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Chapter 9 - Mindscape

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Azarin, he, who comes through night. Zark’n, he, who guides the light. Laris, she, who holds the gem. Rathril zi la ish varen.

The words circled Athira’s mind. She felt her colour light her body, extending her senses as her consciousness plummeted into the void. There was the usual anxiety attached to the fall, but she embraced it. It’d been too long since she’d entered her mindscape, fully and completely.

It was time to face her inner demon, the Sin that coursed through her blood.

She tried to keep her breathing steady as nervousness ate away at her.

Talon is here. He’s never let you down before.

Yet it couldn’t quite quell the quiet thought hovering at the edge of her mind.

But how long until Talon isn’t enough?

Athira dismissed the thought and opened her eyes, finding herself at the top of her cliff.

It looked the same as it always had -- barren ground populated with tufts of grass springing up from cracks. The only exception was a small sapling that’d taken root in the centre of the cliff, right near the edge. She lingered on it for a moment before passing it.

As always, the white-grey fog clung to the edges, concealing the drop into the abyss she knew was there. It seemed thicker, more malevolent somehow. It filled her nostrils with acrid smoke, leaving a bile taste in her mouth.

She unfolded her legs, letting the colour drop her feet to the ground and walked towards the edge, cloak whispering around her.

Nothing to do except go.

She was about lift herself into the air; move on to the next stage when something rippled the space behind her. Her head snapped around, fearing a breach of her mental safety. Colour came to her hand in preparation to strike back the intruder, then fell to her side again a second later in shock.

Coughing and pushing himself up from the ground beside the sapling, was Shift.

*+*+*+*

Shift got to his feet, head spinning and threatening to send him back down.

Fainted. Kione’s going to be bringing this up for the next week. Damn it all.

He rubbed the side of his head and looked around. Any thoughts of Kione’s attitude vanished as he realised he was no longer at Indigo base, let alone the control room.

Maybe that was all just a bad dream? he wondered. He tapped his foot on the ground. Nope. That’s definitely solid. So where the hell am I and how did I get here?

He spotted a cloaked figure stalking towards him, their body masked by indigo fabric. He was about to ask them if they knew where he was when they beat him to it.

“You need to leave,” they said, eyes burning in the shadows of the cowl. “Now.”

Shift stared at them in a daze. He knew that voice, or he thought he did. He peered inside the cowl, trying to make out the features of the person inside it before his eyes fell on to the amulet pinned at her chest marked with a raven design.

“A...Athira?” he said tentatively.

She ripped the cowl back from her head impatiently. Raven hair framed the face that seemed to be paler, more fragile than usual.

 “You shouldn’t be here,” she said. “I don’t know how you got in, but--“

“What are you talking about?” asked Shift. “What do you mean, ‘got in’? As far as I can see, we’re standing on the top of a hill.”

“A hill,” she said.

Shift scratched his head. “Well yea, what else--“

“How about the entry point into my mindscape, or the physical reality of my mind’s landscape and the place you should definitely not be right now?” she said, staring at him.

He waited a few seconds to see if she was kidding. “No one can access their mindscape,” he said slowly. “Not even the Elites have developed--“

“The Elites are little more than glorified monkeys. That means nothing,” said Athira. She rubbed her temples. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. I have work to do. You need to leave, now.”

Shift glanced around behind him. He could see nothing but more of the barren land that slipped away into the fog. “And... how do I do that?”

“I’m guessing that’s yours,” she said, nudging the sapling with her boot. “Pull it out or something and leave!”

“Athira,” Shift said. “That’s a tree. I am not a tree.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “That would be your tether. The thing keeping you attached to my mindscape, the place in my mind where you’ve latched on to like a parasite and the thing that’s keeping you here. You put it there. Pull it up and get out.”

Shift knelt down and wrapped his hands around the slender length of the sapling’s stem. As he made contact, a shiver ran through his body the way it usually did when he shifted colour. He tried to pull it out, but no matter what he did, it remained firmly rooted.

“It won’t come out,” he said, standing up.

Athira flexed her palm at the sapling, causing black colour to engulf it from the bottom up. She remained like that for a second, strain on her face before the colour disappeared. The sapling was still firmly in place.

 “We don’t have time for this!” she said, exasperated. Agitation marked her movements as she walked in aimless circles. “The disturbances are getting worse and I need to find Reader before I can’t stop it anymore!”

