Chapter 7 ILSEVEL
ILSEVEL
There’s a moment of strange resistance as my physical body and conscious mind both war against the unreality into which my footsteps carry me.
I must fight with every ounce of will I can summon not to turn and run, arms outspread to receive the deadly arrows, which will be my fate if I refuse to honor the test now.
Death seems preferable by far to this terrifying unknown.
But I cannot think or choose for myself alone any longer.
Even as panic thrills through my veins, the twin golden cords, extending from my spirit through the ether, vibrate with profound energy.
Taar. And Diira. Their lives also hang in the balance.
If I am shot down by Licornyn archers, Diira will be hearttorn and then killed. As for Taar . . .
No. I grit my teeth, refusing to think any of the dire thoughts pressing in on my imagination. What’s the use? Taar believes I can do this, believes my connection to Diira is strong enough to see us through. How can I let either of them down?
So I walk on. Into that uncanny landscape, which plays such bizarre tricks on the eyes.
Nothing in my previous life—the life of a spoiled, pampered princess in an altogether ordinary world of stone and dust and disappointment—has prepared me to face the wild wonders of the multi-worlds which have ever existed just beyond my range of perception.
Yet here I find myself, walking with reluctant determination into an unknown far more incomprehensible than any I have encountered.
Even the darkness of the vardimnar, though it seethes with raw evil, is, at least, something.
Not this amorphous confusion over which my mind tries to lay veneers of understanding.
In the end I close my eyes. If I don’t, my mind will simply crack in two, spilling my brains on this featureless soil.
I close them tight and, putting on a little burst of speed, hurtle forward.
One step. Two. Three, four, five, gods! How many?
I could have sworn I would have crossed by now.
Ten, twelve, fifteen, I’ve lost count, but I’m running full tilt now, committed to this course, committed to this trial, committed to—
Diira’s voice shrieks along our soul-tether, bursting in my brain and scattering through my veins.
It’s the last thing I hear, the last thing I know before I am flattened and stretched and dragged and pulled out, one small particle of existence after another.
Soon all that is me is stretched into a single thread, so long, it crosses a hundred worlds all at once.
I see—feel—know—everything and nothing all at once, as eons without measure pass through me like a tunnel of light.
I twist and wind, whatever remains of my conscious awareness rushing over oceans, over mountains, over twisted terrains for which no language spoken by the tongues of men has words to describe.
I see civilizations rise and fall and turn to dust, bizarre entities made of light and energy and flame, all perceived in less than a blink as I speed along that infinitesimal and infinite highway of being.
Eventually—eternities later—the string of selfhood begins to coil up on itself, forming little groups and bunches, bundling back into .
. . something. Something like the experience of me I once knew, long ago.
I feel a sense of selfhood that is strangely cumbersome but not altogether unpleasant.
There’s a little thrill of . . . what is it?
It’s difficult to define existence with thoughts structured from mere words, but I had it just there on the tip of my awareness.
Oh, yes. Fear. Panic. Terror. Madness. All such foolish little things.
I shrug them away with a lash of my long-coiling thread-spirit.
I float in the state of un-ness for a millennia or so, quite uncaring.
I am stardust, drifting lonely through the void between worlds, between atoms. Until I hear something.
A voice. A voice, so clear, so bright, it sears across my consciousness and drags me streaking at the speed of light through planets and nebulas and all the black nothing in between.
My being suddenly centers on that one fixed point of existence, buried deep under layer upon layer of heavy, unwieldy, suffocating time.
Some core part of me knows that voice and is irresistibly drawn to it.
“Elawynn, Goddess of Mercy, grant me your grace. Elawynn, I beseech you. Anaerin, Great Goddess, hear my prayer. If I am worthy of your protection, cast your shadow over me. Nornala, Goddess of Unity . . .”
A sweet voice. So delicate and young. Strange that I should discover a concept for youth after so many eons of expanded being.
I focus my threaded perceptions, smaller, smaller, until I find myself gazing down from a star-strewn sky to a field dotted with tents, alight with campfires.
