The full story of The Man in the Maroon Suit. This story was run from April 9th to November 7th 2022 and was originally posted on the Clockworksun Stories Discord server.
This story is 100 updates long, plus an epilogue, spread over 336 standard pages with a total of over 110,000 words.
Note that some reaction counts may not be exact, as voters may have changed their reactions between the close of voting and the time this story was scraped from the server.
Note that some reaction counts may not be exact, as voters may have changed their reactions between the close of voting and the time this story was scraped from the server.
@Story Notifications
Welcome back; let's get some story writing going again! This time, there are only three options as part of the winding-down process. If anything changes later, the number of options will return to four. Given that two of these suckers are novels, there will be plenty of time to see if things change.
Another difference is that I'm not retiring prompts since there are only these ones. Three prompts will be posted and three will be written; you're voting on the order. Well, unless there's one prompt with basically no votes; I might retire or revise it if that happens. Anyway, here are your options:
[NOVELLA] The Man in the Maroon Suit
Horror / Mystery
Present Day, the dream world
“I never used to remember my dreams. That changed, a couple of months ago, when I first met Him in a nightmare. Tall, thin, grinning in just the right way to seem totally unhinged. I called him the Devil. I’ve encountered him several times since. Always hunting me while I sleep. I can never wake myself up when he’s too close, and I dread what will happen if he catches me. But that alone isn’t what makes me glance over my shoulder when walking down the street. It’s that I saw him yesterday in real life.”
[This story is part of the Kronwaë canon, but is not significantly related to the main timeline.]
[NOVELLA] The Man in the Maroon Suit
Horror / Mystery
Present Day, the dream world
“I never used to remember my dreams. That changed, a couple of months ago, when I first met Him in a nightmare. Tall, thin, grinning in just the right way to seem totally unhinged. I called him the Devil. I’ve encountered him several times since. Always hunting me while I sleep. I can never wake myself up when he’s too close, and I dread what will happen if he catches me. But that alone isn’t what makes me glance over my shoulder when walking down the street. It’s that I saw him yesterday in real life.”
[This story is part of the Kronwaë canon, but is not significantly related to the main timeline.]
[NOVEL] First Contact
Intrigue / Various
The Future - Space/Kronwaë
One day, a sleek starship descends on a remote planet, inhabited but not spacefaring. An alien being emerges, instantly and without ceremony confirming the existence of extraterrestrial life. They somehow speak the local language, and it quickly becomes apparently that our protagonist needs to get involved. Why is this alien here? Where did they come from? What will become of the planet after such a dramatic upheaval of everyone’s worldview?
[This story is part of the Kronwaë canon, but is not significantly related to the main timeline.]
️ [NOVEL] All Falling Apart
Adventure / Existential horror
Near-future - a planet like the Earth (Kronwaë)
Everything has gotten worse lately. Resource shortages, global political turmoil, climate disasters, and now it seems like portions of the planet itself are simply sinking into the ground. It’s all falling apart, and no one knows what to do to fix it, or if we even can. Our protagonist must decide how to proceed in this seemingly-doomed world, whether that means struggling to save it, desperately trying to escape, or something else entirely. One thing’s for sure: there isn’t long left.
[This story is part of the Kronwaë canon, but is not significantly related to the main timeline.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Alrighty then, The Man in the Maroon Suit will be the next story. First, let’s confirm a few things about the setting. Then we’ll get to our protagonist.
When does this story take place?
- Before The Factory.
️ - Between The Factory and “HENRY”.
- After “HENRY”.
Where does this story take place?
- In the large midwestern city known as New Brighton after the events of “HENRY”, or by another name before them.
- In the large southwestern city known as Marnosa after the events of Making a Difference, or by another name before them.
(Winners: , )
- Before The Factory.
️ - Between The Factory and “HENRY”.
- After “HENRY”.
Where does this story take place?
- In the large midwestern city known as New Brighton after the events of “HENRY”, or by another name before them.
- In the large southwestern city known as Marnosa after the events of Making a Difference, or by another name before them.
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Alright, so the city-to-be-known-as-Marnosa is our setting. Let’s get to know our protagonist a bit, shall we?
Who is our protagonist?
- Mira. Quiet, shy, keeps a low profile. Secretly believes in the supernatural due to a childhood experience, but won’t admit that.
️ - Alfonse. Studious, educated, a little stuffy. Collects obscure board games and owns more than twenty decks of cards.
- Su. Energetic, inquisitive, cares what others think. Writes mushy fanfiction but is too nervous to ever show anyone.
What is their occupational field?
️ - Engineering
- Research
- Finance
- Communication
- Art
How well-off are they?
- Reasonably wealthy. Upper middle class.
- Moderate. Not wealthy, not poor. Surviving okay. [Money will not play a major role in the story.]
- Poor. Having to make difficult financial choices regularly.
(Winners: , , )
- Mira. Quiet, shy, keeps a low profile. Secretly believes in the supernatural due to a childhood experience, but won’t admit that.
️ - Alfonse. Studious, educated, a little stuffy. Collects obscure board games and owns more than twenty decks of cards.
- Su. Energetic, inquisitive, cares what others think. Writes mushy fanfiction but is too nervous to ever show anyone.
What is their occupational field?
️ - Engineering
- Research
- Finance
- Communication
- Art
How well-off are they?
- Reasonably wealthy. Upper middle class.
- Moderate. Not wealthy, not poor. Surviving okay. [Money will not play a major role in the story.]
- Poor. Having to make difficult financial choices regularly.
(Winners: , , )
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@Story Notifications
Well, poor Alfonse. Okay then, Su will be our protagonist and she will be some kind of researcher of moderate means. Let’s get to know her in a little more detail, shall we?
What is Su’s relationship with her family?
- Her parents passed away some time ago and she doesn’t have any close siblings.
- Generally cordial. Stays in touch to some degree and visits occasionally.
- Pretty close with a few family members, including one who lives nearby.
What is Su’s relationship with her friends?
- Has some close friends and a lot of acquaintances. Leads a busy social life.
- Has a lot of acquaintances but very few to no close friends. Attends parties, but never hosts them.
What is Su’s housing status?
- Lives alone.
️ - Has a housemate that she is friends with.
- Has a housemate that doesn’t interact with her much.
Will the story be told in first or third person?
1️⃣ - First person.
3️⃣ - Third person.
(Winners: , , , 1️⃣ )
- Her parents passed away some time ago and she doesn’t have any close siblings.
- Generally cordial. Stays in touch to some degree and visits occasionally.
- Pretty close with a few family members, including one who lives nearby.
What is Su’s relationship with her friends?
- Has some close friends and a lot of acquaintances. Leads a busy social life.
- Has a lot of acquaintances but very few to no close friends. Attends parties, but never hosts them.
What is Su’s housing status?
- Lives alone.
️ - Has a housemate that she is friends with.
- Has a housemate that doesn’t interact with her much.
Will the story be told in first or third person?
1️⃣ - First person.
3️⃣ - Third person.
(Winners: , , , 1️⃣ )
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@Story Notifications
The Man in the Maroon Suit
Scene 0
I let the door swing shut behind me, savoring the last drift of air conditioning before emerging into the dry, hot air outside. At least there was a breeze, though that would make biking harder. Looked up at the sun - still high in the sky - slid on my sunglasses, blinked several times to clear the afterimage, and smacked myself in the forehead for doing that in the wrong order. Put in one earbud and queued up my “going home” playlist, then wandered over to the bike racks and retrieved my ride. Time to head out.
I rode the half-mile to the light rail station, then dismounted and stretched, leaning my bike on the railing as I waited for the train. What a day. I didn’t want to think about it, so I didn’t. Just stared across the street, eyes unfocused, waiting for a big air-conditioned box on wheels to show up and whisk me back home. I felt a headache coming on. Aw man, that was pretty unusual. Might be because of all the pressure riding on the new satellite proj - no! Don’t think about it! They only pay me for forty hours a week, so that’s what they’re going to get. No work outside of work.
Thankfully, the train arrived not long afterwards and I was quickly on my way. Time to sit back and rest for twenty minutes or so. Leaned back, kept one hand on my bike just in case, and closed my eyes. No need to do anything until I heard my stop announced. Ahh...
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
I opened one eye, then very quickly both of them to confirm what I was looking at. Pale face, maroon suit jacket, black dress shirt, silver tie. “AUGH!” I screamed, flailing back on the seat as I tried to get away. “It’s you! Get away from - oh.”
The man stood frozen in surprise, holding out an ID badge towards me. His face wasn’t the right shape, actually, and his hair was a different color. He wasn’t even wearing a maroon suit; it was a sweatshirt from a local college. Not the man. Not the Devil. Christ, I was jumpy.
“I - I’m sorry,” I stuttered, glancing around at all the curious eyes on me. A metro security officer hovered nearby, ready to intervene. “I thought you were... uh, you surprised me. Sorry. Again.”
“... Uh, that’s okay.” He rubbed the back of his head, also casting his eyes around the train car. A few people looked away. “I just found this on the floor and thought maybe you dropped it?”
I accepted the ID card. “Suyeon Che - Research Scientist - Korman Aerospace Engineering.” Yep, that was me. “Y-yeah, that’s mine. Thanks. I wonder how I lost it...”
The security officer stepped away at this point, apparently satisfied the incident was resolved. Most of the other people went back to what they were doing. The train slowed down as it approached a stop. “Glad I could help,” said the man. “Hope you, uh... nevermind.”
I let him walk away and exit the train; apparently this was his stop. People kept stealing quick glances at me. I returned to my seat and conspicuously started checking something on my bike. The chain was fine, but I could at least ignore the onlookers more easily if I had somewhere to pretend to gaze.
... Okay, this was getting ridiculous.
I had first seen the man in the maroon suit in my dreams about a month ago. Pale, thin, and smiling in just the right way to seem completely insane. He chased me through my dream that night, and even though I was lucid, I couldn’t wake up until I barely managed to escape. That never happened. I could always wake up. But with him involved, I was stuck in the dream. I had feared for my life that night, terrified that if he had caught me, I would have died in real life before being able to wake up.
He had invaded my dreams twice more since then, always grinning and walking slowly in pursuit, always blocking my ability to wake up. After the second time, I started calling him the Devil. After the third, I started getting paranoid, dreading any future encounters. These dreams were worse than nightmares; they were viscerally terrifying to such a degree that I couldn’t believe the fear was springing from only my own psyche. But... the Devil couldn’t actually be hunting me down in my dreams, of course. He wasn’t real.
So you can hopefully understand why I, to put it mildly, freaked the hell out on the train. If he were real, if I ever saw him in real life, I might die of fright on the spot.
By the time my stop came around, I had mostly calmed down. Rolled my bike out of the train and off the platform, hopped aboard, and looked both ways before crossing the -
No way.
Just a half-block to my left, there he was. Maroon suit, black shirt, silver tie. Same face, same orange-yellow eyes. I did a double take. He was still there, casually sitting at a table outside a bar and grill, holding a beer in one hand and drumming his fingers on the table with the other. Facing partially in my direction but not looking directly at me. No way, no way. This couldn’t be him. I was being paranoid again. It was someone else who looked kind of similar. Right?
I could feel my legs shaking. My bike wobbled. I was about to pass out in the street.
- Be courageous, go confront him. Make sure it isn’t actually the Devil and it’s just some other guy in a sweatshirt or something. I’ll feel better after confirming that.
- Bike home as fast as I can, lock the door, and hide. I just need to get away and go somewhere safe.
- Go somewhere else, fast. Somewhere public that I can spend some time hiding before going home. Don’t want to let him know where I live.
- Pass out in the street. I don’t really want to, but I may not have a choice!
(Winner: )
- Be courageous, go confront him. Make sure it isn’t actually the Devil and it’s just some other guy in a sweatshirt or something. I’ll feel better after confirming that.
- Bike home as fast as I can, lock the door, and hide. I just need to get away and go somewhere safe.
- Go somewhere else, fast. Somewhere public that I can spend some time hiding before going home. Don’t want to let him know where I live.
- Pass out in the street. I don’t really want to, but I may not have a choice!
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 1
“...!” He turned slightly in my direction. I jammed my foot down on the pedal and shot off down the street as fast as adrenaline could carry me.
Several minutes later, I had calmed down somewhat, caught my breath, and met up with a few people I vaguely knew from work at a different bar and grill, further into downtown. No men in maroon suits in sight, and you better believe I double checked every single patron to make sure. Had some greasy food and a beer or two, and felt much better afterwards. That couldn’t have been the Devil; I was overreacting.
“What did you say, Su?”
“Wha?”
“I thought you just said something about the devil? Nevermind.” Josie almost had to shout so I could hear her over the general din. I hadn’t said that out loud, had I?
“Nope, no devils here!” I assured her. “Just muttering to myself; you know how it is.”
She nodded sagely. She knew how it was.
Later, she was trying to show me how to play billiards, along with a few other random people I didn’t know. I didn’t understand most of the rules about pocketing and striking the head rails and what to do if you make a foul, or how you even make a foul. I wondered how many beers I had downed at this point. I decided it had probably been enough.
One of the other people went first, jabbed the cue ball with the stick - the cue, she had said - and sent all the other balls flying. Josie took the cue back and said the man had made a foul. I sort of spaced out. Someone else got poked in the belly by the cue and everyone else laughed. Hilarious. I joined in.
I was next, apparently. I took the cue, picked a ball to line up with, got the thumbs up from Josie that I wasn’t doing it completely wrong, and gave it a try. Balls went everywhere and one of them went into a pocket! I stood up, triumphant, only to get waved down by Josie.
“Sorry, Su, you didn’t pocket the ball you were aiming for. That’s a foul.”
“What?”
She tried again to explain the rules as the next player went; he apparently already knew how to play and thankfully didn’t make a foul. Suddenly, I heard my name. “What?”
“Su, are you even listening to me? Come on, what’s happening in there?” She tapped my forehead. I blinked.
“Sorry, I’m just kind of... distracted tonight.”
“Yeah, you can say that again. Look, what’s wrong? If it’s the Centurion project, I can relate. But you’re not at work; you’ll be fine!”
“No, no... It’s not Centurion. Even though it is a massive time sink.”
“And a money sink.”
“And has been delayed five times.”
“And the technology to accomplish it literally doesn’t exist yet.”
“And-” I paused. “Wait, that part is my job. That’s nothing unusual.”
Josie cocked her head. “You’re in propulsion development? I thought you were working on controls.”
“No, I-”
“JOSIE!” someone else shouted. “HELP!”
She spun around and laughed, heading back to the table to save someone from not knowing some obscure billiards rule. I sighed and leaned back against the wall, not really sure what to do with myself. I didn’t really know anyone here except Josie, and I didn’t really even know her. Most of the people at the billiards table worked at Korman Aerospace, but the company was big enough I had never met most of them.
Bleh. It was always like this. Why had I moved here, away from everyone I knew? Just for the job opportunity? I guess the pay was good - good enough to pay my mortgage, at least - but I didn’t really have any friends. At least, not any close enough friends that I would feel comfortable telling them that I thought the Devil himself was chasing me through my dreams and was now following me in the real world too.
... Oh, right. That’s why I was here. I checked my phone to see it was past 9pm now; it had been three hours since I had biked frantically away from the man at my train stop. He was almost certainly gone by now; I could head back.
“Su, hey, it’s your turn! Come on, don’t mope in that corner all night; get over here!”
I looked up. Josie was grinning and gesturing me over with the pool cue. Two of the other players ducked to avoid getting beaned by it. I had to stifle a chuckle at that.
I should...
- Stay, at least a bit longer. Maybe I can get to know Josie and the others a bit more.
- Head out now. I’m not in the mood, and I need to get home. There’s still plenty to do before I can go to bed.
When I leave (whether now or later), I should...
- Bike home. That’s how I got here, after all. Not a big deal as long as I’m sober enough. I’m pretty sure I am.
- Take a bus home. It won’t get me all the way, but pretty close. More public, less reliance on my own legs.
(Winners: , )
- Stay, at least a bit longer. Maybe I can get to know Josie and the others a bit more.
- Head out now. I’m not in the mood, and I need to get home. There’s still plenty to do before I can go to bed.
When I leave (whether now or later), I should...
- Bike home. That’s how I got here, after all. Not a big deal as long as I’m sober enough. I’m pretty sure I am.
- Take a bus home. It won’t get me all the way, but pretty close. More public, less reliance on my own legs.
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 2
“... Alright, alright.” Maybe I could stay a little longer.
Later, I sat on the bus and stared out the window, bouncing my leg on the floor. I hadn’t really learned much about anyone there - it had been a bit loud and chaotic for formal introductions - but I had at least had some fun. After several repetitions and demonstrations, Josie had managed to pound some billiards rules through my thick skull. I had managed to avoid making a foul several times and even won once (though that was mostly due to the person before me screwing up).
I was still sort of energized from all the shouting at the end of the last game, where Josie had made a frankly ridiculous shot to pocket three balls in one go and win the game. Everyone had decided we weren’t going to top that, so we all headed out. I still didn’t know anyone’s name except Josie. Oh well, maybe next time.
The bus stop was right across the street from the train station. I got off cautiously, peeking around the vehicle’s nose to see if the man was still at the bar and grill. No sign of him, though it was dark by now and most people would probably be inside. Either way, it was time to get home before anything else happened.
The rest of the night wasn’t particularly exciting, though there also wasn’t much night left to do anything exciting with. I checked the mail, cleaned up, took a shower, and went to bed a little before midnight. Pretty normal. What wasn’t normal, however, was my apprehension as I eyed the pillow. “He’s going to be there,” I whispered aloud to my bed. “I can’t deal with him. Not tonight; not after he was just... sort of? Maybe? Maybe here for real.”
Full of wisdom, the bed had no response.
I sighed, turned off the light, and sank into the sheets. I couldn’t just not go to sleep. Plenty to do at work tomorrow, as per usual. The goddamn Centurion project taking all - no, stop it. Rest now. Work later.
...
I woke up to the sound of water flowing. Opened my eyes, sat up. I was slouched in a vaguely comfortable office chair behind a desk. Must have fallen asleep. The room around me was all white or shades of light grey. All the architecture was ultra-modern minimalist. Ambiguous white light filtered through a pane of frosted glass to my right, sort of filling the role of a window but without actually being able to see anything through it. There was a little bamboo fountain on the desk that was producing the noise. A plain white door promised an exit from the room, its handle not much more than a slight indentation in the material. So minimal as to be only barely functional. Still, it was a sleek look.
I stood up. What was I doing here? Was this my office? I couldn’t quite remember. Maybe it would come back to me if I stepped outside.
The door opened into a confusing mess of architecture. Overall, the room was probably something of an atrium or courtyard, with a generally open space arranged around a central water feature open to the sky above. But... I squinted up as I walked closer to the fountain. That wasn’t the sky either, just like the window in the office wasn’t really a window. Light panels made to simulate sunlight. In fact, I couldn’t see any traditional lighting fixtures or actual natural light. Everything was lit in a soft white glow from indirect lighting hidden behind jutting-out blocks or around corners. Everything was so square and white and... not exactly featureless, but... smooth? Streamlined?
Still, it wasn’t like everything here was made of white blocks upon white blocks. There were a surprising number of plants, from vines to shrubs to small trees. They grew out of dark, rich patches of dirt carefully contained by blocky curbs, smoothly rounded plant pots placed precisely on half-walls, or even the many, many smaller fountains dotted around the area. Flowing water was absolutely omnipresent, bubbling up from water fixtures, flowing down walls, and trickling across the floor in little carved-out streams. The sounds filled the air.
I reached the central fountain and peered into it, watching my reflection ripple in the waves.
The penny dropped. “This is a dream,” I said quietly. “I don’t work here.”
At that exact instant, the mood changed. Previously, it had been quiet and tranquil, if a little strange. Now, a mountain of dread slammed down like a curtain. My eyes widened and I backed up, quickly checking the room. Nothing moved besides the water. I stayed quiet and still, pressing back into a corner and straining my ears. Listening for anything that might be audible over the constant water. Footsteps, maybe? Was that what that noise was? No, just more water dripping. Probably. Maybe?
Something tickled my foot. I stifled a yelp and jumped into the air, splashing back down to realize the floor was now covered in a thin sheet of water. That hadn’t been there before. The feeling of dread intensified to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore; I had to wake up!
... I couldn’t.
He was here. I didn’t know where, but he had to be. If I couldn’t wake up, he was here. And I was in danger.
I need to...
- Get to higher ground to avoid the rising water.
- Stay very quiet and hide from the Devil.
- Run. If I can get far enough away from him, I can wake up.
[I’ll blend these priorities based on the number of votes for each. Feel free to choose multiple!]
(Winners: > )
- Get to higher ground to avoid the rising water.
- Stay very quiet and hide from the Devil.
- Run. If I can get far enough away from him, I can wake up.
[I’ll blend these priorities based on the number of votes for each. Feel free to choose multiple!]
(Winners: > )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 3
I let out a quiet, shaky breath and tried to stay calm. The water level continued to rise; I’d be swimming before long if it kept this up. Getting to higher ground would have to be my first priority unless I wanted to drown, trapped against the light panels in the roof. Somewhere outside would be great, but I couldn’t be sure there even was an outside in this dream.
Of course, my second priority had to be staying quiet and staying away from the Devil. Wherever he was.
I sloshed as softly as I could through the water until I could climb up a set of steps, wincing as my shoes squished on the ambiguous material of the floor. Some sort of laminate? A very smooth stone? It was hard to tell, and I was just latching onto random questions to try and avoid panicking. It was sort of working. There was a hallway over there, up another short flight of stairs. A way out of this room and up a little higher. Perfect. I crept up the stairs, scanned the room one more time (still not seeing any movement) and continued on my way.
I wandered through the white, blocky complex for what felt like an hour. The entire place was full of flowing water; every room had a fountain or a pipe or some other water feature. I kept trying to ascend, though that started getting more difficult as time went on. More and more passages led back down. I took that as a good sign; maybe I was getting closer to the top so there were fewer paths I could take. The whole time, that unidentifiable sensation of dread muffled me like an ill-fitting cloak, stealing my breath as I triple-checked every corner for a glimpse of maroon. The Devil never appeared, but I knew he was still somewhere. I tried to wake up several more times, but never succeeded. This was even worse than before; at least then, I could see him. Knew where he was and where not to go. Now, I just had to hope I didn’t accidentally run into him.
The environment finally changed as I climbed one last staircase, emerging out of waist-deep water only a few minutes before I would have had to start swimming or drown. I stood dripping in a small rectangular chamber, about the size of a typical living room. Thick glass pipes of flowing water connected floor to ceiling along two walls, forming a set of columns framing the central path. This path led up another set of three textured glass steps to a jarringly out of place submarine-style bulkhead door. Heavy metal, a wheel in the middle to open, and an oval shape completely unlike the sharp, angular lines present everywhere else in this dream.
I climbed the last few steps and placed my hands on the wheel. The feeling of dread was so suffocating I could barely breathe; I felt my fingers tremble with my heartbeat. I had never in my life been so scared and I simply could not articulate why.
Still, the water hadn’t stopped. It flowed into the room, lapping around the base of the steps I was standing on. I couldn’t turn back now; presumably this bulkhead would do its job and stop the water. It was exactly what I was looking for. I gripped the wheel.
One crank.
Two.
Three...
The door creaked open away from me, revealing a long, circular hallway lined with metal pipes and valves: the interior of a submarine. Exactly what its construction had implied.
Standing in the submarine, just a few feet away, smiling that damnable smile of his, was the Devil. He had his hands clasped politely in front of him, as if he had been patiently awaiting my arrival this whole time. Water lapped at my feet. It felt like a giant weight was crushing my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I stumbled back, slipped, and fell into the water. Shuffled backwards, half-submerged. The Devil stepped through the door, still grinning.
“Finally,” he said. I couldn’t tell you what his voice sounded like. Only the words registered.
I couldn’t respond; I couldn’t breathe; I could barely move. I understood the phrase “frozen in fear” like I never had before.
“Now the game truly begins,” he continued. “If you hold still, this won’t hurt much.”
I didn’t have much of a choice. My body had entirely given up its ability to move.
He stepped into the water. Steam rose around his perfectly shined dress shoes. Picked up my left hand by the wrist and turned it so he could see my palm. Raised the index finger of his other hand and glanced briefly at it; a flickering red ember ignited at the tip of his fingernail. Carefully moved his burning finger towards my palm. I couldn’t look away.
The searing pain finally snapped me out of it. The Devil was carving something into my hand; what the HELL?! I had to run; get away; do SOMETHING!
He spoke, calmly and without looking away from my burning hand. “Hold still.” Not a request. A command. “Interrupting now will be much more painful.”
[This is a branch point.]
- Hold still. If this is “not hurting much,” I don’t want to know what “much more painful” means. Plus, he can probably stop me.
- RUN! This is CRAZY! I can’t just sit here and let the Devil burn something into my hand!
If I run, where should I go?
- Into the submarine. I didn’t see another door earlier, but there has to be one somewhere. Right?!
- Under the water and back into the flooded complex. I’ll have to hold my breath.
(Winner: )
- Hold still. If this is “not hurting much,” I don’t want to know what “much more painful” means. Plus, he can probably stop me.
- RUN! This is CRAZY! I can’t just sit here and let the Devil burn something into my hand!
If I run, where should I go?
- Into the submarine. I didn’t see another door earlier, but there has to be one somewhere. Right?!
- Under the water and back into the flooded complex. I’ll have to hold my breath.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 4
“...”
I held still. As best I could anyway; I was still trembling. Seconds passed with agonizing slowness before finally, he dropped my hand. My arm splashed down into the water, dulling some of the fiery pain. I could see some sort of red mark on my palm. Not a good sign.
“You have just been granted a remarkable gift,” the Devil told me. “Use it to seek the Gate of Deeper Slumber, but just know this.” He leaned down to the point where I could almost feel the flames radiating off his body. “If I catch you again, I will kill you.”
He snapped back upright, turned on his heel, and strode back into the submarine, pulling the door shut behind him. The omnipresent cloak of dread fell away and I collapsed onto my back in the water, finally able to breathe again. Thankfully, it was shallow enough that I wasn’t completely submerged. He was gone. At least, for now.
...
I woke up to my alarm, muddled and with a fragmented recollection of what had happened in my dream. I reached over to slap “snooze,” then kept my eyes closed and focused on remembering the details. Flowing water, that was one. White, blocky, vegetation. Good. Keywords. What else? Terror, everywhere, always. The Devil had been there. The Devil had caught me. The Devil had...
My left hand hurt. No, no no no.
I raised it in front of my face and opened my eyes. There was a symbol burned into my palm with angry red lines: a triangle inscribed in a circle. A few droplets of water dripped onto my face. My night clothes were soaked with water from the inexplicable complex. I didn’t need any more convincing to know that my dreams were now real. And that meant...
“If I catch you again, I will kill you.” That’s what he had said. He didn’t even need to hunt me down in real life now; he could clearly hurt me even in dreams. I was going to die.
I got up and robotically went through the motions of getting ready. Clothes, bathroom, kitchen. My mind was miles away, still working through the implications of what the Devil had said. I wrote it down as it came back to me to be sure I didn’t forget.
My dreams were real. How? Why? What did the Devil want with me? What was the symbol burned into my hand? (A quick internet search revealed nothing but geometry theorems.) What was the “Gate of Deeper Slumber” and how would I seek it? (A similarly quick search only returned Lovecraft stories.) Did I even want to? Was the Devil going to keep chasing me every night now until he caught me again? Could I ever get away or would he be a constant presence in my dreams for the rest of my life - no matter how short?!
I decided I was panicking. That was fine; that was normal! A perfectly reasonable response to what had just happened.
... I want to stop thinking.
- Go to work. There’s enough to do to keep me distracted from this.
- Call off and stay home. I need some time to digest and plan.
- Call off and go visit Grandpa. I can’t tell him exactly what’s going on, because that would be insane, but maybe he’ll have some advice anyway.
️ - Call off and wander around. Go to a bar, theater, game, or something. Find my own distractions. There’s plenty to do.
(Winner: )
- Go to work. There’s enough to do to keep me distracted from this.
- Call off and stay home. I need some time to digest and plan.
- Call off and go visit Grandpa. I can’t tell him exactly what’s going on, because that would be insane, but maybe he’ll have some advice anyway.
️ - Call off and wander around. Go to a bar, theater, game, or something. Find my own distractions. There’s plenty to do.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 5
I took the day off from work. Called out sick, grabbed my bike, and rode on down to the light rail station. One train and one bus later, I was near the northern edge of the city. Well, not really near - I was still ten miles out from the last of the major streets - but certainly in a more suburban area than near my house or job. Fewer skyscrapers or industrial buildings. Unfortunately, that also meant fewer options for transit: I’d have to go the last mile myself. But of course that’s what my bike was for.
Out here, under the bright desert sun, the man in the maroon suit seemed very far away. His was a realm of dreams and darkness, not the comfortingly stable reality of a bustling intersection beneath the broad light of day. He had no power here. Of course, at night, that might be a different story. I didn’t want to run into another doppelganger at a bar; I still wasn’t sure if that had actually been him or not.
Thinking too much again. Look around.
I took my own advice. The neighborhood was definitely well-maintained, with trim bushes and plump little cacti growing amidst beds of carefully arranged stones. All the houses out here seemed to have that timeless, adobe-like look - though they of course still had all the normal modern conveniences. Air conditioners hummed busily away between every building. I stopped under the shade of a convenient tree to take a drink of water. Getting close now.
Kids screamed merrily from someone’s backyard; I could glimpse a pool through a gap between houses. Quietly, I wished I could afford one. I could handle the maintenance, but the upfront cost was a bit much. It would just be nice to be able to step into the backyard and go for a swim.
See, I’m doing great. Thinking about the stuff around me, not... not anything else. Yep. Ah, here we are.
I locked my bike to the tree that I always did, walked along the light brick path to the front door, and rang the doorbell. An older man’s voice yelled “just a minute!” from somewhere within the house. Only a few moments passed before the door opened.
“Su! I was just wondering when my favorite grandchild would stop by again!”
“Hi, grandpa.” I shuffled my shoes on the front stoop. “Are you busy?”
“No, not at all. Come in!” He swept me into the house and shut the door against the heat. “I was just working on the shading here; no trouble at all.” He gestured at his enormous drawing tablet as we passed; I could see a mostly-completed desert landscape on the screen. There was a tall, dark-skinned man standing in the middle ground, staring off into the distance with a thoughtful expression.
“Who’s he?” I asked.
“Oh, you mean Sani the Farseer?” Grandpa abruptly changed course to show me the painting in more detail. With a closer look, the man now seemed less “thoughtful” and more “deeply concerned.” “Sani was the leader of a group of explorers who scoured this valley and its mountains for a fabled magical wellspring, hundreds of years ago. He’s quite famous in the right circles.”
Grandpa was super into old legends and occult stuff, especially tales that weren’t very popular. I was sure that no one besides him and a few of his other friends would have any idea who this was. “Why does he look so nervous?”
“Ah, he’s looking for his companions, worried that they had gotten lost in the mountains or eaten by some horrible monster. You see, his expedition had apparently angered the gods.”
“And were they? Eaten, that is?”
“Well, they certainly never came back. No one’s quite sure what happened to them, and the stories from that time are all very fragmented. It’s rumored that Sani himself later died of fire, though exactly how is unclear.” He patted a stack of old books sitting on the desk across from his tablet. “Ah, the thrill of history! But anyway: Su, you’re looking down. What’s on your mind?”
I looked away from the portrait of Sani. “Is it really that obvious?”
“Oh, come on. You’re all wilted, like a sad little flower. Now come over here, have some lemonade, and tell your ol grandpa what’s wrong.”
What should I say? [I can bring up multiple topics if the conversation flows that way. More votes = more priority.]
- “Work is really stressful these days...”
- “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately...”
- “I don’t know how to make any real friends...”
- “This weird mark got burned into my hand...”
♂️ - “My dreams are real and the Devil is trying to kill me.” [Needs unanimous agreement due to how ridiculous this sounds.]
(Winners: > )
- “Work is really stressful these days...”
- “I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately...”
- “I don’t know how to make any real friends...”
- “This weird mark got burned into my hand...”
♂️ - “My dreams are real and the Devil is trying to kill me.” [Needs unanimous agreement due to how ridiculous this sounds.]
(Winners: > )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 6
“I’m... having trouble sleeping,” I began. “I keep having these terrible nightmares, and even when I don’t have them, I can’t sleep because I’m worrying I will.”
“Nightmares, huh? Do you remember what they’re about?”
“Y-yeah.” I took a deep breath. I could tell him about the Devil, right? Just not that I thought he was following me in real life. “They all involve the same person. He’s a man. Tall, thin, pale. Always smiling in a really creepy way. He’s always wearing a maroon suit with a black shirt and silver tie. Orange eyes.” I shivered. “He chases me, but he’s always so relaxed. Just casually walking towards me and no matter how fast I run, I can’t get away. Sometimes I can hide from him and manage to wake up. Other times, though...” I squeezed my left hand, feeling the burned lines on my palm. I wasn’t sure I was ready to reveal that yet.
“How many times have you seen this man? When did it start?”
“When did it start...?” I looked up, thinking. “It was about a month ago. I’ve seen him four times in total. The last one was... last night.”
“So you figured you’d come ask your old gramps for advice? Good sense!”
I smiled, but wanly. “I know it doesn’t sound too terrifying when I’m just talking about it, but in my dreams he’s just... I’m so scared I can’t breathe. It’s just...” I couldn’t think of a good description and settled on “the worst thing ever.”
“Well that doesn’t sound fun at all,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t fix you up, hey?”
I looked at him curiously.
“Well, dreams about being chased usually mean you’re anxious about something in your waking life, or that you’re avoiding a major problem. Is there anything like that in your life? Maybe something that could be represented by a man like you described? Maybe-” Grandpa gasped. “Is there a man in my little Su’s life?”
“Grandpa! No!”
He chuckled. “Had to ask. You know, your mom-”
I glared at him.
“-Right. Nevermind.” He hesitated a few seconds, drumming his fingers on the table. “Actually, you remember what I said just a few moments ago about avoiding a major problem?”
“It’s not a major problem.” I stared him down. “I’m not talking about this.”
“Su, please. I’m just saying that maybe you could-”
“Let’s talk about something else.” I breathed out, trying to push the anger away. I wasn’t mad at him, just...
Anyway.
“How about this? Do you know what this symbol means?” I opened my left hand and showed him the palm with the triangle-inscribed-in-circle mark.
“Are those burns? Su, how did this happen? Are you okay?”
Ah. Right. “I...” I struggled to make up an excuse. “I, uh, burned my hand on the stove! And there was a... a cloth that... um, with this symbol, uh...”
“If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. I don’t judge. Just tell me you’re safe, okay?”
Safe. Right. With the Devil having promised to kill me if he ever caught me again. I swallowed. “I am.”
Grandpa narrowed his eyes, searching my face for signs of deception. I stayed quiet. “Okay, that’s good. Now let me have a look at that...”
He copied the symbol from my palm into a notebook and took a few pictures. It wasn’t a very complicated design, but he wanted to make sure he got all the angles and distances exactly right, just in case. Apparently, it reminded him of something he had seen recently in his historical research, but the exact story or painting eluded him. We dug through some of his texts together, first for info on the symbol and then just for fun, but didn’t find anything of note.
“I’ll bring this back to my next club meeting, if that’s okay with you. I’m sure some of the other members will be able to jog my memory. Are you okay with me sharing where I got this symbol?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” I didn’t mind if a few of my grandpa’s friends knew I had a weird burn on my hand. They were all nice older nerds like him. “Just let me know if you figure anything out about it.” I paused. “When’s your next meeting, again?”
“This Thursday at 6. We’ll be down at the Silver Sun resort if you want to join us, but if not, I’ll give you a call afterwards. Sound good?”
“Sounds good. Thanks, grandpa.”
“Anytime, Su. Now c’mere.” He pulled me into a hug, which I returned. I didn’t have much family I was close to these days, but grandpa made up for it. Especially after...
“Now, before you get going, I just want you to take a deep breath and listen with an open mind. Okay?”
I frowned. “I know where you’re going with this. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s been over a year since you even talked to her, Su. I think your dreams might-”
“See you later, grandpa. I need to get going.”
“Su!”
I rushed outside and closed the door, fumbling to unlock my bike before he could get the door open. I heard the latch click, but by then I had my helmet on and was pedaling away. Disappearing into the heat haze and the morass of suburban households.
It wasn’t related; my dreams weren’t some subconscious anxiety about... her. I had solved that problem. This was something else; something about the Devil. Not her.
I didn’t want to talk about it.
It’s now Tuesday afternoon. Grandpa will get back to me about the symbol on my hand on Thursday evening. What should I do with the rest of the day?
- Go do some research on my own. There’s stuff besides the symbol to look into.
- Sit around like a blob and digest some of the anger grandpa just reminded me of.
️ - Go be productive. Pick up some shopping; do some errands. Stay busy.
(Winner: ️ )
- Go do some research on my own. There’s stuff besides the symbol to look into.
- Sit around like a blob and digest some of the anger grandpa just reminded me of.
️ - Go be productive. Pick up some shopping; do some errands. Stay busy.
(Winner: ️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 7
I made sure to stay busy for the rest of the day. Went and did some shopping, bought and used some oil for that squeaky hinge I kept meaning to fix, cleaned the kitchen. That sort of thing. Nothing major, but little errands I meant to get done eventually. Tasks that kept my mind off the looming problems that would arrive with the sunset.
Still, I couldn’t avoid the night forever. Time ticked on, the bloated sun eventually dipped below the horizon, and I eventually had to go to bed. Though not necessarily to sleep; I lay awake and stared at the ceiling, heart refusing to slow down as I remembered the Devil’s words. Was this it? Would I ever wake up again after passing out tonight? No, surely not. He only hunted me about once a week, right? I would be safe tonight. There was time to figure out what to do. I’d be okay.
Eventually, though later than usual, I managed to drift off.
...
I stood in a covered porch, staring out into the woods through screen windows. Crickets and other bugs chirped outside, warning of incoming rain. The sky was steely grey and misty; the storm would be here very soon. I sat on the wicker chair just beside the window and watched. I didn’t want to miss it.
“Hey, pumpkin.” My dad walked into the room and sat down on a chair across from me. “Ready for the big one?”
“Of course!” I exclaimed, glancing back at him briefly but then returning my gaze to the storm clouds. My voice was much higher than it normally was. I was shorter, too.
“I just double-checked the generator, so we’ll be good if power goes out. Plus, I’ve got some fresh cinnamon cider on the way to help us enjoy the rain. Just the two of us; how’s that sound?”
I got up and hugged him, only reaching part way up his torso. “Sounds great! But... what about mom?”
Dad frowned, but only briefly. “Your mom’s running late again, sweetie. And with the storm how it is, it’s not safe for her to travel. She’s staying at work until it passes.”
I looked out the window, then back at dad. “It’s not bad yet. I bet she could make it back in time and watch the storm with us!”
Dad chuckled. “It’s not bad here yet, but it already is over town. She’ll make it up to you on the next one, okay?”
I hesitated. “Dad, why is mom never home? There aren’t many storms like this.”
“Your mom is... a very important person. She’s very busy at her job and sometimes has to stay late to... help people. She takes her work very seriously.” The microwave beeped. “Hold that thought, pumpkin; I need to go finish the cider. You stay put and keep an eye on those clouds, okay?”
“Okay!” I swiveled back to the window for my assigned task. Those clouds weren’t getting by me. Except... why was there so much rain in Arizona? And so many trees that weren’t palms? Also, what was my dad doing here looking twenty years younger?
I blinked and was myself again, now 28 instead of 8, and just as tall as my dad. I was standing in my childhood house, talking to a ghost. Not a real ghost - dad was still alive - but a ghost of who he used to be. Before...
I growled and clenched my fists. This wasn’t fair; I had decided not to think about this and now here my subconscious was bringing up all these old memories to spite me. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to remember storm watching with my dad; it was the rest of the environment that hurt. Remembering how simple things were back then. How easy. How much my dad used to smile. Talking about... her.
The symbol on my hand hurt. I winced and looked down at it, uncurling my palm. The outer circle had darkened from angry burn-red to more of a deeper black color, while the inner triangle now shed a very faint amount of pale red light. The pain went away as soon as I looked, though the colors and glow remained. What did that mean?
“Hey, pumpkin, here’s your cider.” Dad walked back into the room and placed a mug of hot cinnamon apple cider on the table. “Careful; it’s hot.” He didn’t seem bothered that I had aged twenty years in the last few minutes.
Not really sure how to continue this memory now that I wasn’t on autopilot, I picked up the mug and blew to cool it down. My left hand hurt again and I looked at it: the outer circle had sprouted three equidistant lines connecting it to the triangle. Again, the pain vanished as soon as I registered the symbol’s change. Like it just wanted to tell me something and was content once I had seen its message. But what was that message?
The doorbell rang. Dad looked up, confused. “Who could that be now? When the storm’s about to hit? I’ll be right back; stay put, please.”
I didn’t remember this part of the memory. Something wasn’t right here.
- Stop dream-dad from answering the door, and don’t answer the door myself.
️ - Stop dream-dad from answering the door, and investigate it myself.
- Let dream-dad answer the door, but hide from whatever might be there.
- Just stay put like dream-dad said.
(Winner: )
- Stop dream-dad from answering the door, and don’t answer the door myself.
️ - Stop dream-dad from answering the door, and investigate it myself.
- Let dream-dad answer the door, but hide from whatever might be there.
- Just stay put like dream-dad said.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 8
“Uh, dad, wait!”
He turned back to look at me. “Yeah?”
How could I get him to not answer the door? The gnawing fear was back - not as strong as the aura surrounding the Devil himself, but a lesser version of it. One of his minions, perhaps? Anyway, that doorbell couldn’t mean anything good.
I couldn’t come up with anything. “Don’t answer the door, please.”
“Why not?” The most obvious follow-up. I had bought myself maybe a few seconds to think of something.
“Uh...” What would convince my dad? “I just... have a really bad feeling about it. Come on, no one we know ever comes by uninvited anyway!”
“I’ll be careful, okay? It could be someone who needs our help with the storm!”
“N-no, don’t!”
The doorbell rang again. “Sweetie, I’ll be right back. Nothing’s going to happen.”
He turned away. My fear spiked. I jumped towards him, catching his shoulder with my hand. “Stop!”
“Okay.” He blinked twice, then turned away from the door. “Now, are you ready? The storm’s just about here; look!”
I stepped back, confused at the sudden attitude change. Trees bowed in the wind and light faded as sheets of torrential rain poured in. The doorbell rang again and I flinched, but dad didn’t even seem to notice. After one more try, it finally stopped ringing. Not really sure what else to do, I sipped my cider and watched the storm with him.
It was nice.
...
I woke up to my alarm, disoriented. “Mmph, dad?” A few seconds passed and I remembered where and when I was. My house, a few minutes before I had to get up and go to work. Dad wasn’t here, obviously.
I tried to remember my dream as I got up, washed up, and got ready for the day. Most of it was pretty clear, but it got a little hazy towards the end. The symbol on my hand had changed... the symbol!
I looked down to check on it. Totally normal now: just the same circle-triangle glyph etched in the same lightly red burn lines. It wasn’t dark black and it didn’t have the three extra lines. Where had those lines come from? The doorbell had rung, I had gotten scared, then I had stopped dad from answering the door. How had I done that? I couldn’t exactly remember.
Bleh. At least nothing had tried to kill me.
On the train, I kept thinking about my dad. It had been a while since I had talked to him; not since...? My eyes widened; had it really been Christmas? Months ago?! Oh dear, oh dear. I guess everything had been so busy with the move and the new job... I shook my head; no excuses. I needed to call him today. Unlike some family members, I still wanted to keep in touch with him. Plus, after the... uh, yeah. After that, I wanted to make sure he was doing okay.
When should I call?
- Before work. I can be a few minutes late; no big deal.
- During work; midday or so.
- After work.
- You know what, nevermind. Don’t call.
What should I talk about? [I can bring up multiple topics; you get the gist by now.]
- My dream from last night. With all the weirdness going on, maybe that was actually him?
- General pleasantries; “hey, how are you doing?” Make sure he’s okay.
- My new job; how things are going down here. He likes hearing about my life.
- The, uh. That. Her. [I really don’t want to and will only do so if forced or he brings it up.]
(Winners: , > > )
- Before work. I can be a few minutes late; no big deal.
- During work; midday or so.
- After work.
- You know what, nevermind. Don’t call.
What should I talk about? [I can bring up multiple topics; you get the gist by now.]
- My dream from last night. With all the weirdness going on, maybe that was actually him?
- General pleasantries; “hey, how are you doing?” Make sure he’s okay.
- My new job; how things are going down here. He likes hearing about my life.
- The, uh. That. Her. [I really don’t want to and will only do so if forced or he brings it up.]
(Winners: , > > )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 9
The morning passed relatively quickly in a blur between meetings, project updates, and test results. Things were progressing slowly on Centurion. None of the latest thruster designs were performing up to the required spec. We had two more revisions on the current design to test before it was back to the drawing board. Management was getting antsy about another delay, but there wasn’t much we could do about it without bending the laws of physics. What else was new?
Anyway, after that hassle, I excused myself from the rest of the team as half of them went to lunch together, hid away in my office, and called dad.
One ring... Two rings... Three... I started to wonder if he was going to pick up. It was the middle of the day, after all. Maybe he was busy.
“Hey, pumpkin!”
I jumped. “Hey, dad.”
“What can I do for ya today?” His voice, though a little scratchy with age, was still strong and energetic. He hadn’t slowed down since the incident; if anything, he had sped up.
“I just realized I hadn’t called since Christmas and wanted to check in; that’s all. I’ve been really busy... do you have some time to just talk?”
“Always for you, Su! And don’t worry about it. I know you love to worry about what everyone else thinks about you, but you just moved across the country and started a new job! Of course you’ve been busy. Speaking of... how’s that been going? I only heard a little.”
“Well, you know I’m a propulsion research scientist with Korman’s aerospace division down here, right?” A sound of affirmation. “So I’m basically trying to design new thrusters and rockets and other ways to make things move faster and more efficiently. Lately, we’ve even been trying to study gravitational waves to see if we can basically create artificial gravity and make things hover; it’s pretty cool! Though... a lot of the projects fail. I guess that’s part of being on the bleeding edge.”
“Well, that sure sounds cool, but how is it going? I heard Korman can be pretty tight with its deadlines; are you happy down there?”
“...” I hesitated. “I... like the projects...”
“I’m sensing a ‘but.’”
“There’s just so much going on,” I admitted. “In the company, the city, everything. I don’t know anyone here and I’m trying, but it’s just hard to meet people in any context other than a party or a bar. And management is always pushing for faster results, even though we’re literally messing around on the frontier of science; no one in the world has ever done the stuff we’re trying to do! How can you push for faster results on a problem no one has solved?”
“Pumpkin...”
“And all that is on top of my crazy dreams recently; I keep getting chased by-” I changed direction mid-sentence, not wanting to worry him any more than I already was. “- someone and it’s hard to sleep. Grandpa thinks it might be related to, uh...” I trailed off. “Anxiety about my problems at work!” Saved it.
“It sure sounds like you’re under a lot of pressure. Are you making sure to take time off, spend some time relaxing, and set boundaries around work?”
“Yeah; yeah. I don’t know if it’s related to work. We’re not on-call or anything, so I only have to worry about it 40 hours a week. But - hey, speaking of dreams, you were in one last night.”
“I was? Not chasing you, I hope.”
“No, we were back in Wisconsin in the woods, watching a storm. You made cider for us, but-” Focus. Careful. “- then something rang the doorbell and I had to stop you from answering it. I don’t know why, but whatever it was would have been really dangerous.” A short pause. “It sounds kinda lame when I say it aloud, but it felt more important at the time.”
“Dreams often do.” He took a deep breath. “Those stormy nights with the cider sure made some good memories, hey? At least, I enjoyed them.”
“They were great,” I agreed. Apparently he didn’t remember the dream. Of course it hadn’t been him; that would have been absurd.
A few seconds went by. I shifted my grip on the phone. “So, dad...”
“Hm?”
I spoke carefully. “How... are you doing? Just in general?”
“Just in general, huh?” A pause of consideration. “Well, I’m thinking of retiring soon.”
“Why?”
A chuckle. “Why not? I’ve done my time in the workforce and I’m not getting any younger. I’m almost 60 years old, Su. There’s only so much project management I can do before I wear out.”
“Are you going to be okay, you know, financially?” I asked almost automatically.
His voice grew slightly deeper, a little more unsteady. “I’ll be fine. Even half of what we had is more than enough. Don’t you worry about your old man, okay?”
“Okay.” My voice was a little strained. I was thinking about it again. “Are you thinking like, soon, or...?”
“Maybe by the end of the year. I’m not sure. I’m hearing rumors that Xera’s going to implement a retirement incentive program soon, so maybe I’ll hang out until that’s finalized one way or another. Need to invest in some hobbies, too, so I actually have something to do afterwards.”
“Maybe you can join grandpa and learn how to draw?”
Dad laughed. “Oh, he tried to teach me back when I was little. I was never any good at it. I’m thinking I might get more into hiking or something outdoorsy. Get out into the woods like back in Wisconsin.”
“That could be fun. Hey, if you come down here, I can show you some cool mountain trails. There aren’t many trees, but if you like cacti...?”
“As long as they aren’t trying to prick me! I’ll have to visit before too long. It’s been a while!”
“Unfortunately, you kind of missed the only cool season now that we’re getting back into summer. Maybe this fall or winter?”
“Sounds good; I’ll see when might work. Now - hold on. Be right there, I’m on the phone! Sorry, I’m scheduled for one-on-ones today. Did you have anything else to chat about?”
“No, that was about it. Just a quick check-in. I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Well, I’m glad you called. I’ll see what my schedule looks like for later this year and see about that visit, okay?”
“Okay! Bye, dad.”
“Bye!”
I set the phone on my desk. Well, it sure seemed like he wasn’t doing too bad. Better than me, probably. That’s good.
- I brought lunch today. Chill in my office for a bit, then finish the day.
- Go out and get some food from one of the many local restaurants.
- See if anyone I vaguely know hasn’t gotten lunch yet and if they would like to.
(Winner: )
- I brought lunch today. Chill in my office for a bit, then finish the day.
- Go out and get some food from one of the many local restaurants.
- See if anyone I vaguely know hasn’t gotten lunch yet and if they would like to.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 10
I sat there for a few minutes, alternating between remembering the incident and blanking out entirely. Finally, someone slammed a door in the main office and I snapped out of it. Maybe grandpa was onto something after all; I clearly wasn’t over it. At least I’ve made some progress by even admitting that. I think that’s enough for today.
Of course, just deciding to stop thinking about something never worked. I got up and stepped out of my office, vaguely intending to see if anyone else was around to go get lunch with or something. No one was in the main area; the big group who often went out together had already left and anyone remaining was probably in their offices or already gone. I sighed to the empty room. Should have asked earlier, I guessed. Maybe tomorrow.
The rest of the day went about as well as the morning. Meetings, test results, a little bit of actual design work. Someone proposed that we partner with one of the local universities to speed up testing, since we only had one lab capable of running full simulations. There was a general murmur of agreement and the team lead agreed to bring that idea to management. Might get them to chill out a little on the pace of results. Might not.
I didn’t really feel like trying anything else social that evening, so I just headed home on time and sat down for some food and a few hours of doing research for my latest story. By that, I of course meant just watching the show it was based on, but I could pretend I was being productive by taking a few notes along the way. We were getting close to the season finale and I wanted to catch up so I could watch it live.
Thoughts kept creeping in as the sun went down. Why was I just sitting here watching TV instead of trying to do something about the Devil? Surely I could be more proactive in saving my own life than just sitting around like a lump, right? I needed to research the symbol, the colors, lucid dreaming in general. Try to resolve - oh hell, now I’m thinking about the incident again.
I didn’t accomplish anything with these thoughts except a steadily-rising sense of anxiety and spoiling my enjoyment of the show. Of course.
...
I pushed on the floor, wincing as I rose to my knees. My face hurt, especially along my right cheekbone. A little droplet of rich, dark blood dripped to the ground. I had fallen over, clearly. Ow.
I looked around, uneasy. I was kneeling in the middle of a long school hallway, lockers lining both sides. All the lights were off and the only illumination came from the red EXIT signs placed along the walls seemingly at random. None of them appeared to actually provide an exit door. Several other hallways branched off in various directions. It was very cold.
Wind whistled nearby. It was very cold. I got up, looking down at myself. T-shirt, cardigan, jeans, backpack. I only came partway up the lockers. It was very cold. This was school; where was my locker? I had to get something, I thought. I think? What was it? Am I missing anything? Someone is chuckling nearby. It is very cold.
I moved slowly down the hall, face still hurting and dripping occasional drops of blood onto the linoleum. Around the corner. There was a snowdrift in the hall, having plowed through a wall of lockers like an avalanche. They lay scattered across the floor, bent and broken by the snow’s force. Another giggle from some vague direction. Winter wind howled just outside, drifting into the building. “EXIT,” the signs said. Not that way. I wiped more blood off my face. Where’s my locker? I’m going to be late.
More snowdrifts coated the floor as I continued on. The air got colder to the point where I started to shiver even in my cardigan. There was a low hum in the air. I started to feel a little dizzy. A break in the lockers; a door. Metal, heavy, warm. I struggled to open it, then stepped in. Someone laughed harshly as the door shut.
It was a grimy concrete room, walls lined with rickety wooden shelves containing paint, cleaning supplies, spare parts, tools, and so on. Towards the back of the room, a massive metal cylinder squatted on four short legs surrounded by pipes: a steam boiler. The room was warm, humid, and loud with clanking and rattling as the thing operated. My locker wasn’t in here. I shouldn’t be in here. The teachers will catch me. The students will laugh at me. I need to go.
I squeezed back into the hallway, then jumped as something shouted my name in a low, growling voice. “SU!” Weird purple light gathered at the far end of the hallway, accompanied by the vague sound of a crowd howling in laughter. I felt tears run down to mix with the blood on my cheek, though I couldn’t understand why I was crying. I backed up a few steps, then was buffeted by the strongest gust of wind yet. A locker tipped over and crashed away from the wall, nearly flattening me and leaving a narrow gap in the building. I could see mounds of snow, howling wind, and the cloudy night sky above. Moonlight.
“SUYEON CHE!” the thing screeched again. More laughter, screaming in hysterics.
I clutched my head, falling to my knees as sensations spun around me. I didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t my fault. Please; PLEASE!
[I’m not lucid at the moment, so my choices are limited: I can’t wake up until I know I’m dreaming.]
- Hide in the boiler room.
- Run down the hallways to get away.
❄️ - Squeeze through the gap in the wall; run outside.
(Winner: )
- Hide in the boiler room.
- Run down the hallways to get away.
❄️ - Squeeze through the gap in the wall; run outside.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 11
The light grew harsher, casting twitching shadows on the lockers. Then, the source was revealed. A formless agglomeration of faces and limbs, howling and screeching in hysterical laughter. My classmates guffawed at me as they shifted in the amorphous mass. At the top of the shambling form, attached by a thin, crooked neck, was the head of a teacher. Mrs Hood. She shook her head, not knocking loose a single strand from her perfect grey bun. “Suyeon Che. What are you DOING IN THERE!?”
I ran.
Hopped over the fallen locker, banging my shins on the frigid metal. Stumbled around the corner, ducking past another break in the school walls. Took turn after turn to get away from that horrible... thing. A collection of former classmates and teachers; memories. Were the lockers getting shorter? Wait-
I shook my head, touching my cheek and finding no fresh blood. I was dreaming again, and was now in my normal adult body. The mark on my hand didn’t hurt and hadn’t changed shape; it just glowed a very faint red. I was still in the same outfit as my younger self, just scaled up to fit my normal proportions and perfectly clean; no more bloodstains. The Mrs Hood monster screeched somewhere in the distance, but far enough away I didn’t need to be immediately worried.
I leaned against the wall, steadying myself with one arm to catch my breath after all that running. Was this the Devil’s doing or just a regular nightmare? What was it trying to tell me? I just needed a safe place to - “whOA!” I lost my balance as the part of the wall I was leaning on suddenly became a classroom door, the lockers that had previously been present simply vanishing without a trace.
Curious, I opened the door and entered. The classroom stood in contrast to the rest of the school: the lights were on, for one thing. It was also pleasantly warm and looked mostly normal. No weird exit signs pointing to nowhere; no broken walls leading outside. Just a warmly-lit normal middle school classroom with two large windows overlooking... ah. This memory again.
A younger Su, probably in seventh grade if memory served, crouched nervously behind a corner in the hallway. Three other girls crowded around her, shoving and prompting and goading. I didn’t need to listen in to know what they were saying. “What are you, scared?” “Do it, Su, and then you’ll be cool!” “If you don’t do it, we won’t be your friends anymore.” Stuff like that. I clenched my fists. The symbol felt warm, but didn’t hurt.
Young Su crept out from the corner and down the hall to the boiler room door. The other girls stayed back, cackling. She fumbled in her pocket for the key, swiped from the janitor earlier that day when he had been distracted. Fit it into the lock. Stepped inside, closed the door.
The other three girls immediately emerged from the corner and ran down the hall, shouting for Mrs Hood. She appeared quickly - on hall duty at the time - and rushed to the scene of the crime. A small crowd began to gather. I knew how this ended and didn’t need to see any more.
The door creaked open and I heard the beginning of the howling laughter as Mrs Hood screeched my name. I wiped a hand across the glass, changing the window’s view. It now looked out over a sun-dappled courtyard rather than the dreary concrete parking lot it would have seen in reality. I slid down the wall into a sitting position.
“Why are you showing me this?” I asked the room aloud. “I already know my ‘friends’ were jerks who set me up. I hated Mrs Hood for years afterwards. What more is there to-”
“Suyeon, I’m very disappointed in you.”
I choked on my words as the scene changed again. I was sitting in the corner of the principal’s office, watching my miserable younger self try to sink into her chair. But that voice wasn’t the principal; he wasn’t speaking. That was...
“Mrs Che, I’m glad you could make it,” he said. “I’d like to briefly discuss Suyeon’s behavior this afternoon.”
NOOOooo no no nononono.
My mother’s face was scribbled out in my memories, like those edgy emo album covers. The room became greyscale where she stepped. Little Su whimpered.
Alright, it’s time to wake up.
⏩ - Go to Grandpa’s meeting tonight.
⏸️ - Just let Grandpa call me with the info. No need to go personally.
⏱️ - Actually, I don’t remember exactly how this played out. Maybe I can stay and watch. [I really, really don’t want to and will pick any other option if given the chance.]
(Winner: ⏩ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 12
I sat upright in bed and caught my breath, glancing at the clock. 6:08 AM. Not really worth going back to sleep. My cheek hurt and I touched it, wincing. There was a nice bruise there; I’d have to cover it up or pretend I ran into a cabinet or something.
“Suyeon, I’m very disappointed in you.”
I actually shivered, even in the warmth of an early Arizona morning. I hadn’t thought about that moment in years; I hadn’t thought about her at all - well, much at all - for months. Since I moved here, away from the Midwest. Away from all those memories. And now she was chasing me down again, forcing me to relive everything she had done. Was the Devil doing this? Making me remember?
I needed a distraction. It was too early to go to work, but I could at least get ready. Then... well, I’d figure something out.
Dad texted me before lunch about planning a visit around Thanksgiving. That was still a long way off - more than half a year - but it at least gave me something to look forward to. I’d have to pick out some cool places to take him. There was plenty of time to figure it out.
Aside from that, the work day passed without incident. Management was working on contacting nearby universities to see if we could partner with them. Centurion continued to move slowly. I finished refactoring one of our test pipelines and immediately discovered a faulty control board with it. A minor win. Only one more revision on the current design to test, this time using my new pipeline. Maybe this would be the one, but far more likely not. I left it running overnight and headed out.
Back to my empty house with my very much non-empty thoughts.
... Maybe not. Today was Thursday and it was close to 6. Grandpa would be having his meeting at the Silver Sun resort. He’d be talking about my symbol there. I could go; kill some more time. It was another distraction. Worked for me.
...
“Su, what a pleasant surprise!” Grandpa greeted me with a nod as he rushed past, hands full with a miniature train and tiny paintbrush. “I’ll be right back; just need to finish up this detailing before anything else...” he trailed off. I looked around.
The history club met in a large basement room in the community center of a 55+ RV park. Grandpa didn’t live here, but the club was open to anyone who one of the actual residents was willing to vouch for; apparently including me. My sponsor - an older man named Dyn - had never met me before, but was willing to trust my grandpa. Nice of him.
He stood near the centerpiece of the room, an enormous model desert. The diorama stretched on for dozens of feet in both directions, larger than my living room and covering much of the room’s square footage. A half-dozen older folks stood around and within it, editing various features. Grandpa was working with Dyn on one of the old wooden rail networks stretching from the town in the center of the model towards the outskirts, where it disappeared into a mountain tunnel. I had never seen anything quite like this, nor was I entirely sure what it represented. There weren’t any labels and it certainly wasn’t this town; it was far too old-fashioned for that.
“Excuse me, are you new here?”
I spun around to see a younger man, probably only a little older than me, standing with one hand on a chair and the other holding a large leather briefcase. Glasses, kinda scruffy, soft voice. “Huh? Oh, I’m just visiting my grandpa.”
“Oh, so am I! That’s him over there; the one working on the general store.” He pointed to one of the older men in the model, who waved good-naturedly back at us. “Who’s yours?”
“Uh, the one with the train and paintbrush.” I waved to grandpa, but he was very focused on getting the details exactly right. “He’s a little busy right now.”
“Yeah, the history club folks are pretty serious about this model. I like to stop by and help out a little; sometimes stay to chat and play some games afterwards. My name’s Alfonse, by the way.”
“Su. Nice to meet you.” We shook hands.
“Su? Like, S-U-E, or...?”
“No, just S-U. It’s, uh, short for Suyeon. But I go by Su to make things easier.”
“Suyeon... Korean?”
I blinked. “Yeah. Not many people know that. I mean, I’m not Korean, not directly, but my grandpa, he, uh...” I sort of trailed off. “Sorry, I - it, doesn’t matter that much. But most people would just guess Chinese and be done with it.”
Alfonse rolled his eyes. “The same people who think Africa is a country and China is the only nation in Asia.”
“Tell me about it. Much easier to just have an American-sounding name. Plus, you know, I am American, so...” I trailed off again. Talking about myself too much. Chill.
“So, Su,” Alfonse began, changing the subject. “Have you been here before? Do you know what this is a model of?”
“No and no. Grandpa never told me about it.”
“This is the old town of Marnosa, sort of the precursor to the city we’re standing in today. Well, some parts of it are Marnosa and some are more modern. The trains, for one; a lot of these folks love model railroads and, well, you get the idea. But most of it is from the era where western settlers were first exploring the desert and uncovering old legends of magic and curses. It’s still in progress, but eventually there will be detailed, scaled models of many of the more interesting myths from the era. I think it’s pretty cool, though I’d never have the patience to... well.” He gestured to his grandpa again, who was painstakingly arranging individual bricks in the general store.
“Magic and curses, huh?” I squeezed my hand. I couldn’t feel the mark, but I knew it was there.
️ - Talk to Alfonse some more. [You can specify some topics, or just let me wing it.]
- Go get grandpa; it looks like he’s almost done with the train.
(Winner: ️ )
️ - Talk to Alfonse some more. [You can specify some topics, or just let me wing it.]
- Go get grandpa; it looks like he’s almost done with the train.
(Winner: ️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 13
“Oh yes, magic and curses.” Alfonse gestured to a table on the other side of the room and I let him lead me over there. He set the heavy briefcase down with relief and kept talking as he unpacked a large, complicated game board from it. “There are so many legends from the 1600s - when this area was a mysterious and wild frontier - through the 1800s, around the gold rush and westward expansion era.” He glanced back at the model. “I suppose the trains could be realistic, then, if this is the Marnosa of the mid-1800s or later.”
“What kind of legends?” I asked, pulling up a chair.
“All sorts! Can you hold this for me, please? Yes, like that. Thanks.” He handed me a hollow metal pole and had me hold it still while he arranged boards above and below it. “Cities of gold, ancient wellsprings of magic power, the fountain of youth. But also caverns of poisonous evil, dangerous spirits and monsters, and old gods of the desert. The West was full of possible riches and adventure, but also danger and unknowns. I think that’s why a lot of these myths popped up.”
“Do you study this stuff? You seem to know a lot about history.”
“Oh, no, not really. I just come here pretty often and absorb some of what the actually knowledgeable people talk about. No, I do something a lot less interesting than study myths like this: I’m a lecturer at RSU. I teach calculus, college algebra, that kind of thing.”
“RSU? I don’t, uh-”
“Rutherford Sutcliffe University. Kind of a mouthful; the students have nicknamed it Red Sand U because we’re close to the desert. It’s a pretty small campus; a lot of people haven’t heard much about us.”
“Huh.” I let go of the pole now that it was stable, allowing Alfonse to start on the next section. “You know, my work is looking for universities to partner with for testing our satellites. I don’t suppose you have a good aerospace program?”
“It’s a little small, but everything at RSU is. I can get you some contact information if you’re interested. Who are you with?”
“Uh, Korman Aerospace. I’m a propulsion research scientist: I make things move fast, better.” I awkwardly looked away after that sentence, not really sure how to continue.
“Korman, really? No, I don’t think we have any connections with them, but I know one of the profs in ME is a big fan of your company. I’ll send you his details later; can I have your contact info?”
I fumbled my phone out and, after debating a few seconds, agreed to exchange numbers and emails. Of course the one time I actually needed a business card, I didn’t bring it with me. Why would I bring one to history club with grandpa? I made a mental note to just carry a few on me at all times, just in case. The Korman cards were really cool too, with faux-metal coatings and holographic - I cut myself off. Alfonse was talking again.
“Can you hold this one just for a - thanks.”
I tilted my head, finally focusing on the game board we were setting up. “What is this, actually? It looks like a chess board, but... split apart?”
“Ah! This-” He paused a moment for dramatic effect. “Is Marnosan 3D chess!”
“Marnosan 3D chess?” I blinked slowly. “They had game boards like this back in the 1600s?”
“Well, not exactly like this, but apparently so, yes. They used wooden rods instead of the metal here, but apparently there was a sort of inventor who designed unique games like this several hundred years ago! I collect things like this, actually. Strange board games, card games, anything interesting like that.”
“It certainly looks unique,” I admitted, studying the assembly. It had four boards layered partially overlapping each other, held up by an assortment of rods from the lowest board and the table. A series of smaller boards hooked into the corners of the main ones. “How, uh, do you play?”
“Oh, I’d be delighted to show you! It’s mostly like regular chess; do you know how to play that?”
“... Vaguely?”
“That’s good enough for me! Here, these are your pieces, the striped birch ones. Mine are these red oaks, and the ghost pieces are the ebony ones. Now, I’ll set up mine first and you can mirror me. Start with rook, knight, bishop...”
I got surprisingly into the game; the rules were close enough to regular chess that I could mostly remember how to play, but the added complexity of playing with so many extra boards and dimensions left me hopeless when it came to actual strategy. That wasn’t even to mention the ghost pieces, which Alfonse seemed to have a particular affinity for. All of the pieces were beautifully crafted and smooth from use, just like the boards. It was pretty clear that he really did care a lot for this game set, and played it regularly.
In fact, I got so distracted that I hardly even noticed grandpa sneaking up on me until he appeared in my field of view and waved cheerfully. “Hey, Su! Are you winning?”
I glanced at my beleaguered king, trapped on the top board and cut off from most of my forces below. Alfonse grinned in an apologetic way. “Uh, probably not.” I shuffled a pawn two steps forward, resurrecting the ghost knight that Alfonse had left behind in his wave of conquest. He handed me a birch ring that I hung on the horse like a necklace. “Grandpa, you never told me that your history club meetings were so... interesting?”
