by Kylie Leane
“It has become a sort of rite of passage for misfits. Many on the Lawless Child have dreamt it,” Jythal added. “It should come as no surprise that you, sir, would eventually dream it also.”
“Interesting.” Denvy hummed. Was something out there, across the burning-sea, calling to the misfit-born of Utillia, trying to draw them in? His air-gills spread slightly as a flare of sunlight caught the tips of the spires in the distance and he blinked at the sharp intensity of the dawn.
Nixlye wheeled towards him, her tail vibrating in excitement. “Where is she?”
“Who?”
“The Zaprex?” Nixlye looked around. “There is always a Zaprex in this dream. She is usually here, at the beginning, looking out across the desert. She cries. It’s how misfits know that Zaprexes are not malevolent. We can feel her agony for what was lost.”
A low rumbling chuckle escaped from Denvy. Of course it would stand to reason that a Kattamont would look upon a Zaprex and presume it was female. He breathed in deeply, bowing his head.
“Sekhmet is gone.” Gone—not just from this dream but from the world itself.
Nixlye clapped her hands on the sides of her wheelchair and sagged back. “Bother. It would have been amazing to see her like this. You said her name is Sekhmet?”
His shoulders were heavy, but he pulled them back, ignoring the weight of the memories the name evoked. “Sekhmet was one of the Twelve Original Zaprexes—part of the Pantheon. The bonding partner of Nefertem.” He could tell she wanted to know more. The thirsty little scholar inside her could have listened to him tell tales for hours, he was sure. But he had nothing to tell—not yet. She seemed to sense his hesitation, or perhaps she caught the irate flick of his tail. Either way, she did not press him.
Jythal moved up beside him. “As a Dream Master, is it possible for you to dream something into existence, beyond this realm?”
Denvy tugged on the yoke fastened around his neck. “Yes. It is likely one of the reasons my captors needed to bind me. I am quite skilled at manipulating the energy, or, as the Zaprexes would call it, the songs, of the Secondary Realm.”
“Can you do it while awake?” Jythal queried.
Denvy glanced back at the white lion. “Hmm, now isn’t that an interesting question. Do you daydream, young prince?”
Jythal frowned. “Yes, I suppose.”
“Then I suppose I can.”
“You’re telling me that you could create something in a dreamscape out of energy from the Secondary Realm and bring it into existence in the Primary Realm?”
“It was one of my design features. Never seemed much of a big deal when I was cub.” He settled his paws upon Nixlye’s chair and crouched. “So, my dear, what is it that you see in this dream?”
She poked his nose fondly. “I see you, our seeing-stone. You clear up dreams for those who live in fog.”
Denvy shook his head. “You give me far too much credit.”
She scoffed and waved her hand, dismissing his low murmur. She pointed across the burning-sea, to the tall, glistening spires protruding from the dunes.
“Those are the Rythrya Stones. The Tall Mirrors.”
Jythal’s paw sought her shoulder to steady himself. “How do you know? Few have ever seen the Rythrya Stones.”
“At the Iposti Haven Hall, where I was raised, many scrolls depicted what they looked like.” Nixlye plucked at the blanket across her lap.
“I gather the Rythrya are different to the guiding stones Aaldryn speaks of?” Denvy asked.
“The guiding stones are used by wind chaplains, like Aaldryn, as guides to gauge the currents,” Jythal said. “However, the Rythrya themselves, well, no one truly knows what they are, for they move with the currents of the burning-sea. Guiding stones remain stationary.”
Denvy swept up a pawful of sand, letting it run over his pads. Utillia had once been an oasis of coral reefs, an ocean of great sea-weed forests, and, between those trunks of rippling, swaying green snakes that stretched to the heavens, gleaming Zaprex spires had soared. His people had lived side by side with the fairy race, contentedly and blissfully, merging iron cities with coral. Now all of that lay buried under an ocean of sand, but time could not swiftly erode that which a Zaprex built to last. Denvy studied the spires in the distance. They were too far for him to know for certain, but they had the distinct allure of a fairy castle.
“The Iposti speculate that the Rythrya Stones might even create the currents,” Nixlye said.
