Dysphoria: Permanence (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 7)

by Terra Whiteman

  When I returned from Etann’s aperture, disoriented and heady, Dracian watched me carefully, as if he was expecting a particular response. Apparently I did not give him what he was looking for and he looked away in minor disappointment moments later.

  “Come,” he said without looking at me, already starting for the door. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  “What was this for?” I demanded, confused by his behavior. He seemed upset, even though he had pushed me to retrain in the Story of the Twelve.

  Back in the gallery, Dracian slowed to a stop and turned to face me. His eyes lifted to mine, cautious. The smile on his face had returned, but it was withered. “There are things you need to know before we can proceed.”

  “Proceed in what?”

  “Our investigation, of course.”

  “How does relearning legacy sources relate to our investigation?” I asked, exasperated by his vagueness.

  Dracian looked around us, then took a step forward. His voice was hushed. “Do you know why the Codemaker’s Law exists?”

  “To keep our universe homo—”

  “Yes, but why. That is the question.”

  I fell silent, reflecting on that. “Why must we remain homogenous, or why the Law was formed at all?”

  “Both.”

  “I know the answer to the first one, not the second,” I said, less confident now.

  Dracian tilted his head, eyes trailing slowly to the side in thought. “You can’t know anything if you don’t know both, since both rely on each other to make any sense. If you want to understand the Vel’Haru’s inner-workings and pertinence in the multiverse, then you must understand ours as well.”

  “Drace, you aren’t making any se—”

  Again, he cut me off. “Do you remember your first cycle?”

  Again, I hesitated. With reluctance, I said, “No.”

  Dracian nodded and started across the gallery, toward Teleram’s exit gate. “Neither do I,” I heard him mutter.

  *

  I stared at the Vel’Haru book on Dracian’s console, running my fingers along the surface of the cover. It felt hard like stone, but was malleable as well. At a magnification x3.5, little perforations showed that it had been woven together. It was large—the length of my forearm to fingers, containing several thousand pages.

  I opened the book, marveling at the script. It was written in Exodian-Philoic, their traditional language, and I could only translate a few passages without help from Grid. I was excited to get started, but...

  Each time I began, I found myself staring at the back of Dracian’s head as he studied our event map. He’d said nothing more about our time in Teleram after we’d left the gallery. His persistent and buoyant demeanor had irritated me at first, but now it was endearing. When he was quiet and sullen like this, things felt wrong.

  I revered him, I realized. What did he have planned for me?

  “Tell me more about the story,” I said.

  Dracian tilted his head, acknowledging that I’d spoken, but kept his attention on the gridcast. “What makes you think I know any more than you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “A little more, perhaps. I convinced Etann to elaborate a bit on several occasions,” he said, carefully, as if it had an underlying context to which I didn’t want to think about. “But he couldn’t tell me anymore than what is allowed per my role.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Enough to whet my pallet,” said Dracian, casting me a sidelong glance with a mischievous grin. “What is that you want to know about the story?”

  “What happened to the twelve after they left their world?”

  “Each of the twelve shattered themselves and colonized the superclusters. Twelve superclusters, twelve legacies. We tend to move between regions now, but all of our source coding is owed to us by them.”

  “Shattered,” I repeat, confused by what that specifically meant.

  “Split. Replicated a thousand times. I’m not sure how—probably the same way in which the progenitor facilities operate.”

  I thought on that for a moment. The progenitor facilities housed legacy codes that assembled our basic framework. The legacy codes were from the twelve. Were there really twelve legacy codes? Why so many? Who decided which were selected for dispersal, and when?

  “Drace,” I sighed, defeated by my own relentless curiosity, “I fear you’ve done more harm than good. I’m too distracted now to focus on our investigation.”

  “Thinking about it is good,” assured Dracian. “That’s the point. We’re so caught up in the everyday monogamy of our roles that we forget there are truths we haven’t uncovered yet. That’s what they want.”

  “They?”

  Dracian didn’t respond, imputing more into the event map. Before I could repeat myself, he suddenly said, “Tomorrow we’ll go on another excursion. For now, focus on translating that book.”

  We’re done talking about this, he meant.

  I forfeited any further attempts to make him explain what he’d said. He was right, I had work to do. We had work to do.

  I looked back at the passage, pushing the Story of the Twelve from my mind. For now.

  ***

  Year 125, Scarlet Era, Day 654

  Aipocinus Loren

  We sent four of our winged guardians across the gorge, under Calenus’s instruction and ordered them to return and tell us of their findings, if any at all. It has been four days since and we have not heard from them.

  One of the guardians was Cayliss’s, and she spent today weeping, knowing that he is dead. I heard her shouting at her brother, cursing at him for sending one of hers. Calenus is not wrong for wanting to know what is beyond Enigmus, but perhaps some things are better left a mystery.

  VI

  INTERVENTION

  Qaira Eltruan—;

  I OPENED MY EYES, taking A MOMENT TO figure out where I was and what had happened.

  The heavy feeling in my chest and limbs made this process a quick one. I remembered the crushing weight of Leid and Adrial as they held me face down on the floor, the prick of the syringe going into my neck. The entire time Tae had laughed at me from the corner of my room.

