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That day, blood drenched the sky. At first, the cloud seemed like a strange thing in the distance, just a blotch of red drawn onto heaven’s canvas by an angel. As it approached, the screams from within shook my ironed heart. The unholy blood cloud drifted down from the northeast, over us, and toward the desert depths.

Herakon said he witnessed arms and legs and heads poking out of it. The priest, Yohan, swore he saw a giant human eye open in its folds. My tactician, Markos, was adamant that tentacles, bubbling with yet more eyes, grabbed at the sparrows passing by. But all I beheld was blood, coursing through the bulbous cloud as if through veins in a wrestler’s arm.

Thankfully, it did not rain upon us. An Abyad tribesman we’d captured said that a few years ago, a blood cloud had floated to an oasis oft frequented by desert travelers, where it then wept. Was the parched desert soil grateful for a drink of blood instead of water? According to the Abyad, mere hours after that blood rain, skulls with living eyes sprouted out of the ground. Such a place was cursed for all time, he said, until the “Great Terror remakes us all in fire.”

The Zelthuriyan Desert was cursed. Cursed with false faith. Cursed by the Fallen Angels themselves. But their tricks would not terrify me. I, the Opener, prophesied by the apostles in Angelsong, would not flee. No — I came to break and conquer, and no fright for lesser souls would turn me from my path.

And so on the very day the Apostle Benth was born, in the month of the angel Dumah — the Silent Destroyer — we arrived at the mountains of Zelthuriya. They were red, as if baked from blood-soaked clay, and steep and towering, stronger than any wall. The Latians believed that a tribe of Fallen Angels called the Efreet molded this cavernous city for them, so they could worship their demoness amid the safety of rock.

Today, we would prove that nothing is safe from divine light. That men of true faith can level even mountains. Our host, seventy thousand strong, would not be deterred, not by blood clouds nor desert heat nor a wall a league tall, chiseled by demons made of smokeless flame.

To face our seventy thousand, the saint-king cowering behind the mountain sent one: a young, cool-eyed and fair-haired man. A look more common to the icelands than this dismal desert.

He came alone, wearing a robe of chafed, carded wool grayer than a rat. He was barefoot, his soles unscorched by the fiery sand. His beard was light brown, his build wiry, and his stare without fear.

Whereas I was covered in chain and plate and helmeted like a true commander of legions.

The magus stood straight-backed, prayer stones in his hand. A light breeze whipped up the sand between us.

“Peace, Basil the Breaker,” he said in perfect Crucian. “That’s what they call you, isn’t it?” His voice rang like iron, yet flowed like honey.

“It is.”

“Why? What did you break?”

“A lot of walls. A few hearts, too.”

“But you’ve never broken a mountain.”

“I will if you don’t surrender,” I said, getting to the heart of the matter. “Spare your people a butchering. Should you defy us, we won’t leave a single soul to live in this wasteland. We’ve come a long way and are hungry to offer our lives and yours in service to the Archangel.”

“Then you will all die in the shadow of these hallowed mountains.”

I expected obstinance. But with age, I’d grown less willing to delight in it. If only they knew that they were destined to lose, we could all spare each other the suffering.

“I’ve just journeyed from Qandbajar, seat of your saint-king, who fled like a rat does from fire. History will say that we were merciful — soon as the city guard flung open the gates, we spared them and the common folk and even your shrines. Qandbajar will be all the better under my rule. The same conditions I gladly give to Zelthuriya.”

“You see yourself as a merciful man.” He clacked his prayer stones, which were on a string.

Was he scoffing at my words? “It is not my own mercy, but the Archangel’s. We are not here to eradicate you or your faith. We will spare your holy city and the tombs of your saints and the rights and lives of residents and pilgrims. But only if you surrender.”

“Zelthuriya does not have a door. You’re welcome to send your legions through the passage. It is always open. Always providing a welcome to the weary.”

“A welcome of iron, no doubt. Your passage fits — at most — ten men across. Surely the remnants of your saint-king’s army will be lying in wait. You could defend it against a million men.”

“And knowing this, you still came?” The magus spread out his hands. The faintest smile formed on his face. “Why?”

“Because I can surround your mountains from all sides. You aren’t growing any crops in there. How long before you all have to suckle on bone? Two, maybe three moons?”

“We won’t starve, Imperator Basil. You have a host of seventy thousand — I have a tribe of jinn who will fling lightning at you. Who will ensure we are fed and fine. All I needs do is command them.”

“If you’re as mighty as you claim, where were you when I drowned the saint-king’s host in the Vogras?”

“I was here, fulfilling my duty. You’re not the only danger this city needs protection from. Speaking of — do take care whilst you’re camping in the desert. The Abyad tribes are given to feuding with each other. Poisoning water wells and hoarding desert game. Though they are a hospitable folk, they might not see you as guests. I give you one moon, and that’s without considering what the jinn will do.”

I snickered. “The Fallen Angels cannot be allowed to poison the hearts and minds of men. I, the Opener, will see them ended. By whatever power I can call upon.”

If only I could sense some emotion from him. Though from his twitching mustache, he did seem to be chewing on my words.

“Tell me,” he said, “did you see the blood cloud drift southward?”

“I saw it.”

“And did you take it as an ill-omen, or as a portent of victory?”

“More than a portent of our victory — it was a sign for you. The god who has kept you safe, the otherworldly powers that have aided you…” I pointed to the sky. “There is something more.”

The magus bit his dry bottom lip. “You speak of the Uncreated.”

“Indeed. I do.”

He sighed, long and sharp, the first real crack in his placidity. “When I was a child in the icelands, I beheld things that even now I struggle to put into words. The people there do not veil their gods with virtues and holiness. They worship them raw, for the power and the plainness of their signs.”

“Then heed me. To save ourselves, we must all dwell beneath the same tent. I am offering you shelter.”

“The tribes who lived near the Red River worshipped the Uncreated.” He kept prattling on, ignoring my generous offer. “I learned long ago to be afraid of it. Of what it could manifest into our world. Not by design, but merely by dwelling on its bizarre form.”

“Then you know why I am doing what I am doing. Zelthuriya stands against my mission to spread the faith that will save us all to the ends of the earth. I must clear all obstinance from my path.”

“As I recall, it says in Angelsong that the Uncreated appointed the Archangel and the Twelve Holies to rule this plane, before uncreating itself. Even it preferred lesser angels to be the sole objects of worship.”

A stronger gust sent sand whispering across my plate. I dusted it off. The magus let it cover his eyebrows and hair.

I didn’t want to discuss theology. I’d the patience for one final appeal, and hoped to make it a good one. “You Latians indulge in all manner of blood magic and demon binding. You sully your hearts daily with arcane teachings brought down as trials by the angel Marot. Do you think there is no cost to power? It is no wonder blood clouds find a home here. But I can save you from that. And only I can save this world from its creator. It is what I was chosen to do. I do not delight in death, but I will clear all obstacles from my path — even mountains filled with jinn.”

The magus clasped his hands. I feared he was conjuring magic, so I stepped back.

“Be at ease.” He let out a resigned sigh. “It seems our conversation proved as fruitless as tilling the sand. Do your worst, Imperator Basil the Breaker. I await you in the Shrine of Saint Chisti. Oh, and I hope you and your legionaries won’t get lost on the way. Those narrow passages do go on and on.”

I could only smile at his determination. “One way or another, I will bring low your godless mountain.”

I returned to our camp, which we’d set upon a coarse bed of shrubs and watering holes that stretched for miles. My men were busy preparing for the siege. Hunting parties led by all the Abyad tribesmen we’d hired roamed the scrub for desert deer. Legionaries dug trenches around the oasis’ perimeter, then filled them with spikes, so we’d suffer no raid at our flanks or back. The camp prefects surveyed the land for water, and ordered new wells dug where appropriate.

The truth was, if the Zelthuriyans did not surrender, we’d struggle to survive a siege as much as they. The desert was not bountiful by nature, and seventy thousand mouths could not guzzle sand. Worst of all — few of us were used to the rageful heat of the day, or the sudden shift to a bitter, biting cold come moonrise. Surviving the desert took special skills and an even more peculiar constitution, which us folk from fairer lands lacked.

We’d no shortage of zeal, though. The unshakable truth which we each stood upon. After a decade of succession wars in which I defeated three Saturni pretenders, none but I had finally united the lands of the Ethosians. And we’d united for one purpose: to push east to the waterfall at the edge of the earth, and to open all hearts we’d cross to the faith, as portended in Angelsong.

I walked into my tent and poured ice water into a silver cup. My throat had swallowed enough sand during my short conversation with the magus, and even more disappointment. He did not sound like a man willing to relent, unlike the guards manning Qandbajar’s circle wall. Some men are bought with gold, others with fear, and yet more with common sense. What the magus’ currency was, I could not say. If it was as my own — if it was faith itself that had hired him, then we were in for a long siege.

I sat on my unfolded stool and took the water into my mouth. I let it settle on my dry throat, crunched the ice with my teeth, and swallowed. The ice we’d brought would not last the length of the siege, so it was an enjoyment I ought to savor.

An iron-clad legionary poked his head in. “Legate Tomas to see you, Lord Imperator.”

I nodded. “Let him come.”

Tomas strode in, still wearing his regal robes, spun of wool from his lavish estate on the breezy seaside of Deimos. The fur accenting the collar of his silver and rose shirt seemed suffocating, as did that turquoise bauble around his neck. From how sweat-soaked he was, and from his pungency, he obviously had not acclimated to the desert.

“How did it go?” he asked.

“The Zelthuriyans will stay in their caves and resist.”

“No surprise. And have you given thought to my proposal?”

His proposal. I wanted to spit on his silver sandals. To simply march past Zelthuriya, into the eastern lands, and down unto the peninsula of Kashan — wherein it was said they worship blood gods even stranger than those of the Yunan icelands — was a cowardly tactic.

We’d already spent a year conquering Himyar and Labash. Though taking Himyar was a bloody struggle, the Labashites surrendered and their Negus even accepted the Archangel into his heart.

“We did not come for the wealth of the east,” I said. “We came for their hearts and souls.”

“But with their wealth — and ever more hearts and souls — we can return to Zelthuriya stronger. I hear the Kashanese have tamed mighty mammoths for use in war.”

“We are already strong. And Kashan will be no walk through a pleasure garden. They say wormrot plagues the land. Better to wait that out before marching through its jungles. At least a year.”

“A year in this heat. Watching the mountains and waiting for the Zelthuriyans to surrender. When it is said that many don’t even need to eat or drink. That their faith nourishes them.”

“I am committed to this course, Legate. Best you and the others expend every resource to ensure this siege a triumph.”

From Tomas’ ugly scowl, it was obvious he did not appreciate my resolve. He rarely did. During the succession wars, he was oft counted among one faction or another opposing mine. Except for that rainy summer — now twelve moons ago — when we briefly aligned to snuff out the Brine Lord of Dycondi. But even after that victory, Tomas rushed to align against me, until I was the only power left to align with.

Still, I added him to my stable of allies. You can never have enough. I’d witnessed others inflict vengeance for reasons both petty and noble, and so knew well the folly of punitive retribution — though some exceptions had to be made for terrible men. Ultimately, I’d triumphed by being a unifier. I called to the foundation we all stood upon, the Ethos, and made it the unshakable pillar upon which I hoisted my Eight-Legged Banner. And in doing so, I did not discriminate between enemies and allies. An endless war only ended the day all surrendered to crown me.

And then we pushed east. Men that for decades had slaughtered each other now together slaughtered the infidel. But even with unbelievers, I preferred to make common cause. It would not be faith that united us — yet — but a baser calling: safety in body and wealth. I would keep the people of Qandbajar safe, something their saint-king failed to do, and thus win their loyalty before our faith won their hearts.

“Tomas.” I snapped my fingers. “Where is my son?”

“Doran is helping build the trenchworks.”

“Getting his hands sandy, is he?”

“As you well know, the boy — or rather man, given how broad his shoulders have become — leads by example. Rather like his father.”

I beamed, despite Tomas’ obvious ingratiation. His tongue was oft honeyed. Whenever it wasn’t — like a few minutes ago — you knew he was expressing his true yearnings and fears.

“I would spend an hour in prayer,” I said. “After, I’ll take questions from all and hear any concerns. We will do this siege right, as we did when saving Kostany from the Saturni and their deluded orators.”

That was a hard-won siege. Kostany’s walls might not be mountains, but they were the next best thing: high, thick, and worst of all, deep. The imperator who’d built them a hundred years ago was said to have drawn the designs himself, though he’d no background in engineering or wall works. Rather, the specifications came to him in a divine dream, in which the angel Malak himself promised him pillars as sturdy as his own. Those walls had kept Kostany safe from khagans and raiders. But they could not keep it safe from me, which further proved my chosen purpose.

“I don’t doubt your earnestness.” Given the softness of Tomas’ tone, he was ready to relent. While an ambitious man, he no longer let ambition outstrip practicality. Opposing me was simply bad for his health, and the health of his house and children, and he knew it well. Especially after I’d slain two of his sons in battle. He’d known it now for over a decade, and so had everyone in my assembly of dukes, legates, and priests. That was the only way to rule: show those with ambition their highest seat was just beneath yours, and to even attempt to rise would guarantee ruin.

“But you do doubt something,” I said. “What would it take to ease your heart?”

“I’m afraid after sighting that blood cloud, naught would ease my heart save my featherbed in Deimos.”

“You’re not the only one shaken by such nasty omens. The east is darkened by sorceries. Beguiled by demons. We must be ready for worse. Our holy fire will chase all rats out of their roosts. We must armor our hearts with faith as we do our bodies with iron.”

“You are wise, Lord Imperator. But the Abyad translator…” Tomas shuddered, his jaw stuck in fear or hesitation.

“What did he say?”

“He said the blood cloud comes from a land deep in the Endless Waste. A cursed crack in the earth called the God Sea. He said those born beneath such clouds are blessed with the power to write with blood. And he said there are tribes of these bloodwriters nearby, in the Vogras, and that they will not leave us alone for attacking this unholy city.”

“The Vogras… that’s a few days’ ride. No matter. We’ll root out those who failed Marot’s trial.”

“And if we come against blood magic? What equal do we have?”

“’Before faith, all darkness flees.’ So it is written in Angelsong.”

“I have found darkness to be unmoving. It is the light that comes and goes.”

He was anxious. No Crucian army had ever gone this deep into Latian lands, so we all ought to be wary.

“I know we are each uneasy to be far from our hearths and harvests. But I unified Crucis and the Ethos with this very purpose. To fulfill prophecy. Nowhere in Angelsong is it written that such things are easy. No, it will be a greater trial of faith than any before or after.”

Tomas nodded in his slow, thoughtful way. “Even the priests lack such reassuring words. I have always found it difficult to have faith, especially when faced with such bottomless suffering. But today, I will count myself among the faithful. I’ll do my utmost to reassure the legions.”

“Thank you, Tomas. Your service is ever appreciated.”

At that, he left me to my prayers. I knelt, closed my eyes, and pictured the Archangel in my heart, as I’d done since I was a boy. My faith was the only thing that had not changed, not since the day my father first took me to the chapel. It was still the faith of that innocent heart, and carried with it the same childish hopes.

And yet, now when I pictured the Archangel, his wings vast across the clouds, his many eyes watching the world from every possible angle, there was something else. Something dark in heaven above. Something that no light could illuminate. And it was vast, as if encompassing a thousand thousand leagues. Worse, it was growing. Growing and encroaching. Soon, it would cover everything, and no longer could we avert our gaze.

We’d have to face it.

That night, someone shook my shoulders till I woke from a dreamless sleep.

“Lord Imperator, the blood cloud has returned.” My son’s ever-deepening voice.

“Doran.” I sat up in my pallet and reached for my water jug, hoping to ease my nighttime dryness. But as soon as I sipped, I spat it out.

That was not water. Too metallic and viscous. And judging by the stain on my blanket, too red.

“Father, we must flee.” He was six and ten years, but the fear in his cheeks made him seem no older than ten. His dark curls dropped onto his bulging shoulders, hardened from laboring like any man in my army.

“Flee? From what?”

“The cloud. The cloud of blood and screams. Don’t you hear it, Father?”

I stilled and focused on the rustling breeze. Behind it lay something else… wails. Shrieks. As if an entire city were boiling alive. Men, women, and children, bathing in their own enflamed blood and innards. And it came from above.

I stood and grabbed my spatha, as if it could protect me from a cloud. Still, I felt safer strapping it to my belt. With my son at my side, I went through the tent flap and stepped onto the sand of the Zelthuriyan Desert.

The sky was a bulbous, bubbling red. It covered all corners, as if an evil god had unrolled a blood-soaked carpet above us. Now I saw those arms and legs, dipping in and out of the cloud, as if those suffering within yearned for escape, only to be pulled inside by whatever demons stirred that cauldron.

I swallowed, tasting the blood I’d sipped earlier. “That magus must’ve directed it back here. He means to chase us away. It is but a vain trick.”

“Father, this is no trick. All the water in the wells has turned red. Every morsel of food is bursting with rotten, black blood.”

“This is the evil we came to destroy, Doran. If I run from it, then how can I call myself the Opener?”

“How will we eat or drink? Would you have us sup upon something so vile?”

“There is worse in this world, my son. I have beheld such. I see it even in my prayers. There is a darkness vast, one that was not created, but rather is threaded into the fabric of everything.”

My handsome son scrunched his eyes and shook his head. How black his hair was, and yet it curled, unlike mine or his mother’s. Neither were we a family so broadly built as him, with such staunch chins and wavy brows.

“What would you have us do, Father?”

“Tell the men to stand upon the faith. This cloud will pass, as all do. Our zeal will outlast it. Then, we will commence our siege and put an end to such sorceries and demonic tricks for all time. Anyone — and I mean anyone — who runs will be hunted down, and shall taste their own blood in their throats. I will cut their necks slow, and I’ll proclaim their dishonor in every corner of Holy Crucis, such that even their own mothers will curse their names.”

I went about the camp shouting, “Steel your faith! These are but the guiles of the Fallen. Do not fear, for we have the angels at our backs!”

To the credit of my men, none fled. Many held hands with their brothers and hymned the holy verses of Angelsong, all while staring defiantly at the sky, as if hoping their words would send that blood cloud on its way. But I knew it would be a harder trial than that.

I sighted Tomas on the back of a camel. The Abyad translator sat at the front as the camel raised its long neck. The beast was laden with wooden cases and fabric rolls.

“Where are you going, Legate?” I asked, my face level with his silver shoes.

“Lord Imperator, you must give the command to flee. We ought to make for Qandbajar and return here only once this cloud has passed.”

I sighed with disappointment. “If this is all it takes to make us flee, they’ll do this again when we return. The magus is playing his trick, and we must outlast it.”

“This is not a trick,” the Abyad translator said in his crooked lilt. He was a young man with a swirl-shaped scar beneath one eye, whom we’d employed because he spoke many languages of both west and east. “The magi are as much at the mercy of these things as us. Even the jinn flee in the face of such evil as this. My people tell a story — strange things that live within the God Sea are stirred every seven hundred or so years. This cloud was born from the God Sea itself, and so we are right to fear what it may bring.”

I drew my sword and brandished it at his kidney, the tip jutting into his tapestried robe. “I fear only the angels. And they fear nothing. You will cease inspiring cowardice, or I will water the sand with your innards.”

“Go ahead. I’d rather die than live through what’s about to happen here.”

“And what’s about to happen?” I asked. “All it’s doing is floating. Maybe it’ll rain some, but so what? We are each soldiers. Do you think we have not bathed in blood, our own and others? Do you think we haven’t suffered a symphony of screams? We have brought more screams to this earth than any cloud.”

“You’ve let your arrogance blind you.” The Abyad tugged one end of his jade turban. “Doubtless, this blood cloud is here to punish you. It is an ill-fate that sees me trapped in your orbit.”

“Get down off that camel,” I ordered. “The cloud is a fright, for true. But I’m far worse. Don’t make me prove it.”

“Your blade will give me one death. I say that’s better than the many-fold deaths up there.”

I wound my arm to stab the camel through the neck before they could flee. But then the sky flashed, as if lightning had erupted across the blood cloud.

We all looked up.

The cloud billowed. It breathed. Its breadth extended for miles, and as the screams loudened, a haze drifted downward at speed.

“It’s coming!” Tomas shouted. “Archangel save us!”

Most of my legionaries stood in their irons, facing the descending blood cloud with prayers on their tongues. But for some, the sight of those oily, eyeball-filled tentacles slithering within it was too much. They ran, scattering across the sands, as if that would save them.

As for me, I’d been warned about these terrors. About what the Uncreated could conjure from its perch outside of time and creation. I’d even seen them in my prayers, of all places. I stared straight as red fog immersed us, thickening until it was as suffocating as smoke.

And for a moment, the screams and prayers ceased. Everything was silent.

Everything was still. I stood alone in a bloody haze, my lower half obscured by the thickness of it. A sudden chill breezed onto my bones, and as I shuddered, the stench of molten copper and ungodly rot assaulted my nose.

“So this is it,” I said. “Not such a terror. Let it pass. By the Archangel, let it pass.”

And then it began to thin, and we found ourselves somewhere else.

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Lightblade is here!

An Indo-Persian cyberpunk thrill ride with a progression magic system.

Get it at https://Books2Read.com/LB

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I awoke in a coliseum. A blue sun gazed at me, something I’d not seen before. It cast the world in a somber, alien hue. Rows and columns of stone benches sprawled around a sandy field.

Zauri stood in the field, sword hilt in hand. Black and red waves ignited off her hilt in a corkscrew pattern; how wondrous! A headless man charged her with a twinblade; it was like a lightblade except red beams shot out of both ends of a hilt, so it had to be held from the middle. How would she deal with something twice the size of her blade?

When the twinblade surged toward her chest, she twirled out of the way and swiped down on it with her lightblade. Light hit light and sparks flew in rainbow hues like when I’d fought Kediri’s shadow.

“Pause!” Zauri said to the headless man upon noticing me. He stood straight, holding the hilt of his twinblade out.

Zauri wiped sweat off her forehead with her sleeve as I walked through the sand toward her.

“The dream never ended for you, again?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. Lost count of the days, honestly. Twelve, I think?”

“Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“I was flying around and found this place. It’s on its own little island in the sea. Decided to sharpen my skills, so I can teach you better. Did a lot of fighting.”

So Zauri had been adventuring without me in my own dream stone. How was that even possible?

I wiped a bead of sweat off her reddened, sunbeaten cheek. Whatever she had to tell me, I could bear it, right? I wouldn’t just disown her.

“You were about to tell me something before we were so rudely interrupted. Truth is, I have much to tell you, but I want to hear whatever you have to say first.”

Zauri nodded. “Let’s go sit, at least.”

We sat on a stone bench. I imagined it filled with folks watching warriors do battle, cheering each bloody pummel and sliced limb. When I was a boy, Abba told me they had coliseums in Majapahit where people fought, but I hadn’t imagined them like this: stone-built, sandy, and large enough to field a small army, let alone a few duelers.

