Aisling

by Nicole Delacour

  “You need to drink,” Kilpeni interrupted her thoughts shoving the canteen in her face, “Sparingly though, we won’t have any way to fill it from here on out.”

  “When did it get filled last anyways? Isn’t this still the water from the second?” Jess asked before taking a large gulp. Handing it back, she watched as he tied it at his waist. “Does it ever disturb you that you can form things from your flesh?”

  “Does it ever disturb you that you can’t?” he retorted raising a hand to block the sun’s glare. “Well, this one’s definitely less obvious than I’d have liked.”

  “That has to be the understatement of whatever time span Aislings deal with for hyperbole,” Jess grumbled.

  Kilpeni glanced at her. Letting his hand fall, he spoke, “How did you know that the world would bend to your will?”

  “It didn’t bend though, did it? There’s other reasons why that dimension is silent. The rules were already broken there, so when I realized I could speak, it made sense,” she lied. The entirety of her confrontation with Njál had been based on a belief that she could intimidate him. She had never believed the world would fall silent at her command.

  “Well, as interesting a trick as it was, I sincerely hope things don’t get so out of control again.” He took her hand in his causing her to tense. “Oh.” Kilpeni dropped her hand. “Sorry, I just got used to it in the fourth.”

  She took his hand in hers. “It’s fine. I could use the stability at the moment.”

  He smiled brightly at her before noticing what he was doing. Calming his features into a more neutral expression, Kilpeni moved his eyes to the world ahead of them. The empty desert stretched out before them with little in the atmosphere to make breathing pleasant. Her tongue quickly grew dry even though she inhaled through her nose. Inside her nose, the skin cracked. Beneath the unforgiving star, she coughed gasping for breath though they had barely gone a mile. Kilpeni frowned.

  “I didn’t think I’d feel it,” she rasped hoarsely.

  Kilpeni glanced at her and held up the canteen. “Drink.”

  Though she sipped, her thoughts circled around the strangeness. The water in her body and the water in the canteen were the only bits of dihydrogen monoxide in the entirety of this dimension. The fifth stretched out as a vast desert and, in the distance, solidified carbon rained from the sky. Flumes of black ash burst forth from the cracks in the surface sending down static bolts of blue lightning. The crystals fell from bile yellow clouds that oozed over jagged mountain peaks and into the valleys below with tiny plinking echoing with each falling gem. Sweat glistened on her brow and all the weight of the fourth dimension could barely compare to the dry scorching rays that burned through the clouds with little light left to spare upon the ground but heat multiplied too many folds.

  “Tell me it isn’t mixed up in that.” She gestured towards the storm that drifted away from where they trudged through dirt and dust. “I’m not sure I could survive whatever conditions are necessary to turn whatever gas that is into diamonds.”

  Kilpeni nodded before turning back to the long way down that they had until they were at the bottom of the valley. Somewhere in the ravine was the stone. He only hoped that he hadn’t been wrong. There were five stones in that pouch, so he couldn’t believe that there was any more than one in the fifth. He had to hope because Jess wouldn’t last too long as the world worked against her body to drain all and any water out of her so easily adapting form.

  “The stone should be nearby,” Kilpeni offered before he led them forward once more to continue down into the ravine.

  The closer they grew to the silver, the more Jess noticed it flowed. The liquid was slower than water, but there was a current nonetheless. The metal stood out against the dry light brown of the shore where silver pushed outwards into the roughened cracks. His hand remained smooth against her skin which the air carved like the earth. Where mercury welled to the surface of this strange place, blood formed red designs on her flesh the further they went. Jess gritted her teeth. Her fingers twitched.

  “If time moves the same in all of the eight dimensions, the stone here would be further along than Njál. Is anything out of place? Who was in the stone?” she asked, stumbling behind him. Her feet ached in her shoes.

  He glanced at her before quickly looking away. There was no doubt in her mind that she looked just as in pain as she was with her body dehydrating in such an unnatural manner. They stood by the river before he answered, “I don’t know who, but I do not see any changes.”