He chuckled. “We’re a lively bunch! Alfonse here is pretty popular, too; shows up with a new game almost every week. This one sure... is... huh.”
His eyes settled on my face and I looked away, uneasy. “What?”
“Su, is that a bruise on your cheek? And after the-” he leaned down and lowered his voice. Alfonse good-naturedly pretended to not be paying attention. “That’s a nasty bruise. And after the burn earlier this week? Are you actually okay? What’s going on?”
- “I ran into a cabinet; just unluckily clumsy this week. I’m fine!”
- “Okay, maybe I’m not fine. Can we talk after this?”
(Winner: )
- “I ran into a cabinet; just unluckily clumsy this week. I’m fine!”
- “Okay, maybe I’m not fine. Can we talk after this?”
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 14
I guess I wasn’t as good at makeup as I thought. Or the bruise was just too big. I hesitated for several seconds as grandpa waited, trying to decide if I was going to tell him. And if so, what I was going to tell him.
“... Okay, maybe I’m not fine. Can we talk after this?”
“Of course! You’re sure not now, though? I’m worried about you.”
“Later. I promise I’m not going to explode if we wait a few hours, okay?”
“... Okay.” Grandpa stood back up. “Well, we’re about done with today’s construction phase, so we’re about ready to start the meeting proper. I’ve got those pictures, Su, but if you want to come on over once you’re done with your game and show off your hand, you’re welcome to.”
“Alright, I’ll be over in a bit.”
“Good, good...” Grandpa headed back to the rest of the group by the model and the room quickly filled with chatter. I was conscious of several eyes on my back as I turned away from the group and tried to focus on the game again. It wasn’t going well.
“So, Su...” Alfonse began as he clicked one of the corner boards into place, delivering a revealed check from his rook. “What’s this about your hand?”
I frowned, blocking the attack with a bishop from the lower board. I had cleared its path with the ghost knight just a turn prior. “It’s... well...” I came here for a reason. Might as well show it off, right? I still felt uneasy about it. “Here.” I held up my left hand, palm facing out.
“That’s a very strange burn. How did you get it?”
A logical question. I didn’t have a logical answer. “Uhm... I’d rather not talk about it. If that’s okay.”
He tilted his head, then initiated a rook trade. I had to capture back. “No, that’s fine. I don’t mean to pry. But is that symbol why you’re here?”
“... Yes. I was hoping that maybe someone here might know what it means. Grandpa said it reminded him of something in his research, but he wasn’t quite sure what. So here I am.”
“Well, you’re in the right place. I’m sure someone here will have an idea. Hmmm...” He moved the ghost queen in, defended by his rook. The only option was to retreat into a corner. “Check, and...”
I resignedly moved the king.
The queen took a single step forward, now defended by a bishop from a lower board. “Mate. You did great, especially for your first time playing this variant. I think with a little more practice, you’ll get really good!”
“Thanks, Alfonse. I had fun; maybe we can play again later.”
“I’m here almost every week with a new game, plus I host game nights at RSU. Let me know if you’re interested; you’ve got my contact info. Right now, I think your grandpa might want your attention.”
I turned to see grandpa beckoning me over. Most of the group was now staring at me. Great. “I think you’re right. I’ll, uh, go see what they want.”
“Su! We found something. Charles, the book?”
A thin, droopy fellow with wispy white hair pushed a very old book across the table towards me. I glanced through the pictures as grandpa explained.
“See, this symbol - the triangle inscribed in a circle - is referenced several times throughout this book. And on this page... here, you can see it’s even shown on someone’s hand!”
I looked. He was right, the symbol was drawn on a crude human wearing fancy robes and a very impractical hat. A staff was grasped in their other hand as they held out the one with the symbol forcefully. “Almost looks like a priest,” I murmured.
“Right you are!” To the rest of the table, he said, “See, I told you she was smart.” Then he turned the page to reveal a new image: the same priest figure shown as raising their marked hand high with a low-detail crowd behind them. A large semicircle extended off the top of the page. “It seems that religious leaders from this sect were fond of marking their hands with this symbol. Only the very high-ranking members seem to have it inscribed.”
I closed my fist, nervous. “What kind of sect?”
Grandpa hesitated just a moment before replying, so Charles interrupted with a warbling but very excited voice. “The original name was never recorded in western records, but the translated one was: ‘Those who await the Judgement of the Crimson Moon.’ Apparently they viewed the moon as a deity, and performed special rites during particular phases. Blood moons were their most sacred nights and they were quite adept at predicting them.”
Charles took a breath, so someone else interrupted. Everyone seemed incredibly enthusiastic about their research. “It’s theorized that the symbol’s circle represents the moon, while the triangle represents the worshippers. There isn’t much other information about the sect itself or their activities; they seem to have mostly died out by the early to mid 1800s. No one mentions them after Marnosa was burned down, at least.”
I was quickly getting overwhelmed with all the new information. “Burned down?”
Dyn picked up the story this time. “The entire town of Marnosa was destroyed in a great fire sometime in the 1850s. Since almost every citizen died in the fire and almost all of the records burned, the exact date and cause are unclear. All we know is that the survivors who made it to other towns either didn’t know or didn’t want to talk about what had happened, and many of them died soon after of respiratory sickness. Maybe from smoke inhalation; we don’t know. And of course, after this city was founded on more or less the same spot in 1868, it’s basically impossible to figure anything else out about the fire. It’s one of the biggest mysteries of Marnosa.”
It was a lot to take in. The symbol on my hand matched that of high-ranking priests from a long-dead religious sect that worshipped the moon? The precursor city to the one I was standing in now, that I hadn’t known about until today, had burned down under mysterious circumstances? Was that related? Why would the Devil-
Grandpa cleared his throat. “There’s one more thing I think you should know. Just on the previous page here.” He pushed the book a little closer to me, his expression unreadable.
The page showed the same priest from before, but this time without the symbol on their hand. Instead, they knelt before a tall man drawn wearing an old-fashioned suit, who was burning the mark into the priest’s hand with his finger. Most of the color had long ago flaked off the book, but enough still clung that I could recognize a trace of maroon in the standing man’s coat.
Ah. So I wasn’t the first one that the Devil had marked like this.
I sat down and tried to pull myself together.
️ - Tell everyone how I got the mark.
- Tell just grandpa how I got the mark, after the meeting.
- Tell no one how I got the mark.
Also, I told grandpa I’d talk with him after this. What should I say about the bruise?
- Tell the truth: I got it in a dream.
️ - I ran into a cabinet. Clumsy me.
- I got in a fight? Something concerning to validate his worries, but not too concerning.
(Winners: , )
️ - Tell everyone how I got the mark.
- Tell just grandpa how I got the mark, after the meeting.
- Tell no one how I got the mark.
Also, I told grandpa I’d talk with him after this. What should I say about the bruise?
- Tell the truth: I got it in a dream.
️ - I ran into a cabinet. Clumsy me.
- I got in a fight? Something concerning to validate his worries, but not too concerning.
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 15
The rest of the evening passed in a blur of self-conscious anxiety. I kept feeling eyes on me as people wondered about the burn on my hand in connection with the blood moon cult from the book. No one went out of their way to harass me, or to ask where I had gotten the burn, but I could still catch occasional stares. After a while, I told grandpa I’d meet him afterwards and walked outside for some air.
The sun was down by now and stars had just begun to peek through the remnants of sunset. It was still warm out - it always was, here - and the moon glowed softly overhead. I lifted my marked hand towards it, blocking its light with the symbol. Nothing happened, but I shivered anyway. What did it all mean?
Later that night, I broke down and told grandpa everything. I hadn’t wanted to get him involved because I would sound completely insane, but with the book and the cult and his guarded look showing me the Devil’s image, I had to. Maybe he could help me. He listened all the way through my fumbling explanation, at least.
“Su... I don’t mean to doubt your story, but-”
“You do, though! You’re doing it right now!”
He hesitated. “Okay, I suppose so. Even with the book and the mark on your hand, don’t you think this all seems a little far-fetched?”
“How else would I have gotten this burn?! The bruise? Come on; how would I have made up the Devil before I had ever even heard of this cult?!”
“You might have heard of them in passing earlier; maybe you subconsciously remembered the images without even knowing. The bruise could have been anything, really. And the burn...”
“Yeah? What about the burn? You think I would have scorched it into my own hand and then lied about it?!”
“No. Of course not! But there may be some other explanation. A pattern while you were asleep? Maybe an accident or someone nefarious while you were awake?” He rubbed his chin. “Have you been drinking lately?”
“Grandpa! Come on!”
“I’m sorry, Su! It’s just so difficult to believe and there’s no hard evidence. You have the symbol on your hand, which I admit is hard to come up with an explanation for, but it’s not impossible.” He paused for several moments, thinking. I tried to calm down. Of course he was right and being angry about it wouldn’t help. “Okay, let’s assume, for now, that everything you’re saying is true.”
“Not much of an assumption,” I grumbled. “I’m not a liar, grandpa.”
“I know! I know. Just, work with me here. So, you’re being hunted in your dreams by a Devil who we know is associated with a long-dead sect who worshipped the moon. You can be hurt in your dreams, and you’re worried the Devil can appear in reality as well. And you think he might try to...”
“He’s going to kill me. He said so.”
“R...ight. So, how do we prevent that? Well...”
I remembered a phrase. “The Gate of Deeper Slumber. That’s what he told me to look for right after he burned my hand. I don’t know what that is or how to look for it. Maybe... is it related to the moon cult?”
“Perhaps. I feel like I’ve heard that phrase before, though it may have just been in a novel I read. I can look further into the sect and the Gate of Deeper Slumber. But in the meantime, you need to stay alive and unharmed.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” I admitted. “He’s so powerful and I don’t know how any of this works.”
“He said the symbol was a powerful gift... And that would make sense, since it marks you as a priest of this order. But what does that mean in today’s world?” He muttered for a few moments before speaking up again. “If you can be hurt in dreams, something about you is physically somewhere else. Can you take anything from a dream? Bring anything to one? Like, say, a camera? A weapon? Can you manipulate the dream while inside it to defend yourself?”
“I... I don’t know. To any of that. Sometimes I can control my dreams when I’m lucid, but I could always do that even before all this started. I don’t know if I can bring or take anything. I... I could try it, I guess. Would a picture of that weird white cube place convince you?”
“Well, yes, but it could also help bring more information across. Learn more about who this ‘Devil’ is, why he’s doing what he is, and how to stop him. And if you can take things from dreams...”
“Yeah. I get it. Okay, I’ll... try. Please see if you can find anything else about the Gate of Deeper Slumber or the Devil or this cult or... anything. I just... I’m - I’m so scared. I can’t get away from him and I just know he’s going to show up again and-”
“Breathe. It’s okay; we’ll get through this.”
Later, I sat on the edge of my bed, opening and closing my fist. The priest in the book had held their hand out, like they were using it to do something. Magic, maybe. I held my arm out towards the wall, but of course nothing happened. The symbol glowed in my dreams, and it could change color and shape. Was that all it did? Could I use it to do something else? Something useful? Protect myself? I wasn’t sure.
I picked up my phone and slid it into a pocket in my shorts. Would it come with me to whatever dream I was going to have? I couldn’t remember if I had kept my clothes previously; I knew I hadn’t in the school, but that had been sort of a special case because I had been reliving a memory? Ugh. I just didn’t know what the rules were!
- Keep my phone in my pocket, go to sleep.
️ - Hold my phone in my left hand, then go to sleep. I might need some tape or something.
- Nevermind, actually. I don’t know if I want to risk my phone even if I can get it into the dream. [You can suggest something else to try and take with if you have an idea.]
(Winner: ️ )
- Keep my phone in my pocket, go to sleep.
️ - Hold my phone in my left hand, then go to sleep. I might need some tape or something.
- Nevermind, actually. I don’t know if I want to risk my phone even if I can get it into the dream. [You can suggest something else to try and take with if you have an idea.]
(Winner: ️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 16
I frowned and retrieved my phone. Glanced at the symbol on my hand. Well... I had no idea how it worked, so I might as well try something weird. I found some tape in a drawer somewhere and secured my phone to my hand, touching the symbol. If anything would come with me into the dream, it would be that.
Feeling very silly, I turned out the lights and lay down, keeping my left arm out at an awkward angle. The tape was uncomfortable and I couldn’t close my hand. I almost hoped this wouldn’t work so I wouldn’t have to do it again. A sigh. “Come on,” I whispered to the symbol. “Do something for me, please.”
...
I opened my eyes and sat up. I had been lying on a beach formed of soft, dark purple sand. The sky glimmered with more stars than I had ever seen before, all tied together into a beautiful purple nebula or galaxy. Waves slowly washed along the sand, the water glowing a vibrant blue. There was a phone taped to my hand.
“Ah!” I remembered immediately. “It worked!” I had my normal body, was wearing my normal night clothes, and had my normal phone taped to my hand: exactly as planned. I removed the tape and unlocked it, noting no signal (obviously) and taking a few pictures of the environment before I could get distracted. Thankfully, it seemed to be working just as it usually did. For the final proof, I set it to video mode and recorded myself standing in front of the otherworldly ocean, waving at the camera with my glowing left hand. “Believe me now, grandpa?”
Now, it was time to figure out where I was and what was going to try to kill me first. In turning around to film myself by the ocean, I was now (obviously) facing inland, and there were some very strange formations not far away. The symbol was still dim red and I didn’t feel any gnawing fear, so it seemed safe enough. I started walking through the silky soft sand, observing and taking a few more pictures as I went.
Little rings of raised sand formed tide pools on the beach, each trapping a ring of glowing blue water. Most of these pools seemed to be warm, almost like natural hot springs, and releasing sweet-scented steam into the air. Achingly inviting, but I held back. Every dream since I had gotten the symbol burned onto my hand had tried to kill me somehow, and I wasn’t about to fall for this beautiful place’s tricks. It felt so peaceful, though. So calm and genuinely lovely. Still, I resisted.
Off in the distance, a vaguely-defined red-purple jungle swayed in the gentle breeze. Stars glittered overhead. The tide pools grew wider and shallower as I continued inland, but the jungle never came into sharper focus; it stayed just as blurry as it had been from back at the shore. Distant cries - birds, perhaps? - became audible through the trees.
The last of the tide pools were behind me now. I reached the edge of the jungle, blinking several times to try and bring it into focus. No luck; it still looked like I had lost my glasses, even though I didn’t wear any. Reached out, touched a blurry purple tree. It felt soft and warm and my hand sunk a few inches in before I pulled it out hurriedly. The cries from the undergrowth grew louder and I started to wonder if they were actually birds at all. They sounded a little too purposeful for that; almost like they were trying to form words. Human speech? ... I couldn’t tell. Warm mist leaked from the jungle, cloyingly sweet as opposed to the more mellow scent from the tide pools. I almost coughed and had to step back.
My hand hurt. I looked down to see the sides of the inner triangle were bending inward towards the middle, as if they were going to touch. At the same time, a voice called out from the jungle. “Su? Are you there?” A little self-conscious chuckle. “I believe you; now how do I get out of here? Hello? Su?”
That was my grandpa’s voice and my grandpa’s mannerisms. But... how had he gotten into this dream as well? Had I brought him here somehow? I glanced down at my hand again. I didn’t feel any of the pressing anxiety like when the Devil was around, but maybe it was still a trick regardless?
“Su! Please tell me you’re out there somewhere!” The voice sounded fatigued; strained. “It’s getting harder to breathe in this fog; please help me get out!”
I hesitated.
- Go into the jungle and help him get to the beach.
- Stay put, but call out and guide him to the beach.
- Stay quiet and leave. Back to the tide pools.
(Winner: )
- Go into the jungle and help him get to the beach.
- Stay put, but call out and guide him to the beach.
- Stay quiet and leave. Back to the tide pools.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 17
It didn’t make sense how he was here, but of course none of this made sense. I couldn’t just let my grandpa die because of a misplaced sense of paranoia. “Come this way!” I yelled back. “Follow my voice; you can get to the beach!”
Rustling in the undergrowth. “Oh, good. I’m so glad you’re here...” He trailed off, out of breath, then continued. “Is this what it’s like for you every night?”
“Sort of, yeah! It’s not always a jungle like this, but there’s usually something dangerous trying to... uh...” I stepped back several paces as the trees nearest to me began to change color and more mist started leaking onto the beach. It stung my nose and I coughed violently as some of it got into my lungs before I could retreat. “G-grandpa, are you okay in there? This mist is really...” I paused to cough. “...Awful.”
No response but more rustling from the jungle. A tree trunk shifted. The sides of my triangle were almost touching. I felt anxiety settle in the pit of my stomach. “Grandpa?”
A blurry humanoid shape melted out of the mist. I squinted, trying to make out any further details, but it stubbornly refused to solidify. “Is that you...?” My hand hurt again as the sides of the triangle actually touched and the entire thing darkened to a sickly, dull green color. Something was very wrong.
“Yes, Su, it’s me... Help me get out of this fog, please...” The figure dropped to its hands and knees, less than a dozen feet away but still somehow obscured by the mist. I glanced back. Mist was encircling me, two arms wrapping behind my back to cut me off from the beach. Glanced forward. Grandpa was transparent; I could see the sand through him. My hand throbbed with minor but persistent dull, aching pain.
“You’re not grandpa.”
“Su, how could you say that? Please... I need help...”
“AUGH!” I couldn’t take the risk. Maybe it really was him and the mist was just playing tricks on my eyes. Maybe I was about to make a terrible mistake. I ran forward, holding my breath, into the fog bank. My eyes immediately started to burn and I squinted them nearly closed until I could barely see. Sounds were muted in the mist, but I could still hear distant cries from the jungle and the labored sound of grandpa’s breathing.
My hand passed right through his arm as I tried to help him up. He was nothing but a silhouette now, a shadow in the mist. My hand throbbed more urgently, pulsing with more severe pain the longer I spent in here. I could hardly see through the tears in my eyes from whatever burning chemicals this mist contained.
“Su... please... help...” The shadow dissolved into the mist and was gone. I was lost in thick fog, unable to see well enough to make anything out beyond the sand beneath my feet. “I just killed grandpa” was one of the three thoughts currently swirling through my mind, fighting for space with “That wasn’t grandpa” and “I’m going to die.”
I turned around, aiming for where I thought the beach was, and bolted blindly through the mist. My lungs hurt from holding my breath this long but I held on as best I could; this stuff was not good to inhale.
A tree loomed out of the mist. I couldn’t stop in time - it became visible maybe a foot from my face - and slammed into it at running speed. I fell to the ground, all remaining air knocked out of me. I had to take a breath. I couldn’t take a breath. I had to - I -
I took a breath before I could stop myself. My lungs burned and I coughed involuntarily, which of course only made the situation worse. I picked myself up and ran away from the jungle, head spinning, eyes burning, and choking on the mist-laden air. Thankfully, with the directional assist from the tree, I managed to make it out of the mist and back onto the beach this time. I kept running, still coughing heavily, until I made it back to the tide pools and could sit down to take stock.
The cloud of mist never made it far from the jungle, and after I escaped, it retreated back into the trees. The triangle on my hand returned to its normal color and shape after the mist left, regaining its dim red glow. The sauna-like air from the tide pool soothed my eyes and lungs. I was too drained to care about the possible danger and just slid into the nearest one after testing with a pinky, immersing myself in the equivalent of a hot tub. I coughed again, almost inhaling a mouthful of blue water from the spasm. Maybe I should sit up a little more.
... I didn’t know if that was grandpa or not. If it was... No, nope, not going there. It was a trick; must have been. The mist was some kind of predator that was mimicking his voice. And shape. And his knowledge of me and the situation. I swallowed, feeling a lump in my throat, then coughed again. How would it have known? “I believe you,” he had said. Would a mist monster in my dreams have known we had just had that argument? Maybe, especially since this was my dream and I knew that! Yeah, that made sense. It wasn’t him. He was okay. Had to be. Right?
...
I woke up with red eyes, a stuffy nose, a sore throat, a pain in my shoulder, a still-somewhat-nasty cough, and a whole lot of fatigue. My phone was still in my hand, but the tape was gone. My bed and clothes were again soaked with water, though it wasn’t glowing or particularly blue anymore. I didn’t even get up or dry off before calling grandpa.
Come on, pick up...
Nothing. Voicemail. I shuddered, staring at the wall with empty eyes as I fumbled my way through recording a message. It was before 7am. He was probably asleep. Nothing to worry about. He’d call me back later. Right?
I coughed again and winced, pressing a hand against my sore chest. Today was going to be just a lovely Friday.
- Go to work like normal, wait for grandpa to call me.
- Go visit grandpa immediately. Be late to work or call off if I need to.
- Is that a little bit of blood that I’m coughing up or am I imagining it? Maybe I should actually get that checked out.
️ - I’m still exhausted and feel terrible. Rest a little more before doing anything else. [I’ll be late / call off and will do the next-highest choice after this, if this wins.]
(Winner: )
- Go to work like normal, wait for grandpa to call me.
- Go visit grandpa immediately. Be late to work or call off if I need to.
- Is that a little bit of blood that I’m coughing up or am I imagining it? Maybe I should actually get that checked out.
️ - I’m still exhausted and feel terrible. Rest a little more before doing anything else. [I’ll be late / call off and will do the next-highest choice after this, if this wins.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 18
As I got up and got ready for the day, the cough not only didn’t get better, but was joined by a headache and some light dizziness to add to my pile of other symptoms. After bloodying a tissue by coughing into it, I decided I wasn’t quite ready to collapse and die at work, called off again, and went to the hospital. I wore a mask on the train just in case any of this was contagious, which earned me some concerned looks and a lot of personal space as it acquired slight red droplets from the ongoing coughing. Better than spraying it onto other people, at least.
I was pretty vague about what had caused this, muttering about spilling some chemicals into each other while cleaning, but nothing specific. Thankfully, the receptionist was alarmed enough by my condition that she didn’t ask any probing questions and just handed me over to a nurse within a few minutes. Time passed along with various diagnostic tests. After a while, I couldn’t sit up anymore and laid down. A doctor told me I was “experiencing symptoms mostly consistent with chlorine gas poisoning, but the tests were inconclusive.” My chest felt too tight to breathe. He told me he was going to get some medicine and left quickly.
Darkness started creeping in around the edges of my vision as my head spun. “I’m going to pass out now,” I said in a relatively normal voice, surprising both me and the attending nurse.
And then I did.
...
I was back on the purple sand beach, kneeling by the shore. My chest felt like a crushed soda can. I couldn’t breathe. No, no, no not here not now come ON! I angrily pressed both hands to my sternum like I could force my lungs to function through willpower alone. Work! This is a dream, so why? Can’t? You? Just? WORK?!
There was a flare of warm yellow light from the symbol on my hand, and then I could breathe again. The light quickly died away, returning to the normal dull red glow - though maybe dimmer than before? I stayed put for several seconds, panting as I caught my breath. It wasn’t completely gone; I could still feel a mild tightness in my chest as if I were merely suppressing the symptoms rather than curing the underlying cause. Still, I’d take it. How did I...?
Maybe I could do it again.
I pressed my left hand to my cheek where it was bruised from the middle school dream earlier this week. Not entirely sure how I was doing this or what I was even doing, I commanded my face to heal. It was easier this time, as if I had overcome a mental block now that I had done it once. Golden light bloomed from my hand, and in an instant, the bruise was gone. Nothing but smooth skin. Again, I could still sort of feel it if I pressed hard, and again, the glow on my hand dimmed. Definitely noticeable now: I was using up some sort of reservoir of some sort of power by doing this.
Before I could think much more about it, I very suddenly woke up. My awareness snapped between the purple beach and the hospital in a very disconcerting way before I returned to the waking world with a choking splutter as the doctor removed some sort of tube from my throat. I could breathe again, this time in reality. Everyone was very relieved about that, me most of all.
I stayed in the hospital for the rest of the day as the doctor ran several more tests and tried a few more treatments, carefully dodging his questions on what exactly I had inhaled. He seemed to be unsure what exactly had caused my breathing issues, but it seemed to respond well to a cocktail of aerosol drugs that I forgot the name of seconds after he told me. The internal bleeding was concerning but apparently not significantly more so than the rest of my symptoms put together, and was also improving under the same treatment.
Even so, with such a sudden onset of very severe symptoms, they wanted me to stay overnight just in case anything came back or got worse. Still feeling very unwell even with all the medicine, I reluctantly agreed and hoped tonight’s course of dreams wouldn’t do anything weird to their beds. The bruise on my cheek hadn’t healed in the physical world after whatever I had done to it in my dream, but it did seem marginally improved? Maybe a placebo. I’d need to do some more experimenting.
Towards the end of the work day, I got a text message and immediately opened it, hoping for a response from grandpa. No such luck; just Alfonse sending me the contact info for that professor as promised last night. Not in the mood to deal with that right now, I kept it unread and promised I would get around to doing something about it later.
I tried calling grandpa twice more and got voicemail both times. As my anxiety mounted, I decided I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t do something about him, today.
- They can’t force me to stay here. Get up and go check on him myself. I need to know, especially if anything weird and magic-y happened.
- Although I hate to admit it, this might be a little beyond my abilities right now. Call the police for a wellness check.
- Ask a friend to check on him for me. [Specify who, if you’d like.]
- Call dad, explain what’s happening, and ask him to deal with this. Grandpa is his dad, after all; I’m sure he’d want to know. [Dad is across the country right now, so he won’t be able to visit in-person right away.]
(Winner: )
- They can’t force me to stay here. Get up and go check on him myself. I need to know, especially if anything weird and magic-y happened.
- Although I hate to admit it, this might be a little beyond my abilities right now. Call the police for a wellness check.
- Ask a friend to check on him for me. [Specify who, if you’d like.]
- Call dad, explain what’s happening, and ask him to deal with this. Grandpa is his dad, after all; I’m sure he’d want to know. [Dad is across the country right now, so he won’t be able to visit in-person right away.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 19
... Actually. I opened the conversation again.
“Thanks for the contact info, I’ll send it over tomorrow”
“Hey, would you mind doing a big favor for me? I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t urgent”
Alfonse started typing, but I beat him to it with my next message. “I haven’t heard from my grandpa all day, can you please go check on him?”
He stopped typing, presumably deleting his question, then sent “...sure? But why can’t you?”
Ah, right. “I’m in the hospital and they won’t let me out until tomorrow”
“I can send you the address, I just want to make sure he’s ok”
“Hospital? Are you ok?”
How was I supposed to answer that? “Mostly,” I decided. “Thanks a bunch, you’re really helping me out”
I sent the address, dodged further questions about why I was in the hospital, and sat around impatiently. Alfonse’s university was across town, so it took him a while to drive to my grandpa’s house. Still, at least he had a car. And at least he was actually willing to do this for someone he had just met literally last night. Maybe he already knew my grandpa from history club, though.
Three quarters of an hour later, my phone buzzed. I picked up, incredibly scared that he had decided to call me instead of just texting that grandpa was fine. “H-hello?” My voice was still scratchy from all the coughing. I was just glad the nurse wasn’t here to eavesdrop.
I heard muffled voices, then “Hello? Su?” Grandpa’s voice.
“Grandpa! You’re okay!”
“Yes? I -” he turned away from the phone to say something to Alfonse. “Hang on, let’s just go inside and I’ll put you on speaker, alright?”
A few minutes later, we had worked out more or less what was going on. Grandpa’s phone was reporting no cell data, and when he tried to check his account, the number was listed as “recently transferred” and couldn’t be accessed. Someone must have hijacked his phone number. But how, and more importantly: why?
With Alfonse graciously retreating to another room to let us use his phone to talk in private, I explained why I had been so worried. The dream, the mist, the reason I was in the hospital. I still had all the recordings from the purple beach, but couldn’t send them to his phone for obvious reasons. Grandpa hadn’t been there; he hadn’t been that shape in the mist. Obvious in hindsight - my dad hadn’t been there for real when I dreamt about him - but still a massive relief.
I agreed to send him the pictures as soon as he sorted out the phone number situation, but he replied with, “Su, you’re in the hospital with a serious illness you got in a dream. I believe you. You don’t have to prove anything.”
“I’m going to anyway; I went to a lot of trouble to get these pictures. Plus, who knows, maybe they’ll help in your research?”
“Maybe. Plus,” he admitted. “I’m terribly curious to know what a dream looks like.”
A brief pause. “Grandpa?”
“Hm?”
“Do you think we’re... I don’t know, being kind of nonchalant about all this?” I hesitated, trying to sort out my thoughts. “I mean, this is crazy, right? I’m being hunted by the Devil and I have video evidence that I can physically visit dreams. That’s... magic. I’m using magic. And I’m not telling anyone but you. It just... feels like it should be a bigger deal? Like, this upends centuries of science, right? Don’t you feel like someone... important should know? Scientists? The government? Someone who can do something about it?”
Grandpa took his time before replying. “Su, I won’t stop you if you want to go public with this. If your evidence is convincing, I’m sure you could change the world with the revelation. But my biggest goal is to keep you safe, and we’re in a very uncertain situation right now. Not just with the Devil in your dreams - or deadly mimicking mist, apparently! But I’m certain whoever stole my number today did it because of my connection to you. We don’t know who these people are or how they might react if we try to reveal everything to the world. Going public is something you can’t take back, and I’m very concerned about what might happen to you if you do.”
“... I get it. But there’s also a risk in not telling anyone, right? I mean, the government could protect us, maybe?”
“I don’t know. And I’m sure they can’t do anything to keep you safe in your dreams.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Right.” A longer pause. “I’ll... think about it. But I won’t do anything stupid.”
“I trust you. Now, unless there’s anything else you want to talk about, I need to go get my phone number back.”
“I think I’m good. Thanks, grandpa. Thank Alfonse for me, and good luck.”
“Will do. Talk to you soon.”
The line went dead and I flopped onto my back, tired out even from the minor exertion of talking for several minutes. Things weren’t looking promising for being productive tomorrow.
My phone rang again. Caller ID said grandpa, and I picked up automatically before remembering he didn’t have his phone number at the moment.
“WHERE ARE YOU?” a heavily-distorted voice growled through the receiver.
“What? Who is this?”
“IT DOESN’T MATTER. SUYEON CHE, HEED THIS WARNING. THOSE WITHOUT THE MARK CANNOT ACCOMPANY YOU ON THE ROAD TO THE GATE. SECRETS MUST NOT BE SHARED. VIOLATIONS OF THE CODE WILL RESULT IN SWIFT, DECISIVE PUNISHMENT. YOU ARE ONE OF US NOW AND YOU MUST FOLLOW OUR ORDER’S LAWS. SEEK THE GATE. LEARN THE KEY. BREAK THE LOCK. WE WILL BE WATCHING.”
“Wait - wait!”
Too late. They hung up. I slowly returned to my previous supine position, much less relaxed than a minute prior.
- Keep this whole thing between just me and grandpa.
️ - ...Also tell Alfonse. But no one else.
- Tell no one, and ask grandpa to stop being involved. The person on the phone was pretty clearly threatening us because I didn’t keep this a secret.
- Don’t go public yet, but do some research and see who might be a good pick to tell, later. [If it wins, this option will include the second-place option as well.]
(Winners: , )
- Keep this whole thing between just me and grandpa.
️ - ...Also tell Alfonse. But no one else.
- Tell no one, and ask grandpa to stop being involved. The person on the phone was pretty clearly threatening us because I didn’t keep this a secret.
- Don’t go public yet, but do some research and see who might be a good pick to tell, later. [If it wins, this option will include the second-place option as well.]
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 20
The rest of the day slid by. Grandpa got his number back - apparently someone had made the change by calling the telecom company from a public phone and convincing the support person they were grandpa. The company promised to put a note on his account so it wouldn’t happen again. He wasn’t thrilled. I did some digging around government and university websites to see who might be a specialist I could talk to, if I did decide to stop keeping secrets. Unsurprisingly, there weren’t many people who studied dreams in this way. I came away without any answers and only a few leads. Tired, frustrated, and very worried about that last phone call since I wasn’t about to leave grandpa out of it, I eventually went to sleep.
...
“Su, hey! Wait up!”
I turned to look over my shoulder. The air was crisp, the trees were fiery orange, and golden afternoon sunlight filtered through the remaining leaves. Adam was waving at me, half-jogging to catch up. Red hair, short beard, glasses. I stopped to let him approach, smiling nervously back. Awkwardly moved some of my hair out of my face, but it was too windy to put it back into any sense of order. “Hey! How’s it going?”
He caught up with me and we continued our trek across campus. “Dr Wang was talking about organic synthesis for the last hour,” he groaned. “If I never have to see a benzene ring again, it’ll be too soon.”
“Isn’t your major chemistry?”
“Oh! Don’t remind me!” Adam faked an anguished cry. “Heh, no, it’s fine; just a little repetitive. I hope he doesn’t expect us to remember all thirty-some reactions from class today. Anyway, how about you?”
“U-uh...” He looked at me with interest. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Come on, Su, say something! “G-ravity!” I managed to blurt out.
“G-ravity?” he asked, mimicking my mispronunciation.
“Yeah! Pretty important for rockets, heh.” Oh my god kill me now.
“Well, I guess so!” He looked over at an interesting tree, allowing me to catch my breath. “Hey, are you doing anything tonight?”
So much for catching my breath. “Just some homework?”
“Oh, okay; if you’re busy, that’s fine. But it’s just that some friends are hosting a s’mores bonfire slash swimming thing down by the lake and I was wondering if you wanted to come?” I felt like I could see myself from the outside. Tomato-red face, deer-in-the-headlights expression. Adam smiled his dorky grin. “I think you’d have fun!”
“Uhhhhh...” Say yes just say yes oh my god please do something. “Sure!”
“Ayy!” He bumped my shoulder. I nearly fell over. “Awesome; I’ll see you there! Lemme find the details and send ‘em over...”
A minute later and he had left, heading into a different building for his last class of the day. I slumped down on a bench and took deep breaths. Put my head in my hands to try and recover. What was that symbol on my palm-
I stood facing my younger self from across the path, leaves drifting around me in the wind. Smiled faintly. I knew how this played out, of course. I had such a huge crush on Adam, but never the confidence to do anything about it. We had been friends for a while. Then, that night...
The sun spun crazily across the sky and the landscape melted before reforming. I stood on the beach beside a crackling bonfire. Dozens of college kids tended the fire, talked and laughed with friends, or swam in the glossy-black lake. Where was... me? Ah, there I was. Just as I remembered, sitting near the fire and actually participating in normal conversation with Adam and some of his friends. Roasting marshmallows and telling some story about... I shifted closer across the sand to listen in. Right, the professor who set that kid’s homework on fire. I pulled out my phone to show the proof. Everyone laughed.
I smiled quietly on the edge of the firelight. This moment had been one of young Su’s best memories. I had been popular, confident, and just enjoying myself. And then...
“Thanks, Adam, I had a great time.” It was later now, and the bonfire was burning low. A few people were moving in to start dousing it. I was heading home; Adam would be staying behind to help with cleanup.
“Aw, no problem. Glad you had fun. Let’s do it again sometime, eh? Or maybe something with fewer people around?”
I was pretty sure he couldn’t see me blushing in the waning firelight. “Uh-h, m-maybe! Sounds, uh-good!”
He laughed. “Alright, take care. See ya Monday!”
I wandered off down the trail. You could practically see me trailing little hearts and glitter, like a cartoon character.
Seamlessly, the trail and glossy dark lake blended together to become the face of a smartphone. Younger Su trotted happily along the glass, oblivious to the new ground. I winced and almost reached out to change the dream, but something held me back. My symbol was normal; there wasn’t any external anxiety. It was... it was just me. I wanted to see this. I was ready to face it. To face her.
The phone rang. Younger Su screamed and fell, jostled by the vibrations. I slid my finger along the screen to accept the call, helping my younger self to her feet as I did so. “H-hello?” we said, simultaneously.
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said. “This won’t do at all.” The dream faded to greyscale as mother talked. “Look at him. Scruffy, unmotivated, not even on the dean’s list!”
Younger Su shouted something back, angrily gesturing with her hands. I only heard muffled yelling. Blood rushed in my ears. TV static grew on the phone, sparking around the microphone and speakers.
“How DARE you speak to your mother like that?! Absolutely not! You shall have nothing more to do with him!”
Younger Su stamped her foot and shouted even louder. The static grew, engulfing more of the phone.
“Suyeon, dear, who pays your tuition? I’m afraid I simply cannot fund anyone associated with a miscreant like this ‘Adam’ character.”
Younger Su lowered her arms, now pleading instead of shouting.
“Of course not! Now, you will find a different young man more appropriate for your future position, or you will have to pay for school yourself. You have until the end of the semester. Understood?”
The static consumed the phone entirely, and younger Su with it. She melted into the blob of heaving, scratchy voices. I covered my ears as mother’s voice grew louder and more strict. “Do. You. UnderSTAND?”
I cried out and changed the dream.
- I remembered Dad trying to change her mind...
- I remembered telling Adam what she had said...
♂️ - I remembered meeting the “acceptable” young man she chose for me...
- I remembered rejecting her terms and signing loan after loan...
️ - I woke up.
(Winner: ️)
- I remembered Dad trying to change her mind...
- I remembered telling Adam what she had said...
♂️ - I remembered meeting the “acceptable” young man she chose for me...
- I remembered rejecting her terms and signing loan after loan...
️ - I woke up.
(Winner: ️)
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Scene 21
Or rather, I woke up. Gasped awake and stared around in panic for a few seconds before remembering why I wasn’t in my own bed at home. Checked my phone. Not quite 5 AM. Great.
As I rearranged my limbs and the sheets to try and get back to sleep, I remembered more of the dream. Another memory: I had been back in college. That bonfire on the beach? Had I been dreaming about Adam again? That must have been it. I sighed aloud, staring at the ceiling. That relationship had never gone anywhere beyond a few dates after the bonfire. He said I was too distant; I said he was too clingy. A few other arguments here and there. Nothing terrible; it just didn’t work out. We agreed to stay friends after the breakup, but sort of drifted apart afterwards. I hadn’t talked to him since college.
So many of my relationships - friends, family, partners - ended like that. Just sort of drifting apart. Agreeing to stay in touch but never actually doing so. Aside from dad and grandpa, I couldn’t think of a single person I talked to regularly that I had known for more than a year or two. Maybe not since I had moved, even.
Of course, mother’s unending need for control over my life didn’t help, either. I remembered fragments from the last part of the dream that had woken me up. She had never been there for me; never approved of my choices. Not in partners, friends, classes, or even anything as basic as how short to cut my hair. At least I had managed to escape her now. At least, in reality. Couldn’t do anything about the dreams.
“It’s been over a year since you even talked to her,” grandpa had said, implying that my mother-related anxiety might be messing with my dreams. Well, so what if it was? There were so many reasons I had cut her out of my life entirely, and I wasn’t going back on that decision now. Dad had moved on; the incident had spurred him on to finally get a divorce just before I moved here. I could move on too.
My thoughts slowed and I felt sleep beginning to return. Man, I had a lot of problems, even before the whole Devil thing. Sometimes it took being half-awake at 5 in the morning to list them all.
...
Pouring rain. I wore a raincoat, poncho, and waders, and I was still drenched. Wiped wet hair out of my face and it immediately splashed back, spraying droplets in my eyes. Unbelievable. I was crouching next to an open manhole set inconspicuously in the middle of a few bushes right next to a sidewalk. Rainwater sluiced into the hole as I stowed the crowbar I had just used to open it. The sounds of raging water echoed from below.
“Found you,” one of my partners said. The taller one.
“What?”
“What? I said ‘ready to go?’”
“I thought you said-” I cut myself off as my left hand throbbed under my glove. “Ow, ow - hold on.” I struggled to get the thing off, unstrapping velcro and buckles to let it fall to the soaking grass and reveal my much smaller hand. There was a symbol on my palm. I blinked. “Oh, right...” The outer circle was jet black, just as it had been a few days ago when I had dreamt about my dad. Two equidistant lines joined the circle to the inner triangle, which glowed with its normal dim red light. A sense of anxiety began to press down.
“You ready to go or what?” the taller one asked again. The shorter one mutely shuffled from one foot to the other. “We gotta go before the tunnel floods, remember?”
Even though I was lucid now, I didn’t feel any more in control of the situation. Far less, in fact. “No; I swear you said ‘found you’ a moment ago. Then my symbol hurt.” I showed him my hand. “What’s going on?”
“You should put your glove back on,” he said, seemingly ignoring all of my questions. “It’s too cold and wet to go bare-handed.”
I considered this - my hand was freezing and rainwater sloshed down into my sleeve without the glove’s protection - but decided it was better to be able to see the symbol quickly if it needed my attention. I changed tactics. “What are we doing here?”
“We’re looking for the subway key; don’t you remember? It’s down in the drains somewhere.”
“The subway key?”
“Yeah, subway key.” The man looked at me like I was crazy. “You know, it unlocks the door to the subway.”
“I - I know how keys work. Look, why do we need a key for the subway? Can’t we just wait until it’s open?”
“It doesn’t open unless you have the key. I thought you wanted to ride the train?”
It felt like I was getting somewhere. Maybe. “Okay, but why would I want to ride the train?”
“I don’t know; you didn’t tell us. Don’t you remember?”
So close. Of course I had no idea why I might want to ride the train; it seemed like all the dream-specific knowledge of whatever character I was playing got lost as soon as I became lucid. Annoying. But maybe... “By the way, who am I?”
“Well, you’re Mistress Su.”
So I wasn’t playing a character here; I was myself. Or, some other version of myself? They didn’t seem to mind me asking all these questions that I should have known already, so... “Why am I a mistress? I am leading something, or...” I trailed off, hoping it was the first definition of the word.
“You’re leading us to find the subway key.”
“Ugh!” Useless. My hand hurt again and I looked down to see the two lines had shifted somewhat; they were closer together and near the upper-left segment of the circle. Almost like... a compass? Or a radar?
I looked up in that direction. Rain poured down, obscuring the buildings and limiting vision to only short distances around the streetlights. No one would be out on a night like this, and the city was nearly empty accordingly. But only nearly; I caught a flash of movement under a streetlight about a half-block away, then another just down the street emerging from an alleyway. Human-sized forms. I lost track of them in the rain and darkness, but they were the only other people around besides my two clueless companions.
I paused, thinking. I could always wake up if anything got too dangerous, but I wouldn’t make any progress solving this mystery if I kept bailing. Maybe it was time to go on the offensive, just a bit. See if I could figure out what this symbol meant and who or what these shapes were. There was still a low level of background anxiety, but nowhere near as bad as the Devil or even my mother. I wouldn’t be overwhelmed by fear. Probably.
- Confront the moving figures. Question them if possible.
- Try to stay away from the figures, but stay in the dream. Explore; try to learn more. This isn’t one of my memories.
️ - Descend into the drains and search for the subway key. Maybe it’s important.
- Send my two companions to intercept the figures while I go somewhere else. [Where? Discuss in #story_discussion.]
(Winner: ️ )
- Confront the moving figures. Question them if possible.
- Try to stay away from the figures, but stay in the dream. Explore; try to learn more. This isn’t one of my memories.
️ - Descend into the drains and search for the subway key. Maybe it’s important.
- Send my two companions to intercept the figures while I go somewhere else. [Where? Discuss in #story_discussion.]
(Winner: ️ )
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Scene 22
“Alright, fine, let’s go find the subway key.” I waited a moment, glancing around, but didn’t see the figures again. Neither of my companions seemed to want to take the lead, so I put my boots on the ladder and began to descend. They followed after a few steps, sliding the manhole cover closed and reducing the amount of water pouring down on my head from “a waterfall” to “a sink.” This was going to soak the sheets again when I woke up; why was there so much water in my dreams?
I reached the bottom of the ladder and splashed down into the torrent of water awaiting below. It came up to my waist - way higher than I had expected - and almost staggered me with its force. My companions arrived shortly afterwards, bracing themselves against the curved stone wall much as I was doing. We all had powerful headlamps to illuminate the tunnels, but visibility was still terrible with all the spray.
“Why did we have to come down here in the middle of a storm?” I complained aloud. “Why not when it’s all dry?”
“The subway key can only be found in spring rains,” the taller one explained. “You told us that, Mistress Su.”
“Oh, yeah, great,” I grumbled. “Obviously. I don’t suppose I told you which direction we need to go?”
“You said you would lead us.”
“Of course.” My hand pulsed with a brief twinge of pain. The lines had rearranged themselves again to account for my new orientation, now facing primarily towards my fingers. I frowned at the symbol. “Can you show me where to go? I mean, if you can - I assume - point at whoever those shapes are, can you point at the subway key too? Whatever that is?”
The mark did not change. “Okay, hard way it is. Come on, you two. We’re going on an adventure.” It was astonishing how much more confident I was wandering around in a dark, flooded sewer when I had two other “people” with me. Even though they were clearly just dream projections, I wasn’t as alone as I could have been. The idea that I could just wake up if anything terrible happened didn’t hurt either.
I wandered through flooded tunnel after flooded tunnel, not really sure what I was looking for and glancing down at my hand every so often to keep an eye on the symbol. The lines kept moving and eventually split up. I was fairly certain the shapes were down here with us now, though still relatively far away. It would be hard to tell for sure with all the noise from the water. For lack of a better idea, I waded along with the current. It was easier than going against it, and it pointed me towards a destination. Maybe the subway key would be at the terminus of all these drains.
The water level grew higher as I went, climbing up past my waist to midway up my chest. Icy water flooded into my waders and I had to start swimming. Thankfully I knew how from growing up near a lake, but the cold was something else. I could feel my heart and lungs start to misbehave. Maybe... “Oh no you don’t,” I informed the organs in question. “Work.”
I clenched my left hand closed and golden light spilled out into the water. I immediately felt much warmer, like I was swimming in a summer lake instead of frigid underground sewer water. A relieved sigh as the glow faded to a constant golden shimmer. I couldn’t believe that actually worked. Still, the effort of holding my body temperature steady just added to the strain of wading or swimming through what must be miles of flooded tunnels. I couldn’t keep this up forever. But... maybe I’d keep going just a little longer. It would be a shame to leave without anything to show for it.
A few minutes later, with absolutely no warning whatsoever, someone tackled me from behind and pinned me to the tunnel floor with a heavy boot. My golden light fizzled out as I lost concentration and the freezing water returned in a rush. I shoved against the side wall and managed to wiggle free, choking for air as I broke the surface. Wake up wake up wa-
My assailant tackled me again and I lost focus for a second time, the waking world slipping away as I crashed back into the water. That’s when I really started to panic. Rough hands pawed at my coat and pockets as I struggled in their underwater grip. The rushing water carried us both down the tunnel. I couldn’t focus through the fear enough to wake up or use the symbol. Air; I needed air.
I kicked off the floor and kneed my assailant in the stomach. Not hard enough to do any significant damage - I was underwater and not particularly strong - but enough to slip away again. Cough for more air. They grabbed my sleeve and I yanked my arm out of the jacket, letting them haul it off me as I splashed further down the tunnel, temporarily out of reach. My headlamp was somehow still intact and I took the briefest opportunity to shine it on whoever was attacking me.
A normal-looking youngish man with a soaked mop of curly brown hair busily tore through the pockets in my jacket before tossing it aside and looming up to stare me down again. One of the lines on my symbol pointed directly at him; the other off to my left somewhere. The sound of rushing water grew catastrophically loud behind me and the current picked up. I couldn’t glance back to confirm the presence of a waterfall, but I didn’t doubt it.
The man shouted something angrily, but I couldn’t understand him over all the noise. He surged forward again, hands outstretched and ready to toss both of us off the cliff if he didn’t slow down.
️ - WAKE UP! [I hope I can do it in time.]
⏬ - Dodge the lunge and watch him sail down the waterfall. [I hope I’m athletic enough to pull this off.]
- Leap of faith off the cliff. I bet he’s not expecting that. [I hope it’s not too far down.]
- Pretend to throw something from my pockets over his head. He clearly thinks I have something he wants. [And then do what? Discuss in #story_discussion or base on other choices.]
- Move forward to meet him to stop us from going off the cliff. [He’ll attack me again. I’ll need a secondary plan based on other options.]
Also, where are my companions?
- Temporarily sidetracked but currently charging in to help.
- I don’t know. Gone somewhere. Did this guy kill them?
(Winners: , )
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Scene 23
A frantic thought formed in my mind. I reached into my pocket, grabbed the first thing I found - a miniature screwdriver, apparently - and lobbed it over the man’s head. He stumbled as it arced, trying to trace its path with his light. Slowed, began to turn. I shuffled sideways and focused again, trying to feel the sheets beneath - “AUGH!”
Yet again, I was interrupted. This time, my previously absent companions suddenly appeared from the dark, crashed into my assailant, and sent us all tumbling over the waterfall. I screamed briefly, then tried to orient myself in midair to avoid breaking my neck. No luck; it was too dark and chaotic. I couldn’t tell where anything was.
Four people slammed into a swirling maelstrom of water. I broke the surface, coughing and treading water, and quickly took in the new room. We had fallen maybe twenty feet into a deep, wide cistern, about forty feet from the water to the roof and twice that in diameter. Three full-size subway train cars protruded from the water, partially buried beneath the waves. I had avoided crashing into unyielding metal by a few feet at most.
Roaring, thundering water drowned out any further noises I could have used to locate anyone else. The lines on my symbol pointed vaguely behind me, towards the edge of the room, but I knew it didn’t update constantly. In all the confusion, I couldn’t be sure where the man was. However, it seemed likely that if he was attacking and trying to steal something from me, he might be after the same thing I was: the subway key. And given the literal subway trains inexplicably present in this sewer...
I paused, took several moments to center myself, and then focused on my symbol. Golden light bloomed again and the cold retreated. I could have woken up then, but with how desperate this guy was to get ahold of - presumably - the subway key, maybe I shouldn’t give up so quickly. Maybe if I could find it instead, I could finally learn something about all this.
I swam over to the nearest train and squeezed inside through a broken, half-flooded window. It was much more open than the light rail vehicles from my own city in the waking world, so these weren’t feeding from my memories. The water was calmer in here, but I couldn’t see any keys just lying around; just waterlogged seating and dull stainless steel. Still, there was more to the car below the surface.
Am I really about to...?
Yep. I was. I took a deep breath and dove, using my glowing symbol to light the way. The car grew more damaged as I descended; almost crumpled from its impact with the floor. Seats and poles blocked my way. I swam around a few of them until I could see the far wall and the cracked concrete floor beneath the train. No keys here. I headed back up, pulling myself past obstacles to return to the surface, gasping for air. I had cut it more than a little close.
Not here. Next car. Where was everyone else? I knew my attacker and my companions had to be down here too, and then there was the other line to worry about - presumably my attacker’s friend. I checked my hand but couldn’t really tell what it was showing me. The lines weren’t 3D, only updated every so often, and didn’t move with my hand, so it was really hard to be sure where they were actually pointing.
Clambering over a tangle of broken, partially-submerged couplers, I sloshed into the next car. I wasn’t exactly inconspicuous with my golden light and headlamp, but I still had the audacity to be surprised when my attacker slipped in through a window on the other side just moments after me. I froze. He didn’t, immediately lunging towards me.
Inside the car, out of the main whirlpool outside, it was quiet enough that I could actually hear myself shout. “I don’t have it!” I yelled, again losing my concentration on the golden light as he slammed me against the wall.
“I’ll be the judge of that.” His accent was hard to place; vaguely European? Not native Arizonan, for sure. He kept me pinned uncomfortably against the wall with one arm and a shoulder while digging through the rest of my pockets - of course, finding nothing he wanted. I was getting tired at this point, weakly struggling but unable to get him away without some better leverage.
“What are you even looking for?! Couldn’t you just ASK?”
No response. He ran out of pockets, snarled, and tossed me away. I splashed into the water and whacked my spine on a protruding bench. Pain blossomed through my back and I squinted my eyes nearly shut, focusing on the symbol. Golden light flickered weakly before the man spun around again and punched me in the upper arm, hard.
I shouted and fell back, the light dissipating again. Maybe I had misread the situation; I hadn’t thought he actually wanted to hurt me.
“You’re pathetic. Can’t even use your metzmatan properly.”
I slumped into the water, grabbing my arm with my other hand. It wasn’t actually that painful, but maybe he’d underestimate me. I had him talking now. “My... what?” I gasped, trying to sound as pathetic as he thought I was.
He scoffed. “Your metzmatan. The symbol on your hand.” Another sneer as he lifted his palm, revealing a near-identical symbol to my own. His outer circle, however, was bright red instead of black and had only a single line, pointing directly at me. “You don’t even know its name. You know nothing.”
Progress. I had learned something and he had a symbol too. Now I just needed to build on it... and also get away without getting hurt any further. I eyed the man carefully as I weighed my options; he was muttering and massaging the symbol on his hand - his metzmatan, apparently. This felt dangerous.
- If I came from one car and he came from the other, the subway key must be here if it’s anywhere. Distract him, dive down to find it, and wake up before he can get me.
- Keep him talking. Play into the act. See what he knows and what I can learn.
️ - Just wake up. Fourth time’s the charm, right?
Where are my companions this time?
- About to bust through the wall to do something very distracting.
- I don’t know, but apparently not here.
(Winners: , )
- If I came from one car and he came from the other, the subway key must be here if it’s anywhere. Distract him, dive down to find it, and wake up before he can get me.
- Keep him talking. Play into the act. See what he knows and what I can learn.
️ - Just wake up. Fourth time’s the charm, right?
Where are my companions this time?
- About to bust through the wall to do something very distracting.
- I don’t know, but apparently not here.
(Winners: , )
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Scene 24
Keep him talking; don’t sound like a threat... “I... I don’t understand; how are you in my dream?”
The man narrowed his eyes and pressed on his symbol, seemingly unconsciously. “You really do know nothing, don’t you? Who are you? Are you even in the Order?”
I remembered the phone call from the distorted voice. Just yesterday? Had it only been a few hours? Felt like days. “Y-yes, I am.” I didn’t know if that was the right thing to say, but...
“Prove it. Who’s your master?”
Uhh... Unable to come up with a convincing lie in time, I stayed quiet.
This definitely didn’t make the man any calmer. “You’re NOT!” He clung to one of the damaged poles in the train car, other hand on his head as he muttered out loud. “A full metzmatan... outside of the Order? How did this happen? Who - why? I need to...” He stopped; calmly looked up. Pointed at me. “You’re coming with me. You need to answer some questions.”
He carefully stepped back into the water, maneuvering along submerged seats to keep his footing. Breathed out measuredly, made a curious gesture in midair. Little streaks of burning light traced his fingertip, forming the core triangle-circle symbol with a number of extra additions. His metzmatan glowed brighter and more forcefully until, drawing the last few lines of the sigil, he reached out with his glowing hand and-
I kicked him in the leg and he faceplanted into the water. The nearly-complete symbol hovering in midair crumbled into insubstantial dust, his hand flared with light, and then his body simply burst into ghostly wisps that quickly vanished into nothing.
I shuffled back against the side of the car, breathing quickly. My hand hurt and I immediately turned it over to look. The symbol had returned to its normal color and both lines had vanished.
“...What?” I whispered aloud.
...
Later, I walked down the street outside of the hospital. I had made some weak excuse about spilling water from the sink to explain the soaked bedsheets. They didn’t exactly believe me, but were unable to prove anything else and let me go anyway. My back and arm now joined the other still-healing injuries, though thankfully it was nothing worse than a bruise in either case. I was still coughing and still had to take the aerosol twice daily for a week, but the bleeding had stopped and I felt okay enough to stand up on my own.
I kept my left hand tightly closed around the little metal object I had found at the bottom of the last train car minutes before waking up: a tiny brass key that looked like it belonged to a filing cabinet. It had the sequence “MA4871S” engraved on it, normal-looking bidding, and seemed unremarkable in every way. Except that I had taken it from a dream.
I went home. What else was I going to do? By the time I got there, my lungs were complaining again and I had to sit down for a while. I’d probably be weak like this for a few more days at least; it was very lucky there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage. I texted grandpa the pictures from the purple beach, let him know I was out of the hospital, and then slid onto the couch to decide what to do with my Saturday.
It’s 11am, I’m physically exhausted already, and I have so many more leads than just yesterday. The phone call, the “Order.” The word “metzmatan.” The subway key and its engraving. The man who tried to dream-kidnap me and his much more advanced control over the symbol. And of course, grandpa’s leads on the blood moon cult, possibly the same as this “Order.”
So much to investigate, so little energy to do so.
To make things even worse, grandpa texted me again, saying the book on the blood moon cult was missing. He had gone to re-read and make copies of a few pages only to find it simply not in the library maintained by the history club. The “librarian” - really just Dyn - said grandpa had texted him yesterday to borrow the book. During the time his number had been hijacked. Clearly, whoever had stolen his number and called me had also stolen this book.
I should investigate...
- The weird phone call and the message they gave me.
️ - The “metzmatan;” the symbol.
- The subway key and its engraving.
- The blood moon cult; the “Order.”
[Or something else! Write-in options or specify leads/theories in #story_discussion.]
(Winner: ️ )
- The weird phone call and the message they gave me.
️ - The “metzmatan;” the symbol.
- The subway key and its engraving.
- The blood moon cult; the “Order.”
[Or something else! Write-in options or specify leads/theories in #story_discussion.]
(Winner: ️ )
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Scene 25
Unfortunately, there was nothing I could really do about the book thief. Instead, I decided to focus on some research of my own. Hopefully that wouldn’t require much physical activity, but would still be productive enough to not feel guilty.
I wanted to know about the “metzmatan,” as the strange man had called it. The symbol on my hand, and on his as well. Related to an old order of blood moon-worshipping priests with some control over dreams. There had to be enough information there for me to find something, right? I got to work.
Just typing it into a search engine didn’t bring anything relevant up; mostly just snippets from documents containing lists of names where a person with the last name Metz happened to be next to a person with the first name Matan. So I tried a few different spellings, since I didn’t actually know if I was spelling it correctly. Not much there either. I tried fragments, added different keywords, ran various permutations through translators and online dictionary searchers. Nothing major until finally, something clicked.
A dictionary returned a “did you mean...?” result, prompting if I had misspelled the word. I clicked into the website, one of the local universities in my city. Pages on local indiginous people and their languages. “-matlan,” read one of the entries: “in the hand of.”
That could be a coincidence, I supposed. It wasn’t the right spelling or the right pronunciation, but it was a word from a language spoken in this area at exactly the timeframe this cult had been operating. And it related to a hand: the location where the symbol was inscribed.
I focused on the “metz” part next, digging through the website further until I found a possible match. It didn’t take long before I found “metztli,” which could mean “leg,” but could also mean “moon.” “Metzmatan:” in the hand of the moon? The moon in your hand? Or something? The translation wasn’t exact, and the phonetics were still off, but the broad meaning made sense. Maybe the word had been warped over the centuries into its present form, maybe I was missing some other connection, or maybe this whole thing was a coincidence and I was looking too hard into something that didn’t actually matter.
To be safe, I sent an email to one of the professors at the university who was listed in the contact page on the website. Maybe they’d be able to help further. The warning about doing things alone still weighed heavily in the back of my mind, but I figured this would be fine. It wasn’t like I was revealing anything actually magical.
Then I took a break. Got some food, watched some shows, made a little progress in my latest story. Some imagery from my recent dreams started to leak onto the page, my characters exploring flooded tunnels or purple beaches. No one would know.
After dinner and a bit more writing, I wanted to look into one more thing before giving up on productivity for the day. Nothing too elaborate, but I tried typing “MA4871S” - the sequence from the subway key - into a search engine. No relevant results; just college class codes for either math or manufacturing courses. I tried a few more permutations but didn’t come up with any good results, then called it a night. I had already discovered something promising with the metzmatan thing; I didn’t need to figure everything out today. Even though it felt like I was on the clock with the Devil hunting me, and now these probable cult members too, there wasn’t a hard deadline anywhere. I’d be okay.
Later that night, hair still damp from the shower, I sat on my bed and stared at the unassuming brass key on my nightstand. “I should leave you here so I don’t lose you,” I told the key. “But what if I end up at the subway in tonight’s dream? What if I need you?”
As one might expect, the key didn’t have much to offer in the way of advice.
- Take the key into my dream tonight.
- Take my phone instead.
- Take both.
- Don’t take anything.
- Across the country, in a different city...
️ - Out in the quiet, moonlit desert...
- Centuries in the past...
- Right here, right now...
(Winners: , ️ )
- Take the key into my dream tonight.
- Take my phone instead.
- Take both.
- Don’t take anything.
- Across the country, in a different city...
️ - Out in the quiet, moonlit desert...
- Centuries in the past...
- Right here, right now...
(Winners: , ️ )
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Scene 26
I decided against it. Too risky; I should probably figure out what the subway key actually unlocked before trying to take it into my dreams anywhere. At least in the real world, I could be fairly certain it wouldn’t get up and walk off my nightstand.
...
Out in the quiet, moonlit desert, I sat alone on a flat, red rock. Smoothly carved and polished over eons, dusted with a sprinkling of sand, and left to while away the centuries sleeping and dreaming beneath a slowly changing sky.
I could feel the desert around me, through the rock. As the fat, heavy sun finally sank beneath the horizon, the creatures of the desert stirred to life. Ants marched unceasingly on, carrying bits of food back to the nest. Tiny frogs hunted the ants and scorpions hunted the frogs. Foxes, bobcats, and coyotes prowled the wastes. Cacti stood tall and strong, the defining flora of the desert and proud of it.
And then, lurking just behind those common creatures were... the others. The demons that haunted this land, or so they said. Shadowy presences walking quietly in the dark. Some lingered nearby, just beyond a nearby dune. Their attention was unfocused, but they were aware of me. Well, I was aware of them, too. It was only fair.
“Leah,” someone spoke behind me. I opened my eyes and got to my feet, then turned around to address the robed man standing just below.
“Master. I am here, as you requested.”
“I can see that.” The man pulled back his hood to reveal a dark-skinned, bald head lined with tattoos. Each one had a specific ritual purpose. I only knew a handful. “It is time for you to earn your metzmatan.”
I took a step back, my broadened awareness fading with my focus. “Really? Now; tonight?!”
“If you are ready for it.”
I jumped off the rock as he gestured, landing in a puff of dust. “I’ve never been more ready in my life.”
“Good.” He ushered me forwards, around the rock to a relatively clear patch of sand. No plants or stones in the way. “Draw your circle.”
The familiar symbol of the metzmatan took shape on the sand as I coaxed lines and curves out of the earth. A trickle of water, a dash of luminous powder. Master didn’t inspect the circle before closing his hand, whispering a short phrase, and blessing the glyph. My hair lifted for a moment and my clothes rustled. That was all.
“Is it working? Did I draw it right?”
“You will know shortly, if you continue. If the circle is weak, the demon will break it. I will not save you. A true priest of the Order must have confidence in their own abilities, for no one else may accompany you on the road to the Gate.” He paused for a moment as a slight breeze picked up, then stopped. “Are you confident that your glyph will keep you safe?”
“...” I inspected the lines. They looked good, but... “What if I’m not?”
“Then we stop now and you practice until you are. The next blood moon is in sixteen months. You can try again then.”
“I’m confident now.”
Master nodded, then retrieved a pouch from his belt and handed it to me. “This is the base of your offering. Open it and enrich it with your own essence.”
I opened the bag, revealing a mixture of crushed leaves, seeds, and nuts. All manner of desert flora were represented. A heady aroma wafted up. “I didn’t bring a...”
Master handed me his ritual knife without comment. I grasped it reverently; I had never held it before. Each knife was unique, forged by an individual as part of their initiation into the Order as a full priest. Each one contained a small percentage of starmetal originally from meteorites, melted back down for reuse once the owner no longer needed it. If all went well, I would have my own before long.
A cut, a wince, a dribble of deep scarlet into the bag. “That will be enough,” he said. “Close the pouch and bind your wound before continuing.”
I did so. Something shuffled closer behind the dune. The shadows I had noticed earlier grew closer. “Master...” I whispered, tying a bandage. “I hear them.”
“They are what you are trying to attract. Ready? Good.” He took several paces back, into his own circle. I hadn’t noticed him drawing it. “Open the pouch and place it outside your circle, at the apex closest to the demons you sense.”
I did. My hands tingled briefly, as if they were falling asleep, as they passed over the line in the sand.
“Now, sing to them. They will come. Under the light of the blood moon, they will come.”
I looked up, noting the red tinge on the moon. It would only be a few minutes before the color was at its deepest. Shadows grew darker. “I’m sorry; sing to them?”
“Sing to them, Leah. It doesn’t matter what you sing; just that you are calm and continuous. Many priests use lullabies; others use hymns or even a melody of their own design. It can be more effective if the song has meaning to you, but anything will work.”
“I - I didn’t - I’m not... good - at singing,” I stuttered.
“You are committed now. The offering has been made. Sing, Leah.”
“I - uh...” I couldn’t think of anything. The moon grew darker. In my peripheral vision, the dune moved. Little lights appeared over the sand. Something approached.
“Leah! SING!”
- Leah gets her act together and sings.
- Master intervenes by providing a melody to sing to.
- Leah can’t figure out anything to sing.
️ - I notice what’s going on.
(Winner: )
- Leah gets her act together and sings.
- Master intervenes by providing a melody to sing to.
- Leah can’t figure out anything to sing.
️ - I notice what’s going on.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 27
I thought of something. A melody from... I didn’t remember where, but that wasn’t important right now. It didn’t have words. I’d have to make them up. SING!
“In the desert; the moonlit desert...” The demon grew closer, more defined. Like a shambling mound of dark, glossy jelly. “There is always saaaand.” My mind raced, trying to come up with literally any lyrics that fit the tune of the song before my mouth got there.
“In the desert; the moonlit desert: vast and empty laaaaand...” Wind picked up, whipping around the circle. Particles of sand swirled around me like a miniature tornado, though none of them made it into the circle itself. The demon slid closer. Its gelatinous body seemed full of hundreds of tiny lights arranged in complicated patterns. It reminded me of translucent, bioluminescent creatures from the deep sea.
“Come to me, little demon creature; come and get your herbs...” It wasn’t particularly little, but I didn’t have the luxury of thinking too long about this. The thing was close now; only a half dozen feet away from my circle and the size of a large shed. The lights in its body pulsed in hypnotic patterns.
“Flavored with my delicious blood; don’t leave it for the birds...” That was an awkward line for sure. Thankfully, the creature didn’t seem to mind. Master had said it didn’t matter what I sang; maybe I could get away with just repeating the first two lines? Wait, no, the next part had a different tune.
“You are who I seek; please now give me my own metzmataaaan...” The demon extended a small portion of its mass to the very edge of my circle, drawing the bag into itself. It drew closer still, looming imposingly. Pressing its body against the invisible barriers of force that kept me safe. I shrank back, anxious, but stayed in my circle and continued singing.
“Help me join the Order and I will move quickly ooonnnnn...” There was a crackling sound from the circle as little sparkles of light burst just on the boundary. The demon slipped forward an inch as some invisible force slipped, hovering just on the edge of the lines. I could feel the chill emanating from its skin. A tiny dollop of some unknown liquid dripped onto my sleeve. I took another step back, acutely conscious that I didn’t have any more steps to take. The circle’s opposite edge hummed just at my back. The song’s melody repeated after that line, so I started over.
“In the desert; the moonlit desert...” The demon slowly oozed down the barrier, returning to sway gently just in front of my circle. Several of the lines now steamed, ragged from the strain of holding up against the thing’s weight. Above me, the moon grew dark. It was time.
“Leah! Now! Place your hand on it!”
I reached through the circle and touched the demon’s body. There was a flash of red light, a searing pain on my palm, and the sound of a deep, cosmic note. I withdrew back into the circle, falling to my knees and cradling my burned hand, as the demon quickly retreated back into the desert. Master approached and knelt next to me, clapping me on the shoulder.