Denvy’s eyebrows lifted. “Really? Now that’s something rather fascinating.”
“It is?” Nixlye looked at him, surprised by his sudden surge in interest.
Denvy inclined his head in the direction of the spires as he scooped up another pawful of sand, throwing it into her lap. She growled playfully, brushing it from her tartan blanket. “The burning-sea is the result of a defunct desktop grid. All energy that had once been applied to the desktop of Utillia is now likely being channelled into the sky-sea.” He pointed upwards. “The environmental system.”
Jythal nodded slowly. “So, what then, is creating the currents if the desktop grid of Utillia is inoperative?”
Denvy opened his arms. “I imagine that is a question the Iposti have been asking for quite some time, yes?”
“True. Though the word amongst the Prides is that the Iposti have the charts that record the movements of the Rythrya Stones, but they keep them hidden, so that only they know where they are and where to lead the Wind Cities for good fortune.” Jythal’s paws twisted into fists, then slowly relaxed. His air-gills frilled out as he shook off all signs of frustration.
“That doesn’t mean they have figured out what the Rythrya Stones are, though,” Nixlye mused. “Aaldryn’s been diving the cities for sol-cycles and he couldn’t even begin to explain half of what he’s seen. And he has an ancient wind-god living inside him.”
“True, I suppose.” Jythal sighed.
Denvy slowly rose to his foot-paws. He tugged on his gradually regrowing mane. A dream all misfits dreamt, a dream of spires that could never be found, that always called to the wandering souls of the burning-sea, as if calling to kindred spirits.
“Where did you think the Iposti keep these records?”
Jythal’s grin was far too vindictive for the usually passive doctor. Denvy repressed a shudder. “If anywhere, they would be in one of the Haven Halls, upon the Wind Cities.”
Nixlye tipped her head in his direction. “You can’t seriously be thinking of trying to find the Rythrya Stones.”
Denvy raised an eyebrow. “My dear, a mass dreaming on this scale, happening for centuries, and you expect me not to be curious about it to the point of wanting to discover what the source behind such power might be? Oh, we are very much going to find your Rythrya Stones.”
Nixlye gripped Jythal’s paw on her shoulder. “We’re going on an adventure, dear.”
Denvy turned away from the couple. On the horizon of the dunes, the large tail of a sand-sea creature had risen through the folds, spraying up sand. The rays pierced through the spray of particles like a shimmer of raining diamonds. As the golden Sun finally streaked the skyline in a full globe, a familiar azure glow he had known since he was a cub wrapped him a world of safety.
He was suddenly aware that he was standing alone in the dreamscape. Nixlye and Jythal had woken, most likely, leaving him with a hollow, vacant sensation lingering within his mind. His shoulders sagged and he tipped his head back. Would he be stuck in this desert until he woke? With the yoke still around his neck, how much control of his dreamathic skills did he truly have?
“Alone…” he whispered. “I am always alone.”
“Who said anything about being alone, brother?” The wind carried the voice, but it was not Aaldryn’s, nor the cultured monotones of Jythal. It was an echo within the dreamscape that gave the illusion of the owner of the voice being more distant than it was. The presence that was causing his fur to spike was nearby, and crafted purely of the fabr
ic that formed the Secondary Realm—data. A mass of data, congested into a singularity. For a moment he feared it was the Dragon, but there was no crushing malice weighing him down.
“Ryojin.” Denvy breathed out. “How are you…?” The rest of his words were simply lost on his dry tongue. The young prince stood a few paces away, admiring the sun on the spires in the distance. The rays shone through the tiny swirling blocks that formed his shape, creating a halo around his figure. Ryojin shrugged nonchalantly as he stepped closer.
“Apparently, according to System-Death, whom I just met by the way, to cross the Osiris Gate you need all of your data intact, or you’ll end up corrupted when the cycle begins again.”
Denvy’s stomach twisted. He did not like where this conversation was heading.