“So... what now?” asked Shift uncertainly.

Athira threw her hands up. “You’re the one that got in here, didn’t you?” she said. “So just do whatever you did in reverse and get the hell out already!”

“Oh sure, I’ll just unintentionally un-collapse and black out again. Why didn’t I think of that before?”

Athira started pacing again. “This doesn’t make any sense. How did you possibly get dragged in here with me?”

Shift followed her with his head. “It could have been my colour,” he offered.

Athira shook her head. “No, your colour doesn’t work in here--unless...” She paused, massaging her temples. “Unless something happened before you actually entered. What exactly does your colour do?”

“You know how green is the colour of change, right?” he asked.

When she nodded, he continued. “Well, most greens change part of their physical self, their arms or legs into another object, animal or plant, things like that. Only mine doesn’t affect my physical body, it affects the part of me that channels my colour. With that, I can borrow or ‘shift’ another person’s colour  and take on their powers temporarily, until the shifted colour runs out and it reverts back to green again.”

“Before... when we were in contact,” said Athira. She gave him a deadpan stare. “You just had to be the one colour that might actually be a problem for me, didn’t you?”

Shift folded his arms. “You seemed to be okay with it the other night when Discord took your amulet.”

She gave him a small smile. “I know. You took enough of it away for me to get control of it back. It explains why contact with you seems to soothe my colour, at least, although I think that’s why you’re here.”

“It wouldn’t have stayed in my system this long--“

“My colour is a lot more potent than your average Colour, Shift,” Athira said cutting him off. “They were crafted with... different designs. Either way, I need to figure out what I’m going to do with you--”

“I’ll just sit in the corner like a good boy then shall I,” Shift said dryly.

She sighed. “You don’t understand, if you stay here--“

“How about you help me understand? I can help you figure something out.”

Athira stopped, turning back to Shift.  “You have to swear--“

The distant rumbling cracked, splitting the air around them. Athira and Shift covered their ears, bodies instinctively dropping lower at the sound. Shift spun around, searching for the source.

Movement caught his eye. The edge of the visible ground was crumbling. In the split second that falling rock cleared the fog, he glimpsed the yawning chasm of fire below.

This isn’t a hill. It’s a cliff.

The ground shook again. Shift backed up.

“Athira, the hell is going on!”

She grabbed his arm and dragged him to the tapered point of the cliff with irresistible force.

“You stay with me, understand?” she said, looking straight into his eyes. For the first time, a sliver of fear entered Shift’s mind. The uncertainty in her tone shook his faith in his ability to live. “Whatever happens, you do not leave my side unless I tell you otherwise.”

Athira pulled him closer to the edge. Shift’s boots were centimetres from the crumbling edge.

She brought her mouth to his ear, though he could barely hear her over the raging tempest around them. “We need to go down.”

“And what, you just expect me to jump?” he asked doubtfully.

Athira glanced around, apparently at a loss. Shift was all too aware of the way the ground was slipping away around them, shaving the metres off their island of safety more rapidly than he would have liked.

Athira moved back a few steps, taking Shift with her.

 “Talon!” she cried out. “I need you!”

She glanced around frantically, and in that moment, Shift knew he was going to die.

She’s lost it. She’s gone. So very, very--

The rhythmic beat of wings blew the thought away.

A huge, black raven three times his size swept over the cliff and landed on the space Athira had created. Shift nearly fell off the edge.

It eyed them intelligently. Shift tried to push Athira behind him, protect her from the thing that was looking at them like lunch but she stopped him, pointing towards it instead.

 “Get on!” she said. “We need to get down the bottom, there’s no more time! This platform won’t last much longer!”

“It’ll eat me!”

“No time for this, Shift!.”

Shift could no longer argue as Athira’s colour wrapped around his chest and levitated him straight onto the bird’s back.

“Take him to the bottom, I’ll meet you there!” called Athira, even as the bird was already taking off.

Shift grabbed a handful of feathers and lay down as flat as he could manage, trying to keep himself attached via whatever means necessary. He turned his head to see Athira jump off the edge of the cliff as it crumbled beneath her feet. He half expected her to keep falling at the point where she collected herself and flew through the air towards them, arms outstretched.

Shift watched her fly as the bird steadily dropped lower and lower. Second time this week I’ve almost died. The weekend is looking promising.

He still had no idea what was going on, but he intended to find out.

