by Damon Alan
Then he dreamed of a demon, whirring above the grass, speaking to him in a strange language. He knew it said something important, something that was going to change the world, but he didn’t understand no matter how hard he tried. When he failed to comprehend, the demon would stab him with knives and burn him with fire.
Yet he didn't die. He knew this because another dream came, then another, until dreams were lost into each other under an unrelenting assault.
Then the dreams stopped.
Eislen opened his eyes, was assailed by a strange brilliant light, then panicked. The world glowed, like the inside of a fire. Neither his head nor his body would obey his will to move. Only his eyes cooperated, and even they seemed reluctant. He squinted to darken the overbearing light.
In front of him was a gray wall, broken with lines and small knobs. A shelf glistened like the surface of water. He heard blood rushing in his ears, and his eyes felt heavy. Squinting filled them with desire to close.
A noise that sounded like a board scraping another board pierced his awareness. A moment later a person walked into his view, pulled one of the knobs on the wall and it opened to reveal a large box. Inside were small cubes with strange symbols on them, some unbelievably white towels, and some glass bottles with lids that glistened.
The person wore blue clothing, very fine and well sewn like an adept would wear. But this person’s clothing was plain. The garments of an adept were awash in ornate patterns.
The person turned toward him and walked to his side. They were talking, but Eislen didn't understand the speaker anymore than he'd understood the demon he'd run from before he’d died. He thought the person speaking to him a woman, but it had short hair like a man. He wasn’t sure whether to believe the tone of the voice or his eyes. The person grabbed his shoulders and rolled him onto his back. Pain coursed through his wounded torso, a stabbing protest of shredded muscles and bruising.
Stained glass in a frame was placed on his head, causing the pain in his eyes to subside. Strange vines made of water hung from a clear fruit on a gray tree, the vines went under a patch of cloth stuck on his arm. He couldn't see how the cloth was stuck, there weren't any bindings. There were other vines going to his fingers, and a bundle of intertwined vines to his chest. Those vines weren't like water at all, but the color of chalk. Nearby a box was lit up with strange red symbols, glowing and changing. It chirped rhythmically.
Is this heaven? Or has Tsungte cast me into the great beyond for demons to torment?
Another person came into view as Eislen struggled to understand where he was, the new person had black skin, like an eggplant. Eislen's eyes went wide.
Demons!
When they saw his fear, the demons babbled, then laughed. For some reason their laughter outraged him, but he was afraid, and the fear swallowed his will to speak.
On his back he saw the rest of the room around him. The walls were made of the same material as the shelf he'd looked at first, the stuff that shined like the surface of water turned to stone. He looked down, past his feet to see glass along the top half of a wall. Real glass, like in Miker's house, but perfect and not wavy at all. He saw shadows of more people.... or maybe demons on the other side of the glass looking in at him. Behind them, however, true darkness loomed.
He saw the thing from his nightmares. It was behind the walls, a great distance away, but it reached for him. He saw the blackness, the twisting filaments of dark energy that seemed built of hate. He saw tendrils reach out and build a shell around him, enveloping him in vile corruption. The chirping box next to him went mad, chirping twice as fast as it was before.
Tentacles of impenetrable blackness swept past him, ripping the gift from him as they darkened his mind. He reached out with the gift to sense the nature of the beast, but it lashed him defensively and again his perceptions collapsed to only what his eyes told him of the room around him. For a moment he saw it as it was, a writhing bundle of tendrils rotating around a central point. Despite seeing the shape of it, he knew nothing of what it was.
Sometimes understanding the situation didn’t mean understanding everything seen. He was in punishment. The beast was his tormentor. Fear ripped into him like an arrow.
He screamed, then he screamed again. A moment later he felt a sting in his arm. His eyes closed and the dreams came for him once more.
* * *
He awoke again, sometime later. The room was dark, Eislen still wore the stained glass on his face. The strange glowing symbol box was still next to him. It chirped quietly, rhythmically, and as slow as he’d first seen it. He could wiggle his fingers, and move his arms a little. Something was restraining him at his wrists, but he didn't know what.
Past the walls, in the distance, the tentacled demon writhed. This time Eislen tried to ignore it. It didn't eat him in his sleep, maybe it fed on his fear. He resolved not to feed it. Instead, he concentrated on his room.
A woman sat beside him, and another person stood near the door. That person had a strange shaped club that looked to be made of obsidian. One end rested near his shoulder, and the other came nearly to a point. The man gripped the club in the middle, from a projection that jutted from the bottom. It was a silly looking club. How strange. The man had the aura of restrained violence. Eislen had no desire to see the club put to use.
Maybe these were demons, but they looked like a man and a woman. Just the wrong colors, as if they were scarred. Plants had colors like these two, not people.
The woman beside Eislen had yellow hair, not white like his, but even more strangely, the man with the club had black hair. Her skin was darker than Eislen’s, the color of fresh cut white pine. The man, his skin was the color of wet soil. Eislen tried not to stare. He didn’t know if the demon people would consider it impolite.
I am in the lands of the Gods. I am dead.
Eislen spoke, his voice gravelly. “Am I dead, demons? Will you take me and cast me back to the ground as a burning soul? Or will I go to the sky?”