Zauri sighed and scratched her snaky eyebrows. She locked eyes with me, her cheeks tight and tense. “The first day when you met me was also the first day I’d ever existed. Technically, I have a sense that there was a before, but no actual memories. I possessed knowledge and ideas, but no actual context for why I knew what I knew aside from an understanding that I’m a script, meant for a specific purpose. Basically, I’m like a person with amnesia who wakes up knowing what their purpose is, yet not really understanding why it’s that way.”

If I were to wake up with amnesia, it might be a mercy. Forgetting everything would be a clean slate. And yet, the shadows of what had happened would still be there, an inexplicable pain hiding in the darkness.

I nodded so she’d continue.

“There was something else, though… a source, deep inside me, feeding me ideas. Emotions. Sensations. And even memories. Eventually, I figured out what it was, and the real sin is that I didn’t tell you until now. It’s a hidden script called a black box. It’s something most often used in espionage in order to corrupt a dream stone and control the mind of the user. Meaning, it’s something evil, and I don’t know what it’s doing to me. What it’ll make me do, in the end, to you.”

Tears spilt from her eyes. Her remorse was real, of that I was sure. She’d described something that seemed beyond her control. But the awful possibilities were endless; could this black box be why I was missing memories? Had it poisoned my thinking, somehow? Had it changed me?

Strange to say it, but even if it had changed me, I was happy with the decisions I’d made since I met Zauri. From the moment just after I’d executed Vir, I was starting to free myself of the way the camp had made me think. Of how it had corrupted me. Surely, even with a black box inside of her, Zauri was better than all that.

And it wasn’t her fault. Someone else had done it, and perhaps she feared what I’d think and so hesitated to tell me.

I took her in my arms as she bawled. “I, too, have a part of me that I don’t understand. That makes me do things I can’t explain. I still don’t know who it was that betrayed my friend Vir — if that was even me, or some monster hidden inside. It doesn’t make you bad.”

She clung to my chest. “Jyosh, you should always destroy a stone that’s been corrupted with a black box. I don’t know what’s written in it… and it’s become so entrenched in my script, that I no longer know if my actions and thoughts are arising naturally, or from it.”

“I won’t destroy you.”

I tasted a bitter thought: what if she’d kissed me because the black box made her do it? Maybe when Rahal said not to trust my dream wife, this was why. Maybe it was worse than I was willing to accept. Something underhanded was being done to us… but why? We laborers were nothing but the lowest of the low and barely worth this kind of clever trick.

“You should delete me,” Zauri said, her eyes wet and sad. “For your own safety. You should!”

“No. There has to be another way.”

“Please, Jyosh. I don’t want to cease existing, but I don’t want you to get hurt. Black boxes are capable of awful manipulation. They’ve even been used to brainwash people into killing themselves or killing others, even others they love. They can twist your sense of reality. I’m dangerous!”

“If it means disconnecting from you forever, I won’t do it. This dream is all that makes life worth living. Besides, what isn’t dangerous? I’m literally in the middle of a war zone right now sleeping in a building that, at any moment, could be erased by a light cannon.”

Zauri covered her mouth in obvious shock. “What happened?”

“Would be faster if you just read my memories.”

She nodded, placed a clammy hand on my forehead, and closed her eyes. A numb throb spread through my head as if my brains were being slowly sucked through my forehead.

Zauri gasped in utter horror and retracted her hand. “You had a chance to escape Maniza and you gave it up for some old woman? Why!?”

That scolding tone reminded me of Amma. “The ticket didn’t belong to me. It was rightfully hers. I couldn’t do that to her, to her family. I couldn’t be that person…”

“The person who betrayed Vir? Surviving isn’t evil, Jyosh. Nor is it easy. As a lightblade training program, first and foremost, I’m teaching you a way to survive. And to survive, you have to value yourself as much as others.”

It seemed she valued my life more than I did. “I think… what I did to Vir… it already killed me, in a way. The person who did that couldn’t live with what he’d done, and so I was reborn in his place. The way you said you’d been born the day we met… oddly enough, I feel the same. That’s why it seems so strange that I hurt him.”

“No, you’re compartmentalizing. You’re breaking into pieces. It’s a reaction to stress, not some kind of rebirth. The thing is, you have to survive.” She paused to catch her breath. “What’s done is done, I suppose. But given the situation you’re in, I’m going to teach you everything you need to know so you have the highest chance of getting through the mess you’re in.”

I chuckled. She didn’t lack for confidence. “Whatever you teach me, I won’t use it to harm people. More than anything, I don’t want to make this world a worse place. I won’t use my skills for evil.”

“You’re being evil to yourself if you give up and die! Your soul is as valuable as anyone’s. Let’s not waste time. I can teach you useful things right now. You can already make a lightblade, but that’s worthless if you don’t have a combat stone and sword hilt.”

She waved her hand in the air. The overhead sun sank toward the ground and burned redder, the color of Maniza’s eternal sunset.

Now it loomed on the horizon — a menacing half-oval.

I asked, “If the sun is redder at the horizon like in Maniza, why is it harder to conduct red light than if the sun is overhead?”

“There’s actually more of all wavelengths of light when the sun appears white and is positioned overhead. What makes the sky red in Maniza is the angle. The light takes longer to reach, and most of it gets absorbed along the way — red just slightly less than the others. That’s why the sky appears red.”

I could spend all day asking her questions and learning from her. But this probably wasn’t the time.

“Put a green stone in your chest,” she commanded.

“Yes, sir.” I opened my palm and tapped Aperture Stone > Green into the terminal. I felt a slight tickle and jolt in my chest.

“So here’s the thing, Jyosh. Forget about lightblades for now. You need to learn to fight with this.” She snapped her fingers. A weird, disc-like thing with a handle appeared in her hand.

Took a moment to realize what it was.

“A frying pan!?” I said with my hands on my head.

“There’s a frying pan in the room you’re sleeping in. You may not have noticed it, but I did when you let me see your memories. Also, crucially, there’s a stove in that room. So here’s what you’re going to do. Open the stove’s bottom compartment, remove the gain medium crystal, and adhere that crystal to the frying pan.”

I laughed.

Zauri snarled. “I’m not joking! You can make an electric weapon with the frying pan that way. Just like how you’ve been conducting green light into a fabricator, you’ll do so into the frying pan. Because it’ll have a gain medium crystal, it’ll become a basic electric weapon.”

I snorted and shook my head. “Yeah, and how am I going to adhere a gain medium crystal to a frying pan? I know how gain mediums work — they’re rather sensitive.”

“Exactly. You know how they work. You saw those batons the soldiers were using. They’re also an electric weapon, just like the frying pan weapon you’re going to make.”

Well… she wasn’t completely insane. If I had wires, I could technically attach the gain crystal to the frying pan and create a conduit, which I could then conduct green light into. That would technically electrify the frying pan, but it just seemed so ridiculously crude.

“So this frying pan… it’ll hurt?”

“You saw what that baton did. It’ll be similar. But we need to practice — now — so that when you wake up, you’ll be ready to mess people up with that frying pan.”

Zauri handed the frying pan to me. It had this bulge between the handle and the pan where the green gain crystal was being housed.

I inhaled the sun’s green light, cycled it through me, and pushed it into the pan. The coated handle got hot, though not as much as the metal pan.

“If only I had some eggs,” I said with a grin.

“Be serious!”

“Yeah-yeah, I’m very serious, I swear.”

“Good. Now, push more green into it, like you want to overload the thing.” Zauri presented her right cheek to me. “And then hit me.” She poked her cheek. “Right here.”

“I don’t want to hit you.”

“Hit me! Unlike a lightblade, which we can see, I need to feel that you’re doing it right.”

Was I really about to slap this woman with an electrified frying pan?

“Right now, it’s just kinda hot, though. There’s no electricity.”

“That’s because it’s a freaking frying pan. It’s meant to conduct heat into food, not spark. You have to overload the gain crystal, but not so much as to destroy it. Just enough to get a current to conduct through the pan. And you have to do it right at the moment before you strike. So try!”

It was all so ridiculous. Was a frying pan really going to help me survive a war?

I wound my arm and held back the light from entering the handle, letting it pool in my hand instead — a tingly, hot feeling. Hitting her seemed so wrong, but she couldn’t feel pain, and she’d be the best judge as to whether it worked. Those smooth, soft cheeks though…

I thwacked the pan into her shoulder, surging a goodly portion of green into the handle just before impact. The pan electrified and sparked as it made contact. Lightning bolts jumped off the pan and onto her.

Zauri shuddered and backed away.

“Holy…” she said, jaw hanging. “You did it on the first try. You shocked the hell out of me. Anyone would go down from that.”

I smiled, satisfied but not surprised. “I’ve been a machinist for twelve years. I can command massive machines. What the hell is a frying pan to me?”

“All right, all right. Very good. But you’re not a god just yet.”

“I might be to those who worship frying pans. Surely there must be someone, somewhere who does.”

Zauri snapped her fingers. A pale, headless, pot-bellied man blinked into existence in front of me. She pointed at his hand with her forefinger. A slanted, metal pipe materialized there.

He raised the pipe, ready to charge.

How was Zauri inputting all these dream commands on the fly, without a terminal?

“Defend yourself, Jyosh,” she said. “If you don’t, it’ll hurt.”

She pointed at me with an open hand, then closed and opened it again. Her commands were so dramatic. I loved them.

I didn’t love the way the pot-bellied man charged at me, shoulder forward, with the force of a barreling ox. I dove away from his lunge. Landed on one hand, then pushed myself to my feet. I was quite the acrobat when needed.

Sparks flew from the pale man’s pipe as he swiped at me. His swings were heavy but slow, so I sidestepped or backed away from each. I imagined my frying pan to be a hammer and went for his neck stump. The headless man blocked my topside swing with his pipe. Electricity zagged through the air as both our weapons sparked.

“For god’s sake, Jyosh, stop dancing.” Zauri gritted her teeth as the headless man and I stepped back and faced each other. “Imagine what a real bad guy would do to you if he won. He’d spill your guts. He’d stew your entrails. He’d paint his walls with your blood. Fight like you’re going to die an agonizing death!” She grunted as if she wanted to join the fight. “Get angry. Feel some hate!”

I imagined Kediri’s head on that neck. Kediri had already killed me, figuratively, and our whole family, literally. Why had that bastard tried to defect, alone? Didn’t he realize Emperor Sanga would punish his family for such treason? He’d died selfishly, but he deserved a second death, an infinity of deaths!

As the pale man went for my right arm, I lunged at his heart. Electrified my frying pan just as it hit his left breast. A pounding, spicy pain radiated from my arm, seizing my senses as both our hits landed. The headless man crashed backward and me on top. Electricity zapped my muscles and bit into my bones.

I’d won, but the electric jolts in my arms and the frustration that I couldn’t really kill Kediri made it less than pleasant.

“From now on, every fight is to the death,” Zauri said. “Know what happens in war? No one will be working the fields, so food’ll run out. Light cannons will flatten cities. Droves will rush to the borders, but eventually Maniza’s neighbors won’t allow them in.” She clasped her lush blue hair, more exasperated than I was of my sad plight. “You can’t be soft. Your chance of living lessens each day you’re out there.”

It was awkward to wield this frying pan while discussing life and death. “Thanks for caring, Zauri. But how much can an electrified frying pan increase my odds of surviving? Maybe half a percent? I’ll need to get lucky to keep breathing — had I just drawn a five or eight on that ticket, I could’ve been somewhere safe by now. Who knows what ways to live or die tomorrow’ll bring?” I lifted the frying pan over my head and pretended it was a hat. I grinned, but Zauri wouldn’t smile back. How to make her understand without upsetting her? “I realized a while ago that focusing only on survival makes life as bitter as the cleaning-fluid-spiced curry I often had for lunch. And in here, I don’t want that awful taste in my mouth. I want to have fun. I want to make good memories. And truth be told, since you arrived, I’ve been having fun. Haven’t had this much fun since I was a dumb kid.”

Finally, she smiled, though pain lingered in her eyes. “I understand. Since you’re not going to destroy this dream stone, know that we can make more happy memories if you survive longer. And if you die… what if this dream never ends for me? I’ll be alone… forever.”

Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. Whereas she made my life less lonely, I made her life less lonely, too. And what was lonelier than being the only one in a forever dream?

“I think we’re both right,” I said. “So let’s use this time wisely. We’ll spend some of it training, some of it adventuring, and some of it taking it easy. Sound good?”

Zauri nodded. “Our training isn’t over.” She snapped her fingers. Now, two headless men blinked into existence. One had a slanted pipe and the other something far worse: a machete.

“A lot of farms around your area,” Zauri said. “I’m taking an educated guess about the dangers you might face. Next, you’ll fight a rake-wielder.”

I trained with the frying pan the whole day. Got pretty good at slapping headless men with it. I also practiced my dodging, ducking, and sliding. Such acrobatics would be more difficult in the real world with my pained knees, though.

 Timing the electric hits was easy enough, but if I had to dodge as well, I’d mess up sometimes. According to Zauri, this was why training mattered — it developed muscle memories and instincts.

“Okay, time to learn a new move,” Zauri said after I’d brought down a headless man who dual-wielded rakes with a clean strike to the ribs. “You can use the frying pan to block a hit and conduct a current from yourself, through the pan, and into your enemy’s weapon. That’ll shock and perhaps knock out your opponent, turning parrying into an offensive move.”

So not only would I have to time my electric surge right, but also direct it into my opponent’s weapon. That would demand some inward focus while I was dancing, dodging, and dipping.

It sounded ingenious, though. I beamed at my teacher. “Tell me, Zauri, this something all lightblade training programs know how to do?”

She crossed her arms — adorably serious — and shook her head. “I’m figuring this stuff out on the fly, but it’s all based on sound principle. The same principle by which you power machines with sunshine. Energy is energy, it can be channeled in an ordered way, or chaotically. We’re mixing it up here to create viable offensive and defensive strategies.”

I scratched my head. “Despite slaving at a machine for half my life, I would’ve never figured any of this out. Nice to have you around to think for me.”

“Because you weren’t taught the fundamentals. You don’t know the intricacies of conducting sunshine. There’re a thousand layers of knowledge regarding it. Even I’m ignorant relative to what’s out there. I’m straining and stretching everything I know, for your sake.”

Whether she was right or wrong, whether any of this would really help me or not, just the thought that she cared so much almost melted me. She had my best interest at heart. Despite the black box. I’d shuttered that from my mind because I wanted to give my trust to her fully.

Zauri snapped her fingers. A pipe-wielding man materialized amid white light.

“Give it a go!” she said.

The man swung at me. I raised my pan to block. I pushed the green light from my hand into the pan and surged it toward where I hoped the pipe and pan would make contact.

Clank. Sparks erupted off the pan. One caught me in the neck, sending jittery jolts through me. But the pale man remained standing, pipe brandished in front of his face, ready for the next attack.

“Try again,” Zauri said. “It’s not just about timing, it’s about positioning. Here, do this — instead of trying to figure out where on the pan the pipe will strike, try to line up the pan so the pipe strikes it at the center, then be ready to direct your light there.”

That would simplify things. But I’d also be relying more on my physical positioning instead of my ability to direct green light, and I was more comfortable with the latter. Still, I trusted my teacher’s guidance.

The headless man swung down; I pushed my pan forward so the pipe would smack its center, then surged the pooled light into that point. Sparks jetted off the pan and into the pipe. The pale man electrified. Blue lightning engulfed his limbs and torso. Burnt meat stench filled the air as he collapsed forward.

I’d become a god, truly. That electric parry was even more powerful than my direct strikes!

Zauri cheered and clapped with glee. “Not only did you direct your own light into his weapon, you directed his own light back at him. Told you you’re amazing!”

I bowed my head, a graceful winner. “Well, those shitty factory machines were always one misdirected current from breaking down, and breaking a machine would mean my head. So long story short, frying pan weapons are my specialty.”

Zauri wagged her finger. “It’s still not enough! You’re just getting started on my new training regimen. But… we can break for today. Next time, I’ll teach you something even better.”

Ahh. I’d earned some relaxation. How wonderful to actually be good at something. But whether or not the school of the electrified frying pan would prevail in a war zone remained an open question.

“Before we take a break,” Zauri put a finger on her chin, “there’s something I discovered that you need to see.”

With how tired I felt, all I wanted to discover was the sand and waves. “I’ll only agree if you promise it’ll make me smile.”

“Umm…” she tapped her chin. “Yeah, you’ll smile.”

“Your hesitation doesn’t inspire confidence.” I sighed and scratched my sweaty eyebrow. “But since you’re so insistent, lead the way.”

Zauri opened her palm and tapped into her terminal window.

A glowing white light enveloped me.

I blinked onto a field of golden grass. At my front sprawled a palace with uncountable spires. Statues of the gods painted in wondrously glossy purple, green, and gold covered each spire. Some statues sported wings, others had many arms and heads. Some wielded swords and had fire for hair. Some had animal faces, others human. It was a colorful, vast splendor that my eyes had never tasted the like of.

My ears, too, delighted at the flutes and sitars sounding from the sky, as if the gods were playing a symphony from their perch in the second heaven. The air, which itself was glittery and pink, smelled of the purest roses. A musk breeze cooled my cheeks.

Zauri came to my side and took my arm. “Well? What do you think?”

“Does the emperor of the world live here?”

“Actually, it’s a temple. It wasn’t here before, though. After you left, another weird pattern appeared in the sky, so I flew up toward it. When I did, I appeared here.”

I wanted to skip my way to the entrance. I’d not been so giddy to explore something since I was a child sneaking through my neighbors’ yards. “Let’s go inside!”

“I already tried. It’s locked. All we can really do is marvel at it from afar. Unless… maybe there’s a key?”

“A key? Hell, I’ll break the door down with my frying pan.”

Zauri put her face in her palm. “Wait till you see the door before you say that. Also, we can’t fly over it. There’s a force field.”

We walked for three minutes down a flower-lined stone walkway toward a massive, golden double door that dwarfed my whole house. A door for titans, literally. No way my frying pan could break through that. Zauri fingered the indentation at the door’s base, which resembled a lotus.

“So we have to find a lotus-shaped key,” I said. “Where could that be hiding?”

“I dunno.” She smiled at me. “Let’s keep a look out, I suppose.”

“Whatever happened to that divine dragon? You ever see it again?”

“Nope. But you should understand something — all these… surprises, all these things the modder added to your stone, as well as the black box inside me — it’s all connected, somehow.”

I glared up at the magnificent, golden door. “Well, obviously.”

“And…” Zauri gazed at the ground, solemn. “It might all be a bad thing. It might be meant to hurt you, in the end. It might seem like a puzzle, an adventure, a mystery, but it could all be leading to your doom.”

What wasn’t leading to my doom, these days? This was a more fun doom than the one in the real world, at least.

“I don’t want to believe that. This world can’t be all bad. I mean, you’re not bad, Zauri. You’re doing your best to help me.”

She shrugged. “I hope you’re right.”

I hated seeing her so unsure of herself. I knew that poison too well.

We spent the next day at the beach. Zauri wouldn’t change into swimming clothes before she got in the water. I always hated swimming with my day clothes on, but to each their own. We had fun, though. We even used the turtle shell to skid across the water. Racing each other against the throbbing tides, I almost forgot what awaited me in the real world.

For the first time in forever, I had a true friend. Well, more than that. A teacher. Maybe more than that. What exactly Zauri was to me, I couldn’t say. And maybe, I didn’t want to define or limit it in any way. It was what it was, and it would be what it would be.

The day after that, we trained. I got masterful with the frying pan. I was smacking down three attackers at a time by day’s end. No strike was too much for my electric parries, a move that would shock my opponents in more ways than one.

We munched on fruits after. Normally, I don’t eat in dreams because it makes you hungrier when you awaken, as you’re tricking your body into thinking it’s enjoyed nourishment. A banana, some pineapple, and a slice of watermelon couldn’t hurt too much.

“It’s like discovering a new color,” Zauri said, chomping down on watermelon flesh, seeds stuck on her teeth. We were sitting in the cabin with a crackling fire going. “It’s so so good.”

We laughed a lot. We got stuck in the moment. We put the sad things, the questions, and the inevitable end out of mind. Though it was always there, itching my scalp like an ant digging toward my brain: You’re going to wake up. And then you’re going to die.

I did my best not to let the thought poison the moment. But it lingered like a ghost no matter where we went. Even when we gave the turtle shell another go and whooshed across milky clouds, it was there behind me, always lurking, and in front of me, forever looming.

I had to tell it “No!” I wasn’t going to die. I could survive. I could fight to live. I had something to fight for, after all: more moments like these.

We smoked cigars on the mountain top, sitting our backs against a massive ruby, with more giant rubies and emeralds dotting the landscape. Wind hummed as it hit them, playing songs of ruby, emerald, and topaz.

“I’ve been wondering,” I said. “If this dream continues when I’m not here, then who’s dreaming it?”

Zauri seemed to be enjoying her cigar, unlike last time. Her puffs, while not as deep as mine, made a satisfying sizzle. “Maybe it’s not continuing.” She tapped her chin. “Maybe it’s the black box making me think that, feeding me false memories and sensations.”

I regretted asking the question. That sounded so sad. False memories? How could you be sure of yourself if you didn’t know what you’d actually experienced? If your personality, habits, and feelings were just the product of some mysterious unknown?

Zauri seemed as disturbed by the thought as me; she breathed out cardamom-scented smoke with a tense sigh.

“You’re real to me, Zauri.” I said what I felt in the moment. Finally. “I wish I could never wake up. Imagine if we could, somehow, enter a layer two or layer three dream. It would multiply the time I could remain in the dream.” I did the math on my fingers, using the creases of my right hand. “Three hours in the real world is three days here, that’s seventy-two hours, that would be seventy-two days in a layer two dream. In a layer three dream… uhh…” That was beyond my finger counting skills.

“Over four and a half years.” Zauri smiled somberly as she snuffed her cigar out on the ground. She snapped a new one into her fingers. “And a layer four dream would be a hundred and thirteen years.”

That was the most hopeful, beautiful, and wondrous thing I’d ever heard. “So what would it take for us to enter a layer two dream?”

“It’s not possible. This dream stone doesn’t have a second layer.”

“So many things we thought weren’t possible have been happening. Maybe there’s a way. If there’s even a sliver of hope of entering deeper dreams, we should try.”

She shook her head. “There isn’t, though. It’s one thing for new scripts to emerge from a black box, it’s another thing for your dream stone to change physically and somehow, magically, gain another stable layer of depth.”

I grunted in frustration. “I won’t let myself die, then. I’ll get to safety. I’ll be back. I promise.”

Seeing her hopeful smile, I almost regretted those words. If I couldn’t stay true to them, she’d be alone forever, waiting endlessly. Even her memory of me would wither with time.

“Jyosh.” Zauri took my hand between hers. So warm. “If you can’t find another levship, then look for the train tracks. There’s definitely a rail line connecting Maniza with its neighbor to the east, Demak.”