“Well done, Leah! You are one of us now, fully and completely. Welcome to the Order, Priestess.”
Burned into my hand, the metzmatan’s soft glow slowly faded. I had done it. I had really, truly done it.
...
I woke up late, groggy and with a clogged nose. I grumbled at the sun, stumbled to the bathroom, coughed a distressing glob of something into the sink, and took another dose of the aerosol medicine. Felt marginally better. Pulled myself together for the day. At least, enough to be decent if I had to answer the door. I was not leaving the house feeling like this.
Nearly an hour after I got up, something occurred to me: I hadn’t dreamed last night. Or if I had, I didn’t remember it. I pondered this for a minute.
I guess that’s not really unusual; I didn’t always remember my dreams before this happened. Especially when I’m sick. And I haven’t really had the symbol long enough to know if this is weird or not. Maybe it doesn’t actually help me remember dreams like I thought it did, or maybe I just didn’t have any?
Still, I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing something important. If only I could remember! Of course, trying to recall only pushed the memories further out of reach. I sighed, coughed again, and collapsed back onto my bed, groaning. “This sucks,” I mumbled into the sheets. “Wish I could do the golden light thing now.”
I considered this. Sat up, looked at my palm. “Surely I can’t actually do the golden light thing in real life. Surely.”
I tried to do the golden light thing. It didn’t work. I couldn’t feel anything from the symbol; it just didn’t have the sense of latent power like it did in dreams. Guess that would be too much to ask.
- Investigate the weird phone call and message.
- Investigate the subway key.
- Investigate the Order.
- Just do normal chores today; maybe my dream will come back to me.
(Winner: )
- Investigate the weird phone call and message.
- Investigate the subway key.
- Investigate the Order.
- Just do normal chores today; maybe my dream will come back to me.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 28
Well, it wasn’t like life stopped happening just because I had a magical symbol on my hand. I spent most of the day doing regular, boring, adult tasks like paying bills, cleaning the house, and passing out on the couch for an hour because my stupid lungs still weren’t working properly and I overextered myself cleaning. Again, no dreams. I couldn’t quite figure out what the rules were; I had dreamt of the purple beach during the few minutes I had been unconscious at the hospital, but there were no dreams last night or now, during this much longer nap?
I was vaguely hoping that memories of last night’s dreams would come back if I didn’t think too hard about them, but they didn’t. Sometimes it worked like that, where I’d suddenly remember some details in the middle of doing something else. No such luck today, unfortunately.
Make and eat dinner, spend another few fruitless attempts trying to find anything on the subway key, cry at the season finale of my favorite show, and feverishly write up a short non-canon epilogue for it. Before I knew it, it was already past 11 pm and time to go to bed in order to get up for work tomorrow. What a life.
...
“Ticket, please.”
I blinked awake, peeling my face off the window where I had been passed out, and dug through my bag to find the ticket. Handed it to the conductor. He considered it, inspecting the paper through a many-layered magnifying glass. Finally satisfied, he tore it in half and handed me the stub, then silently continued on his way.
While moving the ticket stub back into my bag, I caught sight of a strange burn on my hand. Two seconds later, I knew I was in a dream.
I stood up to get a better look at what was going on. I was wearing a long, light pink dress and a kerchief - absolutely not my style in reality - and was standing in the aisle of a long, wood-and-leather train carriage. A peek out the window revealed we were moving through a desert very much like anywhere about half an hour outside my city. The sky was cloudy and light rain drummed on the train’s roof; very much unlike anywhere near my city.
There were other people in the car, all dressed in similar sorts of upper class, vaguely old-fashioned attire. Suits for the men; dresses for the women. Almost without fail. I blended into the crowd fairly well, except for my skin tone and facial features: everyone else on the train was extremely white and very homogeneous. My symbol didn’t hurt and was still its normal dull red color, so I figured I was on my own for now. Time to go look around.
I worked my way through the crowd towards the front of the train, figuring anything terribly important would probably be in the engine. Fancy people whispered and glanced at me as I passed, swirling their wine and making disapproving clicks. I tried to ignore them, but couldn’t block all the mutters. “Like the desert savages?” “Really going to trust Easterners?” “No, look at her skin.” “Think she stole that dress?” “And that tattoo; disgraceful!”
A warm blush crept up my face as I looked down and continued on my way. These people weren’t even real. Just dream projections, maybe even of my own anxiety. They had no power over me. Still, it was incredibly uncomfortable.
The door at the end of the car clicked open and admitted me outside, balancing briefly between two cars. Rain stung my face and wind whipped at my hair. I managed not to lose the kerchief as I shoved open the opposite door and stumbled into the next car, glad to be away from the judging fancy people.
This appeared to be a dinner car. It was full of very similar-looking people to the car I had just left. Many of them were staring disapprovingly at me and starting up the muttering again. Thankfully, after I squeezed into an empty seat near the window and they lost sight of me directly, they got distracted by their food and returned to eating. I sighed in relief, glancing out the window into the rainy desert. The sand wasn’t flooding or turning to mud; the rain just sort of vanished as it fell beneath the wheels. Just for ambience, I guessed. Seriously, why did all my dreams involve water?
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
I turned. A waiter stood beside me, holding a covered plate. “Me?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He removed the cover to reveal a tall, delicate glass of some bubbly red-pink liquid, as well as a small stack of thinly-sliced vegetables drizzled in some yellow-green sauce. “A gift from that gentleman over there, in the corner.”
I looked. The gentleman in the corner grinned in my direction, revealing pointed teeth. He wore an impeccably clean maroon suit, though in an older style than I was used to. Still, he had the same face and the same orange-yellow eyes. The Devil was sitting casually no more than twenty feet away.
He had promised to kill me the last time we met. A wave of terror crashed over me as he turned back to his steak, seemingly entirely uninterested in me.
“Ma’am, will you accept the gift?” The waiter blinked, noticing my expression. “Are you okay?”
- Run! Get away, back down the train, as fast as possible. Away from him.
- Run! Past him, towards the front of the train. Maybe he’s trying to block my path?
- Something’s odd here. He’s not chasing me. Accept the gift, but warily, and be ready to leave.
- Something’s odd here. He’s not chasing me. Approach the Devil. Ask what he’s up to.
(Winner: )
- Run! Get away, back down the train, as fast as possible. Away from him.
- Run! Past him, towards the front of the train. Maybe he’s trying to block my path?
- Something’s odd here. He’s not chasing me. Accept the gift, but warily, and be ready to leave.
- Something’s odd here. He’s not chasing me. Approach the Devil. Ask what he’s up to.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 29
... He wasn’t chasing me. He wasn’t even looking at me. Something very strange was going on.
“S-sure,” I said. “And I’m fine.”
The waiter paused, but seemed to accept my answer. “Very good, ma’am. Enjoy.”
I glanced at the Devil again. No change. Experimentally, I tried to wake up. Felt for the sheets. Nothing there; I was stuck. So he was still holding me here; what was his game? What was he playing at?
Leaving aside the possibility of poison for the moment - it didn’t seem like his style - I cautiously tried the “gift.” The drink seemed to be some sort of vaguely strawberry-flavored champagne, while the vegetables had a surprising amount of flavor due to the sauce... but were a little overdone. “Fine” was about the best I’d rate it. Nothing special, for sure. I still didn’t understand what he was doing. Why chase me through my dreams for months, brand me with a metzmatan, threaten to kill me, then not do that? Was it a scare tactic? A ploy? What was the POINT?!
He stood up, nodded to a nearby waiter, and slowly walked down the aisle. I bolted to my feet as well, unwilling to be trapped in the booth, and retreated towards the door I had just come through. Hands up defensively. Looking ready to fight didn’t improve my image with the fancy people, who muttered disapprovingly. I wasn’t sure if I could use the metzmatan to do anything beyond the healing golden light stuff, but I intended to find out if he got much closer.
The Devil stopped and smiled pleasantly. “Good evening, Suyeon.”
Just as before, his actual voice never registered; only the words came through. I could hear my too-fast heartbeat, even though he wasn’t doing anything. “S-stay back. I don’t know what you’re doing, but-”
He took a step forward. I took a step back, now pressed up against the door. “Such fear...” A long, slow breath in. “Delightful, wouldn’t you say?”
I didn’t respond.
“I’m not hunting tonight. You can relax.”
Pressed back against the door and with one hand on the handle, I shook my head.
“Suit yourself.” He took another step forward. I didn’t have anywhere to go without leaving the car entirely and stayed put. A wider grin. “What brings you here tonight?”
Unsurprisingly, my voice was unsteady. “What do you mean? I didn’t ch-choose to come here.”
“But you did. Your thoughts prior to sleeping have a great impact on your dreams. Even more so with that symbol on your palm. So try again; why are you here?”
Another step. I still didn’t dare flee. The words spilled out of my mouth almost without my consent. “The... the subway key. Maybe?”
The Devil grinned even wider, the corners of his mouth stretching across his face farther than should be possible. “The subway key. Recovered in a confrontation against one of your... contemporaries. Well? Are you prepared to use it?”
“I - I don’t know what... the key...”
“Disappointing.” Another step. “Perhaps you would have been better served with one of those desert wraithbeasts as your patron.”
“Patron?!” I stammered. “Y-you? You’ve done nothing but try to kill me for weeks!”
A shrug, another step. Only a few more and he’d be right next to me. “Other priests would kill their own family without a second thought in order to be marked by my metzmatan. The hunts are required for it to function effectively. Lesser demons may have lesser demands, but grant lesser boons.”
“I NEVER ASKED FOR THIS!” I shouted, causing a wave of tittering to erupt among the fancy people. “Take your boon back and give it to one of those other priests, then!” I held out my marked hand, easily within his reach. “Take it back and leave me alone!”
The Devil grasped my wrist in one hand and traced the symbol with the other. His skin was burning hot and my arm shook with growing discomfort. “Did you ever stop to wonder, Ms Che, why I picked you out of the billions of human beings on this globe? Why not one of the ‘other priests,’ as you say?”
“Only ALL THE TIME!” Pain mounted in my wrist, his grip like burning iron.
“Good.” The Devil released my arm and I yanked it back, trembling. “You have some things to consider, then.” He turned snappily on one heel, then spoke another few sentences over his shoulder. “Seek the Gate; learn the Key; break the Lock. That’s what they’ll have you do. The rewards are great, though so are the dangers. Next time we meet, you may want to run.”
“Wh-” I couldn’t decide between “Wait!” and “WHAT?!”, so I settled on a compromise and slid down the door to cradle my not-actually burnt arm. Thankfully, the pain faded over the next minute and left no trace behind, just like the Devil himself. He had vanished, taking the oppressive sense of anxiety along with him.
Someone threw a tiny wineglass at me. It missed, shattering on the floor by my feet, but the liquid within splattered on my dress. I glanced up, catching sight of a large, haughty woman quickly turning away from me. No glass by her plate.
- “ExCUSE ME?!” Confront her.
- “...” Just leave the carriage.
️ - Wake up. Now that the Devil’s gone, I can.
(Winner: )
- “ExCUSE ME?!” Confront her.
- “...” Just leave the carriage.
️ - Wake up. Now that the Devil’s gone, I can.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 30
“... ExCUSE ME?!” I stood up and stomped past the glass shards to the woman who had thrown the glass. She pretended not to notice me. “Hey! HEY! Look at me; what the hell is your problem?!”
No response. I broadened my address. “Any of you! What’s with the mutters, the side-eyes, the stares? What do you have against me?!”
No one spoke. There were a couple of awkward coughs and glances away. Someone made a motion to get out of their chair and leave, but stopped when I glared in their direction. The woman still hadn’t looked at me and I had had enough. “You could have actually hurt me with that! What is WRONG WITH YOU?!” I grabbed her shoulder and pulled, trying to force her to turn.
Instead, my symbol burned bright red and my arm suddenly grew many times stronger. I ripped the woman out of the seat and threw her behind me, slamming her into the opposite wall of the train. The ripped sleeve of her dress dangled from my hand, shading the red light.
She shouted in surprise and pain, then noticed the ruined sleeve. “You... YOU BITCH!”
I dropped the sleeve, eyes darting between the woman and my hand. Only the inner triangle was producing the glow; the outer circle was dim. It quickly faded as I held up both hands placatingly. “I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to - I just-”
Someone else threw a bottle. A heavy one, this time; not just a tiny wineglass. I flinched back as it thunked against my shoulder, thankfully staying intact and even more thankfully missing my head. I couldn’t tell who threw it; the crowd was too dense and homogeneous. The red light on my hand died out as anger was replaced by fear; most of the crowd had some sort of potential glass weapon and none of them looked friendly.
“Look, I’ll just-”
The woman screeched and hurled herself off the floor. I jumped, startled, then was immediately bowled over and pinned to the ground by her charge. She was so much heavier than me that I couldn’t hope to escape through conventional means; the only option would be waking up or using the metzmatan. Unfortunately, I didn’t decide what to do in time.
“Help me teach her a lesson, will you?”
Several people from the crowd rushed forward to assist, pinning my arms at the woman’s direction. The metzmatan flickered between various colors of light on my left hand as I frantically tried to activate it in some way, but I couldn’t touch anything with it and its powers were therefore useless. That only left me with one more option. I closed my eyes, breathed in, and focused on reality. Come on, come on; I can’t be asleep like this...
The woman slapped me across the face and broke my concentration. “HEY! Pay attention!” She raised her hand and I cringed back, too worked up to wake up. Why does this always happen why can’t I just wake up whenever I-
She ripped the sleeves off my dress. Grabbed a steak knife from one of the plates above and - before I had time to freak out about being stabbed - roughly cut the fabric off. “Fucking barbarian bitch,” she growled. “Teach you to mind your goddamn betters.”
I didn’t know whether to be terrified, incensed, or relieved.
She didn’t stop there, however, using the steak knife to carve jagged cuts through my dress all throughout its length. This process took several agonizing minutes of being pinned to the floor, heart pounding as I worried that any next stroke would be through skin instead of cloth, unable to focus long enough to wake up because one of the woman’s assistants would slap me every time I closed my eyes to try.
Finally, she had gotten it out of her system. Tore the kerchief out of my hair and cut it into two ragged pieces, then at last, stood up. “Don’t try that again or the next place this is going is through your neck.” She waved the steak knife menacingly, then picked up her sleeve and daintily returned to her seat. The rest of the fancy people also resumed their normal activities, leaving me on the floor.
I didn’t move for almost a minute before cautiously sitting up and darting to the exit. Little scraps of fabric fluttered as I moved, the dress disintegrating with every step. Good thing it wasn’t mine. Hauled open the door, lost more fragments of cloth to the wind and rain outside, then shoved my way into the next car. I just wanted to be away from the fancy people for a moment to collect my thoughts and decide what to do next. And, thank god, I found myself right next to a toilet compartment. The passengers in this car hardly had time to stare before I slipped in and locked the door.
The mirror proved that I was physically fine; nothing but a little redness on my face where I had been slapped several times. The dress was pretty much done for and would probably fall apart if I kept going much longer. I knew the passengers weren’t real people (probably? I guess I didn’t actually know for sure), but... I’d need new clothes if I wanted to stay. For multiple reasons.
... God, there was a lot to digest. The Devil, him claiming to be my “patron,” asking why he picked me, the subway key. The fancy people and their disgust towards me. The red light on my hand; I hadn’t meant to be so violent! It had just... I glared at my hand, now back to just its normal dim red glow. “You did that because I was angry,” I scolded it. “Control yourself next time. I’m really lucky the only loss was this dress.”
Could I... use that power on my own, without the emotion behind it? Like I could with the golden light? I focused and wiped the redness off my face with a glow of gold, then tried to form my thoughts in a way that would... do what? Hurt someone? I sighed and looked away from the mirror. It wasn’t as easy as just flicking a switch.
️ - Wake up.
- Try to get to the engine.
- Stay put as long as possible. See if the train ever arrives anywhere.
️ - Get off the train; explore the desert.
(Winner: )
️ - Wake up.
- Try to get to the engine.
- Stay put as long as possible. See if the train ever arrives anywhere.
️ - Get off the train; explore the desert.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 31
The train chugged onwards. I stayed in the locked toilet compartment for a while, unwilling to go back out but also not exactly wanting to wake myself up. I could really use the rest and it seemed like the peril had mostly passed. Tried a few more times to activate my metzmatan with the dangerous, bright red light from before - that would be really helpful if I could use it on command - but couldn’t figure out how to make it work. It wasn’t like the golden light where I had been able to just command my body to heal and it did.
Maybe I just wasn’t angry enough. I really hoped this wasn’t going to be a thing that I could only do when I was furious. I always hated powers like that in shows - ones that were tied to emotions. It always felt like there had to be a way to make it work on command and the anger thing was just an excuse to make the character less overpowered. Of course, my life wasn’t a mediocre TV show.
Still, I couldn’t make it work. Maybe I just needed some more familiarity with it; I’d try again later.
After I finished failing to make the metzmatan work, I sat around and picked idly at the loose fabric on my dress. Vaguely wondered why I always seemed to get new clothes when entering dreams - and lose them when exiting - but I could take other items in and out. Maybe it was just because I wasn’t intending to? Maybe I could, and I just hadn’t tried yet? I resolved to give it a shot even though this dress was utterly ruined, just to find out.
Suddenly, it got dark. I stood up and looked out the window to see the cloudy desert daylight vanishing into the distance behind the train: the mouth of a tunnel. We had entered a... for lack of a better word, a subway.
“... Wait a minute.”
...
I woke up to my alarm, grumbled a bit, and failed to get up. Closed my eyes, trying to remember the details of my dream. A train... the Devil, the woman, the tunnel. Yes. I rolled over, grabbed my phone, and started taking notes so I wouldn’t forget. Lots of important details. I - hang on. I sat up in bed, shedding more strips of pink fabric onto the sheets. Oh.
Turns out I could take clothes back with me, but at a cost. My own night clothes were gone, presumably disappeared into the train bathroom where I had stolen this dress from. Not exactly a fair trade, but at least I knew how it worked now. Sort of.
I paused a moment in my note-taking, considering this. My dreams so far hadn’t really seemed shy about giving me full, appropriate outfits for each scenario, and the Devil had said my thoughts before sleeping affected where I went. Maybe I could go clothes shopping in my dreams? Just trade old, cheap night clothes for new, fancy outfits? A brief smirk at the absurdity. It felt like a dumb idea, but I couldn’t come up with a reason why it wouldn’t work, based on what I knew so far. Anyway, back to note-taking.
Thankfully, my lungs felt better today and I could go to work. Grabbed a dose of the aerosol medicine and headed out to the station. It was surprisingly pleasant out this morning: sunny, not too hot, and with a light breeze. A welcome break from the heat of last week before the inevitable onslaught of summer weather. I wasn’t looking forward to July in Arizona; I was from the midwest originally and had yet to experience a southern summer since I had only moved here this February. Thank god for air conditioning.
“Su, where have you been? What’s with the mask?”
“Hm?” I had only made it halfway down the hallway to my office when Josie appeared out of an adjacent lounge space and gestured me in. “I’ve been sick? And the mask is in case I’m still sick?” Almost the truth. In reality, I was feeling mostly better but still coughed up just a little bit of blood every so often. No one else needed that in their face.
“You, uh, feeling alright? You can just stay home if you need to, right?”
I shrugged. “I’m okay.” There were several other people in the room that I didn’t immediately recognize; no one was from my team. “Am I interrupting a meeting or something...?”
“No, no! We’re just waiting for the rest of the team to get here before heading out to the test range.”
“The - whuh? Where’d - what are we testing?”
Josie winked. “Centurion.”
“You’re joking.”
“No, no. Prop Dev said their latest design - wait, you’re in PD. Why didn’t you - you were gone on Friday!”
I put the pieces together. “The design I left running on Thursday night... worked? And no one told me?!”
“Well, it passed the sims, at least. And you know how rabid management’s been about getting something deliverable, yesterday.”
“Don’t I ever,” I grumbled.
“So QC pulled a weekend shift to set up a preliminary payload test at the northern range. And we’re gonna go watch that thing fly, or explode! In about five minutes.”
“But - why did no one tell me anything?” I grabbed my phone and checked my work email and calendar. Nothing from the team about the latest design, the test, or in fact anything at all beyond the usual spam and vague troubleshooting email chains.
Two more people walked into the room and Josie did a quick count. “I think that’s everyone. You all ready to watch Centurion fly? Or explode?”
Assorted words of excited agreement.
“Su, you coming? I think your team’s already out there. We can give you a ride.”
- Sure! I guess they forgot, but I should be there.
- No thanks. I guess I’m not needed there.
(Winner: )
- Sure! I guess they forgot, but I should be there.
- No thanks. I guess I’m not needed there.
(Winner: )
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Scene 32
“Uh, yeah, of course! I’m not missing this; they probably just forgot ‘cause I was gone on Friday.”
“That’s the spirit!”
We - Josie’s team and I - piled into a work van and headed out to the desert. All of Korman’s test sites were situated well outside of the city for obvious, rocket-falling-out-of-the-sky shaped reasons. We had blown up enough of these things that some local government officials were inching towards cancelling Korman’s special permit and requiring us to go through normal FAA approval procedures, but so far a liberal application of funds combined with a promise to try to avoid blowing up anything important had stalled that.
A large and assorted group of Korman engineers and scientists was already present at the launch site, the former working on verifying the rocket was actually ready to go and the latter verifying all the testing frameworks were actually set up properly. Everyone from propulsion development was here - I got a surprised apology from my team lead, who claimed he had forgotten to send out the invite after everyone agreed on the time at the meeting on Friday. I grumbled, but it seemed like it had just been an honest - if careless - mistake.
I had never been to the northern test range before, nearly an hour from the city limit into the desert, and spent some time exploring while the test was set up and the bulky, beetle-like shell of Centurion’s prototype slowly worked its way towards launch. There wasn’t much to see, really; just a few permanent bunkers set into sandy, reddish rock. The launch platform itself was nothing more than a slab of concrete. Everything had that trademark Korman minimalism. Clean, functional, but never fancy. The original Mr Korman who founded the company wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Still, I kept getting flashes of deja vu as I wandered around the site and helped set up the test leads for my team. Something here felt intensely familiar, but I wasn’t quite sure why. I started working backwards through my memories to try and figure it out.
In the van? No. Talking to Josie at the company building? The architecture was similar, but that probably wasn’t it. On the train to work? Nah. Getting ready at home? Nope, nothing there. In the train bathroom in my... dreams. Ah.
I pointed up at a particular rock formation and nudged Josie. “Hey, does that rock look like anything to you?”
She squinted at it, outlined against the brilliant blue sky. “I dunno, kind of like a spire? It’s pretty tall.”
“Look, just beneath the spire. You see those other ridges?”
“No...?”
“Right there.” I pressed in next to her in order to line up my viewpoint. “See? That horizontal line, then-”
“Ha! It’s a hand!”
“Pointing upwards! Like our rocket should. Isn’t that funny?”
“How do you see this stuff, Su? I wonder if that’s why they put the test range here; just for the symbolism. Feels like something Korman would do.”
“Maybe!” I let Josie get back to work at that point and wandered back to my own tasks. That particular rock formation - a finger pointing up to the sky - was one that I had just seen a few hours ago out the window of the train in my dream. Which meant the train had been going... north... west? Probably? And had passed by here... uh, there? I glanced between the finger and the horizon, trying to match up the mountain ranges. It wasn’t much use; I couldn’t remember the specifics in any detail. But the dream train had definitely (probably) passed through a real landscape, and that meant that the tunnel - the subway tunnel - it had entered just before I woke up could be real too! Maybe that’s where I can use the key, I thought. There was a range of low hills off in the northwest that could potentially match up with the train’s destination.
“Attention all personnel: please report to launch positions. Centurion will have ignition in five minutes.”
Hold that thought; it was go time.
After the launch, I should...
- Go take a peek at the low hills before heading back.
- As above, but also convince Josie or someone to come with me.
↩️ - Take a look at satellite or GIS mapping of the area, then come back later with more info.
- Get Centurion to take some readings of that area during its test flight. It’s supposed to be taking readings anyway; won’t hurt anything.
(Winner: ↩️ )
- Go take a peek at the low hills before heading back.
- As above, but also convince Josie or someone to come with me.
↩️ - Take a look at satellite or GIS mapping of the area, then come back later with more info.
- Get Centurion to take some readings of that area during its test flight. It’s supposed to be taking readings anyway; won’t hurt anything.
(Winner: ↩️ )
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Scene 33
I stood anxiously in a test bunker and watched the countdown. Of course, this wasn’t the real Centurion test, but it was still the farthest a prototype had ever gotten and the mood was tense. “$10 says it blows up before a hundred meters,” someone muttered. “$20 says it blows up on the launchpad,” someone else countered.
“Three... two... one... we have liftoff.”
A blaze of blue flame erupted from the base of the rocket - one of our new experimental fuel blends - and Centurion rose off the ground. The rocket trailed vapor and smoke as it climbed past a hundred meters without incident, then two, three, and ten.
Something small and metallic jettisoned off the side of the craft, followed by a deluge of white steam. The rocket lurched sideways, the flame wavered and cut out, and then the entire thing erupted into a beautiful blue fireball a kilometer and a half into the sky. Echoes thundered across the desert and shrapnel littered the dunes.
There was a collective groan of disappointment, a few seconds’ pause to reflect on the incident, then it was time to begin gathering the pieces and figuring out what went wrong.
Later that day back at the office, amidst poring over the flight data from Centurion, I got a response back from the professor I had emailed about the origin of the word “metzmatan.” Unfortunately, there wasn’t all that much of substance in the reply. They just noted that yes, the roots did seem related, and that there had been some records of linguistic drift in the area that could explain the difference. But the word wasn’t part of the indiginous language itself, though it could have been a proper noun.
I mentally shrugged; it seemed I was on the right track that the tribes of this area could be related to the metzmatan, but linguistics probably wasn’t the direction to approach that theory from. Maybe grandpa would have some more information for me before too long.
The rest of the day passed quickly with all Centurion teams busily deciphering the launch data to sort out possible causes of failure. I didn’t want to pass blame too quickly from incomplete data, but based on what I was seeing, it sure looked like the propulsion system had worked exactly as designed. Hopefully tomorrow would reveal that some small ancillary part had failed and we wouldn’t need more major revisions to get this thing in the air a second time.
Later that evening, I poked through a set of satellite images around the northern test site. Sifted through survey reports, borrowed from work, of the same area. Got excited. Texted grandpa, who knew exactly what I was talking about. He sent me back a handful of scanned newspaper articles and the title of a book that included more details: “The First Subway: A Comprehensive History of Marnosan Rail Transit.”
The articles confirmed my suspicions even if the book title hadn’t. There had been an active passenger rail line running northwest out of Marnosa to other burgeoning cities in the region, possibly even stretching as far as Nevada. And it had used tunnels that cut right through the hills I had noted earlier.
I spared a moment to clench my fists in victory and mouth a drawn-out “yessssss.” Obviously the newspaper articles didn’t have the exact tunnel locations - they were scans of a paper from hundreds of years ago that only mentioned the railway plans - but I knew they existed now. Or at least, they had existed. Grandpa wasn’t sure if any tunnels had survived to the present day; at a minimum, no modern trains used them.
But hey, it was a start. And everything lined up so well with the little brass subway key still lying innocently on my nightstand that I had trouble imagining this not working out.
But... what to do from here? I had the key, I knew the approximate location of the tunnels, and I had a few options. [I can enact more than one of these choices, especially those that aren’t very strenuous. Feel free to vote more than once.]
- Head out to the desert and search the area. Surely a train tunnel will be pretty obvious, right?
️ - Ask around work; the surveyors clearly found the tunnels, so maybe I can get some details from them.
- Go to the library and check out “The First Subway: A Comprehensive History of Marnosan Rail Transit.”
- Hold the subway key and think about the tunnels. Try to dream of them.
(Winners: ️ , )
- Head out to the desert and search the area. Surely a train tunnel will be pretty obvious, right?
️ - Ask around work; the surveyors clearly found the tunnels, so maybe I can get some details from them.
- Go to the library and check out “The First Subway: A Comprehensive History of Marnosan Rail Transit.”
- Hold the subway key and think about the tunnels. Try to dream of them.
(Winners: ️ , )
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Scene 34
I resolved to check with the surveyors at work to see if either of them had more details about the tunnels, as well as to go check out that book grandpa had mentioned. I couldn’t do either of those things at 10pm, though, so I tried my best to put the Devil’s advice into action (can’t believe I just said that) - I focused for at least half an hour before going to bed on what I wanted to dream about. It was hard to stay consistent for so long, especially since I kept thinking it was a silly idea, but I really wanted to try the whole clothing swap thing I had come up with last night. Not because I couldn’t afford to buy clothes normally; just...
I don’t know; it just seemed cool.
...
I walked past the greeter and nodded politely in response to their, well, greeting. Basked in the cool air of the enormous box store; glanced back to frown at the heat-shimmery parking lot outside.
“Alright, you ready? Race you to the-”
I blinked. Josie was here too, wearing running shorts, a tank top, and a sweatband. “Ready for - wait, what?”
“Go!” She darted off into the aisles. I ran too, a vague idea of what we were racing for painting itself in my mind. It was... yeah, that. Of course!
Merchandise, employees, and other patrons blurred through my vision as I ran. Sweat dripped into my eyes and I couldn’t wipe it away. My hair - too long! - joined in, obscuring my vision. I ran blindly deeper into the store, only able to make out the basic outlines of aisle markers and reading signs by touch. I couldn’t let Josie beat me, of course.
Eventually I slowed to a stop, breathing heavily and not sure where I was. The sweat problem worked itself out as soon as I stopped running and my hair returned to normal as I ran my hand through it. The aisles were much darker here, resembling more of a dull concrete warehouse than a department store. There weren’t any other patrons around either, and no Josie. Occasional employees passed in the distance, but they moved... strangely.
I turned around a few times but didn’t get any less lost. “... Josie?” I called. “You there?”
Echoes. An employee glanced in my direction but it didn’t have a face. Wouldn’t be able to help me.
The shelves grew taller. Or maybe I was shorter. “... Mom?” My voice was higher. “Mom, where are you!”
Cruel silence.
“Someone help! I don’t know where - where to go!”
Something rustled in a nearby display rack. “I can show you where you are,” one of the coats whispered.
“You can?” I cautiously approached the rack, trying to peek through the clothes to see whoever was inside. Coats couldn’t talk; even I knew that. “Where’s my mom?”
“Here, I have a map. Take a look.” An arm emerged, holding a piece of paper. I just had to get a little closer to read it. Stretched out a hand...
The symbol.
My perspective fractured and I watched from a dissociated, external point of view as my much-younger self reached for the map. “No!” I shouted. “RUN!”
A man burst from the display rack and grabbed little Su by the arm. Both of us screamed. The man cackled and dragged us into the rack. A terrible, chemical smell. Announcements over the store PA. Flashing blue and red lights; sirens. Mother shook her head in disgust as a police officer explained the situation. A different officer wrapped me in a blanket. I looked down, empty.
“Are you stupid, Su?”
“...” A sniffle.
“Really, what were you thinking?”
“...” I held back tears.
“The first rule we taught you about going out on your own; what is it?”
“...” I couldn’t speak or I would cry. I didn’t want to cry.
“TELL ME!” A hand slammed onto the table.
“D-Don-Don’t-” I broke down into sobs.
Mother tsk’d. “You must do better. Maybe your father will be able to talk some sense into you.” She sighed and left. I hurt - heard. I heard muffled discussion outside the door. More tears splashed onto the carpet. I could still smell that chemical. It was on my skin; in my hair.
I shook myself out of the trance, finding myself standing in the corner of the room and watching my younger self cry. Again. This was getting to be a disturbing staple of some of my dreams. The landscape outside of the room was a sort of misty, smoky grey, like it just wasn’t important. This wasn’t right. Was this really what had happened?
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember. Everything was such a jumble. Dad had come in next, right?
On cue, he entered. Approached, hugged me. “It’s okay, pumpkin. I’m here for you.”
Now that I was lucid, I had to steer the memory. How had it gone, again?
- I was grateful for his support and he calmed me down.
- I was still very upset and demanded to know why mother was being so mean.
❓ - No, wait. He hadn’t been there. Wasn’t he on a business trip or something? So hard to remember...
(Winner: )
- I was grateful for his support and he calmed me down.
- I was still very upset and demanded to know why mother was being so mean.
❓ - No, wait. He hadn’t been there. Wasn’t he on a business trip or something? So hard to remember...
(Winner: )
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Scene 35
“...” I leaned into him.
“It’s okay,” he repeated. “I’ve got you; you’re safe.”
“... I don’t want to go shopping anymore.”
“You won’t have to. Not until you’re ready.”
I heard muttering from outside. Frowned, stepped closer. I could move away from my younger self. A door materialized from the mist, but I was insubstantial enough that I could simply walk through it.
Mother - face obscured by a mess of scribbles - stood with a police officer. I could hear their conversation. This was new.
“... can’t believe she would do something so stupid.”
“Ma’am, please calm down. We just need your account of what happened.”
“There’s not much to say.” Her voice was clipped even with the officer, like she was repressing a burning rage. “I was buying clothes with my daughter, looked away for a few seconds, and then she was gone. The store couldn’t find her, so we called you.”
“Right. And how old is your daughter, again?”
“Six years old.”
“Okay...” The officer made a note on his clipboard. “And just to confirm, you personally did search for her as well? You only said the store earlier, but-”
“Of course I did! How dare you suggest such a thing!”
“Right, right.” Another note. “Do you have a good relationship with your daughter, Mrs Che?”
I winced and stumbled back as a screeching, static-like noise crackled over the scene. My vision blurred as mother grew taller, more distorted. “I don’t have to take this from you! I know my rights.”
She turned in a curtain of flame, swatting the officer away. I didn’t see what happened to him as he flew into the mist. Mother slammed the door open, startling dad and my younger self. “Come on, you two. We’re leaving.”
The distortion grew stronger and more painful as she came closer to little Su to the point where I cried out, hands over my ears to block out the noise, and swiped at the air to change the scene.
I gasped for breath, on my hands and knees in a box store clothing department. Stood up quickly, staring in all directions for any danger. No mother, no creepy men, no strangely-moving employees. Just normal patrons in the distance, though no one was nearby.
Well. I guess I knew what mother had thought of that whole ordeal now. The details were still sort of loose and foggy, but I had gotten the gist. Amazing how I could listen in on conversations that I had never heard before; maybe I had caught some mutters through the door and my dreams were just sharpening up the detail? Yeah, that made sense.
... I needed to do something about this. I couldn’t keep having nightmares about my mother every night that I wasn’t being chased by the Devil or hunted by a cultist in my dreams. I needed some sort of break. I just... didn’t know what to do. I had already cut her out of my life as much as possible. I hadn’t spoken to her in over a year. What else did I need to do? What else could I do?
I shook my head. I didn’t know.
... Those were some odd-looking clothes.
Amidst the backdrop of the clothing department generally, there were three mannequins that caught my eye as out of place. They stood alone, across from an empty fitting room. I walked closer to inspect them.
The one on the left wore a pretty standard black polo with black slacks - more or less what I’d wear to work pretty regularly - but on the left side of the chest, where the corporate logo would normally be, was the metzmatan symbol inscribed in deep red thread.
The one in the middle wore a shimmery, flowy, golden-yellow dress that seemed fit for a high-class fancy party or ceremony. The way the fabric folded and shifted among itself reminded me somewhat of desert sand dunes. Here, too, the metzmatan symbol was present: this time on the long, semitranslucent gloves that accompanied the dress itself.
The one on the right had given me a shock from afar: it wore an impeccably tailored maroon suit over a black shirt and silver tie. The exact same outfit worn by the Devil, but sized down to my measurements. Just as the other two, the metzmatan was present here, this time as a large metal pin on the lapel.
I glanced between them and the fitting room. Obviously, there was no better choice to test my clothing swap idea. But I could only take one; which did I want?
- The polo and slacks.
- The golden desert dress.
- The maroon suit.
(Winner: )
- The polo and slacks.
- The golden desert dress.
- The maroon suit.
(Winner: )
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Scene 36
I mean, it wasn’t really a contest, was it? I had plenty of polos and could embroider one with the metzmatan on my own if I really wanted to. Dresses, while very pretty, weren’t really my style most of the time. But the suit...
I moved closer and ran my hand down the sleeve. Was this the Devil giving me a gift, or something else giving me the opportunity to mess with him? I was still uneasy about his involvement, and I’m sure I would end up running terrified from him in the future, but the overwhelming, paralyzing fear I had felt earlier didn’t seem as strong now that he had taken the time to have a conversation with me. It didn’t feel like I was going to be messily murdered at any moment.
I stripped the mannequin and changed in the fitting room, only now noticing that my own outfit had been near-identical to the one worn by dream-Josie. Running shorts, tank top, sweatband. Strange, but I guess it didn’t matter. Swapped it for the maroon suit. Checked my appearance in the mirror.
The Devil, I definitely was not. The suit fit just fine, but something about my figure or the way I wore it simply didn’t lend it the same sense of power. I just looked like, well, me wearing a suit. Not some ethereal dream demon with crazy abilities. Still, I looked good. Satisfied and not in the mood to go anywhere else in case I ran into mother again, I stayed in the fitting room until I woke up to my alarm.
...
It was an unusual - though not unheard-of - experience to wake up and roll out of bed in a full tailored suit. I quickly stripped it off and changed into more ordinary clothes before getting ready and heading out to work. No need to wear it today; in fact, I wasn’t really sure when I would wear it. I didn’t exactly go to distressingly fancy events very often. Maybe I hadn’t thought this through.
The morning was mostly meetings about the Centurion failure. Most of the departments ended up pointing fingers at a gasket failure somewhere in one of the fuel lines, which thankfully was not my team’s problem. Still, since it had exploded and fabrication needed some time to put it back together again, we took the time to review the current design and see what improvements could be made. Apparently my relay of that RSU professor’s contact information had turned into a partnership and we’d be working with them on some future iterations.
One of the newer guys, Tom, ended up paired with me for most of the afternoon as I showed him the ins and outs of the test pipeline and how not to detonate the test servers when writing new control code. I hadn’t really interacted with him much before, but we had a good amount of sporadic downtime today just to chat. Apparently he had only recently graduated with a master’s degree and Korman was his first real job outside of retail. Moved across the country from the east coast for this. I could relate to that last part.
He seemed nice enough, but something felt just a little off. Was he just a little too interested in my hobbies? Maybe a little too quick to ask me a question? A little too eager for my approval? I wasn’t sure, and I might have been overreacting. Meeting new people had never been one of my strong suits. Still, I’d keep an eye on Tom.
I finally got enough free time near the end of the day to go talk to the two-person surveying crew that Korman kept on site for whatever reason. I really had no idea what an aerospace company needed surveyors for - surely we could just hire an external crew for like, new rocket platforms? What else did we even build? Why did we care about specific geographical features?
Unfortunately, I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to ask the surveyors why they were employed. Plus, I felt like that would be an awkward question. Instead, I asked about the tunnels in that range of hills over by the northern test site. Maps were shuffled, old reports dug up, and finally, I was able to talk to the man who had found them in the first place: Amir.
He was an older man, probably in his fifties and close to retirement. Tan and worn from years out in the sun, but still lively. “Yeah, we surveyed those hills maybe five years ago, when HQ was deciding where to build the new test range. Big, curved tunnels bored through them all over the place, intersecting at crazy angles. We didn’t go too far in because Korman didn’t care what was in the hills, and also because it’s a maze in there. We weren’t prepared for it and didn’t feel like getting lost.”
A maze. Great. “Did you happen to see any... train tracks when you were in there?”
“Train tracks? No; just sand and rock. Or at least, I don’t think so. This was half a decade ago, miss, uh, Suyeon.”
“Call me Su,” I said automatically. “Do you remember any more details? A partial map, anything unusual; anything at all?”
“I don’t think so? Why are you so interested in the tunnels? Don’t tell me you’re gonna go out there. It’s miles into the desert, no roads anywhere, and probably no cell service in the caves. Real dangerous.”
I pressed my lips together. “I... Probably not. Don’t worry, I’m not stupid.”
Amir shrugged. “Just don’t get yourself hurt on my old, faulty information. Okay?” He glanced over my shoulder. “Hey, you, you need somethin’?”
Someone eased open the door: Tom again. “Sorry if you’re busy; I just had a question for you, Amir?”
“Yeah, yeah. Su, you all done here?”
“Uh, yeah. Go ahead.” I turned to leave, passing Tom on the way. Curious. Why did he need to talk to Amir, and at the same time I did? No one ever came by here, especially from Propulsion Development. It had nothing to do with our team.
- Stay by the door and listen in. Try to be a little sneaky.
️ - Confront Tom and ask what he was doing.
- Just leave. Not my problem and I don’t want to be weird.
(Winner: )
- Stay by the door and listen in. Try to be a little sneaky.
️ - Confront Tom and ask what he was doing.
- Just leave. Not my problem and I don’t want to be weird.
(Winner: )
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Scene 37
Curious and a little suspicious, I only pulled the door most of the way shut, then stayed put instead of leaving. I couldn’t hear Tom’s side of the conversation - he had a quiet voice - but I could hear Amir’s and see both of them. Tom seemed to be explaining something while Amir nodded. After a minute or so, he seemed to be done.
“Yeah, I can get that. No, you have to remember that Korman’s more than just its aerospace arm. We do work for overall Enterprises here, but they base us in this building because who knows why?” A pause. “I forgot the rest of your questions.”
Tom repeated something.
“Yeah, she was asking about some tunnels out north. You-”
Tom interrupted. I felt vaguely betrayed that Amir had given away what I had asked him, though I had never really told him it was a secret.
“No, nothing like that.”
Another series of muffled words.
“Listen buddy, I don’t know why. You want to know, just go ask her. You’re on the same team, right?”
An awkward hand movement. I could only see Tom’s back so I had no idea what expressions he was making.
Amir chortled. “Really? Well, you’re gonna have to get over that eventually. Just go talk to her tomorrow, yeah? You’ve got something to ask about; nothing weird about that.” His expression grew a little more serious. “But don’t make it weird; got it?”
A nod. I started to get the gist, or at least I thought so. Did Tom... oh no, was that why he seemed so awkward earlier...? I pulled away from the door, seeing him start to turn, and quickly darted down the hall. Made it away and out of the building without seeing him again. Quickly got my bike and away I went, still a little disoriented.
Well, at least it didn’t seem like he was some sort of nefarious spy. I sure was in an awkward position now, though.
Preoccupied, I missed my turn and had to resort to my phone’s GPS as I found myself in an unfamiliar part of town. Eventually, I got back on track and arrived at the massive public library just outside of downtown. All metal and glass, it looked very clean and modern; a bit of a contrast from the older town center nearby. I didn’t come here often, but today I was on a mission: I wanted that book about the Marnosan subways. Taking a trip out to the old subway tunnels in the desert seemed pretty dangerous, so I wanted to be sure I was fully prepared before I went. If I even had to. I didn’t want to go out there, really, but something told me I might not have much of a choice.
I had to get a librarian to help me, as apparently the book I wanted wasn’t available in the general stacks. Something about “old and rare books,” but they did have it and they did let me read it, though I wasn’t allowed to take it out of the library. I went to get some fast food from a nearby restaurant (because it seemed I’d be here for a while), then sat down to read.
Hours later, I was done. Bleary-eyed and head filled with more facts than I ever wanted to know about trains, I scanned the sections that I wanted to reference and handed the book back to the librarian who had been helping me. I splashed some water on my face to wake up a little, then headed back into the streets to catch a train home. While I rode, I reflected on what I had learned.
“The Marnosan passenger rail system was a marvel of its time, unmatched by any rail transit development in Arizona before or since,” the author had begun. “But why? And how? We must begin by delving into the cultural and religious history of the region - and its emphasis on free movement - before we can begin to understand the infrastructure itself.”
The text got much more dense from there. I was fairly well-educated - I had a master’s degree in aerospace engineering and put it to regular use - but the author seemed to assume any readers had an in-depth background in transit policy, indiginous culture, and the local history back hundreds of years. To put it bluntly, a lot of the book went over my head. I skimmed a lot of it. Sue me.
Heh, sue me. Su: me. I paused for a moment, digesting the awful pun. I am way too tired for this.
Still, there had been some useful tidbits buried under all the academic fluff. There had only been one main route that passed through the hills I was interested in, but it had been rebuilt once after a cave-in. The author had gone into some detail on the supporting structures needed to maintain the tunnels, and had even described a number of “local religious organizations who took a liking to these hills, eventually building a number of ritual chambers and other holy sites adjoining the train tunnels. Marnosan government efforts to require permits or evict these religious squatters fell flat due to the distance from the city, and eventually the populace at large mostly forgot they were even there at all. Very few records remain on the identities or purposes of these religious organizations, and they are not the focus of this report regardless.”
Perhaps the most useful detail, however, had been the reasonably precise maps that provided the exact location of the train tunnel entrances. The author cautioned against relying heavily on the maps he provided, noting that “surveying and mapping techniques of the time often left much to be desired, and no modern traces remain to verify the original track line.” Still, he admitted, “they are, however, better than nothing. Any train-lovers or religious pilgrims wishing to visit would be wise to reference these charts as well as modern solutions.”
I wasn’t exactly either of those things, but I intended on referencing the charts anyway. The author couldn’t stop me; he was dead.
... I was in a rare mood tonight. Probably an odd combination of loopy from reading all evening and tired from... reading all evening. My head could only hold so much knowledge on obsolete train systems.
The train slowed to a stop and I exited into the night. Biked home. It was late, but I had made good progress. Now, there was just one thing to decide.
[It’s currently Tuesday night, in case you forgot, but I’ll need some time to prepare if I’m going to go out there this weekend.]
- Resolve to visit the train tunnels this weekend, alone.
- Resolve to visit the train tunnels this weekend, with someone. [Who?]
- Resolve to not visit the train tunnels this weekend. [Maybe later, or maybe I won’t go at all.]
(Winner: )
- Resolve to visit the train tunnels this weekend, alone.
- Resolve to visit the train tunnels this weekend, with someone. [Who?]
- Resolve to not visit the train tunnels this weekend. [Maybe later, or maybe I won’t go at all.]
(Winner: )
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Scene 38
Yeah, I wasn’t going out to the desert to explore some long-abandoned maze of tunnels on my own. I wasn’t insane. I mulled over who might be willing to come with me for a few minutes before deciding to ask Alfonse. He had been involved in the confusion over grandpa’s stolen phone and was really into the history of the area, so he seemed a natural choice. Maybe I could find some info on old board games played by train operators in the tunnels; that’d get his attention. Grandpa himself, of course, was too old to be doing this sort of physically demanding expedition.
I decided to wait until tomorrow to ask since it was already quite late, then headed to bed. Time for another round of nightmares. What would it be tonight; mother again, the Devil, or something else?
...
“Alright, see you later!” I laughed before turning away from the rush of noise and heat, letting the door close behind me. I sighed good-naturedly and paused a few moments to calm down from the energy of the stadium before walking away from the door into the much quieter parking garage.
It was raining outside; puddles and streams made their way in from the gaps in the structure. I took a moment to glance out into the storm as I made my way down a thoroughfare, but there was nothing to see. Just the misty shapes of other sections of the enormous complex. Now, where did I leave my car?
I wandered for a while, vaguely aware of where I should be going but not exactly sure what I was looking for. I’d probably know when I found it. There were other people in the garage: other stadium-goers like myself looking for their own vehicles, uniformed event security guards stationed every so often, and occasional fancily-dressed couples who universally sneered at me as they passed. I frowned. They must be from the gallery. Jerks.
My hand hurt and I glanced at it automatically. I was dreaming. The metzmatan’s outer circle faded to black and grew two lines connecting it to the inner triangle. My anxiety spiked as I recognized the symbol’s change: this was the one that had pointed to the real person who had invaded my dream. The man from the Order who had also been after the subway key and who had tried to... kidnap me? It was a little unclear what he had been trying to do before I kicked him into the water, but surely nothing good.
Two lines: two people. Both pointing behind me. I glanced over my shoulder but saw nothing. Heard nothing beyond the rain, occasional car engines, and muffled conversation from nearby pedestrians. Where were they; what were they going to do? Should I wake up? Run? Pretend like everything was normal? ... Confront them?
A loud crackling noise echoed from behind me, trailing off into a sort of scraping groan. My eyes widened but I still couldn’t see anything. Maybe confronting them wasn’t the best plan. I turned away and jogged further into the parking structure.
I can’t keep this up forever; their own symbols point to me just like mine points to them. Dodge a concrete pillar. What do they want? Is there another key in this dream, or are they specifically just here for me? Squeeze through a line of cars that extends into the distance in both directions. I might get more information if I let them approach me, but I might get zapped away to some cultist headquarters to be tortured or killed. Pivot around a corner; spiral up a set of ramps.
I peeked over the railing for a moment, just out of curiosity, and peered down into the rain. Nothing as far as the eye could see; just mist and the wall of the parking structure extending infinitely down into nothingness. The other direction was a little better; I could see roofs on some portions of the complex, but others extended past my field of view. Infinite or just tall enough I couldn’t tell? Did it matter?
Another cracking, groaning noise from below. I ran to the other railing to look, but still couldn’t see anything out of the norm. Just concrete and rows of cars - ohhhh no, that car has been flattened. I couldn’t tell by what, but the little sedan was now considerably more little as fragments of glass and metal lay scattered around it. The cars to either side of it were scraped up and misaligned with their parking spots, as if they had been shoved violently away. People can’t do that. Even cultists. Right? Do they have a bulldozer or something?
Something became visible several floors below, winding its way up the spiral towards me. It wasn’t a bulldozer; that’s for sure. It was a sort of smoky, deep blue, vaguely translucent mound of shuffling, sliding gel. Hundreds of little star-like lights twinkled inside its body. I couldn’t tell how it was moving; it just seemed to glide along at startling speed. Maybe ten or fifteen miles per hour; way faster than I could sustainably run. Two people - both dressed in simple, cult-like robes - rode atop the thing on a kind of rug or saddle hooked directly into its skin. One of the people looked up, scanning the railings. I ducked back.
“What the hell is that thing?” I whispered to myself. “That’s not part of this dream, I don’t think. Did they bring it; is it real?”
Focus, Su.
⬆️ - Keep climbing the parking structure; look for an advantage.
⏬ - Climb over the edge and drop down after they pass. The symbols aren’t the best tracking tools; maybe they’ll think I’m still above them. [If I fall, it’ll be into the void or several stories onto solid concrete.]
- Stay put; confront them. Try to learn more.
️ - Wake up.
(Winner: ⬆️ )
- Stay put; confront them. Try to learn more.
️ - Wake up.
(Winner: ⬆️ )
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Scene 39
I ran up the structure with renewed speed, trying to get as far as I could before the thing inevitably caught up with me. There had been guards around earlier, right? Other people? Anything beyond an unending spiral of parking ramps?
The ramp ended abruptly, flattening out into yet another enormous flat deck full of cars. This time, however, there was no roof overhead. Rain beat down on my head and water splashed beneath my feet as I dashed between cars, heading for an entryway into another towering section of the complex that rose out of view. I felt too exposed here; they’d be able to see me easily. No shadows; no pillars to hide behind.
“Hey!”
I cringed and ducked behind a nearby SUV, sparing a second to turn and confirm my fears: the two cultists on the gel-like mound had made it to the roof. However, they were having trouble with their mount. The creature seemed to be reluctant to emerge into the rain, shrinking back under the cover of the structure’s roof. The larger figure of the pair tried to prod it forwards, but the creature wasn’t having any of it and retreated again.
“This thing is afraid of rain,” I whispered. “Good to know.”
As I was still trying to decide what to do next, the second cultist said something to the first and they both dismounted. The gel creature slid back down the ramp while both people stalked forward. The one in the lead - taller, broad-shouldered - carried a dark wooden staff with metal points on both ends, while the one following - shorter, more feminine - held a long dagger. The weapons reinforced my decision to not confront these people and I ran off again, splashing through lines of cars.
“Get BACK here!” one of them yelled. I heard a deep, vibrating hum and stumbled as my vision went blurry for a moment. I recovered quickly, but my hand hurt and when I looked, the inner triangle had turned a sickly green. Just like the mist on the beach. That can’t be good.
Splashing footsteps behind me. I made it into the parking structure again and quickly chose a direction. This section of the garage seemed more well-lit; maybe there would be people here? Please let something be here; I just need-
“Hello?”
I blinked, startled. There was a woman in front of me, about my age and build. White baseball cap; ponytail. I noticed my hand was glowing blue as I brought it up in surprise, but didn’t have time to dwell on it. “Uh, uh-” No time to think; just time to do. “Take this,” I requested, handing her my soaked jacket and stealing her hat in return. “Then run that way as fast as you can!”
Blue glow. I felt a strain in my chest and resisted the urge to cough. “Okay,” the woman said. Did her features look slightly more like mine now? Had she always had black hair? I ducked down behind a pickup truck and rounded a corner, slipping down a separate but parallel alleyway as she ran. My path took me on roughly the same course as her, but up a level instead of straight. Hopefully my pursuers wouldn’t notice the swap or the slight deviation in their metzmatans’ lines.
I tried to move quietly, but it was impossible with soggy, squishy shoes and while surrounded by echo-inducing concrete. I glanced at my hand, glanced at my shoes, then tapped them. “Be dry,” I whispered.
Poof. They were.
This blue light is by far the best power I have. I NEED to learn more about it, just as soon as I lose these guys.
Shouting down below. I slowed my steps, still making too much noise even with dry shoes. Tried to listen, but the acoustics were so bad I couldn’t tell what they were saying. I heard yelling, crackling noises, and then a scream. Metal on concrete. I kept moving as the shouting became mutters, then nothing. I was too far away to hear anything more.
I made several more turns, went up and down a variety of stairs and ramps, and basically got myself hopelessly lost while still moving in the vague direction of “away from those two lunatics.” They wouldn’t be able to follow my trail directly, and I knew the metzmatan wasn’t precise enough to give them more than a general idea of my location. I’d be safe enough for a few minutes, at least. As long as I kept moving.
I slowed my pace, catching my breath after all the exertion. Examined myself; no injuries. My metzmatan’s inner triangle was still colored a dull green, returned from the blue glow previously. I felt...
Good.
I frowned, not pleased with that revelation. I had spent the last half hour sprinting through an infinite parking garage, running for my life from moon-worshipping cultists and some sort of gel monster, and I... didn’t really feel terrified. Sure, I was a little scared and sure, I was definitely worried about what they’d do to me if they caught me, but... well, it was a far cry from the first time I had done this, chased by the Devil all those weeks ago.
A part of me almost... enjoyed it?
I shuddered and shook my head, trying to focus on the pain and fear and exhaustion. There was probably some medical terminology for that; I would not allow myself to start to like life-or-death scenarios. My goal still remained the same as it had from the beginning: survive, then find a way out of this Devil-induced hell.
Still...
The blue glow was intoxicating.
With a little effort, I could turn on the blue light again. Power coursed through my arm, buzzing in my veins and muscles. I could do... anything.
Brushed my hand against a sedan; it was a full sized truck now. Tapped against a yellow line on the floor; it now wove merrily along the walls. Grasped the chipped-paint top of a nearby bollard and it sank into the floor along with its friends. Then, to solidify what I suspected I had done earlier, I closed my eyes. Closed my hand. Breathed out slowly.
“Hello.”
A portly man with a mustache stood in front of me, looking for all the world like a dad who had just come from the stadium I knew was attached to this garage somewhere. I really felt the fatigue this time; I had to kneel and catch my breath, feeling like I had just sprinted a mile. Well, another mile. The blue glow dimmed, then extinguished itself.
I was a god. An all-too fragile, all-too mortal god, but one with the power of creation nonetheless.
“Doesn’t it feel good, Su?”
A grin tugged at my lips despite the many other parts of me uneasy or horrified about my new attitude. I could get used to this.
- “Show me the way out of here... you.”
- Summon an elevator with the blue light.
- Unlock a car with the blue light and drive away.
- Find the cultists. Confront them. I’ve got a surprise for them.
(Winner: )
- “Show me the way out of here... you.”
- Summon an elevator with the blue light.
- Unlock a car with the blue light and drive away.
- Find the cultists. Confront them. I’ve got a surprise for them.
(Winner: )
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Scene 40
“Okay, uh, you. Show me the way out of here.” I wasn’t entirely sure that the man would know, but it was worth a try, right?
“Okay,” he said, then started walking. I followed.
He moved steadily, almost robotically. An incredibly lifelike automaton, but one without any actual intelligence. I had made this man, or at least summoned him here. He wasn’t real, no matter how much he might look it. The sensation of limitless power faded as I watched his dull movements; my frantic energy faded with it. I was so, so tired.
It didn’t take long to reach a larger archway that held a pair of double doors. “This is the way out,” the man said, pulling them open for me. I passed through, leaving the garage and entering an empty, soggy stadium. Rain still fell and water drenched every surface in sight - the field was flooded with runoff from the stands. The man didn’t follow me, and by the time I noticed and turned back, the doors had vanished. Nothing but an empty wall. That was... fine, I supposed. Maybe the cultists wouldn’t be able to get in here now.
I wandered around the stadium for a while. The triangle on my hand slowly returned from the sickly green color to its normal dull red. After nearly half an hour, both black lines vanished and the outer circle returned to normal as well. Presumably the cultists had given up and left.
It was so lonely here. It felt unnatural to be inhabiting this space meant for hundreds of thousands of people all by myself. No players, no fans, no vendors. Just me.
I splashed down to walk in the field, sloshing through water up to my calf. The rain didn’t seem like it would be letting up anytime soon. Still no one around. I couldn’t tell what sport was being played here because the field markings were under several inches of grimy, silty water. My shoes would be ruined; I probably wouldn’t be taking this outfit back with me. It wasn’t anything special anyway; just jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.
“...” I kicked up a fan of water, splattering it against an advertisement for some unclear corporation. Red and pink colors. I couldn’t read the logo and I didn’t care to. When was I going to wake up?
“......” It had been almost two hours at this point. I lay draped over a series of cushioned seats in a VIP lounge, listening to rain pound on the roof. Sleepy. Drowsing in my dream; hilarious. I vaguely wondered what would happen if I fell asleep. Why wasn’t I waking up? Usually it didn’t take this long. Should I just wake myself up? What time was it in the real world?
I yawned and let my eyes drift closed. The rain was so peaceful. There were never any good storms in Arizona.
...
The smell of wet stone. A hard, cold pressure on my cheek. I groaned, pushing myself off the smooth, slightly damp, stone floor. My head spun and I stumbled as I got up, having to lean against the wall for balance. Where was I? What was going on? Was I drunk? I couldn’t remember much; just snippets. Oh no, ohhh no.
I turned to the wall and retched onto the stones, throwing up nothing but clear water. Distressingly warm, vaguely salty water, but still just water. I gasped for breath and spat out the last of it, forehead pressed against the cool stone as I tried to recover.
“Greetings, dreamer.”
I yelped and stumbled backwards, collapsing into an ungraceful sitting position as my balance failed me again. Right into the puddle of vomit-water. Fantastic.
Two... people(?) stood in the tunnel before me, both holding metal staves with lanterns hooked to the ends. They wore simple brown robes emblazoned with the metzmatan symbol on the breast, but their heads were... transparent. I could see through the skin and bone like an X-ray image to the vaguely glowing, light-blue brain tissue within. Their flesh and organs seemed made of light; all outlined in glowing blue lines and dotted with little sparkles that resembled a starfield. It reminded me a lot of... something that I couldn’t quite remember.
The nearest one bent down and offered me a hand, just as translucent and just as formed of blue light as their head. I cautiously accepted it and got up, wobbling a little on the way. Their skin felt warm, but smooth. Like a human hand if it were made of glass.
“I - uh, I’m so sorry about...” I had to pause and shut my eyes - even just talking was bringing up nausea again. “Gimme - hurk.”
“Dreamer, use your metzmatan. Be well.”
Oh, right. Silly me. I clenched my fist and tried to focus through the bizarre nausea. Golden light leaked from my palm and I breathed out a long, slow breath as the sickness retreated. A sigh of relief. I opened my eyes again, clear-headed and ready to find out exactly what in the world was going on.
“Th-thanks.” A pause. I noticed a heavy wooden door behind them. Glanced behind me and saw the stone tunnel continue into darkness past the reach of their lanterns. “What is... all this?”
“This is the Gate of Deeper Slumber. You have made a difficult journey to reach it.”
I didn’t respond, thrown off balance again by the revelation.
The other guard interjected. “Don’t worry, many dreamers find their first journey here to be quite disorienting. You are not alone in your struggles.”
“I, uh. Good to... know?” I hesitated. “I - I’m sorry, what is the Gate of Deeper Slumber? All I know is the Devil told me to seek it, so, uh.” I trailed off, then tried again. “I don’t even know how I got here...”
“Dreamers can access the Gate by a variety of methods. Try to recall what you were doing just before arriving here; that will likely hold the key.”
I racked my memories, but came up short. I didn’t even recall falling asleep. “I’m sorry, I just can’t remember. I don’t know.”
“It will come back to you. The first journey often causes minor amnesia.”
“Temporary, I hope?”
“In most cases.”
“...”
“The Gate of Deeper Slumber is the boundary between the surface dreams shaped and maintained by the collective unconscious of billions of sentient creatures, and the true dreamworlds crafted by slumbering gods. By crossing this threshold, you can leave your body and its ties to the waking world behind, roaming the true dreamworlds as a form shaped by your core essence.”
“Woah, woah, woah.” I frantically sorted through the guard’s speech, searching for the most critical question to ask. Collective unconscious? Slumbering gods? Leave my body? Core essence? No. I decided on: “Why would I want to do that?”
The guards glanced at each other. “Dreamers must have their own reasons for entering the true dreamworlds. Many enter for personal revelation and growth. Others, for knowledge. Still others, secret power. Adventure, escapism, entertainment. There is no one answer for all. But you must be here for a reason. Why would you enter, dreamer? What is your quest?”
I glanced down, somewhat embarrassed to admit it. “I don’t know. I was just... told to come here. Seek the Gate; Learn the Key; Break the Lock. That’s what they told me to do.”
“Ah. Power, then. The Lock lies within the true dreamworlds, and if you possess the Key, there is much you can gain from it.” Both guards stepped aside, leaving the way to the Gate clear. “Now, dreamer. Will you enter?”
“... Can I come back out?”
“Of course. Though there is a cost associated with the travel. Suppressing and re-activating the bond between your body and essence is a strenuous process.” They looked critically at me and I shivered. “But a young, healthy dreamer such as yourself should have little difficulty with the procedure. Still, it is best to avoid frivolous trips. Now, choose. Enter or leave.”
- Enter.
️ - Leave.
(Winner: ️ )
- Enter.
️ - Leave.
(Winner: ️ )
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Scene 41
I hesitated. I wanted to enter and see these “true dreamworlds” for myself - who wouldn’t? But at the same time, I was tired and confused, I didn’t know the key - sorry, the Key - and if I got hurt in there, it could really screw up my plans to explore the tunnels this weekend. On top of, you know, the other downsides.
“... Not right now,” I decided. “But I’ll come back later when I’m more prepared.”
“Of course, dreamer.” The guards stepped in front of the door again, blocking my entry. “In that case, it is time for you to leave.”
“Wait, can I at least ask a few more qu-”
I woke up. Sat up in bed with a gasp, the clear memory of the tunnel and the Gate already fading. Vague impressions of a parking garage and a chase before then were even fainter. I quickly rolled over and began writing down what I could remember, annoyed by the squishy dampness of my sheets. I really needed to invest in some waterproof bedding if I was going to keep bringing water back with me from these dreams.
...
I decided to forgo a mask on the way to work today, though I still took another dose of the aerosol medicine. I hadn’t coughed up any blood for a day now, and the tightness in my chest was almost entirely gone. Most of the bruises were healed or well on their way, too; physically, I was feeling pretty good.
And honestly, I wasn’t doing too bad mentally either. I had a lead on the Gate of Deeper Slumber and had managed to remember most of what the guards had told me. There was a lot to unpack and I definitely wanted to do some research on the topics they brought up. The collective unconscious, in particular, was one that I vaguely remembered from psych class in college - was that a Fruedian thing? Jung? Modern science rejected it, of course, but modern science also said that magic and the Devil didn’t exist. Clearly, there might be something there. Worth looking, at least.
Anyway, I needed to start preparing for my expedition this weekend. First things first, I texted a rough outline to Alfonse and asked if he’d be interested. No immediate response, so back to work it was. More fiddling around with the design, but not much time for radical changes. Fabrication wanted us to be locked in by end of day so they could have everything in place for another scale test next week. Fortunately - or unfortunately, depending on your point of view - none of our proposed changes seemed likely to pan out and the team lead prepared to just tell them to stick with the old design. I saw Tom a few times but tried to avoid him. He was shadowing a different person this morning, so it wasn’t that hard.
Alfonse gave me a call around lunch to get more details on my plan. As expected, his interest in old Marnosan artifacts helped convince him and by the end of the call, I had an expedition buddy. He said he’d talk to a few of his colleagues for some advice and supplies, but I cautioned him against mentioning exactly where we were going. I didn’t want anyone else to get involved; the cult’s warning still weighed on my mind. Even getting Alfonse to come with was a risk, but... well, there were limits to what I was going to do on my own. Going out to a maze of abandoned tunnels miles into the desert was well beyond those limits.
Tom called me over to one of the labs after lunch, asking a question about some obscure piece of test equipment that I happened to know fairly well. Reluctantly, I walked over and entered.
No one else was there; it was just me, Tom, and a whole bunch of computers. He waved me over. “Hey, Su. Thanks for coming. I was just having trouble with this port here; you see...”
The troubleshooting itself didn’t take too long. The problem was an unintuitive syntax requirement on one of the config files, which I hadn’t yet gotten around to writing instructions for. I bumped that up my list in priority. “Well, if you’re all set here, then...” I turned, moving slightly towards the door.
“Uh, there’s one more thing.” He seemed anxious. I stopped, equally nervous.
“Another config thing? I should really write those docs...”
“No, it’s just...” He looked away. “I, uh, A-Amir...” A long, tense pause. “He’s not telling you the whole story about those tunnels. I - I’m sorry, I followed you yesterday and asked him what you asked about.”
I didn’t say anything.
After a few seconds, Tom continued at a faster pace now that he had gotten started. “I don’t know why you want to go to those tunnels, but you really shouldn’t. It’s way too dangerous, and Amir either didn’t know or didn’t tell you about the...” He eyed me and I reflexively closed my left hand to hide the metzmatan. “The things in there.”
“The things?” I asked flatly, casually putting my hands in my pockets. Well, ‘casually.’ Had he glanced at my hand? Did he know? I hadn’t exactly worn gloves every day; how could I hide the symbol? The lines felt warm on my palm, though I knew that was just from nervousness. It had no power in the waking world. At least, I thought so.
A shrug. “I don’t know how to describe them. They’re creatures and they’re the reason all the cavers and explorers avoid the tunnels. Officially, they’re coyotes or wolves or something, but unofficially... I don’t know. People go in, they come out half-dead and unwilling to talk about it, or not at all. I just...” Another look down. “I don’t want that to happen to you.”
I frowned, growing slightly more suspicious. “Hang on, how do you know all this anyway? Didn’t you just move here from the east coast?”
He glanced up, met my eyes, then turned away again. “Yeah, just a few months ago. But I like exploring out in nature and I found the community here pretty quickly. These rumors get around fast in circles like that.”
“Well, I haven’t heard any,” I muttered. “In fact, not many people even know about the tunnels.”
“That’s another thing,” he pointed out. “They’re pretty obscure. How did you hear about them? Why are you even planning on going there?”
- “Just seemed interesting.” [Lie; deflect; don’t give anything away.]
️ - “I’ve been wanting to get into exploration; these are cool and pretty nearby.”
