Cassie
It didn’t go well. Not in a ‘We barely got out of there alive!’ kind of way. It was more of a ‘This sure was boring and pointless!’ type of deal. Paul and I entered the green swamp of Rana’s Inner World and explored it without much luck.
The deep water was so thick with organic matter not even my fishing bat form could sound the depths. I flew in an orbit around Paul as he waded through the shallow areas. Pond scum and duckweed carpeted the water for what seemed like miles in all directions.
I landed to stick my head underwater (the things I do for love) to use my ultrasonography, but I was utterly unprepared to interpret the jumbled confusion I heard in reply. I resurfaced covered in a green mess, but Paul was too kind a soul to laugh.
I lifted my ears to the sky but couldn’t hear the stars.
“Paul, do you see any white fog?”
“Clouds,” he said as he edged around unseen pitfalls with growing annoyance.
“Maybe It is lying low.” I didn’t want to give a demon fragment that could only spew Moloch soundbites too much credit, but we couldn’t afford to underestimate It. “Rana! Where are you?” I couldn’t hear her anywhere. “Come out and show us around!”
“She’s never come out when I’ve been here before. I always thought she didn’t want to show me how she pictures herself in her mind.” He laughed, but it was pained with regret. “I can’t believe I thought you pictured yourself as human.”
“You noticed? Why didn’t you say anything? Oh, nevermind. Everything I thought back then feels stupid to me now. I’d have just ignored you.” I turned my ears on the deepest part of the swamp. “We could flush It out. Splash around and stir up trouble.”
Paul lowered his head a degree as if frowning inside the helmet. “Bad idea. This is Rana’s mind—we have to be careful. We don’t know where she stores her memories. They could be the weeds, or on the bottom of the swamp, or swimming fish, or anything. If we break something important she might not remember us later.”
“Well, I’ve had enough brain surgery for the moment,” I said. Paul took my hand and suddenly we were at the edge of the swamp bordering the infinite void. I could hear the stars again and find my way back without his help, but I let him step us over the gap into his Inner World. I thoroughly approved of his recreation of our home on Radio World.
Then I flew to the border of my own Inner World, returning to my barn in the woods, and awoke.
“You didn’t find anything.” Rana stared at us, deadpan.
Paul and I looked at each other, then said in unison, ““We didn’t find anything.””
“Over here, please! I would much appreciate anyone who felt inclined to come over here!” Lea seemed frantic, so the three of us went to join her. Rana glanced in Daniel and Ziege’s direction, probably a sending.
Lea sat in lotus position with her Caramboles orbiting her as black marbles. We didn’t notice anything wrong, and I told her as much. “If you would just look… oh, sorry.”
I tried to make light of it, by which I mean less heavy. “It’s not your fault human languages are inherently sight-biased. Seriously, what is going on?”
“Is it not obvious?” She sounded frustrated.
Ziege ran up to us with Daniel in hand and skidded to a halt, giving me mild anxiety due to past trauma I think we’re all still working through. My favorite nerd took one look at the situation and said, “Lea, since when do you have fourteen Caramboles?”
“See, he gets it!” Lea exclaimed. I rolled my eyes; yes, that’s a thing I can do. “I have always had eight… at least, since Henry and Gaja adopted me.”
“That was your maximum? What if you tried making more?” Daniel wondered.
Lea studied her lap as she recounted the incident. “Eight always felt right. That is, I realize now eight wasn’t a stable number, but simply the best I could do at the time. I went to replace the one I had lost, and it was as if I stood on the threshold of an open door. I stepped inside… and out they came.”
“Is that very strange?” Daniel asked. “My magic never changes unless I try something new. Except yesterday… Have any of you had a similar experience?”
“You know my story,” Paul said.
I told them what little I knew. “Getting my fishing bat claws was weird. I’ll have to think for a while before explaining. My Progenitor presented me with the abilities I gained before our second battle with the mages but said I’d have learned them anyway without him. I’m not sure what he meant… I guess I’m no help.”
“I don’t remember anything…” Wendi momentarily manifested to let some of her frustration surface.
“No comment,” Ziege said.
They were at a loss.
