Ziz II

Posted on 18 Feb 2013 @ 12:16am by Trija Natyal & Lieutenant JG Kestra Orexil

6,723 words; about a 34 minute read

Mission: Episode 03 - Frontier
Location: USS Galileo: LTjg Liyar's Quarters
Timeline: MD3 1700-2030

ON:

"Damn it, Liyar. You -" Trija clasped her hands in front of her and threw one out toward her side, fixing a heavy glare at the Vulcan in front of her. "You need to listen to me." She stepped through the door, forgoing any necessity of privacy and barging in on Liyar's private sanctuary. There could be no privacy, not when Kestra's life was at stake. It had started two days ago. Little wisps and catches at first. They could almost be dreams. But they weren't. They couldn't be. It was Kestra. If it wasn't the individual, it was the signature. Blood called to blood.

Liyar shook his head, rubbing his wrists and rising from the asenoi on the small table in front of him. He extinguished the meditation flame and approached Trija somberly as though her presence was expected. "I do not comprehend why you believe that my mind has changed since you last interrupted me," Liyar's voice was low, wound. "Miss Natyal, I do not know if I even possess the ability," he said quietly. "Even Adepts take training to accomplish what you ask. You would risk exposing your cousin to an unknown risk. A risk I cannot even be certain is worth taking. You will not allow me to examine her. Get out of my quarters, now."

"Bullshit, Liyar. I've seen the reports. I've seen what you can do. And you're right I won't let you examine her, not until you've agreed and we've tested it out! I'm not putting a timebomb next to my cousin, you can forget it."

"Then you understand the risk. This is a pointless discussion. I was fortunate, Miss Natyal, to escape those incidents which you have sought without my permission with my life. Were I to perish in such a link, you would both be trapped. Very likely you and Lieutenant Orexil would be killed."

Trija locked eyes with him, and moved quickly, steps assured. She reached her hand outward and grabbed Liyar's wrist, wrapping her hands around it and capturing his other while he attempted to step backwards. Trija stared up at him and closed her eyes, pushing him back toward the wall with gained momentum by his shock at the influx of feelings and sensations that bombarded him from the contact. Let me in.

"No -" For the second time in the last month, Liyar felt himself struggling to hold onto the instinctive reaction to lash out, to tear and rip and shred apart every last recognizable strand of Life in front of him until it backed away from him.

Please.

Liyar breathed it out shakily and extracted his hands from her grip, hesitating for a moment. Inhale. There was no residual traces of callous determination. There was only sorrow. He rested his fingers on her shoulders lightly. Threads of emotion were hurtling toward him, and he braced himself. They were slamming great heavy things, stars and meteors from above and through. Against his consciousness until he couldn't breathe. He felt the rise of static and white noise in his mind. Everything went still. "What is it?" / "It's him." / "It's him." / my shoes were full of stones instead of feet / and the fire burned her like fire, so she brought the cool cool water --- enough

Something shrieking in the background threw him out, reality crashing back, stones into cliffs into rising water. Running feet and shrieking emptiness.

The Vulcan lifted his hands up and away, staggering forward, lopsided.

Trija's eyes were wide. "You sensed that. Her. It was her, wasn't it? I heard her voice. You can't tell me that wasn't her. I know my own House, Liyar. And that was more than I've heard yet. Please. I need your help. If I could find some Adept, I would. You are all I have. We can work on the link. Make a plan. Get attuned to one another. Once we do that we can talk to Dr. Ni Dhuinn, present them with something logical. It won't be you. It'll be me. I'm not a hack. I know what I'm doing." Trija was regaining equilibrium fast.

Liyar didn't know if he could trust himself to speak. Instead, he walked over to a small cupboard in the kitchen and began pulling out supplies. He set them up on the table and sat down, relighting the asenoi. He gestured across from him. "It was her," he finally said with a brief nod. "I will assist you," he agreed after another lengthy silence. He didn't know if he could say it was logic that guided his decision. But there was a person in that screaming void. Soft and suppressed, but still fighting.