- “I’m interested in Marnosan history and these tunnels are important to that.”
️ - “Does this answer your question, cultist spy?” [Show the metzmatan; accuse Tom.]
(Winner: )
- “Just seemed interesting.” [Lie; deflect; don’t give anything away.]
️ - “I’ve been wanting to get into exploration; these are cool and pretty nearby.”
- “I’m interested in Marnosan history and these tunnels are important to that.”
️ - “Does this answer your question, cultist spy?” [Show the metzmatan; accuse Tom.]
(Winner: )
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Scene 42
“I’m interested in Marnosan history and the tunnels are important to that.” Close enough to the truth without giving too much away. Hopefully.
“Really? Marnosa is kind of an obscure topic too, although I’m not sure why. You’d think everyone would be more interested in learning about our precursor city.” He paused, glancing at me again. “You have very diverse interests.”
I couldn’t read his expression. “I, uh, try. Listen, I need to get back to-”
“Wait; are you still planning on going to the tunnels?”
“Uhhh...”
He waited patiently. I had to give an answer.
“N-no. Not yet, at least. Maybe I’ll do a little more research later.”
Another flash of an unreadable expression. He was surprisingly good at hiding his reactions. “Good. If you want to learn more about Marnosa in a safe way, I can help. Just let me know.” An awkward shuffle and grin; now I could read him. “But let me get out of your hair. I’m about done here until the test runs through, anyway. See you around, Su.”
He stood and brushed past me; I felt a light touch on my hand as he - accidentally? - stumbled and apologized, then continued walking out the door.
I stood in the middle of the room, nonplussed, and rubbed my hand where he had touched it. No discernible difference, and the metzmatan seemed the same as well. Ordinarily, I’d have written it off as an accident, but there were just too many coincidences stacking up for me to believe that now. Initially, I had thought Tom just had a crush on me, but now I was starting to get worried he was an undercover spy for the Order. The strange interest in me, the uncanny knowledge of the tunnels and Marnosa, the hand touch. What was his game?
I didn’t know. I’d have to be careful. If he was a spy for the cult, he probably wouldn’t believe that I wasn’t going - despite his warnings about dangerous creatures, I wasn’t actually deterred. Weirdly enough, I almost felt a little more energized. Like if there were actually dangers involved, there had to be some worthwhile reward, right?
Obviously, this logic was faulty. But dreams didn’t really operate on real logic, now did they?
I was tangled in my mixed-up emotions for the rest of the day, struggling to figure out Tom. He didn’t come back to talk to me again, but was always nearby. Across the room, passed in the hallway, visible talking to my coworkers. Just doing his job, or stealthily keeping an eye on me? I felt a sense of paranoia heightening even as he just worked on a set of calculations. By the end of the day, I was a nervous wreck. No one else seemed bothered by him, but several people noticed my anxiety. I kept seeing glances in my direction, even though everyone was acting normal. Pretending not to look at me.
Josie stopped by near the end of the day, told me I was too tense, and dragged me off to get drunk. On a Wednesday. I didn’t have the willpower to resist her, and a part of me agreed anyway.
Two and a half hours, one meal, and several beers later, I was feeling much better. My heavy worries about Tom, the cult, and the tunnels felt as vaporous as my train of thought; fleeting and insignificant. I glanced around the crowded bar, half-smiling in a vague sort of way. Josie was in the bathroom, but I sort of knew some of the other people nearby. Brandon, Keith, Kumar, Madeline. The first two worked at Korman in some other department; the latter two were people I had just met an hour ago. Some kind of finance industry, they had said. Deleting money off the face of the earth. Neat stuff.
“Cool tattoo,” Madeline said, sliding one chair over to take Josie’s seat. She wouldn’t mind, probably. “Does it mean anything?”
“Thanks,” I said automatically. Looked up. She was leaning a little close, face flushed with either the heat of the room or the heat of the alcohol. Black hair, olive skin, snazzy pantsuit disheveled from the day. “Wait, I don’t have any tattoos.”
“On your haaaaand, silly.” She grabbed my left hand and held it up so I could see the metzmatan on my own palm. “Does it mean anything?”
Kumar glanced over as Brandon - or was that Keith? - gestured to us. He cocked his head at me, but I couldn’t interpret what he was trying to imply. Sweet beard, though. I refocused and grabbed my hand back. It felt very warm from her grip. “N-no, not really. It’s just, a...” I blinked several times. Nothing was coming to mind. “Circle,” I finished lamely.
“I dig it,” Madeline murmured. “It’s just like that guy I saw earlier.”
I perked up. “What guy? Did you see someone else with this, uh, tattoo?”
“I’ll tell youooouu...” A pause. I waited. Kumar stood up and walked towards us. “Iffff you dance with me.”
“Uh-”
Kumar arrived, six feet of muscle and beard stuffed into a charcoal-grey suit. “I apologize for her,” he told me, before addressing Madeline. “I think it’s time for you to go home, okay? Or at least switch to water. Come on.”
“Wait, waaaiiit, whatif she just sings, like, my favorite song?” Madeline rolled her arms in the direction of the currently vacant karaoke stage. Several people were setting up the mic and audio equipment; it would start in less than fifteen minutes. “I betchu have a real pretty voice.”
“I’m sorry,” Kumar said again, dragging Madeline into a standing position. “I should have been keeping a closer eye on her.”
[I’m not very intoxicated, so I don’t have to worry about making exceptionally poor decisions, whatever is chosen. Just normal poor ones.]
- “No, it’s okay; I’ll dance with you.” [Less public, which could be good or bad]
- “No, it’s okay; I’ll sing. What’s your favorite song?” [More public, which could be good or bad]
- “Thanks, Kumar. No need to apologize.” [I won’t get any information, but things won’t escalate any further]
(Winner: )
- “No, it’s okay; I’ll dance with you.” [Less public, which could be good or bad]
- “No, it’s okay; I’ll sing. What’s your favorite song?” [More public, which could be good or bad]
- “Thanks, Kumar. No need to apologize.” [I won’t get any information, but things won’t escalate any further]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 43
What’s with all the people hitting on me recently? I wondered, but only briefly. I needed that information. “No, no, it’s okay. I’ll dance with you.”
Kumar shrugged and let go. “Alright, as long as she’s not bothering you.” He seemed about to say more, then just shrugged again and returned to his table. For better or for worse, that left me alone with Madeline - a woman I had met literally just an hour ago - in a sea of people.
“Nice,” she said, leaning on my shoulder with both hands. “Kumar’s kinda uptight. The man can’t relaaaaxxx. Can you?”
I made the - questionable at best - decision that I was a little too sober for this and carefully picked up the cocktail Josie had been asking me to try. A little different - and a little stronger - than my normal fare, but not bad. “I’m not very good at it,” I admitted truthfully. “Too much going on.”
“Well, we’re gonna fix that. What kinda stuff?” She leaned further into me as we walked slowly away from the bar. Soft fabric against my arm.
“... Work, mostly. Deadline pressure.”
“Ha! Tell me about it. You know how many times I take the flak for clients not getting their damn forms in quickly enough?” A pause, but not long enough for me to answer. “A... lot! But’chu can’t think about work forever. You gotta just relaaaaxxx sometimes. C’mon; they’re about to start.”
I spotted Josie returning to her seat as Madeline swept me into the crowd in front of the stage. She glanced around for me, then walked over to ask around Kumar’s table. Good. She’d get an answer. A warm hand grasped mine and I swore I could feel the lines of the metzmatan as slightly warmer than the rest. I needed to invest in some gloves, no matter how strange they would look.
We danced for a while - one song, two, three. Madeline was incredibly energetic and the music matched; not delicate, classical, ballroom melodies, but fast-paced modern rock and pop tracks. With all the alcohol still in my system, I found it easier than I expected to do as she kept telling me and just relax a little. No dreams, no Devils, no cults. Just a driving beat, churning motion, and the heat of exertion. I wasn’t a great dancer, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t know anyone around me, but that didn’t matter either. I could just... let go for a few minutes. It wouldn’t hurt.
I fell into a chair and was shocked to learn that forty five minutes had passed. Madeline tumbled into the seat next to me, all flushed and sweaty. I probably looked the same.
“Well, that was fun!” she exclaimed, still breathing heavily from the long period of dancing.
I had to catch my breath as well, but nodded in response. It had been.
“Now, d’you wanna know about that guy I saw?”
“Oh, yeah! Yeah, that’d be great!” I had almost forgotten why I had gone dancing with her in the first place.
Madeline got up - still with an excess of energy, apparently - and held out a hand to help me up as well. “Here, let’s go see if he’s still there. Looked like he’d be here a while.”
“I-I’m not sure - um, yeah, okay.” I was more than a little reluctant to meet anyone else with the symbol, but I supposed I wouldn’t have to reveal my own. I curled my hand into a loose fist and kept it there. It still felt hot. I tried to ignore it. Madeline, on my left side, slipped a finger into the hollow formed by my hand, which she seemed to find endlessly amusing. I let her continue; it was an excuse to keep my hand like that.
We passed by Josie, Kumar, and the others - the two of them shared a laugh as they watched us pass - and made our way to the second floor. It was a little darker up here, with tables set on a balcony ringing the building and overlooking the stage below. Even warmer, as well, with all the air conditioning down on the first floor. Madeline kept searching the tables as she walked, looking very conspicuous. Several people glanced up and I gave a nervous smile in return as if to say “sorry.”
“That guy,” she said in a normal voice. “You want to go say hi?”
“No, no; let’s just...” I pulled her towards a vacant table and slid into a seat. “Can you show me, discreetly?”
Madeline tried again, looking over her shoulder and pointing a few tables down. “That guy,” she whispered loudly. Thankfully, the guy in question didn’t seem to notice.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and dark-skinned. Maybe late 30s in age. His bald head held a number of tattoos, none of which I recognized and none of which were the metzmatan. All of them were of similarly abstract design, though - there wasn’t a single recognizable image beyond geometric shapes. He wore a loose white button-up shirt and light-colored pants. Sunglasses on the table in front of him. I couldn’t see his palms as he lounged back, sipping a drink with one hand and scrolling on his phone with the other. I didn’t recognize him at all, and I figured I definitely would have if I had ever seen him. The head tattoos were very distinctive.
“Well?” Madeline whispered again, interrupting my inspection.
“I don’t know him. You said he has the same tattoo, though?”
“Yeah, on his hand just like yours! Pretty cool, right? You should go say hi!”
Movement nearby caught my eye and I glanced up as a woman about my age passed our table. Shorter, average build, fair skin. Pale blonde hair, worn up in double buns. Pretty. She wore a Chinese-style dress, form-fitting on top and falling loosely to her ankles with the side-slits up to her lower thighs. Primarily red, with stripes of black, gold, and white. And - my eyes slid quickly to catch this detail - long, black, fingerless gloves on both hands hiding the palms. Just a fashion accessory? Maybe, maybe not.
She sat down at the bald man’s table and spoke to him. He put away his phone to listen.
“Wow,” said Madeline. “Lucky guy.”
️ - Go talk to the bald man and blonde woman. [What should I say?]
- Try to eavesdrop. [I can’t hear anything from here; it’s too loud. How should I do this?]
- Walk away; keep an eye out for them in the future. [I don’t get more info, but the situation doesn’t escalate.]
- Ask Madeline to go talk to them instead. [What’s my excuse for not going myself? What should I ask her to say?]
️ - Go talk to the bald man and blonde woman. [What should I say?]
- Try to eavesdrop. [I can’t hear anything from here; it’s too loud. How should I do this?]
- Walk away; keep an eye out for them in the future. [I don’t get more info, but the situation doesn’t escalate.]
- Ask Madeline to go talk to them instead. [What’s my excuse for not going myself? What should I ask her to say?]
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@Story Notifications
Scene 44
“I should go,” I decided aloud. “Thank you for showing me.”
Madeline frowned, puzzled. “What’s wrong with them? Don’tcha want to say hi at least?”
I hesitated. “... No, not today.”
She narrowed her eyes, squinting at me. “Is this like a... a secret society thing? You’re all hush-hush so you can’t recognize each other in public?” A little laugh; she was kidding. Hopefully.
I forced a chuckle in return. “Something like that.” Maybe a little TOO much like that, in fact. “Anyway, it’s late and I’m tired. I think I’ll head out.”
“Aw, but we were just getting started,” Madeline pouted. “Okay, okay. We’ll talk later, k? Both know Josie, yeah?”
I nodded and stood up before anything more awkward could happen. “I had fun. See you around.” Then I headed back downstairs, passing by the bald man’s table as I picked the other staircase. I may not have wanted to talk to them, but I still wanted to get a closer look...
The man’s palms were both still hidden as I passed, as were his companion’s. I didn’t see any tattoos on her body, but any on her head would be hidden by hair. I caught a fragment of two sentences before I had to pass out of earshot.
“- got his mark?” the woman asked.
“Definitely,” the man replied. “I’ve only ever-”
That was it; I couldn’t stay any longer without being obvious. I continued on my way, resisting the urge to glance back but feeling an itch on my back as if their eyes were following me all the way to the stairs.
...
I woke up on the floor of my bedroom, tangled in blankets from my bed. I was drenched in water (again) and wearing my normal night clothes: light tank top and shorts. Very normal, except that I didn’t usually wake up on the floor, and I had no memory of how I had gotten here.
Controlling my breathing, I slowly untangled my legs from the blanket and looked at my hand. The metzmatan was its normal dull red, no glow. So I wasn’t dreaming. How had I gotten here? I tried to recall.
I had left the bar, bidding Josie and the others good night. I had made it to the light rail station. I had... very fuzzy memories of the train. Were those from tonight, or one of the many previous times I had taken the light rail? In either case, I couldn’t remember any part of getting home from the station. I hadn’t been that drunk; no way. Something else was going on.
I got up and walked to the window. Peeked out through the curtains. My normal yard, my normal street. It was dark and the moon glowed down from above, surrounded by stars. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Still uneasy, I moved softly through the hallways of my house on bare feet, trying to avoid the places I knew the floors creaked. “Never turn on the lights for a home invader,” I remembered from somewhere. “You always know your own house better than anyone else.”
Is that what I thought was going on? I listened carefully at every doorway, heart beating quickly and traitorously loudly. I didn’t own any weapons beyond a set of kitchen knives; I slid one of the largest out of its drawer as I passed by. I didn’t feel any safer.
No sounds outside of the normal internal mechanisms of the house running their nightly schedules. The fridge humming, the water heater pumping, the AC softly blowing. Nothing was wrong; everything was normal. If I knew how I had gotten here, I would have just gone back to bed and dismissed it as a bout of paranoia. Unfortunately...
I searched the whole house and found nothing out of the ordinary. Peeked out the back door into the yard; nothing moved. Stared out the front door at the street. Nothing but streetlights and the soft glow of occasional windows where people were still awake. I checked my... wait. I walked quickly back to my bedroom and searched the nightstand, then the bed. My phone was missing.
“...” I checked the stove clock instead, trying to contain my anxiety. 2:09 AM. It was probably just buried in the sheets somewhere. Or maybe I grabbed it and put it down somewhere else during my search of the house. I didn’t remember doing so, but clearly my memory couldn’t exactly be trusted right now.
A shadow moved across the square of light created by the front door and I jumped at least a foot into the air, letting out a strangled squeak of fright. Okay, I was losing it. Good; glad I could admit that. There was nothing visible outside when I looked again, of course. Maybe it had been a bird or something. Where was my phone? I wasn’t sure if this was a job for 911, but I’d feel a lot better if I at least had that option. The situation’s terror was overwhelming; almost as bad as the Devil’s aura of dread. But, in a way, even worse because this was reality.
My hands hurt and I quickly set the knife down, desperate to see the metzmatan change and prove I was in a nightmare. No such luck; I just had red marks in my palms because I had been gripping the handle so tightly. The pain faded. I needed to calm down. Get a grip. Nothing overtly threatening had even happened; I was just being a massive wimp about some minor amnesia and a lost phone. Nothing more.
Wait, amnesia. A memory bubbled to the surface; the guards at the Gate of Deeper Slumber had mentioned that taking a trip there could result in amnesia. Earlier, I had forgotten how I had gotten there, but maybe this time I had forgotten... a lot more?
It wasn’t a perfect explanation, but it was an explanation. Something sensible. I slowed my breaths, beginning to recover. I should put the knife away.
Another shadow passed in front of the door. I paused, heart rate increasing again.
[Pick one from each block.]
- Keep the knife.
- Put the knife back.
- Go out and look. I’ll feel a lot better if I can confirm it’s a bird or a branch or something other than a murderer.
️ - Go back to bed, but stay up. Search for my phone or something.
- Go back to bed and try to sleep. Probably fail, but at least try.
(Winners: , ️ )
- Keep the knife.
- Put the knife back.
- Go out and look. I’ll feel a lot better if I can confirm it’s a bird or a branch or something other than a murderer.
️ - Go back to bed, but stay up. Search for my phone or something.
- Go back to bed and try to sleep. Probably fail, but at least try.
(Winners: , ️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 45
No, no no, nope. I’m not going out there and getting stabbed by a murderer as soon as I open the door. I tried to think; what did characters in horror movies do, so I could do the opposite of that? Of course, this wasn’t very helpful as it just brought to mind even more horrible monstrosities that could be lurking right outside. I knew dreams and Devils were real, so monsters very well could be too.
Very slowly, trying to be as quiet as possible, I retreated back to my bedroom. The knife’s handle pressed into my palms was an uncomfortable weight that really didn’t make me feel any safer, but putting it down was unthinkable.
Everything was normal here, too. I still didn’t turn on any lights, in case that informed something prowling around outside where I was. Instead, I held the knife in one hand and - moving agonizingly slowly to avoid making any noise - poked through the covers again to try and find my phone. Going back to sleep was, of course, out of the question.
Minutes passed. I didn’t find anything. It occurred to me that I might be able to do something from my laptop - call 911, contact someone else, or even just locate my phone - so I carefully moved back into the hallway and towards the living room where I had left it.
Something creaked. I froze. Held my breath. The sound had come from the right, which only led to the utility room... and the back door. I backed up, pressing against the wall and peeking around the corner down the hallway. A shadow moved, roughly human sized and roughly human shaped. A glint of metal. Was that a gun? What the hell do I do?
The figure stepped closer, moving down the hallway in a slow, measured gait. Floorboards creaked and it - he - slowed, looking down. I could see him now in light reflected from the window. The man wore a suit, the color impossible to distinguish in faint moonlight. Held an old-fashioned revolver in one gloved hand and a similarly old-fashioned large metal key in the other. Shiny dress shoes. And the face...
I ducked back out of view and retreated into my bedroom again as I caught a glimpse of a bald head lined with geometric tattoos. An extremely bold choice to not wear a mask or something to cover those up. This was the man from the bar just earlier this evening. Which meant his partner could be here somewhere as well. What do they want with me? I wondered briefly, feeling a wave of lightheadedness as terror reached new heights.
The creaking floorboards came closer and I realized I needed to move. Too close; not enough time to open a window. That would be too loud anyway. Hide, hide, hide. Under the bed? No, too obvious. Closet? Maybe, but easy to find if he looked. Dresser? I was short, but not short enough to fit.
Gotta - can’t - I just - DO SOMETHING!
I ran to the closet, cringing at the quiet - but definitely audible - sounds my feet made on the floor. The footsteps paused in response, then moved more quickly. Confidently. I slowed and slid the door just nearly shut so it wouldn’t make any noise as the man burst into my room, then glanced around. He checked the bed, lifting and tossing the tangled bedding away. He checked behind the dresser, beneath tables, and even under my reading chair, draped in a blanket. Then he swung open the closet door and pointed his gun to reveal... nothing.
He pushed a few sets of clothes out of the way, hesitating for a moment as he noticed the maroon suit.
Then he turned away and searched the rest of the room a second time, finally leaving after another minute.
I let out the shaky breath I had been holding and carefully released the metal panel I had also been holding. My closet had a little cubby built into the wall to give access to a series of pipes for the bathroom and laundry area. I had taken it off at one point and forgotten to screw it back on, which might have just saved my life. I wiggled out of the wall where I had been crammed between pipes, studs, and drywall, then silently set the panel down on the carpeted floor.
The man was still in my house; I could still hear him tromping around, knocking things over. Looking for me. I couldn’t leave the room, or the closet; I didn’t know where he was specifically. Maybe I should just go back into the wall and hide in there for hours.
My hand hurt.
...What?
My metzmatan glowed fitfully, flickering like a lightbulb with a poor connection. Then, it stabilized. A bright red outer circle with two lines connecting to the inner triangle, both flickering between random points on the circle. And a bright red inner triangle, casting a bloody glow on my face and the hanging clothes. The maroon suit absorbed the light, taking on a more vibrant shade of red. The sense of utter, helpless terror dropped away like a discarded coat.
I was dreaming. Or, if I wasn’t, then I had access to my powers - those of a god - in reality as well.
“Come on, Su. Show him what fear really looks like.”
- Smile. Show him what fear really looks like.
- Open the window and run away.
- Back into the wall. Hide, stay put.
️ - Wake up. [If I can’t wake up, I’ll choose the second-highest option.]
(Winner: )
- Smile. Show him what fear really looks like.
- Open the window and run away.
- Back into the wall. Hide, stay put.
️ - Wake up. [If I can’t wake up, I’ll choose the second-highest option.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 46
I smiled and closed my hand, allowing brilliant red light to spill out of my fist. Dripping like blood. Fear was already a distant memory. I was in control here, because I had the metzmatan. Power vibrated up my arm, similar to when I had held the blue light in the parking garage earlier, but distinct enough to feel different. Harsher, faster, angrier. The power of taut muscles and quick strikes. The power to hurt people. Or, one person in particular.
“I’ll show you what fear really looks like,” I whispered, stepping confidently out of my room and down the hall. As I walked, the scene flickered between a dozen different locations before settling on some other house I didn’t recognize. Fancier furniture than my own, and larger. The bald man stood in the living room, gun in hand and searching behind the couch. He wore the same white button-up shirt and light pants from the bar. I cleared my throat.
The man looked up; straightened; turned. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “But now here you are, in my dream. Had I known you would arrive on your own, I would have-”
I screamed and charged, hand outstretched, knife out, tendrils of red lightning crackling across the room. The man seemed dumbfounded by my attack and was too slow to move. I sliced into his arm as he dodged, there was an explosive flare of light, and we were both thrown backwards. I flipped in midair and landed deftly on a table; he slammed into a wall and slumped to the ground.
“Can you and your Order just LEAVE ME ALONE?!” I shouted, sending loose books and lamps flying with the sound of my voice. I was making at least one major assumption, of course, but it seemed justified.
The man grunted and golden light spilled from his hand - I could see the metzmatan now. He really did have one. “Calm yourself, child,” he said in a quiet voice, standing. “I just want to talk.”
“LIKE HELL YOU DO!” I leapt forward again, but this time he was ready for me. A burst of teal light shone from his hand and he simply wasn’t there anymore. I hit the carpet, sending a shock of power into the floor and starting a small fire, then heard a slight clicking sound behind me.
The man shot me in the back of the head.
A burst of overwhelming sound, a heavy pressure on my skull, a sense of weight. My body tensed up, anticipating the burning pain, but it never came. I collapsed face-first into the carpet, the red light snuffing out instantly. The rage-fueled sense of confidence went with it and I was left to wonder what in the world I had been doing.
“Leah, get in here, please,” the man called. “I’ve stunned her for a moment, but I need your help.”
Rustling cloth and footsteps. The carpet smelled like ash. A fire still smoldered in front of me. I couldn’t move.
“How can I help, master?” A feminine, lightly accented voice. Northwestern? Leah, presumably.
“Do you know the Bholgalosan Rites? I need you to recite them.”
“I-I’m sorry, master, I don’t-”
“That’s fine; I know them. In that case, I need you to read her sign. We need to confirm her patron before we proceed; it could be far too dangerous if we’re wrong. Can you do that?”
A long pause. “Y-es?”
Another pause. I moved a finger. The man noticed and cursed. “That will have to do. Come, hurry.” Wind moved behind me and I felt heat on my back. The man spoke in a low, droning voice, speaking a long string of seemingly nonsense syllables. Someone grabbed my hand and pressed two fingers into my palm. I heard a shaky exhale from right next to my ear, then a whispered mutter of “You can do this.”
My right arm broke free, but I didn’t move it yet. I needed to surprise them.
“Reveal the pact,” Leah murmured, tracing my metzmatan with her fingers. I winced as heat built in my palm, then faded. She quickly let go of my hand and stood up, but I felt her shaking even in those few seconds.
The man stopped chanting. “Well?”
“It’s worse than you said. I think - I think it’s-”
“You aren’t beaten that easily, are you?”
I leapt up, spinning directly from prone to standing in less than a second. Red light reignited on my palm and trailed from my limbs. I had - somehow - kept hold of the knife and sank it directly into the closest piece of soft flesh. Leah stumbled, gasping, and fumbled at the blade in her gut with weak fingers. Red lightning crackled around the metal, burning skin and cloth alike. Blood seeped from the wound, staining the beautiful dress she had worn at the bar.
I grinned and shoved her aside, allowing her to collapse with a pitiful gurgle. “You’re next,” I said, my hand temporarily glowing blue to summon a new blade out of thin air. Long, narrow, sharp. An actual sword this time, not just a kitchen knife.
The man backed away, visibly afraid even as he tried to hide it. “This isn’t you. Resist it!”
Something about his words connected, but I dismissed the idea. A trick. He was losing. If I backed down, he’d just shoot me again. No. “NO!” I lunged.
Teal light again. The man was gone. “NO!”
Rapid-fire words from behind. A rose-red glow. An electric tingle on my back. Blackness.
...
Several hours earlier...
I stared at the back of the man’s head, an uncomfortable mixture of fear and anger swirling in my stomach. Short, well-groomed black hair: not exactly an oddity on the light rail. No, the reason I was so upset wasn’t his hair. It was his outfit: the man wore a pristinely tailored maroon suit. I hadn’t seen him get on the train, so I hadn’t seen his face. Couldn’t confirm the yellow eyes and fanged grin; couldn’t know for sure if he was the Devil. But I knew, without a doubt, that it was him this time. No half-spotted apparitions in the darkness, no distant figures at a cafe, no maroon sweater freaking me out on the train. I was wide awake and staring directly at him, in the real world.
Another pang of fear worked its way into the mixture. I felt very nauseous. What was I going to do about it?
️ - Confront him. Make sure.
- Get off the train ASAP. Catch a different one.
- Just wait. Don’t do anything.
(Winner: )
️ - Confront him. Make sure.
- Get off the train ASAP. Catch a different one.
- Just wait. Don’t do anything.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 47
I ran. Well, not immediately, but I got off the train at the next stop and stood nervously on the platform, watching it roll away. He never got up; I never saw his face. Still couldn’t be sure. I was still shaking.
Fifteen minutes later, the next train arrived to take me the rest of the way home. No maroon suits on this one. As usual, I checked the mailbox when I arrived. Not as usual, there was a package waiting for me. I don’t remember ordering anything, I mused, taking it inside. The address was mine and the return label was the distribution center of a global online retailer that I did order from with some regularity, so that didn’t narrow it down at all. Maybe they had mistakenly duplicated one of my orders? It could happen.
I cut the packing tape and opened the absolutely normal cardboard box, revealing an absolutely normal bubble-wrap package inside, protecting a smaller box. I sighed at the waste of packing material before slicing through and opening the second box. A book fell into my hands.
Its cover was sleek, dark red leather and it had a shiny golden clasp holding a protective flap over the pages themselves. Metallic gold inlays formed words and a familiar symbol on the front: the metzmatan, followed by the book’s title: “A Treatise on Traveling the Dreamworlds, by ---.” The author’s name was covered up by a block of gold foil, or paint, or whatever the inalys were made of. Lightly scratching it didn’t make a difference and I didn’t want to damage the book, so I left it be.
A card slipped out as I lifted the book up: one of the standard gift cards from the retailer. It read “null has sent you a gift! We hope you like it! The sender included the following message: ‘Try page 18. Do not lose this book.’”
Before I opened the cover, I stood a few paces back and considered the book. There were really only a few suspects for who could have sent me this: the Devil - assuming he was actually in the real world - or a member of the cult. I trusted precisely neither of those options. Still, it wasn’t like I could ignore it; this book could be exactly what I had been looking for: a guide to the metzmatan, an explanation of the Devil, an understanding of how all this worked.
“...” Deep breath.
I didn’t turn to page 18 directly. I started at the beginning. The chapter titles were already intriguing enough: “Critical Rites,” “Basic Dreamwalking,” “Manipulating the Dream,” “Traveling the Dreamworlds,” and “Glossary of Useful Rites,” to name a few. I started to get excited despite my concern. Patience. Start with the introduction.
“Prelude: Warnings and the Golden Rules.
“If you are reading these words, you possess a metzmatan. Congratulations, and my condolences. This book will endeavor to teach you how to use your metzmatan in order to keep yourself alive as long as possible, and potentially to benefit you and others. Before we begin, however, there are several warnings and rules of absolute import.
“With your metzmatan, dreams become your reality. Everything that happens in your dreams will affect you in the real world as well. Given the unpredictable and often dangerous nature of many dreams, you will be in mortal peril regularly. If you wish to survive, you must learn how to wake up quickly and on command. LEARN HOW TO WAKE UP. This is the most critical skill you can possess to keep yourself safe, even if it is not foolproof.
“Now, the Golden Rules. Three tenets that I hold above all others in prolonging a metzmatan-holder’s life:
1. Your patron is not your friend.
2. Never enter the true dreamworlds unprepared.
3. You are not invincible.
“1. Your patron is the demon who marked you with the symbol and is the source of your power. True, they will usually not wish harm upon you directly - that would be a waste of the effort and power they have invested into you. However, you should never trust them completely. They are not your friend and they do not have your best interests at heart. They always play higher games.
“2. True dreamworlds are the realms created by sleeping gods. They are unlike anything you can find in the surface dreamworlds, created by sentient - but mortal - beings. I cannot overstate how dangerous a trip to this realm can be, and you should never enter without a clear purpose. More on this in later chapters.
“3. I will repeat it again: You are not invincible. Your metzmatan may allow you to reshape dreams at will, and it may allow you to fly, grow to the size of a building, or disintegrate enemies with a thought. But you are still only human, regardless of your... blessings. Even in your own dreams, where you have near-complete control, you can still be surprised and slain; it only takes a momentary lapse in attention. You bring your physical self with you as you travel the dreamworlds, with all of its benefits and flaws. The only exception to this is the true dreamworlds; again, more on that later. You are even more vulnerable there, though you do not take your body with you.”
I paused, hesitating before turning the page. This was it. This was exactly what I wanted. A clear, comprehensive guide to every question I had about my symbol, the dreamworlds, and what I was supposed to do about it.
It was almost... too convenient.
I narrowed my eyes, frowning at the book. “Please tell me you aren’t a trap, or a trick, or just wrong? Please?”
As always, the inanimate object did not respond.
- Keep reading.
⏩ - Skip ahead to page 18. Come back for the prologue later.
- Investigate this a little further. Does the retailer even sell this book, among other questions?
- I don’t know what kind of trick this is, but it has to be one. Burn the book.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 48
Before continuing, I decided to do at least some cursory digging to see if this was actually legitimate. I checked the retailer’s website for the book’s title and, of course, found nothing. There wasn’t an ISBN or anything on the cover - this probably hadn’t been traditionally published. I didn’t even know how old it was, though it was bound and printed so it couldn’t be that old.
Next, I checked through the library’s online database and, surprisingly, actually got a match. The author was listed as Cornelius A. Redmarsh, rendering the censoring on my copy irrelevant, and the image on the website seemed to match my cover pretty well. Red leather, golden inalys, the metzmatan. How had I missed this earlier? There was no description or scan available, and it was listed as part of the “old and rare books” collection, so I would need to go physically speak to a librarian if I wanted to investigate this particular lead any further. Maybe one of them would know where it had come from, or who this Cornelius Redmarsh was. I resolved to visit the library as soon as practical, then eyed the book again.
Well, it can’t hurt, right?
I skipped ahead to page 18, just to see what I was supposed to “try.” The page was part of the “Critical Rites” chapter, which appeared to be a list of rituals that the author had considered particularly important. Page 18 in particular held a ritual titled “Dreamwalking - personal to personal.” Skimming through the instructions, it involved speaking a particular set of phrases, making some specific gestures, then thinking of a person and using the metzmatan to draw an arch in midair. “If done correctly,” the text read, “A silver doorway will open and allow passage to the destination dream.”
I blinked and re-read the instructions several times. They weren’t that complicated, just a little obtuse. I felt my fingers moving almost of their own accord, practicing the steps, then snapped out of it. I absolutely did not want to do whatever this was before thinking at least a little more first. Maybe the book would have more instructions. Maybe I should check it against the library’s copy, to see if whoever sent it changed some words to trick me. Maybe - I glanced at the clock - I should go to bed.
...
I watched the scene as if underwater, muffled and wavering. My metzmatan burned on my hand, its constant presence reminding me I was in a dream. Unusually, it didn’t stop hurting when I glanced at it. It wasn’t glowing beyond the normal dim red, but it continued to burn with a dull ache that throbbed with my heartbeat. My head hurt as well and I squinted, trying to make out what I was supposed to be watching.
I was viewing my younger self again. Little Su - probably around fifteen in this memory - sat in a soft chair and closed her eyes, drawing a bow across the strings of her cello. A strong, clear note resonated through the water. My hand ached. My head throbbed.
She played several more notes in a scale, then nodded and gestured to someone I couldn’t see. Ripples in the water obscured it. Where was all this water coming from?
The other person began playing the piano, beginning a slow, gentle tune. Little Su waited a few beats, nodding her head, then joined in with the melody. She smiled as she played, letting her body sway with the bow and the beat, tapping her foot enthusiastically. I focused, trying to expand my view. My thoughts were muddled; I couldn’t quite recall this memory. Who had I been playing with?
The symbol throbbed with an extra-strong pulse and I winced. The water pulled back, revealing... my mother.
I froze.
Her face wasn’t scribbled out, for the first time in months. I could see her happy, almost radiant expression as she smiled in Little Su’s direction and played with careful, precise presses. Little Su smiled back, softly and more subdued as she focused on the music and getting the notes right. But she was enjoying herself. Mother was enjoying herself too. Together.
I clutched my head with both hands. “This isn’t right; this isn’t what happened!”
I waved my hand, trying to dispel the false memory. The scene refused to change. “Stop it stop it STOP IT STOP IT!”
The metzmatan flared red, then blue, then faded back to its normal dim glow. The scene flickered wildly between two states: the happy serenity I had just seen, and a darker, stricter sequence where Little Su focused entirely on playing well, her expression withdrawn, and mother glared from the piano whenever she - I - messed up. That was better. That was what happened.
The scene cracked, then shattered. Chords screeched and strings vibrated through the white void around me as I fell, spinning, towards a cello the size of a city. I shouted, switching the scene again.
Something resisted, but I pulled away. Piano keys crashed from the sky. It was SO LOUD EVERYWHERE. I couldn’t focus; couldn’t think. I needed it to stop. I -
I remembered the ritual. The words leapt into my mind unbidden, mouth forming syllables I hardly understood. I didn’t know why I was who I was what I was doing I -
I woke up on the floor of my bedroom, tangled in blankets from my bed. I was drenched in water (again) and wearing my normal night clothes: light tank top and shorts. Very normal, except that I didn’t usually wake up on the floor, and I had no memory of how I had gotten here.
...
- The bald man kicked me out of the dream.
- The bald man kicked me out, and muddled my memories of the dream.
️ - The bald man tried to remove my metzmatan.
- Leah survived.
- Leah died.
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 49
In the present...
I woke up in bed, sunlight already streaming in through the windows. Apparently I had forgotten to close the blinds. My arms and back felt sore, like I had been exercising. I hadn’t dreamt last night, or if I had, I didn’t remember it. Still, I felt... good.
I got up, glanced at the red-and-gold book on my nightstand just to confirm it was still there, and grabbed my hairbrush. Paused, smiled slightly, and bent down to pick out a little jade barrette that my dad had gotten for me last year. After the incident. I didn’t often wear accessories like that, but for some reason, I felt like wearing it today. It felt right. Maybe something from my unremembered dreams?
My head throbbed lightly, but I was able to ignore the pain with a fair degree of success. Maybe I had just slept weird. Maybe I had gone to the Gate of Deeper Slumber again and earned myself another bout of amnesia. I couldn’t be sure. It was still a nice morning.
Things continued to go my way as I left the house and headed to work. Tom wasn’t there at all - apparently he was out sick today - so I didn’t even have to avoid him. Alfonse texted a few times over the course of the morning to solidify our plans for the weekend’s expedition. I got into a groove with pipeline optimization so both the morning and afternoon passed relatively quickly, without incident. After all the hassle earlier in the week, it was nice to have a much more chill day.
A little before 5pm, my phone rang. I glanced at it to see my dad was calling and picked up, a little nervous. “Hey, dad. Everything okay?”
“Hey, pumpkin. Don’t worry; all good here!”
He stayed silent for a few seconds. I fidgeted in my chair, then stood up to pace. “So... what’s up?”
“Well, you remember how we were planning on a visit sometime around Thanksgiving?”
“Yeah; is that not going to work anymore?”
“No, no, it’s still fine. I’m looking for flights this week, actually. It’s just...”
More anxiety trickled into my movements. I paced faster. “Come on, is something wrong? You’re making me nervous here.”
“Su, please don’t shut down when I bring this up, okay? Promise me.”
“Dad.”
“Okay, okay. Your... mother called.”
I stopped and pressed my lips together, gripping my phone tightly. “...And?” I managed to squeak out.
“She wants to talk to you. She spent half of the conversation agonizing over what she did and the other half asking me about you. She... isn’t doing well, pumpkin.”
I breathed measuredly. Loosened my grip so I wouldn’t break my phone. “I don’t care how she’s doing. I thought you weren’t going to talk to her again. I blocked her number like I thought you did.”
“She called from a work number - look, Su, I know the incident was hard on all of us. I’m not reconsidering the divorce; I’m not getting back together with her. Okay? I know we’re better off this way. But...” He sighed. “Just because we’re not right for each other doesn’t mean I stop caring about her. You can’t be married for nearly 30 years and just have those emotions vanish.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Look, I know you’re still hurting, but I talked to your grandpa and he agrees that the way you’re dealing with this might not be healthy. You never want to talk or even think about it.” Another pause, another sigh. “Even though she was in the wrong, do you think maybe she had reasons for what she did? That maybe she’s not a being of pure malice?”
To my surprise, a silent tear slid down my nose to land on my desk. I was shaking. “I don’t want to talk to her,” I said, voice unsteady.
“Okay. I won’t make you; you’re an adult and your own person. But I just want you to consider it. You might get some closure if you hear her side of the story.”
“...”
He lowered his voice, like he wanted to ensure we weren’t overheard. “One more thing. She didn’t want me to tell you this if you didn’t want to talk, but... I think you have a right to know. Your mother is going to be in town next week.”
I froze. “M-my town?”
“Your town. Er, not for you!” he exclaimed, doing damage control. “Although I’m sure she would visit, if you let her - it’s for work. A conference or something. I didn’t pry too much. I didn’t give her your address or workplace, so you shouldn’t have to see her unless you want to. Just... I thought you should know. Just in case.”
“... Thanks. Just in case.” Another few tears fell to the desk.
“I’ll let you think on it. Please, give me a call if you want to talk. Be safe, okay, pumpkin?”
“I will. Bye, dad.”
I dropped the phone after the call ended and fell onto my desk, shuddering. I knew the day had been too good to be true.
- Don’t even consider meeting with mother. Stay away at all costs.
- Maybe he’s right. Maybe I need to face her. Maybe that will get her out of my dreams.
- Go to the library after work.
- Go to history club with grandpa’s group.
- Go home to think. I have a lot of thinking to do.
(Winners: , )
- Don’t even consider meeting with mother. Stay away at all costs.
- Maybe he’s right. Maybe I need to face her. Maybe that will get her out of my dreams.
- Go to the library after work.
- Go to history club with grandpa’s group.
- Go home to think. I have a lot of thinking to do.
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 50
I slid into the room as inconspicuously as I could manage. Alfonse was here - I noticed him first, moving around a group of older folks holding cards and speaking excitedly. Grandpa was... there, good. Working on the Marnosa model in the basement of the Silver Sun resort’s community center, as he usually was on Thursday evenings. Today, he seemed to be carefully decorating some tunnels bored into one of the mountain ranges; I recognized them as the very tunnels I was going to visit this weekend. I walked through the collection of history club members towards him.
“You sold me out to dad,” I said in place of a greeting.
“Su! I didn’t expect to - that was today, was it?”
“Did you know about her? Next week?”
He frowned, moving away from the tunnels. “Yes.”
I sighed. “Look. I... think you might be right.” A glance away, a nervous hand movement. “I’ve been... dreaming about her. A lot, lately. Even more than the Devil.”
“Not good dreams, I take it?” He steered me away from the crowd somewhat, to a slightly more private area. Our conversation would still be masked by the general noise of the room.
“No. I keep remembering terrible things she did to me. Her face is scribbled out, like by a big pen, and she’s always furious at me. I want... I want to stop reliving that. Maybe if I face her in reality, I can kick her out of my dreams.”
Grandpa nodded sagely. “You need closure. From what your dad told me, you closed yourself off right after the incident. Is... that what you’re dreaming about?”
I hesitated, remembering. “N-no, no. Not the incident itself. Just... earlier things. Bad memories from when I was little. Being told I couldn’t date Adam, being kidnapped in the supermarket, being-”
“Hold on, you were kidnapped? When was this?!”
“Uhh, a while ago. I was really young. Like, six, I think? I can barely remember it.”
“I never...” He trailed off, thinking. “Your parents must have kept that a secret.”
“Maybe to stop you from worrying. I don’t know. It was pretty traumatic, though.” I swore I could smell a hint of that chemical again. Shook my head. Not real. “Anyway, I haven’t made a decision yet; I don’t know if I actually want to talk to her again. In fact, I’m sure I don’t want to. But...”
“You think you should.”
“Yeah.” Another sigh. “If I decide to, can you... act as a middleman, or something? Like, coordinate a time and place? I don’t want to, well-”
“It’s okay, I get it. Of course, Su. Just let me know when you’re ready.”
“Thanks, grandpa.” A pause, but not an awkward one. I was just processing what I had agreed to. “Have you found anything else about anything?”
“As a matter of fact, I have. But I think Alfonse might want your attention, and I have to get things set up for tonight’s discussion anyway. How about we meet up afterwards?”
I glanced behind me to spot Alfonse, who gave a small wave as I caught his eyes. “Sure. Just tell me first: anything good?”
“Nothing earthshattering; just some little tidbits. Nothing to worry about, for sure.”
I nodded, then let him head over to the table to prepare. Meanwhile, I moved through the crowd to meet up with Alfonse.
“Miss Suyeon Che,” he began, raising a card held between two fingers. Its back faced towards me, decorated in an intricate pattern of layered triangles. “Something very strange is going on with you.”
I jumped at the unexpected use of my full name, plus his almost accusatory tone. “... Me?” was the best response I could muster.
“Yes, you. First the mysterious burn on your hand - which, by the way, I notice hasn’t healed at all.”
I closed my left fist self-consciously. Should have bought a glove.
“Then the situation with your grandpa losing his phone, and you in the hospital for some reason. Which, unlike your hand, you appear to be fully recovered from.”
I winced, taking a step back as he advanced.
“And then, your unexplained desire to visit a set of old Marnosan train tunnels out in the middle of the desert?” He turned the card around, revealing a faded but well-preserved painting of a shower of falling stars. A series of symbols I couldn’t read was written across the bottom of it. “Combined with the book that Charles let me see after last week’s meeting? The one discussing priests of an old cult with that very same symbol on their hands?”
I stared at him, unsure how to react.
“This card is the starstorm,” he explained, handing it to me. I took it, bewildered. “In many Marnosan religions, falling stars foretold significant events. A whole shower of them foretold a cataclysm.”
He paused. I dutifully regarded the card, then looked up again. I saw him glance at my hand, which I had - of course - uncurled in order to hold the card. My metzmatan was plainly visible; I “casually” changed my grip to hide it. Opened my mouth, about to speak.
“But the starstorm could hold a different meaning as well. The cataclysm could be metaphorical, referring instead to the revelation of some great secret.” He gestured to the card with an almost theatrical flourish. “So, Su, I play the starstorm. Tell me, what is going on with you?”
[At least one option is potentially deadly to Su, and at least one option is potentially deadly to Alfonse. Not immediately, but fair warning.]
- Tell him.
- Lie to him.
- Refuse to say.
(Winner: )
- Tell him.
- Lie to him.
- Refuse to say.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 51
I hesitated, but I had kept this hidden from him for a reason. It just wouldn’t be safe to explain. “I can’t,” I said quietly. “I want to, but... I just can’t.”
A brief impression of some reaction, so quick I couldn’t tell. “Well, I tried.” He gestured for me to hand the card back, which I did. “At least there’s nothing you’re hiding about those tunnels that could be important, right?”
I glanced aside guiltily. Tom had warned me about “things” that live in those tunnels, but if he was a cultist, then his information probably wasn’t reliable. Then again, if he wasn’t... Plus, I knew the tunnels had once been home to “religious squatters,” as the dense book had put it, which made me worried that they perhaps still were. Was I going to meet a member of the cult in person for the first time? The bald man and his friend? Tom? ... I couldn’t explain any of my worries to Alfonse without bringing up my own role in things. It just wasn’t safe.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I think I’ve got just about everything ready except for a way to get there. I don’t suppose you have an off-road vehicle?”
Pay attention, Su. “Uh, no. I actually sold my car before moving here; I’ve been just using the buses and trains ever since.”
He cocked his head. “Really? I’m impressed; the transit system here is far from expansive.”
“It gets me where I need to go.” I shrugged. “But admittedly, I did have to pick my neighborhood pretty carefully to make sure there was a train station nearby.”
“Well, we’ll need a rental, then. I’ll see what my archeologist friend recommends; maybe the university has a car we can just borrow.”
“That sounds smart; thanks.” I looked down, feeling even more guilty. Alfonse was doing most of the work to prepare for the trip, and I wasn’t even telling him what the point was. What if something bad happened to him because of me?
We finally arrived at the table where a number of club members sat with handfuls of cards, carefully considering their next move. “So, Su, are you interested in learning about the game this starstorm card comes from?”
Grateful for the change in subject, I agreed. Alfonse explained the basics; it reminded me a little of some of the online deck-building games that involved commanding monsters and activating cards to defeat your opponent. The rules were definitely different, but close enough to things I had played in my youth to be understandable without too much effort. The game’s name was “Tzipatolli,” which I had a lot of trouble pronouncing but Alfonse explained roughly meant “demon cards.” Apparently the Marnosan settlers had adapted this game from the natives’ version and kept the name.
Some of the cards’ artwork looked familiar. Maybe a little too familiar. I tapped one under my control - a dark blue mass with twinkling stars in its depths. “Alfonse, what’s this one named?”
He leaned forward to read the symbols across the bottom. “Acocitl, I think. I’m not sure what that means. Why, you like the little guy?”
I frowned, tapping my head like it would knock a memory loose. “No, it just seems familiar...” I muttered, almost to myself. “Why do I know this thing?”
“Maybe you’ve seen something like it before? In a movie or game or something?”
“Maybe...” I couldn’t make the connection. “Do you know anything about the... Acocitl?”
He shrugged, picking up the card to study it more closely. “Not really. I’m not some dedicated Marnosan scholar; remember? I just like games.”
“Right, sorry.” He put the card back. Games, games. Stadium? The chase! Those two were riding one of these things!
Alfonse must have seen my expression change. “Remember something?”
“Uh, yeah, yeah. It was in a... game I played last... week. I think.” I have to assume it’s a real creature. That’s the safest option. What did I learn about - water! It didn’t like the rain; that’s right. Maybe... I had certainly gotten my distraction. Maybe even a little too much; there were just so many thoughts and dreams to keep track of. And I had to try and continue to be a functioning human adult at the same time. Speaking of...
Alfonse was frowning at me. “You don’t seem too sure.”
“I’m... not! I’ll need to go play it again to be sure.”
“Are you sure this doesn’t have anything to do with all the questions I asked you earlier? You know, about...” He nodded towards my left hand, thankfully resting palm-down on the table this time to hide the symbol.
I felt another flash of guilt. My face felt hot. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you. Maybe in a few weeks, once I figure more of it out. But... not yet.”
A few seconds passed as he studied my expression. I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Okay. But you have to tell me about anything relevant to the tunnels. It’s dangerous enough out there without whatever you might be hiding. Please?”
- Tell him about the dream-monster and possible cult presence.
- Tell him about the rumors of coyotes and wolves.
- Refuse to say.
(Winner: )
- Tell him about the dream-monster and possible cult presence.
- Tell him about the rumors of coyotes and wolves.
- Refuse to say.
(Winner: )
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Scene 52
I needed to come up with something or he might not even come with me. Luckily, Tom had provided an easier-to-believe danger. “Wolves,” I said. “Or coyotes; the rumors aren’t really clear. But there are supposed to be some of them around the tunnels.”
He relaxed a little. “Well, that’s not so bad. It’s the middle of the desert; of course there would be some around. Plus, they usually don’t attack humans.” He tapped one of his monsters, attacking the gel-creature on my side of the board. “I still believe you’re hiding plenty, but perhaps the tunnels will help clarify things. We’ll find out on Saturday, right?”
“Right...”
After the meeting, I walked with grandpa through the resort, watching the stars and enjoying a slight breeze that made the night actually comfortable. I still felt guilty about not telling Alfonse what was going on, but not enough to change my mind. It was in his best interest not to know.
“So... what did you find out?”
Grandpa stopped at the empty pool and watched its blue underwater lights glowing through the calm water. I looked too. Pretty. “This Devil of yours has been around for a very long time,” he began. “There have been references to a man in maroon attire in modern history, Marnosan accounts, and even earlier, in native stories and legends.”
I nodded but stayed quiet. That was hardly surprising. “There seem to be two types of stories about him. The first are a lot like yours: a person is visited in their dreams by the Devil, marked with the symbol, and gains... supernatural abilities. Often, these people end up dying a horrible death to serve some sort of fable about being wise with power.”
I swallowed. “Thanks for the encouragement.”
“Not always! Sometimes, the stories end without a clear resolution; I suppose it’s a ‘happily ever after.’ Anyway, those didn’t have enough details to help you; I’m sure you know enough about what you’re going through on your own.”
“More than enough.”
“Well, the second type may be more useful, then. Or at least a little more cheerful. You see, Su, in these other stories, the Devil hunts down a target in their dreams over weeks or months, scaring them half to death, then finally kills them. There’s no fable here that I can find; it’s just a standard boogeyman myth, with a little more detail describing the torments he puts them through than I would expect.”
“... That’s not cheerful at all.”
“Well, not to them. But it is to you; the Devil has never killed anyone after marking them with the symbol. At least, not in the stories. If they’re true, I don’t think he’s trying to actually kill you!”
I frowned. “Then why would he keep chasing me down? Why promise that he would? Just to mess with me?”
“I’m not sure. I’m aggregating, here - these stories aren’t very clear and are almost always wrapped in myth or fable. But I figured the idea that you aren’t in immediate danger from him might be a little cheerful?”
“... I guess? I’m mostly just confused; if he’s not trying to kill me, what is he doing? He talked to me on the train once, but didn’t give any answers...”
“I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can find. Just please try to be safe. Even if the Devil isn’t after you, there are plenty of other dangers around, as you keep telling me.”
A cluster of bubbles sparkled in the light from the pool. I nodded, still distracted.
Later, I lay on my stomach stretched out in bed, feet up in the air for no particular reason. The red leather book sat muffled by blankets in front of me.
“Dreamwalking is the art of stepping out of one dream and into another,” I read. “This is the basic power that all metzmatans grant, and one of the most useful. By dreamwalking, the dreamer can use their own dream as a jumping-off point to enter the mind of any other person in the world, so long as they are sleeping, unprotected by defensive rites, and they have some sort of connection to the dreamer. This connection is the key to successful dreamwalking.
“If the dreamer knows their target well, and the target is unprotected by defensive rites, all they must do is picture the target in their mind and perform the dreamwalking rite detailed in Chapter 1. This should form the described silver doorway and allow the dreamer to enter the new dream. If, however, the dreamer intends to enter the mind of a target they do not have a strong relationship with, there are other options to form the required connection.
“The weakest level of connection is a name, a description, a picture, or the like. Anything to help form and focus the dreamer’s thoughts on their target. The more details the dreamer knows about their target - personality, relationships, routine, and so on - the stronger the connection and the easier the dreamwalk. However, any of these connections may be blocked by defensive rites, no matter how many biographies the dreamer has read.
“A middling level of connection involves a mutual acquaintance, or a location or object with a strong relationship to the target. Dreamwalking with the help of a friend of the target is often successful, even if the dreamer doesn’t know the target at all. Similarly, holding an item or physically sleeping in a location related to the target forges a powerful connection that will break through many weaker defensive rites. The more intimate the item, the stronger the connection: a toothbrush the target uses daily, for instance, will be much more powerful than an empty cereal box they threw out. Again, defensive rites can stop many attempts with this level of connection, though weaker rites can fail here.
“The strongest level of connection is physical, by using a piece of the target’s body. Locks of hair are popular choices, but saliva or blood samples work as well, as do entirely severed body parts for dreamers lacking in morality. It should go without saying, but physically touching the target counts, too. At this level, all but the absolute strongest defensive rites are irrelevant. There is no known way of blocking an attempted dreamwalk with this powerful a connection.
“However, note that, in order to utilize physical objects - body part, possession, or otherwise - in dreamwalking, the dreamer must bring them into their dream by holding them while going to sleep. This means that they must bring them into the target’s dream as well to act as a focus. A clever or powerful target can then steal the objects back before removing the intruder, breaking the connection and restoring the security of their mind.”
I looked up and frowned thoughtfully, flipping back to Chapter 1 for more information on the defensive rites mentioned. Many of the weaker ones were very simple, often involving just gestures, words, and a sprinkle of various materials. This one needed diluted lemon juice; I had that in the fridge.
It seemed clear to me that I had been the victim of dreamwalking more than once. The men in the drain tunnels, the cultists in the parking garage; maybe even the bald man? Maybe I should try one of these rites. But then again, I had the ability to dreamwalk too, apparently. Maybe I should... try it? I didn’t have any stolen possessions or - I shuddered - body parts, so it would have to be someone I knew well. If I wanted to try it at all.
- Try the defensive rite.
- Don’t.
- Try to dreamwalk.
- Don’t.
[If I do try to dreamwalk, who should I attempt to visit?]
️ - Alfonse.
- Dad.
- Grandpa.
- Josie.
- Mother.
(Winners: , , )
- Try the defensive rite.
- Don’t.
- Try to dreamwalk.
- Don’t.
[If I do try to dreamwalk, who should I attempt to visit?]
️ - Alfonse.
- Dad.
- Grandpa.
- Josie.
- Mother.
(Winners: , , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 53
I grabbed a bottle of lemon juice from the fridge, diluted it to the correct concentration in a mug of water, then sprinkled the mixture around my bed as described in the book. I felt kind of silly, but it wouldn’t cause any problems if it didn’t work, just some citrus scents on the sheets. After that, there was just a paragraph to read - in some other language; I had trouble pronouncing a few of the sounds - and it was done. There was no obvious sign of a success or failure, so I decided to assume I had done it right and go to sleep.
...
The sound of trickling water. I found myself standing in a dilapidated building or cavern, surrounded by broken-down, rusted-out machinery. Bushes, vines, and other lesser foliage rustled gently in the warm, humid air. Streams of water flowed across the ground, splashing into little hollows formed from the natural rock floor and sheets of discarded metal. It was dark, but not pitch-black; some undefined light source cast a hazy, vaguely blue glow across the scene.
I glanced down at the metzmatan as I picked my way carefully through the mess, aiming for a sort of clearing encircled by lengths of bent rebar, girders, and sheets of scrap metal taller than me. Leafy vines crawled up and down all the metal, making it seem like I stood in the midst of a forest rather than a strange mechanical graveyard.
Well, here was as good a place as any to try the ritual. I paused, breathed carefully, then spoke the words clearly as I made the requisite gestures. My metzmatan seemed to glow a little brighter as I moved and spoke, but nothing happened at the conclusion of the rite. It just dimmed back down to normal.
I frowned and tried again. I felt something that time; a sort of tugging sensation in my belly. Still no silver doorway. I considered trying it a third time, but decided against it. Then, after looking around at the strange nature around me, I changed my mind and tried again anyway.
Still no effect; just about the same as the second try. I sat down on a patch of moss next to one of the tiny rivers, winded. I was clearly spending my own energy trying to do something - I wouldn’t get so tired just standing around - so something must be blocking me. Maybe I just didn’t have a good enough connection? Or maybe-
A hand fell on my shoulder, unnaturally warm even through the durable sleeve of the shirt the dream had given me - like a jungle explorer’s outfit. I yelped and spun around.
“Good evening, Suyeon,” the Devil said.
I jumped up and backpedaled several steps, adrenaline flooding my system as the familiar cloud of fear set in. “Y-you-”
“Relax,” he said, calmly walking forward. One of his polished black shoes stepped into the river and sent up a cloud of steam. “If I wanted you dead, you would be already. I’m not hunting tonight.”
“But, last time, you said I should run the next-”
“And you did.”
That gave me pause. “I... did?”
He just stayed silent, smiling that damnable too-wide smile of his.
“The train; last night. That was - was that really...?”
An even wider grin. “Have you thought about our discussion since the last time we spoke?”
“About the subway key and the Gate?” I stepped back again, now standing just at the edge of the clearing. Plenty of open space behind me if I needed to run away. “I found the subway tunnels and I’ve even been to the Gate. I’m making progress.” I don’t know why I have to prove myself to him, but... it seems like a good idea.
“While of great importance to you, these developments aren’t of what I speak.”
“Why you picked me?” My wrist hurt with phantom pain, remembering the burning, searing heat of his grip as he asked me the question. Why had he picked me, of all people?
A nod, a smile.
“I... still don’t know,” I admitted. “I know about the blood moon cult now, but that could have been anyone. I’ve been to the Gate, but I don’t know how. I just - there was nothing special about me before you burned this thing into my hand!”
“Not so. You will learn.”
The Devil seemed content to stand there, hands clasped behind his back, just smiling and waiting. I hesitated, then spoke. “Did you give me the book?”
“No, no...” He almost seemed distracted, gazing up at about a 30 degree angle. I glanced in that direction, but didn’t see anything of note. Just more vague, lurking metal shapes.
“What do you get out of all this? If I go to the Gate and break the Lock and all that; what do you get? Why give anyone a metzmatan, not even me specifically?”
A brief glance and a knowing smile. His yellow eyes flickered like flames.
Something cold touched my foot and I glanced down. A new stream of water had trickled out of a hole in the wall, splashing against my shoe and sprinkling my leg with droplets. I sighed, moving my foot. “Why do my dreams always have so much water in them?” I grumbled.
“That,” the Devil said sharply. “Is an excellent question, isn’t it?”
I looked up, surprised. “It is?”
“Look around you, Suyeon. Not here; in the waking world. Deserts as far as the eye can see. A single river, maybe a lake, but nothing more. Dreams are a reflection of you and your surroundings, blended together to distill out the truth. Where, then, is all this water coming from?”
I considered his words. “If it’s not from my surroundings, it must be from me, right?”
A smile.
“But... what does that mean?”
“Why did I pick you, Suyeon Che?”
Based on the context of the question, I guessed. “Because I have... a lot of water in me?”
The Devil laughed. Actually chuckled. I nearly jumped, the sound was so unexpected. As usual, his actual voice characteristics were simply missing and the sound seemed wrong; almost processed. “When you figure out what that means, you will have the answers you need.”
“...” Obviously, I had no idea what that meant. Still, it was more information than before.
“I must be on my way. Do be careful with the Crimson Moon fellows; they seem to think you’re dangerous.” He shook his head ruefully, then simply vanished. No ceremony; just there one moment and gone the next.
I stood there for a moment, thinking. The water was important. I bent down and poked my finger into the nearest stream, watching it fork around my hand. Why? What did I have to do with water? I wasn’t any more watery than any other human - 70% or so if I remembered my biology right. What did he mean?
And then there had been the parting sentence: the cultists thought I was dangerous? That would explain why they kept chasing me, but why would I be dangerous to them? The only reason I opposed them was because they kept trying to kill me!
Something echoed from the direction the Devil had been looking. Long, low, grumbly. Like a gigantic creature - or a strained piece of metal. I glanced over, the metzmatan glimmering on my palm.
- Go look.
- Follow the water instead. Where is it going?
️ - Wake up.
(Winner: )
- Go look.
- Follow the water instead. Where is it going?
️ - Wake up.
(Winner: )
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Scene 54
I hesitated, then turned away. Something else had caught my attention.
I climbed up a rickety pile of barrels and scrap - ignoring the potential injury if I slipped - to stand atop the leafy wall that encircled my clearing. Turned around to take in the scenery. It was as I thought; the ground generally sloped down to my right and all the streams flowed in that direction as well. The groaning sound had come from the left, upstream. Well, I wanted to find out where all the water was going instead.
I carefully dropped down from the wall and set off to the right, boots crunching on rusted-out detritus and happy green plants alike. The vague, hazy light source seemed to be behind me now, so I concentrated on my symbol and - with a flicker of blue light - summoned a torch. It just seemed more appropriate than a flashlight for some reason.
The jumping flame lit the way, quickly becoming the only light source after I dropped down a several-foot cliff. Waterfalls sparkled and splashed behind me. Hulking carcasses of long-dead machines rose out of the darkness, rusted and broken and forgotten. I started to feel a little uneasy. Above, the diffuse bluish light had reminded me of daylight and the sun, perhaps poking through holes in a presumable roof overhead. Down here, there was nothing but my torch. I willed it brighter and the flame blossomed, expanding its reach. That only helped a little.
I’m in control here. I have all the power. I can wake up, I can change the landscape, I can do anything. I’m the dreamer and I’m in charge.
The passage from the book, the one about not being invincible even in my own dreams, crept into my thoughts. I shook my head, trying to dispel it, but was decidedly not successful. Another nagging filament of anxiety added to the pile. I willed the torch even brighter, to the point where it started to hurt my hand. Reluctantly, I dimmed it again.
Minutes passed. The ground grew more slippery, more wet. I squelched through mud rather than stepped on dirt. Hundreds of trickling streams flowed together, combining and saturating every inch of ground. The hulking machine corpses sank into the mud, many already half-buried or more. I paused next to a broken front-loading washing machine, its drum playing host to a miniature terrarium of moss and shrubs, and wondered how anything green got enough light to thrive down here.
Finally, my torch reflected on dozens of glassy sparkles in the distance. I kept moving and it wasn’t long before I could confirm with my boots what the torch had already hinted at. My next step splashed into cold water and I stopped. The entire area was flooded for hundreds of feet ahead of me and in either direction. I stood on the gently-curving muddy shoreline of a vast, pitch-black sea. Occasional waves stirred the water and caused it to lap at the beach, but for the most part it was calm and quiet.
I made the torch longer, then stabbed it into the ground and stepped away to free my hands. Warm firelight flickered on the waves. I stoked the fire even further with my symbol, stepping back as the torch blazed with the light of a campfire, a bonfire, a forest fire; more!
Then I let it lapse back to a more sedate glow as I caught my breath, recovering from the exertion. In that brief explosion of illumination, I had scoured the beach with light for thousands of feet at least. I couldn’t see the opposite shore, though I could tell it curved inwards in either direction. This was actually an enclosed lake, not an infinite ocean. Probably a couple to a few dozen miles across.
I breathed out, quietly, and sat down on the upended casing of some gigantic fan. My legs dangled over the water and my right side was bathed in firelight, while my left was cloaked in shadow. The water was dark, but clear. Somehow, I could see a good distance into it even with the torch’s reflections.
The muddy lakebed dropped away quickly, almost vertically, after only a dozen feet. Then there was nothing but calm, watery darkness for what must be miles. I could see more mechanical components embedded in the muck, along with long plants waving in the current, but there was more here as well. I frowned, tracing the object with my eyes as I tried to make sense of it. The thing was large - enormous, even. It was bigger around than I was tall. It was partially buried in muck and obscured by plants and firelight, so it took me a long time to realize what it really was.
A gigantic chain link.
I looked down, as if I could see what it was anchored to beneath my perch and the mud below. What in the world could possibly require such massive links? Or rather, what in the dreamworld?
Something about this chain made me shiver, even though the air was still warm and humid. It felt wrong. Too big. What was it securing down in the bottom of that pit?
- Create a boat and paddle out on the lake. Look around a bit.
- Wander along the shoreline for a while. See what I can find.
- Create a diving tank or something. Follow the chain, down.
(Winner: )
- Create a boat and paddle out on the lake. Look around a bit.
- Wander along the shoreline for a while. See what I can find.
- Create a diving tank or something. Follow the chain, down.
(Winner: )
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Scene 55
Well, there was one obvious way to find out.
I used my metzmatan’s blue light to create a diving suit, air tank, and other related apparatus, then changed on the shore. It didn’t seem like my blue powers could affect me or my outfit directly, just the environment, so I couldn’t simply summon the diving gear onto myself. I filed that potential limitation down to investigate later, then carefully stepped into the water.
It felt cold even though the skin of the suit. I concentrated and ignited my hand with golden light, warming myself as I had back in the drain tunnels where I had gotten the subway key. The light was invisible through the gloves on my hands; hopefully I wouldn’t need to use one of the abilities that required touch.
Then, I waded into the lake. Water quickly closed over my head, but that was okay. I could still breathe, I was still warm, I was okay. I transitioned from walking to swimming, hovering just above the edge where the ground dropped away, and shone my light down as far as it could reach. Massive, heavy chain links fell into the depths along the wall, but I couldn’t see the bottom. Little particles drifted by the beam like tiny flakes of snow.
I took a shuddery breath and descended, following the chain into the abyss.
The landscape remained unchanged for a very long time. I swam down, sticking close to the cliff wall and chain links for a reference point. Occasional enterprising plants grew out of the muck and waved in the current at first, but they vanished entirely after only a few links. Then it was just me, the chain, and the steadily-increasing pressure from all the water above. I started to wonder if I should have created a submarine instead, but then reasoned that just the diving suit had tired me out enough. I might not even be able to do something as complicated as that. I should try later. See what my limits are with this blue light.
Instead, I slowly increased the trickle of power to my golden light, allowing it to counteract the effects of pressure on my body. Breathing grew easier again and the building headache vanished. However, I was now on an even stricter time limit than before and it would only get worse as I descended further.
That concern quickly became secondary as the environment finally changed. Motion flashed near the edge of my light and I slowed, rotating to catch a glimpse of an elegant, translucent jellyfish floating sedately in the current. Long, glowing tendrils draped from its underside. Slowly, it pulsed again and drifted through my light seemingly uncaring of my presence.
I left it alone and continued down. More jellyfish appeared from the depths until it almost seemed I was swimming through a galaxy of multicolored stars. I still needed the light to see the chain and wall, but the jellies were a welcome, pretty backdrop behind it. Still, the chain just continued down and down and down.
The pressure was really getting intense now. I dimmed the golden light momentarily, just to check how deep I was, and immediately gasped at the vicelike crushing sensation all around my body. I struggled to maintain composure and brighten the glow again, slowing to catch my breath and berate myself for that incredibly stupid idea. If I had lost concentration...
Images of a splattered pile of salsa came to mind.
I couldn’t stay down here for much longer. I was getting very tired, and if I ever failed to maintain the golden light, I was a goner. Maybe just a little further, though. I didn’t want to turn back without any results beyond “there are some jellyfish down here.”
