Post 11

He woke abruptly with three concerned faces staring down at him. When his eye opened, Rayna sobbed and pressed her forehead against his, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Jared reach out to grasp Eithna’s hand. He reached up a shaky hand to touch Rayna’s back. “What happened?” Everything around him seemed dim. Was that dream the reality, and this the dream? His mind quailed.

Rayna was pressing desperate kisses across his face, and then she laughed with relief against his mouth, unable to answer.

Eithna answered instead. “You were in the throes of your dream again, but you weren’t asleep. Do you remember anything?”

He squeezed his eyes closed, trying to remember. Strange symbols seemed etched into the backs of his eyelids, swirls and a crescent moon… “He said to become ready.” Was that really the dream? This seemed more like the dream…

“Who did?”

“I don’t… I can’t remember… A man… Not a man… He…” A shuddery breath seemed to rip from his lungs. He gently pushed Rayna off of him, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck restlessly. He glanced down at his open shirt, and then shrugged out of it uncomfortably. He looked at them, from one to the other, a confused look on his face. “What did you ask?” The edges of his sight wavered, and he thought this surely must be a dream.

Eithna and Jared shared a strange look, and then Eithna met his gaze again. “I asked who said that.”

“Who said what?” He was still rubbing his neck, and was looking around the room with a blank stare, trying to catch those wavering edges.

Rayna gasped a little, reaching out towards him, and then snatching her hand back. “Eithna, look at his patch.”

He felt for his patch. It was still neatly in place, although his damp blond hair felt a little mussed. From beneath the patch a strange heat seemed to be seeping out, like water leaking from beneath a pot lid. Eithna gently grasped his head to her breast, and lifted the patch from his bad eye.

Eithna gasped. The solid, pale orb seemed to hold a churning mass made up of swirling blue lights, and even the dim room around them was brighter from the light that emanated from it. Eithna bent to stare deep into the eye, and her breath caught when it felt abruptly like she was being drug down into a deep well of… something. She broke the contact, and reached out to touch his cheek where little strands of blue light stretched out searching fingers, as if alive. They crept across his face, seeming to wrap around him, spreading down his neck and over his hair, all emanating from the swirling blue orb that was his eye. Her touch didn’t seem to disturb them. Her fingertips felt only warm skin.

Jared and Rayna were simply standing still, staring in dismay at the scene before them. Arius’ hands had dropped to his lap, and he sat continued to stare blankly, lips parted and with no expression on his face. Eithna sighed and set herself to trying to handle the situation, not that she knew what she was doing. She had no experience dealing with magic, and this was clearly the work of magic. She stretched hesitant fingers to again touch the lines of blue light. They were warm against her skin, but otherwise had no texture or solidity. They were like rays of blue sunlight creeping down his chest and arms where they began to trace across his tattoos. She watched in awe as the blue lines of light followed the inked marks closely, and leaned over his shoulder to see that the same was happening down his back.

Once the entire tracery of ink was fully lit, the blue lines began to throb. Eithna reached again for his pulse, and as she’d thought, the lights were keeping rhythm with his heartbeat. The tattoos seemed to have a life of their own, and seemed to writhe, although surely it was just the pulsation from the glowing blue lines fooling her eyes.

There was no life in Arius’ other eye, the flat gray orb vacant with no spark anywhere within it. His chest was not rising and falling, and she put a hand close to his lips, to find that again, he was not breathing. What sustained him if air did not? Panic had receded, and although behind her she could feel Jared and Rayna’s fear and frustration, Eithna’s thoughts reorganized themselves and she silently thanked her training as a healer as she decided to approach the entire situation from a physician’s standpoint. She wasn’t sure exactly what she could do, but she would monitor him carefully until she figured it out. Suddenly he collapsed backwards, like a puppet with its strings cut, completely limp, eyes staring wide.

Veyga found himself again standing on the seat of the huge stone throne, with the hundreds of people kneeling before him. He shook his head, certain that something wasn’t right. There had been a figure… He turned to his left, and there it was, the black-cloaked figure; except the cloak wasn’t black, exactly. It was… a strange swirl of various dark shades coalescing into a solid mass before spinning away again. It made his head hurt to look at the cloak, so he focused instead on the dark shadow hiding the face. “Who are you?”

“We are your future. We are your present. We are your past.” The same voice from before, it was like gravel scraping across stone, almost impossible to understand, yet somehow he could hear its meaning within his skull.

“That doesn’t answer my question!” He stepped forward, and the figure glided backward, staying out of arm’s reach. The hands rested at the figure’s side, and somehow he knew that the creature was male. How, he wasn’t sure, since the fingers were long and tapered neatly, the hands pale and almost colorless. They could have been a woman’s hands or a man’s hands and wouldn’t have been out of place on either sex. The figure was covered entirely by the cloak, and it was impossible to tell either way.

“It is all we can say. It is all we are allowed to reveal.”

“Reveal? What are you talking about? Why is this happening to me?” He took another step forward, and the figure glided back again, cloak hanging motionless.

“You must seek the answers. You must become ready.”

