PHANTASIA (11 page)

“Raven has nightmares?” Butz asked.

“She’s never mentioned anything about them to me,” Red added skeptically. He wondered briefly if they were something she had wanted to hide.

“You can connect to her dreamscape? You can help pull her out then!” Magnus exclaimed after the two of them.
 

“Exactly. Not just me, a healer’s connection can span multiple people. I think I can get all of us there. We can use the crystal to enter into the same deep sleep she’s in so that we won’t accidentally wake up and leave someone behind.”
 

“That’s risky,” Magnus replied. “We’d be bringing in our own fears as well…”
 

“It’s worth a shot,” Butz replied. “We can’t just leave her here, and she’d do the same for us.”

“Butz is right,” S answered. “We have to give it a shot. Plus, it will still primarily be
her
dreamscape. I’m sure our influences will be negligent.”
 

“What do we do then?” Red asked, looking directly at Magnus. Magnus looked surprised to be suddenly given charge over the decision, but hesitated for only a second before replying.

“We’ll give it a shot,” he sighed.
 

“How will it work?” Butz asked.
 

“It’ll be just like any of the connections I’ve made before, it’ll just feel more powerful. Don’t begin staring at the crystal until I tell you to,” S replied. The healer planted herself right next to Raven and dug deeply into the flazb until she was securely strapped inside. The other three did the same right after her.
 

“Okay, sure,” Red said. “What if these toadstool things notice us?”

“They won’t feel our presence until we’re asleep. They can only sense you in the astral plane. Raven must’ve stared into the crystal before realizing what it was,” S replied. “And anyways, all they’d do is stick us into these spires, and we’ve already done that for them.”
   

In the next few minutes, Red felt the familiar sensation of his own conscience meshing with S’, recalling emotions and memories that he knew weren’t his. He was somewhat used to this, having gone through the connection several times before, but soon felt Butz, Magnus, and Raven as well — an overwhelming wave of emotions he wasn’t expecting. His vision blurred, and he felt as though he were sharing their physical senses as well.
I guess she wasn’t exaggerating about this one being more powerful,
he thought to himself as he struggled to distinguish between his own sensations and those of his team.
 

“Go!” S shouted softly, catching everyone by surprise. As he stared into the crystal, Red felt the thrill of his consciousness slipping away for the second time during the field test.
 

“Does anyone have any idea what her nightmare is going to be about?” Butz asked in a dazed voice. “It occurred to me, we have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into.”
 

“I do,” S replied. “Brace yourselves, and pray that it doesn’t feel too real.”
 

Chapter 5: Gnashars and Nightmares

The rocky interior of the cavern had vanished behind a thicket of ghost white pillars with skeletal branches that extended from the ground like frozen claws. It took a moment before Red realized that the pillars were trees, albeit gaunt and desolate looking ones that resembled nothing he had ever studied. Each of their branches were finger thin and shaped into elaborate spirals like the braids of a miniature galaxy. He looked down and saw that his body was waist deep in a pool of slush. There was no solid ground anywhere in sight, only a vast marsh steeped with carpets of a black algae and estranged bits of floating ice. The land stretched on like this for as far as he could see — a frozen everglade that conquered its horizon with a collection of eccentric flora. He looked to his right, where he saw Butz, Magnus, and S, all of whom looked equally bewildered, and then up, towards the sky, where something seemed to be off. It took a moment for the question to register in his head.
 

“Why are Avalonia’s stars so far away?” he asked out loud. From where he stood, both stars were mere specks in the sky, shrunk against a backdrop of misplaced constellations. Their unusual distance created a dimmer daytime atmosphere than what Red was used to. The blue star, Aleph, seemed disproportionally closer than its red sister, Gama, drowning the hue of Avalonia’s usual starlight into an ultra-blue tone and rooting the sky into a perpetual state of twilight.
 

“Because we’re not in Avalonia anymore,” Magnus answered in a dazed tone. “We’re in the glacial swamps of Takis,” he added while intently observing their surroundings.
 