Finally, finally, something changed with the chain. The next link pulled out from the wall slightly, and the next further still. Its trajectory shifted from straight down to more diagonal, pointing out into the open ocean away from the wall. I hesitated, not wanting to leave the only solid ground in this place behind, but eventually got over myself and changed course to follow the chain. I wanted to know what it was holding, not necessarily what lay at the bottom of the wall.
Soon I was alone in the darkness. No wall and no jellies; they seemed to stick close to the wall and quickly vanished after a few links. Just me, the chain, and the deadly deadly pressure kept at bay by only my concentration and force of will.
A muted bass vibration thudded through the water. I spun, catching the briefest glimpse of something pale moving through the ocean above me. Another sea creature, presumably. Hopefully as passive as the jellyfish.
“...”
I moved into the chain links now, swimming between the six-foot thick bars of metal in hopes of gaining some protection from the massive structure. I kept glancing around, keeping both eyes out for anything that might be swimming around nearby. The chain was horizontal now, and started to rise back up. Whatever it’s connected to on the other side must be close by. I dismissed the thought that maybe the chain was just connected to the other side of the lake as unhelpful. Why would anyone build a chain like that?
Another vibrating thud. I happened to be pointed in the right direction this time and caught the creature in full view as it passed beneath me, swimming along the chain in the same direction I was moving. It was a pale, partially translucent worm or eel, about as thick as one of the chains and about as long as two links - so maybe 6 feet wide by 60 feet long or so. It was more than large enough to bite me in half with a single chomp. Though I couldn’t see its eyes or mouth from my angle, I immediately assumed it had big, sharp, deadly teeth that could easily tear through my suit and skin alike. Of course it would; giant creatures like this were always dangerous human-devouring monsters. And if it wasn’t, well, better to be safe and paranoid than optimistic and eaten.
What do I do?
️ - Wake up immediately. I don’t want to be eaten.
️ - Press on, reach the end of the chains, and investigate. Be careful.
- Slow down, examine the worm-eel-thing more. Maybe it’s friendly.
- Return to the wall and continue down, away from this thing.
(Winner: ️ )
️ - Wake up immediately. I don’t want to be eaten.
️ - Press on, reach the end of the chains, and investigate. Be careful.
- Slow down, examine the worm-eel-thing more. Maybe it’s friendly.
- Return to the wall and continue down, away from this thing.
(Winner: ️ )
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Scene 56
Still, I couldn’t turn back now, not when I was so close. Just had to be careful and quiet.
The eel passed by three more times in the same direction, or maybe there was more than one. I couldn’t be sure. It never changed course to attack me, or even slowed to acknowledge my presence. It still moved too quickly for me to see it from the front, though maybe that was a good thing. Shining a light on this thing’s face might upset it. I could stand a little mystery.
The chain ended.
I stopped, dumbfounded. The next link just floated, weightless in the water, shorn precisely through with a clean break. Was that it? Just a broken chain hanging impossibly when its own weight should have dragged it down to the bottom? What broke it? What even could break it?
I swam around the chain to get a look at the cut section from the other side. As I passed through the plane of the break, I felt a wrenching sensation in my gut, like someone had yanked me several feet over by grabbing my stomach. I spun, disoriented, then blinked in confusion.
The remainder of the chain was here, and from my position, I couldn’t see the rest of the links I had just followed. There was a curving, nearly-invisible boundary in the water - it resembled shimmering, heated currents - that cut clean through the chain and, it seemed, prevented anyone from seeing through to the other side.
Realistically, though, the invisibility barrier was immediately old news compared to the object the chains were securing.
A titanic man floated in the water before me, somehow visible in totality even though he must have been at least half a mile tall. The chain I had been following finally terminated at the man’s left wrist, binding tightly to a shackle so large I could have lived in it. Two more chains draped in from above to connect to the shackle, and three more bound his right wrist in a similar manner. His ankles were also bound by three chains each, disappearing into the depths beyond the barrier of the invisibility bubble.
The man - the god - the titan - appeared to be asleep, slowly drifting in the current, eyes closed and hands relaxed. He had a large, crooked nose and several scars across his face. A dark, full beard and a wreath of hair flowing in the water. He had the build of a warrior and wore armor to match it: primarily chainmail augmented with plates of a deep blue metal. His armor - and the clothing visible beneath it - was decorated in a gentle, swirling pattern reminiscent of ocean waves.
I floated for several moments, stunned at the sheer scale.
The pale worm creature appeared through the invisibility bubble, startling me but again paying me no mind. Instead, it arrowed through the water to a particular chain link near the titan’s wrist and gripped onto the metal with its sharp, massive teeth. I had been right about that part, unfortunately. The eel thrashed for a few seconds before throwing itself off and vanishing beyond the bubble again, having dealt essentially no damage to the chain.
Drawn by morbid curiosity, I moved closer. Swam along the chain links until I reached and passed the one the worm had been attacking. I could make out faint scratches in the metal, but the damage was entirely superficial. It wouldn’t make any progress this way.
I hovered above the hundred-foot wide manacle binding the gargantuan man’s wrist. Here, I could feel the ocean’s chill even though my golden light. Water swirled and thickened around the titan’s arm, falling into the depths as its warmth was leeched away. I shivered, both from the temperature and the sheer spectacle of the moment. People spoke of standing on the shoulders of giants, but...
Is this what the Devil meant? I wondered. Is this... titan... coming from ME?
I floated above the shackles for another minute, achingly tired and starting to lose my grip on the golden light. I needed to wake up. Little bubbles drifted from the titan’s mouth and nose occasionally. Who ARE you? I asked. What are you doing in my dream?
Obviously, the sleeping titan did not answer. The worm came back, though, drifting closer and finally seeming to notice me now that I was floating near the chain link it kept trying to chew through. It had recessed, almost vestigial eyes, flared gills, and a mouth full of enough teeth to put a shark to shame. Are you trying to free him? Or is this chain just a good way to sharpen your teeth? Do you even need to do that? Are you going to try and eat me?
The eel slithered closer still, passing the link it had attacked last time and now drifting within three links of my position on the manacle. Its motion seemed calm and smooth. Are you going to show me something?
Crazier things had happened.
- Stay put. Let the eel show me something.
️ - Wake up. Nothing good will come of this.
♂️ - Try to wake the titan up.
(Winner: ️ )
- Stay put. Let the eel show me something.
️ - Wake up. Nothing good will come of this.
♂️ - Try to wake the titan up.
(Winner: ️ )
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Scene 57
However, at this point I wasn’t going to risk it. I closed my eyes, focused on the warmth of my bed, and gratefully woke myself up out of the frigid, crushing depths. Glanced at the clock: just a few minutes before my alarm. I had been down there a while. Interestingly, and unfortunately, I was still tired. Not sleepy - I felt refreshed and ready to wake up - but just physically tired. Like I had been swimming through a possibly bottomless ocean trench.
Ah. I remembered something in the middle of writing down my dream. After finishing up the notes, I grabbed the red leather book and flipped through the chapter on dreamwalking to find a little section that I hadn’t gotten to yesterday.
“Be warned: performing any of the aforementioned defensive rites will interfere with your own dreamwalking abilities in the same manner as any potential intruders. In fact, your own abilities will be impeded to a much greater degree due to the rite acting on the entry gate as opposed to the exit gate. As you may have gleaned from the previous discussion of the mechanics involved, the entry gate is necessarily more fragile than the exit, so a defensive rite has more power over it.”
The author went on for a while, but his point was made. I had been blocked from dreamwalking not because I had done the ritual wrong, but because I had done a different ritual right. In the future, I would have to choose between defending myself and being able to dreamwalk. Offhandedly, I wondered what would happen if I were off dreamwalking in someone else’s mind when a cultist tried to dreamwalk into my head. Where would they end up?
I filed that question away to investigate later, got up, and got ready for work.
There was an unusual weather alert as I hopped on the train: a flood watch. It almost didn’t register as unusual for me, coming from the midwest, but then I remembered that I was in Arizona. In June. I tapped the alert for more details, skimming over the list of counties and cities after confirming that yes, my city was on there, to get to the details.
“FLOOD WATCH IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY AFTERNOON THROUGH FRIDAY EVENING...
WHAT... Flooding caused by unseasonable torrential rainfall is possible.
WHEN... Until midnight tonight.
IMPACTS... Excessive runoff may result in flooding of streets, areas with insufficient drainage, and other low-lying flood-prone areas.
ADDITIONAL DETAILS... Record high rainfall amounts of 2-4 inches are expected.”
I blinked, skimming the rest of the page. Two to four inches didn’t sound like that much water, but according to the NWS, the wettest May on record here was only 1.3 inches total, in 1930. Even two inches - the lowest predicted amount - would obliterate that record in only a single storm.
I couldn’t help but make the connection between the record-breaking, completely unexpected torrential rainfall and the shackled giant I had seen in my dream last night. Surely there was a connection here, but I didn’t know what it was.
Tom was back at work today, but nothing particularly exciting happened in the morning besides Alfonse confirming that he had been able to rent a vehicle from the university. I sent him the fee for reimbursement and we worked out a time and place to meet tomorrow, assuming the potential floods didn’t ruin everything.
The afternoon, however, was a different story. I started hearing rain on the roof around 1pm, and the flood watch got upgraded to a flood warning shortly thereafter. Still, neither my house nor workplace were in low-lying areas, so I didn’t worry too much. No, the real issue was that Tom showed up again with more problems that I was the best person to solve. He had a surprising - suspicious - knack for tracking down exactly which systems I was the expert on, and getting stuck on edge cases there. I reluctantly followed him down to the lab again, unable to come up with a professional excuse.
“See, it just keeps returning 504 here when I send it the real stream, but it’ll happily digest an empty one...”
I nodded, poking at the board he was having trouble with. I needed to lever out a particularly stubborn switch to get at a different one. “Tom, do you have any pliers or a prybar or something?”
“Yeah, here. Looking at that switch? Yeah, it can get jammed in there pretty good.”
I managed to remove it with the pliers and handed them back to Tom, leaning further forward. “Ow! Careful.”
“Sorry, Su,” he said, quickly stepping away. He had accidentally closed the pliers on my hair when I had handed them back, pulling out a few strands. An innocent mista - wait a minute.
I stopped, remembering the dreamwalking book.
“The strongest level of connection is physical, by using a piece of the target’s body. Locks of hair are popular choices...”
Surely, surely this couldn’t be a coincidence as well.
- Confront him about the cult and his actions. Demand the hair back.
️ - Try to covertly steal the hair back without him noticing. Easier said than done, if he’s actually intending on keeping it.
- Stay quiet. There will be a better opportunity later if I don’t play my hand now.
- Don’t worry about it. Mistakes happen. Right?
(Winner: ️ )
- Confront him about the cult and his actions. Demand the hair back.
️ - Try to covertly steal the hair back without him noticing. Easier said than done, if he’s actually intending on keeping it.
- Stay quiet. There will be a better opportunity later if I don’t play my hand now.
- Don’t worry about it. Mistakes happen. Right?
(Winner: ️ )
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Scene 58
... But what could I do about it? Demanding my hair back would be very weird in the best case and would also reveal that I was onto him. That could cause all sorts of problems, and he probably wouldn’t give it back anyway without a fight. A fight that I would not win in reality. That meant a little more discretion was called for.
However, just as I was making up my mind on what to do, I saw Tom pulling my hair out of the pliers and dropping it into a trash can before returning the tool to its proper place. I blinked, surprised. Had it really been an accident after all? It was hard to tell and I couldn’t exactly ask him.
Just to be safe, I snatched the hair out of the trash after we had both left the room, in case he had been planning to retrieve it later or something. You never knew.
The afternoon wound on as rain pounded on the roof and dripped into the less-well-sealed portions of the building. I was pulled away, along with several other engineers, to help put tarps over some sensitive equipment that was under assault from the leaking roof. Apparently the whole maintenance team, who would normally be handling this, was busy in the basement with some minor flooding. I started to get worried - if this building was having issues, how bad would it be in the areas that were actually considered flood-prone?
Later, water finned into the air in fountainous sheets as the train struggled along its preset path. Several bus routes were closed or detoured due to flooding downtown, but somehow the light rail was still running its normal schedule - though several minutes behind. I had sort of intended to go to the library today to check out their copy of A Treatise on Traveling the Dreamworlds, but the streets around the building were flooded anyway so I assumed they were probably closed. With rain still pouring down, I decided to just head home and make sure I didn’t have any leaks in my own house.
Thankfully, I didn’t find any issues beyond a poorly-caulked seam by the back door. I made a note to fix that eventually, set down a towel, and called it good enough for now.
News reports covered dozens of flooded businesses and streets, bedraggled anchors standing knee-deep in water to make a point. It seemed that most of the damage was downtown in commercial areas, and residential sections were generally safe. The rain was slowing as well, so the worst of it would soon be over. One meteorologist made a big deal about how the storm track seemed to have formed just west of the city, lingered here longer than would be expected, and then dispersed almost immediately just a few dozen miles to the east, but he didn’t seem to know what to make of that information beyond “what an unusual storm.”
I knew. Or at least I thought I did. That sleeping giant - the thing the Devil had told me to look for. Water, always in my dreams. I must have changed something when I was there. Maybe just visiting, or even knowing about it. I had no proof, but I also had no doubt that - somehow - I had caused this storm.
At least the storm’s track meant that the tunnels to the north would be unharmed. RSU, also to the north side of the city, would be fine as well. My expedition tomorrow was still on.
I spent some time packing some equipment for tomorrow, though I didn’t have much, and then spent a little more time reading more about the dreamworlds. I finished the chapter on basic dreamwalking, learning the ritual variations for transiting between my own dreams, those of other people, and the collective surface dreamworlds created from loose thought strands of all sentient beings. The author seemed to intentionally avoid using the words “people” or “humans” to describe these surface dreams, which made me wonder if maybe animal or alien dreams could form part of them as well. The book didn’t clarify.
There didn’t seem to be a rite for dreamwalking into the true dreamworlds, nor was there one for transiting while within them. I skipped ahead a little to see if these were mentioned later, but the author seemed somewhat reluctant to discuss the true dreamworlds beyond just warning of their danger. Well, I couldn’t get back there until I figured out how to return to the Gate anyway, so that was no big loss.
The Gate... Distracted, I turned my thoughts back to the Gate of Deeper Slumber. I had been there once, but I couldn’t remember how. My memories of the dream before it were still hazy too, though most of the details were there. I had wandered around a flooded stadium after escaping from a pair of cultists, then had fallen asleep in my dream. Then... something had happened and I had made it to the Gate.
Or at least, that’s what I had thought. What if something hadn’t happened between falling asleep and making it to the Gate? “The Gate of Deeper Slumber” was a very specific name. What kind of slumber could be deeper than going to sleep in a dream, while already asleep? It made sense to me.
Water, I thought, the rain on my roof breaking into my thoughts. And what was the deal with all the water in my dreams? I had seen the giant, but that didn’t explain anything. The Devil had said I would have the answers I needed once I figured out what it meant. Didn’t that mean I should prioritize the - the...
I frowned. The rain... Something about this very moment was giving me a strong sense of deja vu. Rain on the roof. A single, warm-tone lamp. Shadows. The book; blankets. I pressed my eyes shut, trying to recall, but the sensation passed and just left me vaguely confused.
- Cast a defensive rite.
- Dreamwalk to grandpa.
❔ - Dreamwalk to Tom.
- Don’t do anything special.
- Try to dream about water.
- Try to dream about the deja vu.
- Try to get back to the Gate.
- Don’t do anything special.
(Winners: ❔ , / - tied)
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Scene 59
Unable to conclude for sure the deja vu was actually important - that sort of thing did just happen sometimes, even to people not caught up in a crazy dream-based conspiracy - I finished up a few more things and then got ready for bed, thoughtful. I declined to get the lemon juice back out for another defensive rite; I wanted to try dreamwalking again. But after the day’s events, my prospective target had changed.
I tapped my fingers on the nightstand, then removed the item from my pocket that had been there since early afternoon: a miniature screwdriver. Tom’s miniature screwdriver, to be precise. He had actually brought it in himself when someone had lost the lab set, then just kept using it after we bought new ones. It was no lock of hair, but it would hopefully do well as a focus for my... spell? Was that what I was doing? Was I a witch now, gathering strange ingredients and cackling as I invaded other peoples’ minds?
After some further thinking in the shower, I decided that there would not be any cackling, at least. I slipped the screwdriver into a pocket in my shorts, then went to bed.
...
I found myself lounging on a wicker pool chair, set up on a circular beach ringing the water of a large cenote. Sunlight streamed in through the hole in the cavern roof above, lending a sparkling, deep azure color to the water. Other people were here too, though their features were sort of indistinct unless I focused on them specifically. There was a lodge and a few other amenities; clearly, this was a resort of some variety.
My clothes had changed as well, but not too much: I was still wearing shorts and a tank top, but of different colors, and sunglasses and a shirt tied around my waist had been added to the outfit. I looked like a vacationing tourist.
The screwdriver was still in my pocket when I got up and checked. I half-wanted to stay and explore this dream; it looked so nice, and it was a lovely change to be bright and happy rather than dark and menacing like usual. Still, I was on a mission and had more important things to do than relax at the beach. There was every chance I wouldn’t be able to make the connection, anyway. Treacherously, I found myself hoping for that outcome.
Gripping the screwdriver in my right hand, I spoke the incantation and made the appropriate gestures with the metzmatan. I felt an immediate tiredness and a strange prickly sensation, like a hedgehog rolling around in my brain. I winced and shook my head to try and dislodge the head-gehog, but it had already vanished after only a few seconds. A silvery doorway formed in midair, wavered, then shot away behind me.
I turned to follow its motion, watching it attach to the cenote wall, then flare brightly and lose its glow. A plain, dull grey metal door was now embedded directly into the natural rock wall.
Huh. Maybe it tries to look as much like a real door as possible? I didn’t have any experience with dreamwalking, so I assumed I had done it right and stepped forward to grasp the handle, replacing the screwdriver in my pocket. The door clicked open at my touch, revealing a damp, white-tiled space that reminded me of either a pool locker room or a very humid bathroom.
I hesitated. Was I really about to invade Tom’s dream? What if he didn’t have a metzmatan and wasn’t actually a cultist? I mean, his hands were both bare from the times I had seen them - he didn’t wear gloves - but I figured maybe he had some advanced fake skin or something to hide the symbol.
Well, there was one easy way to know, and I had already come this far. I took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway.
Immediately, the door collapsed behind me. Tiles rearranged themselves and there was nothing but a blank wall. I had known that would happen - the author said you had to create another gate, or wake up, to get back out. Additionally, my symbol was glowing. The outer circle shed bright red light, though the inner triangle remained calm, and a new line had sprouted that pointed to my left. Exactly like the lines that appeared when someone else invaded my dreams, but now I was the invader. Assuming Tom had a metzmatan, he would definitely know I was here now. Time to get moving.
I moved through the locker room as quietly as I could, my sandals uncomfortably loud on the echoey tile, and cautiously cracked open the door closest to the direction my metzmatan indicated. I didn’t feel any more in control of the situation even though I was now on the offense, and after peeking out the doorway into what seemed to be a mall atrium, that feeling only grew stronger.
Hundreds of people wandered the mall, and every single one of them looked like me.
I emerged into the mass of Su doppelgangers, wide-eyed and studying myself from every angle. The imitation wasn’t perfect and each clone had a slightly different body, face, and outfit. Thankfully, it didn’t seem that Tom knew my appearance well enough to be able to replicate it perfectly - that would have been even more creepy than this already was.
Every Su wandered with a purpose; I followed one set chattering as they headed into a clothing store to browse for cardigans, another loner buying food at a pretzel stand, and a group laughing about some dumb boy drama. Everything was exaggerated, like I had fallen into some kind of sitcom. At least I could blend in pretty easily; if Tom ever spotted me, I could be lost in the crowd in an instant. He probably wouldn’t even be able to pick the actual me out of the army of doubles unless I did something obvious, even with the help of the metzmatan.
With that in mind, I headed off with the gaggle of duplicates discussing boy drama, squeezing into the group without much difficulty. They didn’t seem to make note of my presence at all; it seemed like they were just following a script and didn’t have the capacity to react to any changes on the fly.
I swapped between Su groups a few times as I traversed the mall, looking for Tom. Everyone was Su, from the customers to the merchants to the security. As I walked, I wondered what this dream meant about Tom’s feelings towards me. It seemed pretty obvious that I was important to him in some way, but was that as a cult-related target, a coworker, a crush, or something else? All of the above? Some other option? Was he an obsessed serial killer seeing my face in his dreams every night until he finally snapped and stabbed me to death in reality?
It was hard to tell, but I intended to find out. Thankfully, I finally managed to track him down.
Tom - the only non-Su person in the entire mall - sat atop a blocky glass chair that I could only describe as a throne, its back to a sheer drop into what appeared to be an indoor waterpark. Any Su that got within a few hundred feet of the throne changed course and joined a long line approaching Tom. At its front, he spoke to each Su and then... I couldn’t see clearly from here, but it looked like some approached him and then descended behind the glass, while others simply vanished at his feet. My group was wandering towards the line, so I had to quickly choose what to do.
- Stay with the group; join the line. Get a good view.
- Dodge to a different group; try to observe from a distance.
️ - Avoid his attention and investigate that waterpark behind the throne. Use some powers if needed.
(Winner: )
- Stay with the group; join the line. Get a good view.
- Dodge to a different group; try to observe from a distance.
️ - Avoid his attention and investigate that waterpark behind the throne. Use some powers if needed.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 60
Well, I wanted to see what was going on and the group was taking me directly to Tom. Seemed as good an option as any to keep my current course and join the line of duplicates slowly shuffling towards the glass block throne. I couldn’t see too well from my position near the back, but that improved as I got closer. Others kept peeking out of line as well, trying to catch a glimpse of the front, so I wasn’t out of place as I did the same.
Tom didn’t seem to be particularly concerned; he wasn’t checking his hand or looking around warily for the potential dream intruder. In fact, as I was considering his possible metzmatan, I started noticing that only some of the doubles had one of their own. Most of the Su clones had symbols on their hands, but only some of them were the right shape and none of them were glowing like mine. I frowned. If Tom knew about metzmatans - if he had his own - surely his Su constructs would have the correct symbol on their hands. Was I wrong? Was I actually just invading an innocent man’s dream?
Before long, I got close enough to the front that I could make out what Tom was doing. Each Su would approach him, make a gesture, say a brief sentence, then wait. Tom would then consider for a few moments before either waving her forward or shaking his head. A wave forward meant the Su would approach the throne, then descend down a hidden flight of stairs behind it. A head shake snapped open a section of the floor beneath the unfortunate double, revealing a sheer, red-lit drop. Only a second of screaming would pass before a violent, choking end to the sound. Then the trapdoor would slide shut again and the next Su would step forward.
I continued to advance with the line, trying to figure out a pattern between which doubles were waved forward and which were banished to a sudden demise. A middle finger and a shout of “I secretly hate you” led to a dump down the pit. A finger heart and “We can be friends if you want” led to a wave forward, and the stairs. Finger to the lips, “You can never tell me everything,” pit. Blowing a kiss, “You’ve never been good enough for me,” pit. Lifting her shirt briefly - yikes - “I want you,” stairs. A nefarious grin, “I have secrets too, and I’ll never share,” pit. Sultry look, “We can escape together; just say the word,” stairs.
I started to get a pretty good idea of what he was looking for in these doubles. I also got a strong sense of embarrassment: this felt like spying; almost voyeurism. I really didn’t want to know that he dreamed about me like this. The line shuffled forward. I had to work with this guy in the waking world.
However, there were other clues I could pick up from what the duplicates were saying. A lot of them referred to secrets that both he and I held; the ones that hinted at sharing them went to the stairs, while the ones who hid them went to the pit. Many talked about a relationship between us, either positively or negatively. He preferred the positive. A surprising number just straight-up insulted him in various crude ways. All of these went to the pit. Did he actually think I was like this? I would never do something like that.
He still didn’t have a metzmatan on his hand. As I got closer, I could see both palms; both bare. He could, potentially, still be wearing a fake skin patch or something, but I quietly doubted it. If he had a symbol, he would leave it revealed for sleeping; the thing was too useful in dreams to cover it up. Even I knew that and I had only had mine for a few weeks.
I reluctantly admitted that Tom, shockingly, didn’t seem to have a metzmatan. Did that mean he wasn’t part of the cult? Did everyone in the cult need to have one? I supposed I wasn’t sure. He did keep referring to secrets through the Su clones... but that could just be something mundane like, well, this whole thing. I would definitely want to keep this dream a secret from me if I were Tom.
So, what to do? If he didn’t have a metzmatan, I had the advantage here, especially since he might not even be lucid at the moment. But... poking around the unconscious mind of someone who couldn’t even know I was here, let alone fight back, struck me as... cruel?
“You don’t have to be lonely anymore,” I heard a Su murmur from the front of the line. She went to the stairs. I was very close now, and guilt began to mix with the embarrassment that still lightly colored my face. I wasn’t meant to be here; I wasn’t meant to see this. But I couldn’t undo my actions, so I had to make the best of them. What now?
[At least one option is potentially deadly to Su.]
⬇️ - Stay in line; say something that gets Tom to send me to the stairs.
️ - Stay in line; say something that gets Tom to send me to the pit.
- Talk to Tom directly; make him lucid if he isn’t already. [What on earth am I going to say?!]
️ - Leave and explore the rest of the dream.
⏪ - Leave and return to my own dream.
(Winner: ⬇️ )
️ - Stay in line; say something that gets Tom to send me to the pit.
- Talk to Tom directly; make him lucid if he isn’t already. [What on earth am I going to say?!]
️ - Leave and explore the rest of the dream.
⏪ - Leave and return to my own dream.
(Winner: ⬇️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 61
I stayed in line, despite the guilt and embarrassment. I could have woken myself up, but some part of me still believed that Tom was associated with the cult. Or maybe I just wanted to believe that, to justify my own actions. Either way, there was still a little more I could explore, and that meant not getting dropped into the pit.
The double in front of me went down the pit after saying something I didn’t catch; I was too busy thinking up my own line. I could see down into the trapdoor as it closed, revealing a very classic array of deathly-sharp bloodstained spikes. I shivered as I watched my impaled body twitch, then relax in death, blood slowly beading down the metal points.
The trapdoor closed. I was up next. Tom nodded me forward and, at that moment, I changed my plan. I didn’t want to just get down the stairs; I wanted to learn whether he knew about the cult or not. Without pausing to work out the risks, I stepped forward, winked in what I hoped was a conspiratorial manner, then said, “I can help you with the cult if you just tell me what’s going on.”
A pause. Tom considered me in silence. I pressed my palm against my leg, readying the blue light - my strongest ability - if I needed to act quickly to avoid going down the pit.
He waved me forward. I almost stumbled as I moved, surprised. Did that mean he did know about the cult? Or was it just the generally positive attitude? I walked past the glass throne and found my way to the staircase, glancing back momentarily. Tom was already focused on the next Su to judge. I hesitated a moment longer, then descended.
The staircase was of rough, grippy stone, which was good because it was also lightly misted with water from the pools, waterfalls, and slides in the park below. I noted the excessive amount of water present in this dream, too, and wondered if it had something to do with the giant from my dream last night. It could just as easily be a coincidence, though.
The park was mostly populated by - of course - the duplicates of myself who had survived Tom’s judgement above and made it down here. However, unlike the mall above, there were actually other people here too. The park staff were traditional dream constructs: vague and only suggesting an archetype until I focused on them specifically to evoke more detail. Most of the Su groups relaxed or played in the water features, though a fair number also wandered the paths like I was doing right now.
Everything sort of fuzzed for a moment and I blinked, disoriented. I was in a different section of the park now, and there was no cliff or glass throne in sight. All of the Su clones had vanished as well, replaced by more of the vaguely undefined constructs. I frowned, then ducked frantically as a gunshot rang out. Two more followed quickly behind and I hopped a nearby fence to hide in the dense forest-like undergrowth beyond.
It quickly became apparent that the shots were not fired at me as several more cracked off in quick succession. Then another volley, closer. I heard yelling and running footsteps; I ducked deeper into the brush and readied the red light this time, just in case.
Tom and one of the Su clones ran down the path in front of me, holding hands and firing pistols over their shoulders at their pursuers. These pursuers, I was gratified to see, wore brown (cult-like!) cloaks and fired back with a mixture of guns and bolts of magical light. It was hard to tell in the chaos, but several of them seemed to have symbols on their hands.
The action disappeared into the distance, several cultists falling to the ground dying from gunshot wounds. I cautiously began to emerge from hiding when the dream fuzzed again. I lost my balance and fell over, sliding ungracefully down two concrete steps and scraping my arm. I winced and switched to the gold light to heal it, noting that I appeared to be out in the desert somewhere. Gunshots fired off left and right from behind a dune, so I carefully crawled towards the top and peeked over once my arm was all set. Where the heck had these steps come from, actually? I glanced back, but they were gone.
Tom knelt in the desert sand, anguished and holding the bleeding body of one of the Su clones; she had presumably just been shot by the cultist standing before the two of them and laughing maniacally. Su struggled to breathe through the gunshot wound - again, I winced at watching myself bleed out onto the sand - but Tom stood up tall to confront the cultist. The hooded man pulled back the cloak to reveal a bald head lined with geometric tattoos.
I gasped, playing the part of the action movie audience. It was him; the bald guy! The man I had seen at the bar with Madeline, then again in my dreams that night. The guy who had - something strained, then broke in my mind. Memories rushed back. The replica of my house, hiding terrified from the intruder, the sense of murderous rage, the - I had totally stabbed that girl! I searched the crowd of cultists for her, only to realize that it wouldn’t mean she was alive even if she were here. These were only dream constructs, not real people. But - my symbol. My patron; they had been frightened of it. The Devil?
I refocused on Tom, who had been giving some heroic speech about never giving up and the power of love or something. He and the bald man both drew, but Tom was quicker and the cultist dropped. The remaining figures just sort of dissolved, along with much of the landscape, as Tom turned his attention towards the bleeding Su on the ground. The dune I was perched on fuzzed like TV static and I almost lost my balance, sliding down towards the two of them. He lifted her gently and kissed her, releasing a burst of golden light from the metzmatan on my doppelganger’s hand. In a moment, the wound was gone.
The scenery shrunk even further. I scrambled for purchase on the dune, but lost my grip entirely and tumbled down in a shower of sand and grit, too disoriented to call on the symbol.
Dizzy, I rolled over and got to my knees. Tom and the Su clone both stared at me, baffled.
“Uh, hi.” I said. A strong start.
⏪ - “Don’t mind me; just looking for the exit...” [Leave.]
- Talk to Tom. Make him lucid. [What should I say?]
- “Ah ha! It’s me, a shapeshifting cultist spy!” [Try to play it off as part of the dream’s plotline.]
- “... Sorry!” [Wake him up, ending the dream for both of us.]
(Winner: ⏪ )
- Talk to Tom. Make him lucid. [What should I say?]
- “Ah ha! It’s me, a shapeshifting cultist spy!” [Try to play it off as part of the dream’s plotline.]
- “... Sorry!” [Wake him up, ending the dream for both of us.]
(Winner: ⏪ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 62
“Don’t mind me; just looking for the exit...” I continued, getting up and nervously walking around the side of the dune. Tom frowned as I went, brow furrowing and the landscape continuing to change slightly. I had made it out of sight and raised my hand to begin dreamwalking out of here when I heard him put it together.
“You’re real, aren’t you?”
I panicked and just woke up instead. There was a momentary stretching sensation in my head as I saw two locations overlaid for only an instant, then I sat up in my own bed. Safe. Well, for now.
It was only a little before 3 in the morning - I needed to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, I had too much on my mind and lay awake for a while thinking about it.
Tom knew the cult, at the very minimum. He didn’t have a metzmatan, but he was still involved. I was right, and he now knew I was onto him. This could be a significant problem depending on what his superiors ordered him to do... But, wait, hadn’t he just dreamt of fleeing from the cult, firing back at them? Surely that meant his loyalty wasn’t absolute. Maybe my statement before the glass throne - “I can help you with the cult if you just tell me what’s going on” - could be true after all. It would still be an enormous risk to try and confront Tom in reality, let alone to trust him. Plus, there was still his creepy obsession with me to worry about.
Then there was the sudden recovery of a whole night’s worth of dreams when I had seen the bald man. I remembered my fake dream-house, hiding from him in the closet, the whisper of power, the red light, and being pressed into the burnt carpet as they “read my sign.” Then, of course, I had broken free and stabbed his apprentice.
They had been afraid of me. Of my patron. “Worse than you said,” she had whispered. According to the book, my patron was the demon who marked me with the symbol; that would be the Devil. Sure, he was scary and could apparently visit the real world, but he had presumably been marking people in the cult for centuries previously, if grandpa’s research was accurate. Why would the cult be worried about a powerful demon who was - presumably - on their side?
Maybe he wasn’t? But then why would he mark so many people in the cult over the years? He had even told me in the train dream that “other priests would kill their own family to be marked by me.” He could have been lying, of course, but...
I opened and closed my hand under the covers, feeling the creases in my palm move around the metzmatan. It really was an incredible gift, if you didn’t have a dangerous cult after you. I had still only scratched the surface of what it was capable of, but surely being marked by the Devil would be a blessing to these cultists. I didn’t think he had lied on that point.
And the water. The submerged giant. Why had he picked me? I still didn’t know anything about it. I had asked grandpa if he had heard of any descriptions of such a figure in old myths, but he hadn’t responded yet. It had only been a few hours, anyway. Maybe he’d find something.
My thoughts started to slow as I circled the same set of ideas and questions. Eventually, I drifted off again...
... And woke up what seemed like minutes later to my alarm. I sat up and turned it off, then froze. A baseball cap slid off my head to land nestled between my back and the pillow. Aside from the hat, I was wearing a yellow shirt and orange-red vest with tan trousers. A cheap plastic nametag clipped onto the vest proclaimed me “MARTIN.” Hesitantly, I reached behind me for the hat and held it up for inspection. Its color scheme matched the rest of the outfit and it had a stylized hot dog patch sewn on as the logo. The word “GAS” was etched just below in block capitals.
I blinked several times, nonplussed. Either the bald man had zapped my memory away again, or I was now capable of bringing back outfits without even becoming lucid. I had to laugh, wondering why my unconscious self had liked the hot dog outfit enough to bring it back. That was the third set of night clothes to vanish into the dream dimension; I was running out. Maybe I should start sleeping in the hot dog uniform; trade it back for something else.
Shaking my head bemusedly, I took off the uniform and dropped it in the hamper to wash. It smelled like, well, hot dogs. As one would expect. Thankfully it seemed I hadn’t worn it long enough to accrue a hot dog smell of my own - which raised interesting questions about when exactly the swap took place. Maybe I should set up a camera in my room at some point and find out.
What to wear, though? Something practical, probably, as I was going out to the desert with Alfonse in just about an hour. I rifled through my closet, picking up a durable set of shorts and a... Huh. That hadn’t been like that before, had it? The maroon suit I had picked up from a dream a few days ago looked different than when I had first brought it back. The sleeves were shorter; the fabric lighter; the tie clipped. The whole outfit had subtly changed, forming itself to be more suitable for a desert expedition while maintaining its identity as a suit.
Obviously, the regular clothes would still be more appropriate - it was still a suit, even if it had modified itself somewhat - but surely it had done this for a reason.
- Wear the strangely self-tailoring maroon suit.
- Wear regular, sensible clothes.
(Winner: )
- Wear the strangely self-tailoring maroon suit.
- Wear regular, sensible clothes.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 63
Well, I was going out to investigate the cult. Maybe wearing the suit of my patron would do something. It surely wouldn’t make things worse, at least.
Right?
The suit was soft, flexible, and surprisingly lightweight, but I was already having second thoughts about wearing long pants by the time I got to the train station. The forecast listed a high of 97 degrees today and I was heading out to the desert. Hopefully the tunnels would be a little cooler.
Alfonse met me at his college in a rugged, dusty expedition vehicle he said belonged to the archaeology department. He raised an eyebrow at my choice of attire - he was wearing a more sensible outfit - but didn’t comment. At this point, he already knew I was keeping secrets. In fact, it would be about a 90 minute drive out to the tunnels and I was stuck in the car. I expected an interrogation. I wasn’t disappointed.
“So, Su,” Alfonse began, glancing briefly in my direction. We were still on the road for now, but that would soon change. “Nothing bad happen to you with all the floods yesterday? It was a very strange storm; record-breaking, in fact. I heard we got more than two inches of rain in a single day, making this the wettest May ever in this county.”
“My work got a little leaky, but nothing major,” I replied neutrally. “I found a hole in my door, actually, so it sort of helped me. But no, nothing too bad. You?”
“I’m fine; I was too far north for the storm to do much. Sure is an interesting coincidence, though, how an unpredicted and completely unprecedented storm just shows up out of nowhere, right here, right now?”
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
Another glance. “Sure is interesting how the storm’s path followed one of the old Marnosan rail lines, almost exactly.”
I looked up with a start. “It what?”
“Yeah, I was surprised too. You know how they were talking about the storm forming just outside the city and then dissipating soon after passing through? Well, I matched up the path with the history club’s rail map, and it fit right on top of the main east-west line. Even formed and broke up right where the line fed into other tracks on the network.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope. I bet no one else has made that connection yet, but I brought the maps in case you wanted to check them. Go on, they’re in the glovebox.”
Bewildered, I pulled out the maps and lined them up. It was exactly as he said; the storm’s path matched up precisely. Alfonse left the main road; the journey immediately got several times bumpier and several times slower. “That’s very weird,” I said.
“Mm-hm.”
I didn’t say anything else. He glanced at me a few more times before finally speaking. “Su, I know you’re keeping secrets, and I know you don’t want to tell me. But I’m going to ask this question anyway. Were you involved in... causing that storm to happen?”
I sat quietly for a minute. Alfonse didn’t press any further; in fact, he almost seemed to expect me not to answer. Finally, however, I did.
“I don’t know.” The truth. Just stripped of its context.
He nodded, as if my answer was nothing unusual. “Are we going to meet anyone else with that symbol on their hands at the tunnels?”
I frowned. “I hope not,” was the best I could muster. Tom, I immediately thought. He knows I’m going and he knows I’m onto him. Does he know WHEN I’m going? I don’t think so, but if he reported everything to the cult...
This whole thing could very easily be a trap.
Thankfully, no one else was there when we arrived, or at least no one obvious. Alfonse had asked me more questions, most of which I had to decline to answer, then we had talked a little about the plan for when we actually got there. Unfortunately, since neither of us had ever been to the tunnels, the plan ended up involving quite a lot of improv.
I stepped out of the car and hustled over to the shade just inside the nearest tunnel entrance. The walls curved gently overhead in a near-circular shape, and I could make out ancient railroad tracks just a few feet past the entrance if I brushed some of the dust away. This was the right place.
Alfonse approached as well, taking his time to inspect the rocks, dust, and tracks. I had no idea what he was looking for. “These certainly look like old train tracks,” he announced after a few moments. “I’m sure the archaeologist I borrowed this car from would be a lot more interested in them.”
“Maybe they can visit later,” I suggested, retrieving a headlamp from my bag. “But for now, let’s see what we can find.”
“And what are we looking for, exactly?”
“Anything interesting.” I hesitated, then gave up. He already knew. “...And anything marked with the symbol on my hand.”
Alfonse’s eyes flashed at that, but he just nodded. “Well then, shall we?”
We walked carefully forward, into the darkness.
- Be Su.
- Be Leah.
[Something stirs in the darkened tunnels. You may vote more than once. None of the options are directly potentially deadly, but some of them have more potential than others down the line.]
- ???
- ???
- ???
- ???
(Winners: , > > )
- Be Su.
- Be Leah.
[Something stirs in the darkened tunnels. You may vote more than once. None of the options are directly potentially deadly, but some of them have more potential than others down the line.]
- ???
- ???
- ???
- ???
(Winners: , > > )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 64
I started to get worried after about five minutes. Not because anything dangerous had happened, but rather because nothing had happened. No monsters, no cultists, not even any branching paths. Just a long, gently curving tunnel leading deeper and deeper into the mountain range. “So...” I murmured, half-wincing at how my voice reflected off the tunnel walls. “How long do you think this goes on for?”
Alfonse glanced in my direction, but kept his flashlight pointed forward. “Until we’re through the mountain range. That could be several miles, depending on what part of the mountain this tunnel was bored through.”
“Right, right... So it’s fine if there’s nothing yet; right.”
“It could take a while, yes.”
I accidentally kicked a rock and listened to it bounce off the walls. Well, I could be patient. I was willing to walk around all day if I had to, just to find the information that had to be here. The subway key felt heavy in my pocket, even though it wasn’t, and I kept checking to make sure it was still there. That was, after all, the whole point of this expedition: to figure out what this thing unlocked. Now, if only we could find the door.
In all, it took several excruciatingly dull hours of wandering around empty, pitch-black tunnels to finally find something of interest. There were multiple railways bored through the mountains, for some reason, and they occasionally intersected. We emerged into the sunlight on both ends of the mountain range more than once, from a variety of exits, before finally - finally - I just happened to catch my foot on something and nearly fell.
I tried to catch myself on Alfonse, who graciously didn’t complain even though I had dragged him out here for hours of pointless wandering, then fell on him. “All good?” he asked in a shockingly polite tone.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just a...” I knelt, brushing dust away from the object I had tripped over. “A chain?”
Alfonse knelt as well, helping me trace the chain back to its origin. We were in a small widening of the tunnel formed where two railways had come close enough to intersecting that the builders had just knocked out the wall, leaving a slightly larger open space between the tracks. The chain ran along the floor to one of the walls, where it quickly and unceremoniously ended at a dust-covered trapdoor.
I swallowed hard, excitement and anxiety beginning to rise in lockstep. “This counts as something interesting, yes?” Alfonse asked. I could hear the relief in his voice that something had actually happened.
“Oh yes it does.” I pulled on the chain, but the trapdoor was too heavy. “Can you...?”
With Alfonse’s help, we were able to lift the obscenely heavy door up and lean it against the wall. Now I could see why it was so heavy - it was several inches thick and had an obvious layer of metal in the middle, surrounded by wood on both sides. Interesting. But not as interesting as the metal-grate wall that blocked access to a longer tunnel at the base of the ladder.
I scrambled down the ladder, too excited about actually discovering something to be careful, and inspected the wall. It was made of rusty red iron and had a metal plaque with the metzmatan symbol on it. The door held a small, unassuming keyhole, which I immediately slid the subway key into.
Or tried to. It didn’t fit.
I stepped back, baffled. Alfonse climbed down to join me, glancing at the key in my hand. “It - what? This is supposed to...” I muttered. “The subway key should... this is a subway, right?”
I heard a metallic creak and Alfonse shone his light back at me. “It was unlocked,” he said apologetically. The door was now open.
It took me a few seconds to respond. “O-oh.” I put the key away quickly, embarrassed, and pushed my way through the grate. “Thanks.”
“Hold on, Su,” he said, waving me back. “This isn’t Marnosan; this gate is way too modern to be from the 1800s, let alone even earlier. I don’t know what - or who - you’re expecting to find down here, but you have to be careful. This might be somebody’s property, somehow.”
I glanced back, but didn’t turn my head. “Okay, okay. I’ll be more quiet.” I turned off the headlamp, retrieved a flashlight instead to point at the ground, and lowered my voice. “But I’m not turning around. Not when we’re finally here.”
He seemed to be reluctant. “Su, an archaeology expedition is one thing, but trespassing in clearly modern tunnels is another. Setting aside any of the other massive problems, I lose my teaching license if I get arrested. I can’t take that risk.”
“I’ll just go make sure there’s no one here, okay? Back to archaeology again.”
“That’s not-”
I peeked around the corner. There was a short tunnel that then opened out into a moderately sized room. Cheap, department-store furniture was arranged beneath hanging lanterns currently turned off. I could see the sparkle of something that could be a portable generator, though I had no idea how the fumes would work in such an enclosed space. A few other tunnels branched off from the room. No one was there.
I had to admit, this wasn’t archaeology anymore. Alfonse probably had a point, and even though I assumed this was an Order hideout so they probably wouldn’t call the cops on us, what they would actually do instead probably wasn’t much better.
A single drip of some liquid echoed out of the silence ahead. Simultaneously, one of the tunnels blinked with a faint purple light.
[At least one choice is potentially deadly to Alfonse. None are potentially deadly to Su.]
- Try to convince Alfonse to come with.
- Ask him to stay put while I investigate.
- He can go back to the car; I might be a while.
(Winner: )
- Try to convince Alfonse to come with.
- Ask him to stay put while I investigate.
- He can go back to the car; I might be a while.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 65
“Okay, you might be right,” I whispered to Alfonse. “Someone else has been here recently.”
“Perfect. So, if you don’t mind then...” He gestured up the ladder. I stayed put.
“I can’t just leave. There’s something I have to find here, and it’s probably going to be in there. If you don’t want to come with me, that’s fine, but... please go back to the car in that case. Just in case anyone - or anything - else shows up.” I tapped the metzmatan symbol on the grate with my hand. Alfonse seemed to get the concept.
“I don’t think this is a good idea, for the record. How long do you think you’ll need?”
That was a good question. I wasn’t sure. “Say maybe four hours at absolute maximum? If I’m not back by then...”
“I’m going to have to go to the police,” he finished my sentence for me. “No matter what insanity you’ve gotten involved in.”
“That’s... fine,” I decided. “Maybe for the best. But I’ll be back in four hours, okay? Just hang tight.”
A nod. He climbed the ladder, then whispered down again. “Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll be waiting.” His light disappeared and his footsteps vanished into the distance. I was alone, in miles of tunnels, beneath a mountain range, just outside of a hideout that I assumed belonged to the cultists who had been hunting me ever since I got my metzmatan.
It was already far too late to avoid doing anything stupid.
I took a deep breath and slipped around the corner again, this time creeping forward to make my way into the main chamber. As I got closer, I could make out more details: there were four tunnels branching off in total, including the one I was taking. All of them except the entryway had curtains hung where they branched off, forming flimsy “doors.” The main room contained a sofa, a few tables and chairs, several crates that looked just small enough to fit through the trapdoor, a portable generator, a tangle of extension cords, and a few mechanical devices I didn’t immediately recognize. They all seemed coated in stone dust and muck, though, so after some examination I decided to assume they were digging implements. A rack of pickaxes and shovels leaning against the wall added evidence to that hypothesis.
I peeked behind the curtains that didn’t lead to the purple-light tunnel first, just in case. The first one seemed to be a supply room, holding boxes and barrels of food, water, digging and mechanical components, chalks, incense, dried herbs, and a bunch of other items I didn’t bother poking through. Additionally, there were four shelves bolted securely to the walls above the supplies, all holding a single blanket and a pillow. The second room was similarly utilitarian: a mess of bare PVC pipe attached to various containers formed a ramshackle sink, shower, and toilet.
I did note that there were three containers hooked up, but only two were labeled as something I recognized. “Clean water” and “Waste water” made sense, but “Tears?” It seemed to be hooked up to the shower with a valve that was currently set to the off position, but could be turned to allow someone to shower in “tears” instead of clean water. Very odd. I didn’t suppose the cultists were crying into the container, but I didn’t have any better ideas as to what it could mean.
Then I poked my head into the last tunnel. It was bored horizontally for a fair distance until it broke into what appeared to be a staircase leading diagonally in both directions. Curious, I stepped closer. The staircase seemed to be made of the same material as the surrounding rock - a rough, reddish-orange stone - but it was clearly carved into steps, with decorative striations running along the walls. The dripping sound and purple light seemed to be coming from a stalactite near the stairs, which slowly leaked droplets of water onto a luminous purple mushroom growing up through the rock. Several more clumps of them lined the tunnel, but only the watered one glowed.
“How old is this?” I whispered aloud, reaching out to brush my hand along the stone. It felt like smooth sandpaper. There’s no way this is from the 1800s. Earlier? The indigenous people, before western settlers? Earlier still?
Unfortunately, I wasn’t an archaeologist or historian. I had no idea.
Something metallic creaked behind me. I spun, jumping, and listened intently. Footsteps.
“Someone’s been here recently,” a feminine voice said. “The trapdoor and the grate were both left open.”
“Indeed,” a calmer masculine voice answered. “I believe just this morning, in fact.”
“This morning?” I heard some shuffling and a few metallic clanks.
“Yes. One of our scouts reported an intrusion into his dream just last night, in fact. Combined with other knowledge he has gained recently - and our own experience, as you no doubt recall - I have no doubt that the girl was here. Or perhaps still is.”
A pause. I shrank back into the tunnel, gingerly stepping into the staircase. This had to be the bald man and his assistant, talking about Tom. And, well, me. Bad, bad, bad. At least Alfonse wasn’t here; who knew what they would have done to him if he had stayed. On the other hand, that meant I was alone, trapped with them, without any of my dream-based powers. What if they had guns? I couldn’t fight them!
A loud rumble started up, them faded to a more sedate hum. The generator. Lights clicked on in the main room and along the tunnel. I had already turned mine off, so I crouched down even further, blinking against the glare. “... Here, master? What are we going to do?”
“Well...” I heard a rustle of cloth, then another. Presumably he was checking the other rooms. “If she was here and is no longer, we will learn precisely how much she understands of her patron, once we check below.”
“And if she’s... still here?”
“In that case, we can ask her ourselves.” There was a third rustle of cloth as the bald man - I assumed, at least - peeked into the tunnel leading to the stairs. He didn’t see me, of course, as I was hiding several steps down and completely out of sight. “Prepare yourself, Leah. We’re going hunting.”
- Surrender to the bald man and Leah; try to learn from them.
- Sneak downstairs, try to investigate as best I can before they arrive.
- Sneak downstairs, try to get away as fast as possible before they arrive.
- Try to fight my way past them and back to the car.
(Winner: )
- Surrender to the bald man and Leah; try to learn from them.
- Sneak downstairs, try to investigate as best I can before they arrive.
- Sneak downstairs, try to get away as fast as possible before they arrive.
- Try to fight my way past them and back to the car.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 66
I snuck down the stairs as quietly as I could, slowly increasing my pace until I was far enough away I could start running. The staircase was blocked heading up - looked like a cave-in - and with the cultists in the main room, my only exit was down. I just hoped there would be another way out, or at least somewhere I could hide and then slip past them to head back up. The ceiling lights ended at the bottom of the staircase, leaving only a dim purple glow from more of the mushrooms. I clicked on my flashlight again and looked around quickly as I planned my next move.
The stairs opened out into a large, natural-looking cavern with many “bathtub ring” type layers on the walls, suggesting it had once been flooded with water. Now, the stone path hung over a forty-foot drop to the much lower water level down below. There were no guardrails, though there was at least a ladder hanging down so I could get back up if I fell and somehow survived.
Flashing my light around the room, I could see several breaks in the cavern walls where it continued into further rooms of similar size. This was but one of many caves that had been flooded at some point in the distant past, now drained to only a few feet. More water, I thought, suspicious. This has to be important. It has to be.
I made it across the path without much issue, noting the high concentration of purple mushrooms everywhere. Most of them were glowing, even the ones not directly in the water. I wasn’t sure how that worked and didn’t have time to find out.
The next hallway passed in a blur and I emerged into a smaller, more artificial room about the size of a small gym. It still seemed to have once been a natural cavern, but it had been widened and straightened to better match its new, more rectangular form. Dozens of holes pierced the floor, most a little more than two feet wide and a little less than six feet deep. I shined my light into a few of them, noting slimy residue at the bottom along with a few inches of brackish water. There were some additional striations - carvings? - etched into the sides of these holes, but I didn’t have time to investigate. Had to get away.
The ancient temple opened up after that room, with several doorways to choose from. I picked the left one, trusting in the symbol on my hand to indicate my random direction. Left led into another natural cavern, this time at least eighty feet down to the pitiful remnants of the old water level and really testing the limits of my light. A smashed, rotting dock moldered away in the water below, its moorings up here snapped long ago. I thought I could make out the remains of a boat as well, but it was hard to be sure. I kept running.
I passed several more overlooks into natural chambers, once filled with enormous amounts of water but now simply holding stagnant, wretched puddles dreaming of what they used to be. Winding tunnels connected them in a maze of surprising complexity, though I always took the left path when possible to make sure I could get back to the entrance.
After a few minutes, I came upon another different type of room. This one was again more artificial, and like the first one, also had a hole drilled in the floor. This one, however, was much larger and deeper than the two-foot bores in the prior room. It was at least twenty feet wide, deeper than I could make out, and actually still full of clear water right up to the top - though the surface was dusted with debris. Chalk and paint markings on the floor surrounded this central well in several circles inscribed with glyphs and symbols I mostly didn’t recognize. The metzmatan made several appearances, along with many of its similarly-geometric friends.
This one broke a memory loose and I reluctantly stopped to try and recall. It had been a while ago, just after I had gotten out of the hospital. I had thought the night had passed without dreams, but it hadn’t. Moonlit desert; a gel-like creature. Leah and the bald man; a circle much like this one. The memories were faint and scrambled, but there. I had dreamt of them before I had ever met them. This must be a magic circle of some description, but why was it surrounding a pool of water?
I shook my head, hearing something echoing from the way I came. Footsteps, maybe? I had to go.
As I kept moving, jogging down the hallways of this ancient temple, I started to feel a strange sense of deja vu. My hand felt warm, though the symbol didn’t change. I deviated from my “always go left” path at the next intersection, almost without thinking about it. This was the way I needed to go; this was the way I had gone. Three more turns. Two. One. I climbed a short staircase, the only one I had encountered after the first flight. Then I stopped dead, the realization hitting.
I stood in a small rectangular chamber, about the size of a typical living room. Thick stone pipes connected floor to ceiling along two walls, forming a set of columns framing the central path. This path led up another set of three crumbling stone steps to a smooth, metal door that looked jarringly out of place against the surrounding rock: a submarine-style bulkhead door. There was an obvious keyhole in the center of the wheel.
This was exactly the same room I had met the Devil in, when he had branded me with my metzmatan. It was stone instead of glass, and the bulkhead door hadn’t had a keyhole then, but the shape of the room itself was identical. I fished the subway key out of my pocket, feeling halfway in a dream even though I knew I wasn’t. Could I be sure, actually? I had been fooled before.
I made my way up the three steps to stand before the metal door, the key held in my trembling hand. There were signs of attempted drilling and other attacks on the door, but all of the marks were cosmetic only; no real damage. I fit the key into the lock, but hesitated. What was I going to find? If it was anything like the last time, it would be the Devil himself, grinning that too-wide grin.
Footsteps behind me. There was no other way out of this room; I had come too far to back out now. I had to do it. I did it. I turned the key, cranked the wheel, and shoved open the door.
The Devil stood in the small chamber beyond, smiling that damnable smile of his. Wearing his flawless maroon suit, a scaled-up duplicate of mine. Hands clasped politely before him.
I was wide awake, and he was here. This was no half-seen phantom out of the corner of my eye; it wasn’t even a questionable train rider seen from behind. This was the Devil, large as life, standing directly in front of me, in reality.
He stepped forward. I stepped back, still near-frozen in fear even after my multiple conversations with him, missed the next step, and fell to the dusty floor below. I hardly even felt the impact.
“Good afternoon, Suyeon,” the Devil said lightly, descending the steps with polished grace and extending a hand to help me up. His voice was no less unsettling in the real world; I still couldn’t detect tone, pitch, or timbre. Only the words came through. “I trust you would appreciate some assistance?”
[This scene (or the next) is a branch point. All choices will lock out at least one ending to the story.]
- Accept the Devil’s assistance.
- Reject the Devil’s assistance; side with the bald man and Leah.
- Reject both sides and just run.
- Refuse to decide until both the Devil and the cultists have presented a case. [This option delays the branch point one scene to gather more information. Su will still have to make a choice, and the circumstances will be slightly more tense.]
(Winner: )
- Accept the Devil’s assistance.
- Reject the Devil’s assistance; side with the bald man and Leah.
- Reject both sides and just run.
- Refuse to decide until both the Devil and the cultists have presented a case. [This option delays the branch point one scene to gather more information. Su will still have to make a choice, and the circumstances will be slightly more tense.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 67
I scrambled away and got to my feet on my own, backing up towards the doorway. The Devil didn’t seem to mind; he just returned his hands to a polite clasp and kept smiling. “Are you intending to wait for the Crimson Moon fellows? They won’t be pleased to see us.”
“Y-you...” Running footsteps echoed from the doorway and I saw lights flash nearby. I moved slightly further into the room, but the Devil was in front of me. “You’re here. You’re... actually real?” I had thought I had seen him in reality several times, but to have it confirmed so suddenly was still a shock.
“Of course. Though I only rarely enter the physical realm; so drab. Still, some matters simply require my direct attention.”
I peeked behind him, into the room I had just unlocked. The Devil noticed and stepped aside, gesturing politely. I took a few cautious steps forward, watching him, until I could see the object resting on an ornate stone pedestal towards the back of the almost closet-sized room. It was primarily cylindrical, like a reel of old film or tape but taller. A knob at the top raised partially off the main object and seemed connected by threads of a shiny black material to a ring of carved stone around the outside rim. I glanced at the Devil, still trembling but starting to recover.
“Go ahead,” he nodded. “You came all this way for it.”
Another step, then I spun around as the bald man and Leah burst into the room. Everyone froze. They seemed shocked to find the Devil standing tall and casual in the middle of the room, though my presence was clearly no surprise. Both of them wore dark red robes that must have been brutally hot outside the tunnels and - worryingly - the bald man carried a gun. It wasn’t pointed at me and his finger was off the trigger, but its mere presence multiplied my anxiety.
“Su,” he began, speaking softly and keeping at least half his attention on the Devil. “I just want to talk. Can we do that?”
I took a half-step back towards the thing on the pedestal, just to gauge his reaction. He didn’t move, but his eyes flicked back towards the object. He knew about it. “Fine,” I said. “Talk.” Leah had her eyes locked on me and one hand pressed against her stomach, seemingly unconsciously. I didn’t feel particularly sorry for stabbing her, not right now.
“Do you know what this creature standing beside you is?”
I glanced at the Devil, briefly. He was still smiling and looked totally at ease. “Him? That’s the Devil, or at least that’s what I call him. He’s my patron.” My words were filled with far more confidence than I had expected. “But you knew that already.”
“We did. But it’s more than that. This creature is a greater demon of immense and unpredictable power. It places its mark on individuals like yourself to use as pawns in its own twisted games, then disposes of them once their use has passed. You are serving its own horrible goals, not your own, regardless of what it says. And to it, you are entirely expendable. It will dispose of you the very instant your purpose is fulfilled.”
“Never trust your patron,” I remembered from the book. “They are not your friend and they do not have your best interests at heart. They always play higher games.”
But I remembered a counterpoint. Grandpa’s research, of others like me. Those the Devil marked, he didn’t kill. They died from their own abuse of the power, not by his hand.
“Well?” I found myself asking. “Are you going to say anything to that?”
The Devil shrugged. “Lies, slander, a misrepresentation. If you want to believe him, you will simply dismiss anything I say to defend my actions. And I am using you for my own goals; make no mistake. But it’s a fair trade. After all, you’re using me and my power for your purposes as well.”
I hesitated, then returned my attention to the bald man. Why was Leah here? She wasn’t saying anything. “So why are you two here? What do you want with this thing?” I took another half-step towards the pedestal under the guise of waving my arm at it. Only two more steps and I could reach it.
The bald man almost seemed to wince as I moved closer to the thing. “You don’t know what that is; you don’t know how dangerous it is. Please, for everyone’s safety, stay away from it until we’re done talking.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, then took a big, obvious step towards the pedestal. I could reach the object now, if I wanted. “Explain, then, and maybe I won’t touch it.” The Devil chuckled, though out of amusement or approval I couldn’t tell.
“It’s the Key,” the bald man stated bluntly. “Seek the Gate; learn the Key; break the Lock? That’s the Key.”
The Devil interrupted. “Misleading her again! This is a Key. One of many, though the one that is most relevant to everyone in this room at the moment. It will allow you to break the Lock, if you learn how to use it.”
“Correct,” the bald man growled. “It’s a Key. But it’s the only one that matters right now. Have you any idea what this temple is dedicated to? Why it was built so far underground, in caverns that once filled almost entirely with water?”
I said nothing, inviting him to continue.
“The ancient worshippers of this temple revered a great and terrible demon known as Bholgalos. His primary domain was water, so they built the temple in these flooded caverns to be spiritually closer to him. But-”
The Devil interrupted again. “Remember my question to you, Suyeon. Why did I choose you, out of all the people on this planet?”
Water. My dreams are always filled with water, just like this temple. I stayed quiet, but the Devil nodded as he saw my expression change.
“But,” the bald man continued, “After a complicated and bloody era of history that is irrelevant to our current dilemmas, Bholgalos was defeated and sealed away in a prison formed from his secondary domain: dreams.”
The Devil winked at me.
“The acolytes of this temple tried to release him, and they nearly succeeded in doing so and bringing ruin to this corner of the world. Until our predecessors, the original Order of the Crimson Moon, stopped them. That Key just behind you is the culmination of all of their work, the Key to the demon’s prison. And the key to his final destruction. Bholgalos is rising and testing his bonds; you need to give us the Key so we can use it to destroy him once and for all. You don’t have the knowledge to use it; only those of us in the Order have the skills to-”
The Devil interrupted for a third time, yellow eyes gleaming. “Oh, please. Your group doesn’t have the skills to track down even one young woman; she had to come to you! And you purport to destroy a demon of Bholgalos’s power?”
I broke out of my revelations for a moment - considering whether the oceanic titan I had seen was this demon Bholgalos himself - to note something odd. “Aren’t you two on the same side? I mean, you-” I pointed to the Devil, “- mark people in the Order all the time, right? So...?”
The bald man laughed in an almost choking manner. “That creature is on its own side, child. It’s as I said: you can never trust a demon. It may mark some of our order with its metzmatan, and its symbol may be among the most powerful known, but the members it marks are singularly unreliable and often end up immolating themselves and others - no offense to you, of course. This demon brings nothing but lies and ruin in its wake!”
The Devil’s grin grew wider. “He’s right. The Crimson Moon priests I mark never seem to take it well; most of them seem to find some way to destroy themselves with the power I grant them.” He furrowed his brow, pretending to think. “I wonder if that has anything to do with the Order, rather than my symbol? Suyeon here is doing just fine.”
“Y-YOU!” The bald man sputtered as the Devil laughed. Leah grabbed the man’s arm and whispered, trying to calm him down.
“I shouldn’t wind him up like that,” the Devil murmured, still smiling. “But of course, why shouldn’t I? Ah, Suyeon. A question?”
I had sidled closer to the Devil and spoke to him in a low voice. “If they want me to use the Key to destroy Bholgalos, what do you want me to do with it?”
“An excellent question. I believe you should take the Key, learn it, and form your own decision. Gather knowledge and determine the correct usage of it on your own. That Key can be used to attack Bholgalos, but it can also be used to free him or strengthen his bonds. You could even simply smash it on the floor and be done with the whole ordeal. But I wish for you to be the one who chooses.”
I frowned, suspicious. “Why me? These people have studied this for... centuries, I guess, and you’re a... an immortal demon?”
A shrug and a nod from the Devil. “More or less.”
“So... why me?”
The Devil leaned down to look into my eyes straight on. I could see flames reflected in them; burning cities and acres of blazing forest. “When you know why I picked you - not just half-formed inferences about water and Bholgalos - you will have much more than simply the answer to that question.”
The bald man had calmed down somewhat, though he shouted as he saw the Devil talking to me. “Get away from her, demon!”
The Devil straightened up. “Your spells don’t work on me; we both know that. If you wish to stop me, you’ll have to shoot her.”
I jumped at that. “Wait, wait; no need to-”
The bald man still didn’t raise his gun. “No. I’m confident you will do the right thing, Su. Please, help us save all of mankind and give us the Key. Destroy the demon; don’t listen to this one’s LIES!”
The Devil smiled. “Well, Suyeon, it appears you have a choice on your hands. Go ahead and pick up that Key, then decide with whom you will be leaving.”
I glanced back at the Key, still sitting innocently on its pedestal. The bald man, nervous despite his confident words. Leah, quiet in the background and looking at me with wide eyes. The Devil, grinning and leaning nonchalantly against the wall.
[This is a branch point. Any choice will lock out at least one ending to the story. At least one option is potentially deadly to Su.]
- Side with the Devil.
- Side with the Crimson Moon members.
- Reject both sides; figure this out on my own.
- Break the Key. Smash it on the ground. [If this wins, it will take either or as the secondary option; whichever has more votes.]
(Winner: )
- Side with the Devil.
- Side with the Crimson Moon members.
- Reject both sides; figure this out on my own.
- Break the Key. Smash it on the ground. [If this wins, it will take either or as the secondary option; whichever has more votes.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 68
“...”
I turned around to grab the Key off its pedestal, trusting that the standoff would continue and no one would stab me in the back. My shoulders tensed up regardless. The object was fairly heavy - about the weight of a moderately-loaded backpack - and pressed uncomfortably on my arms as I held it. I was going to have a heck of a time getting it back up the stairs and ladder, and then through the miles of tunnels to the car.
Everyone was watching me as I shifted my grip on the Key, feeling warm with anxiety even in the temperate underground room. “I’m going to go with you,” I said quietly, moving to stand beside the Devil. “I don’t trust any of you Order people, and I need to figure this out myself.” I’m starting to wonder if he’s actually evil at all, or just scary. He hasn’t actually ever hurt me, I don’t think.
The Devil nodded, smiling his too-wide smile still. “Very good. In that case, let us be on our way back to the surface.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” the bald man said in a low voice. “You’re going to destroy us all by giving the CREATURE exactly what it wants.”
The Devil rolled his eyes, striding casually towards the door. I followed, anxiety spiking. The man’s voice wasn’t safe. His expression was too dark. His hand-!
The next few seconds were very chaotic.
The bald man raised his gun and fired... at me. The Devil’s form blurred as he moved too quickly to track, leaving a trail of afterimages and flaring embers. A heavy, blunt force hit me in the chest and knocked me to the ground, still clutching the Key. Leah stumbled back, drawing signs in the air with both hands.
I passed out, which was as much a surprise to me as anyone else.
My dreams were chaotic, filled with lakes of endless, algae-coated water. Flames licked along the surface, ebbing and flowing in hypnotic patterns. I couldn’t tell where my body was, or my viewpoint. I seemed to float over the water as much as under it. Something was aware of me. Or, perhaps, something I carried.
I woke up with a gasp and immediately choked, coughing up a mouthful of gross, slimy water. I was drenched again, even though I had only been out for what felt like seconds. My chest hurt and I was incredibly warm.
“Ah, Suyeon, welcome back.”
The Devil’s voice was loud and came from directly above my head. I froze as I realized what was going on: he was carrying me. We were partway up the temple stairs, I still held the Key, and there were traces of a shimmering red substance on the front of my suit. Like blood, but too sparkly.
“Put me down,” I managed to say calmly. The Devil complied, gently setting me down on the step in front of him. “He shot me,” I remembered. “What happened?”
“I slowed the bullet and your choice of attire blunted the rest of the impact. You may feel some soreness for a few days, but you aren’t severely injured.”
“My...” I looked down at the suit. “This is like... armor?”
The Devil gestured for me to continue walking up the stairs. I did so, feeling basically fine aside from the moderate pain in my chest. “To an extent. It is most effective against... well, you would call it magic. The term is sufficient. The firearm in use was enchanted, so the suit was effective. Had he used a regular weapon, things would have been different.”
“... He really tried to kill me.”
“You sound surprised. Consider that, to them, you are a reckless child prepared to bring about the end of the world. Wouldn’t you kill in such a situation?”
I considered that. We emerged from the staircase into the lantern-lit tunnel. “Did you kill them?”
