“Ambrose, Rangi, Itzal, Yin, Kalinda, Pratima, Seamus, Njál, Set and Echo,” Kilpeni whispered. “I will never forget. They will never be gone from my mind. Aislings don’t have names, but they do. They have names because I need to remember what they represent. We all do.”
“Did you know them? Any of them?” Jess asked slowly. Even though she could not see his featureless face, his voice rang with a grief she knew intimately.
“Set and Itzal were my brothers.” The word hung in the area as he sighed. “As close as we can come to family at least. They were my fellow soldiers fighting by my side and I by theirs for centuries. But that was long ago as well. Before I was the guardian of the stones but some days after I inspired their creation. The Compass used me as the tool that turned Echo to stone and set this all in motion. I picked Set and Itzal when the stones were made. We fought for so long. Too long – but I will finally be done soon. Then I will rest. Perhaps I’ll be a mountain.” Though he meant it as a joke, the words fell flat. He dreaded being anything so important as a mountain. A new life as a stone would be far more peaceful.
Jess pulled herself higher into the darkness. She glanced down and saw only darkness beneath her. Above her stood only black as well. Her brows furrowed. “The cliff wasn’t this tall.”
“You fell off of it. How would you know how tall it was?” he questioned, but in his shifting gaze, he only saw Aislings slumbering as far up as he could see.
“Maybe I’ve already passed a door or something. Maybe the entire thing is an illusion,” Jess muttered to herself as she climbed further up the seemingly endless stretch.
“This wasn’t designed to keep people out.”
“Really? Cause this seems an awful lot like that moment when the back-up life is situated right above twirling engines of death and is called ‘a little hard to get to,’” she retorted.
He couldn’t contradict her, so he decided it was safest to just stay silent. The shadows in the core grew darker overhead. While in the second, Kilpeni could see the Aislings up ahead grow thinner stretching over a greater distance. They no longer flickered between land and human form. Fading Aislings at first lightened before becoming translucent. The grey blankness of the second dimension stretched out beyond them as they thinned showing the near invisible shades of those beyond the catatonic phase of the surface shades. These Aisling were nothing more than the corpses upon which the second dimension was built.
Jess kept climbing higher; her muscles shook under the continued pressure. Her knuckles were white, and her fingers had scratches and small nicks from the tips to the palm. Falling into line with her, he felt the strange curling as if the shadows clung to them at each hold. They had not fallen in part due to the sleeping ones up until this point, yet the further they went the more likely it became that they would fall as the shadows loosened their grip.
As Kilpeni’s certainty waned, Jess became more confident with each stretch sending shivers up her limbs. She had come further than she had originally believed possible. Perhaps it was a second wind following the exhaustion after the fall, but adrenaline or confidence, she stretched further and pushed harder than before. In the darkness, her thoughts sparked setting fire to her soul. Jess had wanted to be something greater than her for too long. As outrageous as the thought had seemed when she’d attributed it to insanity, the idea had grown on her.
“Slow down,” he commanded, trying to halt their pace by spreading himself out around the shaft.
Scoffing, Jess ignored his efforts. “We’re almost there. We have to be by now.”
He stared up into the abyss above them where no form remained. Kilpeni could not determine if even ancients existed above them or if this was a place where the core overlapped with the second. Every instinct he had screamed danger. There was no pathway and no sign of any of what the Compass had foretold.
“I don’t know, Jess. Please, take caution,” he begged hoping his adherence to such emotive norms would tempt her.
A small smirk tugged at her lips. “It’s fine.”
Sparks rushed up and down his essence leaving Kilpeni scattered and panicked as Jess reached further into clear space. Yet again, she found some hold in the absence. She climbed further upwards until the ancient, slumbering Aislings were so far below that they were little more than a circular outline. Jessica moved onwards continuing in her trek while Kilpeni attempted to rationalize his mounting paranoia.
Desperate for a hold, he stretched seeking some limits, but she remained his only anchor. “You need to slow down!”