“Takis? We’re in Takis? How did we get here?” Red asked curiously.
 

“We’re in Raven’s dreamscape, Red. You can’t forget that — this isn’t real,” S answered while pinching him. It seemed obvious now that he thought about it, and he wondered how he had forgotten.
None of this is real,
he repeated to himself. He looked down at his hands. He had both of them.
Takis. Takis.
Suddenly, he realized what Raven’s nightmare was going to be about.
 

The glacial swamps of Takis loosely referred to a collection of arctic wetlands encircling the planet’s equator. The subzero temperatures of the forested region spawned a diverse set of ecosystems with creatures that exhibited an extreme tolerance for cold and acidic environments. Takis itself was the first planet to be colonized beyond the metroid belt, even before Iris, despite being further away from the center of their solar system. Roughly about twice the size of Avalonia, Takis was too cold to be habitable anywhere beyond its equatorial regions, where hundreds of major cities had formed around major Cron deposits. Speculations were made that underneath Takis’ beds of frozen ice, warm oceans could have given birth to underwater civilizations like the mnes of Eaut, but nothing of the sort has ever been confirmed. Like the three other outer planets, Takis’ sources of Cron led to a rapid pace of colonization, and after only a few centuries, its population exceeded that of Avalonia.

“We’re supposed to find Raven in
this?”
Butz groaned. “At least I don’t feel the cold.”
 

“Don’t be so sure,” Magnus replied quaintly.
 

“What do you mean? I feel fine, and I’m sitting in half frozen water. My body’s not using mana to warm up the area around me either, isn’t that what happens if you’re in an uninhabitable environment?”
 

“Your body
is
releasing energy - in the
real world
, because it thinks that all of this is real,” S answered. “Luckily we’re wrapped in flazb. That explains how people are preserved in this state for so long within their nightmares, and also why Raven’s energy level was in flux. She must be using up her energy in her dreamscape, and then having it restored by the flazb.”
 

“What happens if we die here?” Red asked.
Should’ve known the answer to that before I jumped in here,
he mused to himself.
 

“It cycles you into a deeper state of the nightmare,” S replied. “And if you die there, even deeper. Each level a more raw state of Raven’s subconscious, where her fears and thoughts take on more abstract forms.”
 

“But we’re all connected to a single dreamscape —”
 

“So you’d get stuck in a combination of Raven’s mind, and bits of ours, inside the composite folds of all of our thoughts. And if you didn’t understand what the fears were because they’d be more abstract, you would have no way out,” S added darkly. “And if she wakes up before you can get out, to be honest, I have no idea what plane you’d be stuck in. It would be a broken dreamscape made up of fragments of our minds.”
 

Butz gave a long whistle after her reply and then began wading through the mire. The algae clung to his waist as he tread along, like shards of a thin molasses floating on water. Although his sense of smell was off, Red could tell this place had a sickly sweet aroma that combined with the sting of the cold to electrify your nostrils. It was a memory that he had — or that Raven had — that he now shared with her. Beyond that, he could feel a mix of other emotions, a familiar combination of fear and wonder, terror and fascination, dread and curiosity.
 

“Wait! Do you know where you’re going?” S shouted after him.
 

“Yes, of course,” Butz replied with a pep as he continued. “Haven’t you all studied the maps of Raven’s subconscious?”

“There should be a city somewhere nearby; Takis is where Raven grew up before Avalonia. This must be close to where she lived,” S remarked. Red knew that Raven had grown up in one of the outer planets, but not that it was Takis.
 

“Fantastic, let’s just find someone to ask for directions then, shall we,” Butz replied sarcastically. Deciding that moving in any direction was better than standing still, Red, Magnus, and S eventually followed behind him. Moving through the algae proved to be particularly difficult; the substance was much heavier than it seemed. It had been concentrated to thicker and more efficient colonies over the course of many years. Linx tread through the swamp right next to Butz, and it wasn’t for a while until Red imagined how peculiar the cat’s presence was. He realized, then, how difficult it was to recognize the irrational in his current state of mind.
 

