Dysphoria- Rise

by Terra Whiteman

  Adrial paused and lit a malay cigarette, blowing purple smoke into the air. He leaned against the table and rubbed his chin. “So, she’s sleepwalking.”

  “Nearly off cliffs,” muttered Qaira. He ashed his cigarette in the canister, center table. “She didn’t tell me that part.”

  “Given everything that’s happened to her, some mental trauma is expected,” reasoned Adrial. “Not to mention her brain chemistry has changed. Vivid dreams aren’t too preposterous a notion.”

  “Did Leid say what her nightmares were about?” I asked.

  “We didn’t get that far.”

  “We’ll keep an eye on her. She doesn’t have to know that—” Adrial froze, looking past me.

  I turned in my seat, following his gaze, noticing that the bench was vacant. The abilities we presented outside of Exo’daius weren’t possible here. Here we were ordinary, no more capable than any lesser in their own universe. So, how Leid had managed to get up and leave the room without any of us noticing was just a bit perplexing.

  Qaira stood, alarmed. “Well, fuck.”

  ***

  Leid Koseling—;

  I was on a bridge formed by black smoke, melding into shape just a few feet ahead of me. There was nothing but crimson haze on all sides of the forming construct; my backless, violet gown trailed behind my bare feet as I soundlessly padded on.

  Whispers from beyond caressed my auditory-visual, and I relented to their pleas. I continued my approach, well aware of what I’d find. This had happened over a dozen times—each time I could both see myself and understand what was happening, and each time I was excommunicated from my body, forced to be a spectator, cognitively trembling with fear.

  Fear, as I was certain that Qaira had spiked my drink. Sedation was going to make it hard to force myself awake once the scenery grew unbearable.

  I’d deal with him, if I survived this.

  Humility followed that thought. Of course I would survive this; it was a dream.

  The bridge ended at the island of yellow plain and red, Exodian sky. And, like before, I stepped onto land without pause. Grass crunched beneath my feet, the only sound present. My body hummed with energy as I drifted across the field.

  Except, something was different this time—;

  It had never been different, until now.

  The same obsidian statues—carcasses of our own—continued their eternal crawl toward the looming escarpment. I was able to tune my attention to the horizon, beyond the field.

  There was no escarpment, no shadows.

  Just beyond the corpses was a porcelain-white statue of an armored giant, face hidden by a horned mask. There was an eye engraved into its plate-chiseled breast, the insignia glowing soft blue. The statue was without a weapon and its arms were outstretched, a sphere coated in electric spindles hovering inches above curled gloves. That sphere…

  It was ours.

  The space around the statue was illuminated in colorful waves, woven into patterns like script, or code.

  Code.

  Stardust around my eyes screened the sight. The whispers had turned into a collective drone that filled my head with knives. The interference of everything all at once was burning my senses.

  I didn’t want to be here.

  I wanted to wake up.

  I fell to my knees at the statue’s feet, holding my aching head. A sting from my scalp served as warning that I was pulling my hair. I ignored it, clenching my teeth.

  This wasn’t working; I couldn’t wake up. Damn you, Qaira.

  I was given no choice and succumbed to the blaring, droning whispers:

  Reach it. Hold it.

  With a wince I wrapped my fingers around the warm sphere and pulled it from the resonance stream. The sparks disappeared and the sphere dulled to obsidian. The whispers stopped. I sighed in relief, clutching the sphere with both hands.

  The relief was short-lived. Fractures in the porcelain giant formed, snaking from the base all the way to its head. A deafening crack followed, echoing across the plain. As the horned giant crumbled, another blare ripped across the sky, tinting it purple. The decibel shook the ground, and I shielded myself, expecting something to collapse on me.

  “Leid—!”

  I spun toward the sound of my name. There was an outline of someone taking form behind me.

  *

  “Leid!”

  The dreamscape rolled away, like fog receding into thin air.