***
"I don't know. I don't know," Trija repeated in a huff. She yanked her hand back and shook her arms as though ridding them of shivers. Goosebumps and electricity. She didn't know how they were going to get through this.

"It is unintentional," Liyar assured her yet again.

"Can't you shut it off? Can't you direct it at all? Haven't you had training in this?"

"I have had training in one very specific method, Miss Natyal. Never in this way. I do not know."

He was relegated to repeating every once in a while when she would get frustrated enough to ask over and over why he couldn't just Vulcan his way out of it, as she'd come to call it over the past two hours. "Try again. Breathe. Focus. Like this." Calm. Control. Foundation. Liyar met her hands with his own, forcing himself over the cultural reluctance for the simple fact that the qui'lara in his hands were the strongest. If he had any change of directional input, it would be through the hands.

They trudged onward.

***
He felt as she began opening the flow between them, the gates rising. Almost without warning, something within him surged, reacting nearly instantaneously, snapping back through her. He opened his mind, opening the watertight compartments. Letting in the lights and the warming glow of Consciousness wandering through the ship, the room. In the walls, the floor, the stars, space itself. Tiny atoms forming trails, wind by wind. Things began to grow smaller, objects separating apart. Liyar felt a red, vibrating thread appear for a blank moment.

He started, but Trija kept going, determined this time to get through. The thread pulsed again and then -

The trees are long and arching, rolling in fog while the stomp of horses pounding the ground, beating at the Earth suffuse the air

Trija breathed hard and opened her eyes. "Can you feel that," she half-asked.

The legion is coming. Ah, my dear son, a monarch has his people to take care of. The men and women over whom he rules are in the place of children to him; and he can seldom spare time to love his own children as other parents do. Your father will never be able to leave his kingdom for the sake of seeing his little boy

"Stop. Liyar, wait. I don't know what this is -"

Trija's voice faded out as the void grew, muted and fuzzy. They could see only the red. Liyar gripped her hands hard in the real world and could only pause for a second. He could feel it splintering within him, cracking like oak and steel and wood, bending and splintering apart. They were going to break, too many voices, too many to count. Their heartbeats were massive war drums reverberating through. Liyar took from within them both and did the only thing he could.

He blasted open the strands separating them from the otherside, weaving through the Red Thing, the one calling for help.

Mother, I do believe it has started! The earth around it is certainly a little cracked!

Trija landed face down with a thud. The fog was so thick in the air she couldn't see anything, not even her own two feet. Where was she? What had happened? She stood up, panicked. The last thing she remembered was being on Galileo. In Liyar's quarters. The voices. The sensations, the emotions. Too much. Livewire. That's what she'd called him. Had he done this? Thrown them into some constructed world? "Liyar!" she called out, but she could only hear the echo of her own voice.

All she could recall was that thread. Bright red on gold, like some kind of sign. "Kestra," she whispered. Had Liyar picked up on it? Had he taken them here? They weren't ready for this. They didn't have back-up, they didn't have doctors. Trija gripped her knees hard and tried to think, focus, but the fog wasn't clearing. It was suffocating. She started running, feet hitting pavement, legs of led, shoes of stone.

Your royal father, left for you beneath the stone, when he lifted it in his mighty arms, and laid it on the spot whence you have now removed it...

Liyar gasped as he hit the ground. Something cold and sick was pitted inside of him, tying his lungs in knots. Not again. Not this. Not now. Ziyreh. The thought felt like a pulse, and he gripped his head as he struggled to his feet. Where was Trija? "Tr--" he couldn't speak, or think. They were pushing in on him. Voices. Hundreds of them. He didn't have room. It was going to push his mind out of his body and fracture it into a million pieces. He looked down, ghost-phantom pains through his body, the places that remembered dying a billion times over. He forced himself to stand up straight, eying the crumbling, desolate buildings in the distance. He remembered the cry for help, one voice above all others, in perfect pitch. It hadn't been a conscious thing. Mind called to mind. Like to like. Throwing them deeper into the hole. What was this place? He hadn't constructed it. The mental signatures were... sticky, dripping blood and pain, on the cold, white stone. Wet with sorrows clinging, gripping, crawling up and over the lip of the well. Endless, twisted parodies of creatures.