  Tae.

  My eyes shot to the corner. She was gone. Relief flooded through me, and I exhaled.

  I sat up in the cot and winced as the room spun around me. Something moved in my peripherals and I turned to see Leid seated on the floor beneath the window, knees curled to her chest. She looked tired; the blood tears that she’d tried to wipe away were still faintly visible on her porcelain skin. Those tears were for me.

  Ashamed, I looked away.

  Without saying anything, Leid tossed me a package of malay cigarettes. They bounced on the cot, lightly hitting my knee. I looked down at them, unable to hide my shock. She’d risked everything by leaving Gantzt. Risked everything for me, again.

  She shouldn’t have had to.

  I ripped open the package of cigarettes and lit one, closing my eyes in relief, knowing my sister wouldn’t be tormenting me for the foreseeable future. But with relief came more shame; and with shame, came anger. After all this time I was still a weak, pathetic shit-heap. And now everyone knew it.

  “It doesn’t matter,” murmured Leid, reading my thoughts. “It doesn’t matter, I still love you. I loved you in Sanctum, I love you now. There’s no shame in what’s happening to you. We all have scars.”

  I closed my eyes, taking another drag.

  “Qaira, please. Look at me.”

  I did, reluctantly.

  “Are you upset with me?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, “not you.” I was upset with myself for making Leid cry. For making her worry about me when there was already enough to worry about. “Never you.”

  “You should be,” she said, eyes trained on the ground. “I should have noticed you sooner. I should have realized something wasn’t right when you started obsessing over—”

  “You shouldn’t h
ave to worry about me. Not like this,” I said, scathingly. “I shouldn’t be a liability to you. To us.”

  Leid’s eyes returned to mine. She was stoic now. “Wasn’t I a liability to you through half of the Celestial War? Should you have stopped trying to save me?”

  I said nothing. There was no counterargument to that, but I still rolled my eyes and shook my head.

  “You need to cut yourself some slack,” she said. “Part of the reason you’re suffering is your refusal to accept your fallibilities. No one is perfect. Sometimes the terrible things that happen aren’t your fault.”

  “But it was my fault,” I said.

  She hesitated, studying me.

  “It was my fault,” I repeated.

  Leid sighed and slumped back against the wall, no longer able to shoulder the burden. “When you’re done with your cigarette, Adrial would like to speak to you.”

  Great.

  *

  Two steps into the room, I saw the chair in the middle of the floor and the notepad in Adrial’s hand. I froze.

  “Take a seat,” said Adrial, leant on the sill of the window, gesturing to the chair.

  Fuck no.

  I turned and headed back for the door, except it slammed shut on its own before I could reach it. Adrial seldom used his noble abilities. I kept forgetting that he had them.

  “This is happening,” he said, in a tone that relayed there was no room for debate. “You can volunteer to sit, or I will make you sit. The choice is yours.”

  “And what is this supposed to be?” I chided. “A therapy session?”

  “You’re fucking right it’s a therapy session,” he said, taking a drag of his malay cigarette. “You’ve spent a thousand years with post-traumatic stress and schizo-affective disorder. The only one who might be able to help you now is me.”

  Someone kill me. Just put me out of my fucking misery.

  I sank into the chair, slumping in defeat. “Can I at least have a smoke?”

  “No, that’s counterintuitive to what we’re doing here.”

  I frowned. “And what are we doing here?”

  “Talking about your sister.”

  I sighed and massaged my head. Adrial delved right in. I heard his pen click; he was loving this.

  “When you see your sister, what does she look like?” he asked.

  “Dead.”

  “Can you elaborate more on that?”

  “Why are you writing this down?”

  “Would you rather it be in attica?”

  I sighed, again. “Tae looks how she did when she died. In chains. No hand,” I paused, finding it difficult to render her image without feeling nauseous, “wings ripped out, blood all over her. Blood running down her legs… from… from her—”

  “Alright, that’s enough.” Adrial scribbled something down. “And what exactly is she doing when you see her?”

  “Watching me.”

  “Just watching you?”

  “No, she… she says stuff sometimes. Tells me to do things. Tells me she’s suffering and I need to end it.” I shifted uncomfortably. “I can’t end it, and she knows that. She gets so angry at me.”

  Adrial paused, concern etched across his face. “Do you believe she’s real?”

  “No, I—” I hesitated, looking past him, out the window. “I know she’s not real. I didn’t know back then, but I do now. It doesn’t matter, though. She’s still there, whether she’s real or not.”

  Adrial nodded. “And that’s because this isn’t about Tae. This is about your guilt of not being able to save her. This is about you not being able to forgive yourself. That part of your mind relives the event every time you think about it.”

  “But I don’t think about it.”

  “You must, subconsciously. Does she manifest whenever you’re experiencing more stress than usual? Or all the time?”

  I thought about that. It wasn’t all the time, but then again I couldn’t be certain considering up until several months ago I’d been on one form of drug or another. “Not sure. It’s been all the time lately, but I’ve also been sober.”