Jess snorted, but she came to a stop. “Physics doesn’t exist in this chimney to hell.”
Kilpeni stretched upward then downward to no avail. “Something’s gone wrong. I can feel it.”
“What were we supposed to come across by now?” she asked, glancing around in the darkness.
“A room.”
Sighing, Jess continued to climb. “That’s helpful,” she sardonically grumbled. “And it’s just the sort of information sharing that would change the world.”
Kilpeni hummed softly falling back into position before tracing the outline for holds to guide her; however, he fumbled without any idea what to do. Whatever existed in the core was not mirrored in the second. He’d never seen anything like the tunnel in his life. Every aspect of the core was mimicked in the second. If Kilpeni could not follow the path in the second, there was nothing he could do to protect her.
Exhausted, he explained, “A room with a conductor of all light – a box where the stones will be safe. We’re close – but I can’t find the door.”
“‘Find the door?’” Her tone wasn’t right. Like a spider, dread crept over Kilpeni. He couldn’t hear doubt or discouragement in the inflection. All Kilpeni heard was a bad idea.
“What are you thinking?” he inquired. “Whatever it is, put it aside and concentrate on not doing it!”
Jess smirked. Her fingers itched though whether it was from the small cuts or tremors brought on by exhaustion, she couldn’t tell. “I think I can find a door.”
“It isn’t that type of door, Jess. It’s an entrance into an area where the dimensions slip together. The spheres aren’t perfect. Overlap isn’t an impossibility. This is a doorway like the one Echo slipped through,” he told her desperate to relay the depth of his message.
Jess stretched backwards testing her hold throughout his speech before removing a hand to slam it against the wall next to her. Returning the hand to its hold, she repeated with the opposite wall and hand. Rough stones mixed with smooth. Clay and sand melded into a wall carved to be climbed with little difference between the one in front of her and those to her sides. Behind her loomed the unknown. Unreachable unless she let go.
“What do you see, Kilpeni?” she asked.
“Nothingness.”
“Brilliant.” She took a breath and reached backwards for the wall behind her. The space between the tips of her fingers and the opposite wall was immeasurable in the dark.
“God! Jess, don’t do that!” he screamed. “Do you realize how far that fall would be? You’d be dead upon impact.”
There was a second that Jess’s muscles twitched instinctively in response to his words. She had never been a risk taker. Her greatest rebellion was to cut her hair short – the idea of bleaching or dying it had been beyond her emotional range. She was the sort who lived their lives contentedly; however, she lived as she would have if she had been as completely and unchangeably unimportant as she had meant to be. Kilpeni had changed her mind even if she had mainly retained her previous programming. Underneath the calm exterior and sensibilities, Jess wanted to leap from a plane with a parachute tethered to her back. The safety net remained, but she dreamed of being dauntless. Her mind had always been the treasured piece that kept her from acting. Without her brain, she knew she would be nothing, so Jess had never attempted anything which could ever harm it.
“I’m going insane talking to my shadow anyways. Who cares if I’m dead?”
She laughed before becoming dangerously somber. “I’m unimportant, Kilpeni. What the hell do I have to live for?”
She leaned forward against the wall. Her arms bent. All her muscles tensed. With a push, she let go. The sensation was novel. Though she had jumped as far as she could backwards off the wall, she’d not made it far enough. Falling with only a minimal amount of panic, the wind rushed around her while Kilpeni screamed and tried to force her to grab hold. Unfortunately, he had no more influence over the core world than she permitted. The release – finally letting go of her doubts and every certainty she had clung tightly to – was short lived. Her back hit soft dirt far sooner than she should have. The ceiling cleared and smoothed to a tunnel carved gently into the earth. Swirling designs painted across the ceiling in blues and greens with bursting suns of red and gold. Tiny stick people danced across the blues and greens in a dark brown. They moved above her head. Sitting up, Jess’s eyes followed them. Further ahead, a circular room was located. A pedestal stood in the center upon which sat a box which emitted a blinding light.
