LotS/The Story/Because I'm the Wanderer/Cyan Eyes
Cyan Eyes
It's the dreams that do it.
The same old dreams, longstanding acquaintances made familiar but not welcome by their frequent recurrences across the years and decades of your life. It would be wrong to call them nightmares. There's no gut-wrenching terror, no bitter grief to claw at your soul long after you wake. Only a sense of residual annoyance and disquiet that your subconscious has chosen to rebel against you.
They began when you were at school. In those days your nocturnal ramblings were as varied, weird, and wonderful as those of any child fed endless torrents of information from all quarters -- television, the information networks, books, your teachers, your peers... Innumerable things fight for space within a girl's brain, and all of them made themselves felt in your dreams, thrusting their way into the nonsensical perambulations of slumbering thought. But certain dreams recurred with unyielding determination, as though they squatted in your mind throughout the day, yearning for the moonlit hours when they might come forth to scamper around your whirling consciousness.
You're in one of the school buildings, bustling towards a classroom, surrounded by the friends and enemies of childhood. You go inside with the others, all of you taking your places in the good, orderly fashion of children who know that corporal punishment awaits misbehavior. A troubled sensation is already bubbling in your stomach, though you can't yet identify its cause. That's when it strikes you. The exam... You're here to take the exam. And you haven't revised. The paper is laid in front of you. The text difficult to read, changing and shifting. But you can read enough. You know that you don't have the answers. You're going to fail.
Even after you left school, your destiny taking you to the military academy, the dream persisted. Always the same -- still set within the environs of that former place of learning, even though you no longer walked its corridors in your waking hours. Whenever a test loomed on the horizon for which you hadn't done adequate preparation, whenever an essay would soon be due that as yet lay half-written, you'd fall asleep and be in that classroom.
It continued beyond that too, surprising you with its tenacity. Formal education lay behind you, left in your wake to ensnare fresh generations of children with its didactic tentacles. The armed forces of the Sian Empire became your new life. But still you dreamed that dream. If some task, some duty was undone, shunted aside for laudable reasons or else because the alluring demon of procrastination had seduced you, night found you back in that classroom ready to fail the unrevised-for exam.
The dreams came to serve as a warning. When they haunted your sleep, you knew that you had to accomplish whatever things were nagging at your subconscious. You accepted them as a tool of motivation, something to urge you on and compel you to tend to your duties in a responsible, timely fashion.
It had been a long while since you last had them. Then they returned, just the same as before, hurling you into a school building which may no longer exist, in the midst of boys and girls who haven't aged a day in decades -- frozen in youth and time even as their real selves have grown old, changed, and perhaps died.
For the past few days they've been niggling away at you. In the mornings you've woken with the absurd memories of failure swirling around your head. At first you couldn't even imagine what had brought about their resurrection. And then it finally occurred to you, an epiphany erupting across the surface of your brain and bathing everything in the hot glow of its explosion.
Yes, you feel them deep within. The blood and the darkness. Waiting for the word that will allow them to consume you. A black and crimson enigma, a mystery you can't begin to unravel. But the galaxy is vast. Perhaps there's an answer to it somewhere out there...
The thing you've thrust deep within mind and soul, shoved into some inner recess. There it remains, lurking and unmastered, a primal force that merely bides its time. Never forgotten, of course. That would be impossible. You'd allowed it to slip into the background of life and thought, however, like the sufferer of a disease who chooses not to dwell on their condition -- attempting instead to live each day of life as it comes.
Now the dreams tell you that you've neglected it for far too long.
You've allowed your wanderings to occupy you, filling your life with new sights and sounds and deeds. You haven't been idle. There are men, women, and children who're still alive because of your recent actions. Good people you've saved, and evil ones you've punished. In minute ways, through the tiny actions with which an individual may scratch their mark on the immensity of existence, you've made the universe a better place.
But you've neglected that task, that duty. You're no nearer to learning about the power that seethes in your blood, the mysterious heritage that empowered and damned you.
What can you do though? Even in the epiphany's light, the shadows of self-delusion chased away by its bright rays, you're left with that question. Aimless wandering is unlikely to bring you what you seek. There's enough of the Milky Way to keep you occupied for a myriad lifetimes, millions of adventures just waiting to challenge and enthrall you. But in the endless void, the seemingly infinite tapestry of space, the chances of you simply straying across a lead by chance are inconceivably remote.
