tamurĂl (narrative)
To slip into the world of nightmares was an easy task, if one put one's whole mind to it. Fell had never seen a people that could dream as this, the ageless sleep, where all was as one's mind ordered it. It was easy to think that they could have controlled these dreams, if they'd tried, and yet their minds were so weak that they dared not try. Fell had witnessed countless empires with something unique about them. Yet it was always this shared unreality that drew him back. Had Ao known, when the first was done, or had he - as with so many other things - simply followed his impulses without regard for the result? If so, it made this strange dreamscape even more interesting and not less. To be the construct of a being of near-limitless power was one thing. To be the result of unforeseen chaos was quite another. Fell found the distinction important, at least.
What they saw was rarely what was intended.
"I've often wondered," Fell said quietly. "If the Deadlands are spreading, if the world is rotting from the inside out, why bother at all? There is no greater purpose than destruction, and if the blackness spreads, all of them will die. What point, then, to all of this?"
The figure he addressed was there. Oa had a face of pristine white, eyes of near-bottomless black, and a figure that some would call lascivious simply because it existed. She enjoyed being naked. As though it would shock someone. Not one of those who was in her employ, of course. Fell had seen a naked form before. He felt as little desire for it as he did for anything else. Here, Oa was the master and he was the servant. Here, the dream took on whatever shape she wanted, and it was through those shapes that she revealed more of herself than she did in the waking world. So the fact that a stage was their background, and these flimsy cushioned seats their foreground, was of little surprise. Performance - the art of pretending to be something that you were not - entertained her to no end. She could not grasp the idea, but she could be enthusiastic about it.
"Is it merely a question of death?" Oa asked in reply, shifting in her seat. "If it were, I could move from city to city, bathing them in fire. I could exterminate as many life forms as I could find. Those deaths would seal their fate as much as anything."
"Then what is it about?" Fell asked, curiosity overwhelming him. "If I may ask."
She gestured to the seat next to her. Fell took it because he was bade to take it, and not out of interest. Sitting this near to her was an unsettling feeling. As though the whole of his being reacted to an opposite force which he despised entirely. The thoughts which led him to her service were not enough to keep his physical reactions from coming about. Oa seemed to know it, and seemed to revel in it, despite every effort on his part not to participate in it. He may as well have been asking himself not to breath in the waking world. There was no way around it. The only choice, then, was to endure it.
"We have argued across space and time, for longer than you could comprehend," Oa breathed quietly. "Always over the same things. Always over the same subjects. Yet I never tired of our discourse, until he broke the rules that had been clearly established. He creates and moves on. I destroy and move on. Here, he stayed."
Fell could remember a time when that fact had not troubled him so. They were meant to be the kings, Fell and his people, lords over Bahamut and the young creatures of the world. Yet Bahamut had learned the secret. If there was prayer, if there was belief, then there was power. No one prayed to Fell of the unseen, Fell of the mind, any longer. They prayed instead to Bahamut. As though his thoughts had summoned them into being a choir of priests was there. Their robes were heavy on their shoulders, solid-color stoles draped atop banded robes of blue and white. Books were in their hands.
They were singing.
"I, the lord of stars and sky, I have heard my people cry. All who dwell in dark and sin, My hand will save!"
"He seeks to show what he believes is truth," Oa murmured as the song went on. "He seeks to show that, given a chance, any one thing can survive indefinitely. I seek to show him his folly. If I leave even a scrap of this place intact, he will not learn. Do you see, Fell? Do you see the beauty of it? I work through this body because I must, because if I beat him at the game of his design, he will at last understand the truth."
"The truth," Fell repeated, and it was only half-question.
"There is nothing he can create," Oa replied, still more softly than before. "Which I cannot destroy."
"Here I am, lord, is it I, lord? I have heard you calling in the night! I will go, lord, if you lead me! I will hold your people in my heart!"
That was meant to be the way of things, Fell knew. It was how Ao had explained it to Fell and the others at the beginning. So long ago now, yet those words remained so clear. All things begin and all things end. There is a set time for every purpose. We may not break it or disrupt it. We may only savor the time that we have. Yet the young gods had not taken this to heart, being made too close to Ao's image. So the teachers, the twelve, had been forced to labor for one purpose alone. To show the gods what they had not understood all those years ago. The end was come, whether welcome or not. It was a time of rejoicing and of memory. It was a time to appreciate that which was given, because it would soon be taken away.
"I, who made the stars of night, I will make their darkness bright! Who will bear my light to them? Whom shall I send?"
"This world must not fall to blackness alone, nor to fire," Oa went on. "We must play his game, and we must win. We must unseat the foundation of all life in this world. We must make it barren, and drive him out. Then we must reduce the world itself to ash."
"Ash," Fell agreed solemnly. "And then we shall live among the stars..."
Yet there was a voice he knew, a voice he remembered, and it was singing now. Alone. The dream he had intended to find was at last before him. She was beautiful, this dark-haired elf, with her cool eyes and her distant manner. The sight of her naked flesh stirred emotions in him that he had not felt in some time. Not since the days of his youth. Not since the world was young, and he'd desired the flesh of Amasa. She felt it in herself, this elf. The pointless nature of her struggle. The lack of reason behind this drive to survive. She felt the days of the world numbered in her bones, and she was driven to proceed by only one voice, only one hope, whispered softly in her ear. It was this hope which Fell had to steal.
"Olas is no longer ours," Oa said quietly. "He strikes for his own ends. We must have her, Fell. She is the gate mistress now. You must make her see and know what you have seen. What you know."
She was singing, now, this beautiful lone elf. She would remember it as a fragment of a shard of a memory, and nothing more, yet she was as real now as she had been at any other time in her existence. Fell almost missed the words spoken in his ear. So intent was he on her voice, on her fearless presence, on the black cynicism of her words.
"Here I am, lord! Is it I, lord? I have heard you calling in the night! I will go, lord, if you lead me! I will hold your people in my heart!"
She was perfection. That much was obvious. Descended as she was, the features of her face held the touch of Ao himself, and she was more than he could hope to take with him to the stars. Arrangements yet to be mad were being worked out even now. Plans were unfolding. This was another step in the plan. Yet for all his interest in this dark beauty upon the stage, it was another presence that made itself known. Without Oa's will. Without Fell's will. There, lurking in the shadows, his face marked by pockets of the same. Fell would know that face anywhere. He'd fought Scythe and lived. With Orb dead, there was only Gola and Fell left. The time had come to cease this running and fight.
Fight, he would.
"I see his dreams," Oa murmured quietly; her tone had changed. "Endless desert. He walks on, through this desert. Soaked in his own sweat, with nothing to mark his progress. He lays down to rest in the dream and wakes to the world. When the world leaves him to his slumber, he awakes here, and starts again. It has been so for long enough that I wonder if he ever dreams of anything else."
"All dreams may change," Fell answered darkly.
"Try as I might, his never do. If I give him shade, he walks around the darkness. If I give him water, he goes on thirsty. He knows what he sees. He knows a mirage for what it is. It is his death, most of all, that we need. Do you understand?"
"I do," Fell answered grimly.
"Then I will leave you to your song. And I shall go, and present him with illusions once again."
Fell did not watch Oa leave. His eyes were on stage, watching the bare hips of the elf, listening to the sweet assault of her words. All night he could have stayed in that seat. The song would have washed over him until she awoke, rested not a jot, wondering why it was so. Yet the work he did now was vital to the end. So it was Beren's face that rested atop his neck. Beren's shoulders, and Beren's coat, that finally graced his figure. The auditorium began to melt away as he stood. Her clothing was restored, and her eyes were glad at the sight of him. Much work to be done, of course.