Kilpeni sighed and uncurled from beneath her. Casting his visage upon the illumination, he stretched toward the pedestal. With a sigh, he slid back onto the floor. “The severance between the dimensions is weakest here. Congratulations, you actually found it.”
Blinking, she waited for her eyes to focus completely before moving. “It was either finding it or dying,” Jess retorted pushing up. Soft dusty green moss grew along the edges of the floor webbing across and part way up the walls.
“Fine – let’s just finish this. Afterwards, you’ll just head back the same way and be done.” Kilpeni nodded. His shaded form flickered from one edge of the room to another.
Jess chuckled brushing dirt off her pants before heading into the room. “Falling up a waterfall?”
“I said the same way – not in the same manner.”
Humming, Jess lifted the pouch over her head. The stones hadn’t felt terribly heavy when tied about her neck. She had almost forgotten they were even there, but once they sat in her hand once more, the weight edged upon impossible to comprehend. Seconds ticked onwards while her mind churned. The box was made of light. A singularity built to conduct constant, blinding amounts of light, yet there was no heat. As she stepped closer, the cogs of her mind cranked in turmoil. Something was not right. The hairs on the back of her neck rose. A chill ran down her spine, but Kilpeni flickered around the floor and walls in impatience.
“Put the stones in the box,” he ordered.
Her dark brows furrowed. Pressing her lips together, Jess sighed. “How is this box any safer than the boxes I suggested?”
“This box will never have shadows,” he informed her. His face shimmered in reflection over the surface of the box then fractured and scattered into shadows over the room. “It is always light! A box made to conduct light everywhere!”
“Won’t shadows form when we introduce an opaque object like these guys?” She swung the pouch back and forth over the box’s opening.
“Will you just trust me for once in your incredibly dull existence? Put the stones in the box, and then you can get back on with writing your boring thesis, and there won’t be any worries regarding dimension jumps or horrible disasters that will blow a hole in the spheres!” Kilpeni ranted as his patience had worn thin. Interacting with his previous wards had never been so trying.
Jess’s lips curved downward in a frown. Opening the pouch, she turned the pouch over in her palm and allowed the stones to fall. The tiny bits fell into the near blinding light, and shadows bounced back. “Well, you’re a moron,” she said before the light turned into a dark swirling hole and the room around her collapsed. She and everything within the room were dragged into the blackness.
Chapter Seven
Kilpni leaned over Jess trying to measure if she was breathing. Breathing had never been mandatory in the second dimension as far as he knew, but he thought he would be remiss not to at least attempt to see if she was alive. He moved in close and laid his hand over her mouth and nose. No air came through. If she had died, the swirling vortex to the core had hopefully died with her. He was then kindly reminded how painful it was to be punched in the face.
“This is your fault!” she shrieked. “I don’t know where I am, but if you’re here, I’m not where I should be! You absolute moron! ‘Put them in the light box!’” she mocked, lowering her voice and waving her hands in the air. “‘They won’t create shadows. It conducts light, and physics doesn’t exist in light conducting boxes.’ Argh!”
“I didn’t know! The Compass insisted the light box would be the best manner of containing them,” he replied checking his nose for bleeding. “I’ve never been punched myself. I don’t even know if I should be bleeding. I don’t think I bleed.” A memory flashed before his eyes. Blood pouring out of a neck not meant to spurt blood. “This is unusual.”
Jess ignored him as she stared at the emptiness around her. White non-light stretched, illuminated with a glow that she couldn’t place. Before she could ponder the oddity, a burning pulled her attention away. Something above her breast bone ached. Dragging down her collar, she glanced down her shirt. She had hoped that if she ever did go through with getting a tattoo that she would remember it. As it was, there were words written in black on her chest directly above her breasts that she could just make out saying: Scattered Stop Please Retrieve At Earliest Convenience Stop If Inconvenient Retrieve Anyways Stop At Least One Per Dimension Stop Don’t Screw This Up Stop.