  “You said you could sense the stones. Where is it telling you that it’s coming from?” she pushed. On the horizon, the clouds raining crystals lumbered closer to them. “I’m pretty sure that I’m not the sort that would be able to survive that storm.”

  “No, we need to get to the sixth as quickly as possible. The dimension isn’t as keen to rob entering forms of their water.” Kilpeni searched outwards for the familiar beacon that would lead him to the stone, but there was a disruption between them and the stone warping his senses.

  His eyes switched from human to telescopic vision. Reflecting and magnifying the light, Kilpeni viewed the horizons before them with trepidation. In the distance to the east, four figures stood bare from the waist up save for thick black lines. The parasites had burrowed deep to avoid the harsh light of the fifth dimension. One of the figures crouched low to the ground, but from the angle where he stood, Kilpeni could not see what they were observing. However, he knew well enough to guess. Without a word, he picked Jess up and took to the sky as leathered wings stretched from newly formed bone on his back. Jess held tight as the wind ripped across her face chapping her lips and further drying her throat. From the sky, a small spring spouted water and turned the surrounding soil dark only for seconds before they dried so great was the thirst.

  Staring down at the water, Jess felt a strange certainty come over that she hadn’t experienced in the fourth. “Drop me in it.”

  “What?” Kilpeni called back over the wind that pushed against them as he flew.

  “Drop me in the water! The stone has to be at the source, and the source is down. I can breathe in water in the rest of the dimensions, right? Or was that just the third?” she asked.

  Jess did her best to organize herself the best she could to dive like a pencil into the slowly widening fountain. The diameter was over three feet; there was a chance that the jump would end terribly, but she knew that she would not last long in the fifth either way. Certainly not long enough to fight all four of the brainwashed Aislings that were beginning to notice them. Two turned to face them before stretching upwards with long clawed fingers prepared to snatch Kilpeni from the sky.

  “They won’t let you get through,” he retorted. “You have the stones! Don’t be stupid.”

  Jess laughed and kicked him in the chest. Though he scrambled to hold tightly to her, she dove backwards. Her back bent in a graceful curve learned from over a decade of swim lessons. The hands were behind her, and she grabbed the wrists twisting to slide down their enemies’ arms. Flicking their arms to dislodge her, she jumped through the air above their heads. They pulled their arms back to them, and one of the two stared in confusion at the long red trails that quickly vanished to a chalky red. The possessed Aisling which crouched did not look up in time to do anything, but the fourth which remained standing reached out to grab her. Fumbling, the last one missed as she landed feet first sinking below the surface of the water for an instant before buoying up. Red swirled with the water dying turning the liquid to a translucent rose.

  Shoving her hands against the solid edges where the water had saturated, Jess pushed herself below the surface before they could attempt to remove her. The water’s pressure was gurgling, and though forcefully, she was able to push against it enough to descend. Narrowing the further she went, the walls grew harder against her fingers the closer they came to her body. When her feet hit the bottom of the unnatural spring, she traced the edges with her toes for a disp
arity of the stone against the rest. Kilpeni had not answered her, so she dared not gasp for air until the last. Pain bled up her arm, and through the water, she saw the black ink: Have You Lost Your Mind Stop Seriously I Could Kill You Stop.

  Swearing internally, she maneuvered to press one arm and her back against the walls while digging into her pockets to grab her knife. The knife slipped, but she managed to open it beneath the water. With a quick prayer and a mental bird to the Compass, she let go of the sides. The water pushed her upwards where she bobbed up above the surface fast enough to grab the side and jump out to the side in a crouch. The four other Aislings were gone, and Kilpeni stood to her right staring down at the spring.

  “They left when you vanished below the water,” he mumbled. “They didn’t seem to care about the stone. Probably only needed the one.”

  “Which means we have an idea what they wanted with them, right?” Jess replied.

  Kilpeni nodded slowly. His eyes never moved from the water. “Even if we get there, that world will already be significantly altered. By that point, reclaiming the stone won’t fix anything. The equilibrium will have been disturbed to a breaking point.”

