Bright, staccato images burst around him with startling clarity, drenching Roland with sight, sound, and smells that overpowered his senses. One vision washed into another so quickly that he had no time to even make a guess as to what was real and what was illusion: Flames of all colors spun in the blue moonlight, a river of cool tar poured over him like a black waterfall. Fountains spewed molten streams of pure silver and gold. Fields of grass and cattails swelled and rolled like ocean waves in a storm. Shimmering curtains of ice crystals danced and tinkled in the wind. Diamonds melted into screaming puddles, rainbows wove in and out of a rubbery forest like curled ribbon. Plants sprouted, grew, and died in the blink of an eye. Roland passed straight through solid walls of rock, or perhaps the rock passed through him. Everywhere there were shadows and eerie whispers and music that lit all of his emotions on fire at once.
Suddenly, all movement stopped, leaving Roland dizzy and breathless. He found himself lying, or perhaps floating, face down upon a cloud of incredibly soft down, rocking in a fragrant mist. A beautiful woman with raven hair and pure olive skin was rubbing his back and shoulders, and his muscles quivered in ecstasy at her touch. This is bliss, absolute bliss!
But he tensed up as the memory of the trapped deer and the winged serpent raced back into his consciousness. The hands responded by digging more deeply into his muscles, carefully caressing and massaging each strand of muscle. Strong yet soft fingers, deliciously cool to the touch, pressed down on his eyes.
As wonderful, as perfect as it felt, a nagging discomfort kept bobbing to the surface. I have been taken from somewhere. This is not my life. This is not where I should be.
He struggled to rise but found he had not the strength to fight the massaging fingers. Only with great effort did he manage to speak. “Where am I?”
“Be still. Let not your heart be troubled,” whispered a voice, soft and sweet as a breeze on a stifling day, comforting as raindrops falling on drought-stricken ground. “Let nothing darken your thoughts. Peace, my friend. Peace.”
Yes, peace. Peace. Oh, it was so easy to lie back and float down the stream of bliss. So utterly restful.
Too restful, too intoxicating. This could not be right. It all reminded him of the stories of irresistible sirens sweetly lulling sailors off their guard, luring them to their doom. He bolted upright. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
“Be at peace,” insisted the honeyed voice, and her touch seemed to melt his bones. Yet stubbornly he fought against the intoxication.
“Tell me!” he begged. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“I am many persons and many things. Yet I am no one and nothing at all. You can no more hold in your mind an idea of what I am than you can hold a breath of air in your hand. There is but one thing you need know, Roland Steward; I am at this moment the best friend you have in the world, and I bring you a peace you have never known.”
“Who are you?” insisted Roland, struggling to clear his head. “And how do you know who I am?”
The woman dissolved and in her place a spark kindled and grew into a brilliant ball of light, so intense that Roland felt as though he were staring into the sun, except he could do so without being blinded.
“Feel now,” came the voice. “Taste the air. Do you sense any evil?”
“Well, no, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know what evil smells like. That’s not something our . . .”
But as he was speaking, he found that he did smell something and he recognized the smell as clearly as if it had been a lilac blossom, or a pine log burning upon a fire. And what he was smelling was . . . good will, trustworthiness, charity.
“No, whatever I’m smelling, it’s not evil. But I can’t tell what’s real anymore. I think I’m going insane again and for all I know, you could make evil smell like God himself.”
“You must let go. Relax and be at peace.”
Oh, I want to! Desperately. “You keep saying that, and I wish I could be at peace, but I can’t unless I know what’s going on.”
The voice sighed with a loveliness that warmed Roland to his toes. “That is the paradox we face. Were you to understand, you would not be at peace. And yet peace is where you must be now.”
“But can’t you tell me anything about what is going on?”
A long silence. Finally, “I can. But I can only tell you part of it for the present. Indeed, I hope that a small part is all that you ever come to know. Roland, you have entered the Fifth Realm."
