Dante pulled hard on the cigar only to realize it was at its end, nothing left but the cherry burning his lips. He let it fall to the dirt and abandoned the chore of cleaning the hidden solar panels that provided power to Heathen’s Rest. He reached into his jacket pocket with a trembling hand. Nothing. He tried his pants pocket. Nothing. In a desperate last effort, he pulled three glass vials from his shirt pocket. All three were empty. He felt pressure from the blister forming on his burned lip. As always, he reminded himself that he deserved the pain. If he lived in agony for every moment until his last, it would still only be a single grain of sand in the desert he had caused.
Dante had been carefully lacing his cigars with stardust. Traditionally the black and blue drug was mixed and then poured directly on the skin, but Dante needed a more discrete method. He found that if he rolled the cigars just right the dust would react as he smoked. The effect was about a third as potent, which let him function during the day without hearing the voice.
The voice was ruin. The voice was murder. The voice was the ripping of his soul from flesh, and it would be coming back very soon if he didn’t do something about it. Dante made for the entrance to Heathen’s Rest. He still felt the slight warping of the world around him that let him know the stardust was working. The cave opening looked like the night sky with little shooting stars flying around. The illusion settled his beating chest. He had been living in a constant state of hallucination for years since he left the company. How much longer could he drift his days away?
The Skyblade’s parking space was empty. Raywick must have left early this morning. Crazy kid, I hope he doesn’t try to go find that lunatic Freeman. I should have never said anything. Dante moved at a brisk walk, not a panicked run that would alarm people, but not a wondering pace that would invite conversation either. He kept his eyes on his maintenance notebook and his path in a straight line to his quarters.
A ball of bright light bounced up the path towards him pulling in all the darkness around it. The pull almost knocked him off balance as a group of kids chased it up into the main cavern.
“Hey Mr. Dante!” a girl yelled as she passed him brandishing a smile three times too big for her face.
It was Kenrra, Linus’s daughter. The black hole of light must have been a toy he made her. Him or Raywick anyway. He always tried to show the kid the importance of helping people. Dante gave his life to the people of Heathen’s Rest. He figured they could do a lot better with it than he had.
He ducked into the little section of the cave he called home. A giant wave of flowstone washed down into beautiful golden icicle shapes like a waterfall frozen in time. Three stalagmites stood waist high with a spare shirt, toolbelt, and water jug hanging from the proud tips. A rust-covered chest lay at the foot of his cot. The scene looked exactly as it should have, and that was the problem. Nothing was distorted. He tore through the chest like a tornado and found nothing in the mess. The kid must have been into his supply again. Dante beat his fists on the footlocker.
“Dammit Raywick, what have you done?”
Well, I think he’s done you a magnificent favor, Dante. It’s been too long my old friend, it’s time we let our colleagues know where you’ve been hiding, the voice said.
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“I … will not let you control me,” Dante said.
The voice let out a deep bellowing laugh that echoed around the inside of his skull. With no need to stop for air, food, or drink the voice laughed, and all of Dante’s demons laughed with it.
Tessa turned the page, careful not to disturb a mushroom growing from the binding. She was reading a section on experiments done by an ancient Solarian physicist. She didn’t know what a physicist was exactly, but this person, whose name had been redacted by mold, had been working on something called particle entanglement. The more Tessa learned about the time before the great war, the more she realized she didn’t know. The process was infinitely frustrating. No one knew what a particle was and the last entanglement she was involved in didn’t go well. It was like only having the centerpieces to a puzzle, you could fit some together, but the picture didn’t make sense without context.
Tessa laid out the facts in front of her. She would remove what she didn’t know and let logic prevail. A particle was a thing, that much had to be true. An entanglement was like tying shoestrings, the separate strings bond together until one starts lying and keeping secrets. The light of her headlamp flickered breaking her concentration.
Dammit, Raywick why did the realms put you in my world? I’m stuck in a cave with a hodgepodge of outcasts that might be obliterated by the company any day, and there just has to be a boy with a cute smile and rebel attitude to turn my brain to mush.
She tapped her headlamp, and the light came back to life as a thought began to form in her mind.
Even his slight limp is cute.
She smacked the headlamp again. The light overcame the mush and her mind cleared. Even after the great war, a fractured belief system had survived on Solaris. They called it the realms. Everyone liked to believe that the universe was connected and that there was some greater power guiding their lives. Tessa thought it was just a convenient way to put reason behind all the suffering. But the physicist had done an experiment that proved two things could be bonded and react in the same way no matter the distance. Did that prove that, even across worlds, everything we did could have reactions to others? Perhaps there were a thousand realms entangled by fate, that would agree with the title of the book at least.
Tessa pulled the headlamp free of her red curls and let out a sigh. Here I am worrying about particle entanglement, and I don’t even know what time it is, she thought. She laid Theory of the Thousand Realms to rest in its proper place and headed to the main cavern to check the light well. The best way to tell the time in Heathen’s Rest was a hole in the ceiling. It had been charming at first, not being a slave to time like back in Aeos, but Tessa found that she would lose days in the library if she wasn’t careful.
On the way up she heard the echoes of conversion.
“I just don’t understand… how is the Lumerite worth all of this?”
The raspy voice was familiar, but Tessa couldn’t quite place its owner.
“I’ve done what you’ve asked, just let these people return to work safely as you promised. They are worth more to you that way.”
What in the realms is going on?
Dante came laboring down the path towards Tessa like a man rushing to grab something forgotten in a burning house. She felt a drowning sensation as the full weight of fear fell upon her. She had heard something she shouldn’t have. Questions swirled in her mind. What was Dante talking about? And who was he even talking to? The disheveled man was alone, and so was she. Tessa picked up a sharp rock the size of her hand and held it behind her back. Through all her research of ancient Solaris, one thing was clear. Victims weren’t often survivors.
When their paths finally coalesced, Dante passed ignoring her like she was just another rock to step over. Overtaken by some madness he labored on deep in his own counsel. The words echoed up from behind her this time.
“What do you mean by some?”