I stood on a rocky plateau, far too sculpted to be natural, with sharp edges leading to a severe drop. There were no loose rocks, no dust, no signs of erosion at all. A city spread out before me glowing green with lethargic pulses of light. Strange to think about it, but it reminds me of blood pulsing through veins; as though the city were somehow alive, and the green light was its essence. The city was built in ordered blocks, symmetrical in every way. It started off small with low buildings before growing to mighty towers and one impossible spire that reached into the grey expanse above. It was larger than any city I had yet to see, though my experience was somewhat lacking, and it buzzed with activity. Even from far away I could see the roads were crowded, though I recognised few of the creatures I saw. Some were huge hulking monstrosities, others were smaller beasts dodging around their larger cousins. There was peace there. It seemed so strange, perhaps because we Sourcerers always used the denizens of the Other World for war.
It was a dream, I knew that. I had visited the Other World many times through Impomancy and knew a Sourcerer has no body in that world. They exist only as a disembodied spirit, invisible to all but the most powerful of horrors. But not that time. I stood on that plateau. I could see my arms and legs, my body, all just skin and bone. I was still wearing the rags from the Pit, torn and shredded and identifying me as an inmate. A criminal. I could feel the stone beneath my bare feet, and the breeze stirring my matted hair. I would be lying if I said it was not somewhat surreal. I had never heard of any Sourcerer actually visiting the Other World as anything other than a spirit, but there I was. The air burned in my lungs and I felt heavier somehow, as though gravity was stronger there.
I wasn't alone.
Isen stood next to me. It wasn't the Isen I remembered though. The rugged man, handsome despite the grime and scars, was gone. What stood beside me now was a ghost. The same ghost who watched me leave the ruined Djinn city. He looked just how I had left him. His left leg was torn open, muscle and blood bulging to escape the wound. His right arm was bent backwards, bone poking through skin. His face was mashed and broken, crumpled on the right side from where Josef had crushed him against the ceiling and then the floor. I have no doubt I would have vomited from the sight, but it was a dream. Neither of us were really there. The mess of a terran that stood beside me wasn't even Isen. It was Ssserakis, wearing the bloodied corpse of the man I had, just a few days ago, fucked.
"Is this my dream or yours?" My voice sounded wrong in that world, as though a terran voice had no place there. I half expected every creature and horror to suddenly find and evict me.
Is there a difference? Isen's mouth moved to speak the words, but the voice was not his. It was the same voice I had heard down in the Pit the first time I met Ssserakis. It is hard to describe, and I have tried many times in my life. I think the closest I have ever come is that it sounds like a bag full of snakes. Angry snakes.
"This is your home." I knew it was true even as I said it. That should have tipped me off that Ssserakis and I were more closely linked than I believed. I knew it was the horror's home, because it also felt like my home. Despite how alien it appeared, I was comfortable there.
That is my home, Ssserakis hissed and pointed with Isen's good arm towards the very top of the great spire in the centre of the city. Before I was taken. Now… Isen's body walked in front of me, obscuring my view and then stopping on my right.
The city had changed. Where before it pulsed with a strange green light, it now stood dead and dark. Nothing but grey stone, still artfully sculpted and symmetrical, but no longer beautiful. The activity in the streets was gone. The creatures that moved about the city were gone. It stood there empty and lifeless. I couldn't say why exactly, but I mourned its loss.
I tore my eyes away from the dead city to find Isen gone. I stood alone on the plateau and realised what little light there was had started to fade. I think, more accurately, the darkness was rising around me. The world dimmed until I was engulfed in a void. I heard only the rapid, fearful beat of my own heart. Icy claws closed around it and the pain in my chest became stifling. It hurt to breathe. I was frozen by a cold that sank so deep into my bones I was beyond shivering.
"Wake up!" I shouted into the darkness. I tried to reach up and slap my own face, but I had no arms, no head. I was nothing. Just a disembodied voice floating in nothing. I screamed.
I woke screaming, clutching at my chest. Hardt tells me he's never seen me look as terrified as I did in that moment. As though every horror and nightmare, every fearful thing that has ever existed in this world, had all visited me at once. And I suppose Hardt would know best. He has seen me at my best and worst. He saw me down in the Red Cells, beneath the Terrelan capital; he saw what tortures the emperor visited upon me. He stood by me as I made the hardest choice, the impossible choice; he witnessed the fear of that decision. He was even there the day I died.
"It's alright, Eska," Hardt said, his voice deep and soothing. He held my cheek in one of his giant hands and stared into my eyes; an anchor to bring me back to the real world. It's surprising what eye contact can do that words cannot. "Just a dream. You're out of it now."
He held that eye contact until my breathing calmed and the panic left me. Then he nodded and helped me up to sitting, my back against the rough bark of a chessop tree. I knew the type well; I had spent my first six years in a forest after all. Chessop trees have short needles instead of leaves and can resist just about any type of weather. They grow far apart from each other and produce a strange earthy smell when burned. I smelled it then and it brought back memories of a carefree time before the Orrans turned me into a weapon. Before the Terrelans turned me into a prisoner. That, too, helped calm me. The thought of a home I would never know again. The memory of our little house and the bed I shared with my brother, my father snoring at night, and waking to the smell of porridge as my mother cooked breakfast.
Hardt nodded and sat down, finding his own tree to rest against. I still didn't trust myself to speak, so I sat in silence. The memories of that city in the Other World, the fear Ssserakis had put in me, were still close to the surface. The horror's voice echoed somewhere within me.
Home. I want to go home.
We were surrounded by trees on all sides, a small copse of them forming a little clearing, somehow free of snow. There was a fire going in the centre, just a few feet away. The heat warmed my feet but it only went skin deep. I could feel the cold inside. Tamura was sitting by the little fire, his hands slick with blood as he tore the skin off a little animal that looked as though it might once have been a rabbit. To this day I still don't know how they caught the creature, nor how they managed to find wood dry enough to burn. One of Tamura's many talents hidden behind layer upon layer of crazy old man.
"Here," Hardt pushed a sack towards me. "Eat."
I started to protest, but as soon as I thought about it, I realised I was ravenous. It was a hunger that went deeper than a need to eat. Again, I looked down at my arms to find them stick thin, bones visible under skin that looked like dirty paper. I dug into the sack and pulled out a handful of shrooms. They were a gift from the imps down in the Djinn city and they were starting to run thin. They also tasted like chewing on an old boot. I am happy to admit that was the very last time I ate shrooms. Even to this day, the thought of them makes me feel queasy.