You have to do something, find a place to begin your search for answers. But where? How?
Sun Xi could have helped you, if she'd lived. But she's beyond your reach now, separated by the veil of death. You've encountered many others with psionic abilities, including allies you might be able to call upon for aid. None with a fraction of Mistress Sun's power, however -- able to delve deep into the past and thus unravel the mysteries of the universe. Perhaps you could search for another psychic whose brain throbs with the same terrifying might. But how could you entrust a stranger with a secret of this magnitude?
There might be others like you out there...
This thought isn't new to you. You've pondered it many times before, in both drunken musings and sober reflection. The Emperor shared the secret. It lay within his blood as it does in yours -- an ancient link between two people unrelated by any contemporary measure. If there was common ancestry between you, it most likely lies so far back across the expanse of history as to be untraceable. Attempting to isolate it, to work your way through labyrinthine family trees that you know full well would disappear into distant darkness, would be an insurmountable task.
Could DNA analysis, comparing the Emperor's material with your own, yield valuable data? This too is something you've wondered about. But even if the 'chi', as he knew it, were something that could be picked out in such a way, isolated by comparing each of your genetic makeups -- which you regard as a dubious proposition -- there's only one way you could bring it about. That's by returning to Wu Tenchu and the others, asking for their aid. It isn't something you can risk. Not after everything that happened...
So you sit in the Silver Shadow's flight cabin, grappling with a problem that seems to have no solution. You don't even know where to start looking for one...
Where to start...
Start...
And then it hits you. Even at that very moment, when it blazes with all the resplendent brightness of a fresh idea, you know it's a longshot. A crazy notion plucked from the ether. And yet the very randomness of its genesis seems to imbue it with mystical importance, as though it were thrust into your brain by the hand of fate. Foolish, perhaps. But it's something...
So you prepare for the hyperspace jump, filled with absurd elation even as you know that this might -- likely will -- prove fruitless. At least you're doing something, making an effort to grapple with the occult mystery which surrounds you.
Perhaps that'll be enough to stop the dreams...
The Woman Who Waits
Strange, colorful flora surrounds you. There are great fleshy things, like tentacles, swaying in the air high above your head -- their ends turned downwards, as though stooping to inspect you as you pass. Below these, alongside your thighs and chest, are bulbous blobs that wobble this way and that like the needles of gelatinous metronomes.
It's beautiful, gorgeous in spite of -- or even because of -- its bizarreness. The kind of alien landscape which makes artists reach for their tablets, writers for their datapads, and chem-addicts for their narcotics. But it wasn't always like this. Rainbows of plant life have grown over generations to conceal all evidence of the horrific combat that once raged on this very ground, churning up the soil and sowing blasted furrows with the charred body parts of slaughtered soldiers.
That battle helped shape the destiny of human space, ensuring the survival of the Sian Empire. It was fought by Daedun Qin, the First Emperor. It's the battle he claimed to have won with the aid of a blue dragon spirit...
Blue dragon. Orange eyes.
Scholars have debated his writings for generations, musing over what philosophical and metaphysical meanings the First Emperor may have intended his words to convey. But they don't know what you do.
You wander among the fantastic foliage, eyes drifting across land and sky in search of... something. Once again the notion seems ridiculous. Do you imagine that visions are like holo-vids, just waiting around until someone else comes along and decides to replay them? That the incomprehensible forces which aided Daedun Qin have been drifting around this multicolored landscape and biding their time until you deigned to visit them?
But the wondrous sights, the spicy-sweet blend of botanic scents, the bleep-buzzing song of the avian creatures that perch on the tall plants and weave their twisting paths overhead... These things infuse you with an inner warmth to match that of the pleasant heat against your skin. Ridiculous or not, you're glad you came here.
Time elapses disregarded as you wander, drinking in the world around you. You can't say whether it's minutes or an hour later that you notice her. A woman on the horizon, her back to you, the purple and cyan hues of her long dress mingling with those of the surrounding flora. Black hair cascades down her back, rippling in the gentle breeze that plays with the folds of her garment.
The sight of another person takes you by surprise, but only because of its suddenness after so long alone -- with only the native plants and animals to share the landscape. It's not unusual for Sian subjects to visit this former battlefield, to walk among the echoes of the empire's history.
Your first inclination is to turn your steps to the right or left, leaving her to whatever purpose has brought her here. But there's something about her that draws you, some vague sense of familiarity in her figure and pose that evoke your curiosity.