“No one caught up in the null-zone can re-enter the mainframe. We can’t pass the Osiris Gate.” Ryojin looked at the blue sky-sea. “Everyone in Ishabal—my father, everyone—they’re all gone. Their data is gone. It won’t be restored, or reused, or anything. They’re scattered junk.” He frilled out his air-gills and looked at Denvy. “I caught the tail end of the null-zone, just enough for it to corrupt some data, but not enough to—”
“Destroy your avatar. I know.” Denvy shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault I’m dead, brother.” Ryojin smiled. “Besides, I just met System-Death. The System of Death! He asked me what I would like to do, since I can’t pass the Osiris Gate. I could become one of his Jackals, but that wasn’t particularly appealing, so I asked if there was any way in which I could help those I’ve left behind.”
Ryojin’s tail twirled across the sand. “He told me I was being audacious. That, right now, the Secondary Realm is a dangerous place for wandering data.”
“It is.” Denvy crouched, again scooping up a pawful of warm sand. As realistic as it felt, it was no more real than the avatar of the prince who stood beside him. Ryojin had become an accumulation of songs that would gradually dissipate over time. A swift death would have been far kinder in his opinion. The fragmenting of a song that had once been an entity within the Primary Realm was like witnessing a gradually cracking plate.
“Just because something is dangerous doesn’t mean you resist it,” Ryojin continued. “So, here I am.”
Denvy dusted off his paws. “I am still not entirely sure where here is, or how I came to be here. I shouldn’t be capable of logging into the Secondary Realm in my current condition.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Even with that yoke, you’re the strongest Dream Master in the Northlands.”
Denvy’s tail went deathly still. He had no recollection of mentioning who, or what, he was to the young prince upon their first meeting. He stole a glance his way, his brow furrowing. There was no malice that he could sense. The avatar was not a virus, come to claim his data, nor was it the Dragon—that much he would have known instantly. The Dragon would never have been so fickle as to trick him.
“How do you know who I am? Or even about the yoke?”
Ryojin gave him a scrupulous look. “You are aware that I am now, in a manner of speaking, part of the same system you are. I have all the information the Secondary Realm contains.”
Denvy scratched the bridge of his nose. “Of course, of course.”
“Denvy.” Ryojin’s paw touched his arm. “The yoke is only preventing you from accessing your dreamathic skills; it hasn’t taken them away. You are still the Dream Master of the Northlands. You are still the Mapmaker.”
He pulled away from the younger prince, staring down at him in frigid horror. He had not heard himself referred to by his executable filename in eons. The urge to run surged through his legs, but he tightened his muscles and bit down on his lower lip. Sharp pain caused his ears to flick and he looked away, shamefully, from the young prince.
“Think of me as a shortcut, or a bypass.” Ryojin took up his paws, squeezing them. “A way around the yoke restricting you. Denvy, use me as your link between the Realms.”
“You did this? You brought me into this dreamscape.”
“You’re my connection now to Nixlye and Jythal, old man. You’re going to be stuck with me until such a time as my data disperses beyond usefulness.” The eyes that stared up at him swirled with songs, the tiny little blocks that formed the avatar he could see, spinning around, as though they were stars within a galaxy. Denvy cupped Ryojin’s cheek, ignoring the crackle of energy that sparked between them.
“Even with your help, I seriously doubt I could be the Mapmaker again. I have not been that program in a long time.”
“Then what can you do?”
“I might not be able to ride the Data-Ways yet, however I am a Dream Master, and this is a dream.” He chuckled low in his chest, brushing a paw through the folds of his air-gills. A tingling beset his foot-paws as he spoke, and a surging ring of hexagons spilled out, vanquishing the dreamscape surrounding them.
“I desire twenty barrels of Mist.”
From a ground now made of starlight, tiny bricks began shifting into place, crawling over each other to form gleaming shapes that solidified into brown, wooden kegs, smelling of fine, cooked rice. Ryojin’s laughter erupted through the galaxies twirling around them.
Denvy spread a paw wide. “When I wake, they will be placed within the brig of the Lawless Child.” He looked at Ryojin. “And you will be a data-crystal, in the palm of my paw.”
Ryojin had barely a moment to gasp in surprise as his avatar split, scattering into thousands of pixels. Denvy clicked his claws a few times, in the old manner he was familiar with, yet something he had not done in sol-cycles. “Awaken.”