“Daniel, what does the number fourteen mean to you?” Rana said.
He hummed and frowned for a couple seconds, then, in that insufferably endearing way of his, solved the puzzle in a few words, “Stack em.’”
Lea had no sooner heard him than begun. She laid out a three-by-three square of Caramboles, then put four on top of that two by two, and then one last one on top. A perfect square pyramid.
He smiled. “Yep. I always thought they looked like cannon balls.”
“What does it mean?” Lea asked.
Rana eyed the stack, dead serious. “It means you’re strong.”
“Can you do eight again? Or is that asking too much?” Once Daniel had a taste, he wouldn’t let go.
Lea seemed so shocked by her own magic she’d try anything. She manifested her Tool, a hand-held balance scale with two flat plates suspended from opposite ends of a pivoting bar. six Caramboles disappeared into an opening slot in the base of the fulcrum. The Libra girl stacked the eight remaining into two triangular pyramids with four marbles each, using them to balance the plates.
“Nine?” Daniel requested. A marble shot from the slot to join the others. Except, instead of dropping on a plate or floating free, this Carambole plunged into a triangular pyramid—turning it into a square pyramid. “The scales are unbalanced, but the pyramids are stable,” Daniel commented. “Ten?”
Another marble left the slot to balance the scales by turning the second pyramid from triangular to square. Lea shivered. “Ten is very good. I used eight for so long I never considered the relative merits of using one through seven. This is uncharted water.”
“Eleven?”
Lea flinched, then furrowed her brows. A vein pulsed on her forehead. Nothing happened. “I cannot. Nor twelve, nor thirteen. Ten is simply too powerful. I cannot break it.” She waved a hand, dispersing the two square pyramids into the air. Of their own accord they reformed as a floating triangular pyramid with three layers.
“Intriguing,” Daniel said. Glancing at Lea’s evident consternation, he added, “Fourteen?”
Three Caramboles joined to the bottom layer of the pyramid and one to the second layer, recreating the three-layer square pyramid. “Fourteen is barely stronger than ten. That’s enough to break the set.”
“And it also has a three-wide base. Noted. You can’t make any more?”
“No. It feels like a huge wall… or a locked gate.”
“Guys, we really do need to do the demon search,” Paul reminded them before Daniel could launch any more experiments.
Frowning, Lea agreed. “Yes, of course. Sorry if I scared anyone.”
Daniel and the others told her it was no trouble. Despite the possible danger, Lea appeared more composed now she’d solved the problem of her missing Carambole. Perhaps I’d been unfairly dismissive of Lea’s concerns. I hadn’t heard a threat to Lea’s immediate future, but taking people seriously when I know they have nothing to worry about is maybe something I should work on.
“Let us begin.”
Paul took our hands in his and transformed into a kerosene lantern Lea and I held between us, connecting our Inner Worlds as boats tether together. I met him at the border of our minds. His invitation allowed me to pass his threshold while retaining my strength. He walked me through his world and into Lea’s.
We had a moment of resistance at her threshold before her defenses relaxed enough for our entry. The two of us found ourselves in a lush valley. Before us stood a simple wooden cottage. It had a quaint vegetable garden and an old bucket-and-windlass well.
“Are you getting the vibe we’re missing a village?”
He shrugged his metal-clad shoulders. “Looks normal to me.”
The two of us searched the area, turning up nothing, and then opened the cottage door. Inside was a single living space with a fireplace, a small shelf for preparing food, a table with two chairs, a medieval bed, and a girl.
Lea sat on the edge of the feather mattress. She stared into a limpid bowl of water as if hypnotized. The liquid’s surface displayed her the view in the waking world.
While Paul poked around for the demon, I walked over and touched Lea’s shoulder. The Libra girl started and turned to see me, equally shocked and relieved.
“Cassie! What are you… and Paul… where am I?”
She stood and rushed for the window to scan the landscape. Lea spun around, eyes touching each item in the house one by one. Her gaze landed on a broom resting against the wall. She gingerly brushed the wooden handle as if to confirm its reality.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“It can’t be…” She began to cry.