Shift risked a glance to the ground below. While they were still hundreds of metres above it, he recognised the landscape instantly.

It’s the same one I saw when Athira fought Talia, with the figure.

Except now, it wasn’t flickering in and out of vision. It was undeniably there and physical, although it seemed... he searched for the right word. Calmer, almost.

He sensed it hadn’t been recently. The landscape looked like a battle zone.

He’d heard horror stories of cities in the aftermath of a villain’s attack, but nothing he’d heard compared to this. Everything was destroyed, crushed or trampled and scattered across the ground. Those things that remained upright seemed to be reconstructing themselves, pillars of rock that seemingly shattered for no reason, their stones hovering mid air for a second before they pulled themselves together again to repeat the process a minute later.

What is this place?

As the bird got closer to the ground, his suspicion was confirmed. Other than the splashes of red dotted across the ground, everything was dark and devoid of colour.

The raven landed surprisingly soft, considering its size. It turned its head to look at Shift and lifted a wing, apparently offering him a way off.

He didn’t hesitate in taking it. Shift slid off the bird’s back, feet hitting the ground below and sending up a small cloud of dust. The surface was soft almost, as if able to be moulded if someone tried hard enough.

Athira landed beside the bird, her cloak still on but pushed back over her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around the bird’s neck, who reciprocated the action as best it could.

“I missed you, Tal,” she said.

‘Course you did. You’re a loner without me. Although I gotta ask why you brought this hatchling into your mindscape.

Shift looked around, searching for the source of the voice. He watched in disbelief as Athira released the bird from her arms and bit her lip.

“Not intentional, I assure you,” she said. “I think his colour linked with mine after I lost you, everything kind of broke free...”

As Athira recapped the last few days’ worth of activities in a few minutes, Shift’s doubt vanished. She was talking to the bird, Talon as she kept calling him. The bird’s reply would echo through his mind, independent and distinctive from his own thoughts. 

The rumbling in the distance didn’t seem to be getting any quieter and the pillars were significantly more intimidating than they had been from the air. Shift found himself eyeing them warily, finding comfort in the shadow of the bird.

Talon, he corrected himself.

Athira approached Shift, still wearing uncertainty on her features. “We need to go--“

Shift stopped her. “Okay. I black out in the control room while my body feels like it’s on fire, wake up on some strange island cliff thing which promptly collapses, ride a giant bird down to a landscape which I’ve seen before, and then you just expect me to--“

“I don’t have to explain anything to you because you shouldn’t be here,” said Athira. “This is my mindscape. Mine. Not yours. Yet here you are, demanding answers to things that don’t concern you. You stay by my side, you do what I tell you to do and you shut up. Got it?”

Talon cocked his head. Be gentle with him, Athira.

Shift recognised the look in her eye, the same one she’d given Talia just before taking matters into her own hands. He raised his hands in a gesture of peace and remained silent. She glared at him, black colour flaring off her body before she snapped around and started walking.

“Come on.”

 Remembering her early warning, Shift stayed close and ended up sandwiched between bird and girl as they crossed the landscape. Athira remained silent, cloak once again turning her into an detached, mysterious figure to Shift. Even Talon seemed content to leave her be.

Shift watched the landscape as they moved, always drawing closer to the source of the rumbling that he assumed was just over the ridge. When the nearby pillars of rock split the first few times, he nearly jumped out of his skin. There was the sense that the area was alive, a malevolent presence that watched their every move. Shadows flickered in the corner of his vision, never there long enough for him to determine their origin.

If this is Athira’s mindscape... what does that say about her? he wondered.

Despite what she may have said, this is not her mindscape. Shift glanced up, finding Talon eyeing him. Her mindscape has long since decayed into the scape of another’s, the one you see here.

Shift glanced at Athira, half expecting her to turn around and explode in his face again. The cloak around her body shifted as if she’d folded her arms, but she otherwise said nothing.

He looked back to Talon cautiously, taking her inaction as tentative approval for the conversation. So if this isn’t hers... what is?

You saw it before, the cliff where I picked you up from.

But that crumbled. Aren’t mindscapes permanent? A reflection of the individual’s state of mind?

Talon made a strange noise from within his chest. Laughter. You almost sound intelligent. The bird shook its massive head. But you’re correct. A person’s sanity is directly linked to the state of their mindscape.