  “Let there be light?”

  Shift to glare at her, Kilpeni stretched his arm down the fountain and ran his fingers against the bottom. “The water should dry up without a problem,” he removed the canteen from his belt and filled it to the brim.

  “Why isn’t there an Aisling? If the stones are having progressively more and more effect on their surroundings, why did Njál manifest while this one didn’t?” She twisted her hair to squeeze some of the water out though the liquid quickly evaporated from her skin.

  “I don’t know.” He lifted the stop from the fountain, and the flow ceased.

  Reaching out, she took it and placed the stone with the rest. Six small stones rolled back and forth indiscernible against one another. As few as two remained or as many as four. They felt heavier with each one than they had been when she had been on Earth.

  “They weren’t guarding the stone. They didn’t take the stone.” Jess frowned. “They were studying it.” When he gave her a curious look, she tucked the stones away. “Maybe – just maybe they were trying to determine how to stop the Aisling inside without stopping the change.”

  “The stones are a powerful tool. If they were able to control the changing, they would easily be able to conquer the other dimensions.” Kilpeni paused glancing up at the oncoming storm. “We need to move. There is a second one close by – and it’s getting closer.”

  Kilpeni pointed at the sulfurous clouds that had turned clearer and lighter until they were nearly the same lumbering forms that Jess remembered foreshadowing a rainstorm. The vapors seemed unnatural compared to the yellow-green hue of the sky and the brown tones of the clouds further in the distance.

  Jess stared into the oncoming storm. “We’re going about this wrong. ‘Let there be light’ – they want to make their dimension more capable of sustaining life. No Aisling – they want to prevent any interference by means of reason or…” she trailed off.

  “If there isn’t an Aisling in the stone, there isn’t anyone who can be convinced to undo what the stone has done,” Kilpeni concluded.

  The rain pattered against the ground growing from the harsh clinks of gems to the softer crashing of water. Static sparked across the clouds, and in each glare of light, a dark form trudged through the air. A figure appeared as a giant amongst the vapor; his broad shoulders hunched forward with each lumbering step. Kilpeni paled as that Aisling shifted upon his heels to stare down at where Kilpeni and Jess stood still more from exhaustion than from awe.

  “Tell me this one’s friendly,” Jess pleaded, reaching out to take his hand in her cold one.

  Lightning clashed to the ground, and a man clad in black ambled down the blade like the light was a staircase. His wavy black hair stuck in curls and random strands about his shoulders. His Stetson was dusted and beaten with a bronzed buckle upon the side where a strip of matte leather clipped. Dangling from his right hip, a chain dangled across his leather britches, and from beneath his gray sleeveless shirt, tribal lines and triangles tattoos encircled his arm like painted chainmail. Over his shirt, his black vest with all bronze clasps undone that let it hang loose about him. Leather boots clicked with metal welded to their soles. A tick of a scar broke the thick line of his brow over one eye as he smirked while another jagged bunch of skin pulled up the top of his lip over his left canine. His skin might have been as rich as the bronze of his wears had he not been caked with smoke. With dark eyes, he pulled his hat from his head and rested the covering against his breast with a smirk twisting the shadow of a beard upon his face.

  “It’s been a long time, in laak. What say we take this party a few leagues down before we start dancing?” His laughter rolled like thunder.

  “Itzal.” The name slipped and hung in the air between them as Kilpeni shifted and pulled Jess behind him.

  “Itzal?” Those black eyes narrowed. The smirk squirmed like a dying snake. “I reckon I desired a bit better than that from you of all people.”

  “Do you remember what you are?” Kilpeni inquired, releasing Jess’s hand to move closer to Itzal.

  Itzal’s brows knotted. “Aisling.”

  “Stone,” Kilpeni retorted.