I care nothing for any of this, however.
Only that voice, which I swiftly pinpoint as coming from one of the indistinguishable rough dwellings.
Small as a mote of dust, I flit down, down, down, through the rough cloth that is as insubstantial to me as air, and into a space of huddled darkness and fear.
She sits in a corner of the small chamber.
A young woman, little more than a girl—and I have capacity for such constructs as womanhood and childhood once more.
Strange that I had forgotten them. She kneels in an attitude of prayer, hands clasped, head bowed beneath a white, beaded veil.
A prayer veil, worn by those who would petition the gods.
I move closer to her, a dancing beam of moonlight, a glint of stars.
“Tanatar, God of War,” she whispers, her voice scarcely audible in that thick, mortal air. “I beg your mighty defense. Lamruil, God of Darkness . . .”
Her voice trails away. Her gentle features, drawn with terror, tighten suddenly. She lifts her chin a little, and I see her face more clearly. Soft oval cheeks, pale and drawn, a little pointed chin, and long-lashed, pale eyes.
Aurae.
Her name. I know her name. And in the naming of her, I take some of her essence into my insubstantial self and become, if only briefly, more solid than I was mere moments before. Not quite a being of this time-bound realm, but . . . not quite outside of it either.
Aurae.
My . . . my something. Something important.
Someone I care for.
Aurae.
“Ilsie?”
A jolt of pure light shoots through me. What is that? What is that word she spoke? Why does it feel like a hook burrowing into my essence, dragging me deeper into her reality?
She sits up a little straighter, putting back her prayer veil. Her wide eyes, ringed white with fear, search the dark room, passing over me where I coil in the empty void. “Ilsie, is that you?”
Why does it feel as though she’s speaking to me? As though I am a thing to be spoken to, a dust creature like herself? Why does this word she utters pull my strands of selfhood tighter, tighter, thickening them, binding them, making me feel . . .
“Ilsevel?” She gets to her feet. “Are you there?”
I try to speak her name. I have no throat, no lips, no means of utterance, and yet it breathes through my strands, a vibration infused with power.
Aurae.
A glaring red light bursts across my awareness.
The girl screams, and the explosion of her redoubled terror sends me hurtling, tumbling, flying right out of her world, out of that time-space, back into the safety and distance of nothing.
This is better. This is surely better, to be away from those .
. . those feelings. Away from that word, that name, that anchor.
I want to spread myself out again, lengthening my reach across galaxies, nevermore to be bound.
Only . . . those two ideas linger with me. Those small collections of sound, resonating through my threads. Ilsevel . . . Aurae . . . Another idea forms, whirling with color and energy through my knotted self. I don’t understand it, but feel it with a strange, yawning sense of depth.
Sister.
No sooner does the idea form than another reality opens before me, cracks of matter and existence opening through the ether.
Though put on my guard by that last encounter, I coil myself closer, drawn by curiosity—yet another sensation I didn’t know I knew.
Slipping through the cracks, I enter a world of stone which resounds with song.
So much song, vibrating with pulsing life through rock and crystal.
It’s beautiful and overwhelming, even to my scarcely-formed senses.
Someone is there. A living spirit housed in flesh form.
Another woman. Young, but older than the last one.
She sits on the edge of a large stone platform that is much too big for her.
A bed? I’m not sure where that idea came from, but it seems to make sense to my disseminated perceptions.
Gleaming crystal light shines down on her, revealing long hair beneath a gauzy veil.
She is clad all in white. Bridal white .
. . yet another new concept I recognize without knowing how.
I coil my essence through the atmosphere, drawing nearer to her curiously.
Her eyes are fixed on a closed door, as though she expects any moment for someone to open it.
Her breath is tight and quick and nervous.
She is clad in scanty garments—not that such things should matter to one like myself, unformed as I am.
More interesting is the throb of her pulse, the frightened song-resonance coursing in her veins.
Why does she seem familiar? Those odd-colored eyes of hers: one blue, one gold. Why does that idea—sister—seem to pull me closer to her? We feel connected in some profound way I do not fully understand.