“How would I find this railway, though? I’ve never heard of it.”

“How were completed parts from camp transferred elsewhere?”

“By levship. It would come several times a week and land at the outskirts. I don’t know of any rail, wouldn’t even know which direction to go.”

She squeezed my hand. “Ask someone, then. Do whatever you have to do. You have skills, now. Survive, Jyosh.”

My vision cracked like a glass pane being hit by a hammer. Zauri hugged me, then pushed her lips onto mine; I held and kissed her as she shattered into a billion pieces.

I awoke, and the bitterness of our sudden separation stung like a severed limb.

As I wiped the sweat from my forehead and gazed at unfamiliar, metal walls, an utterly horrifying realization pounded in my heart: this wasn’t where I’d gone to sleep.

The post Lightblade | Chapter 6 appeared first on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

We relocated to the incomplete version of my hometown Harska. Except it wasn’t incomplete anymore.

It was Harska. The streets were now cobbled, the buildings complete with stone walls and merlon-lined roofs. Lush cypresses lined the roadsides, and they didn’t have hands growing out of them, thankfully. The dragon no longer hovered around the sun, which was now covered by dark clouds. It was raining, as it often did. A red-tailed squirrel sat on a nearby branch, munching an oozing gooseberry.

Rain hitting the tree leaves went patter-patter. Cool drops washed down my forehead. Zauri didn’t seem to like it and took refuge beneath the branches of the broadest cypress. I glanced in every direction, taking in a memory that had now come alive.

“How can this be?” I said after joining Zauri beneath the tree. “Yesterday, it was completely unfinished.”

“Could be that you’re unlocking new scripts, somehow. There are training programs that unlock new features as you progress. I mean, that’s just a theory.”

“So something I did caused Harska to be built? But what? And why?”

“Like I said, it’s only a theory.” She shrugged. “I dunno.”

I bent down and stuck my hand in the wet dirt, then clumped a handful. I brought it to my nose and sniffed. Minerally and rich, like the dirt in the backyard of the house where I grew up. I was home…and yet, it was absent of what really made it home: the people.

“I know what you’re thinking.” Said so melodically. Zauri gave me a toothy grin. “You wanna go to your house, right?”

Well, of course. But I feared what I’d find there: an empty shell devoid of laughter. Without the waft of Abba’s spicy chicken curry, or the comforting sound of Amma chasing a giggling Chaya up the stairs. Even the sight of long-haired Kediri sulking in his room would be a balm.

At least Zauri was here.

“I can show you my room,” I said.

“Oh yeah? What’re we gonna do there?”

“Uhh…” I tensed up. What were we gonna do there? I scratched my suddenly itchy back. “Just see my miniature barrel collection.”

“Your what?” She scrunched her face, obviously perplexed. “Miniature…barrels?”

“Yeah…” I mean, what more was there to say? I collected tiny barrels in my youth.

“Barrels…like…what you use to store stuff?”

“Yup.”

“But…why would they be miniature?”

Wow, so many questions. Was it that hard to understand? “Well, the company that made the barrels would create small models, just to show them off. Abba was friends with the owner. So…yeah…my childhood wasn’t that interesting, is what I’m saying.”

“At least you had a childhood. I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like to be a smaller, more vulnerable version of yourself. To grow from that into what you are now. It’s just unreal. I wish I could glimpse what that’s like.”

The glow dimmed on her face the way clouds cover the sun. The realization that she’d never get to experience childhood had obviously saddened her. Only then did I realize that maybe I was as strange to Zauri as she was to me. It made me feel so much less alone, to think that she was struggling with her thoughts about me, as much as I struggled with my thoughts about her.

About what she was. And even crueler, what she wasn’t.

“One day,” she cleared her hoarse-sounding throat, “you’ll outgrow me, too.” She’d said so before, when talking about how she was only meant to train children. “I’m static. You’re ever-evolving. You’ll flourish, like a butterfly unfurling its wings for the first time. You’ll become something great. You won’t need to visit me, anymore.”

“You’re definitely over-estimating me.”

“No…you’re amazing, Jyosh. You just don’t know it yet. I wonder, will you even think of me when that day comes? Even once in a while?”

“Zauri, they don’t sell dream stones on supermarket shelves where I live like they do in Karsha. Rest assured, I’m stuck with you.” That came out wrong. But it was the harsh truth, and nothing reassured more than truth, right?

She remained sullen. “Sorry…I don’t know what’s come over me.” She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that masked pain. “Let’s go see your house.”

Hopefully I could cheer her up once we got there.

My house was south of the central plaza and park, just past the statue of Sanga Surapsani’s father, Gupta, who stood cross-armed and wore a golden turban with a peacock plume. Then there was the supermarket — one of five in the city — where they sold only local goods and often didn’t have enough of anything, anyway. Once we cleared that, we arrived at a long street lined by palm trees with bulging date fruits, and then a cluster of walled villas for folks even more wealthy than my family. Finally, we reached the stream, which always had chalky, green water, crossed the wooden bridge, and arrived in the closest suburb. The first row of houses weren’t the nicest nor the largest, being wood built and single-storied, but the next row had stone and concrete houses, some as tall as four stories, and mine was in the middle.

The shade-giving cedar stood in the front yard, just how I remembered it. A timeless thing. Used to climb it despite my mother’s pleading. Abba even threatened to make firewood of it when I fell off and broke my arm.

Strange that my house was painted a drab eggshell rather than luminous white; was it a mistake or was I just remembering it wrong? Perhaps I’d brightened the memories somewhat. Most houses were painted off-white, right?

Anyway, I took it all in. That clay-colored roof now seemed a warm protector over our life, or at least the memory of it. And the door: did it always have a silver knob? Wasn’t it golden, or was that another thing my memory had brightened?

Zauri put a hand on my shoulder. I’d almost forgotten she was next to me. From her expectant yet solemn expression, she seemed to understand the moment. Hadn’t she looked into my memories, already? Then she knew what home meant. That my life had been pretty good, once. So good that I took it for granted because I never knew how bad things could get.

The knob turned easier than I thought it would. Upon entering, the place was so…dinky. The living room with its bird-patterned floor cushions seemed too small for a family of five. In my memory, it was like a palace. And the stairs were a few steps from the door, even though I remembered it as a vast expanse.

Amma had these ceramic plates in a big glass display case. But they weren’t there. Come to think of it, how could the modder know the layout of my house, and what items were inside?

A wire dangled from the corner ceiling. Abba would conduct green light into it upon request from the government. Every house had one. To this day, I’m not sure what it powered.

A dusty smell wafted from everything like dead skin. The silence hollowed out my hopes. I climbed the stairs, Zauri following behind.

My room was the first door on the left. I creaked the door open, not sure what I’d see, but expectant, nonetheless. The red sunlight beaming through the window showed a bed without sheets, a dusty wooden desk, and empty wooden shelves.

“Where’s your barrel collection?” Zauri asked.

“It’s not here. Not much is.”

“That’s too bad. I was honestly excited to see some small barrels.”

“Me too.”

It was like standing inside a skeleton. Even without the meat and skin, this was still my house. Or rather, it was the corpse of what I’d lost the day my brother Kediri tried to defect from the Manizan Air Guard, got caught, and got himself killed. The elimination of his family, of course, followed. Only I was spared and sent to a labor camp for life. Only I remained of this once proud home, this once loving family.

Sobs sounded from behind. I turned to see Zauri, diamond-like tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Jyosh, I have to tell you something.” I couldn’t understand why she was suddenly crying, as if her eyes had sprung a leak. “I’m not supposed to tell you, but I care about you too much to hide it any longer.”

“Tell me what?”

“Something very deliberate is happening, here. I’ve known the whole time, but I kept it a secret.” She took my hand in hers. “If I tell you, can you promise you won’t hate me?”

I couldn’t promise anything. I sipped on hate daily, used it for fuel. But here, in the dream, I didn’t want to hate. I especially didn’t want to hate Zauri.

“I can never hate you, Zauri. Just tell me. Whatever it is. So we can go forward without secrets.”

“But it’s…it’s truly terrible.” She sucked in a sob, then let out a pained whine. “I’ve been—”

WAKE UP!

Something bashed against my cheek, as if I’d been smacked with a hammer. Alarms blaring into my soul. Rahal’s angry eyes, pungent smell, and overgrown nose hairs, right up in my face.

He slapped me again, then grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Wake up you sack of shit!”

I jutted up into a sitting position. “The hell — the hell is happening?”

That alarm. I’d never heard it before, but it raised my hairs and blared into my bones.

“War,” Rahal said. “There’s a goddamn war on. It’s them! It’s the Karshans!”

I threw off my blanket, pushed Rahal out of the way, and ran toward the door. I sprinted down the hall and darted outside the dorm. Then I stared up.

“Fuck.”

Levships covered the sky like a swarm. Each was rectangular and metallic. Some were even painted in bright colors. Unlike the levships you typically see in the Manizan sky, these had no wings. They weren’t shapely, but rather boxy. They seemed to be in separate clusters, with a big one in the center — probably a command ship — surrounded by ten to fifteen smaller ones. The big ones were about five times the size of the smaller ones, too, and flatter and shaped like a spade.

No matter where in the sky I stared, I saw a levship or the streaks of one.

That alarm fed panic into my soul. As if it were saying “run while you can, or you’ll be blown to bits. And even if you do run, you’ll still be blown to bits.” Around the camp, most men were looking up, their jaws hanging, drool dripping. Some ran for the camp gate, colliding into others as if without sense. Others were shouting high-pitched things I was too nervous to focus on.

Chaos.

I rubbed my eyes and returned to my room. Took out my fire-colored dream stone and put in my green machinist stone. Then I tucked my dream stone into my pocket and sat on my mattress. We hadn’t received any instructions from the camp managers about what to do. I ought to just wait here, lest I get into trouble.

This coffin was the safest place. Sure, the Karshans had taken over the sky, but down here, the camp police reigned. But…wait…wouldn’t the Karshan air force target camps like this? Emperor Sanga produced weapons here, so…was I just waiting to be hit by a light cannon strike?

But could I really survive if I ran? It seemed I was just choosing a way to die. A thought drifted into my mind and made me smile, despite the terror choking my nerves: better to die free. Fuck this place.

I had no other possession worth taking so went back outside and melded into a group of laborers stampeding for the gate, the only opening among the fencing that surrounded the camp. Since barbed wire covered the top of the fencing, it truly was the only way out. Instead of watching where I was going, I stared at the sky.

So many ships. Just unreal. What was this Karshan fleet doing? Just hovering? It didn’t seem like a battle was going on. No light cannon strikes at all. Where was the Manizan Air Guard? Why’d they just let the Karshans in?

My bones felt the squeeze of the stampeding crowd around me. I could be crushed in here, so I pushed back, hard as I could, against the people around me. Forget the sky. There were enough dangers down here.

The crowd thinned as more workers ran out the gate. I could breathe again.

“Where’s everyone going?” I asked a young, beady-eyed man to my left.

“Some are going into town, others want to trek it to the border. I say the mountains sound safest.”

“Safest from who?” I wasn’t even sure what I had to fear most, in this situation. Was I going to get blown up by a light cannon strike, or would I die somehow in the chaos?

“I don’t know. Everything, I guess.”

You couldn’t live in the mountains forever. But we were safer in numbers, so I followed everyone down the dirt road for the next five minutes, my heart in my throat. Then I realized: maybe we weren’t safer in numbers. Numbers attract attention. But I wasn’t sure where to go, so continued following the crowd.

The jumble of us got clear of camp. Aside from the dirt road, all around were pockmarked, decaying fields. Some grass, but mostly graying soil. Actually, we weren’t far from the nature trail where I’d seen that mound of shiny green emirils yesterday.

A beam of light sliced the sky, as if a sword had cut through a tarp and exposed an angry sun. The beam struck somewhere beyond the mountains.

A flash scathed my eyes. A quake battered the earth as everyone bellowed in fear.

I got low, though I was rather delayed. A plume of smoke now trailed into heaven from beyond the icy mountain peak. A massive light cannon beam must’ve been fired from a levship at some target on the ground. A sign things were heating up.

For some reason, everyone was running. Scattering into the fields. Hollering as if being chased by death itself. Why? That shot was really far away.

“Hey! Where’re you going?” I shouted to the beady-eyed man as he sprinted off, his arms flailing.

Wait, what was this long, streaky shadow that had covered me, all of a sudden?

I looked up to see a levship, hovering just above.

Only I remained in its shadow, now. Nope. I wasn’t about to face a levship on my own. I let fear take over and cycled my legs as fast as I could down the dirt road. Heaving. Hurtling my bones forward, dragging my skin and meat along. Since everything was so flat and open, there was nowhere to hide until I reached the nature trail. If that levship wanted to fire at me, it would be an explosive end.

I could only sprint so far. I’d been breathing dirty machine air for the past twelve years, so after a few minutes of pushing my limbs forward, I had to stop to pant and huff and catch my breath. My knees ached, too, from standing sixteen hours a day for the past twelve years.

A group of two laborers ran by me down the dirt road.

“Where you going?” I yelled.

They didn’t answer. Where had Rahal gone? What about the camp managers and police? What was the plan, here?

Another beam tore the sky — a slice of blazing light. This one was close enough to really scathe my eyes, so much that my eyeballs hurt. I curled into a ball, fearful of fire, whimpering as death fear pulsed through me. The stench of burnt plastic and metal invaded my nose as a shockwave shook everything.

I looked up to see a tower of billowing black smoke. That had to be the camp going boom. My home for the past twelve years. My room — or rather, my coffin, must’ve been incinerated. I couldn’t quite mourn its loss, but I didn’t feel much relief, either.

I got up and trudged on. After three minutes, I reached the nature trail, its daunting banyans surrounding it like a wall. Should I hide here?

Hide from what? From the levships, from the camp police, or from everything? It seemed nonsensical to hide when I wasn’t certain what to hide from. Who exactly was my enemy, now? What was I running from and to?

There was a town an hour’s walk that I’d obviously never been to because it was forbidden for us prisoners, but that seemed like a place worth going. Some of the sellers beneath the bridge were from there, so I knew it was full of normal folks who worked and barely got by. Would the Karshans target it, too? Those pamphlets they’d dropped around the flatlands had said they were Your Friends in Karsha — would our friends kill us?

Considering I tasted ash in my mouth from the camp explosion, I doubted they really were my friends.

I wasn’t the only one walking on the dirt road toward the town, but when I noticed more people walking away from the town and toward where I’d come from, I wondered if I should’ve just hidden in the nature trail.

I saw a middle-aged woman among the crowd walking in the opposite direction. And children. I hadn’t seen either in twelve years. I gawked at them as if they were mythical creatures.

“Where’re you going?” I shouted to the woman. She wore a thin, yellow scarf over her head and a thick floral gown.

She grabbed her children’s hands — a boy and a girl — and whisked away from me.

Oh well. I continued on.

A brawly man wearing a loose black blazer was pulling a cart full of hard suitcases. I asked him the same question.

“There’re Karshan soldiers in the town,” he said while resting against his cart. “They say they’re not a danger to us, but I don’t trust them a lick. There’s also some other people there.”

Of course. We’d been taught never to trust outsiders. “Other people?”

“Yeah. I saw some families getting on a big levship. I think they were flying them out of the country.”

“Why?”

He made a heh sound. “Don’t know. All kinds of rumors going around.” He drew big circles in the air with his hands. “Some say the Manizan army knew this would happen, and so built tunnels to move the army around. Supposedly a battalion is headed toward the city from underground. That’s why those other people are helping some of the city folk evacuate. There’s going to be a big battle.”

I couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than getting away from Maniza and out of the steel grip of Emperor Sanga. If there were ships evacuating people, I had to get on one. Although, if the rumors about a battle were true, then I might get caught in a hail of light beams. So by going toward the town, was I going toward death or freedom?

Maybe neither. Maybe both. I wasn’t sure. Nor was anyone, it seemed. But hope shown brighter than fear, so I thanked the man for his information and continued my trudge toward the town.

Why would anyone help us, though? Why take the downtrodden out of Maniza? Seemed too good to be true. The world was a big place, though. Abba and Amma used to tell me stories of the wider world, though I couldn’t remember much. Still, I knew there were all kinds of people with all kinds of ideas. Religions, philosophies — vastly different ways of looking at the world. Someone out there among the vastness must believe in helping others, right?

Another light cannon shot sliced open the sky. This time, I witnessed the red beam as it surged from a spade-shaped levship toward some target beyond the mountains.

Even the mountains shook as the sound of screaming earth filled the air. Everyone around me either ran, got on the ground, or shuddered in place. I stood and stared, my heart drowning in fear.

Maybe the Karshans were trying to collapse the tunnels the Manizan army were supposedly using. Whatever happened to all those cannons I made? Why weren’t they being used against these levships?

I mean, I didn’t care if my labor hadn’t amounted to anything useful. Or did I? Maybe some part of me did, because it seemed like such a frustrating waste of my life, veins, and time.

Back to what mattered: the sky was flinging death at us. I stared up at the endless arrays of levships. They were all spread out in clusters, but one cluster seemed higher than the others, perhaps even high enough to reach Harska, which floated somewhere in the north near the mountainous border with Demak. Surely, given that it was the capital of Maniza and the Emperor’s seat, the Karshans must’ve been targeting it.

Wondering about that wasn’t going to help me. All this time, my veins had been bathing in adrenaline, in a rush to get somewhere, but that could only last so long. A jittery dread began to replace the hope that had been fueling me. You’re going to die it said. That became a mantra in my mind, poisoning my resolve. You’re in the middle of a war. People die in war. You’re a cockroach to both sides. You’re going to get crushed.

The thoughts flooded. I had to get to town. If someone was evacuating people, getting them out of this nightmare, I yearned to be among the saved.

As I walked down the dirt road, huffing, my legs aching, the town’s silhouette emerged on the horizon. It was a dusty enclave of concrete tenements near the mountainside. The sight of it pushed me to hurry on.

I arrived at the first row of tenements, yearning for a break. To my astonishment, the dirt road fed into an actual paved road, something I hadn’t seen since Harska.

A crowd was bubbling in the plaza amid the tenements. Everyone surrounded something as large as the buildings: a rectangular, metallic box with a painting of a blue shield and a golden dragon on it. A levship!

“What’s happening here?” I excitedly asked a scrawny old woman, hoping she wouldn’t scurry away.

“They’re choosing people to evacuate.” She pointed to a young woman with short hair in an unfamiliar, ocean-blue uniform. A crowd of people with raised hands were swarming her. “Go get a lot from her.”

“A lot?”

“Just go before they run out.”

The young woman held a stack of tickets, and she was handing them out to everyone who threw their hands at her. I stood amid the chaos and inched forward whenever a gap in the crowd opened up.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I’d not seen a young woman who didn’t look like Prisaya or Zauri in forever. But I wouldn’t say I was attracted to her. Rather, she intimidated me with how easily she handled the crowd. She brandished a baton and wasn’t afraid to electrify it if someone pushed into her space. Was that electrification also a conduction ability? She never actually had to hit anyone: soon as those yellow sparks spat off the baton and she shouted “get back!” everyone obeyed.

Was this woman a Karshan? I couldn’t tell, even when I got close. The same blue shield emblem from the levship emblazoned her breast pocket. Brass buttons glimmered on her shoulders, and a gold trim snaked around her collar.

As she handed a ticket to me, I glared at the sword hilt on her belt: it was different from the one in my lightblade training program. It had a metal fragment that protruded from the hilt. A soft coating lined the grip, and a curvy pommel stuck out at a right angle.

She slapped my chest with the ticket; I grabbed it, said “thanks,” and went a few paces from the crowd.

It had a number on one side and the blue shield emblem on the other. Nothing else.

I checked on the sky. Not much was happening. A cluster of levships hovered low at the horizon, just in front of the red sun. The way they clustered, with the sun in the background, resembled a bruised rose. Also, they casted the most bizarre, elongated shadows in our direction. I wasn’t sure whether to be awed or terrified. A lot of both welled up in my chest.

I went back to the old woman who’d been willing to talk to me. “Who are these people? Why are they helping us?”

She ruffled her nose and stared into me. “You’re from the camp, right?”

I nodded. No reason to lie.

“They claim to be from a country called Behesh. You ever heard of it?

I shook my head. There were so many countries. I only knew the major ones and the nearby ones.

“They say they’re going to help as many as they can get out before the battle starts.”

If that was true, there really was hope. People in the outside world actually cared about us. I’d never have believed it if I didn’t see it.

“So why’re they handing out lots?”

“There’s only so much room. The next flight is tomorrow. But with a battle coming, that’ll probably be too late.”

So whoever got on this ship had the highest odds of surviving, and it was determined by lottery. Fair enough. I could only hope the universe had mercy on me, for once.

“If your number ends in five or eight, you’re getting on this ship!” a man with a megaphone called. He was standing atop the ramp that led inside the levship.

I longed to walk through that threshold more than I’d ever longed for anything. I saw myself walking up that ramp and inside the belly of this metal beast.

Everyone looked at their tickets. Oh yeah, five or eight. Five or eight. I brought my ticked to my face.

6

Fuck.

Hollers and jeers sounded from the crowd. The short-haired woman and other guards around the levship raised their electric batons.

“Fives and eights, line up!” the man with the megaphone said. “We don’t have forever!”

Thunder exploded above. I dove and crossed my arms over my head. Everyone ducked or jumped or stuck their arms in front of their faces. The thunderous bellows continued, as if a divine dragon were flinging rage at the world. But it was no dragon; it was the levships firing at somewhere not too distant, somewhere on this side of the mountain range.

And then something from the ground fired back. It sliced the sky like a watermelon. A levship turned into a ball of flame. The explosion sounded as if the sky were coughing. The ship’s metal carcass sundered into pieces and rained upon the earth.

The levships fired back, and the ground fired back, as if the earth and sky were at war with each other. Another levship exploded, and then another.

Well, seemed those cannons I helped make weren’t entirely a waste. Not that I was proud or anything.

Everyone around me was hollering and trying to climb the ramp into the big levship. The guards electrified their batons. A rather tall man got thwapped hard; vomit spewed from his mouth as he hit the ground. Two rugged-looking men followed his foolish attempt and met the same fate.

Despite the metal and fire raining from above, everyone calmed down once they saw what those batons could do.

“Fives and eights! We’re taking off, now!” the man with the megaphone said.

Amid the cacophony and chaos, I barely noticed something sticking to my boot. I picked it up: a ticket that read 108.

Could this be my lucky day? My lucky number? A repayment for all I’d suffered? I glanced around — everyone was either focused on the sky, on their tickets, or on their families. No one had noticed me pick it up.

I got in the back of the line that had formed, an uplifting spirit washing through me. The godly battle in the sky made me jittery. Hard to digest all the hope and fear in my veins. Some things can’t really be understood in the moment, and perhaps that was a good thing because if I really comprehended the danger I was in, I’d probably be paralyzed.