“Butz…why is Linx here?” he asked curiously.
 

“And why is he so big?” Magnus followed up. Red looked at Magnus for a moment and thought it was odd that he was wearing a white crown on his head, but could not remember if he had it on back in the caverns. He decided not to ask.
 

“I don’t know…” Butz sighed. “Linx why are you so big? And why are you here?”
 

“
Obviously
because this is how you see me in your mind,” the Aeyz Cat replied matter-of-factly. His fur now flashed a spectral jade green, reflecting the light around him like the body of a phantom. Red thought he had a funny voice, like that of a highly intellectual scholar, but held back from laughing for the sake of being polite. The cat looked at him glaringly right then, as if it had read his mind.
Why didn’t he ever talk before,
Red thought as they all kept trekking across the swamp.
Must’ve been difficult to have been hiding it for so long.
The cat had a broad and nasal accent. It reminded Red of what elves sounded like, but with a far more deliberate tone.

 
“There is something watching us, I should add, since the lot of you are too dim witted to notice,” Linx added rudely.
   

“What?” Magnus choked. “Where?” They looked around haphazardly until they saw it — a pair of beady eyes half submerged in the shallow mire, watching them patiently from afar. Linx laughed softly to himself as he watched the four of them freeze in place, unsure of what to do about the hidden creature. Its eyes were small and yellow, but Red was unwilling to bet that the creature was of a similar proportion. Nearby, a wide curving trail in the water snaked its way to them, betraying the approach of another of its kind.
 

“Ahh and look at that, he’s calling his friends,” Linx chuckled. “It looks like this is the end for the lot of you. Good riddance.” Red noted that Linx sounded awfully a lot like his owner, and wondered briefly if familiars were the ones that ended up being like their owners - or if it was the other way around.
Probably the other way around
he mused
.
A third pair of beady eyes approached in between the two that were watching them, and as the four of them quietly turned around to walk away from them, two more pairs swam around from behind them.
 

“Would you mind explaining the dying part again?” Butz asked tactfully.
 

“Shhh…don’t make any noise or sudden movements,” Magnus replied.
 

“Ahh yes, let’s pretend we aren’t here.”

“Butz, shut up!” S whispered back loudly as the many pairs of eyes continued to hover around them. They waited there, in perfect stillness, for the longest five minutes that Red had ever experienced. One of the eyes that had come from behind them soon broke out into a movement, circling around them and coming closer. Red felt his mana seeping into his hands as he prepared to draw for a cast, but hesitated from summoning any fire in case it provoked the creatures. In a slow and heavy pace, the one that kept circling them began to rise from the water, letting its long snake-like body tower above the four of them as it demonstrated its full height. The critter was an immense orange worm with a thick body and an oversized mouth that constituted for most of its head, one lined from end to end with saber-like teeth that resembled skewers. It carried a large colorful shrub in its mouth, which it cautiously let down across the four of them. Red kept glancing behind himself to check for sudden movements in any of the other creatures, but they remained submerged in the water, watching the four of them with their beady eyes. After several moments of an idle stand-off, the creature that had dropped the shrub in front of them picked it up and swallowed it in one gulp, then drew another shrub from nearby and placed it in front of them again. Following another long pause, where it continued to stare them down, it let out a deafening roar that reverberated across the swamp.
 

“I think it’s calling more of its kind,” Magnus whispered worriedly.

“They won’t hurt you,” a voice came from above them. For a split second Red thought it might have been Raven, but it was a small boy, no more than thirteen years of age, whose pearl white clothing let him blend in with the trees. He had high cheek bones, a magnetic smile, and a youthful frame. He sat at the neck of one of the spiral branches, balanced perfectly on the thin strip of bark like he had practiced the position a thousand times over. The only thing that made him noticeable against the pale white tree was his hair — a mop of messy dark strands. He carried a sling around his shoulders, and a gem encrusted cutlass against his waist.