I was more than a little pleased to discover that I wasn't dead yet. I was even happier when my consciousness traveled through my Tether and into my avatar, which landed gracefully in the Gossamer about a foot from my body. Well, I say my body: really, it’s the concept of my body. My oneiroform. Let me explain.
Humans are generally unwilling participants in their dreams. If a human survives becoming a Conduit, they can spend their sleeping hours in the Gossamer: the collective dream space of reality. One minute, you’re drifting off to sleep, and the next, you’re standing in a place made of the way that people think, feel, and dream about that place. In the Gossamer, everything you see isn't made of matter; it’s made of ideas—concepts made solid.
A haze of stress motes rose from the creatures crowded around my body. When they popped, their light sketched a smattering of medical jargon and diagrams onto the walls like graffiti. A surge of relief and concern burst from my feet in a wave of light that drifted over my surroundings: they were trying to save me. Maybe they had similar physiology; if they didn’t, perhaps they knew how serious my wounds were due to medical training.
Nothing that I can do to help them from here besides cheer them on. Go team save-my-ass!
I tore myself away from watching the group stabilize me and paused: I wasn’t where I thought I should be. Instead of being inside something like a basket, a cave, or a bank vault—warehouses tend to be inanimate containers in the Gossamer—I was in the belly of a whale. And unless my saviors had a vastly different concept of what a warehouse was, my body wasn’t in a warehouse.
I focused through the walls of the cathedral-sized stomach I was in and got a peek at smaller chambers connected by winding, twisting corridors. Between them were organs the size of automobiles, interspersed by smaller tunnels and cables thicker than my arm pulsing with light. Circular schematics that looked like alchemical diagrams hung in the air like talismans. Giant bones shaped like coral held the entire thing together.
Stranger components were interspersed throughout the bulk: I was sure I spotted a harp with clarinet tone holes in its body and a line of undulating trumpet valves connected to a massive spinal column that ran into the distance.
Nerves spread like tree roots, merging with walls and floors. Some ended in sensory organs: eyes, ears, noses. The more I observed, the weirder it seemed.
It reminded me of the pictures of amalgamations from the Nighthost War: humanity's last great war before the founding of the Pact. But unlike the images of machine-animal hybrids from our history books, none of it felt unnatural. It was bizarre, but it didn’t seem wrong.
In my experience, conceptual amalgamations didn’t occur naturally; creatures normally self-actualize as complete objects in the Gossamer, unless there’s some sort of psychological reason for it. So, unless this thing had some serious self-image issues, I was inside an object instead of an organism. What I was seeing was the collective concept formed by the creatures within it.
The group started moving, and the Tether between my avatar and my oneiroform acted like a kite string, tugging me behind them as they retreated from the storage area. The large red-scaled one cradled me in their arms as they walked—a storm in starlight guarded by a suit of armor with a flaming heart.
What you see in the Gossamer lends itself well to poetry. Bad poetry, in my case.
As we traveled, I noticed a nerve cluster that didn’t pulse as vibrantly as the others. Later, I saw a smaller organ struggling to animate itself. There were other telltale signs of neglect as well: sadness and regret slowly ate at the oneiroform along corners and shadowed spots like rust. It might take weeks, might take years, but eventually, the entire thing would break down, hastening the decay of its physical body in the Materia.
Think of it like this: you own an automobile, and you keep it in good repair. Not only are you providing the machine with the maintenance it needs to continue running efficiently, but you’re also providing its oneiroform with much-needed conceptual reinforcement in the Gossamer.
When you need it to hold together for just a little bit longer, the little bits of anima that you generate when dreaming are spent stabilizing its oneiroform. Because of that, it makes it over the hill to the repair shop. In a way, it wants to do so because you've given it that impulse. More on this later.
I turned away from the concerning amount of mental neglect and focused on their conversation, which hadn’t ceased since we left. Emotions drifted to the ceiling like embers, causing bursts of color and meaning to spread through the walls and ceiling where they impacted. Judging by the embers' colors and patterns and what little I could glean when they burst, their discussion wasn’t about me—not entirely, at least.