She doesn't move as you draw near, lost in whatever introspection holds her -- content to stand there as the breeze toys with her dress and hair, allowing the beauty of the world to drift over her.
You speak when you're still some yards away, so as not to startle her. A lone woman might not relish the unexpected appearance of a stranger at close quarters.
"It's a beautiful place, isn't it?" you say.
She turns round, her black hair dancing aside. The breath catches in your throat.
"It's wonderful," she replies.
The soft, lovely smile falters on her lips -- quelled by the way you're staring at her. You blink and exhale.
"I'm sorry..." you say. "You reminded me of someone."
The smile replenishes itself, illuminating her pretty face.
"Have you ever been here before?" she asks.
"No. I..."
"Me either. It's silly, but I came here looking for... something."
"Oh?"
"You're going to think I'm crazy..." She bites her lip, glances down at the ground. "But I've been having these dreams."
She looks up again. Her eyes widen as she reads your expression.
"Orange eyes?" she whispers.
"Yes!"
"You too?" She steps towards you, urgency in her gaze.
"What do you know?" you ask. "About..."
Your voice trails off, your brain unsure of what words could encapsulate and explain it all. But the woman nods.
"The First Emperor, and the dragon," she says. "And I know the word. Listen!"
She leans in close. You match the movement, bringing your ear towards her mouth, ready to hear that word from another's lips, to receive proof that you're not alone, that-
Your body convulses, thrown out of control, muscles wracked by powerful spasms. The fizzing crackle of electrical discharge flashes around you, in your ears and eyes and brain.
Legs crumple beneath you, dead and nerveless. The back of your head thuds against the soft ground.
The woman's smiling face fills the sky as blackness washes over you.
Windows To The Soul
"She's waking. Her thoughts are moving." A woman's voice...
"Yes... But I still can't penetrate them." A man's...
"Something's blocking us... Shielding her subconscious."
"The betrayer's touch?"
"Perhaps... The Mistress will know."
The voices drift across the blackness, slipping into the gathering fragments of consciousness. Your eyes open and blink, burned by brightness. There's something hard and cold under you... Metal. Uncomfortable. You try to raise your arms to block the light, try to get up off the hard surface. But your wrists are stuck, held in place by the same rigid coldness. And there's something at your neck... Softer and warmer, but still unyielding.
Vision clears, snapping itself into sudden sharpness. Oh... This isn't good.
You're fastened to a metal table, surrounded by bright lights and walls of green, holographic characters that flow in different directions like warring rivers. A man and a woman stand on either side of you, dressed in outlandish outfits -- tight azure fabric adorned with bands of glowing symbols, smooth featureless masks with glowing cyan eyes.
"I knew you'd let your guard down," the woman says. Her voice... "That's why I had the surgeons change my face, to look more like hers."
"Who are you?" you ask. "Centurians?"
"No," the man replies. "We serve something much greater."
Religious lunatics. Great...
"If you want the answer, you'll find it in our eyes," the woman says.
The cyan lights in their masks brighten, expanding in all directions as though widening to consume their entire heads.
You close your eyes, but it's too late. The cyan lights are inside, with you in the darkness...
"We couldn't get in while you slept..." Her voice is strange, echoing, distorted. "So we'll just have to use the front door instead."
There's only one light now, the four cyan bursts merging into a single entity. It fills your vision as it rushes to consume you.
The Vision
A cyan sun, burning and searing. Trying to force its way into your innermost mind. But you've dealt with more potent psychics than these two...
You concentrate on the edge of the light, willing its periphery into existence -- a place where it ends and gives way, where it finds its limitation. Your mental gaze traces the border, working its way around the brightness until its shape is clear. Defined. Restricted. Then you press in on all sides, with a thousand invisible mental arms, compressing it towards its center.
"She's strong!" the woman gasps. There's shock in her voice.
The man says nothing. But there's a faint, masculine groan.
You were trained to resist psionic attacks. And more importantly, you had Sun Xi in your mind -- testing you and strengthening you with her presence. These masked morons are nothing compared to her.
Your eyes flick open. The man and woman are reeling. The cyan lights in their masks blink, going alternately bright and dull.
"Very impressive."
Another woman's voice... She's somewhere beyond the upper edge of the table, where your head lies fastened in place -- unable to turn and glimpse her.