Not of him. But he could feel it sucking the life from him. Absorbing him into it, as it had absorbed others.

The sky was white-blue, hollow and cracked, thunder raging, lighting from the inside out. He could hear the scrape-scrape of metal on pavement in the distance. Za'il ra'fszhodcyen, his mind supplied, and before he could think, his body remembered what to do. Run. Where was he? What was this? His feet slammed on the pavement until he ducked into a space between buildings, pressing the beds of his nails into his fists. Trija. He needed to find Trija. This wasn't the overplace. This wasn't - he couldn't rest. This was here. Trija. Za'il ra'fszhodcyen in the distance, he recognized the blood and copper in the air, the heat of the rising sun and darkness. Phantoms to rise up through his window in the midday and carry his katra away. They had been idle musings. Until they weren't. Driven back by logic. But there was no logic here.

Around them was blackest darkness and a silence that inspired the men with awe. The horses, however, picked their way through the tall trees that grew so high and so thick that not the least ray of light could penetrate. How many days they traveled thus they knew not, for day and night were alike...

"Trija," Liyar mumbled lowly. It felt like speaking glass, twisted shards in his throat. He thought he could feel them rubbing against his larynx, threatening to cut with every breath. He pushed off the wall and started down the street blindly, trying to feel his way through the neverending fog. The darkness was happening up in the sky, raining down in tiny droplets, turning the ground inky black where it touched. Trija. They needed to find Kestra and get out of here. Liyar moved with renewed purpose, forcing himself to stay ahead of the looming night.

It was an effort simply to stay afloat. To breathe. To ache. The pain reverberated against the inside of her skull, but it was her pain. Her torment. And it was necessary. It kept her present, lodging her firmly into herself as the demands and beasts of other minds pressed and beat against her will. Her bones were sharp spines that refused to settle, scraping at the inside of her flesh as she crawled through the rusted debris and sludge of rotting corpses. The hallways had gone, the doors and the windows, too. Her prison had been controlled before, but now. Now it was all at once, terror from every direction, and the tears she wept tasted of copper and sweat.

At first, the body that she spotted ahead, treading towards her, seemed to be one more in an endless line of marching soldiers. Every one of them was broken; limbs and hearts and minds melting into a savage display. They fell, one by one, some to their knees. Others collapsed into nothingness, just a pile of ragged cloth and the wisp of memory. Still more came, then more, but then that vision faded and synchronized into one: the one man. Long, unfamiliar, and shaken. She could feel his desperation and his pain as he walked. Another waking dream.

A Vulcan now. She hadn't seen this one before. Would spiders crawl from his eyes? Would he cut open his own stomach and watch the contents spill out? She didn't want to see any more. Not anything new. Not any thing.

Except she heard her name in his thoughts. Kestra. "Who-" she croaked, blood leaking from her eyes and ears as he struggled against the gravity of sorrow that weighed her to the ground. Then another name. Trija. "Trija-!" She stumbled to her feet, gasping tight-jawed against the effort and collapsing back to the ground immediately as though the world itself had furiously shoved her down.

Hagik na'eifasu vi rish-tor solektra-hutaya shetau Alep-tel, shetau ashv'cezhong, hutauong ozh-dukal.

Step one. Logic. Function. Control. The structure cannot stand without a foundation. Logic is the foundation of function. Function is the essence of control. I am in control. (Step one, in the world without lies. Look pain in the face. Look at it. Feel it. Own it. Let it hurt, and bleed, and suffer.) Never any good at internal shielding, Liyar found himself faced with a dilemma of proportions he didn't know how to handle. He needed control. It wasn't there.