Show no fear or they will judge you unfit.
The woman spoke back to him, but he didn't understand. Her language sounded coarse, with too many hard noises. That made sense since these were, after all, demons.
She pointed at herself.
“Sarah,” she said.
Her name was Sarah? That wasn't very scary, it was soft with no hard sounds. He knew a girl one village away named Salla.
“Sarah,” Eislen said quietly.
She pointed to him, then herself. “Sarah,” she said, then pointed back to him.
Do I give my name to a demon? Will that give them power?
He didn't care, they might consume him at any moment. These human demons either possessed a tentacled demon or worked for a tentacled demon. Either way, they had the power.
“Eislen.” If he gave them what they wanted, maybe they'd find him worthy. He cooperated.
“Eislen,” she parroted, a happy smile on her face.
The woman had a strange beauty, despite her odd coloration. It struck Eislen that her hair was the color of the first urine after a sleep, always a pleasant thing.
She gestured around, and picked up a few things. “Bread,” she said as she picked up food from a plate.
She wanted him to learn her speech. He studied her face. She was older than him, yet didn't have any gray hair. Her face carried some lines, lines of laughter and worry. She also had an air of importance about her that seemed strange in a woman. She smelled of flowers, sweat, and a bit of musk. She didn't have the weathered look many women in his village had.
Despite how alien she looked with her off-white skin and brown eyes, Eislen found her attractive. But then Miker didn't allow him to see girls that often, let alone talk to them.
Maybe she'll want to speak my language.
“Nullo,” he said.
She looked frustrated. She didn't seem to want his word for things. “Nullo. Bread. Bread. Nullo,” she said, her voice a bit more stern. She placed the bread closer to
him where he could see it fully. “Bread,” she said more forcefully.
She was adamant that he learn her speech. “Brayd,” he said.
They're going to cast me back down. I'm doomed.
Instead of dooming him, she smiled. She gestured toward the glass. It opened like a door and a young man walked in, dressed like Sarah. He had less decorative bits on his clothing.
“Malco,” Sarah said, gesturing toward the man.
This was a strange place, but he was no longer sure all of these people were demons. They looked like men and women who stained their skin. None of them seemed afraid of the monster lurking behind them, although it continually reached into Eislen’s mind to unnerve him.
“Mawgo,”“ Eislen replied as he nodded at the new person.
Sarah stood and said some things to Malco. Eislen noted the respect the young man gave the woman. Such deference to a woman was extremely unusual in Kampana, Eislen's village. Except for the healer, but she was frightening, touched by the gods. Everyone deferred to the healing woman when they were sick but they avoided her otherwise.
Sarah, however, didn't seem to be a healer. She didn't carry the small bags full of crushed plants or salves he was used to seeing. She did have a small pouch at her side with something black in it.
A black mallet. Is she a carpenter?
Sarah finished speaking to Malco and walked toward the door of the room to leave. Eislen grew concerned that she was discounting him as not worth her time. He made a hasty decision.
“Sarah,” he said.
As she turned toward him he pointed at the shining black mallet in her side pouch. “I will lift that, I am gifted by the gods.”
She didn’t understand, so he would show her.
She watched him as he concentrated on the object she carried, curiosity on her face. It took him a moment, during which she said something to Malco, who shrugged his shoulders. The demon behind the wall made it difficult to grasp the trueness of the object, made it difficult to feel how it fit in the universe. Each time he'd start to grasp the trueness of it, the demon would twist the information from his mind. He finally enveloped it with his consciousness.
He watched the object lift from her pouch, then he lost control of it as a tentacle swept over him. She dove for the mallet as it fell to the floor, and there was a loud sound like when flat boards strike together hard. One of the glass windows at the far end of the room shattered, and the demons standing behind it scattered. Bits of debris flew across the room. Eislen yelled in pain as sound assaulted him, his ears rang. The man inside the room with the club advanced, clearly angry. Sarah spoke to him and waved him away as she rose from the floor. Glass shards scattered through her hair.
Eislen didn't know what he'd done, but he was terrified. His ears felt as if they would burst, and he smelled an acrid scent. He struggled to escape, then another person rushed into the room. Malco, Sarah, and the new person held him down, although he struggled to break free. Then the new person pricked his arm with a stick she had in her hand. He immediately felt drowsy, and blackness slowly closed in on him.
Fear pushed the blackness back a touch. They must be going to cast me down.
The last thing he consciously observed was Sarah replacing the black object, not a mallet, in her pouch. She stared at him, concerned. He relented and went into darkness relieved there was no anger on her face.
Chapter 12 - A Magician on Our Hands
05 GUSTA 15327
Sarah’s staff who was in or outside Eislen’s medbay sat at a pilot debriefing table near the Yacurra's main hangar. The room was long and narrow, filled by the table and a few dozen seats. A holodisplay covered the wall behind Sarah. Hastily assembled, everyone in the room was a witness to the events that ended when Sarah's sidearm hit the floor and discharged.
Sarah stood near the head of the table, pacing behind her chair. She paced a few minutes while she thought about the events that just occurred and waited for the ringing in her ears to subside. Her officers and Malco sat silently.