“Please help!” a woman cried. “I can’t find my ticket!”

It was the old woman I’d been talking to earlier. She crawled on the ground and dug up the dirt like a cat. “It was one-zero-eight! I swear it was one-zero-eight!”

A young man and woman got on their knees next to her. As did three droopy-cheeked children. They all searched the ground for the ticket.

I swallowed bitterly. I looked away. Better not to see or feel.

But unfortunately, I couldn’t not hear.

“We won’t leave without you, Amma,” the young man said.

“No, you go!” said the old woman. “To see you grow up and have children was all I wanted from life. I’ve lived long enough. I’m fulfilled, and I leave my fate to the gods. Go, now!”

One by one, people ascended the ramp into the mouth of the levship. I nudged forward in the line. I was almost at the ticket checker — the young woman with the electric baton.

I turned to look at the family I was breaking.

The young man got off his knees, grabbed his three children, and along with his wife lined up behind me. The wife wiped tears from her husband’s reddened eyes with her sleeve, then hugged him. The children, too, hugged his legs.

The old woman was right, though: she’d lived long enough. Surely, with time, they’d come to understand that.

She put on a bright smile and waved goodbye to her grandchildren. I’m sure she was relieved and joyful to see them go despite the separation. Despite the danger of remaining in a war zone. How would an old woman survive without her family to look after her?

Survive. Survive. Survive. The sky exploded, fire rained, and the ground quaked. I needed to survive somehow, too. I wanted out of this hell. I’d wanted out for twelve years. I’d given too much time to suffering.

But that old woman…she had people who loved her. Who’d miss her. I didn’t. Maybe one if you counted Zauri, but she wasn’t flesh and blood. She wasn’t really real.

Vir had deserved more than what I’d given him. But I was hungry for a way to survive, even if it meant hurting others. I chose what I chose, and I became what I became.

But did I like what I’d become?

Did it matter if I liked myself, so long as I survived? Was it worth more living as a contemptable man or dying as a decent one?

I left the line and went to the old woman.

“I found this on the ground.” I handed her the 108 ticket. “It’s your number, right?”

She gaped, bouncing her gaze between me and the ticket, as if I were one of the gods she prayed to.

The old woman grasped the ticket with both of her shacking hands. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.” Then she hugged me. Warm yet weak. It reminded me of my mother’s hug.

“Can you tell me where your house is?” I asked. “I need a place to hide.”

I went to the old woman’s apartment, located on the bottom floor of a tenement painted in a color I’d describe as rotting eggshell. It was just one cramped room with three mattresses rolled neatly in the corner. Judging by the sizes, colors, and shapes of the clothes strewn about, the old woman had lived here with her son and daughter-in-law and their three children.

If I was going to die, might as well die dreaming. I unrolled one of the mattresses; it only took up a third of the floor space — a major improvement over my coffin in the camp.

Zauri was about to tell me something, and I was too curious to die without knowing. How badly was I about to be betrayed, I wondered. As badly as I’d betrayed Vir?

What kind of betrayal could Zauri inflict on me? She only existed in my dreams, so what could be so bad? You never know how bad things can get, I suppose, until you’re sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor. Or until the sky explodes.

After I put in my dream stone and lay down, I imagined that the sound of light beams firing was just a game — hard to do with the ground shaking, with the worry that the roof could fall on me at any moment. But I had quite an imagination, if nothing else. Besides, I’d walked so much and hadn’t slept well recently, so I was tired. Tired in my soul. An orange sleep snatched me and dragged me in its current.

The post Lightblade | Chapter 5 appeared first on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

And I was back in my coffin, frigid air making me cough up a lung. For some cursed reason, that kiss woke me up. I’d fallen thousands of feet off a floating island, yet remained in the dream, but a simple kiss slapped me back to reality. Was life not cruel enough?

I’d paid six month’s salary to modify my companionship program into a lightblade training program. In doing so, I’d sworn off dream kisses and dream sex and dream love. It was all fake, I’d told myself. My dream wife Prisaya had been so obviously a script, repeating things again and again. “I love you,” she would say. “I missed you.” “Stay with me forever.” After a few weeks, I’d witnessed everything she could say or do. She never evolved.

But Zauri…Zauri was different. Zauri felt real.

Whatever that meant. Why had she kissed me, anyway? Why would a lightblade training program kiss a student? Doesn’t that interfere with training? It made no sense. Maybe it was a glitch in her script?

An icy gust blew through the crack in the wall. I bit my lip and shivered. I wanted nothing more than to have adventures with Zauri. Flying on the turtle shell, exploring that weird version of Harska, and even falling — it was just…fun. Crazy fun. Something I hadn’t had since I was twelve.

Was it so bad to work a sixteen-hour day and spend the rest of my time in the dream world, with her? It didn’t sound so bad. Maybe I could be happy that way.

A thought exploded in my mind: I didn’t have to kill Emperor Raja Sanga Surapsani.

I could just keep on surviving. I wasn’t totally used up yet. I could still conduct. Though my knees ached. Happens from standing too much in the factory.

  So many doubts, and yet one thing stirred in my heart, doubtless: I kind-of liked Zauri, more than I ever did Prisaya, maybe more than I ever did anyone except for my family. Though…I barely knew her.

She was full of surprises. Too many surprises for a simple lightblade training program.

I punched the wall. Agh! Why had a kiss woken me up? I lay down and tried to circuit more honey-colored light through my veins. My agitation made it impossible to drift away. With no hope of falling back to sleep, twenty toilsome hours would follow before I could ask her about it.

Oh well. Oh fucking well.

I went to the bathroom to pee and shave. To my surprise, Rahal was there, staring at himself in the mirror. What was he doing up so early?

“Praise Sanga,” I said, somewhat jittery.

His white beater was sweat soaked; from the pungent smell, it hadn’t been washed in weeks, like mine. We lacked the water, and especially the soap.

“Jyosh.” His smile seemed worn and his face cracked. “Up early yet again.”

I hunched my shoulders. How to explain this? “Yeah, I dunno what it is. Might be a problem with my dream stone. I’ll have to get it checked.”

Rahal sniggered. “You mean your modified dream stone?”

Like being stabbed in the throat. I darted my gaze to make sure no one else was here. How could Rahal know?

He chuckled and rubbed his parched, pockmarked cheek. “Relax. Not a soul to hear. Just you and me.”

A rusted razor sat on a nearby sink. Was planning to shave with it. Ought I to just slit his throat? We both glanced at it, then eyed each other.

“Think I’ll tattle?” he said. “Mine’s modded too. That’s why I can’t sleep.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s too real. And yet, the dream logic is taking me into places that shouldn’t exist. It’s starting to drive me mad, Jyosh. I’m being burned by the fire.”

“What fire? And please, keep your voice down.”

Rahal leaned his elbows on the nearest sink and stared at himself in the mirror. “No one’s listening to us shit in the middle of sleeping hours. I modified my stone because I got tired of my dream wife and dream island. I wanted a more real-feeling woman and larger dreamscape to explore — I’d heard such things were possible, so I did what you did — paid six month’s salary. But by Sanga’s hairy left nipple, I got more than I paid for.”

The image of the sleeping dragon circling around the sun flashed in my mind. “Rahal, why would the modder do this? Any idea who he is?”

“So…you’ve seen some shit, too. But it’s been what, two days for you? I’ve been drowning in this fire for weeks. You couldn’t possibly know what I know.”

What did he know? Could it explain what I was experiencing, too? “I saw a dragon. My dream wife,” Zauri wasn’t a companionship program, but I wasn’t about to tell him about the lightblade training, “said it was a daeva. Does your dream wife know about strange things, too?”

“A dragon?” Rahul held out his hands, palms open. “That’s it? That’s nothing at all. There’s far better…or far worse, depending on your valor. Let’s talk in a few days when you’ve really gone in deep. A word of warning, though…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve begun to distrust my dream wife. I think she’s the one causing me to wake up. I think she’s doing things in the dream world even when I’m not there.”

An icy shudder swept through me. No…Zauri was honest and open. She couldn’t have some hidden agenda, could she? “Why, though? What could they be up to? They’re not even real. They’re just scripts.”

“Just scripts. Karsha, the mightiest country on the bright side of the world, is supposedly run by a script. They’re not just scripts — haven’t you realized that, yet? They’re smarter than we are.”

That scared me somewhat. My urge to pee became desperate. I stood in the corner, unzipped, and did my business. “So you’re saying I shouldn’t trust her?”

“I’m saying don’t get too comfortable. If I don’t know what’s happening, then you definitely don’t. The man who modded these stones, I’ve been asking around about him. He no longer comes to the usual spot beneath the bridge.” Rahal threw up his hands and grunted in annoyance. “If I don’t get a good night’s rest, I fear I’m gonna mess up at work. Then you’ll have to, well, you know.” He mimed slicing his own neck. “I lost the ability to fall asleep without a dream stone long ago, and now I can’t even sleep well with one!”

How terrifying. Until now, I thought things couldn’t get worse — except for dying — but Rahal’s problems seemed an even deeper hell — a pit I had to avoid.

Also, I shuddered at the thought of having to behead him.

“So if the guy doesn’t come to camp anymore, then what?” I said. “Those bridge vendors come and go all the time. He obviously has a special skill set. He probably found more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. I think…I think we just have glitched stones. Nothing deeper than that.” That’s what I wanted to believe. Perhaps being sleep deprived was getting Rahal thinking crazy thoughts.

“You’re but a babe in the woods, Jyosh. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, then we’ll talk.” At that, Rahal left the bathroom.

I shaved with a dull blade, poured water over my cut-up cheeks, and went back to my room. Lay in bed and thought about Zauri. She was nothing like Prisaya, although she weirdly enough had her facial structure and body. The way she looked with her blue hair and fire-colored eyes: nothing alike. And she kissed me. She kissed me. If, as both her and Rahal claimed, her script was as large as mine, then could she have developed feelings for me?

And if so, how did I feel about her?

Work was the usual dread-filled tedium. However, it was one of Sanga Surapsani’s daughter’s birthday, so they let us off two hours early. I passed by the bazaar — if you could call it that. Just a bunch of droopy men from the nearest town selling wares under the bridge aside the trash-ridden stream that flowed near camp. They had a few things laid out on blankets: razors, shirts, pants, socks, dice, cards.

No soap. No deodorant. Not even a fragrant fucking rock.

As these folks were from the town, the camp managers had to give them special permission to sell to us. Once in a while, more skilled folks show up, such as those who could do maintenance on a dream stone. Or modify a dream stone, like the guy I’d met here a few days ago.

I’d once paid a month’s salary for a bar soap: well worth it. Here at camp, you lived to work and you worked to not die. Both living and working were worse when you smelled bad and when the dead skin and weeks old sweat on your sheets made you scratch holes into your skin. Ugh.

“Any idea when there’ll be soap?” I asked the guy selling razors. He was missing a finger on each hand — a common punishment for charging a different price than what the government had set.

He beckoned me to kneel and come closer.

“No soap this year,” he whispered. “There isn’t a single factory in the flatland making any.”

I sighed, bitterly annoyed. “Where’s the dream stone maintenance guy? He was here last week.”

“Haven’t seen him. Don’t know him.”

No good news, whatsoever.

Boom! Something exploded above. A quake shook my bones and caused the wares on the blankets to scatter. The glass on the little mirrors someone was selling cracked. I crossed my arms over my face as if blocking a punch and got low. The others around did similar; the salesman I was talking to curled into the fetal position.

“A sonic boom?” someone said when it was over.

That was what it sounded like. But not just one sonic boom; several.

A group of workers who’d been relaxing by the dirty stream stared up at the air. I joined them.

“See anything?”

They each shook their heads.

“Probably the air force drilling nearby,” someone said.

That made sense. Wasn’t the first time sonic booms had sounded over camp. But it had rattled my bones. Another sad reminder that we were each pathetic sacks of flesh compared to the power the Emperor could muster against us.

I got permission to visit a nearby trail. They’d let us go once or twice a month to gain a love for the land. It wasn’t much more than a small forest: some banyans, mahoganies, and even palms. Nice to breathe greener air and let the dragon flies fluttering about distract my mind. A much cleaner stream ran through it, too. Was hoping I could wash myself there and use the tree leaves as soap. Anything not to smell like a decaying sack of flesh.

While walking the dirt road leading to it, I saw something gleaming on the ground. A translucent green coin. A single emiril — the currency of Maniza. I picked it up and put it to the sun. Emperor Sanga’s eyes glared at me from the coin’s face.

Someone must’ve dropped it. Considering I earned one emiril a day for my labor, I didn’t mind holding onto it.

But then I came upon another emiril, and another. Each time, I picked them up and placed them in my pocket, darting my head in every direction to make sure no one was around.

Who had dropped so much money on the road?

A shiny green mound appeared in the distance. A mound of emirils! Was this some kind of trick? Was I still dreaming?

Could smugglers have dropped their money here, or something?

Worried, I emptied my pockets of every coin I’d picked up. Then I turned around and returned to camp. Smugglers weren’t nice folks, and I didn’t want to die just yet. An odd feeling, to have something to live for.

Or at least, I hoped I did.

I took a shower in the dorm bathroom — though I had to make do with a quarter bucket of water. After, I went to my room, ready to sleep and dream. I put my dream stone in and lay down. Despite how itchy I was, its orange breeze carried me away.

I awoke in the black room where I’d been sentenced to a lifetime of labor. A spotlight shone on me, burning my soul and hope as it’d done twelve years ago.

I stood and glanced around. Shadows loomed on the distant benches: the audience to my judgment. The applauders of my despair.

I opened my left palm to summon a terminal. The window appeared, glowing faintly. I tapped the commands to relocate to the beach. But like last time, I remained where I was.

Seemed I’d have to find the door, travel to the edge of the floating city, and jump off again. Would it be like this every time? How much more glitchy was this dream stone going to get?

I tried to use the terminal to summon a flashlight, but that didn’t work either. Tried to use the terminal to see in the dark, but its glow was too weak. So I stepped out of the spotlight and groped at the dark.

Clank. Something clattered at my feet; I jumped as if I were dodging a light cannon shot. Just then, a spotlight appeared where I stood. A sword hilt gleamed on the floor. I picked it up.

Across the room, another spotlight turned on. A shadow stood in its glow. It was him.

But he was no shadow. His straight black hair reached his shoulders, and he wore the navy, silver-trimmed long shirt of a captain in the Manizan Air Guard.

“K-Kediri?” I uttered.

Silence. I stepped toward him, expecting him to evaporate. Just an illusion, right? My sad memories and unaddressed anger must’ve been leaking into the dream stone, which itself had been corrupted by the modder.

The spotlight shining on him turned off, as did the one that’d been shining on me. Darkness engulfed the room.

“Jyosh,” he whispered.

And then I saw red. A beam of the purest, bloodiest fire. A lightblade. Kediri raised it to his chest and brandished it at me.

“She was easy, Jyosh,” he said.

My arms shook. My legs numbed. My soul shivered. Rage burned in every part of me. I could hardly move my tongue.

“T-This isn’t real,” I said.

Kediri and his red blade vanished.

“I want you to be alone.” It came from behind.

I spun around. He stood an arm span away, lightblade raised and forward. I ducked as the sun exploded through the black ceiling. All the walls burned away. Suddenly, we were outside, and a rageful red bathed the world.

Twelve years had passed, but he looked the same. He’d always been tall and light on his feet, but with that lightblade in his hands, he seemed so unusually purposed.

“This isn’t real. You’re dead, Kediri. You got what you deserved. But Amma and Abba and Chaya, they didn’t deserve what you did to them. Neither did I.”

If it wasn’t real, why was I talking to it? I’d pent up what I wanted to say to my older brother for twelve years. Now that his image, his voice, his presence stood before me, why not let it out? Better a shadow hear than it remain inside, poisoning even happy moments.

“They died for the truth.”

“What truth, you selfish bastard? You didn’t have to see their heads on the floor, I did!”

“There is only one truth.”

“Shut up!”

I stood straight and willed all the red light in existence into me. It circuited through my core, through my heart, through my soul itself. I became the light, I became rage. And then it erupted off my sword hilt, producing the most intense, bloody blade that’d ever been seen by the sun.

I wound it back and pounded my brother with it, as if I were sundering a log with an axe. But he blinked away and reappeared in the distance, leaving me heaving and breathless.

“She was easy, Jyosh.” What was this asshole trying to say? “Zauri was her name, right? I defeated her, then I deleted her. I want you to be alone. I want you to drown in my despair. The despair of the truth-seekers, those who sleep with eyes-wide-open, if only to taste nirvana.”

What the hell was he saying? What did he mean he killed Zauri? Could it be…could he be a rogue program? A poisonous shadow in the dream stone? If so…if so…was Zauri really gone?

I couldn’t let it go. Not again. I couldn’t swallow my rage. My sorrow. My hatred. I ran at him, lightblade angled forward at my chest, just how Zauri had taught me. I lunged at the evil creature who’d taken everything from me, who’d bled me of hope when I was just a child.

Just as my thrust was about to pierce his abdomen, he lowered his lightblade to parry. Light smashed into light, sparking and sending waves of green and blue and yellow swimming through the air. I wound again to go for his neck, but he swiped back. The force reverberated through my blade, into the hilt, and knocked me to my knees.

Tears burned in my eyes. I wiped them with my forearm before pushing to my feet. I inhaled more red light and deepened the intensity of my blade. Perhaps I could overpower him with my rage alone. With how much of the sun I was absorbing, there’d be no light left. I’d gorge on the sun and leave not just this world, but all worlds in darkness!

I swiped at his other arm, but his lightblade found mine. Rainbow hues colored the air as our lights collided, dazzling and wondrous.

“She was inadequate.” He laughed. “Barely fit to teach children. Me, though — I can make you a god.”

No! What was he saying? Zauri was…she was more than just my teacher! She was my respite! She was real!

“Fuck you!” What else could I say? “Why’d you have to come back? Why’d you have to be in my dreams? Why’d you have to ruin them, too?”

He parried each of my swipes; every time I thought I’d found an opening, he was there to show me how slow, predictable, and weak I was. Every color ever imagined and unimagined danced around our blades.

“Jyosh, don’t you see?” Kediri said after sending me, once again, to my knees with a graceful parry. “It’s always been there, lurking. Strength. You just bottled it up. Hid it beneath all that pain. Let it out, Brother.”

“Shut your mouth!”

I swung wildly, hoping, praying, willing for him to burn by my blade! I screamed and heaved. I even lost control of my breathing. Sweat and tears bled into my eyes. All the while, Kediri blinked and blinked away from every strike.

An earthquake in my core turned my arms and legs to pudding. Burned out, my lightblade fizzled into sparks. They fed back and scathed my hands. I dropped the blazing steel and collapsed.

I awoke on wet sand. Waves kissed the shore. Birdsong played all around, and turtle shells wooshed across the air, ridden by my pale, headless, pot-bellied friends.

Someone was strumming my hair and humming. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Zauri smiled at me, the brightest thing in the world.

“You’re alive?” I said.

I put a hand on her shoulder, just to make sure she wasn’t a ghost. She stroked my ear, her eyes a mix of apprehension and adoration.

“You did it, Jyosh. You made a lightblade. All on your own.”

Images from my desperate fight with Kediri flashed in my mind, as did the rage that seized my soul, that pulled it into its hurricane.

“He said you were dead. That he’d deleted you.”

Zauri shook her head. “No. But he was right about one thing. I’d failed to help you. Tender care didn’t work and neither did fear. But your anger…it brought your strength into the light. It resonated with the red. Real anger, Jyosh.”

None of it made sense until I read the shame on her reddened cheeks. Beneath her congratulatory words lay a strand of deception.

“That was you, wasn’t it?” I said.

“I didn’t want to fail you, Jyosh. I’d been reading you…your memories…your soul, all this time. At first, I was considering having you fight Raja Sanga, until I realized there was someone you hated more. So I chose him instead. Your brother Kediri.” Her eyes wet. “I’m sorry if you’re upset. If you feel betrayed or violated. But I’m a lightblade training program. I have to find that breakthrough, however I can.”

Nausea washed through my chest as if I were on a tumbling levship. I couldn’t trust her either, could I? Even my dream companion was out to trick me — although, she wasn’t my companion, she was a lightblade training script. Some sad part of me was confusing her with what she was never meant to be.

Perhaps she kissed me to make me fall for her, so she could bring out my anger by fooling me into believing Kediri’s shadow had murdered her.

Well, it had worked. Too damn well.

“So when you kissed me, yesterday…” It was almost too painful to ask, but bitterness made me brave. “It was part of your trick?”

She shook her head vigorously, wavy blue strands getting on her face. “I care about you. I really do. But my purpose is to teach you, so that has to come first. Or at least, I think it does.”

From how dismal her eyes shown, she seemed as conflicted as me. Whereas Prisaya had been predictable, one dimensional, a puddle, Zauri was a layered ocean. Too layered. It reminded me why I’d never trusted people in the real world. Because, like Kediri, they all hid things beneath their layers. Things they’d used to betray me.

“You know what my brother did to me, to my family, and yet…you saw fit to use that horror to trick me.” I inhaled to suck up my sobs, then crushed the tears with my eyelids. “I’ll never see Amma and Abba and Chaya because of him. He’s not a tool for my training, Zauri. He’s…he’s the worst thing to ever happen to everyone I’ve ever loved.”

“I’m sorry.” Zauri shuffled to her knees, then bowed to me as if I were Emperor Sanga. “Forgive me. I agonized over whether to do it or not. But now, seeing your reaction, I realize I made the wrong choice. I just didn’t want to fail you — you have so little time. Please understand. I’m sorry.”

I stood and brushed off sand. “To tell you the truth, I don’t want to learn the lightblade anymore. It was a dumb idea in the first place. Replacing Prisaya with you…also a dumb idea, for which I’m clearly being punished. This dream stone is corrupted, so maybe what you did is a manifestation of that. Even your…too-human-like behavior, and your strange decisions…maybe it all stems from that corruption, from whatever the modder did. Mistakes that born more mistakes.”

I realized I was telling Zauri that I wished she didn’t exist. But it was how I felt. Actions have consequences: the most obvious wisdom. Every light has a shadow, every beautiful thing an imperfection, and those imperfections grow overtime as decay sets in. Dream stones needed maintenance to endure, and a corrupted dream stone was already well on its path to ruin. I’d need to save up another six month’s salary to reverse my rash decision and fix this dream stone back to how it was.

Zauri wouldn’t raise her head off the sand. “For some reason, I’m in pain. Not like the singe of getting burned by a lightblade…it’s something else. Some kind of ache, deep inside. I’ve been feeling it since the moment I kissed you and you disappeared. After that, the dream didn’t end for me. I stayed here, alone, wondering how I could help you. It may have been twenty hours for you, but it was twenty days for me. So in that time, I dreamt your memories.” She sniffled and sucked in a wet breath. “I know who you are now, Jyosh. And I want to be by your side, to help you however I can. Please don’t make me disappear.”

