Chapter 6: Death and Madness
> In sleep he sang to me
> In dreams he came
> That voice which calls to me
> And speaks my name
> - “Music of the Night,” Phantom of the Opera
Sophia wasn’t immediately sure how to go about bonding with Tiko, and her ability’s description didn’t give many clues. She finally figured out that if she closed her eyes, she could feel his presence, and by reaching out to him with her mind, she was able to make a connection. A window popped up in front of Sophia, which was especially strange since she hadn’t opened her eyes.
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You currently have 0/1 spirit guides. Create a spirit guide bond with Kisq Tiko?
Yes No
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As soon as Sophia selected yes, she felt her senses explode outward. She could hear the wind whistling through the palm trees in the distance and smell the sweet tang of the fruit growing there, even over the salt on the wind from the ocean. Sophia gasped at the new awareness of the world around her, but before she could open her eyes, she suddenly felt the world closing in around her as a suffocating aura swamped her. She barely felt the thud of her body hitting the ground before she lost consciousness.
* * *
When Sophia’s vision returned, she was standing on the edge of an enormous tower which rose thousands of feet into the sky. Below her, vast swaths of land were covered in a thick green forest, the canopy so dense that she couldn’t see past the first layer of leaves. A few of the taller trees speared up through the canopy towards the sky, though none reached the breathtaking heights of the tower where Sophia stood. In the far distance, Sophia could see the very edge of the forest, and, just past that, the sun’s golden light reflected off a sliver of crystal blue that must have been the ocean.
The tower itself was of rough hewn white washed coral, much like the fort where Sophia had been moments earlier, but without any sign of wear from time or weather. The top of the tower was flat, with a low ridge around the edge, about 6 inches high. There was no other feature at the top of the tower, not even a trap door or apparent way down. Suddenly feeling leery of the heights, Sophia took a step back from the ledge and started to sit down, just to be safe. She had barely gotten to her knees, however, before she was hit with a wave of nausea. Looking out over the forest, she saw what looked to be a massive stormcloud billowing out to cover the entire area.
This stormcloud, however, was distinctly unnatural and made Sophia’s gut clench in a visceral terror. The clouds were lit up with a red hue and the lightning that sparked out with frightening regularity was black, driving the area around it into darkness. One of the taller trees that rose above the forest was struck with a large bolt of the dark lightning and rather than exploding or catching fire, Sophia watched the tree wither and twist, the leaves turning gray and giving off a putrid yellow smoke. Screeches and bellows began to rise from within the forest as everywhere the lightning struck, the trees twisted and warped, the land and air becoming deadly for the animals who had called the forest their home.
Sophia gaped, horrified but helpless as the clouds quickly spanned the entire eastern half of the forest and roiled towards the tower where she knelt. The clouds didn’t rise up to the level of the tower, but even at her height, Sophia’s nose scrunched as the putrid smell reached her, and it left her stomach roiling. The clouds themselves seemed to filter the light of the sun, leaving the entire world tinged with a foreboding crimson light. In mere moments, the storm had overtaken most of the forest that had spanned an entire continent, leaving it a hellish landscape blanketed in death. And high above that, on the tower of white coral, Sophia stared at the devastation and wept.
* * *
Sophia woke with a start, the echo of a voice calling her name still fading from her mind. The voice had sounded familiar, but it faded into barely a memory, and then was gone completely when Sophia sat up in a panic. The sun was shining brightly, which meant that Sophia had slept in and was unacceptably late for work!
In the next moment, Sophia went through a series of emotions in a flash as her mind tried to process everything that had happened. First, the realization that she wasn’t in her bed. Confusion - where was she? Oh, right - memories of the beach, the fort, and Tiko. A flicker of denial - hadn’t it all been a dream? - then resignation. If it was a dream, she was still dreaming because Tiko sat there on one of the stones, staring at her. She could feel him in her mind, their bond almost tangible, but not quite.
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“Are you okay?”
Sophia blinked at the small creature who stared back at her, his squirrel-like face giving off an impression of brows furrowed in concern. “Yeah,” Sophia sighed and rubbed her face, then slid back to lean against the wall. She felt her nose start to tickle, a sign that she was on the verge of crying, but she ruthlessly pushed down the urge. This was neither the time nor the place for a breakdown. “I just… this is a lot, okay?” Worries that she had blocked out threatened to overwhelm her and she swallowed, leaning her head back to rest against the wall, closing her eyes. “I don’t know where I am or how I got here.” Sophia had been referring to this place as Realms of Destiny in her head, but she couldn’t be sure that was true. She didn’t even know for sure that she was inside a video game, despite the game-like prompts in her vision. “And I don’t know how to get home.” That was the scariest part for her. Sophia didn’t have a lot of attachments tying her down at home - some close friends, nieces and nephews that she loved, but no one that depended on her for their lives or livelihoods. Even so, it was her life and she had been happy. Would she never again see her friends or her family? Her students? Sophia didn’t think she could bear that.