Tevan-tor ne'le vathsu, lak'tra. Glazhau s'panu k'bezhunlar ha'kiv-fam. Tev-tor ausu, ruhm-kuv a'le khaf-spol-tav.

Step one, in the world without lies, lie on the ground and roll into a ball and weep until you are dead. No. Wrong. Cast out fear. You can do nothing until you cast out fear. He approached the fallen figure, knelt down by her, forcing his breathing easy through the shattered glass in his lungs.

Hi pehkauong kuht-dzharel, shroiong. Fnashtau-tor harrong palikauong va'ashiv plei-yokul. Fun-tor shavokh na'ki'an ha-kel, tal-tor vashau-hal ta abru'menal. In'sna yu-murlar. Torvau ish-veh uzh-ki'anong, shoret na'telfaong. Shoret ha'kiv, na'ha'kiv.

Step two. Accept what lies within. Accept it, or die. Live or die. Yes or no. Zero or one. (Step three. Step four. Step ten. Turn the soul into smooth granite, get the job done, it's not over yet.) "Not Trija. Tr-" he made himself continue. "Gone. We must find her and escape." He wrapped a hand around her arm, a solid weight in the world of shadows.

Sheiong shen'abruong ozh-dukal, ti gol-fam svi'pi'muzh po? Abru'gir svi sahriv t'solektra-hutaya mau-krol sha'for kup lam-torong leshong ra ha'kiv katau. W'hl'qn kup'fam po?

"Come with me." He knew he was bleeding now, barely intelligible, in this frozen desert world mocking his inner consciousness, taking away the words. Up overhead the roar and rumble of engines, bombs and buildings falling dulled into a pitiful whine, a siren blaring across miles of empty land.

"The ash burns," she stumbled, unsure of anything now except that she had made contact. Whatever this dream was, it was one of her own. Strange, she couldn't remember dreaming of Vulcans before. Nor of any like this one, spewing proverbs in ancient foreign tongues. "You mustn't look the spiders in the eyes. They see too deep. They make the ground shatter." Her feet were granite; her head a mossy stone beside a lake. She grasped his hand and a wide depth of power exploded behind her eyes. Deuterium and lightning, the force of a star birth, the ecstasy of new life. "Trija!" she screamed, and her voice echoed to every end of the void.

On and on it went, shaking the dreams that fed and scampered. The column beside them shuddered and crashed to the ground a few feet from where they stood. In the wake of it's fall, her voice came back to her - winding around a golden thread slick with blue and black. Kestra threw her arm wide and caught it. Her touch caused the line to tighten and tug, and she was dragged along with it, digging in her heels and grasping tightly to the only other source of life she'd seen in decades. Millennia. "The feathers cannot be trusted," she hissed as they passed a field of them and a woman leapt into their waiting arms only to be shredded into so much meat soup.

Liyar extended the hand unoccupied by the ghost-shell, mind-incarnation, but it was the only life he could feel in this dead place. A great blue-white thing rose up out of him, a force propelling torrents of blood and death backwards and away. Liyar's grip tightened on her arm as he led them through the winding mindscape at a run to rival the husks trailing after them, emptier ghosts. Points of light out of immanence turned smoky, screaming back at the echoes without rhyme or reason, enraged banshees. Bits of stone and concrete threatened to annihilate them as they made their way through, but they hit the shield and decimated into a thousand tiny specks of light and dust.

At length, where the mountains on either side met, Alexander's path was barred by a great wall of rock. From a tiny fissure the River of Life trickled forth...

He stepped down hard as they flew into Newspace, landing on metal deck plating. They shook, heaved to one side and then the other, as the ground threatened to eat them whole. The sound of phaser fire permeated the area, directed energy and sparks. The smell of sulfur. Liyar forced himself not to see. Not now. Forward. Forward and onward into the breach. Shouts in Vulcan, Standard and Andorian made their way past the blood of their ears. Blood called to blood. He could stay here. Save them. He couldn't look back.