Dreaming always caused insomnia. It was a strange contradiction. Despite his exhaustion and muscle ache from fleeing the collapsing streets of Ishabal, and struggling against the pull of the burning-sea, Denvy felt compelled to pace the corridors of the Lawless Child. There was a sorrowful silence cast over the sand-ship, a respectful pall. The crew were in mourning for the souls who had been sucked into the depths below the surface. A whole city lost. It was a tragedy, far more so than they could truly grasp. Songs unable to pass beyond the Osiris Gate: it made his head heavy with the thought of such waste. Nixlye’s sorrow had left an imprint on his mind from their shared dream, lingering like the trails of a shredded fabric. She had been weeping for her lost friend, gone so suddenly, without hope of a goodbye. He fingered the indigo crystal in his paw, warm to the touch, humming with the song stored within it. Should he tell the young queen about Ryojin, to uplift her spirits? Or would it create greater despair for her to know the eventual fate of her friend? Attaching the crystal to the strap that held the geode, he tucked the necklace back under the yoke, and steeled himself for the cold wind beyond the warmth of the Lawless Child’s corridors.
The silence continued outside, in the darkness of the night. Mist radiated through sails glowing a soft heat that tickled his fur, causing his air-gills to expand. A skeleton crew moved in the shadows, tending to the creaking sand-ship under dancing starlight.
Denvy leant wearily against the railing, moving with the tip and sway of the vessel. The burning-sea shimmered, the dunes lit with a reflection of the Twin Moons and the blanket of stars adorning the night sky-sea. It was an alien land. His mind refused to see it as Utillia. Utillia was as he remembered it. A lush land, atmosphere so thick one could swim through it. It had been toxic to Humans and Kelibs; home only to Kattamonts and Zaprexes. He had loved the deeper regions of the ancient coral forests, even more toxic, where dangerous flora and fauna dwelt. They—the Kattamonts—had built their homes in the high corals, bouncing on the clouds. He could recall swimming with a school of ewnnins, or as Hazanin-sama had called them, ‘dolphins’, in honour of a similar creature from its home world, the little blue planet.
Now all that surrounded him was shifting, burning sand—his true home was buried. Had it become nothing but dust?
“You wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with the twenty extr
a kegs of Mist in the hold, would you?” Zafiashid’s voice startled him. He had not sensed her presence nor smelt her approach. Denvy touched his chest, frowning at the crackle and pop of the Human illness still coating his lungs and nostrils. It was flaring up again. Here he had thought the worst was over. Maybe he had taxed himself with twenty barrels.
Flicking his tail, Denvy shrugged. “Perhaps.”
In the twin moonlight, the queen’s reflective eyes studied him, and she responded with a scowl, somewhere between motherly concern and irritation for his lack of definitive reply.
“I didn’t want to believe it,” she huffed out. “You really are that old.”
Denvy tugged on the tufts of his mane. “Well, when you say it like that.”
“No, no.” She waved a paw. “I mean…” Zafiashid sighed, her teeth gritting together. “I am not like my son, nor even like his mate and blood-brother. I have never believed much in what lies beneath the sands. What I see is what I get. I can’t defeat enemies I cannot rip my claws into.” She pointed to his chest. “But you are something of an enigma.”
He chuckled, only for the laughter to turn into a rasping cough. Zafiashid stepped forward, but hesitated, her lips turning down.
“Bother,” he griped.
“You should not be out of bed.” Zafiashid sat down on a crate, clicking her tongue in disproval. “That Human illness will be the death of you.”
“I’m just restless. Besides, the sky-sea is beautiful.”
“Jythal will disapprove of your wandering.”
He had a feeling it was she who disapproved of his wandering, but that she was using the excuse of the doctor to guilt him back to bed. It was not going to work. He had no desire to return to the land of dreams just yet.
Denvy raised his brow. “Your confidence in your princess’s mate is comforting. If I recall, mature queens such as yourself rarely sought the company of youthful Prides.”
Zafiashid snorted. She swept her tail across her lap. “And here I thought I was young.”