It was a debate of some kind; that much was obvious. Motes twisted around one another and clashed as charged emotions ebbed and flowed in the discussion. Someone invoked a righteous fury that burst into a shower of red gold, followed by the faded silver of fragile happiness. Cynicism burst in a deep milky gray that hung at their feet like fog. When I was mentioned, the representation of my physical body pulsed with the warm colors of positive emotions.
I guess I was in their good books.
We took a winding route that ended at a crossroads a short distance from the creature’s heart. As the group turned towards a string of pearls the size of houses nearby, a pair of creatures stopped in the middle to argue. Bursts of embers erupted into the air like fireworks as their passions were stoked.
Bursts of light rippled across every surface, echoing the volume and passion of their argument as they gestured in opposite directions: one towards the beast’s heart, the other towards a darkening purple shadow close to the beast’s tail—a confluence of intense, dark intent.
I pressed my hand against the wall and tried to connect with the oneiroform, hunting for an answer that made the puzzle pieces fit together. I cast my empathy and curiosity into the great beast like shouting into a valley, and the empathic whisper that echoed back would have driven the air from my lungs if I had needed to breathe. Of course, I'm sure you've figured it out by now.
I was in a spaceship. A vessel designed to swim among the stars.
A smile flashed across my face but was quickly replaced with a grimace. Humans didn’t build spaceships. The Pact didn’t build spaceships. The Enemy built spaceships. The Enemy rained hellfire on top of us from their ships and slaughtered us for sport, leaving little piles of crystalline dust in their wake.
I felt my self-control slip and a torrent of emotions burst out of me. They painted the walls in fire, which groaned and warped in response as the Gossamer twisted with the onslaught. I was alone, taken from my people. I tried to scream without a voice. I tried to rage against a world I couldn’t touch. I could do nothing more than weep.
Tears can’t exist in the Gossamer, yet I wept all the same.
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Conduit training eventually took over and helped me re-master my emotions, keeping me from causing too much change to the local environment. Drastic shifts in environment like that can attract attention from eidolons and other nasties looking for a meal, and quite frankly, I’d had enough Gossamer-based excitement for one day.
I didn’t have time for the luxury of anger; I needed to focus on the here and now. So, I put it aside until I had the time to deal with it and got to work figuring out what I would do when I woke up.
Long story short: my situation looked dire. I was surrounded by other people from species I didn’t recognize, who likely had allegiances or motivations that didn’t align with mine. I was nearly positive that I was in a spaceship, hurtling through the void with no clue where I was or how to return to my people.
Well, I can wallow in self-pity or wake up and do something about it. Step one should be to get some bearings, figure out where I am, what’s going on. Step two: barter passage out of here. And if that doesn’t work, force someone or something to take me home. So, I protect myself by any means necessary, don’t pull any more impulsive crap, figure out what the hell is going on, and get back home. Piece of cake.
With some semblance of a strategy in mind, I turned my attention to the elephant in the room: my magic. My strategy’s success depended on having access to my magic, so I needed to know what damage I had done to myself. I debated when I should check my Tether, started to focus my senses, hesitated, and finally took a peek. No damage whatsoever. All of that anticipation for nothing.
I had been absurdly lucky. A Conduit’s Tether is like a muscle; it’s meant to be exercised and grow stronger with use and skill. But if you stretch it beyond its ability to flex, you can permanently damage your ability to channel magic—a condition called Fraying. Nearly killing myself and dumping my unconscious form into the Gossamer was, weirdly enough, the best possible result.
On one hand, I had an objective, rules of engagement, my wits, and my magic. On the other hand, I had yet to learn where I was or how to get home. Could be better, could be worse. With no further preparations to make and no additional avenues of inquiry, I drifted into a sleep without dreams.
I awoke on a series of short boxes masquerading as a makeshift cot.