“Ready for what? Where can I find answers?” Another step forward, certain he could pin the figure against the back of the enormous throne. Another glide back.

“You must seek them on your own, we cannot assist you. You must become ready.”

“You are not answering my questions!” He growled deep in his chest, frustrated beyond measure. “I want answers, damn you to the seven hells!”

This time the figure did not glide back when he stepped forward. “We have already been damned, Veygarius.”

One more step forward, and he was able to reach out both hands to grasp the hood. He threw it back, to recoil in horror as his own face stared back at him. The eyes were a mirror image of his, the left orb pale and solid blue, and the right eye a dead gray. There was no expression on the pale face, although he was certain dismay warped his own expression. The lips did not move as the voice continued on. Abruptly he was certain the voice did not come from this figure.

“You will be damned as well, if you cannot become ready. Seek your answers, and seek them quickly. We can tell you no more. We cannot come again, we are too weak. We have stretched the boundaries of time too often, and only now have we reached you. Our time is up, and we will wait for you to become ready.”

“I don’t understand!” In frustration, he tried to shove the mirror image of himself, and stared with a widened eye as the figure didn’t even budge under his onslaught.

“You must seek, and become ready, Veygarius. We can tell no more…” The voice faded away, and he spun around to look out over the room full of people, to gasp anew. Instead of people, it was corpses kneeling in worship, and the sudden stench made him cough and stumble. Rotting corpses, with decayed clothing sagging from putrid limbs. Here and there skulls had fallen loose, and were rolling from side to side on the floor. Flies buzzed in swarms, and he knew without doubt that he was personally responsible for every single death.

He fell to his knees, tears welling from both eyes and trickling down his cheeks, even seeping from beneath his patch. He glanced over his shoulder, and his own image was staring reproachfully at him. Its lips tightened, and then he shuddered as the mouth opened to speak.

“You have failed. Pick yourself up, stop being a coward, and prevent this from happening.”

His own voice sounded strange coming from the near-lifeless image. He twisted into a sitting position and turned his back on the carcasses. “How do I prevent it? I cannot even seem to save Ragged Valley, how can I save the entire world?!”

The figure’s eyes narrowed to mere slits. “Wipe away your tears and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

“Sorry for myself?! What of them?” He motioned over his shoulder towards the hundreds of corpses, refusing to look again. “Is it wrong to feel pain because I failed them?”

“They feel no aches now, they have no hurts. They are beyond all of that now, because you failed. What is it to you that they are gone?”

“What is it to me?” He shook his head, reaching up to wipe the tears from his face with shaking hands. “What is it to me?! It was up to me to save them, and I don’t even know what I am supposed to be doing! How can I help them, how can I be their savior, when I don’t even know what to do? I don’t even know what is wrong!”

“Everything is wrong with this world, Veygarius.”

“Veygarius. You all call me that. That’s not my name.”

Sadness crossed his image’s face. “They tried to name you. The one who bore you refused to cooperate. It is one of the reasons They could not reach you.”

“They who? Who are ‘They’?! What are ‘They’?!” He pushed himself again to his feet, stalking forward once more to stand nearly nose to nose with his image. “What are you?!”

“We are you, Veygarius.”

“That tells me nothing! Why won’t you answer my questions straight?!” His hands were fisted at his sides, and he nearly quivered with frustration and anger.

“We cannot. Seek your answers, and hold hope for the entire world that you will be able to find them. You must become ready, or the entire world will fall to darkness.” The figure lifted a hand, brushing that dark swirling cloak against him, and he shivered at the coldness that seemed to spread across him where it had touched. The hand stretched out over his shoulder to point towards the corpses, and he stepped away as he turned to look, and shivered again.

The corpses were gone and only piles of ashes now sat where the people had bowed to him. “They will be burned away by your ignorance. Your refusal to let Them in has cost you time, and They can no longer help you. Because you refused Them, because you did not accept that They were there within you the entire time, you have already begun to fail. Only in your sleep would you open your mind, and only in your dreams were They able to reach you with their messages. Even now, it is against your full will that They were here.”

“I don’t understand.” He moved away and scrubbed his face with shaking hands.

“Try, you ignorant fool!” His image surged forward toward him, and he stumbled back, but not quickly enough. With a gasp from both of them, his image met his body, and it was as if knowledge was pouring into every pore as the two of them merged. He screamed soundlessly, blind with his image’s fury scorching across his skin. Pictures and descriptions began to flicker through his mind, too fast for him to make sense of them. Finally, one image stood out from all the others- an immense square building, obviously a temple, with thick stone columns in front. He saw himself standing at the foot of at least a hundred steps, facing up at the columns above. He began to climb the stairs, and time seemed to jump ahead and he suddenly saw himself standing between two of the towering columns at the top of the steps. He moved forward into cool dim light, and stopped dead when he saw the nine massive thrones before him, eight of them occupied by cloaked figures with the hoods pulled forward to hide the faces. The statue was real, it wasn’t a dream, and he had to find it.

Then darkness sucked him away, and he was gone.