“Oh, no; I try to avoid fatalities when I enter the physical world. The bald one is incapacitated and the nervous one is attempting to free him. It should take her a few hours.” A wry grin. “She appears to be the smarter one of the pair; she didn’t attempt to fight me.”
“Devil, I - should I call you that?”
He shrugged. “You wouldn’t be the first. I can see the resemblance.”
I decided to take that as an affirmative. “Devil, then... thank you. For helping me.”
An even wider grin that I swear touched the corners of his ears. “It is my pleasure. All I ask is that you do not delay in learning the Key and determining how to use it. Things are moving swiftly now; I would estimate there are only a matter of weeks remaining.” He glanced at the object. “One hint, since you chose to accept my assistance. The Key you hold contains instructions written by gods, so it requires the assistance of gods to decipher. You surely understand where you might find some.”
I thought for only a few seconds before realizing that I actually did. “The true dreamlands; they’re the dreams of sleeping gods. I could find the Key’s instructions, and the Lock is there too.”
The Devil nodded, then flicked his hand. The trapdoor slammed open. “Up you go. Do be careful with the Crimson Moon; at this point they will be furious and terrified.”
I climbed onto the ladder, awkwardly grasping the Key with one hand and the rungs with the other. “Are you not staying, then?”
A chuckle. “No, Suyeon. I must attend to certain other matters before things get out of hand.” He lifted a finger and the Key’s weight became much less; I scrambled to the top without issue. “In fact, I may be unavailable for several days, so do try to stay out of trouble. These physical realm visits are necessarily limited. The next time we meet, you may want to run.” He laughed, as if the last line had been a joke, then walked back down the tunnel and out of sight.
His voice... I could hear it properly now. Confident, harsh, warm; like the flames to which he was so closely linked. I didn’t understand why or what had changed, or even if this was a good or bad development. For every thing I learned about all this, I became aware of two more I had no clue about. There was still so much I needed to know.
I stood at the top of the ladder for several more seconds, not sure what to think, before adjusting my grip on the Key and hoping - to whatever gods or demons might care - that I remembered the way out.
- Show Alfonse the Key; ask him if he knows anything.
- Try to hide the Key from Alfonse.
[At least one of these options is potentially deadly to multiple characters. None are directly potentially deadly to Su, though several lead to choices that may be.]
- Go home.
- Stay with grandpa for a bit.
- Stay at a hotel for a bit.
- Leave the city for a bit. [Specify where to go in #story_discussion]
(Winners: , )
- Show Alfonse the Key; ask him if he knows anything.
- Try to hide the Key from Alfonse.
[At least one of these options is potentially deadly to multiple characters. None are directly potentially deadly to Su, though several lead to choices that may be.]
- Go home.
- Stay with grandpa for a bit.
- Stay at a hotel for a bit.
- Leave the city for a bit. [Specify where to go in #story_discussion]
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 69
I stayed quiet for most of the drive back to the city, reflecting on what I had learned. The Key sat on my lap, digging uncomfortably into my legs and covered by my jacket as a halfhearted effort to hide it from Alfonse. He didn’t ask, though I caught him glancing at it and me every now and again. My shirt was stained with that strange red substance; though it wasn’t blood, it sure looked like it.
“You might be right,” he said quietly. Almost half an hour had passed and we were approaching the paved road again. “You’re hiding things and keeping secrets for a reason. A good one.”
I hesitated, then nodded. He wasn’t looking at me.
“I saw something in the tunnels on my way back. Probably nothing compared to whatever you ran into, but still something terrible.” He paused, glaring out the windshield at the dusty trail. “It was like a shadow, but there was nothing to cast it. Somehow deeper black than the total darkness in the tunnels, and it hissed and fled if I caught it in my light. It didn’t chase me, though; at least, not far. It went back the way I came. Where you were.”
He eyed me to catch my reaction, which was mostly just numb surprise. “I didn’t see anything like that.” A pause; I considered saying more. But he was right. These things were secret for a reason.
Alfonse just nodded slowly. “Su, are you going to be okay? Are we - the city, humanity as a whole - going to be okay?”
I couldn’t answer that and he knew it. “I hope so,” was all I could say.
The afternoon and evening were a blur of activity after Alfonse dropped me off. I went home to gather some things - the Key, the book, clothes, toiletries, whatever - and then booked a hotel room near the airport. I didn’t know how long I would be staying, but the Order clearly knew my name and they could get my address too. If they were worried I was going to do something rash with the Key, they would absolutely break into my house. I had seen that in a dream already and I had no inclination to repeat it in reality.
I picked the airport for two reasons: there were a lot of hotels nearby (for obvious reasons), and if worse came to worst, I would be able to leave the city quickly. Where I would go wasn’t entirely clear, since I didn’t want to drag my family into this if I didn’t have to. Grandpa was already in too deep and I was very worried for his safety. In fact...
“Su? I was about to get ahold of you, actually. You know that sleeping giant you asked me about?”
I paused, holding off my warning for a moment. “Yeah? The one from my dream?”
“That’s the one. Well, it looks like the situation you described is a known tenet of an old, fragmented religion. Apparently you visited the prison of a demon named-”
“Bholgalos. Yeah.”
“Now, Su, why would you have me go look this up if you already knew the answer?”
“I didn’t, not until a few hours ago. Things are moving fast. Too fast. Listen, I’m calling you from a hotel and I think you should do the same, or leave the city for a bit if you can. There are people looking for me now, and I don’t want them trying to... go after you to get to me.”
“... People? You mean your Devil or the cultist folks with the symbols on their hands?”
“The cultists - I don’t think the Devil is as bad as he seems - look, grandpa, you need to get to safety. Maybe you can go stay with dad for a bit? Or just pretend it’s a sudden vacation?”
There was a long pause. “Su, I trust you, and there have been some strange things going on recently, but to pack up and leave just on a hunch? What’s happening?”
I had confided in him up to this point. I had told him everything about my hunches, the cult, my dreams, and the Devil. But now, with actual physical violence on the table, I couldn’t endanger him any further. “I’m sorry, grandpa. I would if I could, but I just can’t tell you. The more you know - the more you’re connected to me - the bigger a target you are. I have to... I have to do this. To protect you. Please consider leaving if you can.”
I hung up.
He called me back, of course, but I didn’t answer. I just texted him the same message again. Leave if you can. I can’t tell you anything else. I’ll explain when it’s all over.
It was already late by the time I finally finished getting situated in my room, and I didn’t have much time to investigate the Key. I was able to twist the knob on the top, which retracted the threads of shiny black material and rotated the ring of stone around its edge. The whole cylinder sort of split apart at that, growing taller and revealing many more carved rings on the interior. I assumed at least some of these were instructions on how to use it that I would need a god’s help to translate. The thing returned to its compact, closed form when I twisted the knob the other way, allowing me to store it more easily. I put it in a cabinet under the TV, out of view and hopefully inconspicuous enough. Then it was time to sleep.
For safety, I sprinkled some lemon juice around and performed the defensive rite again. I didn’t want anyone trying to get into my head, and after today’s adventures, I figured that was a strong possibility.
...
I woke up lying on the floor of a hotel bathtub, hot water spraying from the showerhead above me. My hand hurt and I immediately knew I was dreaming. My metzmatan was a sickly green and the sides of the triangle bent inwards ever so slightly, reminding me of the misty purple beach and fake-grandpa’s voice from the jungle. The lines shifted gently with my heartbeat.
I sat up and spotted a tidy pile of clothes sitting on the toilet lid. Except... I recognized that outfit. White t-shirt, pink-orange jumper dress; even the socks were somehow recognizable. I wasn’t 28 anymore; I was 18, during the summer between my high school graduation and the start of college. Which meant...
“SUYEON!” Someone banged on the door, shouting my name. Mother. “Get OUT of the shower; we’re going to be LATE!”
- Get out of the shower, get dressed, and go along with the memory.
- Stay put and stay quiet. Derail the memory and see what happens.
- Search for or create a different exit.
- Change the dream or wake up.
(Winner: )
- Get out of the shower, get dressed, and go along with the memory.
- Stay put and stay quiet. Derail the memory and see what happens.
- Search for or create a different exit.
- Change the dream or wake up.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 70
I almost got up; the anger in that voice still triggered a reflexive instinct to just do what it said. Don’t make things worse. But then I wondered. I had always just gone with the memories in previous dreams, doing my best to follow the script and not mess anything up. What would happen if I just... didn’t? Plus, that might be a little safer with the green color on my hand; I hadn’t forgotten how the thing in the mist could mimic voices.
So I slid back into the tub as quietly as I could and just stayed put. Mother yelled several more times and slammed the door with enough fury that it shook, but eventually just said, “You’ll regret this...” in an ominous voice and stomped away.
I found myself remembering what had actually happened that day. We were in the southwest, exploring the normal tourist attractions that differed from our life in the midwest. We had gotten back to the hotel late the previous night and I didn’t have time to shower before going to bed like normal, so I did in the morning. I had slept in a little as well, making up for the late night, and at this point we were seriously running behind.
Mother had scared me out of the shower, I rushed to get dressed and get out the door, and we had just barely made it to the airport in time. I forgot my bag in the confusion and by the time I realized, it was too late. We couldn’t go back or we would have missed the flight. I lost everything in there, including my souvenirs from the trip. Nothing particularly valuable - some cool rocks, ticket stubs, cheap plastic junk, whatever - but it still meant something to me.
Still, sitting in the shower now, listening to the water hiss and drain away, I couldn’t get worked up about it. We would have missed the flight if we hadn’t rushed, and it wasn’t like mother had purposefully left my bag behind. Oh, I had been furious at the time, shouting at her and fuming for much of the flight, but... I couldn’t really remember why anymore. Maybe that was just the perspective of age.
My hand hurt again and the pain faded only to a dull throb instead of completely. The sides of the triangle pressed a little closer; I decided I probably needed to do something at this point. I got up, toweled off, and tried to put on the pink-orange outfit. Unfortunately, I noted with annoyance that I was an adult again since I hadn’t engaged with the memory, so the clothes didn’t fit.
Should have seen that coming. Oh well. I’d just use the blue light to... huh.
I narrowed my eyes at my hand, calling on the blue light again. Nothing. Golden? Nope. Red? Not a spark. I focused on reality, checking to see if I could wake up, but got nowhere. I felt a sort of fuzzy-soft presence smothering me if I tried to ascend out of the dream.
“That’s not good,” I whispered, trying to think. I hadn’t known about my glowing hand powers the first time my symbol had gone green; in fact, I had first learned about the golden light just a few minutes later. Maybe this was just a side effect of the green? But then what was causing it and how could I stop it? Last time, there had been a spooky, misty jungle and vocal mimicry. Now, there was a bathroom. The Devil could turn off my symbol, too, and could prevent me from waking up. But he said he wouldn’t be around for a while and this didn’t seem like his style anyway.
So...
I unlocked the bathroom door and peeked out into the room beyond. A hotel room, as expected, normal in shape and content, but altogether darker than average. And... drippier, as well. The only light in the room shone from the door I had just opened, and the floor was dotted with puddles of water formed by constant trickles from the ceiling. I didn’t see anything moving or otherwise obviously dangerous, so I opened the door fully and crept out.
Thankfully, there was a travel bag left on the floor that held correctly-sized clothes so I didn’t have to run around either naked or in the too-small outfit from the bathroom. Less thankfully, they were my mother’s. I frowned, but practicality won out and I got dressed. Ruffle neck blouse and a calf-length skirt. Not good for sneaking, if such an activity would be required.
The bathroom light chose exactly that moment to give out, along with the fan. I dropped into a crouch, suppressing my panic and listening past the shower’s hiss. The room was completely, utterly dark; I couldn’t see anything at all. Almost reflexively, I opened my hand to try and summon a light, but of course nothing happened. However, the metzmatan itself - even in its current dull green state - still gave off a faint glow. It wasn’t enough to illuminate the room, but it was enough to fumble my way around with a minimum of bumping into things.
I made my way to the window first and slid the curtains open, hoping for some additional light. No such luck; while I could see the twinkling, moving lights of an airport in the distance, they were too far away to illuminate the room. Closer to me, I could spot a parking lot far below - maybe ten floors or so - with floodlights that were again powerless to cast their light into my room. Between the parking lot and the airport, I saw faintly shifting reflections of the other lights. A lake? The sky above was empty; no stars, no sun, and no moon.
Then I crept over to the door and peeked through the peephole. The hallway was all dark green and (thankfully) dimly lit by electric sconces on the walls. Mist flowed along the floor, lapping at the carpet like waves. It seemed to be blooming from the left, but I wasn’t completely sure. Someone walked quickly down the hall to the right, then urgently ran back to the left. The shadow of something flitted quickly afterwards, but the actual thing casting the shadow never appeared. I heard a thump, then two more people ran back to the right, the shadow again chasing after them.
I clenched my fist, wishing the metzmatan would regain its normal color and my powers along with it. Unfortunately, it remained dull green and useless. A section of ceiling crumbled near the TV and a jet of water poured in, sloshing around my feet. I needed to move.
⬅️ - Go left, towards the mist.
➡️ - Go right, towards the shadow.
- Go out the window; try to climb down.
(Winner: )
- Go out the window; try to climb down.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 71
Well, the hallway seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. Mist creature or mystery shadow monster; pick your poison. Instead, I returned to the window, sloshing through rising water on the floor, and tried to find a catch without any light to do so. It actually wasn’t that hard by just feeling along the frame; within ten seconds I had levered the glass pane out of its home, struggled momentarily with the weight, then slipped and dropped it all the way down to the parking lot below.
I watched it fall and shatter on the pavement, imagining the glass was my bones. I needed to be careful here.
Something bumped against the door to my room. I glanced back, didn’t see anything, then climbed onto the windowsill. Looked down. Oh boy. I gripped the frame tightly, feeling a little lightheaded. I didn’t usually have a problem with heights, but I also didn’t usually try to climb ten stories down the side of a hotel. In a dream, sure, but if I didn’t have the golden light...
Another impact on the door. I tried to swallow my fear, looking down to the next story to try and find any sensible path. Each window had a ledge a little wider than my foot, and the brickwork was a little uneven. Maybe the drainpipe? The back half of the AC units?
I tried to lower myself down to the next ledge, but wasn’t tall enough without dangling by my fingertips. Sat on the ledge for a bit, trying to find an alternate route. Rattling from the door. Boy those floodlights looked far away.
Maybe if I reached over to the pipe and then stretched my leg down as far as it would go, I could reach the AC, then pivot down to the next ledge. I traced the route, still seeing the parking lot in the background so far below.
There was a click from the door and it swung open to catch on the deadbolt. Mist poured in along the floor; my hand hurt and the triangle’s sides pressed closer together.
I went for it. Grabbed the pipe, stretched my leg, just barely brushed the top of the AC unit with my toes, then I had to move my other leg. Just had to reach the same place and drop down a little. I could steady myself on the pipe. Easy.
The momentum from my other leg displaced the first. My grip wasn’t strong enough to compensate as the lower half of my body swung into empty space. I grabbed for the pipe again as I hung suspended by nothing for just an instant, but couldn’t reach it.
I fell.
It took several excruciating seconds of plummeting through the air, clothes and hair whipping around me, to reach the ground. I couldn’t think through the loop of screaming playing in my mind. I didn’t want to die, but at this point it seemed inevitable.
Intuitively, I called on the metzmatan. Nothing, nothing, nothing... something.
Teal light burst from my hand as I passed the second story windows. I didn’t know what I was doing - not consciously at least - but on some level my body seemed to understand. My fall turned into a glide, then an arc. I swooped away from the building and back into the empty sky, flying on nothing but instinct and dreams.
Events were sort of a blur until I found myself on the ground in the parking lot, curled up and shaking under a floodlight. I had truly thought I was going to die. Just needed a minute... to recover. And figure out what had just happened.
A minute passed. I felt a little more in control. I looked down at my symbol and started to understand.
My metzmatan wasn’t green anymore, and the triangle had returned to its normal shape. In the previous dream, the one with the mist on the beach, the green had gone away after I got far enough from the jungle. It was proximity-based. There must be something up in the hotel that was suppressing my powers, and I had gotten far enough away from it (by falling out the window!) to escape. The teal light was new, but not entirely; I had seen it before. The bald man has used it in the dream I only vaguely remembered, where he had been in my house and then blurred my memories of the event. He had used it to teleport; I had used it to fly. Mobility? Was that its power?
I stood up, pleased with how steady I felt after nearly dying not even five minutes ago, and summoned the teal light again. As with my other powers, it seemed easier to channel now that I knew about it. I felt lighter, faster; quicker to react. But could I fly again?
Experimentally, I jumped. Felt like I went higher than I should have. Tried again; almost felt like I was hovering for a moment. A third time, really focusing on shooting up into the sky. I went up, and didn’t come back down. I hovered a few feet above the parking lot, bobbing slightly on nothing in particular, and just floated for a bit, adjusting to the sensation. Could I... go higher?
Experimentally, I pushed myself upwards with my mind, angling my arms in as aerodynamic a way I could think of. I wobbled, pushed a few feet into the sky, then fell off course and tumbled across the pavement to land in a heap. “Okay,” I muttered, healing the bruises. “Not as easy as it looks.”
I decided to give up on flying for a bit and just look around the area. The parking lot was subtly wrong in a way that took me an embarrassingly long time to spot: all the lines were missing. It was just a giant rectangle of asphalt and floodlights. Aside from that (or perhaps because of it), there was nothing else of note about it. No cars, no markings, no monsters. The hotel’s main entrance was nearby, but I didn’t feel a particular need to go back in, especially with mist curling out the window I had broken, reminding me of the... creature? I wasn’t actually sure.
A few minutes of walking led me to the edge of the parking lot and the start of what was definitely a lake. The ground just dropped away vertically into an abyss of dark water. I briefly wondered if the demon Bholgalos was floating within, but decided probably not based on the lake’s relatively small size; I could probably walk around it in a few minutes. Or fly over it even faster...
On the other side of the lake was an airport, all lit up and active in the dark. Planes shot into the sky and formed false stars to replace the missing real ones. Interestingly, there were defined features on either side of the lake as well: trees sprouted up to form tangled forests. These were the oaks and birches of my native midwest, not the scraggly palms and cacti of Arizona. Nothing really stood out to me about the woods except for their inexplicable presence between the airport and hotel. Everywhere else, the dream just sort of faded to indistinct shadows, but here the scenery was solid.
Experimentally, I flexed my hand and was able to summon a light; this time a high-powered electric flashlight instead of a torch. I had my powers of creation back, at least unless I ran into the mist thing again.
✈️ - Fly over the lake to the airport.
- Walk around the lake to the airport.
- Wander off into the woods.
- Dive into the lake.
(Winner: )
- Walk around the lake to the airport.
- Wander off into the woods.
- Dive into the lake.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 72
Not wanting to risk plummeting into the lake, but still curious about the airport, I decided to just walk through the woods to get there like a normal person.
The forest was calm and filled with sounds that had become intimately familiar over my childhood growing up in a very similar location. Waves sloshing against the shore, crickets chirping, frogs croaking, and wind rustling in the branches. I swapped the flashlight for an electric lantern with a more omnidirectional glow, since just the narrow beam of light was making me nervous. It didn’t seem like there was anything else around here, but I hadn’t forgotten the mist creature and the shadows from the hotel.
Eventually, I wandered into a small clearing formed around the base of a tall, ancient tree. Bulky roots threaded through the ground, shoving aside rocks and other trees alike. There was a child sitting between two branches, one leg dangling as she gazed out over the lake. A younger version of me; maybe twelve years old this time? I clearly wasn’t getting away from memories in this dream.
I approached, my head about level with her waist, and looked in the same direction. The lake stretched out before us, glittering silver in the reflection of a moon that didn’t exist in the actual night sky. Leaves and branches encircled the sight, a perfect window somehow formed by natural growth and decay. Young Su blinked and turned, noticing my presence for the first time.
“Go away,” she muttered, pulling her dangling leg up to squeeze into a ball. “You’re being mean.”
Some sort of presence seemed to guide my words. I didn’t remember this event, but something did. Interested, I went along with it. “I’m sorry, Su. There was a work emergency. I couldn’t leave.”
“Work is dumb,” she said, wielding the quiet wisdom of a much older person.
“Work is dumb,” I agreed. “But I made it back now, so-”
“You’re never here. You’re always at work. Why do you have to work so much?”
I hesitated. Oh, I knew whose role I was playing now. But I still didn’t remember this interaction. “There aren’t very many people who can do my job. So when things need doing, I need to do them.”
“Then hire more people.”
“Oh, Su, I wish we could. But we can’t force people to learn how, and hiring anyone who doesn’t know how would be very dangerous.”
Young Su sighed and let her legs drop back down, unfolding from her little ball. She stretched her arms down and, wordlessly, I helped her out of the tree. My perspective fractured wildly as we touched and I was young me, current me, and my mother simultaneously. I squeezed my eyes shut, almost shouting in pain, unable to process the three conflicting streams of sensory information. Then I snapped out of it. I was adult me again, incorporeally watching mother carry young Su towards the beach, then gently set her down.
They sat, then settled back on the sand. Stars bloomed overhead, the airport going into overdrive as it vomited forth plane after plane, arrowing into the sky and forming the constellations that were so familiar from my childhood. “It must be a very clear night,” mother was saying. “Do you see that band of light? That’s our galaxy, lying on its side.”
Young Su moved to watch where mother was pointing. “It’s so... small.”
“We all are, on the scale of the universe.” Mother pulled out her phone and conspicuously turned it off. “That’s why sometimes we just need to make time for what we care about.”
Young Su smiled, her energy seemingly restored, and started pointing up at various lights in the sky, chattering away and asking about all of them. Mother responded with dozens of facts about space plucked from her encyclopedic knowledge. All the while, I stood back by the tree line and watched, floored. I didn’t remember this at all, but some part of me found it achingly familiar. Was this a fake memory, generated just by this dream and my wish for what things had been like, or...
I focused, moving my hand and trying to restore what I knew to be true. The scene flickered, pain spiked through my head as my metzmatan flashed red and blue, and I almost felt a tearing sensation. In one version of the scene, mother and young Su talked about the stars together. In another, I sat on the beach alone, kicking despondently at the sand. That was right.
For the first time ever, I dared to wonder. My memories could be altered. The bald man had proven that, and I kept seeing double in these dreams.
What if...
I swallowed, releasing my grip on the scene and forcing it to fade away. I stood alone in the woods now; no younger selves or mothers around.
What if...
No; it was too much. Right? There’s no way that all my memories of my mother - my entire childhood - were fake. Right?! My dad remembered them. My grandpa remembered them. Hell, the incident was real. Too many people knew about it. There was no way; it wasn’t just me. Right?!?!
I woke up, too stressed to stay in the dream any longer. I briefly panicked at the unfamiliar surroundings before remembering what was going on and why I was in the hotel. I felt hot, almost feverish, and wrestled my way out of the sheets to pace anxiously.
Why now? Why did this have to happen now? The Key; the Gate; the Lock. I still needed to deal with all the cult stuff, I had work tomorrow, the Devil was still doing who-knew-what, and now I was having a crisis about my entire childhood. I couldn’t deal with everything at once. I-
My phone vibrated. Desperate for some sort of distraction from this mess, I fell back onto the bed to grab it. A text from grandpa. Well, a few, actually. I had slept in a little since I had forgotten to set an alarm; it was a little past 9am. I opened the texts, read them, and then faceplanted into the blankets. Nope, this was not a distraction from my problems at all.
“Su, you may be right. Some strange men tried to get in last night. The police are handling things, they may want to speak to you.”
“They checked and someone tried to break into your house last night as well. A neighbor spotted them and they ran.”
“Please tell me you’re safe.”
“Your mother will be here by noon. She wants to talk.”
“Please call me as soon as you can.”
[This is a branch point.]
- Agree to meet with mother.
- Do not agree to meet with mother.
- Agree to talk with the police. Tell the truth.
- Agree to talk with the police. Tell some of the truth, keeping the supernatural details hidden.
- Do not agree to talk with the police.
- Call grandpa.
- Leave him out of it until it’s over. Keep him safe and uninvolved.
- Call dad. Ask him about mother and the incident.
- Leave him out of it until it’s over. Keep him safe and uninvolved.
(Winners: , , , / - a tie! )
- Agree to meet with mother.
- Do not agree to meet with mother.
- Agree to talk with the police. Tell the truth.
- Agree to talk with the police. Tell some of the truth, keeping the supernatural details hidden.
- Do not agree to talk with the police.
- Call grandpa.
- Leave him out of it until it’s over. Keep him safe and uninvolved.
- Call dad. Ask him about mother and the incident.
- Leave him out of it until it’s over. Keep him safe and uninvolved.
(Winners: , , , / - a tie! )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 73
I thought about what to say to him for several minutes, just sitting on the bed and staring at my phone as the screen went to sleep. Then I shook myself out of it and just typed, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you or the police right now. When it’s over, I promise.”
Then I scrolled through my list of contacts. Hesitated on my dad’s number. Considered calling him to ask about mother. The incident. Just to know if I was actually going crazy. But no; it wouldn’t be safe. I needed to leave him out of it.
However, there was one person who I absolutely needed to talk to, consequences be damned. I had spent a year avoiding her - ever since the incident; the divorce; my move - but I had to know now. Shakily, I unblocked my mother’s number and tapped into our conversation. I had cleared all the history so I wouldn’t have to look at it; there was nothing there but a clean white text box.
“Hi, mom,” I wrote after about a minute of effort. “We should talk. Can you meet me at river square park sometime today?”
The typing indicator appeared before I could even lock my phone and take a breath. Apparently she had in-flight wifi. And was very anxious to respond.
“Su, I’m so glad to hear from you. Of course we can meet, how does 1pm sound?”
Deep breath. I can do this. “That works.” Nothing more.
I set down my phone, ignoring the inevitable messages that she would continue to send, and fell back into the morass of sheets and blankets. I sank into a cocoon of bedding. It was probably time. I needed to remember the incident, in full.
Almost one year ago...
“And when are you going to give us some lovely nieces or nephews, Suyeon? You’re so sweet and pretty; I hate to see you going to waste.”
I tried to maintain a neutral expression. The woman talking to me - one of my aunts - had clearly had a little too much to drink. Or maybe she had always been this blunt; I could never keep track of who was who in my extended family. “Maybe not for a bit,” I replied in an impressively kind tone. “I’ve had my fill of dating for a while.”
“Oh, but I’m sure you would feel...”
I listened to her prattle on, feeling dizzy and a little nauseous. I had been out in the sun, trying to be pleasant to every random family member at my cousin’s wedding, for hours now. I wasn’t built for this kind of stress. “Excuse me,” I interrupted. “I’m feeling a little under the weather; I need to...” I just trailed off into a nonspecific excuse and made my escape. One of my hapless uncles got caught in the lady’s verbal trap as I left, ensnared in a net of good manners. Poor guy.
I learned against one of the tables, breathing heavily against the nausea and pressing my eyes tightly closed against the dizziness. I heard a dress rustle up to me and wearily looked up to see my mother looking concerned. Good. I was definitely in a state she should be concerned about.
“Suyeon, what are you doing? We need to make a good impression on everyone!”
Ah. Of course; that was the mother I knew. “I’m... feeling a little sick. Maybe I should go... inside and lie down a bit.”
“Inside? Nonsense; the boat tours are about to begin! I need your help to make sure everything is ready. Come along; you’ll feel better with the lake breeze.”
I protested weakly, but was too dizzy to offer much resistance. Mother dragged me onto the boat, pointed at a few things she wanted me to tidy, and sat down behind the wheel to start the motor.
I knelt and fumbled with the ropes, aware the faster I could get this done, the faster she’d let me go. The motor rumbled to life and the boat lurched, throwing me off balance. I was so lightheaded it was hard to think, let alone stand up properly. “Mom, please. I feel... really bad.” Here I was, 27 years old and still taking orders from my mother. Pathetic in a way.
She either didn’t hear me or didn’t care. The boat sped out into the lake, mother’s hair and dress whipping merrily in the wind while I struggled to stay in one place and avoid passing out.
The incident itself was very simple, as these things often are. A textbook boating accident, contributed to by a multitude of factors. My dizziness. Mother’s lax attitude. My failure to remember a life jacket and her failure to provide one. A choppy wake thrown up by another boat just a half minute earlier. I went from kneeling on the deck to airborne in an instant, thrown by the wake and unable to keep my balance. I slammed into the water at forty miles an hour and immediately blacked out.
Minutes later, I woke up on the shore, dad’s anxious face hovering overhead. I was half-drowned, bruised all over, and had dislocated a shoulder; thankfully dad had gotten it back into place before I woke up. Mother apparently hadn’t even noticed me fall overboard for nearly a full minute as dad madly powered up the second boat and sped out to save me. The paramedics pronounced all my injuries not life-threatening, but I had to spend a few hours in the hospital anyway. The wedding, of course, was ruined.
Dad started the divorce proceedings the very next day, after I had gotten up and was feeling a little better. I flew out of town several days early, unwilling to talk to or even see mother, and moved to Arizona only a few months later after an unexpected job offer from Korman. I had never spoken to her again after that week.
“...”
The ceiling swam into blurry focus; my eyes were filled with tears. The incident, overall, had been an accident. Negligent, yes. Purposeful? No. But it had been the last straw; after years of her behavior, nearly getting me killed was enough for both dad and me to sever our ties with mother.
“Do you think that maybe she had reasons for what she did?” Dad had asked me that on a phone call recently. “That maybe she’s not a being of pure malice?”
Just because she didn’t actively mean to kill me doesn’t make it okay. And even with my new doubts about my childhood memories, the incident was still real. Had to be; there had been nearly a hundred people there who all saw it happen. Real, tangible things had occurred because of it. Mother was still someone who could throw her own daughter off a speeding boat and not even notice or care. Whatever she was going to say to me today, I needed to remember that. Actions speak louder than words, mother. And yours speak pretty damn loud.
Okay. Let’s go.
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be early or late, so I tried to arrive at the River Square Park right at 1pm. It was pretty close to the airport, so the bus trip was reasonably short. I got there at 1:02pm, stepped gently off the bus, and looked around. Mother would be coming from the same direction, I belatedly realized, as she would have just gotten off a plane. Maybe even on the same bus route. Boy would that have been awkward.
The park was, as the name implied, a square section of grass and trees adjoining the river that cut through the center of the city. I picked it because it was relatively popular - plenty of people around, but no one close enough to eavesdrop - close to the airport, and (perhaps subconsciously) because it reminded me a little of the lake where I had nearly drowned almost a year ago.
I recognized her quickly. Tall, curvy, fair-skinned, long light brown hair; the opposite of me in almost every way. Clearly I had inherited much of my appearance from my dad, and I was glad for that. She wore a light orange sundress and a wide hat; stylish without even seeming to try. My outfit of a simple t-shirt and shorts suddenly seemed inadequate, like she was critiquing me without even saying anything.
“Suyeon!” A wave; she quickly approached. I froze up, not ready even after all my preparation. What was I supposed to do? How did one approach this situation? Was she going to hug me? Was this a handshake thing or would that be weird? Should I say something? Just stand here frozen in panic? That seemed like a solid choice.
- Return the hug.
- Accept the hug but do not reciprocate.
- Greet with a handshake instead.
- Just stand there frozen in panic.
- “Mother.”
- “Mom.”
(Winners: , )
- Return the hug.
- Accept the hug but do not reciprocate.
- Greet with a handshake instead.
- Just stand there frozen in panic.
- “Mother.”
- “Mom.”
(Winners: , )
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Scene 74
I awkwardly stuck out one arm in preparation for a handshake, defusing the incoming hug before she could get too close. Mother slowed down and clasped my hand with both of hers, gripping me like she could hardly believe I was actually here. I could hardly believe that either.
“Suyeon...” She scrutinized my face; glanced over the rest of my outfit. Thankfully, my only visible injuries were under my shirt where the bullet had hit. Nothing to worry about from my appearance.
“Hi... mom.”
She paused, still holding onto me as if afraid to let go. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited, hoping I could hear those words again.”
“About a year?” I guessed.
An unsteady laugh. “About a year.” Tears welled in her eyes. To no one’s surprise but my own, I felt about ready to cry as well.
“Let’s go over there,” I suggested, guiding us towards one of the wooden benches overlooking the river. This one was dedicated to one Mr Stanley Ribbeck, according to the plaque on the side. I traced the shapes of the letters with my gaze, hyper-aware of my surroundings.
Mother - mom, I supposed - sat elegantly and I settled down beside her. Sunlight sparkled on the water and birds rested lazily in the shade. She kept glancing at me, still seeming to disbelieve my presence.
Finally, I had to broach the topic. There was one reason I was here and it wasn’t to look at some cute ducks. “Mom,” I began. Good start. She looked at me, hands in her lap with perfect posture. “You threw me off a boat and left me to drown. Why?” Woah, maybe a little too much malice. Tone it down a bit, maybe? Too late; I had already said it.
She flinched; I caught an instant of actual physical recoil as I bluntly cut straight to the heart of the matter. A part of me exulted at the reaction. “Suyeon, I am so sorry for everything I did that day. I’ve spent the past year regretting it. I should never have forced you to go out on the boat; I should have given you a life jacket; I should have seen it when you fell; I should have just listened to you! I could make excuses, and for a while I was planning to - I was tired, I had to make sure the wedding went smoothly, the whole family was there - but no. Everything that happened was my fault, and it is the worst thing I have ever done. I’m sorry; I never meant to hurt you. I’ll never do it again.”
My. Hand. Hurt.
I turned my head away, angrily wiping my eyes to see what the metzmatan was doing now.
... Nothing. My fingers shook. Mom apparently hadn’t noticed my distraction; she was busy crying. “Suyeon, my only daughter... Can you ever forgive me?”
I looked inside myself, searching for answers and emotions. Anger, sadness, love, hatred, fear, relief? I was too mixed-up to be sure. She cared. She really did. You couldn’t fake this. “I...” My voice broke and I had to cough before trying again. “I don’t know. I hope so.”
Mom nodded tearfully. It was the best I could do. It was the best she could hope for. She moved closer for a hug and this time I didn’t resist. Warmth and the scent of citrus; the same perfume she -
My hand blazed with pain, so intense I convulsed and pulled it tight against my body. The symbol still wasn’t moving, changing color, or glowing, and after a few moments the pain faded away entirely. She noticed that time.
“Suyeon, are you okay?”
Memories. I gasped, seeing two of every single scene I could remember with my mom in it. My hand ached as my eyes widened, spilling tears onto the bench. I had to know. I needed to know.
“Mom, do you remember my first boyfriend from back in college?” I was speaking too quickly; I must have seemed crazy. The change of topic alone carried a huge amount of emotional whiplash but I just HAD TO KNOW.
“...” To her credit, she played along. “Adam?”
“Yes. How did that relationship end?” I tried to present the question as neutrally as possible, recalling two equally lifelike sets of memories. Mother, tsk’ing and threatening to withhold my tuition unless I found a more suitable partner. But also, just me, sitting alone in my room after breaking up with him of my own volition.
“I don’t remember... didn’t you say he was too clingy?”
Pain; great, searing pain in my hand. The memories collapsed down to one. The right one. I hoped. No, no no no no this cannot be happening.
“I - I-” I held my hand curled against my chest, sorting through the mess of memories for one that mom would remember. “The supermarket!” I yelled. “When I was really little. The police; what happened then?!”
“Suyeon, you’re...”
“Please, just answer the question! PLEASE!” My hand felt like I had immersed it in molten metal. I could barely keep myself from screaming in pain.
“I could never forget. You hid yourself in a display rack and we couldn’t find you. We ended up calling the police to get you out. Your father and I were so worried...”
I screamed. The kidnapping... fake. The threats against Adam... fake. I swore my hand was on fire. In lava. Buried in the center of a star. Pairs of memories clashed and collapsed into single sets, one after another. Mom’s conversation with the police; I had never overheard that. Fake, entirely. Playing the piano; we had been happy. Fake. Losing my bag at the hotel; real, but the emotions were exaggerated. I hadn’t screamed and neither had she. Watching the stars; that had happened. I... just... couldn’t-
The pain faded and I slumped forward, falling off the bench. Mom caught me. “Suyeon; Su! Please, tell me you’re okay.”
“... I’m okay.” I slid back onto the bench, still processing the changes to a vast collection of memories. Most of them were very similar to the way they had actually been; just tweaked slightly to paint my mother as worse than she actually was. Some had been changed so much as to be almost entirely fabricated. She had never been evil. Absent much of the time? Yes. Standing with dad on the porch in the rain, asking why mom was always gone? That had happened. For sure. Talking with her from the tree, telling her that work was dumb? Absolutely. The incident? Unedited. That one was real.
Mom hadn’t been transformed instantly into a good mother by whatever had just happened to my memories. She had still been gone too much; she had still nearly killed me with her negligence; she still pushed me quite hard. But... she had never been evil. She had always cared.
Something had just wanted me to believe otherwise.
“...” She was still staring at me. I helplessly raised my hands; how could I explain what had just happened? “Suyeon, you were on fire.”
I caught the barest hint of a glow fading from the symbol on my hand. Golden-white for a split second, then nothing. Overwhelmed, I didn’t know what to think, do, or say.
- Make excuses; leave.
- Explain. I was, apparently, on fire. I can’t just pretend like she didn’t see that.
- Pretend like she didn’t see that. It must have been an optical illusion or something.
- I feel generally positive about mom now.
- I have no idea how I feel about mom now.
- I feel generally negative about mom now.
- I think the Devil is the one who messed with my memories.
- I think the bald man is the one who messed with my memories.
❔ - I think someone/something else messed with my memories. [Specify who/what in #story_discussion.]
(Winners: , , ❔ )
- Make excuses; leave.
- Explain. I was, apparently, on fire. I can’t just pretend like she didn’t see that.
- Pretend like she didn’t see that. It must have been an optical illusion or something.
- I feel generally positive about mom now.
- I have no idea how I feel about mom now.
- I feel generally negative about mom now.
- I think the Devil is the one who messed with my memories.
- I think the bald man is the one who messed with my memories.
❔ - I think someone/something else messed with my memories. [Specify who/what in #story_discussion.]
(Winners: , , ❔ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 75
“I was on... fire?”
Mom sort of helplessly gestured to my outfit. I glanced down; flakes of ash drifted on my clothes. Nothing was damaged, but I couldn’t ignore the ash.
“... I...”
I told her. The condensed version, and skimming over some of the more dangerous parts. But I had to. Not just because I couldn’t simply pretend she hadn’t seen the flames, but because she deserved to know what had happened to my memories. All the while, as I was talking, I dug through flimsy shreds of evidence in my mind, trying to determine who might be responsible.
Who did this to me? How long ago? And why? The Devil? I considered him first as an obvious suspect: strongly connected to dreams, immense power, seemed potentially evil. But he had been nice to me recently, had never actually tried to seriously hurt me (to my knowledge), and I couldn’t figure out a motive. Especially since I had met him; this must have happened before that. Right?
The bald man? He was another prime suspect. He had actually messed with my memories before, scrambling my recollection after I had met him and Leah in my dreams... just a few days ago? It felt so much longer. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt that he couldn’t have done it. I had only just met him, and he truly seemed not to know me. But more than that, he had messed with my memories before... and he hadn’t been very good at it. I broke the spell just by seeing an image of him in Tom’s dream, and that had felt nothing like this. Nowhere near the level of hand-immolating pain that accompanied rewriting years of memories.
So then... who?
Could it have been... me? I was, unfortunately, a likely suspect. I had the motive: justifying the incident retroactively. I had the means: the metzmatan or, if this had happened earlier, I had always been relatively good at controlling my dreams. Maybe that worked for memories too. But... if I had done this to myself... I had ruined my own relationship with my mom. For no reason.
That was a hard pill to swallow.
“Suyeon, it’s just... a lot to take in all at once.”
“I get it. Grandpa was like that too - wait, hang on.” I pulled out my phone and scrolled to the video I had sent him of me by the purple beach. “Believe me now, grandpa?” said the tinny, low-quality Su of a lifetime ago, waving to the camera with her glowing left hand.
She stared at my phone, almost unmoving. Finally, it seemed to sink in. “So... you... all this time... false memories?”
I nodded. “I don’t even know how it happened. My best guess is that... that, uh.” It was hard to admit. To say that at least some of this had been my fault. Had it really? Was I right? “I think... I might have done it. Subconsciously, I mean. Like a trauma response?”
The look she gave me was so unbelievably sad and guilt-ridden that I fumbled to apologize. “No, no, I don’t - I mean, I - it’s my fault that...”
I trailed off, feeling absurd tears creep back into my eyes after a period of self-control. I fell against her and sighed shakily. “We’re a mess, aren’t we?”
“Su,” she managed to say after a minute or so. She rarely used my nickname. “None of this was your fault. No matter what guilt you feel; it wasn’t your fault. Okay? Can you believe that?”
I wasn’t sure. “I can try.”
Another nod, another embrace. Making up for the last year. I still didn’t know what to think of my mother, and I doubted I would for some time yet. You couldn’t rewrite years of memories and just have things go back to normal immediately. Ducks splashed in the river, having a grand old time. Something occurred to me.
“Mom.” I paused for several seconds after that, digesting the implications of what I had just thought. “Why did dad get the divorce?”
I saw a flash of pain and backpedaled again, but only for a moment. “I - I’m sorry; I just, with the memories and...”
“He did it for you,” she whispered. “Your father told me that he couldn’t be with someone who put you in danger like that, and who neglected you, and who tried to control you. He had lists of evidence. I... at the time, I believed him. I had nearly killed you. I didn’t deserve you, or him. But now...”
I had already called dad. But I hardly needed to. I remembered now. My hand flashed with a final burst of pain and the last memory collapsed down. I remembered speaking with dad from my hospital bed, telling him every terrible thing mother had ever done to me. Some of them real, many of them fake. He believed me. Of course he did; why would I lie to him? He had seen some of these himself; the real ones. Mother actually was away quite often, and she did spend far less time with me than he did. She hardly even had time for him. She was harsh on occasion - to both of us, but to me more often.
Her flaws were magnified and strung together into a grand pattern that only existed in my delusional mind. He already knew the real portions and took my word for the rest. Mom hardly defended herself; she was too guilt-ridden to object. Maybe she had done these things. Maybe she was a terrible person. After all, there was some truth in there.
Weeks passed as the procedures continued and paperwork mounted. Dad and I spoke more, and I was always ready to provide him with more evidence of mother’s failings. He just seemed exhausted and empty, not angry or dejected. Like he had been going through it for someone else. For me.
I squeezed my eyes shut as he picked up, not ready to hear his voice. Guilt gnawed at my stomach.
“Pumpkin, hello! Good to hear from you; your grandpa has been telling me some concerning stories. Are you doing alright?”
“D-dad,” I stuttered, immediately clueing him in that something wasn’t right. “I’ve got mom here. You’re on speaker.” Quiet speaker, to avoid his voice carrying far into the park. We were relatively isolated regardless. The ducks wouldn’t tell.
“I’m glad the two of you decided to meet. Hello, Dannika.”
“Hello, Sangjun.”
“Dad...” I didn’t know what to say. How could I? “Sorry, dad, I accidentally lied to you for months and...” “Sorry, dad, your whole divorce is based on a lie.” “Sorry, dad, I ruined your marriage.”
“When you’re ready, Su. No rush.” Calm, patient, understanding. As always. I didn’t deserve him.
“Dad, I need to explain something about my dreams.”
Ducks swam peacefully in the river as I talked. A mother trailed her ducklings behind her like a string of fluffy beads hanging from a necklace. A smaller, chubbier duck waddled onto the shore and curled into a round loaf, settling in for a nap. A family wandered by in the distance, pointedly ignoring the “do not feed the ducks” sign. I sent dad the video as well. A duck wandered up to our bench as we waited for him to watch it, quacked plaintively at us, then waddled away as it saw we had no food. The place was overrun with adorable waterfowl.
“Su... I don’t know what to think.” Dad was silent for a moment, then a staticky whoosh filtered through the connection as he exhaled. “Dannika, is all this true?”
Mom nodded, even though dad was hundreds of miles away. “It’s true. The video; I saw her burning. Suyeon is... entangled in something terrible.”
“This whole year... fake?” His voice grew quieter, as if he were muttering away from the phone. “And my pumpkin, dealing with cultists and Devils?”
I jumped in alarm. “I never said anything about-”
“Your grandpa told me. I wanted to hear your side of the story; I was going to call you later. My poor Su... so much going on...”
“What’s this about cultists and Devils? Suyeon, are you safe?”
Oh no. Things were getting a little out of hand. I still had no idea what to think about mom, many of my childhood memories had just been proven fake, I had unknowingly broken my family apart, my parents knew about what was going on, and on top of all that, I still had to deal with the Key and the cult and Bholgalos!
In the distance, the sleeping duck twitched its wing, nibbled at it for a moment, then returned to peaceful slumber.
[Both sets of choices are branch points.]
- Let my parents help. They’ll be worried sick if they can’t, and they could be helpful.
- Get my parents to stay away from all this. Keep them safe.
️ - Mom and dad talk things out preliminarily, without me involved.
- Mom and dad wait to discuss things until it’s all over and all three of us can talk.
(Winners: , ️ )
- Let my parents help. They’ll be worried sick if they can’t, and they could be helpful.
- Get my parents to stay away from all this. Keep them safe.
️ - Mom and dad talk things out preliminarily, without me involved.
- Mom and dad wait to discuss things until it’s all over and all three of us can talk.
(Winners: , ️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 76
Mom was still looking at me. I tried to say “yes,” but the word caught in my throat. I couldn’t lie; not anymore. “I don’t know,” I ended up murmuring. “There’s so much happening.”
“Let us help you.” Immediately; no hesitation. Both of them. I was tempted for a moment, just to have anyone I could talk to and rely on in all this mess. But...
I stared down at the bench. “I can’t. It’s too dangerous for you to be involved.” They didn’t seem convinced - or at least mom didn’t; I couldn’t see dad’s expression - so I elaborated a little bit. “I have... powers that help keep me safe in all this. But I can’t protect you, and if you’re involved, they’ll come after you to get to me. It’s just... safer for everyone if I do this alone.”
Silence for a few moments. Another duck joined the first in sleeping under the tree, pressing up against it with a contended quack.
We stayed at the park for a while longer, but the conversation was basically over at that point. I couldn’t say anything more about the whole metzmatan situation, by my own rules, and all of us needed time to digest what I had revealed with my memories. Mom and dad agreed to discuss everything further tomorrow, without me, which I figured was fair. I had caused so many problems already.
I left first, still not quite ready to initiate a hug as I said goodbye to mom. So confused. I still held the false memories, but they seemed less immediate now. Like I had seen them on a movie screen rather than actually experienced them. I just... didn’t know what to think of mom yet. I would need time to think and recover, and time was exactly what I didn’t have. The Devil had said there were only a few weeks remaining, and though he hadn’t clarified the “until what” part of that statement, it wasn’t hard to guess. I had a few weeks until Bholgalos broke out of his prison and did... something terrible, presumably. A few weeks to learn the Key and decide what to do with it.
That didn’t seem so bad. After all, it had only taken me a few weeks to get from not even knowing what my metzmatan was to here. The problem was more with the cult; they wouldn’t just leave me alone for a few weeks, especially if they thought I was going to bring about the end of the world. Sure, they didn’t find me at my house, but would they then go searching all the hotels in the city? Maybe. More likely, however, they would try to attack me in dreams.
I tried to remember if I had left anything in the cave that could be used as a focus to bypass any defensive rites. I hadn’t lost any belongings that I knew of, or any body parts, and I hadn’t even bled from my one injury. I didn’t think they could get me, then; even Tom had thrown away the hair he had (accidentally? I was even less sure now) pulled out with the pliers.
Still, I couldn’t be sure, and it wasn’t like I could go back to work tomorrow either. The longer this went on, the worse things would get for me. So. I made up my mind. Tonight, I had to enter the Gate of Deeper Slumber, presumably with the Key, and do whatever I had to do. Maybe not go all the way towards dealing with Bholgalos, but at least learn the Key. There wasn’t really any reason to wait.
I knew I was purposefully ignoring all the problems and feelings I had uncovered earlier today in the park, but I was doing that for a good reason. I had waited a whole year to find out how I felt about mom; I could wait another few days. Plus, it was just easier to not think about it. So much uncertainty and confusion. It was almost a relief to return to the uncertainty and confusion of this clash between cultists and demons.
I returned to the hotel a little before dinnertime - we had spent quite a while in the park and the bus was late - and chewed listlessly through a microwave meal I had picked up at the store while I was out. No kitchen meant frozen meals twice a day every day; another reason to hurry up. Then it was time to investigate the Key again.
Unfortunately, without grandpa’s extensive historical knowledge or even access to the library, I made very little progress. There were a few hits online for details surrounding Bholgalos, but few of them were particularly helpful and none mentioned the Key. Similarly, physical inspection didn’t get me any further than it had last night. I was able to uncurl the thing into what I assumed was its open form, then reseal it back into a more compact object for carrying, but I still couldn’t read any of the glyphs. There didn’t appear to be any other hidden mechanisms or really anything else at all. The Key, on the whole, seemed to just be a weirdly elaborate scroll.
Shower, lemon juice, say the defensive rite. I considered trying a more complex one today, but a lot of them required weird materials with strange chemical names I could look up and order online, but couldn’t buy at the local drugstore. A concerning number required various types of living sacrifice, with the least concerning being a few drops of the caster’s own blood and the most concerning being “the death of a living creature with a strong emotional tie to the caster, such as a beloved pet or favored horse.” I frowned deeply as I read the associated footnote that stated, “It is believed that human sacrifices with similar emotional connections, such as friends or loved ones, would increase the rite’s power and duration significantly. Unfortunately, no real-world tests have been done with this hypothesis.”
Yeah. “Unfortunate.”
Lemon juice it was. Maybe I could look into getting a chemistry lab, a variety pack of solvents, and a bunch of powdered metal for later, but for now this would have to do.
I had to take the Key with me, I assumed. I needed to bring it to the true dreamworlds so I could find a god to help me read it. Unfortunately, that would mean risking losing it if the cult caught up with me... but I had my powers and my ability to wake up. That would have to be enough. I leaned back, turned off the light, and tried to sleep.
“...!” I sat up again after only a few minutes, remembering something important. The lemon juice ritual had blocked my ability to dreamwalk earlier. I didn’t know if traveling to the Gate was a similar sort of process, but I would feel incredibly dumb if I somehow blocked my own path there. Of course, removing the rite would guarantee a cultist invasion, no question about that. I hesitated, biting my lip indecisively.
- Keep the defensive rite.
- Remove the defensive rite.
(Winner: )
- Keep the defensive rite.
- Remove the defensive rite.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 77
I didn’t really have a choice; I needed to get to the Gate, cultists or not. Reluctantly, I removed the covers I had sprinkled with lemon juice. I didn’t know how else to break the spell; I couldn’t un-say the words. After that, I turned down the AC a bit to account for the lighter blankets and returned to bed.
It took me nearly an hour of lying there in the dark to finally pass out.
...
I was sitting on the edge of a pool, my legs resting on a submerged step in the water below. The water was warm, as was the air. The room was tiled with that square white ceramic-ish material common in hotel pools; very similar to the pool in the hotel I was staying at right now, in fact. There were no overhead lights and the majority of the illumination came from bright, light blue indirect lighting installed under the lip of the pool. Water sloshed gently against the sides, pushed and pulled by subtle currents. There were two exits from the room, one frosted glass set of double doors that I would expect to lead into a hotel lobby, and another a tiled opening that would lead to a locker room if normal logic still held here.
I didn’t even need to look at my hand to know I was dreaming; two things clued me in. First, I was wearing the maroon suit I had gone to bed in, and it had changed again. Shorter sleeves, shorter pants, slightly tighter, more waterproof fabric; it had adapted somewhat to the environment without losing its style or identity, just as before. Second, the Key sat next to me. I had brought it into the dream exactly as intended. Now I just had to get to the Gate before anything dangerous happened.
Hm. Previously, I had theorized that all it took to get to the Gate was falling asleep in a dream. It was pretty comfy right here, with the gentle waves and warm water; maybe I could just sort of... lie back and... I frowned and flexed my left hand, creating a pool towel to put between my head and the tile. That was better. Eyes closed; listen to the water. Start to drift...
My hand hurt. I winced and raised it to look, then sat up more urgently, double-checking to confirm. The outer circle was black again, as I had expected, but the number of lines was... a problem. I started counting, but more kept popping up and I had to start over more than once. By the time the symbol had stabilized, I counted twenty three individual lines connecting the circle and the triangle. Most of them were very close together, almost overlapping, but a few had spread out around my hand. I couldn’t hear anything and I didn’t know how far away any of them were, but the sheer number was intimidating. This must be the whole cult, or at least a large portion. They really wanted the Key.
Okay, okay, calm down, I told myself. They might be pretty far away, and if you can just go to sleep before they get here, you can escape to the Gate. Easy.
Yeah. Easy.
I leaned back again and tried to close my eyes, but anxiety kept popping them open. Could I hear footsteps? Voices? Or was that just the water? My body was tense, wanting to move or fight or do anything; I couldn’t go to sleep. It just wasn’t going to happen.
I sat up again after a few minutes of that, then jumped in surprise. Someone else was in the pool now, and he was looking right at me. Dark hair, full beard, large crooked nose, facial scars. He wore loose, dark clothes somewhat reminiscent of a karate gi, and was partially transparent. Water swirled around him in a miniature whirlpool. I recognized him as the titan who had been floating in the enormous lake a few days ago. The demon Bholgalos.
“You,” I said, crawling out of the water and grasping the Key protectively.
“Me,” he agreed, spreading his arms with a wry grin. Water from the pool strained up towards his arms, like tiny tides.
“You can’t be here. You’re imprisoned. I saw you there, just a few days ago.”
Bholgalos shrugged, striding across the pool and leaving a wake of confused water behind him. “So you did. Of course, you now carry an artifact of strong connection to that place. In dreams, physical location matters little.” His voice was strong; deep but clear. Like the ocean, perhaps, or maybe that comparison was just due to the situation.
“... Why are you here?” Good job, Su, asking the tough questions.
The demon lounged against the side of the pool, arms casually set on the rim. “The Crimson Moon want me dead; you know that. It is in my best interest that you hold onto that Key. At least, unless my death is also your goal?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I said carefully. “The Devil said this Key can destroy you, free you, or strengthen your prison. Maybe more. What are you going to do if I let you out?”
“Me? Oh, nothing much. Recover from this ordeal for a while; catch up with all the developments I’ve missed over the last few dozen centuries. Maybe mark a few promising mortals with metzmatans. Start cataloging the damage you lot have done to the oceans while I’ve been away. You get the idea.”
“The oceans? Are you... in charge of the sea?”
Another shrug; he waved a hand over the pool’s surface and a ribbon of water swirled up into a complex shape before splashing back down. “That’s a complicated subject. Is your patron ‘in charge of’ volcanoes? Forest fires? Anything involving the concept of combustion? I have a vested interest in water, in all its forms, much as he does with fire. Does that mean I’m lord of the oceans?” He raised his hands in another shrugging motion. “You decide.”
I glanced up, this time definitely hearing footsteps. Someone was splashing through water not far away. Bholgalos smirked briefly. “Looks like you should get moving. Here’s a tip: you can make that thing a little easier to carry. Good luck, Su.”
The demon faded from view. I looked down at the Key, frowning. Could I? Maybe if I just... I focused, blue light spilling from my hand, and simply shrank the Key. It sat lightly on the floor, now the size of a deck of playing cards and only a little heavier. Obviously this sort of change didn’t follow the laws of physics, but thankfully dreams didn’t have to.
I stood up, hearing voices and splashing from just beyond the double glass doors. Time to move. But also, I had to fall asleep somehow, while running for my life. This would be a challenge.
- Get as far away as possible, then try to sleep.
- Try to knock myself out. Maybe it works the same way?
- [Not available; I’m not desperate enough to try this yet.]
- Try to defeat the cultists, or at least pick a few of them off, so I have more room to breathe. And sleep.
- Try to convince the cultists to leave me alone. [This will be a tough sell.]
(Winner: )
- Get as far away as possible, then try to sleep.
- Try to knock myself out. Maybe it works the same way?
- [Not available; I’m not desperate enough to try this yet.]
- Try to defeat the cultists, or at least pick a few of them off, so I have more room to breathe. And sleep.
- Try to convince the cultists to leave me alone. [This will be a tough sell.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 78
The tiled opening that I had thought would lead to a locker room definitely did not. I ran through a dark corridor of pool tile, barely avoiding crashing into the walls on turns, before emerging into another room very similar to the one I had just left. Big, rectangular pool in the middle with maybe a few feet along the outside edge to walk on. Blue light streaming up from the water. I picked another doorway and kept going.
Sounds of pursuit varied in volume and perceived closeness behind me as I scrambled through the unending labyrinth of tiles and pools. The rooms started to get weirder the further I got, as well. Larger, smaller, twisty-turnier, going up and down and all around. Many were entirely flooded, requiring me to forge through warm, chlorinated water of depths between my ankles and my neck. Occasionally, if I heard anything too close by, I ignited my hand with the teal light that had let me fly; this sped up my movements and allowed me to swim or run faster. I couldn’t go too fast without running into a wall, and everything was too enclosed to fly, but it helped. A little.
I didn’t seem to be making much progress in escaping my pursuers - and I certainly wasn’t making any progress in falling asleep - so I decided to change my strategy. I still had the blue light. I could change things.
A few rooms later, I saw my chance. I emerged into a massive, cathedral-sized room with enormous pillars and large circular “windows” illuminated with more of the same light blue glow as the pools. Water flooded the chamber up to a depth of at least a dozen feet; I leapt off the entrance like a diving board and held my breath, kicking down towards a wall.
Focus. Do this right. I couldn’t have two powers going at once, so I had to proceed carefully. First, the golden light. The tightness in my lungs vanished and I was able to sustain myself without breathing. I approached the corner of the wall I was aiming for - directly beneath one of the other exits to the room so it might look like I went there - then switched my metzmatan to the blue light. Creation, or manipulation.
I closed my hand in a fist and shoved down, imposing my will on the dream. Some part of me vaguely understood that making changes that made sense in context was easier than overriding everything wholesale. Maybe I had read something in the red leather book; I wasn’t sure. Regardless, instead of doing anything like drilling a hole in the wall or blowing it up, I simply pushed a section of the wall down like a secret door, pretending like it had been here the whole time.
The dream complied. A new passage was revealed behind the section of wall, flooded and dark and leading who knew where. I swam inside, then pressed my hand against the wall and pulsed the blue light again. A plate of ceramic formed beneath my hand, rising out of the wall, and I pushed it back in like the button I intended it to be. The secret door slid closed, leaving nothing visible of my presence beyond some eddies of water in the pool beyond.
Back to the golden light. I exhaled in relief, sending bubbles streaming towards the tunnel’s ceiling as breathing became unnecessary again. Back to blue. I needed this tunnel to go somewhere useful, so I forced it to. Just out of the range of my light, I decided that the floor sloped up and emerged into open air. My will against the dream; I won again. I swam forward and the tunnel rose into a small, very dark chamber. One last flare of blue light turned on the same glow as everywhere else in the dream, then I flopped out of the water, dripping and exhausted.
“Good trick,” Bholgalos said pleasantly, appearing out of nowhere to sit on the edge of the pool. “I’d help you up, but I can’t touch anything.”
I sat up after a few moments of lying on the floor. It felt like I had just sprinted several hundred yards. Well, after I had just done that to get here. Several hundred yards twice. “Thanks,” I settled on. “Are you going to keep showing up, then?”
The demon seemed to find that funny. “I’m always around as long as you carry that.” A gesture to my pocket and the Key within. “But it seemed prudent to let you be without distractions for a few minutes.”
It still seemed odd to me that Bholgalos was being so amiable. This was the demon that was so dangerous he could destroy the world; that the Crimson Moon cult would stop at nothing to destroy? He was sitting on the side of the pool, smiling lightly and kicking his feet in the water to swirl it around. Something didn’t add up here, but I wasn’t sure who was lying. Still, I had bigger problems at the moment and our goals aligned; at least temporarily.
“So... are you going to help me at all, or just sit there?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. What’s your plan?”
I hesitated. It wasn’t very thought-out. Plus, I wasn’t entirely sure I should be telling him. Oh, why not. He could guess it anyway. “I need to get to the true dreamworlds, which means I need to get to the Gate.” A nod. “So that means I need to somehow go to sleep.” A shrug and another series of nods. Great; I hadn’t been wrong about that. Or he was lying to me. One or the other. “I need to get far enough away from the cultists that I can fall asleep before they get to me. So I’ve made a little secret chamber they hopefully can’t find.”
“Mm hm...” Bholgalos stood up and wandered around the room, inspecting the walls. I checked my hand; the lines were mostly away from the secret wall. They might have gone past me. “You aren’t the only one with the ability to manipulate the dream. It is, of course, easier for you as this is your dream, but they have the ability and experience to do so as well.”
I had sort of expected as much; my metzmatan hadn’t felt any different during my time in Tom’s dream, though I hadn’t tried to use the blue light. “So you’re saying they’ll be able to get in here.”
“Yes, though the dream will resist their manipulation to some degree, so it will cost them. Still, with such overwhelming numbers, you will tire first in a direct contest of strength. Whether it will take them long enough for you to travel to the Gate is a matter of how quickly you can enact your plan.”
- Stay put; try to sleep here.
- Try to knock myself out. Maybe it works the same way.
↩️ - Return back through the secret door.
️ - Create a new tunnel going forward, back up into the labyrinth.
- Dreamwalk somewhere else. [Where?]
- Change the entire dream to a more advantageous setting. [What?]
[Also, if there’s anything relatively quick I should say to Bholgalos, you can put it in #story_discussion. There’s no formal choice for it, though.]
(Winners: ️ , - a tie )
- Stay put; try to sleep here.
- Try to knock myself out. Maybe it works the same way.
↩️ - Return back through the secret door.
️ - Create a new tunnel going forward, back up into the labyrinth.
- Dreamwalk somewhere else. [Where?]
- Change the entire dream to a more advantageous setting. [What?]
[Also, if there’s anything relatively quick I should say to Bholgalos, you can put it in #story_discussion. There’s no formal choice for it, though.]
(Winners: ️ , - a tie )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 79
“Okay, okay, that’s fine. I’ve got more ideas. Just need to catch my breath a little first.” I stayed sitting down, trying to come up with a larger scale change I could make to the dream that might help me. I knew I could switch the entire setting if I wanted - I had done it before - but never had I tried it so purposefully; so... blatantly. This wouldn’t be easy. Still, something occurred to me as I recovered. “So... I’ve been wondering. Why were you imprisoned in the first place? Surely there must be some reason.”
The demon smiled lightly and pushed a small wave of water across the pool to splash on the side next to me. “A fine question. How about this: you get into the true dreamworlds, and I will show you directly. That realm is composed of dreams and memories; I can think of no better introduction to it.”
“... Okay...” I wasn’t fully on board, but it wasn’t like I had any better ideas. He almost certainly knew the true dreamworlds better than I did, with him being an immortal demon with some command over dreams and all.
“That’s the spirit. Now, you had better make some progress on whatever your plan is. I’ll check back soon.” Bholgalos faded from view, leaving only a few passing ripples on the water’s surface.
“Okay...” I whispered, with slightly more confidence. “Let’s do this.”
Blue light. Hand on the ground, gripping the slippery pool tiles. Breathe, and visualize what I wanted to change. Nothing big, so the dream wouldn’t fight me as much, but enough to help. Sections moving in the labyrinth; walls raising and trapping the cultists. I, the designer, of course knew the pattern. What was the pattern? Didn’t matter; I knew it. I wondered what Bholgalos had actually done to earn imprisonment. Flood an island? A nation? Some massive cataclysm? No; focus! Tunnels of pool tile stretched out for miles; hidden chambers in a maze of impossible complexity. Too much for anyone to work through. Visions of water flooding through the halls filled my mind as I thought of Bholgalos again; earthquakes? Global nightmares? Could he kill people directly? Stop it; FOCUS! I-
My hand spasmed and I realized it had grown painfully hot. I lost my grip on the light and it released itself; blue light flashed through the room and tunnels for miles around with a brief rumble. I fell to the tiles, head spinning and breathing heavily as I recovered from the exertion. Oh no.
Everything held still for a few seconds. A few more. I started to believe that maybe I had done it right after all.
Then the room shook, listing to one side. Tiles tumbled from the walls and ceiling, the pool lights flickered, and cracks formed on all solid surfaces. I cried out, falling into the water with the room’s violent motion. With a hideous screeching sound, before I even had time to figure out which way was up, the floor ripped away and a wild burst of pressure vented the entire contents of the pool - and the endlessly dark ocean beneath it - into the ceiling.
I slammed into solid tile with the force of a cannonball, instinctively curled up with my left hand aglow with golden light. Bones shattered and reknit nearly simultaneously; I punched through the ceiling with a bizarre wave of brutal pain that flared once through my body and then faded away with the healing. I couldn’t tell where I was or where I was going; there was nothing but mad flurries of bubbles and buffeting currents, walls and floors and tiles thundering past in the flow. Sometimes the objects hit me, sending me spinning wildly with another flare of pain that quickly receded as the gold light did its work. I couldn’t do anything but keep a death grip on my focus and wait for it to be over. Something about the overwhelming situation made it easier to hold onto nothing but a single thought, repeated over and over. Don’t die. Don’t die. Don’t die.
And so I didn’t.
There was a gap in my memory; one moment I was tumbling through merciless, buffeting water, and the next I was jerking awake on a shore, coughing out salt water and feeling like I had been run over by a steamroller with a meat tenderizer instead of a smooth drum. My metzmatan’s light flickered weakly and ebbed back to a dull black; I flexed my hand but couldn’t summon more power. I was tapped out, at least for the moment. There were fewer lines than before, I noticed. Counting them all up marked only fourteen; nine invaders had... woken up? Maybe they had bailed out after they saw the incoming wave of water. I shied away from the concept that maybe I had just killed nine people. They had probably just escaped. New train of thought: where was I?
I was lying on a white sand beach, ocean waves pushing up to my knees before retreating back to the depths. The island was very small - maybe only a dozen yards across and hardly more than a few feet above the waves. A single palm tree waved gently in the breeze; this was the stereotypical deserted island. I noted that the sky above was dark and full of stars, though the scene around me was lit perfectly well. The water was clear and glassy; I could see at least a hundred feet down to where the island’s shore abruptly dropped off into the abyss.
Lastly, I wasn’t alone. It wasn’t Bholgalos this time, but rather two people I recognized. The first was a normal looking youngish man with a mop of curly brown hair; the same man who had been the first one to invade my dreams back when I had found the subway key. The second was a woman about my age with blonde hair and a visible scar on her abdomen where I had stabbed her; the bald man’s apprentice, Leah. Both of them wore loose, generic dark clothes, and both were currently unconscious, battered, and soaked with seawater. Two of the lines on my hand pointed right at them.
What should I do?
- Go to sleep. I’m exhausted after all that; it should be easy.
️ - [No! I’m not going to kill them!]
- Kick one or both of them out of my dream. [You can specify who. Depending on how it makes sense, I might do the next-most voted option too. I’m not entirely sure how to do this, so I might have to ask Bholgalos.]
- Talk to them. [And say what?]
- Just leave. [I don’t have the energy to summon a boat or anything right now, and swimming might be treacherous.]
- Restrain them in some way, then... [do the next-most voted option]
(Winners: , )
- Go to sleep. I’m exhausted after all that; it should be easy.
️ - [No! I’m not going to kill them!]
- Kick one or both of them out of my dream. [You can specify who. Depending on how it makes sense, I might do the next-most voted option too. I’m not entirely sure how to do this, so I might have to ask Bholgalos.]
- Talk to them. [And say what?]