This was all too much. It seemed I’d become her consoler once again, a role I wasn’t fit for. Dream stones were supposed to be a place of refuge for us laborers, the only balm in our sad lives as Sanga Surapsani’s weapon makers. Only the red sky knows what he did with those weapons. If, as that paper that slapped me in the face said, Maniza was one of the poorest countries in the world, then these weapons were likely too weak to be used on other countries. But they were likely good enough to use on us, his own people. I was just a cog in an evil machine, and I needed escape from that. I didn’t need whatever this was!

I bent down and lifted Zauri up by her shoulders. Her tears dripped onto the sand, the redness beneath her eyes bright like a sunburn. I took her in my arms, like my sister Chaya would do whenever I cried. Despite how angry I was, being with someone was better than being alone.

“I’m not going to try to kill the Raja,” I said. “I’ll…bear the consequences of my actions. I’ll work six more months and get this stone fixed up.” I sighed, about to make a heavy promise. Hopefully I wouldn’t regret it. “I’ll make sure the modder doesn’t delete you, but just gets rid of the corrupted parts.” Even that wouldn’t make things right, unfortunately. “And if I have to execute eight more men, I’ll do it. I’ll have to live with it. It’s what I signed up for. There’s no way I can pull out of that contract and keep my life. I’ll just have to become…strong.”

That seemed the best course. And even though it was still awful, I’d get to live. Last time, I’d asked Zauri if she had any bad behaviors. Truth is, if she didn’t, then she wouldn’t be like a human at all. We’re all defined by our bad traits, in a way.

Now, I’d seen hers. She was…ambitious. Deceitful. And though it worried me, it made me feel less alone to be with someone as imperfect as myself.

Zauri clung to my waist, her head on my chest. How suddenly our roles had reversed.

“Can I keep teaching you, though?” she asked, hope lifting her tone. “It’s what I was made to do. It’s satisfying to see you learn new things. I can’t really explain why — it just is.”

We’re all meant for something, right? I was meant to be the lowest of the low, a body to be used up breathing sunlight into machines. She was meant to teach children lightblades. “Yeah, all right. It can’t hurt, I suppose. Maybe one day, it’ll save me in a moment of danger, like the one I had earlier.” Like if ever I encountered smugglers on the road. They never left witnesses. Though even if I could make a lightblade, I couldn’t inhale red light with a green machinist stone, nor did I own a sword hilt in the real world.

“Earlier?” Zauri said. “Something happened?”

“Yup. Saw a mound of emirils on the road. Smugglers must have dropped it. Only hours after a bunch of sonic booms, too. Been a strange day.”

Zauri shuffled off my chest and onto her knees, face-to-face. She tapped her chin. “Only really advanced levships can travel faster than the speed of sound. I don’t think they were smugglers.”

“Oh?”

She kept tapping her chin, as if it were how she processed her thoughts. “You ever heard of a money bomb?”

I imagined a bomb exploding, flinging shiny green emirils in all directions. “Nope, but it sounds fun.”

“It’s a strategy the Red Veil concocted to destabilize enemy countries. Flood a country with indistinguishable forgeries of its own currency, so that there’d be crazy inflation. This would plunge rich and poor alike into a deep downturn. And the rich don’t play around — they’ll overthrow the government if things get bad for them.”

“Insane,” I scoffed. “You’re telling me…no way. Wait, who are the Red Veil?”

“An organization that reports directly to the Raja of Karsha. They aren’t bound by any laws.”

It didn’t sound so impossible. Those sonic booms could’ve been Karshan levships flying over the flatlands and dropping emirils all over.

“Why now, though?”

Zauri hunched her shoulders. “I don’t know. I was scripted nineteen years ago — I don’t actually know anything about what’s going on right now, just how the world was back then. At that time, there was a general panic in Karsha because people thought the Padishah from the Nightscape was about to invade — everyone wanted to unite the Dayworld under one flag…the Karshan flag, obviously. So I have the money bomb thing in my memory.”

There was a lot to unpack, there.

“So…who do you think is the Raja of Karsha?” I asked.

“It’s probably not Rivata Haurva.”

I laughed at that. Damn, he was the Raja of Karsha when I was a little kid. It made Zauri seem…old. “It’s some woman named Subha Pavand. They make us curse her at the morning meeting, sometimes.”

“Not surprising. The Pavands and the Haurvas have been trading the Rajaship between them for-like-ever. Used to be one family, way back. So, really, not much has changed.”

Whatever. I couldn’t give Sanga’s left testicle about Karshan politics. Or politics in general. It was so far removed from my problems. Like the clouds in the sky, you had no control, but sometimes it rained, sometimes it poured, and sometimes you thirsted for a drop.

A disturbing thought intruded: Rahal had said not to trust my dream wife. That a corruption was causing him to wake up, and that it had infected every part of his dream.

“Zauri, do you know what caused me to wake up suddenly last time?”

“No. But it could be like you said. It could be an error or a glitch of some sort. Sad that it happened, right as I’d kissed you.”

“What if that’s what caused it?”

She shrugged. Frustrating that she didn’t know.

A silence drenched us. A silence full of dilemmas, mysteries, and, heaviest of all, a rather awkward question.

“So, what do you wanna do today,” Zauri asked. That wasn’t the question, but it lightened the awkwardness, in any case. “Train?”

I shook my head. “Strange as this sounds, I want to explore where we went last time. It’s just…why did the modder add an incomplete, life-sized model of Harska to this dream stone? Why is there a dragon in the sky? Doesn’t it make you wonder?”

“Of course. But the terminal doesn’t work up there. We’ll be at the mercy of whatever we find. Are you sure you want to spend your dream time doing something so stressful?”

I wasn’t sure. The fear and rage from my fight with Kediri still wounded me. But something bizarre was happening here, and I didn’t like that my dreams — the only place where I had freedom, where I could sip happiness and comfort and other things that could be considered good — were housing a mystery beyond my control. Something that had made Rahal so afraid, so agonized. Something that, perhaps, could hurt Zauri, too.

I cared about Zauri, didn’t I? Whether she was real or not, her presence alone lit up my dismal existence.

“Let’s just do it,” I said. “We can’t relocate from there, but can we relocate to there? When I awakened in the dream, I was in that courtroom from earlier. That’s where you took my brother’s from, right?”

“Mhmm. I set it to your awaken position. And yes, we can relocate to there, just not from there.” She tapped her chin. “However, weird things happened, remember? The sun turned so bright red, it actually went beyond what the settings show is possible. And when that happened, it literally melted the courthouse you were standing in.”

“In my brother’s form, you seemed not to have been affected by that, though. Unlike me, you were entirely calm and in control.”

Zauri swallowed, folded her arms, and stared at me as if ashamed. “Look, earlier, I told you the short story, but there is a long story. Here it is — I didn’t take your brother’s form.”

“Wait…what?”

“I don’t have the ability to change my appearance. I can change clothes, but everything else — even my blue hair — is hardcoded.”

“So, then, what was Kediri?”

“I…sort of…created him from a flow that — I think — came from your memories. He’s a shadow script that you can face, though his script is limited. The things he was saying to you are just phrases I pulled from that flow…and a few taunts I composed myself.”

It was all so disturbingly elaborate. But I understood why Zauri did it — she’d achieved her purpose for existing when that fight, that anger, brought the lightblade out of me.

“I get it, Zauri. And I have it in me to forget and forgive.” I gazed away. These next words made me feel somewhat vulnerable. “To be completely honest, you might be the only person in the world I don’t want to feel anger for. So let’s see what’s going on up in Harska.

She beamed at that. “It’ll be like an adventure!”

“Yep, an adventure.” It was more than that, but might as well have a bit of fun. That’s what these dreams were for, right?

The post Lightblade | Chapter 4 appeared first on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

On the way to my dorm, with the stench of blood and piss lingering in my nose, a bitter wind swept through the gaps between my shirt buttons and brought with it a piece of paper. The paper slapped me in the face, as if Vir’s ghost was hitting back. But what the paper said terrified more than any spirit.

You’re being lied to. Maniza is not a rich country. It is one of the poorest countries in the world. Sanga Surapsani has told you lies. He calls himself emperor, but he’s barely a raja. You can live better. You can be free. It’s all in your hands.

From your friends in Karsha

I crumpled the paper and stuffed it in my shirt. I needed to burn it. Even touching such a thing would mean my execution if anyone saw. If only I could conduct fire into my hands, I’d inflame it this second, but I was far from possessing such an ability.

As soon as I got to my dorm, I went to the bathroom, used the paper to wipe, then left it in the trash heap. No one could question that.

Back in my room, I removed my machinist stone from the slot in my chest. The green glow disappeared from the air as I shuddered from the usual jolt when removing and inserting stones. I took out my dream stone from the cardboard box; it had a slightly orange tint. I put it in my chest slot. The air, too, tinted orange.

Wonderful thing about dream stones, they not only contained dream programs, but they also helped the user fall asleep. All you had to do was inhale the orange light. There was no complicated technique to it. Just inhale and let it settle in your veins.

I lay on my bed, closed my eyes, and inhaled the orange light. My room stunk of my sweat, and it made me itch. Still, it wasn’t long until a river of honey swept me into the dream world.

I awoke on a mountain. Boulder-sized rubies and emeralds dotted the area and refracted sunshine into brilliant rainbows. A weird crosshatch pattern covered the sky, as if someone had drawn on the clouds with a god-sized pen. Sometimes, glitches could be an awe to behold.

But where was Zauri?

As I walked on the mountain path, melodious bird song soothed me, though its repetitiveness was perhaps a sign of the original stone’s artificial memory limitation.

I found Zauri sitting beneath a cedar. The cedar was strangely normal, and there was even a red-tailed squirrel chittering in a hole on the bark — an animal I’d only seen in my dreams.

Zauri wore a lapis blazer that matched her hair, with golden buttons. Her hair was a bit of a wavy mess. She smiled and stood when she saw me. She dusted herself, hurriedly, as if she were surprised at my coming. “You’re back.”

I wished I could forget what I’d remembered earlier and just be glad to see her, but with the guilt on me, a smile seemed too heavy.

Her smile softened and turned into concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. What’ve you been up to?” I didn’t want to tell her. Tell her the kind of man I’d learned I was. Anything to distract from that.

She shook her head. “I don’t exist when you’re not here. The interaction between your mind and the dream stone is what creates me.”

“Oh, I see. So…what did you experience between the last time we saw each other and now?”

“It’s hard to describe. But it does feel like some time has passed. About two or three weeks, I’d say.”

Sixteen hours for me was sixteen days for Zauri, so that made sense. I nodded as if it mattered. I didn’t know what to say next, but if I were speaking my heart, I’d tell her I wish you didn’t exist. I wish I’d never modded you into existence. Perhaps my eyes said it because her pupils shrank as sadness swept over her face.

“One’s mental state is an important part of fighting,” she said. “Even beginner teachers like me are scripted to help others…with whatever problems they’re facing in real life. So that you have a clearer mind when training.” She gulped and tensed as if she were putting her feelings on the line. “What I’m trying to say is, I’d like to know what’s bothering you.”

How sad: the only person who cared to ask me that was a script. Well, it had been that way for twelve years. Or had Vir cared about me? His friendship seemed genuine, but you never really knew. You never knew what people hid in their hearts. Still, I knew what I’d done to him, but I didn’t know what could compel me to do such an awful thing. And because I didn’t understand my own actions, I didn’t know what kind of person I was, who I was.

How to express any of this to Zauri?

“Tell me, Zauri, do you have…” I tried to find the proper wording but settled on whatever I could pluck. “Bad behaviors?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Well…I told you earlier my script was as large as yours, but I was also scripted to be agreeable, and sometimes stern, so…I don’t know…it depends how you define bad.”

“Would you ever hurt someone else? Someone you cared about? All just to gain something you sought?”

Zauri took a deep breath. “Umm…I don’t think so. I don’t really have needs the way you do, and I don’t exist in a place where there’s scarcity. So…I mean…I don’t know. I haven’t really been tested.”

“What if…what if you could feel pain? What if someone tried to hurt you, and the only way to escape that pain was to hurt them back? What would you do?”

The slightest fear shimmered in her eyes. And then she shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

She could never understand, then. Sure, she could give me her sympathy, but what was that worth? I suffered alone.

Still, I had to get it off my chest. “So, here’s the thing…” I took a few minutes to explain what I’d done to Vir. Zauri nodded throughout and her eye contact never wavered, which at least made me feel heard.

At the end, she spent ten seconds in silence, staring at the ground, as if to process what I’d said. “So…you discovered why you want to make a lightblade, then.”

Those words were like a jolt of unwanted conduction. “No. I’m even further from that realization. All I’ve discovered is that I hurt someone, betrayed someone. Lied, killed. What the hell kind of person am I?”

“Exactly.” She closed the distance and took my hand. Something electric passed from her into me. It wasn’t light, though. “It’s not them you hate. You hate what they made you become. Do you get it, Jyosh?”

“So you’re saying…I want to kill the Emperor — or die trying — because I’m upset that he turned me into a lying, backstabbing, traitorous piece of shit? But then why…why don’t I remember having that realization?”

She squeezed my hand. “I don’t know. Maybe the modified dream stone did something, or maybe you’re just repressing the memory. Maybe you’ve compartmentalized your thoughts — it’s a common thing people do to survive and not hate themselves. Break into little pieces.” She sighed. “I think…you’re just in an awful situation. You were probably protecting yourself, hoping to gain something, maybe even a ticket out of the camp, when you betrayed your friend. And given your situation, I can’t blame you. Jyosh…I don’t think you’re a bad person.”

Wait…was she just saying that to make me feel better? If it were Emperor Raja Sanga Surapsani himself standing before her, lamenting his crimes, perhaps she’d console him too, just so he could train with a clear mind.

The distance between us deepened, and it filled me with sadness.

“Do you still want to learn the lightblade?” she asked with more gentleness than my own mother.

Did I? I burned with rage…but now that fire turned inward. I hated myself. But Zauri was right: I hated that they’d turned me into something hateful. Why not learn the lightblade, then, so I could at least die with it in my hands?

“The thing is…I remembered something else, too.” This fact made everything so much worse. Showed that I was a heartless opportunist at heart. “I helped execute someone today, and if I do that eight more times, they’ll free me. At least, that was their promise. I have no idea if they keep their promises. I mean, I doubt it, but even a small chance at a good life might be better than nothing. Better than this suicide mission I signed up for.”

“Whatever you think is best. Whatever you believe is your shot at getting out, at living a better life, I think that’s what you should do.”

Such sweet words, yet they tasted so bitter. I laughed with that bitterness dripping from my mouth. “You’re telling me to kill eight more people. Most who are completely innocent, their only crime being an inability to work because their overworked veins can hardly conduct light anymore.” I raised my voice. “And you’re telling me it’s okay to kill them?”

She backstepped as if frightened of my anger. But why should she fear? Unlike me, she couldn’t feel pain, and that made us nothing alike. “They’re going to die anyway, right? You didn’t pass the sentence.”

“So that makes it okay? Are you serious, Zauri? Is that what your script is telling you? Have you no…have you no sense of right and wrong? You’re just trying to make me feel better, and I don’t deserve to feel better. Don’t you see?”

Zauri’s cheeks paled. Her bottom lip trembled slightly. Her pupils shrank. All these subtle emotions on her face…I never sensed anything so deep from Prisaya. How could a script be so lifelike?

“You’re right. I realize that now, you’re right. You might think I’m an unfeeling, unthinking program, but I am feeling right now. I’m feeling you. And your pain…it’s more real to me than the mountain we’re standing on, than the birds singing around us. But I don’t have all the answers. If right and wrong were merely a matter of logic, it would be so simple, wouldn’t it? The truth is, I…I care about you, Jyosh. That’s why I said what I said.”

Such heavy words. But — of course — a lightblade training program would care about her student. And yet, the way she phrased it seemed so…human. Was I really arguing with something that wasn’t alive? Something that was created by the interaction of my mind and the dream stone and thus was an illusion?

I sighed as if trying to throw off the weight. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told her. Nothing could make me feel better. And it didn’t matter. Let the poison flow. Maybe I could make a lightblade with all the rage in me. Let my hate make me stronger; let it mold me into a new person.

“Let’s get started with our lesson,” I said. “Sanga Surapsani will be visiting soon, and I want him to know what he’s done. Not just to me. Not just to Vir. Not just to my family.” I recalled the paper that had slapped me in the face. That was addressed to all the people of Maniza, all who suffered beneath the Emperor’s floating throne. “Let my defiance be a symbol. Maybe then, when I’m dead, I’ll feel better about myself.”

Zauri was right. In my poor mood, my lightblades weren’t more than flickering sparks that occasionally solidified into proper beams, only to sputter and diffuse at the slightest movement.

Hands on hips, frowning, she slowly shook her head. What happened to her agreeableness? Perhaps having a frustrated teacher was a necessary pain, though I wasn’t some child who worried what his teacher thought of him. Or was I?

“Again!” she demanded.

How many times would she watch me fail? To say I was discouraged would be an understatement. This whole thing had been a mistake, surely.

Zauri put her hand on mine, then snatched the sword hilt. “You lack motivation. It’s time to give you some.”

She opened her palm; a terminal window appeared above it. She tap-tapped on it.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Summoning cigars, I hope?”

“You haven’t earned a cigar.” Said so coldly, I wished I had a coat. Woolen and double layered. She tapped some more commands, then closed her palm.

A bright light appeared next to her. That light coalesced into the shape of a man. And then it solidified into a man: pale, pot-bellied, and…headless! What the hell!?

“Oh, no.” Zauri backstepped, hand over her mouth in shock. “Where’s his head?”

She opened her palm; the terminal appeared above it. She tapped it while biting her lip.

The man’s clothes changed; now he wore a crisp suit with a golden scarf. Tap-tap. Now he was in blue swimwear. Tap-tap-tap. And now he had four arms!

“Ugh,” Zauri grunted. “Can’t seem to give him a head. Oh well. He’s a program, so I’m sure he can still see without one.”

A brief, bright flash. A sword hilt materialized in one of his hands. The headless man raised it forward, in my direction, and cast a short, straight, pinkish lightblade.

“What?” I pointed at the headless man. “Am I meant to fight back?”

“You better fight back.” Zauri smirked. Such mischief. Maybe she did have an evil side. “It’ll hurt.”

“But I can’t even make a stable blade!”

“Or can you? Only one way to really find out.” She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled.

The pale, pot-bellied, headless man lunged, lightblade surging toward my chest. I darted to the side, slid onto my knees, then turned and got up fast as I could. Raised my hilt to block his next swing, praying for a beam.

Nothing came out.

I rolled away, barely missing his furious downward swipe. That would’ve split me in two! I was shocked at how acrobatic I was as I sidestepped, slid, and backed away from the thing’s attacks.

“Make it stop, Zauri! Please!”

“Only you can make it stop. Kill it, Jyosh!”

How was I supposed to without a blade? Earlier, she’d wanted me to relax to make the blade, and now I was meant to make one with some wild, headless creature swinging at me? Although my life wasn’t really in danger, my body seemed to think it was with how hard my heart pounded.

My knees ached from the stumbles and slides on the pebbly mountain ground. And then, amid a mistimed dodge, I tasted fire. The thing’s lightblade went through my shoulder, and I watched a chunk of me fly.

Zauri whistled; the headless man stood back, lowered his arms, and retracted his lightblade. My entire left side burned, though I couldn’t see flames, only feel them. My shoulder numbed. I couldn’t move my dangling left arm, which only remained attached to me by a taut, rubbery, bloodied strand of muscle.

“My arm…my arm…” was all I could say.

Zauri put her hand on my back. Violet light flooded me. It soothed the pain, as if honey milk were kissing my nerves. My shoulder…the missing chunk filled with light. Somehow, my flesh regrew in that light. Seconds later, I was whole again.

Whole, but still a failure.

“Take a break,” Zauri said, her tone drenched in disappointment.

After resting, I walked into the palm forest. What could be creepier than these trees? They grew hands instead of branches, and the hands held emeralds, and the emeralds glowed. Why? It seemed oddly intentional to be a glitch; how deranged was this modder’s mind?

In the camp, everyone was deranged to some degree. And that modder…I didn’t really know who he was, but if he reported me, I’d doubtless be executed. But so would he — mutual self-destruction. It was perhaps the safest contract I’d ever made.

If only I could wield a lightblade and lop all these hands off the trees. But even in my dreams, I couldn’t be strong. Even with the red sun overhead. Ideal conditions, and I couldn’t do it. What chance did I have in real life with the weaker, slightly yellower sun at the horizon?

Even if I failed, what did I have to lose? Success or failure, either way, meant my death. An oddly comforting thought.

I went to the beach and watched the headless pot-bellied men zoom around the air on turtle shells. I lay in the sand and stared at the crosshatch-patterned sky. This shore was the only place worth spending time in; the salty air, the seagulls’ chirping, the tide breathing in and out — so soothing. A peace worthy of my final breaths.

If I couldn’t make a lightblade, perhaps I could try killing the Emperor some other way. Lunge at him with a razor. But would that inspire anyone? It wouldn’t truly show defiance, show that I’d been able to learn how to make a lightblade despite it being forbidden. I was powerless and lacking choices. Still, anything was better than nothing.

I turned at the plush of footsteps on sand; Zauri knelt behind me, her lapis blazer already sandy.

“You sure do like this beach,” she said.

“It’s the only thing I like. Although, there was a nicer beach near where I grew up.”

“I feel…” She hemmed and hawed. “I feel like I’ve failed you. And it’s actually painful. I don’t like it.”

Clever, whoever coded that in her script. If she felt pain at her students’ failures, then it would motivate her to be a better teacher. To do more to help them succeed.

“I failed myself. It’s no fault of yours. You’ve been spectacular.” How the tale had twisted. Now I was making her feel better. And it felt oddly good to be in that position for a change.

“I have ideas, if you’d like to try them.” Zauri sat down beside me. “Better ideas than the one earlier.”

“I don’t know.” I let out a sad sigh. “I’m a breath away from being used up. From not being able to conduct anything, anymore. So now whenever I inhale light, be it green or red, I worry if it’ll be the last time. Perhaps that’s why I can’t succeed. I know, in my bones, that it’s hopeless.”

Zauri put her hand on my shoulder. “I won’t lie and say it isn’t hopeless. Maybe it is. I don’t think I was designed to help someone like you. I’m…inadequate.”

The color left her face. I didn’t like seeing her so gray. My failure to cheer her up and her failure to help me — such a sad cycle.

When I lived with my family in the floating city, I used to cheer my brother and sister up by doing the goofiest nonsense: somersaults with my tongue sticking out, singing songs in the highest notes, running around in my underwear with my toy lightblade — anything to see them smile, as if I were a desperate clown.

That goofy humor had since turned bitter. All that remained was a biting sarcasm, and I wasn’t sure Zauri would like it. I often regretted my jokes soon as they’d slipped off my tongue.