  Qaira melded into reality with an arm outstretched, terror in his eyes. I quickly realized why; I was but an inch from stepping off the Exodian cliff. Adrial and Yahweh watched from behind him, postures poised, ready to act if necessary.

  I recoiled, confused.

  Qaira kept demanding to know why I was here, but I couldn’t concentrate enough to respond. The luminescent thread jammed all of my senses with noise. It hurt.

  It hurt.

  “Stop!” I screamed, taking hold of the thread. It singed my skin and I caught a scent of burning meat.

  There was a blinding flash and I was knocked backward. Qaira caught me before I hit the ground and we watched, still entwined, as the thread pulsed with light so intense that we had to squint. Touching it had somehow made it corporeal. Everyone could see it now.

  The deafening blare from my dream returned, shattering the sky. All of us covered our ears, as if that would have helped.

  Then, silence. The thread evaporated into black smoke. Again, like my dream.

  No one said anything, watching the hazy abyss. Our breaths were quick and audible, each second passed only piling on more fearful anticipation.

  “What…” Yahweh whispered, mesmerized by the vanishing smoke. “What was that?”

  Somewhere beyond the haze, the unmistakable sound of a structure’s collapse echoed through the red nothing. With it, came a thought:

  The chains are broken.

  I didn’t know what that meant.

  IV

  WINGS

  Qaira Eltruan—;

  THERE WERE VERY EXCITING DISCOVERIES going on at the Court of Enigmus.

  One, there had been an invisible thread-smoke thing attached to the cliff. Two, that thread had connected to another landmass. Three, Leid could see things we couldn’t. Not a dull moment since I’d returned.

  And everyone was losing their shit.

  Adrial called another emergency meeting and the Court assembled in Enigmus’s entrance hall. The others were already awake from the screaming sky. They rushed the stairs, asking what was going on.

  Adrial’s explanation hardly made sense, but it was the truth. Once everyone absorbed the news, we began to discuss it. We discussed everything. Being a member of the Court of Enigmus was like a being on an around-the-clock panel.

  “That means there’s somewhere else,” said Zira, eyes shifting across the hall. “That means there’s more to Exo’daius than this.”

  “Give Captain Obvious a prize,” I said, taking a seat on the third step. “I’m more concerned about what collapsed, and what it had to do with that electric string.”

  “Well, let’s ask Leid,” said Adrial sardonically, gesturing to my wife. She’d been quiet through the discussion, leant against the rail with her arms crossed.

  We all looked at her.

  Leid glanced away, shaking her head. “All I know is my dreams, and they don’t make any sense.”

  “Why did you grab that string?” asked Yahweh. “How did you know what would happen?”

  “I didn’t know what would happen. It was making too much noise. Usually I can force myself awake before things progress, but not this time.” She shot me a sidelong glance.

  Yeah, I’d gotten that loud and clear.

  Yahweh only tilted his head, encouraging Leid to elaborate.

  She conceded. “I grabbed it to silence it. I broke the chains.”

  “What chains?” asked Adrial.

  Leid shrugged. “Don’t know. It told me that when I touched it.”

  All o
f us exchanged confused looks.

  “Okay, let’s start from the top,” I said, pulling a cigarette from my pocket. I was smoking way too many of these. “Tell us why you kept going to the cliff.”

  “I already told you. My dreams took me there.”

  “Can you remember them?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited, eyebrows raised.

  Leid shifted uncomfortably. “I walked across a bridge that led over the gorge. There was a field on the other side, like the Khel’hanna Scar. There were bodies there. Bodies of us.”

  She had everyone’s full attention. I leaned forward. “What did they look like?”

  Leid winced with recollection. “Crawling, toward a tower. It was different this time. There was a white statue with—” She paused, trying to coherently word her thoughts. “The thread you saw has been here since I’ve woken up. I think it’s been here from the very beginning.”

  “Her dreams may not be dreams at all. They could be visions,” said Zira.

  “Visions?” repeated Pariah. “Of dead scholars across the abyss?”