“Are you alright?” I said, going to Lea’s side. When she didn’t resist, I wrapped her in my arms. Paul shyly turned his body to face away and pretended to be occupied with an iron pot.
“This is… this was… my mother’s house.” She sniffled, then dried her eyes. “Right. The search. We are, I suppose, inside me?”
I nodded.
Lea left my embrace and approached the water. “I do not understand, I am seeing what is in the scrying bowl, but I am also here. That image is my sight—there are the twin ghosts of my nose! How can I be watching myself watch the horizon? It is as if I have been half asleep my whole life, and only now awoken.”
“This is kind of unusual,” Paul said. “Everyone has an Inner World, but I guess you need to be a Nightwalker—or know one—to be aware of it. Is that why we couldn’t find Rana? She’s ‘asleep’ underwater?”
“I wonder who else is awake?” I said.
> Auge, do you have any idea?
> Cassandra,
>
> I’m afraid I’m not any more certain about this than you. However, I have heard those aligned with Night are more likely to be Nightwalkers. Perhaps such races are also more aware of their Inner Worlds as a species? Cassandra Chiropteran and Paul Nightwatcher, you two seem to match that description exactly.
>
> Auge
>
>
Good to know. At any rate, we thoroughly searched Lea’s Inner World as best we could but found nothing except idle curiosities.
“I didn’t know you played violin,” Paul said as he found the humble looking instrument in a place of honor.
“It is a fiddle,” Lea replied, a bit defensive as she cradled it to her chest like an infant. “And when, exactly, might I best have revealed this fact? While imprisoned at Eastwood? Should I have stolen one from humans so I could play for us on the road?”
Both Paul and I let her be before she mentioned Radio World… Lea’s touch lingered on the fiddle as if saying goodbye to an old friend before she tenderly set it aside. We didn’t stay long after that.
I returned through Paul’s mindscape to the barn in my Inner World. Lea and I awakened from a trancelike state that felt like a lucid dream. We released the lantern’s handle as Paul returned to his normal shape.
As the three of us separated, Paul’s arm lifted to lightly touch one of Lea’s Caramboles with a single finger. The black marble shot from orbit and crashed into another, sending it flying.
Lea gasped, and Daniel exhaled a breathy, “Whoa.”
“What?” Paul asked, his gauntlets up by his head to show he wasn’t about to touch anything else. “What did I do? I’m sorry, I don’t usually take Paths like that, but it seemed too curious and harmless to pass up. I didn’t hurt anything, did I?”
“No… no, you need not worry, Paul. I was merely startled, not offended or in pain. Still, this is an oddity without precedent.”
“Really, Lea?” I said. “You hit things with your Caramboles all the time, what’s the difference?”
She frowned, but not at me. “Firstly, my Caramboles never interact unless I demand such. They naturally fall into discrete orbitals around me as easily as square pegs fit in square holes, never colliding on their own. Maintaining their positions while walking or flying requires no attention. Rather, keeping them at a fixed point requires conscious focus.”
I was ready to move on to more important tasks. “It’s nothing to get excited about, though, right?”
“Cassie, were you even paying attention to the collision?” Daniel asked me.
“No, I wasn’t paying attention.” I crossed my arms. “I concerned myself with Listening to make sure the three of you weren’t about to start fighting!”
“Oh, I suppose that’s important as well.” Daniel didn’t take offense, and I doubted anything could distract him once his analytical brain activated. “We ought to thank Paul for noticing, and you for Listening, but this really is interesting. Upon impact, the first Carambole stopped completely, transferring all its speed to the second.
“That simply doesn’t happen outside theoretical physics. Normal matter is unintuitively complex; energy gets converted to heat and sound or absorbed through plastic deformation during impact. Yet Lea’s collision was perfectly elastic, itself impossible. What boggles my mind is that the struck Carambole had more kinetic energy than the initial sum—violating the conservation of momentum!”
“Can we go back to talking sense?” I asked, already tired.
“Daniel… you are right! If I…” Lea lined up four marbles with an inch between each. Then she took a fifth Carambole and slung it around herself, accelerating as it went, until she slammed it into the first of the line. Like a cradle of clacker balls, each marble in the line hit the next in quick succession, and the last one shot away as if thrown by a major league pitcher—multiple times faster than the first Carambole.