A stab of panic broke through the peaceful aura, like shackles being shattered. The Fifth Realm! The land of those wraiths that feed on people’s pain!
“Shhh! You are in the care of Adonaram. You are safe for now, for I am a Seraph. I will protect you if you let me. You must do one thing and one thing only, and that is to trust me, with all your heart and with all your strength and with all your mind and with all your soul. Will you do that?”
“I’m trying but . . .” Oh, the music! It wafted against his skin like a heavenly breeze. He felt he could reach out and touch it, like putting his hand in a stream of water and it was all so beautiful it made him want to weep.
“Search your memory. Mine your thoughts for jewels of happiness. Retrieve the memories of the purest joy. Let them flow to you now.”
“But can’t you tell me anything--”
“Not yet. Although uncertainty puts you ill at ease, that, at least, is no danger to you. Your only enemies now are those that fear, sorrow, and pain can arm. Think of only that which brings a smile to your heart.”
Roland lay back and closed his eyes and suddenly saw himself and his companions bursting out of Cloudmire into the dry moonlight. “Okay, I got it,” he said, but then he changed his mind. His memory turned to the evening with the shepherds in Tishaara on the eve of Vyarlis.
“Tell me what you see.”
Roland spoke of Delaney and her warm smile, of the time of sharing with the Tishaaran people, of the wonderful story told by an old shepherd in the warm glow of the firelight, of the compassion of the Creator who fashioned the realm bounds, He told of the closeness he felt that night with the kind and selfless people of that Third Realm outpost. As he spoke, he felt he was no longer remembering the night but that he was reliving it. It was all actually taking place. See, there was Delaney, so close he could touch her! Am I going back in time? Can such a thing actually happen in the Fifth Realm?
“Delaney,” he called. “Over here.”
“You are doing well. Keep it flowing. What else has brought joy to you?”
The image of Delaney began to fade. Roland thought a moment, and soon he was walking on a torchlit lawn toward a Raxxar rabble, then came the explosion the blindness, and then hands welcoming to safety, then a flurry of praise and compliments.
“You are a brave soul,” said the voice after a time. “Your trust gives me strength; perhaps enough to carry the day. While memories are but a thin broth to a spirit, nonetheless you have provided the greatest feast I have partaken of in many ages of your kind. I feel its nourishment. That will help, yet the dilemma remains. I dare not say too much.”
“What is the paradox?”
“Not being able to tell you is part of the paradox.”
“Great! Can you tell me anything or do I just have to lie here like a happy stoner?”
“I can tell you that you have entered the Fifth Realm, lured by Draxis, one of the Nephilim.”
Roland shuddered at the memory.
“There lies the paradox,” said the voice. “You have felt it for yourself. The more you know, the more you fear. Every pulse of fear increases your danger. And so I dare tell you little.”
Roland nervously pondered that for a bit. “Okay, but you’re saying that if I trust you, I’m going to be okay?”
“Your life depends upon your trusting me.”
Roland felt a twinge of anxiety.
“You feel the paradox again. Stay at peace; do not not ask questions.
It was far too late for that. “If my life depends on trusting you, does that mean that you are powerful enough to protect me from whatever is in this realm?”
“We are all but shadows of the powers we once were,” said the voice. “But I have power. And I am stronger now than I was.”
“Okay, I’ll buy that. But I’m still confused about who or what you are. I mean, I’ve figured out that you must be a Seraph. But I can’t see you. At least not now. Were you that woman I saw before, or are you just a ball of light or what?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, I mean, that other guy, he was a Nephilim, wasn’t he? I know what he looks like. He’s like a giant snake with wings. Sort of dragonish.”
“A winged serpent? A dragon? Yes. That would be Draxis. Yet, Draxis also looks like a pitiful fawn. ‘Looks like’ is the key, for we do not have physical form. We can look like anything we wish, but we are not that thing. The Fifth Realm is as filled with images and sounds and smells as a forest is filled with trees or a beach filled with sand, although not in so orderly a fashion. There is nothing to touch, for we exist only in thought.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
At this, Roland relaxed mightily. “You mean you’re all nothing but an illusion? And that dragon snake can’t harm me, he can only make me think he can?”