Given my earlier position, the boxes were a welcome change of pace.
After a minute or two of luxuriating in the feeling of being alive, I decided to be productive. Aside from my bed, the largest piece of furniture in the room was a wooden desk in the far corner covered with bottles, bandages, and other detritus surrounding a carved stone bowl filled with steaming water. A short stack of books was piled next to the bowl, and I cringed.
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Poor books.
Opposite the desk was a wood door, much larger than I expected. It had a thin brass trim around its outer edge and a circular metal plate where a handle should be, but no handle. Two well-worn rucksacks had been discarded against the wall closest to the door, sagging from lack of contents.
Next to my cot was a barrel acting as a nightstand, with a stack of rags piled on top and doused in an antiseptic I could smell from a few feet away. Beside the rags was a lit lantern, which I shifted further away. Knowing my luck, I just saved myself from having the rags burst into flames, fly at my face, and immolate me. It was that kind of day.
A few moments later, I realized I had reached over and moved the lantern without pain. I gave sitting up a shot and felt nothing more than a dull ache in my abdomen. But, when I stretched my body, the cascade of pops caused me to flinch, but I felt no lasting damage.
Once I had gathered up the courage, standing was surprisingly easy. Extremely easy, I thought to myself. Once I regained some semblance of balance, I bounced on the balls of my feet and lifted higher off the ground than I expected—low gravity.
Huh. Maybe it’s for recovery purposes? Decrease body strain, make it easier to transport patients or bodies? Wonder about it later. What about my—
I reached up and brushed my hand across my neck, but instead of the bandage I expected to feel, I found a long scar to the left of my jugular and two smaller ones across my jaw and cheek.
The shudder I felt wasn’t just because of the temperature in the room.
The unexpected scars prompted a more thorough inspection. All the bits were there, right where I left them, with one notable addition: a small green glass bead the size of a large pearl stuck to my right wrist. I gave it a slight tug, and it felt like I was pulling on a piercing. I couldn’t get a fingernail underneath it either. It was just… stuck.
No, I wasn’t just going to yank it off of me, no matter how much I wanted to. I’m not that much of an idiot. If it was grafted to my wrist, I’d end up bleeding to death, which seemed like a poor way to reward someone’s effort in saving me. Instead, I prodded it with my senses and got that familiar vertigo feeling—more Domain magic. There was a lot of that stuff running around.
My investigation was cut short by my door sliding open, which made me jump. In walked a short creature wearing an earth toned environmental suit with green accents, complete with a helmet and visor that obscured their face. A matronly Alvi followed close behind, with a full crest showing warm colors and her long reed-like hair tied together with twine.
I recognized the short alien from earlier during my aborted hostage negotiation, but my heart leaped into my throat once I noticed the Alvi. Maybe I wasn’t as fucked as I thought I was.
“Nur faya wazhor—” the short one said as they shuffled across the room. I half-loped and half-stumbled around them to reach the Alvi and launched into a long string of words that could be classified as sentences if one were to relax the definition significantly.
“Hi-I’m-Amelin-I’m-so-glad-to-see-you I’m-a-Conduit-from-the-Sidereal-Pact I-have-no-idea-where-we-are-and-I-need-to-get-back we’re-trying-to-rebuild-and-something-had-to-have-gone-wrong-for-me-to-be-here…”
Damn, but I can be an idiot sometimes. I raised my head and saw that she had put her hands in the air, palms towards me, and taken a half-step back. I regathered my wits and took a deep breath to steady myself. It wouldn’t get me out of here any faster to rapid-fire a bunch of questions to anyone, no matter how much I wanted to grab them and shake them until they took me where I wanted to go.
Stick to the plan.
Alvi glanced at her companion and said, “Di yura si sa thor Alvi co senows,” with a humor that sounded like like dry leaves, before returning her attention to me.