  Zira shrugged. “Visions are possible. Anything is possible now, given what just happened. Congratulations, Vel’Haru, we have been demoted to lesser ignorance.”

  “Lessers of our own world,” murmured Aela, pondering that theory.

  It wasn’t a silly notion, considering we couldn’t use our abilities in Exo’daius. We regenerated but with matter that was extramural. There was no pulsing, phasing, blurring or lifting pillars over our heads here. The only part of us we kept were our scythes. Plus, “Bodies, as if we’ve already discovered something else was out there. Calenus told me a story once of proxies and nobles sending their winged guardians to explore the abyss. They never returned.”

  Adrial glanced at Leid. “Were any of them winged?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t remember. I was trying not to look at them.”

  I watched Leid’s body language. She was disheveled, shaken up. I couldn’t blame her; those dreams sounded fucking horrifying. Her right palm had a nasty burn that was evidently bothering her. She kept opening and closing her fist.

  “It’s late,” I said, swooping to her rescue. “Let’s get some sleep and reconvene first thing.”

  “Shouldn’t we be concerned by the idea that there might be something—or someone—out there?” cautioned Aela.

  “Yes, but there’s not much we can do about it while half-asleep and out of intellectual juice,” I said.

  The Court murmured their agreement and dispersed. Adrial watched us ascend the steps. “What about Leid?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about me anymore,” she said over her shoulder. “The dreams are done.”

  I had no idea how she knew that, but I believed her.

  ***

  Yahweh Telei—;

  Qaira asked me to bring something for Leid’s hand.

  I skimmed the shelf of my pharmacy, selecting a vial of clear liquid pain inhibitor and a small canister of numbing ointment. I was a little too happy at the idea of actually administering medicine for healing instead of recreation, because that was basically what I’d become. A glorified drug dealer. My medical supplies were never in jeopardy of running out. I couldn’t say the same about my selection of mood enhancers.

  I eyed the progress of a current batch, filtering slow, steady drops into a volumetric flask. A titration cylinder kept the solution balanced and prepped for extraction. Next to the apparatus, a leather-bound journal sat, collecting dust.

  Ixiah’s journal.

  He had lived in a world where written communication was replaced with collective subconscious; yet the Archaean side of him had still clung to old customs. Most of the entries were written in our native tongue. They detailed notes about his work and research, other ones were raw with emotions he hadn’t ever dared to reveal.

  Now Ixiah was gone, and I was here in his place.

  I turned, cued by a shift in my peripherals. Zira stood just past the threshold, watching me. When our eyes met, his strayed. In the fifty years I’d been a member of the Court, Zira refused to hold eye contact with me for more than five seconds. He always had a brooding demeanor, but this particular behavior wasn’t practiced out of anger. It was because I looked too much like him.

  With a small sigh, I turned and plucked his weekly refill of stimulants. “You have terrible timing.”

  Zira took the vial from my hand. “What better time to oil the cogs than now?”

  I nodded, saying nothing.

  He murmured thanks and turned to leave, pocketing the vial.

  Before he disappeared, I called, “Ziranel.”

  His body tensed at the sound of his full name. Zira looked over his shoulder, his orange eyes muted by the shadow of black hair.

  “Would Ixiah be happy that I’m here?”

  Zira relaxed, battling with that question. “Your brother always wanted what was best for you. He wouldn’t think this was best for you.”

  I lowered my gaze. “I don’t think Ixiah appreciated what he had.”

  Zira hesitated. “You’re probably right.”

  Then, he disappeared through the electric curtain.

  On my way out, I took Ixiah’s journal and stuffed it into the bottom drawer of my desk.

  ***

  Qaira Eltruan—;

  Leid collapsed on the bed as soon as we got inside. She fell asleep moments later, and I let her be, taking a seat at my study across the room. I wondered how angry she would be later on. Drugging her had inadvertently fixed the nightmare problem, at least. If all of this was going to happen, it would have happened eventually; Leid couldn’t have kept on like that.