There was a long silence. “Ah, it would be far safer to let to think that the Nephilim can do you no harm. But I cannot deal in lies even if I wished to do so. No, they can harm you. Just as the aid I offer to you now is real and not imaginary. But do not ask me how the harm comes, and do not think upon it. For the paradox still governs you. So I ask you again to put away your curiosity for a time. Answers may come in time when it is safe for them. No more questions. I can bring you contentment now; not such as would have been possible in eons past, but pleasant, nonetheless.”
Roland felt almost as though he were drugged and floating in some sustained state of euphoria. Images crystalized and altered or vanished so frequently that he learned to simply sit back and enjoy them and not attempt to figure out if anything were real or had meaning. Whether he found himself playing in the ocean surf, or enjoying a banquet with Digtry and Delaney and Windglow, or basking under living stars with Sloat and Katra, he simply enjoyed the moment. Time did not seem to exist, or if it did, it did not flow in any orderly fashion. Roland had a sense of repeating many of these moments, which nonetheless felt real and immediate and present and new whenever they occurred. When he was feeling most relaxed, he felt a warm aura surrounding him, which he sensed was as close as he could come to any tangible understanding of Adonaram, a Seraph of the Fifth Realm.
Every so often, amid the surreal, hypnotic quality of the surroundings, Roland experienced moments of extraordinary concentration and lucidity, where he remembered clearly who he was and what he was about in the days before entering the Fifth Realm. He relived his arrival in the realmlands. On one such occasion, he engaged Adonaram in a discussion of the Cold Flames and the realm bonds. Or perhaps it was several conversations. In any event, Roland was never clear on when anything took place in this spirit realm, nor the order in which it occurred, only that it had.
“Just what are Cold Flames?” he asked.
“A method of transport,” came the answer, this time from a waterfall of fiery jewels that enveloped Roland.
“I don’t get it. If there’s nothing physical in the Fifth Realm, why do you need transportation? Can’t you just be anywhere you want?”
“Even thoughts require a means of transmission. Even a spirit cannot suddenly be where it was not. If the place I wish to be is far away, the purple flame is the way to get there.”
“So you travel about on the Fifth through the Cold Flames.”
“No. You were right in observing that transportation is not needed in the Fifth Realm. As you said, nothing physical exists in this realm. There is no other place to get to in the Fifth Realm, because there is no place, as such, in the Fifth.”
“OK, now you’re really blowing my mind.”
“It is really quite simply. Since nothing physical exists in the Fifth Realm, there is no place in the Fifth Realm to travel from or to.”
“But I’m physical, and at the moment I exist in the Fifth Realm, right?”
“No, the physical part of you does not exist here.”
“Then where is it?”
“It lies on the threshold, where you entered.”
Roland was beginning to get a headache trying to hold this all together in his mind. “But I had to travel to the Fifth Realm. I was somewhere else and I then I arrived here. I mean, the Fifth Realm is a place and I got to it. I walked, like an idiot, right across the lagoon to a place that turned out to be the Fifth Realm.”
“I know this part will be hard for you to comprehend. The Fifth Realm exists as a place, only to the lower realms, and only as a result of the realm bonds. Prior to their creation, no Fifth Realm existed. We spirits existed, but of course there was no physical place that spirits called home. In order to separate us from the lower realms, a boundary had to be created. There can exist a place where the spirits are not, only if there is a place where the spirits are. Thus, the Fifth Realm came into being. But once you reach this place that is separate from the place where spirits are not, there is no physicality there. No such thing as a place can exist within such a realm.”
Roland worked that through his mind for awhile. “Okay, I think I can understand that. But then you’ve basically said that Cold Flames don’t have any purpose.”
“They have no purpose in the Fifth Realm.”