 So if this isn’t hers, then why--

“As I suspect you’re about to ask, I’m not insane because instead of my own, I’m directly linked to this one,” said Athira from the front. “I stripped back my own mindscape a long time ago to make the transition between the two easier, but it comes at a cost.”

“Why on Thols would you do that?” asked Shift.

 “Because I’m the guardian of this one.” Athira stopped, waiting for Talon and Shift to catch up before she started walking again. “And if life as we know it wants to continue, I don’t have a choice.”

“Little over dramatic, don’t you think?” said Shift.

My hatchling rarely does dramatic, said Talon.

“Except when you enter her mindscape accidentally.”

“I’m sorry about snapping, Shift,” said Athira quietly. “It’s just this place... it’s dangerous. Without Talon, I can barely survive it anymore. If you die here, you don’t wake up in reality. There are no second chances.”

Shift looked around, searching the shadows for anything about to jump out. “Care to explain exactly what is going to try and kill us here?”

Once more, Athira was silent, eyes trained on the ground.

Talon glanced at Athira. You need to give him something. It’ll only make it harder to keep him alive if he doesn’t understand.

 “I know,” she said with a sigh. She pulled down her cowl. “Indigo has been tracking the disturbances, right?” Shift nodded. “Something about them is directly linked to the thing inside this mindscape. Every time they occur, it’s strengthened and it fights to get out. Without Talon... well you saw what happened when Discord took the amulet.”

“So your runes, do they...?”

“Help keep it under control? In part, yes. Same with the amulet, not including Talon’s residence. They all do something to keep it down.”

“Does this thing have a name?” asked Shift.

She hesitated before speaking. “Rathe. It’s another reason I need to stop Reader. He knows something about Rathe, something that might be able to help.”

Shift realised where he’d heard that word before. “Kione said the Elites wanted Reader for questioning about this Rathe thing in the training room. What else do you know about this Rathe thing?”

“Not as much as I’d like,” she said. “But you can’t kill it. I’ve been trying for years in just about every way. The only thing that works is coming into its territory, this mindscape, and knocking it out for a few days.”

The evasive answer left Shift with the feeling that she was holding something back, but decided not to push the matter. “So you live in someone...something else’s mindscape?” Shift shook his head. “I can’t imagine how hard that must be.”

 “I don’t need your pity,” she said with a shrug. “In a way, this mindscape is me. No matter what I do, how many times I seal it away, I can’t escape it.” Her voice dropped. “No one can.”

The conversation lulled at that point. By now, the ridge was within five minute’s distance and the impassibility of them on foot was becoming apparent, although Shift would have been content to walk the other way. He wasn’t a coward, but whatever was on the other side of those mountains was not happy. Red colour flashed through the air like lightning, each strike bringing down a new wave of thunder on their heads.

He watched, entranced by the lights as they drew closer. Thoughts ran through his head, unanswered questions he didn’t want to ask for fear of antagonising Athira further. Instead, he channelled the energy into tapping his hand against his leg.

His attempt at restraint didn’t go unnoticed. Athira stared at him until he had no choice but to acknowledge her. He gave her a smile, hoping that would fix the issue.

 “You’re driving me nuts with your fidgeting.”

“Figured it was better than driving you nuts with my talking,” he replied.

To the side, Talon made the weird chest-rumble noise again which Athira ignored.

“How about this,” she said. “I’ll give you three questions to ask, and after that you stop with the fidgeting and the tapping and the really loud thinking. Deal?”

Really loud thinking? thought Shift. Athira narrowed her eyes at him. Uh oh, did she hear that?

He decided to change the topic as her eyes became slits. “Okay, first question,” he said. “What’s all this have to do with finding Reader? I understand why you need to find him, but how does this help actually locate the psychic bastard?”

Athira rolled her eyes at him. “Wherever we find the disturbance in the mindscape, there’ll be glimpses of the point in reality it’s tied to. From there, we work out where it is.”

“And we find the disturbances in the mindscape how?”

Athira pointed over the ridge. “Rathe’s essence is attracted to the point in the mindscape where the disturbances are happening, or most likely to happen for whatever reason. Reader seems to know where they’re happening somehow. I’m hoping he’ll show up at the site.”

Shift thought over what she’d said in his mind. “So you’re saying that we have to fight this Rathe thing in order to figure out where the disturbance will be next.”

“Yup.”

*+*+*+*

A/N -  #226 Fantasy. Yay! *Happy dance*

Wordcount: 30,355 [3k words behind]