Who weeps for such a woman, for so small / A loss in such a brutish circumstance? / Yet ever in my heart I will recall / That wife who laid her life down for a glance.

Trija pulled out one of the phasers from the locker, shouldering it and setting the gauge to green. The Deities only knew where she was now. The Fog had lifted into this new nightmare place, where children begged her to take them home. Vokau. What home? Trija couldn't remember home, but she heard the resonant sounds, thrumming through the walls and the low pitch of warp engines. Trija. "I'm here," she said, raising the rifle to repel back the newest wave of boarders. Where was this? What was this? "I'm here!" She fired.

Kestra wound her wrist around the guiding rope, holding taut. Every falling figure broke a piece of her away, threads ripped untimely from her tattered tapestry. The Vulcan had stopped, but she was being drawn away - further into the battles and fear. She tightened her grasp on his hand, hissing as she was pulled in opposite directions, her shoulders buckling and threatening to tear asunder. Grimly, she set her weary stance into the bucking deck and pulled with both arms with another echoing shout. In the distance, she heard phaser rifles sounding and the familiar sound of her cousin's voice raised against the tumult. To me, she blasted the command with her mind rather than her torn voice. Her nose was bleeding now, pouring a salty sweet deluge over her lips, but for once, finally, there was hope. Hope was stronger than every bloody, gruesome sorrow. The men around her - she knew them without knowing them, their signatures familiar as colors on a spectrum.

Then we will, she decided, looking over them. We will save them. All of them.

Trija grimaced, biting back a grunt of pain as the familiar sensations of her cousin broke through the rain of fire. She holed herself up in the tiny crawlspace above an access hatch and breathed as quietly as she could so They couldn't find her. They couldn't get her here. Pain and sorrow. Fear threatening to overwhelm. Wood breaking. Kestra, she sent back, willing Calm as far as she could to anyone who could catch it, mold it, use it. Her mind wasn't yet broken. She would fight. She would bring them together and guide them home, if no one else would. We can't, Kestra. We can't. They're gone. We need to save us.

They are here. Not gone. No.

Yes! Focus!

Raneh aike'a vré ziyrehviyet anyarenkaci. Liyar threw them forward, through the door, to the cold interior. Lights flickered on and off in the distance.

Hope. Bright-thing. Out of sirens. Here. You must see. She tried to bring it to them. Down and through, down and through. The descending stairs, and the fire burned her like fire. Please. Hope for our future, Trija urged them. She knew then, where they had to go. These were miraea. Demons. Illusions. She tried to ignore the bright, vibrant light sparkling in the air. It was a dream. It would kill them all. Don't trust it.

Liyar came to a stop outside of a nondescript door, Kestra at his side, barreling through it as though it were nothing. He pressed his hands against his eyes, willing away the pressure of his mind. There was something in here, something he could take, something that would soothe the pressure, make him whole. Khasivrashion aike'a vréviyet risket kajzir'khasi. Burn away the unmarked graves. Bring them back. Erase it all. Put him back together. He could feel his body disintegrating before him, watched his hands bleed and melt. He was going to die unless he fixed it. Fix it. He could fix it all.

No! It is miraea, Kestra, please, don't

Meres, rising out of the dark, summoned out of the Will. Living will itself, and Liyar commanded it forward, broke the walls apart and turned everything to stone and ice, crashing tides. He was drowning, now. The water would take him, he tried to get rid of the stones in his pockets but they reappeared just as quickly. Pushing in on all sides. The ship creaked and groaned, threatening to burst.

That face. He knew that face. Come and get me. No, not again.

TRUTH.

The ground came rushing up as they were thrown into the room. A window leading into space, a table, a desk. "In there. Don't make a sound." Yes, Mother. Don't be afraid. You can do nothing until you cast out fear. She moved then, the replicated knife clutched in her hands like paper. Oiri'hyyit. She scrambled as clutching fingers grabbed her, the knife ripped from her hand, cutting deep enough to flinch.