- Just leave. [I don’t have the energy to summon a boat or anything right now, and swimming might be treacherous.]
- Restrain them in some way, then... [do the next-most voted option]
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 80
I had to do something about them before they woke up. A few options cycled through my head before I settled on restraining them in some way, but... how? I didn’t have any chain or rope, I didn’t think I could use the tree effectively, and the island itself was just sand. Maybe I could tear off a few strips from - nope, clothes are surprisingly resilient to tearing. Not at all like the movies. Uhm...
After a few more moments of thinking, and noticing Leah starting to stir, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t really have another choice; it was metzmatan or nothing.
The symbol resisted me, but I could still feel power there and I was eventually able to coax it out. Blue light sputtered weakly and I caused two tombs of tightly packed sand to rise out of the beach, covering both of the cultists aside from their heads. That task done, I released the light and fell heavily onto the beach, utterly spent. My head spun and my ears rang; I couldn’t get enough air. I had gone too far this time.
But that was the idea. Now, the next stage of my questionable plan came into action. I managed to roll over so I wouldn’t suffocate in the sand, then just let go. All the exhaustion of the last several minutes crashed down and, within a minute flat, I was asleep. Again.
...
“AUGH-oh.” I half-yelled, trailing off into a more sedate vocalization as I got my bearings. Cool, damp stone beneath me; something had just poked my leg. A lantern, hooked to a metal staff, held by a partially-transparent blue person wearing a brown robe. Ah.
“Welcome back, dreamer.”
A jumble of scattered thoughts. Nausea, but not as bad as last time. I remembered the last time; I remembered this time. Falling asleep on the beach. I choked back the urge to throw up, still frighteningly weak and unwilling to risk any more use of the metzmatan. “I’ll be...” Held up a hand, squeezed my eyes shut. “Right with you.”
“Of course,” one of the guardians assented. “Take your time,” said the other.
New footsteps sounded on the stone floor as I recovered on the ground. I heard Bholgalos’ voice. “I’ll be going along with her,” he said cheerily.
“Ah,” said one. “It has been a long time,” continued the other. “What is your quest, Lord Bholgalos?”
I opened an eye, the nausea finally retreating. “Lord?”
“An honorary title for one of my skill,” the demon clarified, waving his hand dismissively. “I don’t command these two.” Then, to the guardians, “I seek the Lock. She holds the Key.”
“Ah,” said both guardians in overlapping voices. They both looked in my direction; I wobbled as I climbed to my feet. “And you, dreamer?”
“I, uh, I need to figure out how to use this Key. And then I guess I’m also looking for the Lock.”
“Power, yes. Just as last time.” Both guardians stepped to the side, leaving the path to the wooden door clear. “Now, will you enter?”
I swallowed, but stepped forward. Resolute, this time. “Yes.”
Two nods. “Before you enter, heed our warning.” Bholgalos smirked and leaned back against the wall. He had clearly heard this before. “Passing through the Gate of Deeper Slumber will temporarily separate your essence from your body. Abandoned, your body will start to die. Inexperienced dreamers often only have a few hours before their body dies and they are stranded in the true dreamworlds forever with no form in the waking world to return to.”
My confidence of a moment ago fell apart. “You’re saying I only have a few hours to get back, or I die? I thought you said this was safe last time!”
“Time is stretched in the true dreamworlds, much as it is diluted in the surface ones. A few hours here may be several days there, and dreamers can often get a sense of their body’s condition even while separated. Still, it is wise to return swiftly. Additionally, your body will be left behind as you travel. Time is not the only harm that can come to it; you would be wise to ensure its safety before proceeding.”
“... Important question. When you say ‘my body,’ do you mean the one that’s sleeping in the hotel, the one that’s sleeping in my dream on a beach, or the one that’s standing right here asking you these questions?”
“Any and all of them. Your various physical forms in the waking world and surface dreamworlds are all linked; reflections of each other. Any change to one quickly propagates to the others.”
Bholgalos interjected here. “Most dreamers like to put their dream-body in a nice, peaceful dream protected by all sorts of rites and sometimes even a friend or two before they head through the Gate. You sure do have some confidence, falling asleep right beside the people chasing you.”
“Confidence?” I whispered. “More like ignorance.”
[This is a branch point.]
- Accept the risk and proceed. Enter the true dreamlands; I may not get another chance.
- Refuse and wake up. Try again later.
(Winner: )
- Accept the risk and proceed. Enter the true dreamlands; I may not get another chance.
- Refuse and wake up. Try again later.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 81
“Dreamer, will you proceed or will you leave?”
“...” I hesitated, but it had already taken a great deal of effort to even get this far, and the cultists wouldn’t stop hunting me if I backed out now. They’d try again the next night, and the next, and on until I slipped up. It would only take one mistake. I had to go.
“I’ll proceed.”
A wave of the arm. “Very well. Continue.”
Bholgalos stayed quiet as I walked to the Gate, though I could feel him watching me. Both guardians seemed content to just look down the tunnel; they had probably seen this too many times to count. The handles were dark metal of a very old design; I clicked the latches in and pushed the doors open.
Starry darkness yawned into infinity beyond the Gate. I immediately felt the dizziness and nausea returning; my next step faltered as it landed on some invisible plane just inside the door. Every visible object sprouted a motion trail and every source of light began to blossom into painful brilliance. Some immense vibration, deeper than any sound, thrummed from the void. It almost felt like... a melody.
I didn’t even feel myself hit the ground. Perhaps there wasn’t a ground to hit.
...
I floated.
Well, that was the best way I could describe the sensation. I didn’t really have eyes to see what I was floating in, let alone a sense of balance or touch to know if I was moving. I wasn’t even sure if I was in a physical place at all.
I drifted for a bit.
My mind, shaped by a lifetime of physical experiences, assigned these terms to sensations that were mental - spiritual? - only. By “drifting,” I started to feel things. Thoughts, feelings, memories. Wisps of consciousness floated around and through me. I felt the quiet contentment of a job well done. Thought through the intricacies of a calculation for a grand temple. Remembered scenes that weren’t my own; alien trees waving under a dim purple sun.
I reached further. Some part of me quested out with intangible feelers, searching for more information. There were... larger things here. Structures bigger than a single wisp of sensation. But they were surrounded by barriers that could not be breached by my probes. I circled one, grabbing onto spare thoughts that littered its surface to spin myself around the whole. Powerful sensations impacted my mind. Memories of twenty-four thrones arranged in a circle around a flickering green fire. Only empty space above and below; no stars. A man with salt-and-pepper hair laughed as a white cat licked its paw.
Stop. Recenter. My name, my purpose, my self. I am Suyeon Che. I came here to learn the Key. I am separate from the memories around me.
It hadn’t been that hard to hold onto my sensation of self earlier, just drifting among the wisps, but here... the structure was so big; so purposeful; so overwhelming. It dwarfed my own experiences by an order of magnitude or more. Who’s to say I wasn’t the man with the salt-and-pepper hair, or the white cat, or even one of the many other beings in the memory?
I do. I will not be eaten by a sleeping god’s dream!
I left the larger bubble and drifted back into the gentle maelstrom of shifting thoughts. After a while, it occurred to me to wonder what happened to the Key. Surely I hadn’t left it behind somehow, but if it was a physical object...?
There was something riding my consciousness, like a piggybacking panda or a large burr. I focused on it - pressed against it - and was able to understand it, to some degree. The Key was still here, but it had dissolved into a jumble of fragmented memories and thoughts too broken to understand. There weren’t even any recognizable glimpses; no faces, no words, nothing. Just a total mess, scrambled to such a degree that it almost seemed purposeful. Like maybe... some form of encryption.
Something shifted nearby. Something large; even bigger than the bubble-like structures floating around. But worse: it seemed to be moving purposefully. Pulses of thoughts radiated out in all directions; tiny questions of “who?” “what?” “why?” and so on ricocheted off my mind, returning to their source with equally tiny details to answer themselves. This presence clearly knew what it was doing, and that scared me. I had no idea what to expect of the true dreamworlds, but I knew it was formed of gods’ dreams. And if I could manifest in my own dreams, what was stopping a god from doing the same? What if this presence was... a divinity? How would that even work?
The presence focused on me. A greater volume of questions bombarded me like a searchlight. “Purpose?” “Identity?” “Morals?” “Motives?” I didn’t intentionally answer any, but they nibbled away regardless, carrying information back. I still didn’t know how to “move” at any speed faster than a sedate drift, and the presence was easily able to catch up with me. The questions grew sharper, and then the thing’s shape ballooned to encircle me, like an amoeba consuming a speck of food.
Darkness twisted around me. I fell onto a floor - light, gritty sandstone - as myself, though wearing a white, lightweight tunic dress instead of the maroon suit. Lights sparkled in my vision as if I had just hit my head; I looked up with eyes squinting against the glare to get a sense of what was going on.
I was kneeling on a sandstone path that weaved through a desert. An oasis-like pool of water with abundant greenery lay just off the path to my right, while high dunes blocked the view to my left. Strong winds blew fine particles of sand everywhere, coating my hair and stinging my skin. Visibility was terrible due to the storm, but I could still make out a towering figure - maybe eight feet tall - standing imposingly before me. Then it stepped forward and I could make out the dark beard, crooked nose, and wave-patterned armor.
Relief washed over me as Bholgalos helped me up and stood to my left to block some of the sandstorm, then led me further down the path. “So, how are you enjoying the true dreamworlds so far?” he asked conversationally.
I wiped some sand off my face before replying. I could taste gritty particles on my teeth. “It’s... different. I keep remembering all these things that happened to someone else. And-” I paused again to spit out more sand. “Is this sandstorm really necessary? We’re in your dream now, right? Can’t you control it?”
Bholgalos shook his head. “We’re in my memory. The more changes I make, the less it will reflect what actually happened - and you’re the one who wanted to know how I got imprisoned in the first place. In fact, perhaps I should put you into a role, rather than letting you wander around as you are...”
- Let Bholgalos put me into a role for the memory. Probably a good idea to improve the accuracy as much as possible.
- Stay as myself. It’s already too easy to forget who I am in this place.
(Winner: )
- Let Bholgalos put me into a role for the memory. Probably a good idea to improve the accuracy as much as possible.
- Stay as myself. It’s already too easy to forget who I am in this place.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 82
“No, no thanks,” I replied quickly. “It’s already hard enough to remember who I am in this place.”
“Mm. Very well; I’ll make us both invisible. Just don’t go touching anything.”
I nodded and we continued along the path. After a few minutes, the sound of hooves became audible. I glanced back to see what was approaching; Bholgalos pulled me off the path and stopped walking.
A second Bholgalos, looking similar to the first but with lighter-colored clothing, became visible through the sand, floating quickly backwards and holding a glimmering blue light on the end of a curved staff. He was followed close behind by a horse and rider, the latter wearing a linen wrap around her head against the storm. I glanced at my Bholgalos questioningly.
“Patience,” he said, gesturing slightly forward.
Thankfully, we didn’t have long to walk, as the horse stopped only a dozen paces ahead when the other Bholgalos let the light wink out and dropped lightly to the ground. He didn’t speak to the rider as she dismounted and looked around, nor did she seem to notice him at all. Presumably he was as invisible to her as we were to him. The sandstorm finally began to ease off and the rider unwound her head wrap in order to see better. She was clearly searching for something, but that wasn’t what I was most interested in. Her face seemed... familiar. I glanced up at Bholgalos again. “Am I imagining it, or...?”
“There is a certain resemblance,” he admitted. “Her name is Evessi and she was a witch, of sorts. Keep watching.”
Evessi moved further off the path, making for a dim light in the slowly dying storm. We followed, both Bholgaloses and me, and together watched her discover a broken stone object lying gently in the middle of a glassy crater in the sand. Something glittered inside.
“A meteorite?” I asked. Bholgalos nodded, gesturing for me to continue watching.
The witch reached inside the shattered rock shell, then pulled her arm back out clutching a small crystal object about the size of her fist. It glowed brightly with a warm yellow light, and as she held it up to inspect it, I could tell it was shaped into the form of a stylized heart.
“What is this that you have shown me?” she whispered. I could hear her actual voice faintly speaking in some other language behind the English words; presumably Bholgalos was translating for me.
Unexpectedly, someone answered. Memory-Bholgalos moved close to the heart and spoke softly, so his voice seemed to emanate from the crystal. “It is limitless power. Use it how you see fit; I will guide you.”
Evessi glanced around warily, but didn’t seem to notice that she was surrounded by two copies of an immortal demon and also a time-traveler from the future. Just the horse. “Your gift is gracious... lord. I will do as you say.”
With that, she re-wound the head wrap, tucked the crystal heart into a pouch, and quickly galloped back into the storm. I took a step as if to follow her, but noticed that neither Bholgalos was moving and stayed put. The storm continued to slow.
“I know you’re there,” said memory-Bholgalos. “You may as well show yourself.”
I jumped in shock, but current-Bholgalos merely chuckled and nodded to the left. There, heat rippled in the air before curling into sheets of flame. A moment later, the Devil stepped gracefully onto the sands. He wore much older style clothing here, but the coloring was still maroon and he otherwise looked near-identical to the present day version I knew.
“And what do you think you’re doing?” the Devil asked, poking the broken stone shell with a sandaled foot. Just as with Evessi, I could faintly hear him speaking in a different language behind English. “You know the Yhvram doesn’t appreciate humans meddling with those things.”
Bholgalos smiled, still gazing into the distance after Evessi. “And I don’t appreciate the Yhvram telling us what to do. You know as well as I that hoarding these hearts underground does no good for anyone. They’re meant to be used.”
“Do you not remember the last...” the Devil counted on his fingers in an exaggerated manner. “Three times we allowed a heart to be taken by a human? The cataclysms they inevitably caused? The unbreakable edict to not do exactly what you just did? The Yhvram was very clear that we are to let civilization develop until we can be extremely selective with those who are allowed to claim a heart.”
“Oh, Yhvram this and that!” Bholgalos finally turned to face the Devil. “The old codger can’t even stay conscious half the time; that’s why we’re here. It’s second-guessing our work when it hasn’t even so much as spoken to a human in centuries! Are you seriously going to let it dictate your every action? You, Intaqui?”
The Devil looked down, troubled, his characteristic too-wide smile reduced to a frown. Intaqui? I wondered. Is that his actual name?
“Besides,” Bholgalos continued. “Evessi is responsible, intelligent, and moral. She would never do anything rash with the heart.”
“Were you not paying attention at all? The hearts corrupt! Immortals can’t use them and mortals only cause destruction whether they intend to or not; that’s the entire reason why we’ve been hiding them!”
“Evessi is different. And I will guide her.”
The Devil narrowed his eyes. “You’re in love with a mortal, Bholgalos.”
“Preposterous!” He swatted the air, as if to knock the accusation away. “I merely intend to guide her to use the heart’s power for-”
“Have you ever spoken to her as yourself, at least?”
“No; of course not. There’s ambition and then there’s recklessness.”
“Good.” The Devil sighed. “What would the Yhvram think if it heard of all this? Consorting with a mortal, plotting to use a freshly fallen heart, openly doubting its judgement... You would not fare well.”
“Good thing you never saw any of this then, right?”
Another sigh. “Of course. Just have at least a little caution, will you? And I will be keeping an eye on you and your mortal, as well. For when things inevitably go wrong.”
“You may be waiting a while.”
“No doubt.” The Devil stepped backwards and vanished in a curtain of fire. “Farewell. We shall talk again soon.”
After a few moments of standing contemplatively in the sand, Bholgalos too faded from view, disappearing like ripples in a pond.
“That was, essentially, when it started,” current-Bholgalos said. “When you are ready, we can proceed to the next chapter.”
I had so many questions.
[You may pick multiple; Su will prioritize topics in order of votes. You can also write in more questions in #story_discussion .]
- Ask about the Devil and his relationship with Bholgalos.
- Ask about Evessi and her relationship with Bholgalos.
- Ask about my resemblance to Evessi, and what that means.
- Ask about the crystal heart.
❔ - Ask about the Yhvram.
(Winners: = > > ❔ )
- Ask about the Devil and his relationship with Bholgalos.
- Ask about Evessi and her relationship with Bholgalos.
- Ask about my resemblance to Evessi, and what that means.
- Ask about the crystal heart.
❔ - Ask about the Yhvram.
(Winners: = > > ❔ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 83
“So... the Devil - er, my patron. Intaqui, you said? You knew him?”
“We were friends for a long time, even by our standards. You’ll see more of him as these memories progress. It was rather a surprise to me that he chose to mark you; he had always been so careful about rules and order in the past. I wonder what changed in these last few millennia...”
“Do you mean it was surprising that he marked me in particular, or just anyone?”
“Well, anyone, really. It used to be quite a big deal to choose a priest; Intaqui had actually never marked anyone at the time of this memory. I suppose the rules may have been relaxed in the meantime. Regardless, it was also a surprise that he would choose you in particular, though perhaps I shouldn’t be. He was always detail-oriented like that.”
“What’s special about me? Does it have to do with... how I look like her?”
Bholgalos shrugged. “Ask Intaqui. I doubt you’re related to Evessi - she died childless - but maybe he saw something in you that he thought would be important to me. Or perhaps I’m making too big a deal of things and it’s a coincidence. Has he explained why he chose you?”
I glanced away and flexed my hand, feeling the lines of the metzmatan as little stripes of tension in my palm. “Sort of? My dreams always have water in them, and he seemed to imply that there’s a connection to you and your aspects, but he’s a little... vague?”
The demon chuckled. “Typical. Always giving mortals tests and opportunities to prove themselves rather than just explaining what’s going on. Ah, maybe he hasn’t changed so much after all.” He trailed off, looking thoughtful. “Although, you were able to find my prison in your dreams. Did Intaqui help you with that?”
“I... don’t think so? He was there, but I don’t think he did anything.”
“Hmm. I wonder... Have you ever had any traumatic experiences involving water? Particularly any that came near to death?”
It was my turn to frown. I still wasn’t over everything that had happened just earlier today, nor should I be. “I almost drowned in a lake about a year ago,” I said quietly.
“Interesting; my priests in the past often faced similar trials. And you’re clearly a proficient dreamer on your own, even without his blessing; perhaps you simply happened to have the right combination of traits and experiences that he needed. Not everything has to be some grand conspiracy about being a descendent of an ancient witch who never had any children.”
“I - I don’t think I implied that?”
“Of course, but we were both wondering, right?”
“I guess?” I stayed quiet for a moment, considering. It still seemed a little contrived, but maybe the Devil would be more willing to explain if Bholgalos asked too. Funny; I had never really decided that I wouldn’t use the Key to destroy him, but the possibility already seemed so far-fetched. He just seemed... friendly. I wondered what could have happened with Evessi and the crystal heart to lead to his imprisonment; presumably I would find out soon. “I do have another question, actually. The yellow crystal; it looked like a heart. What... was that?”
“I don’t know,” he said simply.
“... What? This is your memory; you can’t just not know!”
“Well, I know some, I suppose.” He waved a hand and the sandstorm cleared, then reached down into the broken stone object and pulled out a duplicate of the heart that Evessi had previously run off with. “Here.”
He handed it to me. The crystal was warm and smooth, and it glimmered with a complex display of inner light. I felt it pulse, briefly. “Is it... alive? It’s moving.”
“No one knows, really. These things fall from the sky occasionally; we’ve tracked them and know they come from stars, but no one really knows much beyond that. Sometimes they pulse like that - like they have their own heartbeat - but sometimes they don’t. If a mortal holds one, some very strange things can happen. Magic, essentially, but the hearts’ magic doesn’t work the same way as the magic that myself of Intaqui can perform, or even the spells that you or other mortal priests pull off when you do those complicated rites.”
I stared at the heart, but didn’t feel any power. This one wasn’t real, of course. Just a memory. “You said they don’t work for immortals, right? And that they corrupt mortals?”
“Technically, Intaqui said that. But yes, he was correct. The hearts seem to be completely incompatible with the energy that animates beings like myself and him; we can’t even touch them, let alone use them. If that one were real, I couldn’t have picked it up to give it to you; it would have slipped straight through my hand. But if a mortal picks one up... well, we’re not really sure.
“Obviously, going by the results, it always ends in some kind of cataclysm. Even Evessi’s story is, unfortunately, no different; you will see that soon. But it’s unclear what happens to cause these problems. Is it just the lure of power? Do the hearts have their own wills that influence the user? Are they simply only capable of destruction? There’s still a lot about them that remains a mystery. Perhaps some advances have been made in the last few thousand years. I would hope so.”
“So you hide them underground.”
“Well, the Yhvram does. When it notices, at least, which can be hit-or-miss.” Bholgalos frowned. “I wonder how it’s doing these days, in fact. Maybe it’s finally given up and died; that would definitely explain some of Intaqui’s actions.”
“And the Yhvram is...?”
“Ah, right. The specifics aren’t that relevant to you, so let’s just call it “the closest thing this planet has to a god” and be done with it. Even during the time of this memory, it was so old and tired it could hardly maintain sentience. If it’s still alive by now, it’s probably little more than a slumbering animal.” He frowned, looking concerned at that, but didn’t elaborate. I didn’t press; it seemed obvious to me what the problems would be with a wild animal that had the power of a god.
However... “The true dreamlands are supposed to be made of the dreams of sleeping godS,” I said, emphasizing the plural. “If there’s only one...?”
Bholgalos wiggled his hand. “Part of that is a misnomer. The true dreamlands contain dreams from gods, yes, but they also contain dreams from beings like me. But the other part is, well, ours isn’t the only Yhvram in the universe. Did you happen to run into any memories from other planets on your way here?”
I nodded, remembering the purple sun and alien trees; the twenty four thrones surrounded by stars.
“Those are from other Yhvra, or other immortals created by those Yhvra. They all have their own Gates, apparently - and don’t ask me where those come from or we’ll be here all day - and their memories might be from the past or even the future. Everything gets mixed up in here, so it’s impossible to find anything unless you know what you’re looking for. Anyway, don’t get too excited about extraterrestrial life; we haven’t found a way to contact anyone through the true dreamworlds, let alone figure out where or even when these other civilizations lived.”
I tried to push aside the revelations of a god definitely existing - but apparently being too decrepit to do anything - and the definite existence of extraterrestrial life for the moment. Plenty to unpack there later, especially for someone who worked in aerospace her whole professional life. If I could get some star charts from these alien memories, or... focus, Su. You have one goal right now and limited time to accomplish it.
Right. “So when the Devil said I needed to find a god to help with the Key, he meant...”
“That’s right. The Yhvram put me in here, so you’re going to have to dig around its memories to get me out. Now, do you want to continue watching or are you so excited to free me that you’d like to just get going right now?”
- Keep watching.
- Get going right now.
[Requires at least half the total unique votes to activate; will be combined with the choice above if selected.]
- Remind Bholgalos that I haven’t decided if I’m going to free him at all yet, actually.
(Winner: )
- Keep watching.
- Get going right now.
[Requires at least half the total unique votes to activate; will be combined with the choice above if selected.]
- Remind Bholgalos that I haven’t decided if I’m going to free him at all yet, actually.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 84
“I can keep watching.”
“Thought so. Very well; onwards we go.”
The scene twisted itself around me and I felt a sensation of sliding impossibly quickly. Moments later, we were somewhere else. A line of people stretched out, starting just in front of the door to a simple hut and ending several streets away. The hut stood within a crowded city, all wood and clay and sand. There was some greenery around, primarily warm-weather trees like palms, but we were definitely still in a desert.
Past-Bholgalos appeared from the air, clearly invisible to the crowd of people, and strode towards the hut. Current-Bholgalos and I followed, all three of us managing to find some space at the front of the line. Nothing seemed to be happening for a minute, so I surveyed the people waiting.
They were all dark-skinned and wearing lightweight clothing of a similar style to the outfits worn by Evessi, both past-demons, and my own avatar here. Clearly we hadn’t traveled too far, then. But more pressingly, they were all either sick themselves or supervising someone who was. Mothers held trembling babies close in the midday heat, men with missing limbs or bloody bandages leaned on staves to stay upright, and some adults or even children stood unaccompanied, coughing with sickly pallor.
Thankfully, we didn’t have long to wait before the door clicked open. A man emerged, holding a child’s hand with one of his own and a bottle of faintly glimmering liquid with the other. The child was coughing, but only lightly, and the man seemed radiantly happy.
Evessi appeared close behind him, looking much more harried than she had in the previous memory. Her outfit was different: a cloth mask and stained smock over a white dress instead of riding clothes. Her sleeves were rolled up and her hair had half-escaped the bun she had put it in. But she too seemed pleased, in a weary sort of way. “One more,” she called. “And then I need to rest. You may stay if you wish; I will return for the afternoon.” More quietly, to the woman at the front of the line clutching a sickly baby, she said, “Follow me.”
Evessi, the woman, two demons, and I all entered the building.
It was as small and simple inside as the outside suggested. A table and a few chairs in the main room, a cooking hearth, and two plain wooden doors leading elsewhere. Evessi had the woman sit, took the seat opposite her, and spoke. “You are here for your child?”
“Yes,” the mother gasped, almost frantic. “He has grown so pale and cold, and he refuses to drink. He barely moves; it is a sickness beyond normal physicians! I beg you, please save him.”
“Place him here.” The woman complied and Evessi studied the child, murmuring quietly as she did so. Finally, she seemed satisfied. “Do not worry. I can help him.”
“Thank you; oh thank you; what do you need from me?”
“Pay what you can,” the witch said. “I need only enough to replenish my supplies and pay for my food. Please wait here while I prepare the potion; it will be only a few minutes.” Evessi stood and walked to one of the other doors; the demons and I followed. The woman, I saw, had produced a small pouch and was counting out a number of coins.
The other room was smaller than the main one and definitely looked like what I thought a witch’s study should look like. Books, bottles of reagents, a cauldron simmering over a low flame - the only unusual object was the yellow crystal heart, which lay sparkling in a locked drawer. Evessi removed it from its hiding place, referenced several books, and pulled a few handfuls of ingredients from the jars. Then, she began to quickly put together a potion.
Still, none of us spoke. I watched with keen interest, trying to make out the writing in the books before I remembered I couldn’t read the language, then just observing her masterful motions as she chopped, strained, crushed, and stirred together a concoction with startling alacrity. Both Bholgaloses, I noted, watched with a much softer gaze.
In minutes, she was almost done. The last part had her grip the heart strongly in one hand - potion in the other - and mouth a series of words. I leaned closer to listen and caught the last few: “- and deliver this child from his sickness.”
The heart flashed, spraying glimmers of sparkling light around the room. Evessi exhaled a shuddering breath and sagged, almost collapsing before righting herself and putting the heart down again. The potion now glittered gold. She caught her breath, just standing still for a few moments, before moving back to the door and returning to the woman in the main room.
Evessi gave the potion and instructions to the mother, who was just as overjoyed as the man before her. The witch then returned to the door and repeated her words about needing a rest to the remainder of the line, then closed it and returned inside to slump against the wall and exhale. “Okay,” she said with a hint of a smirk. “You can show yourself.”
This time I didn’t jump, but past-Bholgalos did. He stayed put, seemingly unsure if she was telling the truth.
The witch opened her eyes and stared directly at the demon, irises shot through with the same golden color as the heart’s light. “Yes, you. Come, tell me your name. You are the one who gave me this gift, are you not?”
Past-Bholgalos slowly walked to the table, watching Evessi as she watched him. “I am,” he eventually replied. “You have learned quickly.”
“The thing whispers to me,” she said, sitting at the table. “Not in words, but in feelings. It told me how to see, so now I can. Your name, lord?”
“... Bholgalos.”
“Bholgalos...” Evessi tried out the name. “Good. Tell me, Bholgalos. You have been guiding me for a season now, pretending to be the heart’s voice. But even before that, you showed me the way. Water, herbs, power. Why?”
For an immortal demon, past-Bholgalos absolutely did not seem in control of the conversation. Current-Bholgalos looked on with a cross between amusement and... embarrassment? “You are unique among mortals,” he said, presumably trying to play up his mystery angle. “Your combination of intelligence, compassion, and responsibility made me believe you can affect great changes in the world, with a few nudges of guidance.”
She nodded slowly. “So that’s why you have been pushing me to use the heart to accomplish bigger things.”
A hesitation. “Yes.”
She nodded again. “Bholgalos, what greater good would you have me accomplish than what I already provide for the people of this province?” He moved, about to answer, when Evessi continued. “Truthfully, I am worried about this heart. It speaks with its own voice and doesn’t always wish to obey my will. It seems to take more effort to use it as time goes on. But at the same time, the magic I can work becomes more complex...”
I saw a spark in her eyes there. A little one, buried behind her drive to help the people outside, but it was there. The power appealed to her, or maybe the mystery. I glanced up at both Bholgaloses, but neither seemed to have noticed.
“Evessi,” he said, with great weight placed on the word. “I would have you change the world. With the heart, we can advance civilization by millennia and do uncountable good for everyone on the planet, not just those in this one province. You have listened to the heart; you know its power. You know how much suffering could be averted.”
She looked down. “I do.”
“Let me help you. Explore the heart’s power. Learn what magic we can weave.”
“...” Several seconds passed, but everyone in the room already knew what she was going to say. “Alright, Bholgalos. Lord, god, demon, whatever you are. I will. We will learn the heart’s secrets and craft as great a work of good as we can. You have my word.”
“You are wise,” the demon said, standing. “Then let me grant you one additional gift before I go.”
I knew this next part. Evessi held out her hand at Bholgalos’ prompting, then hissed in muffled pain as he burned his metzmatan into her palm. When the symbol was complete, his image washed away like waves on a shore. “Learn the heart. Learn the metzmatan. I will return soon.”
The scene twisted and I found myself standing on a rough sandstone wall with current-Bholgalos, watching past-Bholgalos pace between the crenellations. Guards chatted easily a hundred feet away, but this section of the wall was deserted. At least, it was briefly.
Flames burned into the shape of a doorway and the Devil - Intaqui - stepped out, his mouth set in an angry flat line. He didn’t have to say anything; everyone knew why he was here.
“Intaqui, I can explain.”
“You have revealed yourself to a mortal, Bholgalos. And more than that, you are encouraging her to perform ever more dangerous acts with the heart she wields. Even her healing is risky enough; you can read the aurlines as well as I can. You heard her distress; how she knows the heart is fighting her. She cannot handle this. You must stop.”
“No, you must stop.”
“Bholgalos-”
“Listen.” He took a deep breath. “Evessi is willing to share her discoveries with us. Look at how much we have already learned from observation alone; think of how much we could uncover about the hearts with the willing cooperation of an intelligent mortal capable of using them! We could learn of their powers, origins, ways to contain them; all it costs is bending a few outdated rules.”
Intaqui stared at him, studying. “You care for her too much. This isn’t just about the science; this is about your foolish infatuation with the human! Give it up! You know a relationship can go nowhere!”
“It’s not about her! You yourself have always been curious about the hearts and now we have everything we need to learn about them at our fingertips! And you’re saying to stop just because we need to involve a mortal!”
“I’m saying that you are being irrational and risking a global cataclysm over your precious human.”
Bholgalos growled. Water seeped out of the bricks in the wall, leaving them frail and brittle. “You would feel differently if you had ever blessed a mortal with your own mark.”
“Bholgalos, listen to yourself,” Intaqui pleaded, trying a different tactic. “Listen to what you’re throwing away. You can’t hide this forever. The Yhvram will-”
“To HELL with the Yhvram! It doesn’t know the first thing about humans, or us, or anything!”
A tense silence descended on the walltop.
“... I see,” Intaqui said. Calmly. Dangerously. Bholgalos immediately caught the change in tone.
“Intaqui, wait-”
“No, no, I’ve heard enough. Goodbye, Bholgalos.” He vanished in a ripple of flames.
Silence on the wall for another few seconds. Past-Bholgalos swore and kicked at the crenellations in a very human mannerism before waving a hand to force the water back in, then disappearing from view.
Current-Bholgalos stepped forward, noting the end of the memory. “There is one more chapter to this tale. We can continue immediately, unless you have any comments to make.”
- Continue immediately.
❓ - I have some comments to make. [Specify what I should say in #story_discussion.]
(Winner: * )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 85
“... You and Evessi; Intaqui seems to think...”
“There was never anything there,” he snapped. “Relationships between mortals and immortals are necessarily transactional and fleeting due to the nature of both parties. The hearts were what mattered. Nothing more.”
I didn’t quite believe him, but didn’t push. “Okay. Let’s see the last of it.”
A curt nod and the scene twisted again.
We were back in Evessi’s workroom, both Bholgaloses and me. Evessi was here too, and this time she and past-Bholgalos were working together. She held the heart and spoke softly, its light pulsing with her words. He kept one eye on a furiously steaming cauldron while also constructing a hideously complicated pattern of geometric symbols using several sticks of chalk telekinetically skidding across the floor. I picked out the several occurrences of the metzmatan in the mess; other designs reminded me of the tattoos on the bald man’s head.
“...” Remembering the bald man temporarily shifted my focus back to myself and the body I had abandoned to enter the true dreamworlds. What had the gate guardians said? That I could usually get a sense of how it was doing? I couldn’t feel anything right now, but maybe I’d be able to later once I wasn’t paying as much attention to what was going on in front of me.
After another minute or so, Bholgalos let the chalk sticks drift into a basket at the side of the room and inspected the sigils carefully. He adjusted several with a minute motion of his arm, then appeared satisfied. “The circle is complete,” he said.
Evessi finished one more... sentence(?) before closing her mouth and opening her eyes. I was startled to see her irises - previously mostly brown with streaks of gold - were now almost entirely white with just a few golden specks and no brown remaining. She seemed troubled as she moved slowly towards the cauldron. “Bholgalos,” she began slowly. “Are you certain this is wise? It’s been whispering to me the whole time, trying to make me stop.” She gently stroked the heart, almost unconsciously. “It doesn’t like this.”
“That is part of the very reason this is wise, -” The next word wasn’t translated; it sounded something like “namic” or “nahmeec.” I glanced at current-Bholgalos, but he was studiously not looking at me. Curious. And more than a little suspicious. I refocused; Evessi was speaking again.
“Yes, you have told me of its origin. I trust your judgement there. But this is such a complex rite, with such large consequences...”
“I am prepared to use my full power to prevent any interruptions. If you choose to begin this ritual, I will defend it - and you - with all the force I can wield.”
She hesitated for just a moment, eyes darting to the heart again, before smiling warmly at the demon. “We go together, then. To the cusp of an uncertain future.”
“But what a glorious future it will be!”
Another warm smile and a light laugh, then Evessi refocused. All business. She stepped up to the cauldron itself and held the heart over the steaming liquid with both hands. One more glance at Bholgalos and she said something without a translation. I caught the same word he had used earlier - “namic?” - but missed the rest.
Then she lowered the heart - and her hands - into the scalding mixture.
I winced as she cried out, her skin sizzling on contact. Bholgalos half-raised a hand as if he wanted to help but couldn’t. Several uncomfortable seconds passed as Evessi whimpered, face screwed up in pain and tears sliding into the mixture as she pushed the heart further in.
Then the cauldron erupted with golden light. She regained her composure within seconds, the pain seemingly wiped away, and began to read off a series of lines from a book on a lectern just behind the cauldron. Little motes of light flickered from the mixture, landing on the symbols below like burning embers made of the purest gold. Bholgalos nodded, keeping time with her words as they began to transition into rhythmic chanting. He joined in at a specific point, spreading his arms and causing the cauldron’s liquid to swirl on its own.
Almost a minute passed like this, golden embers accumulating on the floor while both Evessi and Bholgalos chanted. The mixture itself began to sing along, joining their chanting with a subtly interlacing supernal harmony. Almost like a backing choir.
Suddenly, Bholgalos opened his eyes wide with shock and horror. “No-!” he began, before he simply faded away, his image scattering to the floor in a deluge of quickly-melting ice. As this memory was from his point of view, we couldn’t stay behind to watch Evessi’s reaction; we were whisked away with him to float in midair above the city and the hut below.
A pillar of semisolid golden light surrounded Evessi’s home, making it plainly obvious that we hadn’t traveled far. Roughly a hundred soldiers surrounded the hut, commanders shouting orders as ranks formed up and prepared for an assault. But to Bholgalos, the greatest threat was up here in the sky with him. Four demons stood on nothing, all wearing human guises and all looking very upset.
Intaqui was the least surprising. He stood at the end of the row, arms folded with displeasure and mouth set grimly. The demon next to him wore the guise of a tall warrior woman in ringed mail, muscular and wielding a heavy spear. The next one stood stooped and seemingly frail; a small old man wearing the white robes of a priest. The last one in the line was the most intimidating - to me, at least. They were bald with no distinguishing features, wearing only a simple tunic trimmed with gold. Around their head shone a silver disc, like a halo but less solid; mercurial. Their expression was one of thunderous fury.
Bholgalos twisted in the air, his form straining to dissolve and return to the hut below, but he was stuck. Bearing a fury to match that of the demons before him, he spun to face them and roared with the voice of a hurricane. “CEASE THIS!”
Gusts of thundering wind rushed out, threatening to rip roofs from buildings, but the four demons were able to contain the force with little effort. Below, soldiers had formed up around the hut and were cautiously testing the golden light with their spears.
Bholgalos glanced down, then back at the demons. “What is the MEANING of this?! Release me IMMEDIATELY!”
Intaqui half-turned away. The bald demon with the silver light spoke in a voice that seemed to have regal trumpets underpinning its every word. “Bholgalos. You have been accused and convicted of conspiring with a mortal, revealing immortal secrets, thieving and concealing a crystal heart, and high treason against the planetary Yhvram.”
“Convicted? With what trial?”
“The offenses are so serious that none is required. The Yhvram itself has seen fit to validate your guilt.”
With these words, the air itself seemed to thicken for a moment, smelling briefly of ozone. My ears popped and I shook my head to clear it, lights sparkling in my eyes.
“You - you!” Bholgalos looked down again. The soldiers weren’t being injured by the light, so they stacked up against both entrances. Several men moved into position to charge inside. “This must wait; I must intervene below. The safety of this continent is on the line.”
“The soldiers below are under our guidance. They are to apprehend your mortal conspirator and safely deposit the heart in a location where the Yhvram may retrieve and secure it.”
“No; NO! You IDIOTS!” Bholgalos raised his arms, calling up another rush of wind towards the men below, but was again stymied by the other demons. “If you interrupt that ritual, this entire nation will fall. You-” His eyes darted from demon to demon, searching for a single shred of sympathy. “You, Intaqui. Please. You must believe me.”
Intaqui said nothing. He simply looked away.
Below, soldiers shouted and shoved open the doors. Bholgalos screamed, then roared, then howled. His form expanded, growing rapidly from roughly human-sized to hundreds of feet tall. Lightning gathered in his hands and stormclouds rushed in from all directions. Rain fell in fat, heavy droplets, immediately beginning to pool in the streets. A trident formed in his hands and he thrust forward with astonishing speed at the other four demons, who all scattered and began to grow in size as well.
The fight was brutal, but short.
Bholgalos took first blood within seconds, sweeping forward with the force of a tsunami to spear the old, priestly demon with all three points of the trident as he grew. Flesh tore and electricity crackled as, with a thunderclap, flaring bolts of plasma scorched through the demon’s body. Bholgalos ripped out the trident, pivoted to dodge a spear strike from the warrior, and skewered the priest a second time from behind. The demon choked, dripping golden ichor from his wounds, then fell to the city below. His body crushed a row of buildings as it became visible, the dead immortal unable to maintain his intangibility.
Humans screamed. The soldiers, to their credit, maintained focus on their original target. The pillar of golden light wavered and I could distantly hear shouting from the hut. Evessi.
The warrior and the bald demon faced Bholgalos side-by-side, one wielding a spear and the other nothing but silver light in their fists. There was no pause; Bholgalos charged in immediately. He took a blow to his upper arm, the rerebrace absorbing most of the impact, jabbed with the trident, then released it with one hand and landed a deific punch directly to the temple as the warrior trapped his weapon. She reeled from the impact, dropping his trident, and he whirled around to take full advantage. With another earsplitting thunderclap, the storm clouds released another searing bolt that connected at the same time as the points of his trident. Armor rings melted and fused; the weapon slid home with a heavy, shuddering impact.
Another demon fell, leveling another city block. The fight had lasted, so far, maybe ten seconds.
His trident now firmly stuck in the warrior’s corpse, Bholgalos was forced to release it and leap back, too late to avoid two shattering blows to his back and shoulder from the bald, silvery demon. Armor plates dented and he faltered, shouting. He spun with the impact, aiming to punch back with the momentum, but his blows were narrowly dodged. The silver demon landed another two hits, cracking the armor on Bholgalos’ torso. He stumbled, falling to one knee and holding a hand to his chest.
Soldiers dragged Evessi out of the hut; she screamed and fought them, but was no match for their strength or weapons. The crystal heart, carried in the grasp of a very uneasy soldier, flared with energy in pulses that grew brighter and brighter every second.
“Yhvram, lend me your strength,” the silver demon whispered into the air. The storm clouds parted, allowing a glimmer of sunlight through. “By the power vested in me by the will of this planet and its guardian, I hereby banish you, traitor Bholgalos. I banish you to the-”
They faltered, astonished, and grasped weakly at the trident speared into their chest. Bholgalos, not nearly as hurt as he appeared, had formed a second weapon from ice and thrust it straight through the demon’s torso. Thunder crackled and lightning struck. The silver demon’s glow faded as they too collapsed to the city below.
“Bholgalos...”
He turned. Intaqui stood behind him, wearing a carefully neutral expression. “No; stop! Believe me!”
“I’m sorry.”
The sunlight glimmered. Intaqui made a curious, clawlike sign with one hand, and a deep, deathly-cold pore opened in the ground beneath Bholgalos. Chains whipped up, lashing around his ankles and wrists.
“Don’t do this!”
The carefully crafted mask of neutrality faltered for an instant, revealing a flash of emotion. “You know I have no choice.”
The heart detonated with the force of an atomic bomb, vaporizing Evessi, the soldiers, and most of the city. Water swept in from the coast, coaxed by the heart, and obliterated much of the nation. Hundreds of thousands died within hours; millions would starve in the months to come as crops drowned beneath the waves. Bholgalos was dragged down into a formless, watery half-grave, where he waited and slumbered for millennia.
We floated in an empty, dark void, Bholgalos and I. He stayed quiet for a while as I tried to digest what I had just seen.
“So now you know,” he finally said.
I nodded mutely. So much destruction; so much violence. All pounding on my senses and mind. I had felt some of those people; their agony and terror. It almost seemed like other memories had latched onto this one, providing fragmented alternate viewpoints of the cataclysm.
Another series of timeless moments slid by.
[This is a preliminary choice, just to gauge my current opinion. I can change my mind later.]
- I intend to free him.
- I intend to keep him imprisoned.
- I intend to destroy him.
[You can submit anything to ask Bholgalos in #story_discussion, if you want.]
(Winner: )
- I intend to free him.
- I intend to keep him imprisoned.
- I intend to destroy him.
[You can submit anything to ask Bholgalos in #story_discussion, if you want.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 86
“What...” I began eventually, then cleared my throat and tried again. “What would it have done? The ritual.”
“Reveal the truth,” he said simply. “We know where the hearts come from, but we have no idea what they are or what their purpose is. The ritual would have melted that one down into a slurry of physical materials and cognitive residue that could have been examined to understand its true nature. At least, that was the plan. It may have failed even without the... intervention, but I had guards in place to prevent a catastrophe like what actually ended up occurring.”
“So it wasn’t going to change the world like you told her earlier?”
“Of course it would have changed the world. Those hearts are the strangest, most powerful objects we know of, and the only ones that aren’t even partially understood by humans, immortals, or Yhvra. Knowing how they work, and why they work, would have been an incredible boon to the entire planet. We had already gotten as much as we could out of it nondestructively, anyway. At that point, we had been studying the heart for close to a year.”
I stayed quiet for a while. Bholgalos seemed agitated, his tone a little sharper than normal. It made sense, especially if what Intaqui suspected was actually true. Speaking of... “I noticed the translation failed for a few words just before starting the ritual. Was that...”
“Some phrases don’t translate well into English,” he snapped, clearly annoyed. “It was more or less a way to wish good luck, if you must know.”
And yet those two phrases were the only ones that didn’t translate? I decided not to push my luck, though. I already knew that memories could be altered, whether by Bholgalos himself or someone else, so I couldn’t fully trust anything I had seen regardless. Of course, it would be no use asking if he had edited the memory; the only possible answer he could give was “no.”
Maybe if I talked to Intaqui and got his side of the story, things would be clearer. But I had no idea when he would be back and I was on a time limit; I had to keep moving. Before continuing, however, I wanted to check on my body. I closed my eyes and focused - same as I would to wake up from a dream - trying to get a sense of my actual physical surroundings.
A confusing overlap of sensations trickled through the link. Softness; warmth. Water or some other liquid? Cold, unyielding floor; stone? I couldn’t feel my breathing anywhere, which seemed like a problem. Back to the empty void; Bholgalos was watching me. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t think I’m breathing back there. In the physical realm. I think I need to go back.”
He shook his head. “You’re fine. It’s only been what, half an hour here? Even for your first time, you can last a few minutes at least on the physical side. That gives us a few hours here before anything dangerous even starts to happen.”
“The guardians did say time was... stretched? Diluted? Will I... know if my body starts to die?”
“It’s already dying.” Noting my expression, he continued more helpfully. “But yes, you should be able to feel it when you’re getting close to permanent damage.”
An exhale. “Okay. Alright. So. I need to find out how to use the Key. Intaqui said I need a god’s help and you said I needed to look in the Yhvram’s memories. How... do I find those?”
“Remember when I said that to find anything in here, you need to know what you’re looking for? Well, you now have knowledge of a set of memories that include the Yhvram itself.”
“It was... there? Like, for real?” I had felt the air pressure and smelled the ozone, but I hadn’t thought that the god itself had actually been... there. More just an extension of its power, maybe?
“Real enough. It was certainly focused on that confrontation and will have memories of it. If you can find those memories, then arrow back through the connections between scenes - using the Key and my prison as anchors - you should be able to make your way into its memories of the Key itself, when it was created. You get the idea, I’m sure. A proficient dreamer such as yourself.”
Strangely enough, I thought I did. “Y-yeah. Start at the beginning, then work through related memories until I can find what I want. Sounds simple enough.” Maybe.
“Good confidence. Now, there is one potential issue.”
I said nothing, inviting him to continue. It took him a few moments.
“In the event that the Yhvram isn’t dead by now - which, to be honest, I don’t know if it is - poking around in its memories may get its attention. You’re usually safe in the memories of beings who aren’t deeply asleep, since their essence isn’t in the true dreamlands with you, but the Yhvram is big enough that part of it is dreaming at all times. Or, was. Ideally ‘was.’”
“And if it’s not dead and it catches me snooping around in its memories?”
“In that case, I will distract it while you get what you need and get out of here. My current projection is tied to the Key anyway, so I can’t really be hurt without it digging up my prison. Additionally, you can take comfort that the portion of it here will be only a fraction of the whole - and nearly dead even if it is still alive - it won’t be at its full strength.”
“Great!” I declared, feeling only a vague sense of uneasy resignation. “Glad we have a plan.”
“That’s the spirit. Now, I will release the memory and allow us back into the maelstrom. I can guide, but you must lead as you are the only one of us ‘actually’ here. Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” I muttered.
My temporary body vanished along with the rest of the memory and I was thrust back out into the swarm of thoughts and feelings and recollections that formed the bulk of the true dreamworlds. Immediately, I began to absorb experiences that weren’t my own. They seemed stronger now, as if my time in the dreamworlds so far had only been a taste of their true scope.
The chill of winter; pulling a thin coat tight and shivering. The acrid stink of smoke, wafting on the wind in ebbs and starts. The taste of raw, bloody meat and the guttural scream of the creature to whom it formerly belonged. Festive, carnival-esque music in the air leading to the glowing lights of a tent.
I “woke up” an unknown amount of time later, confused. I didn’t remember what I was doing or who I was for a brief moment, until I brushed against the spiky ball of the Key still floating alongside me and my memories returned in a rush. There was a temporary lull in the storm of sensation; I had to make progress. I focused as best I could on the image of the Yhvram in my head. A glimmer of sunlight and the smell of ozone. Air pressure. The other demons who had been present.
A soft, sweet breeze. The taste of nectar on the air; on my tongue. The burble of a gently flowing stream. Who was I? Where were these memories from? I struggled to recall, gripping onto the Key as its thorny protrusions seemed to bring a certain stinging clarity. My own memories were here somewhere, buried under all the others. I just... had... to... find them.
An interminable while passed. I remembered my name for maybe half the journey as I passed through deluges of dreams, memories, and snippets of consciousness. But still, I never lost it; still I returned to my vision of the Yhvram. Finally, something changed.
A membrane hovered before me, bigger even than the first enormous bundle of thoughts I had encountered and spun away from. Fragments of mind leapt from the surface like electric sparks, briefly filling me with the warmth of a sunny day, the mucky cold of loamy dirt, and the roaring, heaving power of the oceans. This was it. Had to be. I couldn’t last much longer out here even if it wasn’t.
Something extruded from the Key and the membrane peeled back, allowing entrance. I couldn’t tell if I had done that, if Bholgalos had intervened, or if the Key itself had made a move. It didn’t matter. I flowed into the god’s thoughts and dreams as an infinitesimal grain of sand flows into the sea; so insignificant as to be utterly disregarded.
...
Ah...
I was the wind and the sand and the river below. I could feel each individual plant, insect, and human as a warm glow; tiny sparks of life forging their own paths in the world. With a little attention, I could press close and listen to the heart of each flame, gleaning a sense of their thoughts and feelings.
The reeds rustled in the breeze, quietly content to stand in the river and drink their fill. They had no sentience, as such, but the spark of life still suffused them with a simple satisfaction. A dragonfly landed on the tip of one, sentient but not sapient, seeking food in the reed patch. A flash: a mosquito! The dragonfly was gone in an instant, arcing through the air after its prey.
Then, I felt a call. Something nearby, but still muffled. So hard to think; I could spend another few days simply watching this one little reed patch.
Again, insistently. I had something important I needed to be doing. What was it? The call... Ah, yes. That.
My children fought below, the traitorous one moving with blinding speed and slaughtering those who were still faithful. I glowered, sending a beam of sunlight piercing through the clouds. I had to be here. To do something. I couldn’t remember what.
Fear, below. A sour tang mixed with anger. A crystal heart glowed blindingly bright to my divine vision, carried by a man whose being was torn between duty and a crushing fear of the unknown. He had never believed in witches and magic until this very day, when he had been called upon to capture one.
And the witch... she struggled in the grasp of two other men, fighting against the inevitable end. Her emotions churned, with terror and fury bubbling to the top of a simmering mixture containing curiosity, investment, and even love. Ah, what a rich experience. How lucky she must feel.
Words floated on the air. One of my children spoke, invoking an old magic. Of course; that was why I was here. I gathered my thoughts, withdrawing tendrils of sensation from around the planet to focus here and now and get this done right. The traitor rose up with another icy trident, but it was no matter. It had always been known that three would have to die today. This was how it was supposed to be.
The pore formed; the prison was created. The crystal heart detonated.
I felt the blast as a physical wound, snuffing out thousands of life-sparks in a single instant. But there was something below that, too. Something deeper, among the remaining three heats buried in my bones; in the planet below. An undercurrent of sensation. A liquefaction, perhaps. Something trickled into the earth, but I was so tired. It could wait.
I - Su - existed again with an almost visceral gasp. I knew I hadn’t even grasped a fraction of the Yhvram’s thoughts and feelings during that brief time I had been it. I could only follow a single thread of its consciousness with my own; it had thousands - millions - more thoughts whirling beyond just the main one I had tracked. Even the main thread interacted with all the others in such a constant flurry of activity that it put any human concept of multitasking to shame. It was so... adjectives failed to describe just how big the god’s mind was. I couldn’t grasp it; I still can’t explain it.
But I needed to get back into it if I ever intended to learn the Key.
I felt something, a ghostly sensation on my arm. Something was touching my physical body. How long had it been? It still wasn’t breathing, but I no longer knew how long I had been here. The sensation faded as the Yhvram’s remembered consciousness threatened to suck me back in.
- Sensations of rippling waves...
️ - Sensations of crushing depths...
- Sensations of radiant flames...
[or...]
️ - Sensations of the physical world... [This option will lock out at least one ending to the story.]
(Winner: )
- Sensations of rippling waves...
️ - Sensations of crushing depths...
- Sensations of radiant flames...
[or...]
️ - Sensations of the physical world... [This option will lock out at least one ending to the story.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 87
I struggled to hold onto a sensation in order to direct myself into the next memory. The Yhvram had been observing the prison as it was created with some of its planet-spanning tendrils. I focused on the image - the feeling of rippling waves - and the scene changed.
Bholgalos in his titanic form slept in the miles-wide pore filled with water and broken machinery from the lands above. From the Yhvram’s point of view, the place seemed to be physical, even though I knew it wasn’t really. Dreams and reality blended near-seamlessly, and the planet unfolded in manifold directions to balloon with every individual creature’s dreams.
There was far too much to take in, so I tried another hop. I aimed for a landmass that looked vaguely familiar, choosing the lapping waves on the beach as a connection point, and was gone. Thousands of years passed in quiet contemplation as trees marched up and down the beach, putting down roots and growing to full size in a matter of moments. Tides went in and out so quickly that the water hardly seemed to move at all, and yet it still crept up and down the beach on geologic timescales. A river drew itself into existence and I followed it inland, tracing a path through time as I went.
Immense, prehistoric plants swayed above as misty jungles and massive creatures lurked just beside the water. The river’s course meandered in real-time, diverting and carving new banks as it desired. Eventually, there was a flash of light and heat, a chilling cold, and the jungles were gone. Heat returned and the land baked as it shifted, powdering the rock and dirt into sand. A desert. My desert.
Settlements rose and fell alongside the riverbanks as I followed them into the earth. I knew what I was looking for and it didn’t take long to find it; the aquifer that would one day become the very temple in which I had found the Key. It was full, now, and there was no temple. I had the right place but the wrong time. I tried to use the rock and water as anchors, attempting to pivot into the present, but something about trying to stay in one place seemed more difficult than wandering freely with the river. I kept being pushed around, buffeted by unclear eddies of motion in the solid bedrock.
Then everything stopped.
Utter whiteness.
Something was there. Something big. Enormous; gargantuan; unimaginably huge. So intensely colossal that its presence stretched out of view in every direction; it was the whiteness. The blankness. A void cleaner than pitch black could ever be.
Something saw me. I felt naked under its scrutiny. More than naked; dissected. Cut open and arranged on a table for it to peruse at its will. And there was nothing I could do because there was nothing else here but it, and me. It drew closer, a blanket of smothering brilliance flaring against my mind with such unbearable intensity it felt like I had taped the sun to the inside of my eyelids.
Then there was a rush of liquid, darker than night against the all-consuming whiteness, and the thing turned its attention away. Dimmed; was gone.
I needed something to hold onto; I needed something tobe. I wormed my mental fingers into the fabric of whatever memory I was in and forced myself into a temporarily physical existence, falling onto my knees with a rush of gritty pain and sensation.
I knelt for several moments, filled with adrenaline from my encounter with the closest being to a god I had ever known. I stood, still disconcerted. That had been the Yhvram, presumably, and that was it after millennia of decay. It was nearly dead and only a portion of the whole, according to Bholgalos. Clearly I hadn’t gotten even a taste of its true power from its memories; what would it have been like to meet it a few thousand years ago?
I would presumably never know, and I was okay with that.
I was standing on an ancient stone bridge just above a pool of water. Except, right now, the bridge wasn’t so ancient. The aquifer temple was new and well maintained. It was even clean; people clearly used it whenever I was. That meant I was probably earlier than the 1800s, but I didn’t really have any idea that was more granular than that. I didn’t even know when the Key had been made; not really. Now? Earlier? Later? Way later? I knew I was in the right place, but I had no idea when the right time would be! Plus, I had to hurry. Bholgalos was distracting the fragment of the Yhvram, but it could presumably break away at any moment to return to me. Had to move quickly.
⏪ - Go back in time.
▶️ - Go forward in time.
⏩ - Go way forward in time.
⏸️ - Stay now, whenever that is, and explore a bit before going somewhen else.
(Winner: ⏪ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 88
Okay. Think. I didn’t know when the Key had been made, so the only way to be sure I found it would be to start at one end of the timeline and move from there. Everything looked new right now, so I was probably pretty close to the start. I went back.
Though I hadn’t made the connection in my incorporeal form earlier, I could see my metzmatan glowing with my movements now that I had a body again. The changes I was making - the motion within time and space - were shedding a multicolored light from my hand: a confused mess of teal and blue and rose. I was grateful for the practice I had gotten in with the symbol over the past weeks, limited though it had been. There was no way I would have been anywhere near as proficient going in blind.
My body phased incorporeally through solid rock and I jumped, straining as I reversed the flow of time again and slowed down to try and pick through the individual years. The temple’s void opened up again and caverns carved themselves out of the rock as I watched. Bridges grew over the water and docks sprouted out of the main caves, pointing to locations unknown. I walked through the temple as it breathed around me, almost a living organism as stone shifted and people expanded its bounds.
Eventually, I made it to the room where I had found the Key. The bulkhead door was missing and in its place was just another altar similar to the ones elsewhere in the complex, so clearly the thing hadn’t been made yet. I focused, clenching my hand as I sped up time, trying to find the moment when it had been hidden away.
Years passed, then centuries. I skimmed past the time I had originally arrived, then shot into the future. The stones grew more and more dilapidated, though many were admirably kept up. The aquifer’s water level dipped, then dropped, but still remained significantly higher than the present day. Still the Key did not appear. I thought I felt something on my arm again, then a scratchy sensation on my face. Physical? Maybe. I sped up further, blowing past centuries in a matter of seconds. The temple fell into disrepair and darkness for a while, then light returned as the new occupants made repairs and upgrades. Finally, finally, the door appeared in the blink of an eye.
I overshot the mark dramatically with how fast I was going, feeling almost like I had slammed into a wall as I tried to wrench my timeline back into the past. Unfortunately, I hit the present instead. I saw blurs in the room, probably myself and the Crimson Moon people, then the door was open and the Key was gone. I knew this part; I had to go back.
Over the next several minutes, I honed in on the exact era the door had been installed, oscillating back and forth as I kept overshooting and ending up years ahead or behind where I needed to be. Eventually I got it down, but it turned out that wasn’t even the right time either, as the Key had been made earlier! I tried to pivot off the man who placed it into the locked room as he glanced anxiously behind him, and eventually wormed my way through the sensations of his interactions with the Key to the time and place I actually needed to be.
I didn’t have a hope of knowing how long that had taken, but it felt like far too long. I tried to set the mounting anxiety of knowing the Yhvram could return at any instant aside, and simply watch the memory.
The man from before... later? Time was confusing when I was moving backwards through it. Anyway, the man who would eventually be the one to seal the Key away was talking about something I didn’t understand and seemed to be reading out of a book of religious doctrine to an audience of other cultists; I didn’t have time for that! I kept skipping around like an extremely impatient TV viewer until I got a sense of his demonstration. Using the Key, overall, seemed to be quite simple.
“First, open the Key up with the knob on top,” I murmured, giving my best guess at a translation for what the man was saying in a language I didn’t know.
“Then, arrange the rings in the right configuration.” I watched him spin the interior circles into position, trying to memorize which symbols lined up where. It was very complicated and I wasn’t certain I got it all down, but I did my best. Plus, I belatedly realized, if this guy was a follower of Bholgalos, he would only give me the instructions for how to free the demon. Maybe that’s what I wanted, but maybe not...
“Next, split the base and extend the inner claw.” The man set the Key down and unfolded more hidden sections I hadn’t found previously, resulting in it resembling a sort of pedestal with a four-pronged claw protruding upwards at the top. The interior rings began to spin of their own accord, staying in sync with each other and glimmering with their own light.
“And then...” I trailed off, not sure what he was doing now. The man was gesturing at the claw, speaking rapidly, but I couldn’t understand him. Several of the other people present replied in the same language, which didn’t help matters. Clearly this step was contentious.
Eventually, he put an ordinary rock in the claw, which grasped it tightly. Then, he clearly enunciated a sentence that reminded me a lot of the rites in the red-leather book. I listened intently as he repeated it a second, then a third time, and had the others repeat it back to him. I spoke it quietly as well and felt the Key respond to me, humming in harmony with my voice.
The memory-Key’s rings spun more rapidly and began to emit a humming tone very similar to the one generated by my real Key. The man sang wordlessly along with his Key, as did the others in the room, for several minutes as I skipped forward. I could harmonize with the box if it came to that. Finally, the memory-Key concluded its song and flashed brightly, then faded. The claw opened, the rock fell out, the rings stopped spinning, and the whole thing retracted back to its basic cylinder form.
The man nodded and gestured again; within a half-minute everyone had left the room.
I had my instructions.
Well, mostly. Clearly something was missing, or his memory-Key would have freed Bholgalos then and there. I assumed it was the rock and that there was some other object needed to activate it. But... what? Another key for the Key? Did the Crimson Moon people know about it? Did they have it? A worrying thought occurred to me. If they had the... key... for the Key, would I have to take it from them?
Maybe there was some way I could figure out a translation, but I also needed to wake up pretty quickly at this point so I could write down what I had learned before it started to fade. I was already starting to forget the particulars of the activation sentence and said it aloud just to be sure. The Key vibrated again in response.
[At least one option is potentially deadly to Su.]
- Stay here for a bit; try to figure out some way to translate the man’s words.
✍️ - Exit the true dreamlands and wake up to write this down.
- Exit the Yhvram’s memories, but stay in the true dreamlands for a bit to talk with Bholgalos about all this.
(Winner: ✍️ )
- Stay here for a bit; try to figure out some way to translate the man’s words.
✍️ - Exit the true dreamlands and wake up to write this down.
- Exit the Yhvram’s memories, but stay in the true dreamlands for a bit to talk with Bholgalos about all this.
(Winner: ✍️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 89
No, it was time to leave. I had what I needed. Just had to...
It was at that moment that I realized I had never actually asked the Gate guardians or Bholgalos how to exit the true dreamlands. Panic set in briefly as I wondered if I had to find my way back to the “location” I had entered from and return backwards through the Gate, but then logic returned and I calmed slightly. Neither of them had thought it worth mentioning, and no one had seemed particularly concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get back. It had to be something simple; probably the same as how I woke up from a regular dream.
Close my eyes, focus on the waking world (or in this case, just another layer of dream), and... I groaned, straining with exertion as there almost seemed to be a multilayered membrane separating me from the surface dreamlands and reality. I pushed harder, clawing my way through the filmy substance by using my actual body as an anchor. It was tough - and took me a lot longer than normal - but doable; a half-minute later I had broken through.
I felt a sensation of vertigo and a strange feeling of dissociation. Stars and blackness whipped past at terrifying speed, then overwhelming brightness as a pair of doors opened before me. I coughed desperately for air as I returned to myself, feeling terrible and acutely aware that the body I had just slipped back into hadn’t been breathing for the past who knew how many minutes.
The guardians were visible for only a few moments as I sat up, seeing stars and head throbbing with pain, before one of them jabbed their lantern into my stomach and I was catapulted up another level.
I was completely disoriented, still choking for oxygen, and utterly spent as I woke up on the beach. There was a sensation of a rebound, as if I had been meant to go all the way back up into reality but hit something solid and landed back here. Dull green light spilled from my hand. Something heavy sat on my legs and something strong gripped my wrists. I struggled, but couldn’t move much. Oh. Oh no no no NO-
Leah - covered in sand and looking flushed, like she had just finished digging herself out of the tomb I had built for her - snatched the Key from where it had been resting, leaning against my side. I hadn’t put it there; it had been in my pocket.
“W - wait, you - !” I started to say something, but broke off into more coughing as oxygen returned to my body.
The other cultist, sitting on my legs and holding my arms so I couldn’t move, grinned widely. “Get out of here, before she breaks out,” he said. Leah nodded, closed her eyes, and was gone. The Key vanished with her.
“You don’t - NO!” I was too late.
The remaining cultist laughed cruelly, tightening his grip until bones grated against each other in my wrists. I winced, but refused to cry out. “Too slow,” he taunted. “As soon as that Key came back from the true dreamlands, poof!” Another laugh, almost a cackle. “Thought you’d be able to sneak right past us and wake up before we could snatch it? Think again; Leah’s an adept interdictor.”
I struggled again as he spoke, but just because he would be expecting it. I had noticed the green light start fading from my hand as soon as Leah disappeared; clearly she had been the one maintaining it. And if my encounters with the mist creatures had been anything to go by, that green light was the only thing stopping me from using my metzmatan. Just a few more seconds...
“Now, how should I pay you back for what you did in those drain tunnels...?” He pretended to think, forcing my wrists together so he could hold them with only one hand to free his other, which he curled into a fist. “How about I-”
My hand exploded with bloody red light and I spun vertically into a standing position. Sand sprayed into the air and the cultist tumbled to the ground where I had just been lying. Electric crackles of red light throbbed around my body, pulsing with my heartbeat. I shot forward, carving a trench in the sand, and lifted the man out of it with one hand.
Dazed, he tried to recover enough to activate his own symbol. I didn’t give him the chance and instead slammed him back down, carving a crater in the beach as if a bomb had gone off. Seawater flooded in, lapping around his knees as he struggled to rise. I could see blood beading on his face and hands where the abrasive sand had scraped away the skin.
“W-wait...” Gasping for air, clutching a leg that was bent at an awkward angle. “I - you don’t... please-”
“Finish him, Su. For daring to get in your way.”
I felt the muscles in my arm tense up; droplets of bloody maroon light dripped into the sand as if they were liquid. The panic of losing the Key was completely subsumed beneath the rage at those who stole it. I was furious.
[This is a branch point.]
- Finish him. For daring to get in my way.
️ - Wake up.
(Winner: ️ )
- Finish him. For daring to get in my way.
️ - Wake up.
(Winner: ️ )
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Scene 90
“AAAAUGH!” I screamed in frustration and fury, but still had my self-control. The red symbol fed on emotions, I knew, reinforcing and strengthening them in a positive feedback loop. But if I could just restrain myself for a few moments...
The red light began to fade and I drifted back to the ground. “Where did she take it?” I growled, balancing on the knife-edge between lethal fury and total panic. Light continued to drip like blood from my hand. Maybe there was some actual blood in there, too. I had no idea if I was actually in charge of the situation or not, but the cultist seemed to believe I was.
He shied back, still holding his leg. “I don’t know where she lives!”
A step closer. My head throbbed from the strain of holding the red light in this half-active state. And also oxygen deprivation, probably. “Then where is she going to take it?!”
A shake of the head; his symbol lit up. I shouted again and jumped into the hole, landing with both feet on his injured leg. He screamed, losing the golden healing light and falling backwards with the shock.
“It feels good to hold the power, Su. You can admit that.”
“WHERE?!” I leveled my hand at him like a pistol, letting the symbol drip its bloody light onto his face and chest.
“Back to the aquifer temple,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “It has to be done at night, so tonight.”
The symbol throbbed one more time and it was all I could do to stop myself from finishing the job. Vivid imagery swirled in my head; it all just seemed to make sense. But with a heroic effort, I managed to pull away. The red light extinguished; my strength went with it. “Great,” I puffed, already closing my eyes to wake up. “Tell baldy I’ll see him there.”
...
I woke up and had another brief moment of panic as my mind caught up and remembered the hotel room. So much had happened in the dream; I needed to write it down. I scrambled for my phone, hardly noticing that I was dripping water and a strangely congealed red substance onto the sheets, then started typing. Activation sequence first. C’mon, THINK!
