory bite, Wren jumped off from her and onto another Gnasher that came out of the water. He used a pair of hooks to latch unto the other Gnashers’ tentacles, and repeated the same maneuver four more times, using his own mana in blasts of plasma each time he switched Gnashers.

  “Shouldn’t we help him?” Red asked.

  “None of this is real, no point in risking your actual life. He wins anyways. He always wins, he’s my brother.”

  Red continued to watch the Gnashers fight the giant Xenosite, but kept his hands ready for a cast in case it was needed, although he was unsure of what he could do against a creature this large. As the whale creature began to retreat and victory looked to be within reach for them, a second Xenosite that resembled a Gnashar, but was smaller in size, jumped out of the water and latched onto Slink, instantly covering the Gnasher’s mouth with its own before submerging it underwater. Infected. Wren looked like he had just seen a family member killed; his face was frozen in a look of shock and disbelief. Towards where the raft was heading, Red could see a barricade in the water and a fleet of carriers floating behind it. Nyle must be close he thought to himself. We made it. Wren
had stopped following behind them and kept circling the area where Slink was taken down.

  “I wish this wasn’t the way I last saw him,” Raven said as Wren’s figure slowly shrunk into the horizon. Right before disappearing into a blur, he lifted his right hand in a hand sign that Raven returned symmetrically. Red recognized it as the farewell sign in Takis; Raven had taught it to him many years ago — extending your palm forward, towards the sky, like a stiff salute.

  “Was Slink his familiar or something?” Butz asked as they crossed the barricade.

  “I guess. Wren never went to Academy so he was never officially classified as a falconer, but I think he would’ve taken up Slink as a familiar if he had. He grew up with the Gnashars, all of them, but he was especially close to her. He’s known her since she was a stage 1. She was a gentle creature. Even I didn’t mind her much, despite how much I was afraid of Gnashars in general.”

  “Hmm,” Butz sighed as he slowly nodded and looked at Linx. Despite his odd relationship with his cat, Red could guess what he was thinking.

  The raft docked on a pier that extended from the side of a ship that had hundreds of shuttles lined on its main deck, each one labeled with two letters and then a number. Before Red knew what was going on, they were being rushed out of the raft onto lines for a sorting process. A tiny machine at the end of the line pinched your hand to identify you, confirm that you passed the bentham, and assign you to a shuttle.

  “We’re not passing this test, are we? We’re not even from Takis. If the machine uses a universal database, it should technically identify us as seven year olds,” Magnus started. “How is this going to work in your dream?” Raven scanned the ship as if she were looking for a solution to appear. The main deck was filled with troops from the Takis imperial guard. Most were techies, Red noticed, with mech suits that had huge cannons strapped to their sides. The weaponry on mech suits usually fired plasma in concentrated bursts, and were powered either by a person’s own energy, or crystalized Cron, a form that could store huge amounts of energy with minimal leakage.

  “Wait, I need to find the shaman!” Red yelled as he took a few steps back from the line of people.

  “What? Red I know what you’re thinking, but it’s very unlikely that ‘The Evil Eye’ he had mentioned had anything to do with…with that eye,” Raven replied.

  “I don’t know…” Butz chimed in, “The one we saw looked pretty evil…I’d want to know what he was talking about too. Has he mentioned it before?”

  “Yes, I don’t remember the details, but I recognize the term.”

  “I want to at least ask him then,” Red protested.

  An announcement on board called off the ships as they departed. They were up to SH-2.

  “Red we don’t have much time, we can’t look for him, we’ll miss the ship. You can ask someone else about The Evil Eye, someone outside of my dreamscape. We need to get back to the real world.”

  “SH-3, departing in 60 seconds” a voice overhead announced, interrupting their debate. They saw a sign for SH-4 at the corner of the main-deck.

  “Can we run for it, right before it departs?” Magnus asked. Red looked around desperately for the shaman, hoping to catch him before they had to decide on their next move.

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Raven replied.

  “Before we get on, there’s something I don’t understand,” S began.

  “About what?” Raven asked in a hurried tone.

  “What are you afraid of? I mean, I understand that this is a nightmare but there seems to be nothing to overcome. Your body has to be releasing negative energy in some form or another for you to be trapped here, but you haven’t really shown a fear of anything. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I don’t know. You don’t think we’ll get out if we leave on the ship?”

  “No…I mean… I don’t know. Do you know if Wren and your mother are alive or not?”

  “My mother passed away a year after I left. I don’t know from what, but I felt it. I felt it the moment it happened. I don’t know about Wren but…he has polystigmata. He would be blind by now, or maybe deaf, and it wouldn’t be long before he lost his other senses. He wouldn’t be able to survive on Takis. It doesn’t make a difference, anyways, does it?”

  “I guess not,”

  “STOP RIGHT THERE!” a voice screamed. A single techie marched up to them, his hand cannon fully cocked and pointed at Red. Raven reactively stepped forward and placed her hand gently on the hilt of her sword. More techies followed right behind the one that approached them. “What’s going on? Are you infected or something?” he asked in a hostile tone.