Liyar fought back rising nausea. No, it wasn't supposed to - moved, turning the room into green mist. He twisted the man's head until it separated from his skull and ripped out his heart. For a brief second, he touched Something. It lit within him, fire crackling. Power. No! - he looked at the dead. He was dead. He felt the light go out. The light should not have - he crushed the sickly organ in his fist and snarled. Good. Bring the Good death to them all, until the sky is black and there is no peace, never again. Not for you.

Bright fire. Charred flesh. He was going to die. They were there and now - it is as it always was, pain as it always was, stop this.

He saw Kestra, and Trija, and Saw. A moment only. Had to warn them. I'm sorry. I should never have - "We have to leave, this is going to be destr -" Trija darted out, linking them all together. A spark echoed out like a shot, a roar as loud as hell itself shattering their eardrums, and then they were gone.

***
Then the forest ended abruptly, and the explorers came to a vast open plain, a desert, through which a wide river flowed. Far beyond rose a mountain capped by rocks of regular shape. At any rate, they appeared to be rocks, but the distance was too great to enable anyone to speak with certainty.

"Water," said the vizier, "is a sign of life."

From the Time Beginning, etched into the walls and passed down through the Houses, they so said this: Stay true, and cast out the demon Illusion. They once tried to take our Homeland, but the little girl Kestra fought long and hard. From the moment she was born, she was destined to take back the night and cast sun upon them all anew. She fashioned stones of glass and kept her memories close, and descended into the winding cave-stairs. Into the dark. The cold. The rank, humid air. Only there would she find the greatest power known to all Betazoids, the only power that could drive the Illusions back, that could restore the lush green grass of their peaceful world. The oceans of Rixx would abate and calm, the flower would bud and the hummingbird would flutter softly between. Down she went, into the dark caves, through the fire, and it burned her like fire. Through the terrible grotesque monsters melting, bleeding, sweating, crying - through the shadow-memories of every bad thought, every lie and fear - the doors and halls jangled a shrieking, hollow sound and it would never be soothed again. And down further she still went.

And further.

We have to keep going. We must find the weapon. Trija kept their hands together as they crept along the cliff wall, flames licking at their feet, threatening to obliterate them into the lake of fire.

Kestra descended with them although every step jarred her. No escape. I have seen none of this before, and yet all. Almost all. Nearly all. More - I could not bear it. I can not bear another. Miraea.

Below, past the flames, there was a sound of water rushing. Water is life. No. Water kills. Saves. Destroys. Purifies. Erodes.

The walls were crawling with squid-like, sharp-toothed creatures, their tentacles like hair, flexing, flicking, and grasping. They hung from the cliff wall above and below; they plopped gooily into the rising tide of sea foam, flame, and gore. Tentacles wrapped around their ankles and legs, pulling and tugging them forwards and to ash. Her legs were weak, her spirit weary, but it was three against thousands. Three would prevail. There was a power in threes.

A weapon. She couldn't. No more death, she thought. The strength of her intensifying will carried like a shout. No more. Fear had to be conquered. Acknowledged and overcome. Down, she warned them as the flames licked higher, then catapulted all three of them off the cliff's edge and into the waiting flames.

It seared and tore at them, but the excruciating pain was momentary in the scheme of things, a transient agony. Below they fell, timeless, through the waiting dark. Things watched them from the walls; warped creatures built of fear. They landed in a pile of soggy flesh, boneless; the fiery curtain above illuminated the landscape of tortures. The bones had been used to build a stairway, up and out, a gleaming escape.

Kestra turned away from it, took them each by the hand, and willed them all further into the dark. Scuttling sounds crew louder, interspersed with the sounds of terrified pleas for help from every side. Ahead the air was pitch and gloom; nothing could be seen. Her cousin, the stranger - she could feel them but her sight meant nothing. Was it the blackness or her eyes. Had she gone blind? Had her skin crept out and over?

Forward.