It took me over half an hour to write down everything I could recall. The recollections got hazy near the end, but I was pretty confident I got most of the important stuff. The Key’s activation sequence, Bholgalos’ memories of Evessi and Intaqui, bits and pieces of the Yhvram’s memories, and of course what I had heard from the cultist that I had beaten up.
“Tonight,” I muttered, scrolling through the weather forecast until I found the sunset time. Around 7:30, today. I had less than twelve hours to figure out what to do, then do it, since I didn’t know when during the night they intended to use the Key.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” I couldn’t believe I had actually gone to sleep - and to the true dreamlands - right next to them on the beach. Honestly, what was I thinking? I could have woken up and tried again later. I had a whole week or more until Bholgalos could break out anyway, according to the Devil; I had plenty of time! But I didn’t do that, and I lost the Key because of it.
Okay. Lay out the facts, then figure out a plan.
The Crimson Moon cult was going to be using the Key at the aquifer temple, tonight, to destroy Bholgalos. Fact. Check. Unless the cultist had been lying to me, but let’s not worry about that. The temple was a few hours away by car, plus almost an hour of walking to get there in the mountain tunnels. I’d need to leave by 4pm at the absolute latest to be reasonably sure I had enough time. Earlier to be safe. I didn’t have a car, and Alfonse probably wouldn’t be up to driving me again. I could rent one; I still remembered how to drive. Probably.
But... even if I got there in time, what on earth was I going to do? I didn’t have any powers in the real world; I couldn’t fight my way through the entire cult! What if they just locked the door? Could I even open the trapdoor on my own? It was really heavy!
I could give up.
I briefly entertained that line of thought to see what would happen if I just stayed here for another twenty four hours. The cult would use the Key and Bholgalos would be destroyed. I probably didn’t want that to happen, but I couldn’t really stop it. And, as sad as his death would be for him, I’d be okay. But... would the cult stop chasing me? I had certainly gotten on their bad side; was it just the Key they wanted or did they want me as well? And the Devil; Intaqui wouldn’t just go away with Bholgalos. Would he approve of my decision? Probably not; he said he wanted me to choose.
“...” Inaction was a choice, I supposed.
I could go to the authorities like grandpa wanted. There was physical evidence of the cult doing shady things now, like trying to break into his house and mine. And if I knew that everyone would be out in the tunnels tonight for the ritual - and, as far as I knew, there was only one way out - could I just convince the police to head out there and arrest them? Would they believe me, even if I cut out the magical parts of the story? I didn’t really have much proof aside from testimonies from various people involved.
I sighed, staring into the last bits of milk left in the cereal bowl. “This is too much for just me to handle on my own,” I admitted to no one in particular. My voice was unsteady, like I was about to cry. “But everyone I drag into this mess is put in danger, too.”
A half-pause, as if I was hoping for a reply. An answer. Maybe Intaqui could appear from around the corner and dispense some cryptic advice.
Nothing.
I pressed my lips together and took a deep breath to try and quell the tears. Felt marginally better. Stood up and went to wash the bowl, still thinking about my predicament.
[This is the branch point that will decide the ending archetype. I intend to...]
️ - Go to the temple tonight. Face the cultists.
- Give up. Stay here and be safe.
- Talk to the police. Try to convince them to help.
❓ - [Or something else. Post in #story_discussion if you have a better idea. You can also specify more details for any plan.]
(Winner: ️ )
️ - Go to the temple tonight. Face the cultists.
- Give up. Stay here and be safe.
- Talk to the police. Try to convince them to help.
❓ - [Or something else. Post in #story_discussion if you have a better idea. You can also specify more details for any plan.]
(Winner: ️ )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 91
I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have anyone who could help. I didn’t have much hope of actually being able to stop this. But I still had to try.
I wore the maroon suit again, both for its protective abilities and because it seemed appropriate. Packed the red leather dreamwalking book and a few other things. Considered calling dad, grandpa, or mothe - mom, but didn’t. Before I knew it, the morning and part of the afternoon had passed and it was time to go.
The rental car place was hot and the car they gave me was sweltering. I turned up the AC as far as it would go, adjusted the seat and mirrors, and spent some time reminding myself what all the controls did. Thankfully, it hadn’t been that long since I had last driven anywhere and the skills came back to me relatively quickly. I made it out of the lot and back onto the city streets with a minimum of fuss.
Two minutes later, I remembered why I had been so glad to sell my car as I sat, moving at less than ten miles an hour, on the freeway. Well, good thing I built some extra time into the schedule.
Traffic improved as I left the city center and almost entirely vanished as I passed out of the city limits entirely. Then it was just a straight shot to the turnoff and another bumpy ride across the desert dunes to the train tunnels. Then... well, I would have to figure that out when I got there.
The sun hung in the sky like a bloated fruit, baking the land as it sank lower towards the horizon. My mind wandered, thinking about the Yhvram and the crystal hearts that Bholgalos said came from stars. The sun was a star; had Evessi’s heart come from it or a more distant astral interloper?
I glanced up at the brilliant orb for an instant, through my sunglasses and the tinted portion of the windshield, but it still left an afterimage. My gaze returned to the road as I slowly shook my head, unsure what exactly I had been trying to accomplish. The sun just felt... alien, today. “The closest thing this planet has to a god,” to use Bholgalos’ words. But of course, the Yhvram wasn’t the sun.
... So what was the sun? Just an orb of nuclear-powered plasma slowly fusing hydrogen into helium and eventually destined to explode? Or was it something more; something that delivered crystal hearts to the planet for unclear reasons that not even gods and demons understood?
I stole another glance at the sun, receiving only another fading afterimage for my paranoia. It just didn’t feel right today. But that could easily just be the anxiety talking.
My phone rang - actually rang and not just vibrated, as I had hooked it up to the rental car’s console so I could have the map and directions on the screen. Grandpa was calling again. I raised one hand off the wheel, as if to answer, but then put it back. I had made my choice already. He needed to stay out of this for his own safety. I let it go to voicemail.
Unexpectedly, the car immediately started playing the message back once he was done recording it.
“Su, I just talked to Alfonse - say hi, Alfonse.”
A quiet “er, hello” from the background.
“And he’s told me what happened on Saturday.”
Ah. I gripped the wheel tightly, my knuckles straining.
“You’ve told me that it’s too dangerous for me and that I need to stay out of it, but who’s going to take care of you, Su?”
I wish I knew.
“So, I just wanted to let you know that I - your little old grandpa - am going to go out to these dangerous train tunnels as soon as I possibly can, unless you call me back and give me a very good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Grandpa...” I muttered, squeezing the wheel even more tightly. “You can’t do that to me.”
“I could get hurt or even die!” he exclaimed, seemingly unfazed by these perils. “And I hate to give you this ultimatum, but it’s the only way I could think of to make you talk to me. So, give me a call back as soon as you can.” The sound of a car starting filtered through the connection. “Or I’ll go figure out what’s going on myself.”
[Pretty much every choice from here to the end is a branch point of some description, so further choices will generally not be labeled as such.]
- Call grandpa.
- Don’t call grandpa.
[If I call grandpa, what should I say? In general, topics will be weighted by votes. Contradictory topics will only take the higher-voted one.]
- Tell him to stay away.
- Agree to meet him there.
️ - Explain what’s happening; tell the truth.
- Tell him to bring backup.
- Agree to return to the city.
[Or specify alternate conversation points in #story_discussion]
(Winners: -> > ️ >> )
- Call grandpa.
- Don’t call grandpa.
[If I call grandpa, what should I say? In general, topics will be weighted by votes. Contradictory topics will only take the higher-voted one.]
- Tell him to stay away.
- Agree to meet him there.
️ - Explain what’s happening; tell the truth.
- Tell him to bring backup.
- Agree to return to the city.
[Or specify alternate conversation points in #story_discussion]
(Winners: -> > ️ >> )
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Scene 92
I forcibly relaxed my grip, flexing my fingers to get the soreness out. Well, he left me no choice. I couldn’t let him go out to the tunnels, especially right now; the cultists would actually kill him. Probably. Maybe? There was enough of a chance that I absolutely couldn’t risk it, to say nothing of all the other dangers out here. “Call grandpa,” I instructed the car.
Less than one ring passed. “Su! I knew that would get your attention.”
“... Hi, grandpa. That’s a dirty trick and you know it. Just like you knew it would work.”
“And I’m sorry, but you’ve been worrying me sick this last day or two! Refusing to talk to me or the police, actual criminals trying to break into our houses, on the run somewhere? You sound like you’re in a car; are you going-”
“Uh, nope. No car. Just...” I cast my gaze around the car and the desert outside, trying to come up with an excuse, but nothing came to mind. “Uh,” I stammered. “...”
“You’re going somewhere, right now! You aren’t going back there, are you?”
“No!”
“So where are you going, and why aren’t you taking transit like you always do?”
“... I, uh...” Come on; think of SOMETHING! Grandpa was absolutely destroying me in the conversation so far; I hadn’t even had time to say anything and he had already figured out where I was and where I was going. “Away... from the city for a bit. To get away from the cult.”
“Right.” He did not sound convinced. “Listen, I know you have your symbol and your Devil, but this is too much. The police are willing to help; there’s actual evidence of wrongdoing now! Please, just don’t get yourself killed trying to do anything on your own. Let me help you; let the authorities help you. That’s why we’re here!”
I shook my head as if he could see me. “I can’t. It’s too dangerous for you - or anyone else, really. My ‘symbol’ and my ‘Devil’ are more than either of us thought, and I know so much more now than I did even yesterday. There’s no one else who can do this and there’s no time to do anything else. It’ll all be over tonight, and then I can tell you everything. Okay?”
Grandpa stayed quiet for a moment, then spoke with a steely-hard edge to his voice that I had never heard him use before. “Honestly, Su? No, it isn’t. I think you’ve been under immense stress in the last few days and are putting yourself in needless danger because of it. You are going to explain exactly what is going on right now, or I’m going to come get you. We’re in the car right now; you can hear it, right?”
I could. Just like he could hear mine. Again, I had no choice. I clenched my teeth for a few moments before giving in and almost spitting out the word “fine.”
I told him.
He already knew a lot of it, which helped keep the time down. At this point, I was already bouncing over the desert sands towards the tunnels, so I had to be quick. I talked about Intaqui, Bholgalos, the Key, the cult, and the true dreamlands. It was almost a relief to finally explain everything that had been rattling around in my head for the last few days, but that relief was tempered by his occasional comments, still with that edge in his voice. And his car wasn’t stopping.
“So,” I finally said, snatching up my water bottle after talking for so long. “You know what’s going on. Now, can you please stay in the city where it’s safe, just for one more night? You know that I’m the only one with the abilities to do anything about this, right? You would only get yourself hurt, or worse!”
A longer pause, where even the ambient noise of his engine cut off. I narrowed my eyes, suspicious that I had been put on mute. “Grandpa?”
The engine noise resumed with an audible crackle. “Sure. I understand, Su. I’ll stay.”
I drummed my fingers on the wheel, considering. “I don’t believe you. Please, I’m begging you, actually stay in the city.”
“I already said yes, Su; what more do you want? Now, I’m sorry, but I have to go or I’ll miss my turn.”
“What? That doesn’t even make any-” He hung up. I glanced at the console screen to confirm the disconnect, disbelieving. It had returned to the map screen and was queuing up the music again; the call had well and truly ended.
“Oh, I have a very bad feeling about that,” I murmured to the car.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much time for me to dwell on it, as I had arrived at the tunnel and needed to hurry to get down to the temple in time. Sunset was close now - it was almost 7:30 - and the mountains cast long shadows that ensconced me in twilight as I left the car and walked cautiously towards the entrance. My shoes crunched on rough gravel underfoot, the sound echoing off the rock in a quirk of acoustics that made it sound like there were many more of me.
I stopped and looked around, gripping my bag’s strap anxiously. No one else. I was actually alone. Deep breath, headlamp on. I still knew the way. Time to finish this.
“...”
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest and neck as I jumped at every shadow cast by my light on the uneven tunnel walls. Sometimes the bent, rusted railway tracks peeked out of their coating of dust just enough to reveal a glimmer in the distance; glimmers that looked uncomfortably mobile. Still, it was only tricks of the light. Just my imagination. So far.
Then I started hearing things. Echoes, mostly, but ones that didn’t quite match the sounds of my footsteps. Ones that barely continued a half-instant after I stopped moving. Quiet, raspy breathing on a different tempo than my shallow, nervous breaths. Faint enough that I could be imagining it. Maybe.
I’m not sure what it was that saved my life. A faint, subconscious memory of Alfonse telling me about the shadow creature he saw in the tunnels? An instant, instinctual reaction to frigid air on the back of my neck? A tiny sound from behind; a pebble knocked off its millennia-long perch?
Whatever it was, I moved. I threw myself forward with a strangled yelp as something heavy and sharp hissed over my head with zero room to spare. Strands of cut hair sprinkled the ground as I fell onto it, and a few droplets of blood dotted the stone. I couldn’t even feel the cut.
As I spun around, rolling inelegantly to see what had just attacked me, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a formless, vaguely triangular figure in the beam of my light. It screeched and fluttered away in a whirl of its shadowy cloak, disappearing behind a bend in the tunnel before I had even turned all the way around.
I held stock-still for a few moments, shaking as my heart thumped so loud I swore it had relocated to inside my head. Something metallic clattered to the ground further down the tunnel, in the direction I had been going. I whipped around again just in time to see an evil-looking, wickedly sharp scythe come to rest maybe twenty feet away. A few dots of blood provided a horrible accent to the near-whiteness of the blade itself. My blood.
Holy HELL. I tried to stand up, supporting myself on the wall as my legs trembled with shock. I almost died. And there’s no golden light here.
- Run to the trapdoor; get there before that thing comes back.
- Move slowly and keep a constant lookout with the light.
️ - Take the scythe.
- Leave it.
(Winners: , ️ )
- Run to the trapdoor; get there before that thing comes back.
- Move slowly and keep a constant lookout with the light.
️ - Take the scythe.
- Leave it.
(Winners: , ️ )
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Scene 93
But there wasn’t time to recover; I had to get out of here before that thing came back. I took a few wobbling steps before my balance stabilized and I was able to run. Scooping up the scythe on the way past, I quickly checked over the blade while bolting down the tunnel. It wasn’t a tall, two-handed, grim reaper-style weapon; rather it was one-handed with a short wooden handle and a curved blade a little longer than my forearm. I was easily able to wield it with an almost instinctual familiarity that I couldn’t quite explain. The suit pulled tighter on my right arm as I moved, constricting and condensing into an almost bracer-like sleeve.
I could feel sticky wetness in my hair, but there was no time to stop and bandage it up. Not until I was somewhere that was safe from the... thing that had just attacked me. Besides, it couldn’t be that bad of an injury; it didn’t even hurt.
“Good evening, Suyeon,” someone said right beside my ear.
I shrieked in alarm and swung with the scythe, carving a hissing path through empty air. Frantically scanned the immediate area with my headlamp, cursing internally as I heard echoes of my yell disperse into the distance. “Who’s there?” I whispered, straining to catch any indication of movement.
“You certainly have made a mess of things,” the voice continued. “I was gone for only two days and you’ve already lost the Key to them.”
“... Intaqui?”
There was a pause before he spoke again, dangerously quiet. “Who told you that name?”
“Bholgalos - I went to the true dreamworlds, and he’s in the Key, and he showed me a bunch of memories with you and Evessi and the Yhvram, and you were friends with him and-” I paused, sorting out my thoughts. “I really need your help.”
Another delay where my shoes crunching on gravel and dust was the only sound in the tunnel. “So you two were the ones who riled up the Yhvram, then. It has been unusually active today, which has made it quite difficult to keep things stable here. In fact...” His voice faded somewhat, as if he were distracted. “It’s possible that something has awakened ahead of schedule. But that can wait; your struggle with the Key is likely more pressing.”
“You said ‘here’; are you with me? Can you help me get the Key back like you did last time? You’re too strong for the cultists to stop.” A little sparkle of hope; maybe this would be possible after all.
“I am currently elsewhere, and need to remain there until the Yhvram has calmed down. Too much is at stake if this location activates early - well, earlier than it already will. But I can still offer some aid.” Another pause and a slight fade-out. Something clanged in the background, then there was a whoosh and a crackle of flames. “But first, tell me. Have you made a choice on how to use the Key? And do you have the sequence required to do so?”
“I have the sequence.” At least, if I wrote it down right. “And I think...” I hesitated, feeling the need to justify myself to Intaqui. “Bholgalos made a mistake, but he didn’t intend for the heart to explode. He didn’t mean to kill all those people; he just wanted to learn more about the hearts.” Remembering Intaqui’s spin on the situation, I added, “And maybe he had... a thing for Evessi too. But none of that makes him evil; none of that means he deserves to die.”
“So you intend to release him?” His tone was completely neutral, with no hints of his reaction to what I had just said.
“... Yeah. Yes, I think so.”
“Very well. Now, we shall proceed.” A hint of warmth, like embers stirring in a firepit, crept back into his voice after the careful neutrality of the last few sentences. “Suyeon, are you ready to break the rules?”
I didn’t know what he meant, but given his insistence on following the rules from Bholgalos’ memories, this felt like an important tipping point had been reached. “Yes,” I replied simply. “I am.”
“Good.” A single second passed. My metzmatan flickered, then began to shine with a dim but steady white glow. I opened my fist in surprise. “The surface dreamworlds and the physical realm aren’t very different, overall. There’s no reason a metzmatan can’t work in your reality, except that there is usually no available conduit for its power. I have etched one for you.”
I focused for a moment, allowing the symbol to pulse briefly with golden light. Blood stopped flowing from my scalp as the cut sealed up. “No way. I - thank you.”
“The pleasure is all mine. Keep in mind some limitations, however. Your physical body must provide the energy for any powers you utilize, much as your dream body does normally. Additionally, the physical realm is less mutable than any dreamworlds, so your manipulative abilities will be significantly less effective. But anything that only affects you directly will work near-identically to what you are used to in dreams. And, of course, I will have to erase the conduit as soon as feasible. The Yhvram hates us doing things like this.”
“The Yhv - are you putting yourself in danger to help me?”
“Farewell, Suyeon. I will check in periodically; good luck.”
I let a smile tug at the corners of my mouth. Intaqui cared enough to go against his god’s wishes in order to help me out. And I now had full access to my suite of dream-based superpowers, in reality. The odds had just been significantly improved.
I finally slowed my pace as I noticed a flicker of light ahead, clicking off my headlamp to leave myself concealed in darkness. Then I crept forward along the side of the tunnel, simultaneously grateful that the light from my hand let me see where I was going and annoyed that it would give me away. Even closing my hand into a fist didn’t conceal the glow entirely, and of course I had forgotten to bring gloves. Why would I have needed them; my hand normally didn’t glow in the real world and all the cultists knew I had a metzmatan anyway! Regardless, I made it to the corner without incident and peeked forward to scan the area around the trapdoor.
Two tunnels merged and then split to create a small area between them, where the wall had been knocked away. I crouched in one of the four entrances; the other two I could see from here were both just empty darkness. Several lanterns had been arranged around the trapdoor, and a man stood alertly just behind it. He was scanning my tunnel intently, presumably having heard or seen something, but didn’t seem to have noticed me yet in the blackness. Interestingly, he stood in a chalk circle drawn onto the rock floor, which had been swept clean presumably for that purpose. He wore some sort of armored vest and carried a two-handed firearm that reminded me of weapons that actual military soldiers used.
“Might have something here,” he muttered into a radio on his vest. “Thought I heard footsteps from tunnel 4.”
There was a pause as he waited for a reply and I crept quietly back into the darkness.
“Alright, understood,” he said. “I’ll keep you updated.”
- Attack the man directly using the red light and the scythe.
- Try to bypass the man using the teal light.
- Distract the man with the blue light; get him to investigate a different tunnel.
⬛ - Extinguish the lanterns with the blue light, then... [One of the above choices with the second-highest votes.]
(Winner: )
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Scene 94
Okay, think. I had my metzmatan, which included powerful combat abilities with the red light. But... he had a gun. And assuming it was just a regular old firearm and not some enchanted pistol like the bald man had, my suit wouldn’t be any more effective than regular clothes. I didn’t want to risk it. Plus, someone would probably notice if he stopped checking in.
The Devil had said my manipulative abilities - presumably that meant my blue light - would be weaker here. But how much weaker? I backed further down the tunnel, clicking on my headlamp and shining it away from the man as some protection against whatever shadow creature might be lurking there, and prepared to test my plan.
Focus; blue light on. I caused a pebble to levitate without too much issue, then sent it shooting through the air at a decent speed with a little more effort. I could crack portions of the tunnel wall with a lot of focus, but even that paled in comparison to how much energy it took to raise a new pillar of stone out of the ground. I had to stop almost immediately; the end result was more of a little bump than an actual protrusion. Clearly I couldn’t just add material as much as I wanted, and it was far easier to just move around things that already existed in the world than to change their state. I could work with that.
Headlamp off; back to the intersection. I put my left hand behind my back to reduce the glow, then glanced towards the left-hand tunnel from my perspective. The one farthest away from me. I started small, just shifting a few pebbles on the coarse stone floor; enough to make a small noise. The man glanced in that direction, but didn’t move or call it in.
I ramped it up a little, causing a few slightly larger rocks to thud against the floor and even clink against the rails occasionally. Then, in a move I hadn’t practiced before, I sort of threw my voice like a ventriloquist, causing a soft gasp to arise from the opposite tunnel. Like maybe I had been caught off guard by the noise.
“Voices in tunnel 1,” the guard said into his radio. “Definitely have something; possibly multiple contacts.”
I interrupted the response with a few scuffs on the floor, as if maybe there were multiple people moving around. He paused, then nodded. “Affirmative.”
He still didn’t seem to want to move, so I tried something a little more dangerous. I gathered together a collection of loose stones into an approximation of a human head - working in the dark and maybe forty feet away - then tapped it against the tunnel wall and moved it ever so slightly into what I hoped was the guard’s line of sight.
“HEY!” he shouted. I whipped the ball back into the tunnel, letting it scatter into its component stones again in a clatter that could maybe sound like someone running away if you weren’t paying too much attention. At the same time, straining with the effort of moving the stones individually like this, I hurled another one towards the guard. It missed by a mile, striking the opposite wall like a very slow, very quiet bullet.
“Contact! One hostile; engaging!” the man shouted into his radio, then leapt out of the circle and ran to the tunnel.
I broke from cover, stirring a few stones down his tunnel to keep him moving away, and grabbed clumsily at the trapdoor. No good; too heavy. I refocused my efforts, letting the stones fall away as I grabbed onto the iron ring with my blue light. Stood awkwardly in the middle of the room for several seconds as I pulled, then finally got it up enough to slip in. I descended a few rungs, then carefully lowered the trapdoor again, jumping a little as gunfire cracked thunderously from the man’s tunnel.
My pulse thumped loudly in my ears as I quietly moved down the ladder. Above, I caught some muffled words from the guard: “Yeah, just another one of those wraiths. Threw a rock at me or something. I scared it off. All clear now.”
Lucky break, I thought, calming down. I wonder if that “wraith” had followed me and was trying to circle around? Or if there are just more of them?
The metal gate was locked, but I changed that by simply severing the deadbolt into two clean halves with my blue light. I was beginning to feel fatigue creeping into my limbs from using my powers, but I could still hold on for a good while longer. As long as I didn’t do anything too exciting.
Voices echoed ahead as I crept down the tunnel towards the main room. I stopped, lights off, and listened.
“I think you’re nuts,” one of the voices said. Younger, scratchy; annoying. “One kid can’t do that much damage. C’mon, you just fell down the stairs; you can admit it.”
“She’s not a kid, Ev. She’s 28 and super dangerous. If you had been there, you would have died.” I knew that voice; that was the guy I had beaten half to death after he and Leah had stolen the Key back. Somehow, I still didn’t know his name.
Scratchy replied in a singsong voice, “Ralphie got beat up by a giirrlll!” Someone else joined in; deeper, probably older.
“Shut up!” I heard smacks and the taunting abruptly ceased. “I hope she does show up, so she can beat the hell out of you two. And then so I can fucking kill her.”
There was a chorus of “ooooooh”s, then a few more smacks, then grumbling silence. Finally, deep voice guy spoke up. “Well, if she’s going to show up, I hope it’s soon. I hate guard duty. They’re probably doing something really important down there.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t you like to know?” Ralph(ie?) taunted, back in control. “I happen to know what’s happening down in the temple.”
“You do not.”
“Yes I do!”
Okay, so my path was blocked by three middle schoolers. Or at least, three young men who had the maturity of middle schoolers. The guy I had nearly killed clearly was going to do his very best to return the favor, so I needed to be careful. They probably had guns too, since metzmatans usually wouldn’t work in reality. How was I going to pull this one off?
- Use the red light. In close quarters, I should have a better chance against the guns, though three on one still isn’t great odds unless I really catch them off-guard.
- Use the teal light. I can probably just zip right past them before they have time to do anything, though they’ll likely raise the alarm.
⬛ - I could probably use the blue light to kill the generator (and the lights), then... [One of the above choices with the next-highest votes.]
[Or suggest alternate plans!]
If I end up in combat, I should...
- Do whatever it takes to keep myself alive.
- Strive to fight nonlethally, as best I can.
(Winners: / ⬛ , )
- Use the red light. In close quarters, I should have a better chance against the guns, though three on one still isn’t great odds unless I really catch them off-guard.
- Use the teal light. I can probably just zip right past them before they have time to do anything, though they’ll likely raise the alarm.
⬛ - I could probably use the blue light to kill the generator (and the lights), then... [One of the above choices with the next-highest votes.]
[Or suggest alternate plans!]
If I end up in combat, I should...
- Do whatever it takes to keep myself alive.
- Strive to fight nonlethally, as best I can.
(Winners: / ⬛ , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 95
The answer came to me along with a rumbling hum and the vague scent of diesel. There was a generator in the main room, I remembered, and it powered the lights for this hideout. If I could damage it with the blue light somehow, I might be able to rush by undetected in the dark before they could get any portable light sources going. Certainly a better plan than just charging in.
But I’d need to be able to see the generator before I could do anything with it; there’s no way I could affect it from a distance with no line of sight. So I had to sneak just a little closer first.
The three guys continued chattering as I moved closer, their conversation basically just background noise. I knew the next corner was the one that would let me see straight into the hideout, including the generator at the back. Unfortunately, the sofa where they would probably be sitting was also in direct view of the corner. If they were actually watching the passage, they might see me. But it certainly didn’t sound like they were paying attention properly. I’d risk it. Only a few seconds, anyway, even if they did notice.
I slowly peeked around the corner, staying low and hoping they were very engrossed in their conversation. So far, so good; scratchy and deep voice were busy elbowing Ralph, who was distracted berating them. I spied the generator clattering away to itself in the corner, ignited my hand with blue light, and did the first thing I could think of: I started to sever all four thick cables leading out its back.
The lights flickered as I cut, the electric load rebalancing itself and causing the generator to change pitch. Unfortunately, I had chosen the wrong side to start from and the room lights remained on for a few more seconds as all three guys turned in confusion, their eyes sweeping across my head and hand peeking out of the tunnel.
“It’s her!” someone started to yell, before I cut through the rest of the cables and the room plunged into darkness. I ducked back around the corner, panicking, and swapped my blue light for teal. Or at least, I tried. Memories of my first few outings with the metzmatan resurfaced as I closed and opened my hand, trying to focus through my fear enough to get the thing to work. I had gotten better at that over time, but apparently not better enough; it took me nearly five more seconds to finally get a steady teal glow.
In the meantime, guns had come out and flashlights had turned on. They were still disoriented and partially blind in the darkness, so I decided I had to make my move anyway. The situation wouldn’t improve if I just kept crouching in the entrance tunnel. Still, it wasn’t easy to force myself to break from cover and sprint straight towards three men intent on shooting me.
Fortunately, scratchy and deep voice were less practiced than Ralph, and they hadn’t yet readied their weapons. Less fortunately, Ralph had. He fired twice before I closed the distance and drove the scythe into his wrist, eliciting a piercing scream as the blade hit bone and he dropped his weapon. The two gunshots echoed deafeningly loud in the confined space; I almost staggered. But then I was off again, ripping the scythe free before dashing down the tunnel towards the stairs and the temple itself.
The other two managed to get their acts together in time to spray a volley of bullets down the corridor. I ducked, stumbling between the instinctive urge to take cover and the more rational idea to just get the hell out of there as fast as possible. Chips of decorative rock burst from the wall and it sounded like a thunderstorm going off in the tunnel. I gasped in immediate, fiery pain as one of the shots clipped my thigh and another my side, carving out slivers of flesh and splattering the stone with droplets of blood.
I made it out of the tunnel and nearly fell down the stairs, my injured leg refusing to hold my weight. Grimacing against the pain and the high-pitched ringing in my ears from all the gunfire, I swapped teal for golden and hobbled further down as I healed. The golden light soothed the pain and shock just as well as it sealed the wounds themselves, and within ten seconds, I could very easily ignore the fact that I had just been shot. Twice.
The scythe’s blade was colored dark crimson and a few scraps of flesh still held onto the side, where I had ripped it out of the man’s arm. I gagged, spying a tiny arm hair protruding from one of the scraps. It just... seemed so...
I don’t know. Something about that hair made it seem so real. Pieces of flesh that had, until recently, been part of a normal, real, regular arm. I really had just done that. In real life.
At least I hadn’t killed him.
Somewhat numb, I switched back to the teal light and ran on.
- Prioritize speed. They know I’m here now, so I just have to be faster than them.
- Prioritize stealth. The temple is a maze; I can lose myself in there so they won’t be able to find me.
- Prioritize directness. I’m on a clock and I don’t know how long I have. Just find the Key as soon as possible.
(Winner: )
- Prioritize speed. They know I’m here now, so I just have to be faster than them.
- Prioritize stealth. The temple is a maze; I can lose myself in there so they won’t be able to find me.
- Prioritize directness. I’m on a clock and I don’t know how long I have. Just find the Key as soon as possible.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 96
People were shouting from behind as I ran across the entrance bridge over the first cavern. By the time I made it into the main temple, skidding into the room with dozens of holes dotting the floor, people were shouting from in front of me as well. I dashed off in a random direction, taking turns through the mazelike corridors so quickly that even I didn’t know where I was going. Eventually, the voices grew faint and I slowed down, no longer using the teal light to enhance my speed.
I stayed quiet, taking several more nearly random turns until I found myself on an overlook above one of the more natural chambers. This one had formerly held a dock, though it wasn’t much more than a cliff with some rusted-out iron brackets now. A switchback path in the cliff led to a shallow indentation in the wall, below the dock’s former position. I walked down, no longer visible from the entrance, and sat quietly on the rubble-strewn floor to glance out at the mostly-drained water that still pooled dozens of feet below. It seemed like no one had been to this particular dock in years; probably decades.
I knew I had to get up soon and find my way to the Key - somehow - but for a few moments I just sat there and recovered from the shock of the last several minutes. Even though I had been doing similar things in dreams for weeks now, something was still different about running for my life in reality.
“This place was grand, once,” a voice spoke from just beside my ear. Despite myself, I jumped again.
“Intaqui!” I hissed.
“Of course, you likely saw it in its prime while searching for the correct sequence. Were you aware that this whole location was dedicated to Bholgalos, but that he never actually gave it his blessing or appeared here to the worshippers?”
“... No?”
“It’s a funny thing, being venerated. Oftentimes you aren’t even aware of it, and people you have never met decide you are a deity, or a demon, or otherwise worthy of prayer and sacrifice.”
I fidgeted on the stone floor, not really sure what to say. Thankfully, Intaqui continued on his own. “How was he? Bholgalos, of course.”
“He... seemed fine, actually. He seemed curious about what had happened since he was imprisoned, and maybe a little disappointed, but not furious or distraught or anything.”
“Mm. And you seem to know of the heart and his infatuation with the witch, so I presume he told you of the events leading to our... unfortunate confrontation?”
“He showed me, actually. The true dreamlands let you relive memories, so he just played them back with us watching.”
“Of course. Tell me, what was your assessment of his relationship with the witch Evessi?”
I bought some time by standing up and moving back up the slope towards the main temple, considering. “They were both researching the crystal hearts. They helped each other with that, and they used the heart to heal people. At least, Evessi did.”
“That is an assessment of what they did. What was their relationship?”
“... I can’t make that judgement. I only saw a few minutes of them together.”
The Devil stayed quiet for a while. Long enough I almost spoke again to ask if he had left. Then, I had a different idea. “She looked a bit like me,” I said quietly. “Does that have anything to do with why you chose me?” Another pause as I continued through the halls of the temple. “He also said his priests often faced ‘trials’ like near-death experiences in water. I almost drowned in a lake about a year ago; did you know that? I’m sure you did.”
“I was aware.”
“You chose me because I happened to be strongly connected to Bholgalos. Almost drowned, like his priests. Look like Evessi, at least a little. And I’ve always been a lucid dreamer. The only thing I’m not sure about is what you wanted me to do about him. I know you said you wanted me to pick on my own, but surely you care. This is the life of your friend, right?”
More time passed. I didn’t press him, though I started hearing people again and had to slow down. “Bholgalos committed a cardinal sin. I could not - at the time - forgive that. Even now, millennia later, I hold my own bias about the ordeal. Just as it would not be fair for a Crimson Moon priest to use the Key - for they hate and fear him - it would not be fair for my judgement to determine his fate.”
“I’m trying to be as fair as I can, and I think my choice is the right one.” I blinked, noticing where I was, and lowered my voice. “But... to be honest, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get the Key back at all.”
I had emerged from a narrow corridor onto a balcony overlooking a massive chamber, the size of a large gym. Ornate carvings adorned the sandstone walls and ceiling, while a series of varying-size permanent glyph circles dotted the floor. Many were connected with lines or chains of glyphs, and the largest of them all surrounded a deep well full of dark, gently lapping water. The room was full of cultists; there must have been at least fifty people there.
I caught sight of the bald man walking purposefully towards the central well, holding a heavy object covered in a white cloth. Leah accompanied him, as did a few other cultists I didn’t recognize. Many of them had weapons drawn and were scanning the room. Looking for me, presumably.
There were three other balconies in the room; one directly across from me and the other two to my right. The two to my right both contained cultists with rifles, who seemed to be setting up some sort of stands or scopes. I heard footsteps on stone in the corridor behind me even over the general murmur of conversation below; presumably two more cultists were about to join on the last two balconies. I needed to do something, fast.
[Pick one from each set, or write-in a different idea.]
- Ambush the cultist entering my balcony, then...
⏫ - Fly up to the ceiling, then...
⤵️ - Jump down into the room, then...
- Circle around to the main entrance, then...
- Disguise myself as a cultist and blend in.
- Steal the heavy object - presumably the Key - from the bald man.
️ - Cause chaos with my powers; make it as difficult as possible for them to know where I am or what to do.
- Stay out of sight and wait for an opportunity.
(Winners: , )
- Ambush the cultist entering my balcony, then...
⏫ - Fly up to the ceiling, then...
⤵️ - Jump down into the room, then...
- Circle around to the main entrance, then...
- Disguise myself as a cultist and blend in.
- Steal the heavy object - presumably the Key - from the bald man.
️ - Cause chaos with my powers; make it as difficult as possible for them to know where I am or what to do.
- Stay out of sight and wait for an opportunity.
(Winners: , )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 97
Glancing around quickly to work out where I was relative to the room’s main entrance, I turned the teal light back on, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried something that I had never done before. With a burst of illumination, I was very suddenly somewhere else. Just like the bald man had done in my dreams earlier, the first time we had met.
I dropped several feet and fell into a crouch, one hand down to steady myself against the swirling dizziness of having teleported several hundred feet in an instant. Thankfully, I hadn’t miscalculated and ended up in a wall; I was in some dark, nondescript storage room hopefully in the direction I had intended. The sound of conversation flowed from the doorway, so I wasn’t too far off in any case. Just had to get my breath back and I could sneak over to the main entrance to wait for an opportunity.
Intaqui seemed to have left again; presumably he was still busy with whatever he was doing at the moment. After a half-minute of recovery, I carefully stood and snuck into the corridor, creeping along the side until I found the intersection I wanted. Then there was nothing more to do but press against the wall, watching and listening and waiting for the right moment to intervene. I had to believe I’d know what to do when the moment arrived.
Two cultists stood guard at the entrance arch, both armed and armored similarly to the man by the trapdoor above. The doorway itself was a tall stone arch about fifteen feet from floor to ceiling, through which I could see much of the room beyond. Not as much as I could from above, but at least down here I didn’t have to fight anyone. At least, not until I wanted to go in.
The bald man had reached the deep central well and discarded the cloth covering the Key, revealing that the squat stone cylinder was already in its extended form with the four-pronged claw. As I watched, he turned the rings carefully and the assembly began to glow and spin, much as it had in the memory. The claw opened. He gestured behind him and Leah stepped forward, holding an intricate knife.
The bald man spoke to the assembled cultists, but I couldn’t make out the actual words from this distance. At least, unless I...
This is such a bad idea.
I took several steps back to make the flash less obvious, then held my breath and teleported forward, into the room itself. I appeared several feet out from the corner and quickly fell into cover behind one of the pillars holding up the balconies. I couldn’t see any of the cultists standing guard above from here, so I assumed - hoped - that they couldn’t see me either. The guards at the doorway were facing the wrong way to notice me, and everyone else was on the other side of the pillar. There were no shouts of alarm and no bursts of gunfire, so I huddled down even lower and decided to believe I had gotten away with it. From here, I could listen to the bald man as well as cautiously peek between the pillar and the wall to watch what was going on.
“-if you please.” He had just finished his grand speech as I started catching the words again.
Leah approached the deep well, knife grasped tightly in her right hand and metzmatan visible on her left. She knelt, dipped her left hand in the water, then pressed the point of the knife against the center of her symbol. The blade trembled. Slightly.
“Stars above; stars below. Baptize with heavenly glow,” the bald man called in a clear, almost singsong voice. Other cultists, standing around the well in a circle with hands outstretched and touching, repeated the line.
“Distill thy power; stay thy hand.” Another repetition from the whole circle. I could swear little dots of light were appearing on the surface of the water, like reflections of the night sky.
“Anoint us with the strength to command!” The last line rose to a shout near the end and the circle collectively raised its arms. Leah, kneeling on the shore and partially blocked from view by many pairs of legs, pressed the knife into her palm and released a few beads of blood.
The bald man nudged her with his boot, his arms still upraised. She glanced up at him; I couldn’t see her expression.
Then she drove the knife through her hand, up to the hilt.
I winced at the impact and the gasped whimpers of pain as she submerged both hands in the pool, knife still skewered through her metzmatan. The circle collectively moved, walking slowly clockwise as the waters swirled in the same direction. There were definitely lights in the water now, and they were clumping together. Coalescing along with the blood into a stream of illuminant slivery-white liquid spiraling through the pool.
The bald man stepped out of the circle - the rest of the participants closed the gap within two steps with the ease of long practice - and knelt to pick up a small object from the cloth bundle just beside the Key. My eyes opened wide as I caught sight of it when he turned: a clear, glossy crystal carved delicately into the shape of a stylized heart. Just like Evessi’s, but noticeably smaller and not glowing.
The bald man passed through the circle - again, they split apart and rejoined within only a few steps as he did so - and knelt next to Leah. He dipped the heart into the water and touched it to the stream of silver-white liquid, which it quickly absorbed. In moments, the pool’s water was clear and normal again, the circle slowed to a stop, and the crystal heart was filled with a soft white glow. The bald man patted Leah on the shoulder and motioned for several cultists to take her away from the pool to a man waiting with medical supplies nearby. Then he placed the heart into the claw atop the Key, which closed as it locked into position.
I shook myself out of inaction; I had been just watching for too long. There wasn’t much time left. I knew from my own set of instructions that the next step would be the bald man speaking a special sentence that would trigger the Key to start humming. Then, he and the others would need to sing along with it for a few minutes before it finally activated.
The bald man spoke the sentence while I was thinking and the Key began to hum. Hell. How long would it take? One minute? Two? Surely not much longer. I needed to do something, now.
[Multiple options are potentially deadly to Su. This is a branch point.]
[For any choice, you can specify more details in #story_discussion.]
- Attack the bald man.
- Attack / steal the Key.
- Attack / steal the crystal heart.
- Stay put. Wait until the last moment; maybe something will change.
[Or do something else! Write in suggestions in #story_discussion.]
(Winner: )
- Attack the bald man.
- Attack / steal the Key.
- Attack / steal the crystal heart.
- Stay put. Wait until the last moment; maybe something will change.
[Or do something else! Write in suggestions in #story_discussion.]
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 98
But still I continued to hesitate, trying to come up with any plan that made sense. The guards at the doorway were moving now, fidgeting with their weapons and speaking into their radios. One of them turned to walk quickly towards the bald man and the rest of the cultists. I held my breath, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t see me.
No such luck.
“IT’S HER!” he shouted, turning.
I spun, frantically unable to ignite the teal light to teleport away; my thoughts were too scrambled. Gunshots sounded, but not from the room; they echoed from deeper into the temple complex. The guard away from the door was bringing his rifle up, aiming in my direction, while the other ran towards the bald man and the rest of the cultists. “Breakout! breakout!” he yelled, waving his arms wildly.
I turned again, trying to focus my mind around a singular goal. The metzmatan flickered, then flared. Bullets tore the air around me as I vanished and reappeared right next to the Key, only feet away from the bald man himself.
He turned immediately, breaking out of the song and glaring with a thunderous expression. “So it is true.”
“Kill him, Su.”
More gunfire from the temple. More cultists began to stop singing, confused, as the guard ran closer. I grabbed the Key, wrapping my arms around it, and willed both of us to teleport away. My plan, such as it was, was very simple. Teleport in, grab the Key, teleport out. They couldn’t complete the ritual without it.
Teal light flared, but I didn’t move. The bald man grinned. “Keep singing! Complete the ritual! Release the acocitls!” he shouted, then lowered his voice to a more normal speaking tone as I gathered my energy to try again. Still nothing; I couldn’t teleport out. “And you. I heard you might have somehow gotten your metzmatan to work here. So I made sure to activate the wards on the floor.”
I glanced down, noticing that I - along with most of the other cultists - was standing inside a giant glyphic circle enclosing the deep well and several dozen feet out from it. “This circle was originally designed to contain demons and the heart we built has enough power to activate both the Key and the ward with energy to spare. You can’t escape; you don’t have a chance.”
“KILL HIM!”
I didn’t have the strength to resist any longer. I poured all my panic, anger, frustration, and hopelessness into my hand, blazing with bloody red light. Power flared around me: the power to hurt, to maim, to kill.
And then it was siphoned away, draining into the floor along lines of power carved by the temple’s original occupants hundreds or thousands of years ago.
More gunfire from the temple, then the muted thump of an explosion. The room shook and dust rained from the ceiling; I saw several more guards rushing to the doorway, the one who had originally spotted me among them. The bald man drew his gun, shaking his head with mock mournfulness. “Just don’t get it, do you? It’s over. You’ve been outmaneuvered. I know your demon isn’t here to protect you this time. You. Are. Done. Any last words?”
Too much panic; too hard to think. Cultists all around; I couldn’t escape. I didn’t have time to do anything. To say anything. I just did the one thing that made sense in that instant. I still had the scythe in my right hand. I slashed forwards.
The scythe impacted the crystal heart with enough force to snap the Key’s claw, sending the glowing crystal tumbling towards the floor.
The gun fired.
The crystal heart fell in slow motion, and so did I. The bullet had taken me in the chest, only slightly below my heart. There was a burst of light as the maroon suit negated whatever enchantment the gunshot held, but the bullet itself passed through; it had been fired from such close range that the suit’s defenses couldn’t stop it entirely.
The heart fell to the floor, bouncing heavily on the stones with a series of echoing cracks. Wisps of glowing smoke leaked from a small fracture. The bald man stood for a moment, stunned, as the Key flashed brightly and then faded, its rings tilting at awkward angles and smacking into each other.
I choked, trying to breathe but getting blood mixed with air instead. The pain was so great it was almost entirely numb; I could only feel a little stabbing spike of agony drilled through the front of my chest and resting near the center of my torso. Like a needle at the doctor’s office, but too long and red hot. I collapsed backwards, head spinning. Blood already soaked the front of my suit, pooling to drip onto the floor. Some part of me knew I could fix this if I could only use the golden light, but the focus just wasn’t there and everything felt so far away.
The bald man knelt and picked up the heart, still grasped in the claw. He looked down at me bleeding out on the floor, and snarled. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he said. Gunfire sounded from the doorway, just outside the room. Cultists were moving around me, a writhing herd without clear direction. Someone picked up the broken Key, though the reason why escaped me. I could feel every beat of my heart, overwhelmingly loud in my ears. Too fast. Or too slow?
“Anyone marked by that demon is too dangerous to live.”
I closed my eyes as he leveled the gun again. Floating. Drifting away.
...
[This scene has no choices.]
@Story Notifications
Scene 99
BANG.
Alfonse shrank down even further as the gunshot echoed crazily in the enclosed space. Several more followed quickly on the first shot’s heels, then dozens more. The earplugs helped somewhat, but his ears still rang. Dozens of state troopers shouted nearby, firing round after round at the monstrous creatures they had found in the depths of the temple. Other officers rushed back and forth from the nearly-drained aquifer nearby, passing buckets and other containers of water to the front line.
He and Su’s grandpa - somehow he still only knew the man as Mr Che - had managed to convince two city police officers to accompany them to the mountain tunnels after suggesting they had gotten a lead on Su’s location. Upon finding her rental car, the state police had been called in. Upon being attacked by the shadow monster Alfonse had run into previously, someone had contacted the FBI and as many SWAT teams as could be raised on short notice.
Now, they were fighting blobby monsters made of blue gel dotted with stars. Their bodies were caustic - even a brief touch to bare skin could induce severe burns in an instant - but Alfonse had recognized them. Acocitls. Mythical creatures from his Marnosan research with a purported weakness to water. Thankfully, a splash from his water bottle had proven incredibly effective - melting away a good chunk of one of the creatures - and the police had adapted immediately to incorporate the new strategy.
Mr Che approached, gesturing quickly to the right. Alfonse stood, jogging with the older man to a slightly quieter alcove. He hadn’t stopped shaking since he had entered the tunnels. The police had tried to get both of them to stay behind after they found the trapdoor with Alfonse’s directions, but the younger man had important information about the living myths lurking below and the older man simply would not be denied in his quest to find his granddaughter.
“They breached the main chamber!” Mr Che shouted over the battle. “There’s some sort of magic inside; you need to see if you know anything!”
Alfonse nodded and let himself be dragged along towards a trio of officers holding position near a tall archway. Two slumped bodies bled onto the floor; he swallowed hard as he tried to ignore them in favor of scanning the room through the arch.
It was chaos in there.
Cultists held position on balconies and behind pillars, taking potshots at officers near the doorway. Several glyphic circles dotted the chamber, including one much larger circle that surrounded a pool of water. There, a number of cultists were fleeing towards an exit on the far side while a bald man with a tattooed head held a glowing object in one hand and a gun in the other. He fired several times at a small figure on the floor, then ran for the exit with the rest of the cultists.
“I - I don’t - there’s nothing...” Alfonse desperately searched his memories as he cowered close to the wall away from the occasional bullets peppering the archway to his side. “Nothing in there is familiar. But - the person on the ground - is it...?”
Mr Che’s expression was grim. “We need to get in there!” he yelled to the officers at the doorway. “My granddaughter is dying; I know it!”
Another barrage of bullets forced the three officers back along with Alfonse and Mr Che. One of them shook his head, trying to explain that they couldn’t push through the open space like that; it just wasn’t safe. There wasn’t anything he could do, not without reinforcements.
Alfonse stared into the room as Mr Che argued with the trooper. He knew that the small, bleeding body belonged to Su, and he knew they had to reach her immediately if there was to be any hope of her survival.
If she wasn’t dead already.
[Multiple options are potentially deadly to multiple characters. This is a branch point.]
- Wait for reinforcements or for the situation to change.
⏫ - There has to be a way to get onto those balconies. Attack from above.
- Attempt to negotiate to at least get Su out or a medic in.
- Wear a cultist robe and pretend to be running from the police. In all the chaos, a disguise might work.
(Winner: )
- Wait for reinforcements or for the situation to change.
⏫ - There has to be a way to get onto those balconies. Attack from above.
- Attempt to negotiate to at least get Su out or a medic in.
- Wear a cultist robe and pretend to be running from the police. In all the chaos, a disguise might work.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Scene 100 (Final Scene)
He looked around quickly, trying to come up with any sort of plan to get to Su in time. The officers holding back the acocitls had almost dissolved the last of them; maybe they would be available to help in just a few minutes. But a few minutes would be too long; he needed something now!
“...” The two dead cultists by the doorway, their robes spattered with blood. If they could, maybe...
Alfonse called to Mr Che and the officer he was arguing with, explaining his idea. Have someone put on one of the cultist robes and run into the room, pretending to be pursued by the police. In the chaos, they likely wouldn’t have time to identify the person beyond the robes, and they could hopefully get to the well in the center of the room. Simple, but risky.
Mr Che immediately volunteered, but the officer immediately objected. “We can’t send civilians into a battlefield!” he shouted as the argument went back and forth and bullets cracked past in both directions. It took too long. Long enough that the last of the acocitls had been melted away and the remainder of the police force approached the doorway, shields out and ready to advance.
Then the gunfire slowed. Alfonse peeked into the room to see the last few cultists retreating, covered by the ones on the balconies before those too ran. The bulk of the cult must have gotten far enough away that it was time to make good their escape. Armored officers entered close behind to clear the rest of the room; within minutes, the area was secure and the sound of gunfire retreated to distant pops deep in other areas of the temple complex.
Finally, Alfonse and Mr Che were allowed into the room; to rush forward to the crumpled figure by the deep well, attended by a single officer with field dressings and limited medical training. Paramedics had arrived at the tunnel system above, but needed to be escorted through the maze; it would be at least another quarter hour.
The man stood, gloved hands stained crimson with blood. He slowly shook his head. “I’m sorry. She was gone before I arrived.”
...
I sat up with a start, frantically feeling my chest for bullet wounds. Nothing. I felt fine. No pain, no tiredness, no anxious nausea. Just a strange sensation of dissociation, like I wasn’t quite myself. That feeling amplified as I looked around.
I was still in the aquifer temple, next to the deep well where the bald man had attempted to use the Key. The room looked different; hazy and rippling and almost splintered from some angles. Like I was looking at its reflection in a foggy, imperfect mirror. Sounds filtered through as well, though they were muffled and indistinct. Just mumbles of noise, mostly. The air smelled clean and wet, like just after a rain, and I could feel cool mist on my skin. The cultists were gone, and I could see vague shadows advancing towards me through the fog. I tried to call out to them, but my voice faded into the mist so quickly that I could barely even hear myself speak. What had happened to this place? I must have healed unconsciously, but where was all this mist coming from? I decided to stand up in order to go find out.
And then I looked down.
I was ghostly-silver and translucent, a being seemingly formed of mist and fog. Curls of vapor twisted away from my limbs and joined the room’s general humidity, though there was still a barrier of sorts that separated the “me” mist from the “room” mist. But the vastly more upsetting sight was that of my original body. It wore the maroon suit, four deep-scarlet bullet holes in its chest. Eyes closed, soaked in blood, pale and frail and small.
And very dead.
A man ran up to me, his form becoming slightly more distinct as he got close. A police officer, by the outline, holding a large medical bag. I almost laughed at the absurdity of it as he quickly checked over my corpse for signs of life. Of course he found nothing. Stood, shook his head slowly at two other figures in the mist. I couldn’t see their features; they stood too far away to be more than vague silhouettes.
I turned my back on everyone and walked away, stepping on the water of the deep well as if it were solid ground. Stars sparkled beneath my incorporeal feet as I moved, still trying to process what had happened.
I was dead. Why had I decided to go dashing off into a cave full of people who wanted to kill me, just to save a demon I had literally just met? Why had I gone alone? Refused any offer of help? Hell, the police were here now, apparently, so all I would have had to do was wait half an hour or so!
... That would have been too late. I myself had only made it there with a few minutes to spare. But why did I care so much?! I didn’t even know Bholgalos! And I got myself KILLED trying to save him! He had thousands of years of life already; I had only twenty eight. I -
What would my parents think? I had just figured out the truth behind the incident the day before. What would grandpa think? He had probably been the one to bring the police here. Why? Why had I been so stupid to pretend like I could do this on my own?
Crying without being able to hear yourself is a strange experience. I could feel the sobs and the familiar pressure, but the only sound was the distant, muffled whisper of the fog itself. Even the tears didn’t stick; they puffed into more mist as they hit the pool and rejoined the room as a whole.
I fell to my knees, then rolled onto my side, curled up and trying not to think about all the things I wouldn’t be able to do after my untimely demise. The water was soft and yielded a little, allowing me to sink into the pool as if it were a waterbed. Images of all the people I left behind kept flashing through my mind. Grandpa. Dad; mom. Alfonse, Josie; hell, even Madeline, Kumar; other people I had only met briefly.
It all just felt so pointless. A quiet, normal life cut abruptly short in a matter of weeks by a demon and his magic symbol on my hand. I didn’t save Bholgalos, I didn’t disband the cult, and I didn’t even figure out anything important about my powers and the dreamworlds. Nothing I had done with the metzmatan had really ended up mattering, in the long run. I was nothing; just a footnote in some obscure historian’s text.
That thought got to me. I lay there in the starry pool, staring up at the misty ceiling above, miserable. I was more than a failure; I hadn’t done anything important. Even if I had learned about the metzmatan, the Yhvram, the crystal hearts, and all the other cosmic, world-changing secrets, I hadn’t told anyone. I had just died. Uselessly.
I rolled over again and stared down into the pool, the water’s surface feeling like the skin of a tautly-stretched balloon. Lights sparkled in the darkness below, glinting and fading like particularly short-lived stars in the night sky. I was done crying now; I just felt numb.
“Okay,” I whispered to the mist and the stars below. “I’m ready to go.”
But they didn’t take me.
Time passed as I lay in the pool. Shadows flitted here and there for a while, then the room grew darker. Someone removed my body and I watched it go with a painful sense of detachment. It felt like I should care, but I didn’t. Then all was dark and still, aside from the mist and the little sparkles of light that still flared in the depths of the pool.
I knew I should get up and leave - try to figure out what I could accomplish with my new existence as a ghost, since it didn’t seem like I’d be moving on any time soon - but I just didn’t have the strength to get out of the pool. The metzmatan was still visible on my misty, translucent hand, but it was fully dull and didn’t seem to do anything. So I just lay there thinking miserable, inconsequential thoughts for who knew how long.
Until, eventually, light returned to the room. A warm, flickering light akin to a campfire; a light that was as much emotional as physical. Because I knew who that light belonged to and that my time of moping in the pool was about to come to a forcible end.
“There you are,” said Intaqui, walking smoothly across the ground and the pool before extending a hand to my sad, pathetic, mist-built form. “Come, Suyeon. There’s someone who would like to speak with you.”
[This is the last choice in the story and will only affect the epilogue.]
- After a while, I will choose to pass on.
- After a while, I will choose to stay and help Intaqui as best I can.
- After a while, I will choose to stay and help Bholgalos as best I can.
(Winner: )
- After a while, I will choose to pass on.
- After a while, I will choose to stay and help Intaqui as best I can.
- After a while, I will choose to stay and help Bholgalos as best I can.
(Winner: )
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@Story Notifications
Epilogue
“Mr Che; Mr Johnston.” The man in the suit nodded to both Su’s grandpa and Alfonse, then gestured to the seats in front of the desk. They sat.
The man’s office was cluttered, with shelves holding innumerable loosely bound notebooks, curiosities, and artifacts from around the world. Many of the items seemed to relate to space or the supernatural; Alfonse caught sight of a small meteorite, images of complex crop circles taken from a plane, and a copy of a red leather book with golden text before he had to focus on the man.
“Special Agent Arthur Veil. It’s good to meet you.” The man paused again, glancing at both visitors before continuing. “Thank you for your cooperation thus far in our investigation. I know it must have been difficult.”
Vague nods. Still, neither of them spoke. The FBI had taken over shortly after they arrived at the aquifer temple on the day of Su’s death, a little over three weeks ago now. Agents had detained and questioned everyone present, including a number of captured cultists. The apparent leader, the bald man with tattoos on his head, had escaped along with at least a dozen followers. He had been briefly spotted crossing the US-Mexico border before his description could be circulated, but had thus far eluded authorities of either country.
The weeks since had been hard for everyone. Alfonse and Mr Che had been subject to repeated interrogations by federal agents from various bureaus, while Su’s parents had to deal with the multiple shocks of their daughter’s death combined with the revelation - only a day prior - of her false memories following the incident.
Alfonse had met them both at the funeral. The younger Mr Che - Sangjun, Su’s dad - was a tall, older man with creases around his eyes from a lifetime of smiling. Those creases didn’t get much use as he spoke to Alfonse, asking about the last few weeks and listening painfully as the tale was recounted. Dannika - Su’s mother and Sangjun’s ex-wife - had accompanied him, and they seemed unsure of the status of their relationship now.
It had been a painful, awkward experience, and Alfonse didn’t feel any sense of closure afterwards. Partially because the funeral hadn’t been the end of the interviews with agent after agent, each one asking him to repeat details he had already given in slightly different contexts, or elaborate on particular points that didn’t seem to matter. At times, he just wanted to scream at them until everyone would leave him alone to figure out how he felt about everything that had happened.
The man in the suit - Agent Veil, apparently - cleared his throat and spoke again. “Your interviews today were the last statements we needed from you. After you leave the building today, you may consider your part in this investigation over.” A pause, a breath. His cadence of speaking was discomfiting. “If you so desire, at least.”
He seemed to be waiting for a response. Eventually, Mr Che obliged. “If we desire?”
“Yes. There is another option.” Another sharp inhalation. “I have been appointed Acting Director of a new federal agency: the Anomalous Investigations Bureau. We’re a little like the FBI, but more focused on... well, events like these.” Pause; breath. Alfonse suddenly became aware of the ticking of a clock in the room. “And our first major case involves piecing together the true plans of the Crimson Moon cult and what they may do next. As individuals who have been deeply involved in this mess already, and are apparently well-versed in the history behind it, we could really use your help. Anything from a full time job - benefits, salary, the works - to part-time sleuthing or even just acting as a contact if you spot anything. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
Mr Che had that same hardness in his gaze as when he had volunteered to rush out into a gunfight to try and save Su. “If it means stopping those people who... took my granddaughter, I’ll do it.”
Agent Veil nodded, smiling slightly. “We’ll get them. I guarantee it. Mr Johnston?”
Memories of his time at the history club, explaining various Marnosan games and quirks of their culture to the retirees. Memories of the long, bumpy drives to and from the tunnels, twice with Su and twice without. Memories of hundreds of bullets thundering through the air; people shouting and screaming and dying.
“I’ll help you,” he found himself saying. “But you’ll have to explain it to my university.”
...
“I’m dead,” I mumbled facedown into the pool. “Leave me alone.”
Intaqui actually paused at that. He took a few moments before sitting down on the side of the well and letting his legs dip into the water. Little wisps of steam rose from the points of contact. “You are not dead,” he eventually responded.
I raised my head a little bit to look at him, then pointedly gestured at myself. He got the idea.
“Your physical body is dead, yes. But you are still here.”
I almost started crying again at the unfairness of it all. I died and now, instead of just disappearing so I didn’t have to think anymore, the Devil came back and started spouting riddles at me. “I’m not in the mood for your half-explanations,” I said, voice muffled from the water. “Just tell me what happened. Please?”
A sigh, but almost a good-natured one. “Very well. You are bound to me now. I captured your essence at the moment of your body’s death and prevented it - you - from dispersing. My power, now, rather than your own physical form, is what holds you on this side of the boundary.”
“So you’re to blame for me moping in this pool for the past... week? How long has it been?” My voice grew a little stronger, curious despite my still-overwhelming desire to just sink into oblivion forever.
“It has been just over nine days. I have unfortunately been busy elsewhere, or I would have come to collect you sooner. You may be pleased to know that the Yhvram has calmed again, and that Bholgalos survived.”
“What?!” I actually sat up at that, grasping at the sides of the pool to pull myself up. Tendrils of mist spilled from my limbs at the movement. “But, I didn’t - the Key... huh?”
Intaqui smiled. “You damaged the power source. By the time the Crimson Moon priests had repaired the Key, their constructed heart had drained of its lacre. And with this temple overrun by law enforcement, they did not have anywhere to repair and recharge it in time. Bholgalos escaped his prison roughly thirty hours ago under his own power. Now, stand up. He would like to speak with you.”
Numbly, I stood up. I didn’t feel weak or tired after lying down for what had apparently been more than a week straight. “Law enforcement... my grandpa brought the police here, right? Is he okay?”
“He is understandably distraught, but alive and uninjured. Your friend Alfonse survived as well.”
That made sense. I had heard him on the phone with grandpa; they had probably been together the whole time. Racing to stop me from being such an idiot. “Can I - I don’t know how this works - can I see them?”
“Patience, Suyeon. One step at a time. Come.”
I stepped onto solid ground again and took his hand. Flames rippled around us and we were somewhere else. Less mist; I squinted against the brilliant orange of sunset, then gasped at the roar of what was unmistakably a jet engine. A passenger aircraft climbed into the sky in front of me as I adapted to the light and noise and finally looked down to figure out where we were. Runways and terminal buildings were visible below; I was standing on the roof of the tower at the city’s international airport. Intaqui made a vague gesture and the air shimmered, dampening the noise enough that we could speak to the last occupant of the roof.
Bholgalos stood closer to the edge, his stocky frame burnished in rays of gold from the setting sun as he watched planes come and go. He wore a more modern outfit now; still dark navy blue, but now it more closely resembled a military officer’s coat rather than the battle armor of centuries past. The demon turned and spotted me, smiling warmly. “So much has changed,” he said. “I can’t get over how commonplace it is these days to fly. Even though I received basic information from the world while imprisoned, knowing of airplanes is not the same as seeing them for myself.”
“I’m glad you survived,” I said, stepping carefully on the roof. I didn’t want to test how resilient my mist-form was to falling 300 feet to the concrete below. “At least somebody did.”
His smile faded and he grew more serious. “I am very grateful for what you did for me, both in the true dreamlands and outside of them. I wish it could have turned out differently for you. So... thank you, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
I nodded, not really sure how to feel. Ever since I had watched my body be carted away, I had just felt mostly numb. “He said you wanted to speak with me?”
“How much has Intaqui told you about your current... state?”
I looked down at myself again, just a humanoid shape formed of tight curls of mist. I could see through my body to the rooftop below. “Not much. He said I’m ‘bound’ to him now, and that I’m not actually dead.”
The two demons glanced at each other, seeming to share a wealth of information in an instant. Bholgalos continued. “You’re in a unique position, Su. With your physical form slain, there should be nothing holding you together. You should have been dispersed back into... wherever it is that souls come from.”
Somehow, that admission surprised me. “You don’t know?”
He shrugged. “We’re not gods, Su.”
Intaqui cut in. “Even the Yhvram either did not know or did not share that information with us. Some things simply are.”
“Regardless,” Bholgalos continued, “Intaqui held you together with his own power. I had heard such things were possible, but I had never heard of anyone successfully doing it.”
The Devil almost smirked. “As far as I know, this is the first successful demonstration of the technique. I have tried in the past, but never got it right. Until now.”
“So I’m... the only person this has ever happened to? So even you two don’t know how this works?”
Two nods. Intaqui had the audacity to chuckle. “Not gods, Suyeon,” he reminded me. “In a sense, you are one of us now. No physical form, but still able to maintain your essence. With some assistance, at least.”
I stayed quiet.
“So,” Bholgalos continued, lightly clapping his hands together. “I wanted to ask if you had decided what you wish to do next. Neither of us are really sure what the abilities and limitations of your new form are, and I for one would be very interested in finding out. Who knows, maybe we could get you a new physical body one day! Intaqui and I can create our own when we visit the physical realm; perhaps you could too?”
“And,” Intaqui added, “I am certain you have deeper questions regarding the dreamlands; the hearts; the Yhvram; everything hidden behind the ordinary world you know. I - and Bholgalos as well, now that he has been returned to us - spend much of our time investigating, discovering, fighting, and generally protecting this planet and its people from the dangers that lurk just beneath the surface. We could use your help, if you are so inclined.” A brief grimace. “I had intended to make this offer while you still had your physical form, but events have conspired such that I make it now, regardless.”
I felt something. A little spark of light somewhere deep in my mist-wrought chest. Curiosity; the need to learn; to invent; to know. The same desire that drove me to aerospace in the first place. I was dead, yes, but now I walked in a world that most people could never even dream of. Still, I had to ask. “And if I decline? Will you just... stop? Let me fade away and die for real?”
“If that is what you wish.”
I took several breaths, feeling mist stirring in my chest as I did so. The air up here smelled warm and crisp, with a hint of jet exhaust. At least it wasn’t the temple’s mustiness. “I’ll stay,” I said. “I’ll help you. There’s still so much I don’t know.”
Both demons chuckled. “That feeling never goes away,” Intaqui promised. Bholgalos nodded in agreement.
A massive aircraft - a 747, I was pretty sure - lifted itself off the ground just in front of us, thundering towards the sky with engines roaring and sunlight glinting off its fuselage. We stopped for a moment, both demons and I, and simply watched the plane soar. It was a sight I had seen before - if not from this angle - but something about the moment made the airplane seem majestic; important.
The feeling passed as the plane continued its ascent, disappearing towards the horizon. I lowered my gaze, returning to the rooftop and the demons who would be my guides and colleagues for the foreseeable future. That little spark of curiosity - of feeling - kept burning in my chest. I knew, as long as I could keep that flame alive, I could keep going. I could do this. I would be okay.
I took another deep breath and held it. “So,” I said. “Where do we begin?”
/^\
Conclusion
Hey, thanks for playing! So, you actually managed to get another protagonist killed, huh? Counting Glorbulon (Jess and Nine), Making a Difference (Eva), End of Everything (everyone), “HENRY” (Ella), and now The Man in the Maroon Suit with Su, that’s a 50% fatality rate for someone in the main cast. Being a protagonist in one of my stories is a dangerous job, it seems.
Anyway, to talk timelines and canon, The Man in the Maroon Suit is part of the Kronwaë canon and takes place approximately a year and a half before The Factory. Interesting how the Crimson Moon people were capable of constructing a crystal heart, though presumably not a true one of similar power to those sent from the stars. And Intaqui mentioned lacre once, in passing, right near the end. Interesting; I wonder if that adds some context to any other stories involving lacre and crystal hearts...
So, what’s next?
You may remember how I was saying I was going to wind down the server after the next few prompts? Well, I changed my mind. I like writing these stories for me (as well as you), so I’m going to keep doing that for as long as I keep having fun. However, there will be a few changes.
First, I’m not going to keep using the age-out prompt method, as almost all stories chosen were the one closest to aging out of the docket. Instead, I’m just going to plop down four prompts that I think could be fun, revised anew at the start of every story. Some may carry over if not picked; some may not. Vote for your favorite as there’s no guarantee it’ll come back later!
Second, though I do like writing these stories, doing the choices and posting and such only makes sense if there’s an audience. So, if I ever get only a single vote (or zero) on any poll, that’s it. That story will be the last one on the server. Anything more than one and we keep going till I get bored. Sounds good? Great; go invite your friends so we can have more voters! I’ll keep running this as long as I’m having fun, but I’d be lying if I said that having more readers wouldn’t be more fun.
Anyway, in a few days I’ll be archiving the current #story_updates channel and creating a new one for the next story. The next set of starting prompts will be up probably... this weekend-ish? Sure, that sounds about right. At that time, we’ll get going setting up the next story as per usual.
As always, thanks for your continued support and engagement, and I hope you stick around for the next one!
~ Shaun / @Mxblah
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