“A linear momentum cannon!” Daniel exclaimed, the dorky joy on his face priceless. “Lea, you’ve got to try it with different sizes!”
“Yes, it seems I have much work to do, learning and practicing. Surely, though, I should have noticed this property before? Unless this is a new ability—”
“—From gaining a third level square pyramid? How does that make any sense?” Daniel and Lea both studied the Caramboles intently.
I decided perhaps this was far more important than I’d given credit. “Lea, we’ll need any advantage you can give us for what’s coming. Daniel, don’t forget about your own training. In the meantime, we’ll finish our search with Wendi and Ziege.”
With no warning, Rana sat down, covered her legs in a foam blanket, and said, “It’s night where Kenta is and he’s going to sleep. I have to stay on his rhythm to do my job.” With that, she finished covering herself in her foam sleeping bag.
“She’s right,” Daniel agreed. “We have to travel while he’s awake, or else risk Rana losing track of him. I guess we’ll start in eight or nine hours, before the sun rises.”
Once it’d been decided, Paul and I agreed to do one more dive with Wendi and Ziege before calling it quits. Except, this time, before I crossed over to Paul’s mind, I waved him over. “Hey, can you come over for a minute? I had a thought.”
“Sure,” he said, entering my mind at the edge of the clearing outside the barn. I led him inside to show him something. We climbed the ladder into the hayloft where I kept my figurines of everyone I knew, my conch shell, the pair of dice, and the candle in the window.
We stood there, together. I Listened to Paul stare at the piece of himself which saved me. “It’s yours,” I told him. “I’ve been borrowing it, that’s all.”
“What do you want to do?” he looked at me, I think. It was hard to tell because of the helmet.
“You need it; take it.”
He stood there for a few moments, gathering his courage. I felt it too. Touching anything in someone’s mind was dangerous. The easiest way to reverse what we’d done would be to repeat our actions in the flesh—except his touch would kill me. This seemed like cheating.
Paul reached forward, slowly, and picked up the candlestick with a delicate grip.
Nothing happened.
We both sighed in relief. “This is awfully convenient,” he said.
I shrugged. “I guess you’re getting your Yang magic back after all. If we take this to your mind and put it next to the lantern, it should work, right?”
We climbed down the ladder and left the barn. A bead of sweat rolled down my back. I still had a flush of anxiety from the ‘heist.’
As we crossed the field towards the tree line, I welcomed a cool breeze that blustered through my damp hair. Must be a hot day in the waking world. Right as we reached the border of my Inner World, I smelled something.
Smoke.
I shivered from head to toe. I was running a fever. I was sweating rivers. I was burning up. I panicked.
“Fire!” I grabbed the candlestick from Paul’s startled hands. I transferred it to my right leg hand as I shifted, wings lifting me as I shot towards the barn.
I didn’t bother going through the doors and up the ladder, I flew to the window and slammed the candlestick on the sill. I felt better instantly. The smoke faded as the burgeoning flame of the spontaneously combusting straw smothered and died. I’d made it in time, the lesson clear.
Messing around in someone’s mind was not to be done lightly.
“Sorry,” he whispered as I returned to his side, head bowed with self-inflicted burdens.
“I had to know. Don’t worry about it.”
I wasn’t sure he’d listen to me, but I didn’t regret the attempt.
That settled, Paul and I entered Ziege’s mind as we had Rana and Lea’s. A deep crevice split the twin devils’ mindscape down to the very core of their Inner World. On Wendi’s side stood the same Radio World hotel as in Paul’s mind with some slight differences in the interior details.
On Ziege’s side, a gorgeous meadow with thousands of the sweetest flowers I’d ever smelled unfurled across a tall hillside. While this hill appeared to be one of many in view, if you tried to fly or walk to those other hills, you’d find yourself somewhere back on the original.
Both devil girls were awake and greeted us on our arrival. I’m not sure whether that follows your explanation—Capricorns aren’t that close to Night, are they? Don’t bother answering. At any rate, the two of them helped us search every inch of their Inner World, for all the good it did us.