People move into your field of vision, dressed in the same costumes as the man and woman. They take hold of their disoriented comrades, steady them as they recover.
"But I expected no less."
The voice is still coming from the same place -- the speaker isn't among those who now crowd around the lower half of the table, gazing down at you from their expressionless masks and glowing eyes.
"Her subconscious was impenetrable," the first woman says. "So we-"
"No matter," the unseen one replies. "Her mind will open to us."
"Who are you people?" you ask. "How did you know about..."
"We're her children, her disciples."
"Why is that when people find religion they stop giving straight answers? Whose children?"
"You'll see..."
This time it's a dozen eyes that blaze from featureless faces, swarming and swirling around the edge of your vision... Like vultures waiting for a fresh corpse...
Something plunges into you with so much force that it seems to pierce your skull and part your brain. By the time you realize it wasn't physical, that your body is intact and your mind perceiving only a simulacrum of agony, she's inside.
The unseen woman's talons are clawing around, trying to force aside your inner defenses, probe deep into your mind.
Colors swim in the darkness, blending and blurring across your mental vision.
"Behold..."
Two cyan eyes glimmer in the midst of the color-strewn void. They're like those in the masks, but far greater -- pregnant with power that makes your teeth ache, your bones shudder.
"See her..."
The eyes are getting bigger, closer. Some of the colors are swirling around it, rivers of paint flowing together. An image is forming, coalescing around the cyan orbs -- framing them.
"Look upon the image of the Far-Seer."
A Dangerous Mind
A monstrous azure visage, a horrific face. It roars amid the maelstrom, its jaws spewing tides of primordial chaos. Nascent features undulate, blurring and unblurring, parting and merging, as though the creature's might is struggling against the very limitations of existence.
But the cyan orbs are unflinching, unchanging. Solid and blazing and unalterable. They're glowering, eyeing the mind they plan to rip asunder.
The colors tighten, flowing together and solidifying, giving final shape to the abomination they've summoned forth. It's demonic, reptilian... Draconic. A visage of wickedness that's almost primal, ingrained into the mind of man -- tainting his myths and theology with its ill-remembered violent majesty. It's an image to evoke terror, to herald destruction.
And yet that isn't what flashes across the tortured reaches of your mind. Instead there's... Recognition.
Yes... You've seen it... her... before. That's impossible. Where could... How... But it's true. Seen her face, heard her voice.
The dragon roars. You ignore it. Trying to distract you, stop you thinking. Pain explodes across your consciousness, a million different agonies screaming for your attention. You thrust them aside.
Where was it? What did she say?
"I see further still, to a time when your blood will flow across the void, blazing beneath a thousand burning suns."
There!
A door, so utterly sealed that it had melded into the very fabric of your mind, hidden behind a facade of nonexistence, flies open. No, not a door... A dam, breaking apart and unleashing the flood.
Oceans of sight and sound and smell and taste and texture crash down in one gigantic wave, an existential tsunami that washes over the dragon's face and scatters it into disparate colors once more. Only the eyes remain, disembodied and furious.
"There!" the unseen woman shrieks.
It isn't a cry of anguish. There's anxiousness, desperation, but also... victory. This is what she wanted. What she thrust herself into your mind to steal. No... it's more. She didn't expect all this. She's shocked, filled with avaricious glee. An ocean of impossible memory, so vast and varied as to be incomprehensible. But even now you can see little pieces of lucidity among it all, like crystals awash on the tide. Recollections that can be grasped and understood.
Dozens of hands are reaching for them, grabbing, snatching -- trying to loot what they can. Part of you yearns to join them, to take hold of these priceless treasures, unravel them and fathom them, gain their forbidden knowledge.
There isn't time. You have to stop them before they can pillage your mind, before they get what they want and can dispose of you while you lie helpless on the metal table.
Recognizing the dragon opened the way for them. Provided them with a shortcut to their plunder. It's served you as well, however. Your mind is clear, freed from the draconic assault. It's still swarming with invaders, but they're busy looting...
You have a chance. Could battle free, take command of your body, and... No. Still fastened to the table. Strong bonds. Trapped. Need a different plan, another strategy.
Oh... Their minds are in yours. Connected...
You rise up from the darkness, filling your flesh like warm liquid poured into a mold. Once it reaches your lips, you speak.
"Kasan."
The word bursts from your mouth and the dark fire flares around the edges of your vision. Agony, despair... Torment jabbing itself into each fold of your brain.