“Well…” the kisq tilted his head and seemed to consider. “I can at least tell you where you are.”
“You… can?” Sophia frowned and looked up.
“Sure! You’re on the island.”
Sophia waited for a beat, but when Tiko didn’t say anything else, she groaned and let her head fall back against the wall with a thud. “I must have gone crazy. That’s the only explanation. Better than the alternative - that the entire world has gone crazy and I am now talking to the ghost of a sentient squirrel-monkey hybrid.”
“Hey!” Tiko stomped his foot, scowling. “Who are you calling sentient?” When Sophia only whimpered, he harrumphed. “You aren’t crazy. I know crazy, and you aren’t it. Now, the way I see it, you need answers. And I’m going to help you find them. So, what do you know?”
Sophia was silent for another moment before taking a deep breath and sitting up. “You’re right. About the answers. I… I don’t know much. I still don’t know that this isn’t a dream.”
“Well, maybe not,” Tiko replied, surprisingly agreeable, “But even if it is, there’s nothing you can do about it, yeah? So you might as well play along.”
Sophia figured that’s what a hallucination would say, but she couldn’t really argue the point, so she grudgingly agreed. “Very well. In that case, I know I’m on a beach, in the ruins of an old fort that looks… really familiar.” Once again, Sophia looked around, and felt a shiver run up her spine. This was more than a sense of deja vu. The feeling of familiarity was almost tangible, but when she tried to place it, the memory was just out of reach.
Turning back to Tiko, Sophia frowned. “Do you know the people who used to live here?”
The kisq frowned and looked around, then shrugged. “You mean this? It’s always been here. Like this. Why?”
Sophia shook her head, shaking off the question. Then she looked back, as something else occurred to her. “Tiko, you said that you’d lost control when you attacked me. Why was that?” Inwardly, she was holding her breath. She hadn’t completely dismissed the possibility of rabies and she honestly wasn’t sure what to do if the kisq had been rabid. He’d scratched up her scalp pretty good, and she thought she had remembered teeth being involved. But she wasn’t an expert on rabies and wouldn’t know how to treat such an infection.
But Tiko surprised Sophia by straightening and snarling viciously, though not at her. “It’s that… that thing! The dark thing on the mountain. It’s making the animals crazy!”
Suddenly, Sophia wondered if perhaps rabies would have been the easier answer. “Dark thing? What does it look like?”
“It’s dark!” Tiko answered with a tone that said the answer was obvious and Sophia was stupid for not understanding.
“Right. So… how is it making the animals crazy?”
“It’s the music!” Tiko started hopping on its stone in agitation. “It gets into your mind and tells you what to do! It started with the worgen pack that roams the jungle, but lately, it’s been whispering to the other animals, the birds and the smaller creatures. Most of the time, it drives us crazy. I think only the worgen have stayed not-crazy, but they can’t resist the call of the music.”
“What does it want? This dark thing that plays music to control the animals?”
Tiko hesitated, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I tried to avoid it after the other kisq starting going crazy, but I was hungry and I wandered too close to the mountain. That’s the last thing I remember before… the music. Horrible music, bad notes.” Tiko shuddered and Sophia frowned, thoughtful.
From the kisq’s description, Sophia imagined he could be describing anything, from a magical spell gone awry to an actual monster with sound-based powers like a siren. There also was no telling whether it only affected creatures with animal-like intelligence or whether Sophia would be affected as well if she got too close. Finally, Sophia wondered if there might be any connection to the mysterious fort, but she was able to mostly dismiss that possibility with a question.
“This dark thing - has it always been there, on the mountain?”
“Oh, no! The dark thing arrived…” Tiko hesitated and then held up his paws, all 10 claws out. “This many minutes ago.”
Sophia was pretty sure the little kisq didn’t actually know how to count, or what a minute was, but if he remembered a time before the music, then the origin of the dark thing on the mountain wasn’t likely connected to the fort, which had been in ruins for as long as Tiko could remember.
“Okay.” For another long minute, Sophia considered. She still didn’t know exactly where she was, but she did have some more clues to work with. “What else can you tell me about the island, Tiko? Are there any more ruins like this one?”
Tiko suddenly grew very serious and he nodded. “Yes. But we don’t go there. Even before the music, we didn’t go there.”
“Why not?”
“It’s forbidden.”