Chapter 130 - Hijacked
The golden threads rushed into him, heating up his body. In another moment, the grays in his perception saturated beyond measure, and then came a sudden jerk.
"Whoaa!" he screamed, and something pulled at his mind. He braced for pain, yet none came. Instead, it felt like floating in a river and letting the stream whisk you away.
The golden flare disappeared, and…
Wait, is that…me? For an instant, his perception populated with the surroundings of the room, but it was as if the origin of his perception was behind his back. And that tug pulled again—
Schwaa
The world remained oversaturated, but he finally calmed down. I swear, that was me. Wasn't my 'flesh' going to be pulled, too? Before he could make any more judgments, his white reality faded into a bright hue.
This repeated a dozen times with different colors before their rate of change sped up, and all of them began blending together, making sounds that were naught but hollow echoes.
Vern just watched on in awe.
The colors were so brilliant he couldn't believe he was 'seeing' them. It has to be my perception, right? There was no way the human eye could sense this much vividness. He tried 'looking' around, but everything was more of the same.
Seconds passed, or was it minutes, before something changed.
One of the hues making this tunnel came off like a thread from a sweater. As if blown by an inexplicable wind, it billowed opposite to the direction of his perceived motion—stretching off eternally into the canvas of colors.
Huh…? Is this normal? The thought of a failed travel terrified him. That would be a pitiful death.
His surroundings sheared and distorted as more strands came off the walls, and the tunnel became sparse. He tried to flail, but he had no limbs to move. He was just that—a ball of consciousness.
In some time, the far ends of these threads attracted each other and began assembling into shapes. Shapes he'd seen. Shapes he knew. Shapes he understood—the runes.
It's happening again! His fear swiftly turned into excitement, but mixed within was an unhealthy amount of uncertainty. Are these runes really not from the people organizing this confluence, then?
It was still hard to say. What if these runes were the underlying concept that facilitated this consciousness travel? Yeah, anything is possible.
The more he perceived them, the more they encompassed his perception. As if those runes held more than just verbal meaning, new sight began to overlay on the former, and it transitioned into…
Darkness.
No. More like nothingness.
Darkness had an intonation of the color black to it. This? This was nothing. After all, perception is more than just colors or sight.
In this endless void, he waited.
.
.
.
Until something spoke. Words? No, sounds. They bored through his skull or whatever equivalent of it existed in this realm. But they are so faint.
Yet, these voices were the only ripple in this still lake. So he thought of moving towards it, and his origin of perception obliged. He'd already waited for quite a while, and nothing had changed.
Soon, the voices got louder, and the distant noises became echoes. Echoes became cacophonies, and before he knew it, they gripped his psyche and whispered into his mind.
"wIll thz gld tea ivela mih"
"cetare cerate eracte etraec creeta"
He willed his hands to grab hold of his skull to soothe this bludgeoning headache; didn't do much. His flesh wasn't really here.
Feeling unsure about his decision to proceed, he looked back, and an infinite void greeted him. Fuck. My only choices are to move forward or wait here for who knows how long.
He chose the former.
The whispers were nasty, but they had yet to reach the point of overwhelming him. However, the more he moved towards the source of these whispers, the worse they became.
"pleh llep hllp eee llsha sdg"
"em rrifam"
Vern did his best to ignore all the ramblings as he waded through more of this all-consuming darkness. Yet, as terrible as the voices were, they were still a solace when null was all that surrounded him.
He gritted his proverbial teeth and kept chugging along. There's surely a source of all this.
The cacophonies continued to meld and amplify, becoming an incoherent mess once again, and when doubt and regret colored every inch of his mind, he saw something.
A line.
Vern somehow sped up as he finally found a change in this monotony. The sole line continued to grow, stretching from his left all the way to the right.
He continued to shorten the distance, for the whispers were eternal, and he would only do his psyche a favor by arriving at his destination—if there was one—quickly.
That's when another line joined in. Then a couple more, and then a dozen, but they floated and flickered aimlessly. Hmm… Vern decided to touch the fire to see if it burned by observing the line closely under his viewpoint.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Whoosh. As if something clicked in place, the floating lines suddenly rushed towards that singular point of his focus, and a vague outline formed there. Was that a…strip? A bandage? A plank?
It was just an outline, so it was pretty hard to tell.
Soon, however, a new wave of whispers threatened his focus, and the strip exploded into aimless floating lines yet again.
This…
For some reason, he felt his heart beating faster. Maybe not the physical rhythm of its beats, but the adrenaline that came with it.
He steeled his mind and continued pushing further. More lines sprung forth from the void and soon came the point where thousands—no, millions of these gathered around in a small space, out in the distance.
These edges of white in nothingness hovered all around him, and as if to tax him for standing here, the assault of whispers grew heavier.
Ughh. This is annoying.
Whatever had corralled him into this realm wanted him to come precisely here, didn't they? Something within him wanted to rebel and go against this choice forced upon him.
Yet, his rational mind weighed the pros and cons and realized waiting around for whispers to end him wasn't a good idea either.
Hahhh…
He sighed. Really, the only choice here was to observe these lines. Doing so caused them to come together and reveal the underlying structure of reality. He eyed the cluster in the middle. It was pretty obvious what he was supposed to do.
So, he started from the fringes instead. Always paid to be cautious, after all. He focused on the most significant cluster after the one in the center, and random lines floating around it quickly came together, forming another strip.
Vern didn't waver and followed this strip's length to the center of it all. Pain thrummed in his head, and he could practically feel his representation escaping him.