  “What?” Red asked, puzzled.

  “Why is your hand a blade? Why does it look like that?”

  Red looked down at his right hand, a giant blade. It was black and shadowy, not organic and veiny like the one he had seen on the bladed man. Everyone else looked at him with sudden surprise, as if they too had just noticed it.

  “What… when did that happen? Red is this your nightmare?” S asked.

  “What? No. I don’t think so,” Red replied. If it was, this was a bad way for his to mix with Raven’s, he thought to himself as he stared down the barrel of the cannon pointed at him. He could see the light of the crystal inside it, an ominous blue like the ainmosni crystal. His hand still felt like a hand. He felt like he could open and close it, even grip something, but it shaped out as a blade. He suddenly felt an odd prickly sensation and the urge to laugh. He tried fighting it, but a smile slowly crept over his face as he couldn’t resist.

  “I have orders to shoot anything on sight that’s suspected to be hostile,” the techie replied anxiously. Red’s smile seemed to make the techie more nervous and he grabbed his hand cannon with his free hand, preparing for the recoil of firing. “I’m giving you till five to explain.” A crowd had now formed around them, watching the whole debacle unfold.

  S and Magnus both began yelling at the soldier, telling him to calm down, but he continued to count down from five. The need to explain anything had long vanished in Red, and he couldn’t think of anything but his newfound sensation to laugh. His smile broke out into choked spurts of glee, and then all out laughter. Where is this coming from he wondered.

  “Four.”

  “Red, answer him,” Raven said.

  “Three.”

  “RED! Why is your hand a blade?!” Butz yelled.

  “Two.”

  “RED!” Raven yelled, it was one of the few times he ever heard her not calm.

  The techie didn’t bother counting off one. Red heard the sound of his trigger click as the world disappeared around him.

  Chapter 7: The Truth Sayer

  Unlike the first time he had entered Raven’s dreamscape, when the world around him simply melted into Takis, almost unnoticeably, this time, as Red fell into a deeper layer of her nightmare, he felt the jarring sensation of diving into a pool of freezing water and then sinking below its surface. The first instant he splashed into the water, he felt as though he had finally awoken for the first time in his life — like he had been asleep for all these years and just now opened his eyes to see the world for the very first time. I’m submerged underneath the glacial swamps he thought blithely. Everyone is right there above the surface, I can go and return whenever I want to. But he had no intention of swimming up to the surface, at least not yet. The first level of Raven’s dreamscape only felt like another rendition of reality, but the world he had now entered felt like a level above reality, true reality if there was such a thing. He heard someone calling his name, “Red,” and thought of the color. Suddenly he could hear the color red, the actual color itself. Its burning and lively rhythm, its melody of endless energy. And when he blinked to reset his vision, he could see the sound ‘Red,’ right there in the ocean, swimming next to him, swimming through him. Everything around him felt transcendental, like the world had finally revealed its true form. He had the urge not to swim to the surface and save himself, bu
t to sink deeper, to peer further into this dream. No, not this dream, into reality. I’ll see it for the first time. And so he went, deeper and deeper.

  Time had shed itself of its linear illusion and he could see the lives of his team, including himself, all unfold from start to finish. Not the details or contents of their experiences, no, those were irrelevant, but the way they would shape the universe ahead of them and behind them. He saw each one for who they truly were: the king, the prophet, the light, the betrayer, and the phoenix. Then there were ones that he would soon meet whose lives were inextricably connected to all of theirs. He could see them as well now: the ocean, the dragon, the wolf, the conqueror, the phantom, and the dark one. The dark one he could not see. Red only knew that he was not from this world. There were more but their images were blurrier, and he assumed that they were too far into the future for his present self to grasp. He could only make out a few of them: the defiler, the people’s champion, the genie, and the executioner.

  He looked up again towards the surface. It was much further above now, but still reachable. He thought of having to return to his world one day, the one he knew as ‘the real world,’ and felt a pang of regret; he knew he wouldn’t remember any of this. The experience would float at the edge of his memory like a vague sense of enlightenment. He looked deeper into the waters. There was more there, so much more to be discovered. He didn’t have to go back. At least not yet. And so he swam deeper.

  Any thought that came into his mind he could explore within these waters. He looked into the last memory they had in Raven’s dreamscape, boarding the shuttle headed for Avalonia. The machine that had sorted seven year old Raven into SH-4 had done so in error. She belonged in SH-3, headed for Karth. He could see the two alternate realities side by side, and their profound differences. If she hadn’t come to Avalonia, they never would have met in the orphanage, she never would have come to Crest, she would not have been with him during the field test, and he would not have escaped The Evil Eye. A single error, a result of a shuttle planner incorrectly documenting SH-3’s capacity as less than what it actually was, changed the course of the entire universe. That’s all life was, he realized in that instant. An enormous web of what-if’s, a giant network of errors and consequences, a collection of paths that connected and branched out into an infinite number of different universes — and a single temporary blip of consciousness that allowed someone to grasp one of those branches from beginning to end.