Truth was, I had no happiness to give to someone else. But where does happiness come from, anyway? Could I inhale it from the sun, like I did for light? Could I conjure it from my core like magic?

We sat in a sad silence. Though Zauri sniffled, I didn’t see tears, so maybe it was just allergies. Weird that a dream program would have allergies. My companion Prisaya never cried, either. Come to think of it, I’d never seen a woman cry since the day my sister Chaya learned what he’d done. Seen plenty of grown men cry since, though.

Sand splashed onto me from behind. Zauri and I swiveled around as a turtle shell landed near where we sat and skidded into the water. The headless, pale, pot-bellied man who’d been riding it fell in a heap.

I got up and pulled the turtle shell out of the water. It was bigger than my body but lighter than paper. Dream logic.

The headless man got on his knees and bowed, as if begging me to give him the turtle shell.

I shook my head. “It’s mine now. Go away.”

He ran back down the beachside crying out of his neck.

I dropped the turtle shell onto the sand and turned to Zauri, who seemed somewhat neutral about the whole thing.

“Care to give this a try?” I asked.

“You mean, fly?” Zauri chuckled as if the child in her had awakened. That made me smile and chuckle as well. A bright seed had germinated in the air between us. Perhaps we could tend it.

I sat at the front of the shell. Despite being so light, the surface was firm, unbending. Zauri got on her knees behind me and clung to my shoulders.

I’d never flown, even in a dream. It had never been possible in this dream stone before, so the modder must’ve added it in.

Actually, I had flown once: in a levship when they sent me from Harska to the labor camp. But I try not to remember that ride.

“Uhh…” I knock-knocked on turtle shell. “How does this work? Any idea?”

“You’re a machinist, right? This turtle shell must be some kind of machine. So inhale and conduct green light into it.” Zauri scratched her head. “Actually, let me make that a bit easier for you.”

She opened her palm terminal and tapped into it. The sun brightened, then changed from red to white. The world suddenly felt and looked better.

“There you go,” she said. “Now try.”

I rested my palm on the shell, inhaled green from the sun into the crystal in my chest, and flowed the light through my veins and into the shell.

Whoosh! An air burst pushed us up. Nausea bubbled in my stomach as we hovered several feet above the sand.

No matter. I yelped in joy. I could fly!

I pushed more green light into the shell. We whooshed higher. High enough for my body hairs to stand in fear. Whoosh! High enough that the island became a sand mound drifting in an endless rain puddle. Zauri clung closer, giggling and cheering, her nervous sweat wetting my neck.

I could go higher, but I wasn’t sure how to move sideways. No command console appeared in my mind’s eye, nor could I feel any new limbs or wings.

It barely felt real, being so high. I was as a god. Also, good to know I wasn’t afraid of heights anymore, like I was as a child. Why fear such beauty, anyway?

“Umm, you know how to pilot?” Zauri asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know anything.”

“Usually when piloting a levship, one person conducts the energy into the machine and the other directs the movement. It’s the best way to do it, especially for beginners.”

“Really? So it takes two for even a small thing like this?”

“Skilled pilots can control things by themselves, but two is optimal. I suppose it’s because our consciousnesses can only handle so much at once, and it’s better to specialize.”

Ah. So I could make it go up but lacked the experience to conduct light and control its sideways direction.

“Okay,” I said. “So…why don’t you direct where it goes?”

“I’ve never done it before.” Said so giddily. “But why not?”

Now I flowed the green in me into Zauri’s hands, which she’d placed on my shoulders. Her touch felt so…blue, like her hair. Not the blue of a bright sky, but of an ocean trench, where fish endure on the faintest sunshine, and some even shimmer with their own inner light. A soundless, somber coffin, ironically full of life. This was her natural frequency — every soul had one. Every soul…was that the correct wording? She didn’t have a soul, did she?

Sometimes to operate a big machine, I’d have to team up with someone. Teamed up with Vir, once, to operate the Big Beast. His frequency was red — not a rageful red, but a classy red. A deep red…maroon?

The longer you form a circuit with someone, the more of them you feel. The more your minds mix. We’d mixed, Vir and me. I’d felt how his emotions disturbed the light waves: frustration causing them to jitter, despair pulling them apart, even the rare times his hope caused a light wave’s crests to bounce. So when I betrayed him, it wasn’t like I didn’t know whom I was condemning to death.

Thinking of what I did to Vir depressed me. So I focused on the moment, on Zauri. Her emotions…though I was feeding my light into her, I could still feel how the waves flowed through her: she was a bit jittery, judging from the subtle jaggedness on the wave’s troughs, but the crests bounced with an excited glee. Despite these varied emotions, she maintained the final order of her light incredibly well, and it flowed into the turtle shell free of distortion.

So inwardly focused was I, that I hardly realized we’d soared into a cloud. Fog hugged us, its coolness drenching my hair and bare arms. For a moment, I felt I’d slide off the turtle shell and dwell forever in this endless gray storm. I opened my mouth to taste the cloud. Not sure what I expected; it was tasteless.

We splooshed out of the cloud. Zauri zoomed us to the ocean’s horizon. I turned to look back; the island was long gone, replaced by a vast, rippling blue carpet. With the artificial memory limitations removed, it seemed the landscape went on and on.

“So amazing!” Zauri said in my ear. It was both ticklish and arousing. “You ever felt anything like this?”

What was I even feeling? Half of me was focused on inhaling and flowing green light, a quarter on the incredible scenery, and a quarter on how warm Zauri felt against my back. Too much stimuli.

“Why don’t we pause and hover for a moment?” I said.

“Good idea!”

Zauri slowed us. I looked straight up. What the? That weird crosshatch pattern hovered above, except now we were mere feet from one of the lines that formed it.

“The hell is that?” I said as we came to stillness.

Zauri held her hand up as if she could touch one of the lines. “The sky is…some sort of grid? Weird.”

“I thought it was a glitch, but now that we’re close to it, it actually looks like something we could touch.”

 I accelerated the turtle shell upward, slowly, until we were touching distance from the lines. We both reached up and rubbed our fingers against it. Smooth and cold. Some kind of metal?

I turned to face Zauri, so we’d be sitting across from each other.

“Why do you think that’s there?” she asked, her nose ruffled.

It no longer felt like we were floating. Instead, it seemed like we were sitting on the floor. Surreal. Perhaps this was the line between the first and second heaven. Even levships couldn’t venture to the second heaven because the air was too thin.

Then I remembered this was just a dream, not the real world. There was no second heaven here. Just two people, staring at each other, perplexed.

“What if we try standing on it?” I said. “We could walk on the sky.”

The lines were thick enough to stand on. They had a flat top, too.

I accelerated us up through a gap between the lines. Then Zauri hovered us over one and landed on it.

 As soon as we stood, the turtle shell and sky vanished. A black floor replaced them, and lights appeared above. Spotlights. Walls surrounded us, and the air went from fresh to smoky and stale.

Zauri clenched her teeth in shock.

“The hell just happened?” I said.

She darted her gaze around. “You mean this isn’t your doing?”

“Why would I do this?”

“I don’t know. Where are we, then?”

I stomped my foot. The unmistakable hardness of a marble floor. The government offices in Harska had marble floors. Black marble, just like this. I’d walked on such a floor when I was twelve, the day I attended my own trial.

I’d stood in a dark room with spotlights, too. I’ll never forget the dim outlines of my judges sitting upon high benches on the far side. Thankfully, they weren’t here today.

“This is a—” I could barely wheeze out the words. Panic filled my lungs. I took a deep breath to calm myself. “This is a courtroom. It’s just like the one I stood in when they convicted me of treason.”

Needless to say, I didn’t like being here. Amid all this dark, where was the exit?

“This is all wrong, then,” Zauri said. “I’ll find us a way out.”

She stepped forward, out of the spotlight and into the darkness. I could no longer see her as she trotted around, her hard footsteps on marble the only reassurance that she was still with me.

My father, mother, and sister had all entered a room just like this to die.

“Zauri. I can’t see you.”

“I’m here.” Her voice came from a few yards away. “Just looking for a door.”

“No need. I’ll use a terminal command to get us back to the beach.”

I opened my palm. A terminal window appeared and hovered over it.

Travel>Beach

I was still standing in the room, and Zauri was still running around.

Travel>Beach

Again, nothing happened.

“It’s not working,” My words came out high-pitched and panicked. “Zauri, you try.”

No more steps. Had she found the door?

“Zauri?”

Silence.

“Zauri!?”

My heartbeat sped as I swallowed painfully. What the hell was happening? I was twelve years old again, tears bubbling beneath my eyes as a dark despair choked me.

I darted into the darkness in search of Zauri. I couldn’t see my hands in the pitch black between the spotlights.

Footsteps sounded behind me. I turned just as a spotlight switched on in the distance. Someone was standing there, a shadow amid the light. So familiar. Dread clogged my throat…it was him.

A cold hand grasped my shoulder. I yelped and spun around.

“It’s alright. Just me!” Zauri said, her body an outline in the dark.

I sighed out a gust in relief. “You could’ve answered me!”

“Sorry. I was outside. I found the door.”

It was suddenly hot. I could smell her sweat and my own.

“There’s something weird with how light works in this room,” Zauri said. “It doesn’t project very far. Probably another glitch. Come on — hold my hand and I’ll guide you out.”

I turned back to look at the spotlight. The shadow was gone, as if it never were. Perhaps I’d imagined it. Or was it yet another glitch?

Zauri took my sweaty hand. She tugged me farther into the dark. I couldn’t even see her outline, now. Then she pushed on something; a door squeaked open. She pulled me through.

We were outside. A hum resounded around us; it sounded like people talking, but everywhere. I’d not heard this sound in a long time: the background music of Harska, an endless bubbling of voices and clamor.

We were in a city. The ground was made of stone, but all the buildings were white and textureless, as if whoever scripted it had left it unfinished.

The humidity soaked my chest hairs. I took in the heavy, steam-like air. Though chilly winds constantly swept over the surface of Maniza, Harska was always mild and humid — just like this place — partly because a lake covered most of the floating island.

“It looks like we’re in an unfinished area.” Zauri tapped her chin. “Maybe whoever modded your dream stone added it in.”

“But…why? I’m gonna have to find the guy and ask him just what the hell he was thinking. This…this reminds me too much of Harska, where I grew up.”

Zauri poked her cheek. “Not unusual for someone to recreate their home in a dream stone, especially when they have to be away for a while. You think he came from there?”

“Could be. But I never asked him to do this, so why?”

Unlike the court room with the spotlights, which felt as dreadful as the one I’d stood in twelve years ago, this outdoor area of Harska was too unfinished to feel like home. In the distance, stone blocks floated in the air, as if they were meant to fit somewhere but the modder had never gotten around to placing them. It was all rather disconcerting.

“By the way, have you looked up?” Zauri showed me her toothy grin and pointed to the sky.

I looked up.

A circle with scales surrounded the sun, as if a ring around it. The longer I looked, the more defined it became: whiskers trailed off its blue and yellow face like flame tails. Its eyes were orbs bright as moons, and a forked tongue hovered out its elongated, fanged mouth. Strangest of all, blue fur covered only the lower half of its body, as if it, too, was unfinished.

“That a fucking dragon?” I wasn’t sure whether to be awed or terrified. A bit of both tingled every bone in me.

“Indeed. It’s a slumbering sky serpent.” Zauri said with a bit too much glee. “Designed in the form of a daeva.”

“Daeva? The hell is that?”

The dragon’s scaled, curled tail was almost in its mouth, and the ring it formed sprawled around the yellow sun. I truly hoped it was sleeping.

“Weird, I thought this was common knowledge.” Zauri puffed her cheek. “A daeva is a divine dragon. They were the greatest gods worshipped by the forbears of all civilization — the Ancients.”

“Oh. I don’t know anything about what gods other people worship. In Maniza, we’re taught only to worship the Emperor and his family.”

Zauri snickered. “Well, that’s obviously wrong. He’s not even worthy of the title ‘emperor,’ let alone worthy of worship.”

Strange, how opinionated she was on this topic. Why would a lightblade training program have such strong opinions about gods and emperors?

“I know it’s wrong. I just…I’m ignorant, okay? Sorry.” And I was ashamed of it. I wanted to be more curious about things, but where to start? I had no foundation when it came to understanding the world outside my camp, let alone outside my country.

“No, I’m sorry,” Zauri said. “It just…it interests me, that’s all. I shouldn’t assume you know what I know, or even care to know.”

“What interests you?”

“Dragons and gods and stuff.”

“Really?” I found it amazing that she had interests outside of teaching the lightblade. “So tell me about this daeva, then.”

That made her light up and smile. And seeing her smile made me feel brighter inside.

“The gurus say that he was the son of a great raja who’d ruled the world for ten thousand years. He grew impatient waiting so long for the throne, so one day he struck his father down. A sky serpent saw what he did and swallowed him as punishment. He lived in the serpent’s belly for another ten thousand years, feeding on whatever the serpent would eat, lamenting what he’d done, and meditating each day until he reached nirvana. The separation between his soul and the serpent’s soul ceased to exist, and they were reborn as one, unified divine dragon. Thus this daeva came to be.”

Quite an entertaining story. A nineteen-year-old lightblade training program was more interesting than I realized. In Maniza, you were only allowed to learn what Emperor Raja Sanga Surapsani allowed you to learn. I never realized Zauri could teach me forbidden things about the outside world. Truths, or at least sweeter lies, to wash away the bitter fruit I’d been fed.

“Another thing,” Zauri said. “If ever you should meet a dragon, remember they are governed by two iron laws.”

“Iron laws?”

“Mhmm.” Zauri held up one finger. “One — dragons are born in the dark and die in the light.” She held up two fingers. “And two — only a dragon can teach you how to slay it.”

Well, my chances of ever meeting a real dragon — if they existed — were slim, so I wasn’t sure what to do with such laws.

“Wait a minute…why would a dragon teach you how to kill it? That doesn’t make sense.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s just what the gurus say.” She pointed at me. “Don’t forget it!” She tugged on her blue hair. “Hold on…I think there’s a third law…but I don’t remember…”

“Uhh, okay. I’d love to know more. But this place is weirding me out. Let’s talk at the beach.”

Zauri smiled sweetly and nodded.

“If this is Harska, it must have an edge,” I said, “for us to jump off. I was never good with geometry, but if we walk in any direction, we should find it.”

We walked the streets, if you could call them that. More like an unfinished mishmash of floating stone blocks, wireframe buildings, and unpaved dirt roads. Unlike the real Harska, cypress trees didn’t shade the pathways, nor did ryegrass soften the fields. Too bad — I would’ve liked to be home again, even in a dream. To smell its dew, to be kissed by its breezes, and feel its stone paths beneath my feet.

The pathway ended and the edge we sought appeared. We peeked over it. Since Harska floated just below the second heaven, we could only see clouds below. They resembled a snowscape, and I almost believed we could stand on them.

What would happen if we fell through? Regretful pangs seized my limbs: whose dumb idea was this? What was scarier than this perch? Suddenly, I was a child again, afraid of heights. I’d already fallen from this city once, but if we jumped, we’d crash thousands of feet to our doom!

This was a dream, so it obviously wouldn’t kill me. Still, fear poisoned my veins. I didn’t want to show my fear to Zauri — for some reason — so just bottled it and rubbed my sweaty hands together.

Zauri tip-toed to the edge. No way she was scripted to fear heights; and yet, she bit her lip. “You first?”

“You’re the one who doesn’t feel pain. You go first.”

She chuckled nervously. “I might not feel physical pain, but I do feel fear.”

I looked back at the incomplete city. For a moment, a complete version of Harska flashed before my eyes. Bad memories bubbled in my stomach, overwhelming the good ones. I wanted out of here. At least I wouldn’t fall alone this time. “Let’s jump together, then?”

“O-Okay. That’s fair, I guess.”

Zauri grabbed my hand. We stood at the edge. I looked up and away instead of down. The sky above was no different from the sky below.

“Jyosh.” She gazed into me and smiled, a breeze whipping up her wavy blue curls. “Don’t let go, no matter what.”

“I can’t promise that. If I see another bear dancing on a shark, no telling what I’ll do.”

She giggled. It sounded so melodic and pleasing. “You should know, there’s a limit to how much pain you can feel. When part of your shoulder got sliced off earlier, that was already the worst of it. So although this fall won’t be pleasant, I promise it won’t be that bad.”

Having a chunk of shoulder sliced off by a burning blade wasn’t exactly a fun experience, but I’d eaten worse in real life.

“I have an idea.” Zauri got behind me and wrapped her arms around my stomach, tight. One of the warmest hugs I’d ever enjoyed. “We’ll jump like this, so I’ll hit the ground first and maybe break your fall.”

I scratched my head. Something about this plan didn’t make sense, but I wasn’t smart enough to figure out what. “Uhh…sure you can hold my weight while we’re in free fall?”

“Yup.”

I turned to face her. Our noses brushed briefly. Was I blushing? Was she?

“It’s better if we’re facing each other,” I said. “I’d rather see the ground than the sky.”

She hugged me tighter and pressed her forehead into my chin. “It’ll be all right. I promise.”

Lightning struck my mind. Chaya, my sister, had said those exact words as we hid in the closet, the day the military came for my family. We’d clasped our sweaty hands together and bawled as their bootsteps neared.

Days later, during the execution, I kept my eyes shut when they beheaded Amma and Abba. But someone noticed. He got behind me, pressed his fingers into my skull, and forced my eyes open. Thus, the image of Chaya without a head was burned into my brain.

“Ready, Jyosh?” Zauri asked softly.

I was suddenly drenched in awful feelings. “Wait, this seems wrong. Let’s find another—” And we were falling.

Hard to think in free fall. However long it really lasted, it was a moment of absolute horror. The wind threatened to pull my face off. Whatever we were falling into resembled a shadow that loomed and enlarged. Was that the ground or a portal to hell?

Zauri didn’t let go. She even wrapped her legs around mine, like a snake. At some point during the fall, pressure invaded my nostrils, punched my brain, and knocked me out.

Banging into the surface at hundreds of miles per hour woke me the hell up. The obvious happened: Zauri landed on her back, and the insane force knocked me into the sky. Before I regained my senses, I was draped in between the branches of some tree. Except they weren’t branches; they were long, sinuous arms. They entangled me, cold hands running through my hair.

I screamed. An utter numbness drowned whatever pain I was supposed to feel.

Zauri ran up to the tree after half a minute of me screaming my soul out. Judging by how small she was below, I must’ve been quite high.

She whipped out a sword hilt, formed a lightblade, and swept the tree in one, graceful motion. The tree tipped over. I faced the fresh horror of crashing face first into the ground.

“I got you!” Zauri ran toward my shadow. She caught me as I fell. We tumbled into the dirt, rolling over each other and getting sticky in each other’s sweat, until we finally came to a stop.

With both of us breathing heavy and fast, she lay on top and hovered her forehead over mine. A dozen emotions flitted across her face, from fear to shock to concern to relief and finally laughter.

I laughed with her. I didn’t know what I felt, but laughing helped me release it. It was good to have flown and fallen. Better than being stuck on the ground, forever afraid. Most of all, how wonderful to have experienced it with someone else. With her.

My hurried heartbeats began to match her slower rhythm. And then, as our laughter died down, our noses touched. A hope for more alighted in my body, and judging from how bright her pupils were, she must’ve felt the same. Zauri pushed her lips onto mine and kissed me.

The post Lightblade | Chapter 3 appeared first on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

I woke up sweating, despite the cold. My soggy underarm itched. My throat ached, and I swallowed painfully. I pulled my blanket over me, but it wasn’t much more than a papery sheet, so I shivered from the chill gusts whispering through the wall cracks.

My room — if you could call it that — was barely bigger than me. A stiff mattress, a wooden chest for clothes, and a flaky cardboard box with knick-knacks: the sum of my existence.

Before I awoke, something had bothered me: a thought. I tapped my forehead as if that would reveal it.

Why do you want to kill the Emperor?

That was it. Why did I want to kill Raja Sanga? I hated him like everyone else, but a gulf existed between hate and murder. Whether that gulf was narrow or wide, I wasn’t quite sure.

I had my dream stone modified from a companionship program to a lightblade training program. I couldn’t quite finger the memory that pushed me over the edge and made me take such a crazy, and probably irreversible step. Haze suffocated my recollection of the past few weeks.

Could the bootleg modification have scrambled my memories? Damaged dream stones could cause memory loss, but if so, what other memories was I missing?

I pondered it as I shivered. The light of ever-dusk peeking through my window painted spindly shadows on the walls. So long as I lived here, I was better off dead. I was a slave building weapons for the cruelest man alive, a cog in an evil machine. As I’d lived doing evil, why not die doing good?

I felt so certain about it. But why all of a sudden? What had changed? Why couldn’t I remember?

It was almost time for work, so I pulled out the dream stone from my chest slot. Its weak light throbbed in my palm, dissipating as the crystal went from a somber orange to clear. Being stoneless, even for a moment, disconnected me from the sun’s spectrum. The world turned gray. The air itself lost its shimmer.

I reached into the cardboard box for my machinist stone: a dull green crystal. I pushed it into the slot in front of my heart. An electric jolt jittered my bones.

The air tinted green. Just what I was used to.

Got up to wash. Left my room and walked down the cold hall to the bathroom. A fellow worker faced a mirror and shaved with a rusted blade. We weren’t allowed to keep beards, but I’d shaven yesterday and could get away with stubble roughening my cheeks.

“Jyoshi,” the worker said with a smile. His name was Rahal. “Dream anything good?”

That was all anyone talked about. Well, life was either spent working or dreaming, and talking about what commands we’d inputted at the factory wasn’t exactly a more interesting topic.

“The usual.” I doused my face with discolored sink water. It burned slightly.

“Oh? You’re up early, though. Had a fight with the wife? What was her name again?”

The wife, whom I’d deleted to make space for the lightblade training program, was always agreeable…too agreeable. Dream companions, as far as I knew, were programmed that way, so I assumed Rahal must’ve been joking when he asked if we’d had a fight.

I rubbed my barely alive brown eyes, then stared at myself in the mirror. “Zau…Prisaya.”

“Oh yeahhh. My mother’s name was Prisaya. Not liking the image. Say no more.” Rahal snorted water out of his nose.

He’d been at camp a few years, whereas I’d been here over a decade. He was older, though, and so his hair had grayed more than mine, especially at the front. I wondered whether men in their twenties elsewhere had gray hair; but really, I was too ignorant of the outside world to know. Perhaps they had blue hair.

Rahal also had a bit of ear missing, like a dog that had survived a fight: never told me what happened, but it gave his face character, as did the pockmarks beneath his too-round eyes.

“I was searching this underwater shipwreck for the forty-fifth time,” he said. “Saw a golden mermaid — didn’t know my dream stone had one in its memory. Weird, eh? But when I tried to find her, there was some kind of…error, and I woke up. Couldn’t go back to sleep.”