“Fa shi ana ju ongi yi, yadzhi mu,” the Alvi continued. I guessed it was a request and not a command by the tone, but had no clue what she was saying. My face screwed up in confusion, and once she made the obvious leap in logic that I couldn’t understand her language, the soft smile on her face faded to concern, then to pity. She didn’t skip a beat: she gestured to the cot behind me and put her hand near but not on my shoulder.
I nodded in response and wandered back to my cot with Shorty in tow, my hands moving through a pair of small, quick series of gestures to cast a spell.
Step one: get some bearings.
One of the first spells I learned was connecting those ember-like speech logiforms radiating into the Gossamer to my ears. When a person speaks, the meaning in their words percolates into the Gossamer before eventually bursting into emotive embers like the ones I mentioned earlier. If a Conduit has been trained to read them and can make the proper connections, their mind translates those logiforms into speech they understand. To the casual observer, it looks like the Conduit understands their language; in reality, it’s more like they’re building a translator in conceptual space.
I’d hear everyone’s speech in my voice, lose a lot of nuance, and most of the idioms wouldn’t make sense, but it was better than the alternative. And if you're wondering why I didn't do this earlier, it's because I didn't have ears at the time.
The spell finished casting and I smelled a whiff of ozone, but the others didn’t indicate that they noticed it. While I nestled back into the covers and got comfortable, they continued to talk around me, which meant I had approached the social crossroads of being talked over when a physicker is explaining your medical diagnosis to a room of apprentices, and when the people talking in a foreign language nearby don’t know that you understand it.
“…cuthu are simply electrolytes, urea, trace minerals. Other than the delivery system, the creature’s secretions bear no similarity to my own. They’re completely non-lethal to any sapient that I can think of,” Shorty said.
The Alvi nodded her head as she handed him another book, “What would you say is the purpose of the secretions then? Scent marking?”
“Possibly, though I’m leaning towards thermal regulation like the [wanderer-primate-large-eyes-nomads]. The patient was overheating, so they began to secrete the solution. The secretions stopped after removing several blankets that [large-fire-armored-mountain-strong-simple-brave-foolish] had placed on them. Ancestor’s [judgment-by-prismatic-refraction-using-heart-and-mind], but he can be dense.”
The Alvi chuckled, cupping her cheek with the palm of her hand. “His concern for them is quite charming, though. Says that they have ‘[spirit-burning-ash-healing-protector-light]’s fire.’ Are there any other unique traits you’ve noticed?”
“Noticed? Certainly. Explored? No time. Everyone with medical skills—hold this, please—is busy helping our people.”
As they continued talking, I pieced together a rough summary of what had happened in the intervening hours between losing and regaining consciousness. A good portion of my physiology had analogs to other species that Shorty had encountered before. As the individual with the most experience and practical knowledge, they had taken a massive gamble and managed to save my life.
I couldn’t imagine the risk involved in operating on a creature that I only had a best guess approximation of their physiology. In the Pact, a Human physicker would work for years to understand their species before branching out, and they couldn’t practice medicine until they were pronounced competent. If they planned on training as a cross-species physicker, they’d need more training and would have to spend the time learning a healing Discipline. What kind of training does it take to operate confidently on a foreign species and pull it off? But those were questions for later.
After about five minutes, I was confident enough to cast spell number two, which is the more complicated of the pair. This spell builds a network of connections between your voice, the logiforms in the Gossamer, and their ears. Now, when you speak, they don’t hear your voice; they hear their voice with your words, which is just as creepy as it sounds.
The longer you listen to their speech, the better the spell works, because you’ve got more vocabulary to work with. While the philosophical debate of being able to hijack someone’s voice in their mind had continued unabated for centuries, I always felt there was a quiet nobility in needing to listen to someone else before you can speak in their voice.
A bit of finger-waggling and ozone later, and I was ready.
“Can you understand me now?”
Everything stopped. Shorty stiffened as if I had slapped them, and the book they were thumbing through tumbled out of their hands. They quickly gathered it up and whirled around to face me; while I couldn’t see their face, the clenched upper body spoke volumes about their emotions. They launched into a rapid series of comments, inquiries, and expletives, delivered with such speed that my spell was having trouble sorting it out.