“You complete and utter freak!” she shrieked and tackled the Aisling to the ground. She took hold of his collar and shook him for all her worth. “What the hell is this?” She pulled down her shirt to reveal the writing. “The Compass, right? Right? That screwed up ball of crap! When I find out who or what he is, I’ll strangle his neck! De-curtain the creep like the Wizard of Oz!”
His eyes widened as he stared at her chest. He had met his fair share of female-formed Aislings and enjoyed intercourse as frequently as his wards had, but shared action hadn’t meant shared intimacy. The two had always mimicked while ever vigilant. More often than not, only one shade would replicate the forms, so the second could be a look out. Aisling did not mate of their own accord. Formed by the Compass, they were built from the essence of their ward. Jess’s breasts were not another Aisling’s. The view of them was singularly his own. A rush of heat flushed up his neck and face. Realizing he’d watched them develop, Kilpeni glanced away with a grimace.
“Not the boobs, you idiot!” Jess punched him in the shoulder. “Read the black!”
Grimacing, he forced himself to read the writing. “That’s definitely the Compass. Their messages are always on skin, and they’ve been rather fond of telegram forms as of late.”
“Dimensions? I have to go into those good sense forsaken layers that I’m not supposed to have to go to in order to retrieve little crappy stones that the stupid light box was supposed to protect! How is this fair? How is this supposed to change anything?” Screaming, she threw him aside. Her eyes traced the expansive emptiness surrounding them. “Well thought out plan my fanny, you magical moron! Couldn’t even think it through enough to keep Mr. Important in the loop! Well, count me the heck out! I’d rather fall into a Irish mud hole than help any of you!”
As a tingle traced across Kilpeni’s chest, he sighed and sensed the change the Compass had projected upon him. The seams of his shirt fell open as he shifted to reveal the Compass’s words as he spoke them aloud. “Stop whining stop. I have a plan stop. Collect the stones and follow my instructions stop.”
“Really? If you’re so omnipotent, why don’t you do it yourself! I’m going to skin you alive and flay you like a Bolton!” Jess screamed. The same burning sensation scraped over her skin. Her eyes narrowed, and with a fearsome glower, she read the words newly shifted and replaced upon her chest. “‘You’ll never find me stop. You’re in my world now, baby doll stop.’”
“Stop arguing. The words will
fade in a bit since you’ve read them. Let’s find the one here first and work our way to the edge. It shouldn’t be that hard.” Kilpeni forced a smile and ignored a small buzz against his hand until Jess turned and trudged away. Following her, he read his hand quickly: LOL.
“Kilpeni!” she called, and he ran to her side without a thought.
They walked beside each other for the first time. He’d never experienced anything so unnatural. Echo had crossed. She leapt through, and when the Compass pulled her back by her tethers, she’d been brought back through his core. Coldness and pain laid in those memories. Ones which weren’t entirely his own. Though the danger of their predicament was well known to him, Kilpeni found his eyes moving of their own accord. They traced her profile. The mirrored view of the core had shown it to him previously but never with his eyes. Her braid swung back and forth. Interwoven bits of multi-hued brown bounced against her back. Jess’s mother had called it a French braid when she’d taught Jess. It was much more cunning from a distance than he’d thought it in reflection. Everything about her was that way. Her dark eyes glared at him then the second dimension around them. Had she always been so light? She seemed on the edge of floating away.
Lips pursing, Jess asked, “Where are we even going?”
“We must find the Keys. The first here and then we shall move outwards until we find the rest,” he replied wondering if she had completely forgotten their previous conversation. Though Kilpeni had never heard of a core-born in the second dimension, he wondered what side effects could result. Water was his first thought. Shifting forms was easy enough with some practice, but separating items formed from his skin was vastly more difficult. Despite his reservations, Jess needed something to carry water. When her eyes were on the invisible horizon, he stretched a bit of his essence and cut it free. Forming a canteen, he held it out to her. “You need water.”
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