“Well, where else could they have a purpose? They are a Fifth Realm power, and Fifth Realm powers don’t work in the lower realms.”
“That is close to the truth. Cold Flames are to a large degree vestigial--a relic of an ancient age. Yet they can still transport us into the lower realms. Of course, once we are in the lower realms, we no longer have Fifth Realm powers, which means we no longer have the flames. So we cannot use them to travel in the lower realms, and we cannot use them to return to the Fifth Realm.”
“So Cold Flames are nothing but a one-way ticket to the lower realms,” said Roland.
“Yes. Ever since the realm bonds were created, that has been so.”
“So that’s the answer to the mystery!” exclaimed Roland. “When we see Cold Flames in the lower realms it is because Fifth Realmers are traveling into those realms. But why would you do that?”
“What do you mean by `when we see Cold Flames in the lower realms?’ Cold Flames are a Fifth Realm phenomenon. They cannot exist in the lower realms. They can transport us there, yet they cannot exist there. If they cannot exist there, you cannot see them.”
“That’s what everybody says. But we have seen them.”
“What did you say?”
“Didn’t you know that Cold Flames have been seen in the Second and Fourth Realms? That’s not just some rumor; I saw them myself. Apparently, I saw a Fifth Realmer there at the same time as I saw the flames. It’s the weirdest mystery: the Cold Flames can’t exist in the lower realms, yet it’s pretty well confirmed that they’ve been sighted.”
Adonaram was silent a long time. “This changes everything. If what you say is true, then we shall have to take some risks with the great paradox.”
“Yeah, about that paradox. I still don’t get what you're talking about.
“The paradox is this: the more you know about the Fifth Realm, Roland Stewart, the more fear will enter your heart. Fear is one of the things on which the Nephilim feed. The more you know of your situation, the more fearful you become and, therefore, the more nutrients you provide to the Nephilim. The more nutrients you provide to them, the stronger they become. The stronger they become, the greater your danger.”
“You’re right. I guess I don’t want to know. anything.”
“Roland, after what you have told me, I see no alternative. You will have to know more than you know at present.” Soothing music surrounded him, carried in on a gentle breeze, the notes so clear and beautiful that it brought tears to Roland’s eyes. Light glowed softly, the colors rich but subdued, the air clean and invigorating. “I shall trust you, Roland, because I sense that you have within you the strength to do this. Can you trust me? And can you trust yourself? The fate of many may depend on your courage to shut out fear.”
Roland felt a sense of dread, which further increased his uneasiness. “But I was taught that feelings are neither right or wrong; they just are. We have no control over what we feel, only over what we do with those feelings. Isn’t that true?”
“Feelings may be neither right nor wrong, but once you enter the Fifth Realm they are a matter of life or death regardless of their moral neutrality. They must be controlled. I can help you with that. Indeed, I am doing so now.” The melody of the song lifted Adonaram high into the air, where it soared like an eagle in absolute stillness. They spoke for a long while about the realms and the history of the realm bonds, and the meaning of the Cold Flames.
“Remember this, Roland. The Nephilim have been starved for centuries of your time and that has left them weak. In their current state, they cannot inflict physical harm. They can only make you think that you are experiencing it.”
“Okay. Got it. No matter what happens, it’s all just a dream. I just keep that in mind and I’m fine. No problem.”
“Oh, but it is a problem.” Roland jumped at the sound of the voice, which was clearly not Adonaram. It was predatory--the voice of a deadly beast that had been stalking him in secret and now moved in for the kill. And yes, there was an unmistakable scent of evil in the air. “You are afraid, Roland Stewart. Deathly afraid. The reek of your weakness led me to you. Your fear gives me strength, more than enough strength to overpower your pitiful so-called protector.”
A wave of terror washed over Roland and he could hear a moan of delight coming from the shadow that swirled before him. That reminded him that he was feeding the beast with his fear. Steeling himself against the enemy, he drew upon courage and confidence and anger.