I’ve never known Alvi to be highly animated over anything unless they’re exceptionally young, but her eyes had visibly widened. I crossed “surprise an Alvi” off the bucket list and smirked in response. I have a good smirk.
“…answered any number of questions while we’re here speculating…”
“Telepathy?” She said as she twisted to face me. Her hand lifted to forestall further complaining by Shorty, but they didn’t get the hint.
“No. Well, not exactly. I couldn’t speak with you until now. I needed to feel your language first, then I could speak it. It’s a spell. You know, magic?” I said before quickly following up with, “I apologize for the voice. I’d much rather use my own than yours.”
“…speaking to me in my own Gods-given voice…”
She nodded, letting a gentle smile show at the corners of her mouth. “You have nothing to apologize for. We would much rather be able to understand one another; to do that, you must communicate by some means. Is that not so, [neurotoxin-intelligent-shrewd-excitable-seeker-library-healer]?”
“…forty-six standard as a chirurgeon I’ve never heard of—“
The Alvi clapped her hands in Shorty’s face, and their helmet shook back and forth like they were clearing their head.
“Oh! Yes? What were you saying, [autumn-tree-feather-deep-woodwind-comforting]?”
“I was saying that how we converse is less important than the ability to do so,” she said, “because we would like to understand this particular patient above any others presently in your care.”
“Yes, yes, quite right,” they said while clamoring on top of the crates, “but that can wait. Do you have any pain?”
“No. I just ache a bit,” I said, rubbing my abdomen.
Shorty had reached the top of the crate-cot and bobbed their head in understanding while rummaging around in the pouches at their belt, “To be expected. You have been unconscious for three [one-tenth-circadian-rhythm-cycles]. Given the state you were encountered in—”
“A one-tenth circadian rhythm cycle would be a little over two hours for me. I… I had hoped…”
The pair exchanged a glance and started to speak, but I wasn’t listening. All of my efforts—the justifications, the willful ignorance, the attempts to stay distracted, the plans and discipline—none of them were strong enough to hold back the flood of fear waiting to take over in my mind. I tried to take deep breaths, but as soon as I saw my hands white-knuckling the thin sheet covering me, a small part of me knew what was coming.
“I hoped—no, I have no idea where I am or how your timekeeping works. I have been sitting here watching you two talk about species I’ve never even heard of before,” I said while patting the bed in time with my words, “I’m frankly surprised I haven’t asphyxiated yet, which didn’t even cross my mind the first time I woke up.”
“I’ve never seen a person like you before in my entire life,” I said as I pointed to Shorty, the volume in my voice rising, “I’m terrified of touching everything, on the off chance that I end up contracting something that causes me to bleed from every orifice and die, and the one small sliver of familiarity in a long list of shit I don’t understand,” I said as I gestured at the Alvi, “has been sitting here wildly speculating as to what I am for the last ten minutes.”
My hands dropped, my head dropped into them, and I finally started to wind down, “I watched Humanity’s oldest ally walk into my room, and my first thought was, ‘at least I’m not going to die of dehydration.’ I’m out of my depth here, and holy shit could I use an explanation as to what is going on. I just want… I just want to get back home.”
There were a lot of things I could say about my first encounter with the broader galaxy. I could give you all of the classic excuses for my outburst: I was nineteen, scared out of my mind, trying to desperately keep it together; I just couldn’t hold back anymore; it was just how I was. But regardless of the reasons for my anger, they were there to help and didn't deserve it.
Not the most auspicious way to present humanity, is it? If I were a better ambassador for my species, I would have radiated patience and tact—calm in any situation, no matter how dire. Human, indomitable. A lot like the Alvi, I suppose. Instead, I had just shown how thin our veneer of civility can be. I needed to be better. I would be better.
I was in a tough spot, and I hadn't made it easy on myself. Now, it was time to get out of it.