“I hear It’s voice from time to time, but never seen It,” Ziege said as they searched.
“Maybe it’s not a lesser demon. Maybe it’s a memory infused with Moloch’s will? I had a memory-Moloch action figure in my barn.”
Paul shrugged in defeat. “It’s one thing to say you’re ‘carriers’ but, if we can’t do anything about it, what does that matter?”
“This sucks,” Wendi said.
Three minds, no demon fragments. Daniel’s theory seemed to be a bust.
After returning to our bodies, I played with Ziege for a few hours, and we had a good talk. It wasn’t like it used to be between us, but at least we’ve started mending our relationship. Rana was still asleep when I went to bed. It’s a little early to say for sure, but I think I’ve been feeling better since I started sleeping next to her—That’s one theory confirmed!
We’re going after Kenta tomorrow, and I’m feeling a lot of mixed emotions.
I did some deep Auditions in the Nightscape as soon as I got out here. What I heard hasn’t left me optimistic. Confused, in fact. Too many factors, too much interference to get anything but out-of-context bursts I can’t interpret and glimpses of past nightmares I’d hoped were gone for good. I keep getting an eye (which has to be you), a snake (Medusa?), a ceramic doll (I have no idea), and a spider that I’m totally clueless about.
> Cassandra,
>
> Keep at it. Dreams can be a powerful weapon once you learn to use them. Though I can’t offer you any insight into those Auditions, and I am not so conceited as to advise you on your situation, please know I am rooting for you.
>
> Never let your doubts overwhelm you. Trust in your senses. Believe in your abilities. Master yourself, and all obstacles will fall before you.
>
> These words, which my teacher gave me, I pass on to you. May they encourage you as they have me.
>
> P.S.
>
> I know the visual arts aren’t your forte, but I hope you will find some small entertainment in this drawing. I pray you don’t feel the subject too presumptuous.
>
> P.P.S.
>
> Do not hesitate in your criticism. I am young in my craft, but my skin is thick with preparation, and my ego is ready to accept your barbs.
>
> Auge
>
>
Cassie turned her attention from Auge’s message to the tableau before her. The Mokumokuren had etched something into the face of the asteroid they’d been using to exchange messages. She touched the surface and used Ultrasonography to paint the picture in her mind’s eye.
It was a drawing of Cassie, full bat form in the upper right corner, her figure drawn to dominate the scene by height and size. Elements of the composition attracted focus like arrows pointing to the fearsome yet magnificently portrayed chiropteran as she roared a blast of sound waves at dozens of imaginatively drawn creatures. The mages’ beasts fell in droves to the lowly ground while others were frozen in rictus agony as they were crushed by sheer sonic force.
Cassie didn’t quite have the words to describe the drawing, but she felt powerful emotions stir within her. The drawing itself, and that Auge had been inspired by her life, filled Cassie with equal amounts admiration for the artist and pride that someone thought her cool enough to draw. She wasted no time writing her response.
> I love it! Thank you for sharing this with me. Some of the details aren’t exactly right, but I couldn’t have asked for a better rendering of the scene! I never thought I could look so imposing, but your drawing really makes me believe it. You’re a talented artist. Have you shown anyone? I don’t mean that like I want to be famous, but people should know about your abilities!
> Cassandra,
>
> Thank you for the praise, though I doubt my craft has fully earned it. To read of your pleasure warms my being. That alone is the art’s merit, as I doubt I will ever show this piece to anyone else. Though I understand your need to inform your fellows of our exchanges, I have not revealed you to my allies and do not intend to do so.
>
> Understand, it is not because I do not trust them. My life is theirs without question. However, I do not wish to unduly involve you in our affairs. That is not to say I have no fears of their reaction should they discover our correspondence, but I believe I could make them understand my intentions were never their betrayal. They know I explore the Nightscape privately and have stated their trust in my propriety.
>
> It occurs to me again how little reason you have to trust my many claims, and it irks me. It irks me fiercely, and I would eagerly seek a remedy.
>
> My preparations are complete. Your surprise is ready.
>
> I propose a trust-building exercise.