Hnggh. He sharpened his intent and sped up. The further he moved, the blurrier and distorted the lines back at the fringes became. They exploded back into their initial chaotic state when he focused too far away.
It's as if they had so much inherent chaos within them that they'd only remain whole when actively observed.
Faster, then. Stability! The speed of lines coming together upped by a notch, and surprisingly, nothing untoward happened. So he skipped a bunch of smaller clusters to reach that central one with millions of lines.
When he did, a jolt of energy crackled through him, and he practically felt the representation separate from his thought space. Fuck! Why is this so expensive?
His massive reservoir of representation emptied like a steam chamber, leaving him in droves. Yet, he furrowed his brows and kept at it. If I lose focus now, the whispers will make it impossible to try again.
Aghh… he grunted to himself. Fortunately, his efforts bore instant fruit. The chaotic ensemble of lines slowly came together, and a shape found form in chaos.
The more he focused on it, the clearer it became. Thousands of lines combined together to first form the outline of hundreds of those twisted strips—one on each side of a hollow center.
Myriads of lines culminated into this twirl, but from within their sublime curving mass dangled…fingers? The more the shape solidified, the deeper his frown grew.
More lines emerged, and shapes that seemed like arms materialized on the hoops’ other end, tied by those twisting strips. That's when he noticed something odd. The strips weren't just wrapping around the skin; they…pierced through it—impaling the wrists.
The central outline of a body began to take shape in the cluster—limping downward, held only by the two wrists as the anchors.
He felt his brain fogging up, almost as if his fleshly body had forgotten to breathe. A mix of perplexity and fear washed over him. He knew this whole ordeal was uncanny right from the start. But this just made it worse.
What is a human doing here?
He'd be less surprised if something alien-like what he'd seen during the Duskfall formed from the process. But this…? The conjectures in his mind were going wild.
Hundreds of more strips manifested out of a dark void all around the body, seeming to wrap around those hands.
Perturbed, Vern flared his eyes harder, and almost all his representation left him in a single instant.
Snap
That's when his mind froze as something else entered his skull. Something other than the destructive ravings.
"Thou…came?" resounded a whisper within his mind—standing out amongst the ravings without even trying to. Myriads of feelings projected into him from those words, and his similar past experience with Esther only hammered home the sorrow and…pain within them.
Yet, he didn't have the luxury to feel it. A shiver went down his spine, and the words scraped at his very psyche—worse than any of the other whispers. He instantly lost the focus out of sheer panic.
Fuck. It'll all break—
It didn't.
Nothing happened. As if his observation didn't matter anymore, the ensemble of lines retained their shape.
When he had enough brains to perceive things again, he got a full view of what became of that cluster.
The outline vaguely resembled that of a woman. They—uh, she? He didn't know if gender was even a thing for this entity, but the feelings enveloping him, as well as their outline, made him want to think of them as a woman.
Hundreds upon hundreds of strips emerged from nothingness, merging into her upturned arms and dangling legs. It almost seemed as if they were nailed on a cross, except he knew it was two heaps of strips wrapping and piercing through her wrists.
It was all just outlines, so it was hard to make out anything concrete, but there was something wrong about this image. It was like he was seeing life for the first time ever; it was too…raw? Too…pitiful.
Worse were the words—for they still ravaged his mind. He commanded his body to take rapid, deep breaths, and dozens upon dozen seconds passed before he had the mind to process it all.
Snap!
Vern suddenly focused and noticed one of the strips breaking off her body—fizzling away into nothingness.
However, before he could try something, the outlines of that face moved. The change of expression helped him realize she wasn't bundled in a cocoon of those strips, but almost as if they were a part of her body.
Then came a whisper even tinier than last, "We thank thee."
Vern braced himself for pain. Yet, it was nothing compared to the last time. Almost as if he'd gotten accustomed to hearing the voice—or the entity had found ways to make them hurt less. It was so mild it didn't even make him want to scream.
As if knowing when he was ready to receive the next set of words, the voice continued, "For thine gaze…is all we have," and an intense pang of loneliness burst within him.
Wh…what?
When he was back to not shaking like a leaf, he wondered. Thank…me? My gaze is all they have? What?
He ran those words through his mind again and again, unsure what the fuck was going on. He understood the words and their implication but not the logic.
Who the fuck was he in the grand scheme? Nothing.
Someone who could hijack his passage to a council of the planet's 'Visionaries,' the 'secret hand,' shouldn't have any reason to rely on him or his gaze or whatever.
Was that his paranoia speaking? Maybe. But it was more so the intense emotions that exuded from each of their words. It just…didn't agree with his worldview of balance, of equivalent exchange.
So he bit his tongue and willed to speak the same question he'd asked Yharl Ballin—the question whose answer had shattered any delusions he had of a higher being watching over him.
It had broken something within him—for the good and for good.
It was probably a stupid question to ask a being like this. Yet, she wanted his 'help.' He couldn't not find it suspicious. What would they even stand to gain from praising or relying on someone as insignificant as him?
He wanted to know.
He knew he had zero control of his life and death the moment he was pulled out of his body. It wasn't a pleasant feeling, but such disparity in strength and means only awoke one sentiment within him.
Indifference.
Towards death and the outcome. He would strike a fine balance of cautiousness and rationality, but that was about it. Rest would be left to the whims of his mind.
.
.
.
When he searched it, what came to him weren't words but shapes. So he imposed them onto reality with his perception, and some runes formed using the lines.
They asked, "Why me?"