“No, not the anger,” came Adonaram’s wispy voice. “Hatred is the Nephil’s most nourishing food of all. That, at least, you must deny it.”
Roland nodded and tried hard to compose himself.
A rotten stench arose that nearly gagged him, and he found himself waist deep in slime in the midst of a vast graveyard. Except that the bones lay uncovered, in twisted forms, and Roland could see agony written on every skull. “Do you know what this is, Roland? This is your destiny.”
“That’s not exactly news,” said Roland, employing flippancy now as a defensive weapon. “We mortals know we’re mortal, and that’s not a big problem. We may not be tickled about it but we’re basically resigned to it.”
Then came a most horrid, spine-freezing laugh. “Ah, but there is a difference, Roland Stewart. I, Draxis, am going to play with you, and by the time I am done, the place you see here will seem more glorious than the gates of heaven to you. This vision is the best that you have to look forward to.”
Roland gulped. “Go suck an egg! I know you can’t hurt me. You can only make me think you can hurt me. Sorry, old buddy, I’m not buying it.”
The laughter rose and crashed down on him in waves, louder and more cruel than ever. “Is that what Adonaram told you? That I cannot really hurt you? Oh, what a pathetic illusion! Tsk, tsk! The sniveling little milksop of a Seraph should have told you the truth. But it is afraid of telling you the truth because of the “paradox,” I believe they call it.
“Adonaram cannot tell you the whole truth for fear of what it will do to you. The truth is that I can make whatever I do to you as real as anything you have ever experienced. Fool! Does it matter that when you feel the agony of your bones breaking, no bones are actually breaking? The pain you feel will be as real as if they were. In fact, here is the most terrifying truth. You will feel the exact pain you would feel if I broke every bone in your body. I can and will inflict unimaginable suffering upon, suffering that will drive you mad.
“Roland Stewart, you will experience your own slow, horrible death as if it really happened. Then when that is over, we will do it all again. Hour after hour. Day after day. Year after year. You will die a thousand excruciating deaths, Roland. And when those are done, a thousand more. I can make you die in agony every day. A dozen times every day. And I will feast on it.”
Roland worked hard to block out all thoughts of what Draxis was saying, but he was sliding quickly into despair.
“Oh does that frighten you? Well, Roland Stewart, it gets worse,” said Draxis, each word ringing in Roland’s ears like the tolling of a bell of doom. “Take the worst nightmares you have ever had. Visions so terrible to imagine that you woke up praising the heavens that they were only a dream. Visions that could not happen in real life. I can make them happen in your mind. You will feel them and the perception will be just as if they were actually occurring. I can and will make your worst nightmares come true. Hour after hour. Day after day. Year after year.”
“I suppose you could, if I let you,” said Roland, weakly.
“Tell yourself it is all an illusion,” cackled Draxis. “Do you think that will help?”
Desperately Roland called to Adonaram. He focused all of his thought on the Seraph and the bliss of the massage and music that seemed to have faded away. “I have help, you know.”
“Call to Adonaram all you like. You cannot stop me, Roland Stewart, and neither can the Seraph. And here is proof.”
The air suddenly cleared and Roland saw an image of the dark-haired beauty that had been massaging him. The woman was bound tightly in the coils of the gigantic winged serpent Roland had briefly seen by the shore, so tightly that the cords were cutting into her skin. She was sobbing in anguish, unable to move a muscle. “Be strong, Roland!” she cried. “Please, you must be strong! Every tremor of fear you show makes him stronger.” Roland could feel the distress and the edge of failure in her voice, as if they were poisonous fumes filling the air. The faint haunting harmony slid off-key and then ended in a screech.
“Roland!” sobbed the voice. “Run! You have made him too powerful! I can protect you no longer. Go! You must get out of here! Find the edge of the island and jump! For the love of God, do it now!”
Feeling the icy breath of wraiths upon his neck, Roland tore off in panic into a swirling rainbow mist, with no idea of what direction he should take. He felt the Nephil lapping up the fear and swelling with new energy.