  Yahweh stepped through the door with two containers in his hands, heading for my unconscious wife. He sat beside her and gingerly lifted her wrist across his leg. “Should we wake her up?”

  “Good luck.”

  He rubbed the ointment across her open palm. Leid only stirred. She was injured by something from here, so healing would take a while. Yahweh bandaged her hand with eyes cast to the ground, in thought.

  “Why did Oraniquitis have a map of Avadara?” he asked.

  That question had been brought before the Court already. I was more comfortable with discussing my thoughts now, and Yahweh knew that. “I don’t know, but I’m leaning toward the idea that she knew exactly what Calenus and his court were trying to find.”

  “What were they trying to find?”

  “The same thing that we’re trying to find.”

  Yahweh’s expression fell with cognizance. “You mean our origins.”

  I nodded, juggling my cognition between our discussion and attica’s projection of the constellation, rotating on loop. Whatever was there had something to do with what was happening here. At least, that was my working theory. I wouldn’t share it yet, considering I had no explanation as to how or why. The Court wasn’t interested in ideas without evidence to entertain the ideas. We were a logical bunch.

  Yahweh set Leid’s arm down beside her and she rolled to her other side, murmuring something incoherent. He drew the blanket over her and sat on the couch next to my desk, idly scanning the spines of my extramural book collection.

  Then, he surprised me. “Oran needed wings.”

  My eyes trailed to their corners, watching him. I didn’t respond, only waited for him to continue.

  He did. “She must have known there was something beyond the abyss. You said the proxies sent their winged guardians to explore. She needed wings to get there.”

  She needed me, was what he was saying. I’d been her target for that reason.

  “Whatever is in Avadara must be connected to that thread,” he concluded. “We should run this by Leid when she’s more rested. Perhaps she can fill in the gaps.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “But right now I need some rest, and so do you. There’s only a few hours left before we’re expected back at Euxodia.”

  Yahweh didn’t object, yawning instead.
“I left a pain reliever on your nightstand. The dose is two drops per drink.”

  I smirked. “A non-alcoholic drink, right?”

  Yahweh frowned. “See you at morning meal.”

  With that he left, and I turned in my seat to watch Leid sleep. My mind swam with thoughts about what I’d seen when Oran was inside of me. All that code. All those waves.

  The proxies had been able to see the multiverse’s inner-weavings. Leid had joined their ranks. The metamorphosis had brought her to their level of cosmic sight. Unfortunately none of us could understand fully what that meant unless we, too, metamorphosed. Zira was the next to start the process, give or take a hundred Exodian years. Add another fifty years on top of that for the alteration cycle. All of it would take the kind of time that the Court of Enigmus didn’t have.

  I suppressed attica and moved to the bed. I rolled on my side and Leid inched closer, pressing her back to my chest. My arm curled across her waist, and she sighed.

  For the first time in fifty-five years, I dreamed of Sanctum.

  V

  EXPEDITION

  Qaira Eltruan—;

  WE WERE SERVED OUR MEAL standing. It was Zira and Pariah’s turn to cook and serve; we rotated chores each day. I had no idea how to cook and hadn’t had to since signing the TSA contract. I imagined everyone would seek extramural reservations on my rotation, just like last time. I didn’t mind, considering there was less clean up involved.

  Zira and Pariah dished out our food while we assembled in a line at the center serving table. Adrial had announced that we would reconvene discussion while we ate, and once our plates were full we all filtered into Euxodia.

  Leid poured some alcohol into her coffee, lighting a cigarette. Adrial shot her a disapproving frown, but said nothing of the small infraction. Leid was our Queen as much as Adrial was our King, and even he was indebted to Leid, having been her guardian prior to his ascension.

  Our biological directive demanded that we be ruled by two nobles at any given time: one male, one female, usually determined by seniority. Leid had ascended after she’d slain the Ivory Queen under Oraniquitis’s influence. Adrial had ascended when I’d killed the Silver King half a century ago. Until then the violet line, our line, had been looked down at.