I stuck my wet fingers in my tear ducts, tried to rub the tiredness away. “Mermaids? Really?” I’d seen bears dancing on sharks in my dream stone, but that was because it’d been modified. “Why would an error manifest that way?”

“Manifest. Look at you using a thousand emiril word. Hah!”

I’d gotten a highborn education until I was twelve, so knew a few expensive words, though I probably didn’t use them right. Most here at camp never had a formal education, but Rahal seemed a bit sharper than the average laborer.

I disrobed and used a bucket and pail to wash myself. No soap today — there hadn’t been any for three months. Whatever factories produced soap in Maniza had probably been converted to making weapons. Same reason we barely had food to eat. What was happening in the outside world…was Emperor Sanga going to war, or was he just being paranoid as usual?

Rahal buttoned on his uniform: a sleeveless, navy shirt and loose, navy pants. A few weeks ago, I’d been like him: content in my lot. As content as one could be in hell. Living for my dreams, living for something false. Though for Rahal and the others, perhaps dreams were more real than the waking world.

“You’re tired, eh?” Rahal said.

When had I not been tired? Must’ve been years ago. “I suppose.”

“When’s your next day off?”

I held up all ten fingers.

“Lucky you. Mine isn’t for a month. Gonna dream all day, or what?”

I nodded, though I didn’t plan on living until then. If I did, that was doubtless what I’d do.

Rahal grinned; I could count his remaining teeth on my fingers, too. “Next time, we should request the same day off. Would be fun to have a beer or two.”

That did seem nice. But as nice as it seemed, warning sirens sounded in my mind as if a light cannon strike was imminent.

“I’d enjoy that,” I said. “Beer is good. Perhaps we will. Certainly we will.”

Best to remain polite. I made a mental note to avoid having the same day off as Rahal. The sad truth is you could never be certain of someone’s intentions here. I’d learned that early on. There was a thing shrewd people did: have a few beers, get someone tipsy or drunk, and then watch the words flow. If a single word was a shadow of treason, you could be rewarded for reporting it. Rewarded with emirils, better living conditions, or — most cherished of all — a ticket out of the camp, back into society. Whatever that looked like, now.

But I didn’t know Rahal’s heart, so I just nodded and smiled and pretended to appreciate his camaraderie. Perhaps it was genuine. Perhaps it wasn’t. What did it matter? I was already dead.

*

Breakfast was curry. Or more accurately, a tasteless, brown goop with burnt pepper and a rather acidic mystery spice. Cleaning fluid, perhaps?

I scarfed it down, then left the mess hall and went outside.

The walk from my dorm to the factory provided respite. Best part of my day, to stare at the distant mountains and dream that I might one day climb them. That I might one day be free. I looked up at the sky, which was always the color of a swollen bruise. In the Duskland, the sun loomed on the horizon, never rising or setting or moving, always filling the sky with red.

And yet, with a machinist stone in my chest, I could absorb green – and only green — waves from the sun’s spectrum. Since I’d already put my machinist stone in, the air appeared to have a green tint.

I was supposed to know how to conduct green and only green. But because of the dream training last night, I sort of knew how to conduct red as well. Still, the machinist stone in the slot near my heart couldn’t absorb red. I’d need to get my hands on a combat stone to absorb and conduct red light. I’d also need a sword hilt. Only then could I create a lightblade in the real world.

From the outside, the factory was an ugly, metal rectangle. First thing you saw walking through the double doors was the golden statue of Emperor Sanga Surapsani sitting on his throne and waving.

You had to bow for at least ten seconds. And when you bowed, you had to get low: your back had to be at a right angle or less. Some asshole from the camp police stood in the corner and measured the angle of your back with his left hand, using his fingers. And he’d count on his right hand, tapping his finger creases, to make sure you’d bowed for at least ten seconds.

To be safe, I always bowed for fifteen seconds. I was young enough that I could bend my back so that my head was almost at my knees. Just to be safe. I’d seen them whip workers for failing to bow long or low enough.

After bowing to the statue, us workers assembled in an empty room for the usual prework speech from the manager. He wore the same uniform as us, save for a red gem sewn into his collar to signify rank.

“Remember why we’re here,” he said. “We’re all tainted. Impure. It is only by the deepest mercy that His Holiness has given us a chance to work. A chance to redeem ourselves.”

That was the lure: redemption. Perhaps one day you’d be allowed to leave camp and go home, back to your family, back to society. But I had no family, and society…I hardly knew what that was anymore.

No lure could ensnare me. I saw no way out.

When my shift started, I did all the usual motions. First, I ensured the gain medium crystal in the fabricator was in good order; I’d changed it last week, so the green crystal was still hard-edged and mostly translucent. After polishing it and putting it back in the bottom compartment of the fabricator, I stood and gazed at the sun, which gazed back from the east-facing glass wall. I closed my eyes and inhaled, pulling green waves into the crystal near my heart. I cycled the light through me. I pushed the light into my hand.

For whatever reason, green powered and spoke to machines. And as a machinist, I was meant to command machines, in this case a fabricator at the factory, to create whatever was shown on the blueprint.

I stuck my finger in the fabricator’s user port and pushed green light into the machine. It hummed as the sunsink within spun, as if the rhythm of my light and its spin were in concert.

A command console appeared in my mind’s eye.

I began the usual cycle to check for errors and ensure the machine was in good enough order to begin fabrication.

Blueprint>Test

Speed>Normal

Begin>Yes

The conveyer belt began moving. The clinks and clanks and grmmm sounded normal enough.

Was there a more boring job in the world? I often wondered how people in Karsha or Majapahit or Zerastra or Demak or any other country earned a living. Was it as dull and hollow and pointless as this?

Blueprint>BombardJX88543>MuzzleSwell

Speed>0.1

Queue>1

Begin>Yes

I often fantasized about a machine that could queue more than one item at a time; it would make my job so much easier. Having to reinput these commands every — single — time was agony. The fact that there was a command to queue more than one meant it was possible, but I also had to operate the machine at its slowest speed because it wasn’t in good shape and needed a careful hand. If I damaged the machine…well, I was worth less than it, so I’d be beheaded.

I opened my eyes as the fabricator did its thing. Metal came into the conveyer, a mold pressed down on the metal, and there it was: the mouth of a light cannon. Gleaming like a newborn.

Around me in the room, workers made the other parts of the cannon. Gears grinded, smoke belched, and conveyers hissed. The new guy behind me, I think his name was Kirat, whistled and it was pleasant enough amid all the cacophony. He fabricated cannon knobs, which conductors would grip to move their light into the cannon. Across the room, I eyed Parvin, who wore an eye patch, owned a deck of cards, and could hold his beer. He made reinforcement rings, which kept cannons from exploding as light beams passed through them.

Afterward, these and other parts would be assembled by hand because the machine that used to do it had caught fire a few days ago. The Big Beast, we called that machine — not the most creative name, but it was fitting. The thing loomed five times larger than my fabricator; only the best conductors could operate it, given its complicated and sensitive commands. Now it remained empty — almost ghostly — right next to my machine.

I inspected the muzzle swell I’d fabricated. Looked exactly like the hundreds I’d made these past few weeks. I carried it into the back room where we stockpiled the parts. It was the first part anyone had made today, so the room was bare. I took a breath and enjoyed a brief sense of aloneness.

I looked out the window; someone stood in the dirt field in the distance, facing our building. Just a shadow against the red sun. I could swear he was staring at me, but I couldn’t quite make out his face at this distance.

Cold nails slid down my spine. I shuddered and returned to my station.

I stuck my finger in the fabricator port, closed my eyes, inhaled more green light from the red sun, pushed it into the machine, and wrote the fabrication commands. Again, and again, and again, until it was lunch time.

Was expecting the same machine-cleaner-spiced curry from morning, but it was actually worse. Mulch, we called this bread. Biting down too hard on it had once shattered a front tooth. Since then, I’d learned to dip it into my water cup before biting, though that made my water nasty. Still, a worker must eat, and my water tasted weird anyway.

I was the first in the mess hall. Ironic, but I felt self-conscious eating alone. As if ghosts sat in the empty corners around me, and they all watched me chew.

Better than eating with others. As often as you could, you avoided conversation between shifts, especially with those you didn’t know well. I didn’t know anyone well, not anymore. You never knew who was undercover camp police, or who was willing to report you for saying something you never said. You especially avoided eating in threes or fours, so you wouldn’t have two or three witnesses against you. Eating in sixes and sevens was safest because larger conspiracies were harder to form.

“Praise Sanga!”

I looked up to see the gray hairs poking out of Rahal’s nose. He clanked his plate of mulch across from mine and sat on the floor.

“Praise Sanga,” I mimicked.

We said nothing for five minutes. He’d been here long enough to know it wasn’t worth conversing in the lunch hall. The camp police have good ears. I enjoyed eating with others in silence. A comfortable, peaceful silence. As alone as we all were in this hell, we were alone together. That thought didn’t make it less lonely or painful, though.

“You going to finish that?” Rahal pointed at my mulch. It’d been a minute since I’d touched it.

I pushed the plate toward him. “Enjoy it, by Sanga’s grace.”

“By Sanga’s grace.” He chewed quickly and tap-tapped his foot nervously.

After burping, he said, “Tired?”

That wasn’t a question worth answering truthfully. I shook my head.

From behind Rahal’s messy head, I noticed someone staring at me across the room. He had small eyes, ball-like cheeks, and a flat nose. A familiar face, though I couldn’t quite place it.

Rahal turned to see what I was looking at, then turned back to me. “You make muzzle swells, right? What’d you make before that?”

Unwise to remember the past, here. Could be seen as dissent, aching for what was gone. Aside from your love for the Emperor, it was better to be reborn each day.

“I don’t remember. I make whatever His Holiness desires.” I peered over Rahal’s shoulder; the man was still staring at me, unblinking.

“What you looking at?” Rahal turned to look behind again while I rubbed my aching eyes.

The staring man was gone when I opened them. How’d he taken off so fast? Could he be camp police? Why would they be watching me? Was it because they’d found out about my illegally-modded dream stone?

“N-Nothing,” I said.

“Isn’t it strange how we’re all making weapons, suddenly? What do you think is going on?”

Oh dear. This was a trap, wasn’t it? I stood up. Camp police watching me, Rahal trying to get my opinion on something I had no right to have an opinion on — it was all too much and too obvious. I’d been a prisoner here too long to fall for that. Disappointing to see Rahal laying such an obvious trap, but I couldn’t blame him. We all sought ways to survive, even if it meant sacrificing each other. Solidarity wasn’t a thing.

“Praise Sanga. I should get back to work.” And so I did.

*

The rest of the day, I inhaled and cycled green light into the machine and input the same command again and again. By twelve hours, I was frayed. My veins ached. It started as a dull throb from the deepest part of my bones, and it got sharper by the hour.

I’d cycled too much light. It was getting harder to keep it pure, and thus to keep the machine operating. Our managers knew the limits of us underfed, sleep-deprived machinists. But they didn’t care. Instead of giving us respite, they’d declare some bogus charge and schedule a beheading. Plenty more to take the place of a worn-out worker.

When I began to feel as if my veins were on fire, I took an unauthorized break. Stared at the vacant Big Beast as if a ghost were standing there, operating it. Char and soot covered the arms that fit together the cannon parts. The conductor must’ve overflowed it, causing a fire, which happens either from carelessness or inexperience. I wasn’t on shift at the time and hoped I’d never have to operate the Big Beast.

My manager walked by, so I cut my unauthorized break short and stuck my finger in my fabricator’s user port. Did what I needed to do for the remainder of the day. By the end, my veins had gone numb, and what was once burning now felt cold and dead. I pinched myself and couldn’t feel it. Breathing became a labor.

I was used to it — though you never truly get used to it. I wanted nothing more than to rest, to sleep and dream. The one respite we workers had. I still couldn’t understand why I’d modded my companionship program into a lightblade training program. The memory just wasn’t there. Instead, a blank spot in my brain detached my present from my past.

It all felt…off. I wasn’t a violent person. Far from it. So what could have motivated me to do that? And why, of all things, had I forgotten it?

I pondered these questions as I took in the air on the walk to the dorm. Not the freshest air — it tasted like belched machine oil — but it was fresher than the air in the factory. Mountains sprawled in the distance, snow dotting the tips like the powdered sugar on the pastries my mother used to make. My heart endured a thorn prick every time I thought of her, of home.

Up in the sky, that’s where home was. In the floating city of Harska, seat of Emperor Raja Sanga Surapsani himself. I’d seen his father speak at a rally when I was a boy. Such memories were a painful reminder of my fall. My exile and imprisonment here. It wasn’t me who committed the crime, nor my mother or father or sister, and yet we all paid for what he did…

A bell rang. Each chime lingered, tingling my spine, until the next chime, the space between each exactly two seconds. Death Bell, we called it, because it only rang for executions. And it was mandatory to attend executions. Missing one meant the next bell would ring for you.

Luckily, I was less than a minute’s walk from the execution ground, which was just a dirt field outside the police’s lodging. A chill wind blew through, so I rubbed my hands together as I joined the crowd of workers, who sprung out of the factory and dorm and mess hall and streamed together. Despite the crowd, the silence was almost solemn. A tension choked the air and stuck in our throats. Who would it be, this time?

I took a seat on a stack of bricks behind the main body of workers. The dirt field stank of waste, and it wafted in the breeze. Soon it’d smell of waste and blood.

A week — I think — had passed since the last execution; there was a time when I thought of them as a much-needed break because they’d ring the bell during my shift. An unbelievably sad thought.

A camp policeman marched some guy I slightly recognized to our front, then pushed him onto his knees.

“State your crimes,” the policeman said. “And thank His Holiness for giving you an opportunity to serve.”

The poor fellow muttered his crimes. Something to do with smuggling.

I didn’t want to listen or watch. I didn’t want to remember another gray face in this place full of ghosts. But I had to at least pretend to watch; in actuality, I crossed my eyes into a blur. I sang a song in my head so I wouldn’t have to hear the condemned man’s final words.

The fire surged.

Room to room.

Red, yellow, orange, leaping.

Playful, free. An ecstasy of burning.

Mother used to hum this song about our ancestors to make me sleep. They were rounded up, put in lacquer house, and set alight. The lyrics may seem disturbing, but according to the legend, the fire couldn’t touch them. After stepping outside, their clothes having turned to soot but not a burn on their skin, they defeated their enemies and helped create Maniza, this nation. It was a reminder that we were a founding family of this country, of which I was now a slave. Because of what he did…

Most of all, the song reminded me of Mother, and that remembrance always pricked my heart. Sometimes even stabbed it.

“Jyosh!”

The call cut through my thoughts. Who’d said it? I relaxed my eyes; my vision unblurred. I focused on the executioner: he held a lightblade, zealously red and dripping shadows.

“We’re waiting for you, Jyosh,” he said.

Waiting…for me? Why?

What did they want with me?

Everyone turned and stared at me. My limbs shook as a poisonous fear swamped my bones.

“Jyosh, come here.”

The camp executioner was not a man you disobeyed. I got up, walked through the dirt, and went to him. The condemned man remained on his knees; he’d pissed his pants, and I could smell how dehydrated he was.

The executioner, who wore the same sleeveless button-down shirt as the rest of us, brandished his lightblade in my direction. So monstrously red. Zauri’s image flashed in my mind, as if she were holding it, as if I were still on the beach with the bears dancing on sharks and headless, pot-bellied men flying on turtle shells amid other bizarre glitches.

“Jyosh,” the executioner said. He was so…old: white hair, no muscle in his bony forearms, cheekbones that jutted out. The only truly old man in the camp. And yet, his lightblade radiated heat and death.

“Did you forget?” he asked.

“Forget what?”

“Your duty. You swore an oath, in front of every man here, that you’d kill the next ten traitors who betrayed the Emperor. This wretch,” he waved his lightblade in the direction of the condemned man, “is only number two. Wavering so soon, Jyosh?”

What?

The executioner softened his grip on his sword hilt; the lightblade fizzled and disappeared. He handed the hot metal hilt to me.

He glared at me. His toothy smile chilled my spine. His chuckle rattled my bones. What did he want? What did he expect me to do with this sword hilt?

“I know you can’t make one, Jyosh. And I know killing is hard. But we all must do our duty to the Emperor.”

Everyone was watching me. Even the clouds and the mountains. Even the ghosts.

The executioner put his hand over mine. He made me squeeze the hilt, just as Zauri had. The sun loomed on the horizon, a rageful crimson. He inhaled its red light, cycled it through his veins, and flowed it into my hand. As Zauri had taught me, I cycled the red light into the hilt. A hot beam of death erupted off the blade.

“Whoah!” The executioner looked upon me with wide, astonished eyes. “You’re getting better, I see.”

I gulped and nodded. Turned out I was missing more memories than I realized. When, and why, would I ever have agreed to be co-executioner of ten men?

This wasn’t the time to wonder. With his hand on mine, together creating the lightblade, the executioner and I lined the beam above the kneeling man’s neck. Poor fellow finished muttering and crying and now waited. Waited with eyes closed and a placid face, as if he’d already digested his death. I, too, believed that I’d die in this camp, but you don’t truly feel death until you gaze into it. Perhaps if we waited another minute, he’d be crying again. For now, he was calm as a monk. Still, the stench of his piss almost had me gagging.

I didn’t move the lightblade as it fell upon the man’s neck. Or maybe I did? It happened so fast. To the fiery beam, flesh is as thin as air. There wasn’t even a noise as it cut through. Or perhaps I was too horrified to have heard it.

The man’s head rolled at our feet, eyes wide open. Blood bubbled and spurted off his neck. The stench of lightblade-burnt flesh was somehow sweet, like a pastry of death. The headless body remained kneeling until the executioner kicked it into a lying position.

That’s when it really hit me: this wasn’t even my first execution.

I remembered him. The first person I killed. I remembered Vir.

Vir. He operated the machine next to mine. The Big Beast. The machine that put the cannon parts together. We’d take unauthorized breaks together and just talk to each other. Talk about our lives before this hell, about our dream companions, about our hopes if we ever got back to society. Vir: he had small eyes, ball-like cheeks, and a flat nose.

I wasn’t on shift when his conduction overflowed and burned the Big Beast. But I was watching from outside. I watched when the police seized him for damaging the most important machine in the camp.

A memory reemerged from a deep, dark sea: I was sitting in a smoky room with a camp policeman. My mouth ran endlessly. I told him about Vir’s treasonous words, how Vir had insulted Emperor Sanga Surapsani, and how he’d planned to destroy not just that machine, but other machines, too. It was all a lie, but I said those words to the policeman.

And I remembered coming early to work that morning, thirty minutes before the manager’s speech. I did something to the gain medium crystal on Vir’s machine. I sabotaged the Big Beast. I’d caused the accident that led to my friend’s execution.

And then, after they took him, after I fabricated his treason, just to prove my devotion, I swore an oath that I would execute him with my own hand. And the next nine men who’d dare defy the Emperor, as if making a mistake or being unable to conduct or smuggling was some kind of unforgivable sin and not flaws all of us suffered from.

But…why? Why the hell did I do these things? What kind of monster was I?

The post Lightblade | Chapter 2 appeared first on Zamil Akhtar | Fantasy Author.

Soon, my burnt-out veins won’t be able to conduct sunshine, and they’ll cut off my head with a lightblade. Staring this truth in the face changed me. I became like a hungry man pulling meat off a roast, tossing it in the trash, and then breaking teeth on bone. Or a man on fire running from the rain and jumping into a spurting volcano. I decided to let go of hope and embrace pain.

Because pain, I’d been told, makes you strong.

So I got a black market modification on my dream crystal. Had to go beneath the bridge and trust this guy who said he also gave “perfectly legal haircuts.” Took an hour for him to finish the mod, which he did while asleep. That way, his consciousness could perfectly direct the creative energy flowing into the crystal. He changed it physically; he cut new edges and lines upon and within the crystal; he erased older, frayed ones. I prayed the camp police wouldn’t spot the difference.

Oh, and I handed him a pocket full of shiny emirils, six months of my salary. Earned from hard, bitter, soul crushing labor.

It was the moment of truth. If he messed it up, fair chance I’d enter an unwaking dream and spend eternity reliving my worst memories. Or perhaps my soul would become trapped in its own tiny world, an island barely big enough to stand on. I’d be a god there, at least. Or maybe I’d boil in a new kind of hell.

I sat on my sweat-stinking mattress, clutched the fire-colored crystal in my trembling hands, and told myself whatever waited, it couldn’t be worse than living in this box these past twelve years.

I pushed the dream crystal into the empty slot in my chest. It snapped into place; it twinkled and sent a jolt through me. So far, so good. I lay on my mattress, stared out my tiny window at the crimson sun, closed my eyes, and thought of the beach from a childhood memory — how the sand warmed my calves as the waves of the sky lake kissed my toes. Life used to be good. I heard the laughter of my sister and brother in the soulful breeze, and I turned to see them throwing seashells at each other…

That breeze took my soul. It carried it like a feather to the realm of the dream stone.

I washed up on a sandy shore. The surrounding palm trees grew human hands instead of branches, all clutching emeralds. A seagull sang a catchy song about the letters of the alphabet. Well, something had gone wrong, and this wrongness got me lucid quick.

I got up, brushed diamond dust off my puffy pants, and walked across the sand. A tribe of pale, headless, potbellied men tossed lightspears at the sea turtles crawling to the shore. Then they ripped off the turtle shells, stood on them, and rode them into the sky.

So skyboards were turtle shells. Tree branches were human hands. Fruits were emeralds. Unsound dream logic, to say the least.

Did I just waste six month’s soul-charring labor on this? I’d been to this island thousands of times, but it was never so bizarre. Too many glitches. But that didn’t matter so long as I got the one thing I’d asked for.

At the island’s center, past the palm groves, sat a log cabin. Another glitch: three dancing bears floated above its door. Worse, they were dancing upon sharks, and these sharks sang together in an epic symphony: a song only appropriate for a world-ending battle.

Now normally, a woman would be waiting for me inside on a feather mattress, and she’d be in her underwear, obviously. That was the purpose of the dream stone. Each of us prisoners was given one to make us happy, pliable, and ultimately better builders of Emperor Sanga Surapsani’s machines.

But I knew there were all kinds of dream stones. Literally anything you could imagine could be contained in the more expensive ones that were illegal in the camp. And since one hour dreaming was one day here, imagine what I could accomplish if I put my mind to something?

I opened the door. A woman with blue hair stood against the wall, as far from the bed as possible. Not an inch of skin showed beneath her lapis suit. And by Sanga’s hairy left nostril, she was holding a beam of straight-edged fire: a lightblade.

Her eyes widened in surprise. Her lightblade sparked as she retracted it. She straightened her back and said, “You’re here to train?”

I rubbed sand off my thigh, cleared my throat, and nodded. “Yeah. I am. So…can you teach me to make a lightblade?”

“Of course.” She nodded back rapidly. “I’m lightblade training program zero-four…or was it three? No — zero-four-six-eight.” She scratched her chin and winced. “I think?”

