David Wells - Linkershim

“I had a new magical experience when I was a prisoner. The Babachenko poisoned me with a venom that caused extreme pain, so much pain that I began to lose my grip on reality and started involuntarily slipping into the firmament. But when I did, the collar would start choking me, bringing me back, only to slip away again, until I thought I was dying. Then something unexpected happened. I found myself in the firmament-physically.”

Jataan’s eyes went a little wide. Lita gasped. Chloe spun into existence, then disappeared again.

“The Babachenko confirmed it for me with one of his divination spells. I actually vanished from the world of time and substance for several minutes, leaving my slave collar behind, and then reappeared back in my cell.

“The sovereigns have suggested some exercises to help me better understand what happened and learn to control it … but they’re dangerous.”

“How so, Lord Reishi?” Jataan asked.

“The first involves me deliberately scattering my mind into the firmament.”

“You’ll die,” Lita said.

“That is my understanding as well, Lord Reishi,” Jataan said. “I urge you to reconsider.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Jack said, “what happened while you were in the firmament?”

Everyone looked at the bard.

He shrugged. “Alexander wouldn’t be considering this unless he had good reason, and I suspect that his experience in the firmament has something to do with that.”

Alexander nodded, quietly grateful to Jack for giving him an opportunity to introduce Siduri and explain his part in the history of the world without revealing the existence of the blood of the earth. He felt a nagging sense of guilt about misleading his friends and a squirming sort of frustration in his belly at having to remember the lies he’d told so far just so he could keep them straight. How deceivers went through life telling one lie after the next without their guts constantly being tied in a knot was a mystery to him.

“I met someone there.”

“In the firmament?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” Alexander said.

He spent nearly an hour explaining everything he could about Siduri, his history and the nature of his power, while carefully omitting any reference to the blood of the earth. His friends sat silently, listening with rapt attention to his account. Even Jack was at a loss for words when he finished.

“I need Siduri’s help to master this new talent and the only way I know to reach him is to get lost in the firmament.”

“What if you can’t get back?” Jack asked.

Alexander shrugged.

“You’ll die, that’s what,” Anja said. “And with us trapped in here.”

“You do have a point there,” Alexander said. “Honestly, I wouldn’t know how to scatter my mind into the firmament anyway. I think I’ll need the help of the fortress island wards to do that and I can’t get there with the door closed.”

“So what’s your plan then?” Jack asked.

“Actually, I’m not quite sure. My relationship with the firmament seems to be changing and I want to explore that a bit.”

He closed his eyes and quieted his mind. He could see the worry on his friends faces and in their colors before he slipped into the firmament. Rather than try to go anywhere or see anything, he chose to delve into the depths of the firmament itself. It was a struggle at first, his mind resisting, hints of panic dancing on the edge of his awareness, yet he pressed on, willing himself deeper into the ocean of creation, beneath the surface where reality happened.

The deeper he went, the quieter it got, the song of creation fading away and leaving only stillness and solitude. As he pushed further, he began to slough off many of his worldly concerns, his cares and worries becoming trivial and ephemeral in the face of such vast, untapped creative potential. Piece by piece, Alexander lost himself in the firmament, until there was nothing left but the witness, detached and unconcerned, aloof, yet fully aware.

There he found a kind of duality. A sense of immense isolation permeated his being, offering sensations of peace and belonging so fulfilling that he couldn’t imagine ever letting them go, while at the same time he felt a profound connection to all life everywhere, a kinship like nothing he’d ever felt before, a oneness that subtly shifted his understanding of reality.

In that place of deep quiet, Alexander was content to rest, floating serenely. Time and substance were no longer his concern. They’d become abstract concepts in the face of the void, the quiet emptiness from which all things of substance were born and to which all things of substance would return. In that place, seeing reality as a whole, his worldly concerns seemed like distant dreams, fleeting and illusory.

He had found peace.

But then the peace was interrupted by a faint cry for help. Distant, yet insistent, a voice that should have been familiar called out for his help. Like remembrance of a dream, the source of the voice came to him: it was Chloe. As if a scrap of his personality snapped into place, he remembered who she was and what she meant to him.

He heard her again, farther away, an edge of panic and despair in her tiny voice. She was in trouble. Another fragment of his psyche returned to him. She needed his help.

With an act of will, he reassembled his essential being, transforming from the detached witness back into himself in an instant, willing himself toward the surface of the firmament, casting his awareness across the whole of creation and finding Chloe in a construct of her own making, oblivious to the plight of the world, lost in a fantasy that looked exactly like the Valley of the Fairy Queen.

“Short people aren’t supposed to be here,” she said chidingly, when Alexander appeared before her.

“Chloe, it’s me, Alexander.”

“That’s a good name, but you’re still not supposed to be here. The way out is that way.” She spun into a ball of light and vanished, giggling.

Realization of what was happening slammed into him and he snapped back to his own body, severing his connection with the firmament immediately, and by extension, cutting Chloe off from it as well.

He opened his eyes and found himself slumped over in his circle, pillows propping him up so he wouldn’t fall off the low table that the circle was set into. Jack and Anja were pacing, Lita was sitting nearby, and Jataan stood against the wall with his hands clasped behind his back, worry etched into his swarthy face. Chloe lay unconscious just inside the circle on a little pillow.

Alexander was suddenly overwhelmed with a sensation of thirst followed by hunger. When he stirred, everyone in the room came rushing to his side. Chloe woke a moment later, buzzing into the air, spinning into a ball of light, buzzing higher and higher with each spin until she was at the ceiling.

“He’s back!” she shouted.

Alexander tried to speak, but his throat was so dry he started coughing, a rough, dry, sharp cough that felt like he’d swallowed broken glass. Lita gently brought a cup of water to his lips. He seized it, gulping it down as quickly as he could, spitting most of it right back up in a spasm of coughing and wheezing.

Jack handed Lita another cup of water.

“Slowly,” she said, holding it up to him.

Alexander had to make an effort to sip the water. Every part of his body cried out for it like he was dying of thirst, but he took just enough to wet his mouth and throat, swallowing with effort, before taking another sip, then another, until he was able to drink freely. Then he drank until his belly felt full, but still he wanted more.

“That’s enough for now,” Lita said. “Any more and you’ll get sick. Let’s get you back to bed.”