A room with an empty pedestal and three doorways. Kestra stumbled forward, catching herself on the bare stone. The blood that eked and dripped from her face pooled on the dark, pitted surface, and began to grow, shift, burgeon out into a cylinder. A sword. A torch. A batleth. Water pitcher. Phaser. Harp. She shoved all of them away and they splashed on the floor at her feet. We are the weapon. Everything outside of us is vapor and breaking promises. She sounded clearer, more assured, but her renewed strength of will cost her.

Trija and Liyar felt their feet hit the solid ground again, Trija's stuttered gasp between them the only sound for miles. The sound of shuttles flying over them, clipping low. Trija ducked, hands over her head, while children cried out their whole minds, and cities burned. A sigil appeared in her hand, worn and battered, fabric of an old uniform. Property of B.O.M.C, 2370. The patch turned to dust as she remembered. Marching steps in unison. (Forward. Face. Ready.) A living column of soldiers, weapons in hand. They hadn't done this in centuries. They were peaceful. Why were they a target? (There is no tactical advantage here.) But they would do it now. For their future. Trija brushed her hands over the tattered uniform, a wry, sad smile taking over. How they had fought. How they had died. Amidst whoops and cheers, the pindrop boom-shake

Liyar was alone in the dark. Alone. How could anyone stand this? Shion. Gone. His whole body shook, dying with every step. No voices. The root of home and Consciousness, a snapped tether, drifting to nothing. He would go mad. It was in this place, he found the shriveled threads of Meres. Liyar knelt, a skull of leaves and bone with a shredded cloak beside it, a wreath of ribs resting on top. You must take my skin. Just like before. Before? Before, when the whole world died. My skin will take you through. You can survive in the vacuum this way. You must survive. Take it, Liyar. With my skin, you can do anything. You can go back there. Rip their memories out, make it Real. Their katra, Liyar. It lives here. It lives here. Take it.

He hesitated, running his hand over the silken cloak, the twisted crown. No. He wanted to take it. He didn't know if he was even strong enough to resist. How could he resist? He was Vulcan. It was his core. How had he lived? It slipped from his fingers. Liyar dropped the skeleton, watching as it shattered and disappeared, turning to running water, running off the edge of the room. Meres wasn't without. He floated away from his body, separating every atom from one another. There wasn't one source. It was All. Shion. Mirrored in perfect harmony, within them all. He gripped his hands into fists, finding himself squarely physical, the top of his head to the toes on his feet, he stood Real, snapping his head up to stare at Trija and Kestra across the room. Here. They appeared at his side like whispers.

Great booms began to sound as the ceiling cracked, shuddered under the weight of stones. They still had further to go. An avalanche of rock and mud, whole mountains slammed through the ceiling, shards of glass raining down upon them at the impact. They hit the floor, massive things, giants. Liyar led them away, and they began to run again. They were Real now. They couldn't afford to be hit. Sheren anyarenkaci. The boulders crashed through the ground, under their feet, creating holes leading further into the darkness. Liyar clapped his hands upward, and they fell further, annihilating the room in its entirety.

Yes. He remembered this. Meres. Survival. Energy. Here. Take it. The stones. They're the key. He gave her his Life, gave them all, power and water and electricity. He could survive this place. He could annihilate the barriers in her way. He would. He reached over and grabbed their hands as they fell down into the Nothingplace, renewed hope even in the middle of dying. Etched in walls. Etched in stone. The world flipped over, and root stalks appeared, waving in the stagnant wind, the life of an anu tree. Down below, the lurking Leviathan waited, as he'd waited for millennia. Holding a bridge across the treachery, down into his belly. Refuge in monstrosity. I am the gate.

We can't trust it, Trija said, eyes wide. We can't go down there.

Liyar shook his head. In the world of illusions, what do you trust?