  The two stared – neither blinking – as Jess shifted concentration with each shifting movement from the twitch of Itzal’s fingers to the shift of Kilpeni’s foot. Kilpeni wavered under the dull stare that could almost pass as the same cocky arrogance that had defined Itzal. It was difficult to separate the Aisling who had often toyed with the vices of the core world and had pulled random bottles of alcohol from bars when his charge wasn’t looking. That one incident all those centuries ago involving an attempt to grow an agave in the second dimension had left everyone involved a bit bewildered considering no one still had any idea where it had ended up. However, that Aisling had died a long time ago well before Jessica Gould had ever been conceived and far too many years to count prior to even her parents’ conceptions. The manifestation of the stone was only a mimic – a transmutation of what had been into a form that the stone could utilize to comprehend the makeup of the surrounding dimension. Though the interface opened up the option of diplomacy with the stone, Itzal had been far more chaotic and less inclined to bow to reason than Njál.

  “Itzal? Whatever happened to that list of suggestions I gave you? God, this is why I didn’t want to die attached to that son of a Pict.” He smiled at Jess. “That’s the way of things, isn’t it? I finally get a name – a self-identifier – and it has to either be a warning like Echo or the ward I died with.” His eyes flickered to Kilpeni. “I expected more from you, brother.”

  “I didn’t think being named for the Aztec god of discord and war would be appropriate,” Kilpeni retorted, and though his voice had lost the edge, there was a dangerous uncertainty in his eyes.

  Itzal smirked displaying straight teeth slightly yellowed and worn in the same way his clothing was. “I ain’t asking for much. I think I was mighty fair considering the situation that you got us into.”

  “You had as much choice as Set and I. We had agreed to draw straws when you decided to be a hero and leap head first into a firefight that you couldn’t possibly win,” Kilpeni said. His eyes narrowed when Itzal winked at Jess. “You seem completely mentally competent for once in your too long existence, so I see no point in furthering this argument. You are dead. You are simply a manifestation of a rift capable of mutating matter at random. You are a poorly chosen moral compass for a power that you couldn’t even manage to respect while you were alive.”

  “I respected those little micks plenty,” Itzal replied.

  Cautiously raising a hand, Jess asked, “Am I ever going to get an idea about what you’re discussing? I mean, just a word or something to clue me in would be great.”

  Itzal’s tongue was black like some anthropomorphic snake as it ran over his bott
om lip. The dust that covered his skin curled into wisps of smoke; his skin glowed like celestial bronze though his eyes were what burned a blistering red when they flickered to where she stood. Clink – the rain in the distance hissed and bounced from the ground. Clink – gems rained from the sky, and the clouds lowered turning back to their acidic hue.

  “I’ll explain this to you in a way your tiny core-corrupt mind can grasp, hm? This ain’t something you best be stepping in – move back and lock your jaw. There are no commandments here.” He leaned forward. His chin jutted out as he hooked his thumbs in his pockets.

  “The Compass -,” Jess said.

  “Isn’t here,” he interrupted her. “And I don’t give a damn what that manipulative megalomaniac wrote. I’m just another Aisling they let die,” he snorted, throwing his hands up in the air. “But praise be to the scum of all nine underworlds! Burn away and rewrite each part of me! I aim to be not but a canvas.” His eyes burned, shifting back to Kilpeni. “Gods, how far are we going to go for these?”

  The hollowed out look that burrowed its way through Kilpeni before Jess’s eyes broke her fury more than she had ever thought possible. Still, though he was dead in the eyes, he pulled her back and placed himself between her and Itzal. The black curls that had been his in a way she should not have allowed herself to become accustomed straightened and melted to white gold. When she sought his face, she only caught a glimpse of thin lips and the dark amber of his altered eyes.

  “For all of us,” Kilpeni whispered. The voice – at least she had believed that would be the same. His voice fell deeper and rougher as though it came from lower in his soul and clawed its way out. “If any of what you were remains, go back to sleep.”

  Itzal hummed softly before sneering. “Simple? Easy? How many stones in that bag of hers? How many have you made rest? I heard the dead talking from here. The drums – listen, brother – this ain’t war.”