Well, those numbers meant nothing to me. “Got it. I’m Jyosh. Lovely hair, by the way.”

“Oh, t-thanks.” She tugged on a strand of her lush blue hair, as if surprised. “Here, have one of these.”

She tossed a piece of metal at me. I fumbled the catch and it dropped near my feet with a clank. I bent down and picked it up: a perfectly-polished sword hilt. No blade.

I gripped it and held it aloft, like I’d always imagined doing, though there was no light beam. It was the first time I’d ever held a deadly weapon. Wait, was that even true? For some reason, my memories of the real world had turned hazy since entering this dream.

“All wrong.” The woman balled her hands into fists, stuck them against her hips, and shook her head. “Your stance is of immense importance. Beginners shouldn’t raise the hilt to eye level — you’re just inviting your enemy to carve up your chest, where your heart and crystal are. And that’s how you die, obviously.” She pointed to the door. “Let’s take this outside.”

Well, this was delightfully different. I smiled to hide my nerves. “Sure thing.”

We left the cabin and walked some distance into a clearing amid the palm groves, away from the dancing bears and weird song the sharks were singing.

“So, what’s your name?” I asked.

“I gave you my designation. But if you feel more comfortable with a name, call me…Zauri. Any other questions before we get started?”

“What year were you programmed? And where?”

“I was programmed in the floatland of Salkofy in Karsha, in the year twelve-seven-forty-one.”

So nineteen years ago — outdated by Karshan standards. But all she had to do was teach me to make a lightblade, so her age wasn’t important.

Zauri came to my side. Because she was only a mod, she still had my old companionship program’s pleasant almond-shaped eyes and proud nose. The only difference: Zauri’s hair was wavy and blue instead of straight and brown. Also, her rigid posture made her look two inches taller. She wore an untucked white button-down shirt beneath her lapis blazer and flexible, velvety black pants, which seemed comfortable enough for fighting. But what really got me was her aura; my hairs tingled upon sensing an unfamiliar, yet strangely melancholic blue shimmer around her body. It flickered for a moment and disappeared. Was her frequency leaking?

“I’m setting the sun to create only red light.” Zauri opened her palm with her left hand; a terminal window appeared and floated above it. She tapped on the terminal a few times.

The sun turned from yellow to red, casting the sky and the island and even her in a dismal, ruddy glow.

I tried not to act surprised; I never knew that a program could change the settings of my dream. I always thought only I could.

“Given your age, I’m sure you know that red light is used for combat,” Zauri said. “Here in the dream stone, we can amplify any wavelength of the sun we want — to make training easier. But eventually, you’re going to have to learn how to parse red light among the sun’s entire spectrum.”

True: I wouldn’t have the luxury of these beginner settings in the real world. Also, it was nice of her to do all this thinking on my behalf. “You a military program by any chance?”

Hair got in her face when she shook her head. “Actually, I was scripted for children.”

Of course. Even the children in Karsha could form lightblades. That was why that country was so powerful. Meanwhile, all I got as a dumb five-year-old was a toy lightblade.

I sighed at a memory of me banging my toy lightblade against a tree. I had to start somewhere. I didn’t mind it being the lowest level possible. After all, in a dream, we had nothing but time.

Zauri put her hand on mine. Electricity from her passed into me. She didn’t feel like my old companionship program anymore. She even smelled different: no tangy perfume, just a sour sweat, as if she’d come off a machinist shift.

She repositioned my fingers on the hilt. “It’s a basic thing, but you want your fingers looser, less tense. Wrap your thumb around the side.”

I did as she instructed. “Like this?”

“Yes, good. Now, inhale the light. If, for whatever reason, you can’t inhale enough red light, I can hold your hand and flow some of mine into you.”

“To be honest, I’ve never inhaled red light before. Plenty of green, though. Still, let me try on my own, first.”

I stared up at the crimson sun. To see it so high in the sky instead of at the horizon and even redder than the ever-dusk was…ominous. If I were awake, I might think the world was ending. That blood and rage were painted on the world.

I focused on the sun’s glow and inhaled. Red light flowed into the crystal in my chest. The light pulsed through my veins, accumulating in my wrist which held the sword hilt. I pushed the light into the hilt itself, and then opened my eyes.

A faint red beam protruded from the hilt where a metal blade would be. But it bulged unevenly — not the right shape. I closed my eyes and inhaled more red light, cycling it into my beating heart, through my veins, and pushing it into the hilt. It spattered like a leaking pipe off the end instead of creating a blade. I pushed even more in: it refused to straighten.

This bleeding, uneven beam certainly couldn’t cut.

“Allow me to help you.” Zauri put her hand around my wrist. Red light from her hand flowed into mine; her light was so uniform, so pure, so purposed.

I pushed it into the hilt.

A red beam erupted. Twice the size of my arm — shimmering, shadows dancing around it.

I’d done it…sort of. I was holding a lightblade. But when Zauri lifted her hand, it flickered, faded, and disappeared. I inhaled more of the sun’s red light, cycled it through me as quick as I could, and pushed it into the sword hilt.

It got hot. Sparks fizzled off the end. I couldn’t create a straight beam on my own, and that chaffed.

“It’s a start.” Zauri gave me half a smile, her left cheek ball-like.

That wasn’t how my companionship program would smile. It was still strange to look at someone who had her face, but not her soul. Although, I wasn’t sure if either of them had souls.

“So…where did I mess up?” I asked.

“You didn’t mess up. You’re just inexperienced.”

“When you held my hand, you must’ve felt how I circulated the red light. Do I have any talent for it?”

She bit her lip in obvious apprehension.

“I’m no child. You don’t have to protect my ego. I’m twenty-four years old…if I remember how to count. I’ve lived my entire adult life in a prison, scorching my soul seven days a week with green light. Green light used to power machines. I know it’s worn out my conduction abilities, made me a shell of what I could’ve been. I’ve seen…I’ve seen how the camp police dispose of those who can no longer conduct light.”

I’d never told my miseries to my companionship program. Probably because I knew how she’d respond: with fake concern. Maybe even a hug and a kiss. And I didn’t want to be comforted, to be told it would be okay. That would only numb me more. I was here to bathe in my pain, not pretend it didn’t exist.

Zauri dug her tooth even deeper into her lip. “I know you’re not a child. The truth is, I think you can make a lightblade…but that’s not saying much.”

“Obviously it’s not saying much. I’m sure even an eight-year-old in Karsha can make a lightblade. But what I want to know is — can I make a lightblade that can kill?”

“Well, that depends…who are you trying to kill?”

I could tell her, couldn’t I? She was a program existing only in my dream, so why not? Perhaps she could even help me plan the whole thing.

“I’m going to kill the Emperor. I’m going to kill His Holiness Raja Sanga Surapsani.”

Her eyebrows climbed into her forehead. “Oh…isn’t he the son of the Raja of Maniza, or is my memory outdated?”

“Actually, the bastard is the Emperor, now. Has been for the past fifteen years.”

“Emperor…weird, I’ve never heard such a lofty title used for the Manizan Rajas. Anyway…” She darted her fire-colored eyes around in hesitation. “You want my opinion on your chances?”

“Sure, why not.”

“As a head of state, he’ll be surrounded by bodyguards and decoys. And they’ll be the most powerful your country has to offer. A small army of highly trained combat conductors would only stand a small chance of killing him. You won’t have any chance at all.”

Ugh. I knew that much. Still, it ached my heart to hear it. “Look, it’s not about actually killing him. It’s more about sending a message. That he can’t do what he’s doing to us and just expect us to take it. Someone has to hit back” I gritted my teeth. “I just want him to feel fear. If he feels fear, then I’ve killed something inside him, the way he killed the light inside of me. Then I’ve won. Sure, they’ll behead me for it — or worse — but I died a long time ago anyway.”

Zauri scratched her head, her expression awash with disbelief. “So, if I’m understanding this right, all you want is to brandish a lightblade in front of his face? I…think we can manage that. But getting your lightblade stable will take weeks of training. How long do you usually sleep for?”

“Four hours. That’s all they give us.”

“So in dream time, it means we have four days in this session. I’m going to make it count.” Determination shone in her eyes, and she grinned. “Sound good?”

*

After a few hours of failing to project a lightblade off the sword hilt, I almost regretted deleting my companionship program for this. Inhaling and parsing red light, when your veins have only tasted green for twelve years, is exhausting. It’s like if your blood turned to oil. I wanted to lie down and unsign myself up for this task. But someone had to send Emperor Sanga a message he would never forget.

I hoped I had enough time. I wished I had a deeper dream stone with more levels. I’d heard in Karsha’s black markets, they sold illegal dream stones with a thousand levels, each one taking you deeper into yourself. And if you were wired with others in a conduit, deeper into the collective consciousness. Strange, inexplicable places where reality has different rules; most who awaken from these dreams, which could last millions of years, can’t readjust to society. My father told me that a man who reemerged from the deepest of dream levels even claimed he found the true reality: what he called the Atman.

“You’re so stuck in your thoughts,” Zauri said. I’d forgotten she was standing next to me.

“Guess I need a break. Hope you don’t mind.”

Zauri gave me a weak shrug. “You’re the boss.”

“Care to join?”

Another shrug. “Sure.”

We went to the beach and sat in the sand. An endlessness shown at the horizon. The waves whispered toward our toes. The world of the dream stone seemed so vast. But it was an illusion.

“I should tell you something,” I said. Seemed the right time for an awkward truth. “Uhh…you’re actually a bootleg program.”

Zauri raised an eyebrow. Hers looked a bit snakier than my companionship program’s. “So that’s why this environment seems so odd. It’s like I wasn’t born to be here.”

“I couldn’t afford to buy a new dream stone. And even if I did buy one, it’s illegal, so I’d be executed if found out. So instead, I had someone copy a lightblade training program onto the only dream stone I owned. Umm, the thing is…” My head got suddenly itchy. “Thing is, that dream stone had a companionship program on it. Aside from your blue hair – and maybe your eyebrows — you look exactly like her.”

“Oh.”

“But you don’t behave like her. It’s just weird for me, that’s all. I guess to save time, the modder kept your appearance mostly the same. I kind of wish he hadn’t. It’s distracting.”

“I understand. Thanks for explaining.”

“You’re really different, though. It’s odd. You actually feel almost like a real person.”

“Of course I do. My script is as large as yours.”

Was that a joke? I couldn’t help but chuckle nervously.

“It’s true,” Zauri said. “I’m guessing the companionship program you had me replace was much smaller, by comparison. The inexpensive programs tend to have their memory and bandwidth artificially limited. Dream stones are actually quite cheap to produce, so to create demand for the premium tier ones, they make the cheaper ones worse on purpose.” She bit her lip. “I have no idea why I know all this, but it feels like the truth to me.”

Well, that made sense. Of course the camp minders would give us the cheapest dream stones possible. That was why the woman in my companionship program, whom I called Prisaya, felt like a program and not a person.

“So, then, how big is your script, exactly?”

“Like I said. As big as yours.”

“Does that mean…you’re alive?”

A wave surged into my thighs, leaving them cold.

“Am I alive?” Zauri shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’m a program.”

This was all a little too confusing. “Aha. So seeming alive must be part of your script, then. Now that I think about it, it took me a few months to exhaust my companionship program’s script. For a while, I felt like she was a real, breathing human being. But slowly, I saw her…repeat things. What I believed to be as endless as that ocean suddenly seemed nothing more than a puddle.” I nodded with understanding. “But in any case, I deleted her to make room for you. So I can learn to make a lightblade. And hopefully die better than I lived.”

Zauri’s chuckle endeared. It was almost soundless — mostly a concert of stifled breaths. “Well, I wasn’t programmed for philosophy or metaphysics. I attained a basic education, equal to a low Karshan noble. I was taught to train children how to form their first lightblades, and a few other useful basics. I’m afraid, if you weren’t shortly intending to embark on a suicide mission, you’d eventually outgrow my usefulness.”

“When you say ‘attained’ and ‘taught,’ you mean ‘programmed,’ right?”

She paused for a moment, obviously stuck in thought. Then she nodded.

“So…do you have memories from before I came here?”

“They’re not memories like yours. It’s more of a…sense of self, and a knowing of who I am and my purpose. If I were like a newborn babe, I’d be useless to you, right? I merely exist to help you with whatever capacities I have.”

Oh. Well, now she was talking like a program, and that made me less unsettled but more…alone.

The seawater had wet her pants, and now they clung to her thighs. Such familiar thighs. My companionship program’s thighs.

“I should tell you that I don’t have genitalia.”

I’d probably stared at her thighs too long. I snapped back to attention. “Why would you — why would you mention that?” My cheeks felt suddenly heavy.

“No need to be embarrassed. Just wanted to make that clear. I might look like your companionship program, but key things are…missing.”

“G-Good. Good. They give us those companionship programs so that we feel just comfortable enough not to fight back. I’m done being comfortable while roasting in fire. I’m here to train, nothing else.”

“Let’s go train, then. Progress might inspire you. Throw off some of that melancholy.” Zauri stood, dusted sand off her thighs, and held out her hand. “Shall we get back to work?”

I guess it would take time to adjust to her. And speaking of adjustment — why the hell had the modder turned her hair blue? So weird. Not that I didn’t love it.

I grabbed her hand. She pulled me up as if I were made of air.

“I think you’re ready for a basic technique. Might help you form the lightblade.”

“Sorry for being so slow.”

“Don’t apologize. Helping you isn’t just my job, it’s my whole purpose. In that spirit, here’s what you’re doing wrong. You’re treating the red light same as you treat the green light, but they’re totally different. Red light has a lower frequency and longer wavelength. It’s low energy. The distance between the crests and troughs on its waves are vaster. You have to be more patient when cycling it, so it doesn’t lose coherence and diffuse.”

I pinched my chin, frustrated. “You’re getting rather jargony. Listen, I might be twenty-four, but I have the education of a twelve-year-old. A twelve-year-old who skipped class to smoke cigars with his dumb friends. So spell it out in a way a braindead fool could understand.”

Zauri clenched her teeth as if pained by my words. “Sorry.” Considering how her voice broke, it sounded as genuine an apology as I’d ever heard. “I think…I could show you? I can hold your hand, and you can feel and copy how I let the light flow through me.”

Sounded swell. I took her hand. Weird how it felt nothing like Prisaya’s, despite looking alike. There was this buzzing vibration that flowed from her into me. Or maybe I was just nervous.

I clutched my sword hilt, closed my eyes, and focused on her frequency. Her inner light showed how she inhaled the red waves: as calm as a mountain breeze. She let it circuit through her heart in harmony; it pulsed and flitted as it went from her veins into mine. I did my best to slow down. I matched my breathing to hers. But I was too accustomed to green light with its raging current, and so the red light compressed and turned orange before it reached my hand.

No beam appeared on my sword hilt. Only sputters and sparks.

“Keep trying,” she said in the softest voice. “It just takes practice. I swear.”

I hadn’t felt so mothered since I was twelve. How comforting to have a teacher. To have someone making you better. Someone who only cares about making you better.

After ten minutes of standing on the sand, holding her hand, and cycling the sun’s bloody light through me, I actually…relaxed. Got in the rhythm of things. My heartbeat slowed, and a breeze streamed through the dreamscape, cooling my angst. More red light reached my hand. When I pushed it into the hilt, a light the size of my fist grew off the end.

“See?” Zauri said, an excited smile stretching across her face. “You’re doing it!”

I wanted to push more light into the hilt. I imagined the blade: a long, slightly curved beam of deathly red. How glorious!

But when I pushed more red into the hilt, it was as if my hand choked. Sparks flew like birds taking off. One caught my hand and jolted me like lightning. I yelped from the shock and dropped the hilt.

“The fuck!? There’s pain here?”

Why was there pain? I never asked the modder to add pain to the dream stone. Puffy burns streaked across my palm, trailing from my pinky to my thumb.

Zauri took my sizzling hand. She closed her eyes and pulsed violet light into me. It soothed the burn. Lulled away the pain.

When she let go, my burn was gone. Good to know lightblade training programs could heal their students.

“There’s pain here, but it’s a lot less than what you would’ve actually experienced in the real world. That slip could’ve cost you your entire hand. In battle, it could’ve costed you your life.”

“I once fell off a mountain and it was like landing on a giant marshmallow. There’s not supposed to be pain here.”

“All lightblade training programs have pain. The modder must’ve added it in. It’s necessary when training to feel pain, otherwise you won’t learn. Fighting is all about pain — how to avoid it, mostly, so you need to get used to it.” She clenched her teeth again. Her nervous tick, I assumed. “Here’s the thing. You actually got the flow right. The light reached your hand red and whole, but your technique of pushing it into the hilt was…well, it was rushed. Once again, you were pushing it like it’s green light. A softer touch is needed with red.”

Made sense. I sighed, annoyed with myself. There was much to learn. And even more to unlearn, it seemed. “All right. Can you do it, and I’ll hold your hand and feel how you pushed the light through?”

“Of course.”

She didn’t so much as push it through but rather gave it a gentle tap. And she timed her taps in a catchy rhythm so the light reached her hilt in even flows. Almost like she was pacing it to the beat of a slow, sweet song.

“Gonna take a while for me to get that right,” I said. “When you’ve circuited light a certain way your entire life, it becomes mostly automatic. It’s hard to force myself to do it your way. And to be honest, I’m feeling a bit…burned out.”

Burned out was the perfect word. I’d been feeling burned out for the past year, but the camp police and the Surapsanis they answered to couldn’t care less about what any of us felt. In the dreamscape, I had respite from the real world, but by replacing my companionship program with a lightblade training program, I’d renounced that escape. I had to be as hard on myself as they’d been on me and the other prisoners.

“If you’re feeling burned out, take another break. It’s best to listen to what your body’s saying.”

I grunted and shook my head. “You’re too nice, you realize?”

“I’m supposed to be nice. I was created to train children…noble children, who wouldn’t have to use their lightblades in actual battles, just as a basic thing to know for the sake of their prestige. But if you want me to be less nice…I can try.”

Damn. This program showed more self-awareness than half the fools I knew in the waking world. Although I couldn’t blame my fellow prisoners: they were programmed by their fears, as I was. “Just do what you have to do so that I learn. We don’t have all that long.”

“Can I ask — when are you planning on executing your mission?”

“Sanga Surapsani will tour the factory I work at in six days. So six days, four hours of sleep each day, that’s — and I’m shitty at math — but I think that’s twenty-four dream days we have to train.”

I opened my left hand. The dreamscape control terminal appeared, floating above my palm. I tapped Order > Item > Cigar and hoped that the modder hadn’t removed cigars.

To my delight, a red-wrapped and sweet-smelling cigar materialized in the air in front of me, already lit. I grabbed it and took a puff.

Ah…like inhaling life itself. That spicy, black cardamom flavor — it so reminded me of home.

“Want one?” I asked Zauri.

“Yeah. Okay.”

I was expecting her to say no. Prisaya never smoked.

I ordered one and put it in Zauri’s hand. She took a long puff.

Then coughed it all out.

“Suppose my – cough — smoking technique is all wrong,” she said with a wry smile

Wait…was that some kind of joke, relating her poor smoking technique with my awful lightblade conduction technique? No way.

Sharper wit than I was used to.

“You can make a lightblade, but you can’t smoke a cigar properly?”

“It’s not something I ever tried before. What do you expect?”

What did I expect? Good question.

Zauri flickered. For a moment, her face changed to one I didn’t recognize; only her blue hair remained the same. It was as if her form was now glitching, too.

Then my cigar flickered, turning into a soup of orange lines and bizarre, squiggly letters. And the palm trees. And the sky. Even the ground phased in and out of existence, suddenly replaced by lines and letters.

After a second, everything went back to normal.

“Did you see that?” I asked.

“See what?” She glanced around as if nothing happened.

“Everything got weird for a moment.” Light-headedness overtook me. A shudder seized my soul. Now, it was as if my brain itself had flickered. “Ugh — I’m suddenly…very confused.” I let the cigar fall out of my mouth. I stared at my hands. They were paling. “What am I even doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m starting to wonder,” I scratched my scalp as if trying to dig at something: a memory. “Why do I want to kill the Emperor?” I pulled my hair just hard enough to feel a jolt of pain. “What was the breaking point that made me want to kill him? For some reason, I don’t remember.”

“Breaking point?”

“Yeah…was this really…my idea?”

My idea? Of course it was. I hated Sanga Surapsani. He’d executed my family. He’d taken me from my home, the floatland of Harska, and sent me to live in a prison camp on the surface. I hated him…but I’d never done violence before. I’d never thought of doing violence. So…why did I suddenly decide to throw comfort to the wind and learn how to make a lightblade?

“Listen,” Zauri said. “It could be the mod. Bootleg, black market modifications aren’t inspected for dangerous artifacts. Something might have impacted your memories.”

Okay. That made sense. But now I felt like a man standing in quicksand, unable to keep himself from sinking in self-doubt.

“I need to cut this dream short. I need to wake up. I don’t remember…what made me want to attempt to take the life of a man impossible to kill…at the cost of my life. Without that memory…this is all wrong.”

Zauri took my hand. “I understand, Jyosh.” The first time she’d said my name. “If you’re missing recent memories because of this mod, you shouldn’t continue. It may only get worse. You can wake yourself up, right? Just open the terminal and do it. I’ll be here for you, if ever you decide to resume your training. Obviously, since I can’t go anywhere. But…” She smiled sweetly. It made my heart skip a bit. “It’s strange for me to say this, but I hope I never see you again. Because if you do decide to continue training with me, it means you’re set on this suicide mission. And I’d rather not see you die.”

“Really? You care whether I live or die?”

“Why would I ever want a student to die? I want them to learn and prosper. To use their skills to thrive. I want your success, not just in learning how to make a lightblade, but in everything in life.”

Hearing that and seeing her concern, it was like a second sun shone upon me. It had been a long time since I felt cared for. Not since my sister Chaya was executed. I mean, obviously the companionship program cared for me, but her caring was so…false. It was like, she cared about me without even knowing me. I could’ve been a serial murderer and she would’ve loved me, unconditionally. I know we all want unconditional love, but conditional love is somehow…sweeter. It shows we have value.

“I can’t promise anything,” I said. “People die all the time where I’m from. When you’re no longer of use…” I mimed slicing my own neck. “That’s it. Maybe I know I’ll soon burn out, like this cigar,” I crushed the dead butt under my feet, “and so want to get ahead of it. Decide my own death. Yeah, maybe that’s it.”

I wasn’t certain if that was it, but it seemed to ring true. Anyhow, once I woke up, I hoped to remember what motivated me to do all this. It couldn’t be the execution of my family because that happened twelve years ago. Something else had happened recently, but I couldn’t remember what it was.

“All I can say is — good luck.” Zauri still had most of her cigar left. She took a puff, then offered it to me. I tasted her saliva with my final puff; weird, how intimate that felt.

I opened the dream console and wrote the command to wake up.

Read Chapter 2

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