Nothing, Kestra answered, and everything. Her bones were shattered, emerging from her knees at odd angles, but what did she need bones for. Or legs. They were falling endlessly and this place was not her dream. So much fury and terror. She knew grief, the grief of a nation, of a planet, of more than one. They were united in loss, the three of them. Grief thick as gravy. She stretched, their joined hands holding forth the stones from the Vulcan's pockets. Not stones, but hearts. Will, in its purest form: Love. She twisted again, navigating them towards the Leviathan's gaping maw, and just before the dank finality of its lashing tongue, drove them all into the waiting gleam of its eye. You are mine and ours. We hold you with us, in us, but we are the masters- They pushed through it. Into it. And came out the other side like a miracle dipped in latinum.

Desert as far as the eye could see, but cool. Three moons danced overhead.

Kestra looked around dizzily, shaking off the sheen of the beast's tears.

Was that it?

Was it over?

A wind burst across the bare landscape and barreled them backwards down a flight of stairs. She held her grip on their hands and the hearts grasped between them, crying out as the effort to grip twisted her already broken body further. Falling. Falling.

They emerged at the end, three broken bodies, a twisted pyramid in front of three doors. Sraosha, mithra, rashnu. Lamashtu followed them through the bridge, and only here could they find escape. Trija stared at the doors. The House of Observance. The House of Mysteries, an Empire waiting beyond, statues of stone and marble standing at the ready to take up arms. The House of Judgment. The Voice of Conscience. Liyar pointed at a door with a great sphinx standing watch. Yasna 56-57. 57.1. The holy spell, possessing Truth. Ashavenem. Ashayam. And the greatest of these, was Love. Liyar stood, broken feet like pillars stuck in the Earth. A grand chord, deep and low, rang through the chamber of doors, a concert symphony. An Empire, a state. Mind. 57.2, 57.5, 57.7, 57.9, 57.11, 57.15. To return victorious from evil. 57.12. They don't need sleep. xrvi.dru. darshi.dru. Of the Strong, to overthrow Aeshma, at the renovation of the World. 19.95.

Observe. Liyar led them through the first door, and everything went still. In the center of the room there was a table. It neither bled, nor twisted hollow. He rested his hands overtop of a small bowl. The water there, not unlike the ones in his own mind. He reached in and picked out three stones. This is the weapon. There is only you. Burn away the lies. Create solidity from illusion, master the universe without.

Etched in each stone was only one simple word. Trija. Kestra. Liyar. Their names. He handed the stones out, small, amber-things, memories captured in glass. Souls. Liyar broke his open and it filled him, suffusing him with Life again. He was whole. He could awaken. Trija followed suit. Two out of three. The pyramid almost complete. The biggest secret of all. The sound of your voice.

"I am Liyar." He blinked once, held out his hand, wavering in half-reality.

Trija started, grasping at air. Was this it? "I am -" she felt it, grasping at her Consciousness. Sounds and perceptions, the smell of incense, the feel of the floor beneath her. She stared forward at Kestra and smashed her stone against the heavy table, breaking it into water, renewed with Strength. Out, and out, and out from fire, they brought the cool cool water... "I am Trija Natyal, of the Thirteenth House of Betazed." She blinked. Up and out. Upward and outward. She gripped his hand and held hers out to Kestra.

"Ah-" Kestra's voice cracked. The amber stone had the weight of a boulder, demanding and intolerant. Who was she? There were so many things, memories, terrors, agonies; nothing had a name. No one had faces. "Kestra," she said pressing her carved name against her forehead. "I am Kestra'lunaris Orexil, of the Thirteenth House of Betazed." The angels of Peace and Protection suffused her, made her expansive in her own mind. The stone shattered in her hands, glittering gold dust filtering through the sudden silence. She dove through it, and caught their waiting hands, following them Up. Out. Through. Into.

OFF:

Lieutenant (JG) Liyar
Diplomatic Officer, VDF/SDD
USS Galileo

Lieutenant (JG) Kestra Orexil
Patient (Former CTSO), SFS
USS Galileo

Trija Natyal
Assistant Producer, FNN
USS Galileo
(PNPC) Liyar

 

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