Dreaming in the Dark

25

Two girls riding a unicorn. Best. Thing. Ever.

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"Let me sing to you." Malice did sing, and amazingly, the pain began to fade. It wasn't all at once, it was like her voice was blocking up the synaptic pathways that let the pain in brick by brick until there was a cool nothing in its place. When that happened, Ange loved the woman more than she'd ever loved anyone in her life.

"Dear one," Malice said. "There's only one thing I ask of my daughters."

"What is it?" Ange asked dreamily.

"Die for me."

So she did.

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Sorry.

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They broke through the mist to find the woman gone, and in her place a monster. It was sinuous and scaled, rapine and wreathed in scarlet shades. It had stubby, clawed lizard's feet and expansive veined wings. It was black like blindness, and its eyes were the color of cinnamon. Ange was in the creature's mouth, and then and she was gone.

Jo screamed, and Dez went dumb. The unicorn reared, and they were both forced to jump to the ground.

The monsters fought, and their wrath was terrible to witness, but the girls did not witness it, not really. The unicorn charged and cantered, nimbly avoiding superheated tooth and claw, and the girls looked about themselves as if that wasn't what was happening. They were lost, confused, and monsters were a distraction.

The unicorn speared the dragon's flank, the dragon singed the unicorn's forelock. The two of them had been fighting for forever, certainly long before the three sisters had arrived. That was a different story, soon to disappear into the mists.

Jo searched the place where Ange had been, among the tangled and the broken trees. She found a shred of her yellow sheathe, and that was all.

"She's going to be okay."

"Jo." Dez said.

"The unicorn is going to win and then Ange is going to be better. I don't know if that was Ahriman or his wife or what but we're going to beat her like we beat the Butcher and Ange is going to be fine! You've got your heart back. We've all died before. We come back!"

"Not like this." Dez said.

"It doesn't matter, because nothing is really like anything else, is it? But the Maker didn't make us to die, at least not this time. This time we weren't eaten, so we can't be eaten now."

In the hidden mists, a dragon roared. It seemed very far away.

"See?" Jo said. "She's coming back."

Dez slipped over to Jo's side and hugged her. "It's going to be alright." She said, squeezing.

"I know." Jo said. "I know it is."

They stayed together for a while, and wiped their eyes, and looked around and wondered where to go from there. They took off their space suits, their gloves and their boots, because they were more comfortable without them and they didn't seem like much protection anyway.

"Why are you so strong." Jo asked.

Dez thought about it. Strong was not a word she would have used to describe herself. Analytical, detached, but certainly not strong. When she saw herself, she saw weakness, that wound in her spirit that never healed. But when she wasn't thinking about herself, about the wound, she did sometimes behave in a way that could be interpreted as strong. She smiled.

"I think I'm only strong for you." Dez said.

"Well," Jo said. "Good job."

A cuckoo landed on a nearby overhead cable. It clucked at them in consternation.

"Oh!" Jo said, suddenly radiant, "is that you, friend?"

The cuckoo clucked and hopped further down the wire.

"It says to follow it!" Jo said.

"No it doesn't," Dez said. "It didn't say anything at all."

"You don't talk to birds?" Jo seemed genuinely flustered, so Dez sighed and played along. It wasn't as if she had a better idea about where they should be going, and chasing a cuckoo would help to keep her mind off of Ange.

The fog and the forest network appeared both limitless and without meaningful distinction, one section identical to the rest. Occasionally, they heard the sounds of conflict, but didn't come near to the dragon or the unicorn again. Then there was a wall.

The hatch opened onto a vertical shaft with a ladder. The cuckoo flitted up and out of sight. Jo and Dez climbed with nothing to light their way. Jo could hear the cuckoo keeping just a few rungs above her as they passed several more hatches. She still had only a piece of her own heart to power her and she was reaching the last of her reserves. It was with shaking hands that she spun the final hatch, and climbed into an empty white hall. Dez came after her, and sat beside her as she propped herself against the wall to catch her breath. The cuckoo wouldn't enter the hall, it watched them for a moment more and flitted back into the darkness.

"Where do you think we are?" Jo asked.

"The end," Dez said.

There was nothing special about the hallway, its light strips or its maintenance panels. It could have been any hall on any ship, though they both knew it was not. It was ten paces end to end, and the door on the opposite side was ordinary as well, with a simple touch pad and slide track.

They waited until Jo could breath again, then approached the door. They hesitated before the pad.

"We can tell Ange about it when we see her again," Jo said.

"We will."

It slid open soundlessly, and the void took them like a great and icy hand. The air was ripped from their lungs, and their sweat crystallized on their skin. They were caught in an inertial current, rocketing around the outside of the command tower a mile above the rest of the ship. The scale of everything in the void was immense, but the thing they saw perched atop the tower made the universe itself feel small.

It had the head of a toad the color of tar, and beady cinnamon eyes. It was as tall as a mountain, with twelve arms and nine tails and terrible weapons held in each. It knew the names of the stars, and could bind them by those names. Its feet could crush cities, and were forged from brass. The tongue that lashed out from its mouth was a sword devouring light. These were the last seconds, the last images, and yet Jo was still conscious of her hand frozen around Dez's wrist. Her sister was unconscious, but they had stayed together somehow, and she remembered what had made her strong.

"Ahriman!" There was no air, and yet her voice rang clearly through its absence.

The toad thing gargled a laugh, and its hell tipped tongue lashed at her as she shouted.

"I know who you are!"

She hadn't known it, but as she said the words, she did know. The void changed. She was still in the hall with Dez beside her, clutching her hand.

There were tears on Dez's face, and a look of utter terror. "Don't touch it!" She was shaking. "Don't open the door! I saw where it leads."

Jo smiled, her eyes radiant, her heart feeling full for the first time since the beginning.

"So did I." She said, and pressed her fingers to the pad.