"Kasan."
Illaria's standing there, screaming in anguish. The Emperor's fist strikes her face, explodes her skull, bursts her brain.
"Kasan."
Redness. Everywhere redness. Forever and ever. And you understand.
"Kasan."
People are screaming. Some are in your mind, some are in your memories, some are around you. It doesn't matter. All the same.
You understand. The power of your blood, the thing these people want to steal... Awakened by trauma, by fury, by anguish. By the sight of Illaria's death. Redness. Power and pain bound together, inextricably woven. One and the same. That's why...
"Kasan."
Illaria. Death. Failure. Grief.
They tear through you like bullets, shredding your sanity. But shredding theirs as well. And they've never experienced it before...
"Kasan."
They aren't as strong as you. This is a power they have no right to.
They're staggering, screaming, thrashing. Hands are pressed to heads, as though trying to hold their skulls together. Blood's gushing from ears, spilling out under the masks from noses and mouths.
"Kasan!"
The shout is the judgment of the universe, irresistible and final. You wrench your body, feel the metal yield and break as your wrists tear free, your neck rip its way through the strap.
A million Illarias die before your eyes. Your heart dies a million deaths.
But they die too.
The masked men and women fall, a collection of arrhythmic thuds. You can hear them convulsing on the floor, their hemorrhaging brains making them dance like broken puppets.
You smile as you tumble into the familiar blackness.
Kalaxian Cult-Mistress
"Urgh..."
The groan comes from somewhere above your head, drawing your swimming mind into half-consciousness.
The unseen woman... She must have got out of your mind in time -- escaped before taking the brunt of it. Only knocked out instead of killed like the others. You were both unconscious. Sleeping enemies.
"You..." she murmurs.
She's groggy, but she's pulling herself together. It doesn't matter. You're free now.
You swing your legs off the metal table. Your feet are unsteady when they touch the floor. You have to grab the table to steady yourself.
There's the cult's mistress -- down on one knee, recovering her strength just as you are. Her mask is different from the others. It only covers the upper half of her face, revealing her pursed lips below. Four cyan eyes glimmer from its metal, giving it a strange, alien appearance. Flowing black hair and azure robes pool around her in waves, making her seem drowned and disheveled.
"Just so you know," you say, "I'm going to beat some answers out of you before I kill you."
The woman's lips draw back in a sneer.
"Kalaxia watches over me."
She grabs for the weapons at her belt.
She cries out in horror or surprise. It's hard to tell which, and a woman who's had a corpse thrown at her might be entitled to either emotion.
You didn't have a weapon. She had two, one of them ranged. You had to do something about that... So you dropped down when she started shooting, using the table for cover, grabbed a corpse, and hurled it at her.
The pistol flies from her hand, dislodged by her minion's posthumous betrayal.
You vault over the table before she can recover it, forcing her to meet your attack with her sword alone. It's a fine weapon from the looks of it -- a broad blade sheathed in pulsing, crackling cyan energy. But a sword's only as good as the arm that wields it.
She swings the weapon in both hands. You step in close and grab her forearms, thwarting the blow. She howls in frustration. Then she screams in pain, as the sole of your boot stomps at her leg -- inverting her knee joint with sickening crunch. The sword falls from her grasp, sparking and clattering on the floor.
But you don't let her fall to join it. Instead you keep your grasp on her arms, holding her up even as she desperately tries to keep the weight off her broken leg -- not an easy task when your body is trying to collapse that way.
"Now, about those questions..."
"Kalaxia!" the woman shrieks.
Blood gushes from her nose, erupts from her ears with so much force that it shoots from her head in either direction like a pair of crimson blaster bolts.
A psionic suicide technique. The equivalent of a cyanide-filled tooth.
You shrug, and let her body fall.
Even if you can't question her, you have something. Kalaxia... You can do some investigating, and see where that name leads. You doubt a bunch of lunatic, uniformed cultists have gone unnoticed in their forays around the galaxy.
And you have more besides...
You remember. The places you went with Sun Xi, the things she showed you... Much of it is a blur, just as it was back then. A swift sensory experience. But some of it remains clear and firm. You remember the woman you met in that place of nothingness, the warrior from a long-forgotten world. The hero who helped you find your way back home.
Forbidden knowledge shimmers in your mind.
You doubt you'll be having that dream tonight...