“Too late!” screamed Adonaram in a wretched voice. “You waited too long! You have made him powerful with your fear. You are now his. Forever!"
Blinded by terror, Roland found himself falling into an abyss so dark that it extinguished every ray of hope. An eternity so far beyond misery, so far beyond agony that it was beyond contemplating, with no chance of ever a moment’s relief.
Yet even as he saw the doors slam shut, locking him in his is own private hell of eternity, Roland somehow clung to the hope that had been extinguished. It was in this that his gift for detachment in the face of crisis saved him. For he clung just a few seconds longer to the absent hope, not as one in frantic denial of the truth, but as one clinging to a promise-- a promise that hope was there, exactly where he had last seen it, even though it was no longer visible.
For those few seconds, he set his jaw and shook his head to clear his mind.
Control. I have to keep control.
For those few seconds, he staved off despair long enough to run back the conversation in his mind, looking for that lost ray of hope in the yawning void of his inescapable fate. And with the drums of doom thundering all around him, beginning to envelop him, he spotted it.
Adonaram said to run. But there is no place in the Fifth Realm, and if there is no place, there’s nowhere to run to. So why would the Seraph tell me to run? It wouldn’t! That wasn’t Adonaram!
It was all illusion, and that vision of a helpless Seraph in the grip of the dragon had to be the prime illusion. And in that moment, he realized Draxis’s weakness. If Draxis really had the capability right now to own Roland’s mind to the extent he claimed, to toy with him and torture him as he said, he would be doing so. Ravenous with a centuries-old hunger, he would not have delayed one instant the start of his feast of agony. He would not have restrained himself by nibbling on the hors d’ hoeurves of fear and doubt. The fact that he did not showed that he could not!
Keep your head, Roland! This faker cannot do anything if you do not let him.
“Well done, Roland!” came Adonaram’s voice. A trumpet fanfare burst through the clouds, drowning out the evil drum cadence, trilling in triumph. “Draxis was growing more powerful with each heartbeat of fear. It was fast overcoming me. Very soon it would have grown strong enough to do exactly what it said it would do. But you have fought it off for now, and just in time. The opening is now, Roland! While Draxis is reeling. Jump! Jump for the shore!”
“No!” cried Roland, his exhilaration collapsing by the latest betrayal of his senses. “I know who you are. It’s you, again, Draxis, and you’re playing more of your mind games. Adonaram would never tell me to jump. There is no place in the Fifth Realm, so there’s nowhere to jump to.”
Adonaram reappeared in the form of the beautiful dark-haired woman, lovelier than ever. She smiled a most comforting smile. “Do not hang yourself in the rope of your own cleverness, Roland. Remember, the Fifth Realm appears along the coast of the Fourth from time to time. It is there now. Jump quickly, before Draxis recovers and renews its assault. Despite your heroic efforts, you gave it much to work with and it is now more powerful than I. I have exerted the last of my efforts to hold it off and I can do nothing more for you. Jump!”
“You mean I can get off this place?!” Roland had never felt such relief. As he said it, he felt Adonaram’s pulse quicken, the music grew louder and more animated.
“Go now! Just jump. In no direction.”
“I know. Because there is no direction.” Roland started to leap, feeling an almost uncontrollable lightness in his unexpected release from the nightmare, as though he could jump over the stars. But as he did he heard the start of a thrilling chorus of Seraphim, and he realized what his elation was doing.
“I’m not going yet,” he said. “Not before I thank you and pay you back just a little. Feast on this: thank you, thank you, thank you! You’re beautiful! You're awesome! You totally rock, I love you forever!”
The chorus exploded in eight-part harmony, a hymn of such power and praise that it lifted Roland into the air.
“Go now. You have given me a feast such as I have not enjoyed in many millennia! Go.”
Already soaring high in the air, Roland simply stretched his arms as high as they could go, and closed his eyes. Seconds later, he was flopping about in cold water, salty waves washing him toward a beach strewn with stones and driftwood.