  Adrial wrote more down onto his notepad. “Yahweh is working on a medication that should stabilize you. It might not take away your hallucinations, but it should be able to keep you from disassociating yourself. No malay from now on.”

  “None?”

  “No mind-altering drugs aside from what Yahweh gives you. The goal here is to determine when and why your symptoms manifest, and how to deal with them without substances. Do you really want to have to depend on something to keep you sane? Is that any way to live?”

  My stare lowered to the ground. His question brought me back to Sanctum, when Leid had forced me to quit injections. She’d said the same thing, but his words rang stronger now that I wasn’t in the throes of withdrawal.

  And he had a point. I was angry that he had a point, but that was my problem. “This is only temporary, right? I’m not banned from drugs forever.”

  Adrial tilted his head in curiosity, crossing a leg. “Why would you want to do them?”

  I shot a venous look at the cigarette between his fingers. “Why would you?”

  He smirked. “We’re not talking about me.”

  “You’re as hypocritical as a divorced marriage counselor.”

  “No one else is screaming and throwing things at corners when they go without a fix,” he added, ignoring my jab. “Honestly I’m not sure if you have to quit forever, but if the drugs are exacerbating your condition, it might be wise.”

  “Alright, fine, whatever.”

  Adrial fell silent for a moment, reviewing the notes he’d written. My attention had wandered again to the window.

  Leid was sitting on a log at the lake; her usual perch. Her back was to the keep, shoulders wrapped in a red shawl, raven hair loose and swaying in the wind. Yahweh sat next to her, offering comfort with whatever she was battling. Surely I had something to do with it.

  “What is your greatest fear?” I heard Adrial ask, his voice only background noise to the thunder of my thoughts. My eyes never left the window.

  “Failure,” I said. “Uselessness.”

  *

  I was back at the equation, albeit with a little less mania. I reviewed the diagrams on the wall, a cigarette dangling from my mouth. Yeah, I told Adrial I’d quit, and I would as soon as Yahweh brought me something else.

  A knock on the door came a little while after; just as I’d reworked the metric tensor equation to a neat construct of variables, with only one missing.

  “Yeah,” I called, not bothering to look, already knowing who it was.

  The door opened and a second later Yahweh was at my side, looking over the equation as well. “You’re making progress,” he murmured, his cerulean eye flicking toward me. He wore a different sash around the other, this one gold and black. “I’m sorry about earlier. I was frightened.”

  He’d given me a shiner that was slow to heal. I was kind of proud. “Don’t apologize. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, just keep you from squealing.”

  “Mm. Hopefully now you understand why I did.”

  “More or less.”

  “Here.” He handed me a vial of red liquid. “It’s already diluted, so you can drink it without a mix. Three drops twice a day, with food preferably, or else the onset is a bit dizzying.”

  I took the vial and swirled the liquid in front of my face. “This isn’t water.”

  Yahweh smiled. “No, it’s root juice.”

  “Ugh, fuck.”

  “Electrolytes are good for you. I’ll see you at dinner? Zira got another azgan, and Aela found tubers in the forest.”

  I nodded, although the idea of facing the others made my stomach clench. “Are you and Pariah working tonight?”

  “Yes, on the TEM analysis.”

  “Would you like me there?”

  Yahweh’s face brightened. “Absolutely. Something is wrong with our calibration standard. We’re trying to troubleshoot. You could pro
bably speed up the process tenfold.”

  Damn right I could. “Alright, see you at dinner.” Yahweh turned to leave, and I called, “Wait.”

  He paused on the threshold.

  “Can you guarantee I won’t have an episode with this?” I held up the vial.

  Yahweh leaned on the frame. “I can’t guarantee anything, but if what you have is indeed what Adrial thinks, the chances are in your favor.”

  “Here, then.” I threw him the pack of malay cigarettes. He caught it with one hand. “I won’t be needing these anymore.”

  Yahweh winked (which was weird since only one of his eyes were visible), flashed me a grin, and then stepped out. I only shook my head and returned to the equation.

  *

  As I was wrapping things up before dinner, Leid entered our room, rummaging for another change of clothes from the sack beside our cot. She changed clothes at least twice a day. Always had. It was fucking weird.

  “Are you feeling better?” she asked, catching me in the act of watching her undress.

  “I am now.” I grinned.

  She glanced at the vial on the windowsill. “Adrial’s prescription?”

  “Yes, our Multiverse-Esteemed psychiatrist has diagnosed me as insane.”

  Leid smiled, amused. “Well, I think we all knew that already.”

  As she picked her dinner attire, I couldn’t stand watching her anymore. I was across the room in a beat, catching the wrist that held her shirt. “We’ve got some time, don’t we?”

  She responded by tossing the shirt on the cot, wrenching away from my grasp, and shoving me into the wall.

  My back slammed against it with a thud, and the next thing I knew she was tearing off my shirt. I hissed through my teeth at the sting of her fingernails digging into my chest. She leaned in and traced along my collarbone with her tongue. She was always so fucking aggressive, and I loved it.

  I grabbed her by the hair and wrenched back her head, smashing my lips against hers. By the time her hand reached down to knead my groin, I was already rock hard.