Unable to believe her own memory of what just happened, Sarah grasped the back of the chair, looked at her officers in frustration, then demanded, “Someone tell me what the hell just went on in there.”
Doctor Jannis scratched her chin, appearing reflective. “Right now you're asking yourself if you're having a mental break, Captain. You're not. I don't know what just happened, if I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it. In all my years as a military doctor, I've never witnessed anything resembling the supernatural. Telekinesis is something that belongs in the realm of charlatans and magicians.”
“Telekinesis.” Sarah sat down in her chair. “Right. We all saw it.” The last was stated as a statement, but was clearly a question. Sarah looked at the nodding heads in the room to make sure. “I thought he was asking me what my sidearm was. I was about to ask Malco how to explain it to him when I felt the weight lift from my hip. I looked down just as the gun lifted and dropped to the floor.”
“Yep,” Gilbert said. “That’s what I saw. But I don’t think he wanted the gun. How would he know what it was anyway? I suppose it might be too early to think we can read his facial expressions, but I got the impression he wanted you to see what he could do.”
Seto agreed with Gilbert. “I got that same vibe, Commander.”
“It will make more sense when we can speak to him.” Malco Vander was only a corporal, but the highest ranking linguist still alive in the fleet. Most had been on the Yascurra near the most ready available shuttles.
Seto built on Vander’s statement. “He's willing to communicate. Maybe teaching him our language should be top priority.”
“I suppose so,” Sarah said. “Doctor Jannis, you're sure he's one hundred percent homo sapiens?”
“One hundred percent, Captain, allowing for the deviations that will arise from over ten thousand years or more of isolated evolution.”
“Ten thousand years?” Gilbert asked.
“An estimation, but probably very close.” Dr. Jannis justified her number. “The radiation flux here is a bit high thanks to the gas giant. Taking that into consideration, the level of genetic drift from the human baseline agrees with the number I just gave you. I can increase my certainty with more samples from different locales. But I’m certain they’re homo sapiens.”
“What sort of evolution happens in ten thousand years?” Sarah asked, curious.
“Apparently psychic powers,” Dr. Jannis said. “I have found a number of mutations that don't exist in any other known homo sapiens sub species. Possibly enough that we might have to consider these people a separate species. Homo Sapiens Telepathia.”
“Tell me about these mutations,” Sarah requested. “What else can we expect?”
“Well,” Dr. Jannis explained, “what looks like albinism is actually just suppressed expression. He still maintains some ability to tan, for example, but simply isn't tan because there is such a small UV flux on Refuge. After hundreds of generations, melanin seems to be recessive.”
“That explains him looking like a ghost,” Gilbert said.
Dr. Jannis smiled at Gilbert. “After what we’ve seen today, maybe ghosts are real too.”
Gilbert’s eyebrows furrowed. “Sorry, doctor, I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on.”
“Of course. In addition, there are other mutations that are likely a result of Refuge's gravity. Thicker bones, denser muscle fibers. Eislen is a very stout young man. Strong by our standards.”
“None of that explains psychic powers,” Sarah said. “I want to know about those. What the limitations are.”
“There’s an extra subsection of the brain, one I uncovered doing a brain scan on him while he was unconscious. The organ sits under the hypothalamus, within the temporal lobe. There are nerve bundles exiting the optic nerve and terminating at this organ, so it’s possible the locals have sight greater than ours, if the structure is a visual organ.”
“Does that organ explain the telekinesis?” Sarah
asked. “How does he exert force? How did he counteract the spin of the Yascurra’s habitation ring and lift the gun?”
“Nothing I know explains that. The locals are mutating at a higher rate than most of humanity. A hazard of living on the moon of such an active gas giant, as I said. Fortunately for them, and for us, Refuge has a very strong magnetosphere and a thick atmosphere to reduce that radiation to livable levels.”
“That's all nice, doctor, but if none of it explains the gun.” Sarah said. “That is what I need to know.”
“I can't explain it. But I will get the answer.”
“This is madness,” Gilbert interjected. “Science has proven there's no such thing as telekinesis.”
“Didn't you just say you saw it, Commander? Science has proven a lot of things that were later recanted. Please, use your head. Let's not regress, this is a scientific investigation,” Dr. Jannis said. “I see two conclusions. Either we're all having the same mass hallucination or we just witnessed psychic phenomena.”
“I'm going with mass hallucination,” Gilbert said, irritated.
Dr. Jannis scowled at him.
Sarah smirked, enjoying the doctor’s annoyance more than she should.
He has an aggressive streak under that fun exterior.
Sarah interrupted to stop the butting heads. “Harmony, people. Harmony.” She let a few moments of silence pass before continuing. “I know we're all on edge. We’ve been through a lot, and the last thing we need is some new crap on our plates. But we all saw this. That gun rose twenty centimeters after pushing my holster strap open. The habitation ring on the Yascurra is spun up to point nine gravities, so it's not going to jump out of the holster on its own. We're going to assume we're all sane and we saw what we saw. Eislen wanted to show me he could lift the gun. With his brain.”
Reluctantly, everyone agreed, even Gilbert.
