Yes, she was dreaming. She tried to wake up.
A flicker of blackness, and then… nothing changed. The great globe of ice remained obstinately front and center. She tried again, failed again. Then again. Another failure. She was locked out of her body! And this time it wasn't because of the elixir of sleep.
Hints of the smothering dream she'd just escaped enclosed her.
Where was she? Anxiety made her thoughts come fast.
Japheth said something about her being pulled down to a city of… terror? Torment? She couldn't remember.
Was she in the place she'd imagined, where her image tried to talk but no words emerged? She didn't see any mist or columns.
Fear seeped in beneath her reason and pawed at her self-control.
"What am I going to do?" she whispered, her eyes darting away from the ice into the wider darkness that enclosed it. Awful scenarios twirled her around in a full circle. Dire prospects half solidified like a spider's web.
Every possibility ended in her grisly death.
Her mind was trapped outside her body in a place that would shame most nightmares. Japheth had tried to free her, but failed. She would die here. The only question was whether she would fail slowly over time or suddenly when some soul-eating creature caught sight of her.
She could hardly breathe.
The thought was like the sun rising on a dreary plain. She was in her dream form. Breathing was an illusion!
She was formless-and invisible to most things.
Anusha's panic fell off, becoming a more manageable ache of worry. Fear she could handle. Panic would propel her to a quick end, she'd heard enough stories to know giving in to arm-flailing terror rarely worked out-
The sound of something cracking drew a shrill yelp from her.
Her eyes fastened on the great dome. It was riddled with shadows beneath the surface. Not air pockets… She realized the symmetrical shadows were the outlines of people! People trapped in the ice, as she had been.
She walked in measured paces along the frozen boundary, controlling her phantom breathing. Anusha gazed into the blurred surface. All were preserved motionless, as if dead. It was probably how she'd looked.
There were so many! She saw a short woman-a dwarf, a human man in lavender robes, a creature whose lower face had tentacles hanging off it, another woman, either a comely human or an eladrin-her loose hair hid the most telltale feature. And there was a fellow whose hair was composed of glowing crystal-
Another crack. It was from back the other way. She hurried around the periphery until she returned to the crater where she had emerged. One of its rough edges had spawned a fissure nearly two feet wide that zigzagged across the crystalline face for several feet.
Even as she watched, another retort like glass breaking issued from the crevice. A body slipped from the fissure and dropped to the floor only a pace from Anusha.
"By Imbrar!" she gasped.
The figure moaned. It was a woman! But not human-her skin was the color of desert sand with darker mottling. Her hair was brown and long, layered into braids. H6r features were sharp and her ear s were as elongated as an elfs. But the woman's severe features and coloration, and her silvery plate armor, didn't seem particularly fey.
The woman shivered. She stared at the icy tomb from which she'd emerged, and croaked several rough syllables. Whether ritual or language, the sounds were crude and slippery and assaulted Anusha's ears. She retreated a step.
The woman broke off her litany and turned to regard Anusha. Though she continued to shake with cold, the woman's filmy translucency argued she was as immaterial as Anusha.
"Who are you?" Anusha ventured.
The woman's face seemed expressionless. She said in oddly accented Common, "I am… Yeva. I am dreaming."
"You're not dreaming," Anusha said without thinking.
The woman nodded and bent her head into her hands. Silent sobs shook her shoulders. Tears trickled between her fingers. Her form began to waver and thin like fog before the rising sun.
"Hey!" Anusha exclaimed and dashed forward. She touched the woman's shoulder, but her form continued to unravel and fade. "Don't leave me alone here!" Anusha said. She hugged the woman, trying to hold her fraying presence together.
The woman's body was filmy strands of gauze in her arms.
"Stay!" Anusha pleaded, wishing the woman's presence to endure just as she willed her own shape and clothing.
Yeva's body gradually came back into focus. It returned to being only slightly translucent to Anusha's eyes and solid and warm to her touch.
The yellow-skinned woman drew in a deep breath. She looked into Anusha's eyes and whispered, "You have power here? Who are you who can command the captured dreams of Xxiphu?"
Anusha released the embrace. The woman's form remained constant. "I am Anusha Marhana. I'm no one, really."
"You are a human, of Faerun, if I'm not mistaken. A great sorceress you must be, though I admit I am not familiar with your name, and I made some study of such things before I was trapped. I wonder how long…"
Lines of worry creased her face.
Anusha shook her head. "I'm no sorceress. I just got caught up in events I didn't understand. I don't even know where I am, really. But I do have some control over my own dreams…"
"And the dreams of others, it is clear," Yeva said, her voice louder and more assured. "Your touch anchored me.
I was shriveling, dispersing. If you hadn't intervened, my soul would have become gruel for the Eldest." The woman shuddered.
"The Eldest?"
The woman gestured to the expanse of cold white. She pronounced in her lilting accent, "The Eldest broods over this city. It is an entity whose age surpasses most gods."
"And this… Eldest, it eats souls?"
Yeva nodded. "The Eldest sleeps. Its mind moves so slowly its thoughts hardened millennia ago. The chambers where the creature's attention flowed through Xxiphu in ancient days are choked with its petrified thoughts.
People whose dreams veer too near are caught here forever while their bodies waste until they perish. As likely happened to my body centuries ago..*The strangely hued woman cast down her eyes.
Anusha didn't have a ready reply. If what Yeva said was true, that her body was dead even though her dream remained-did that make her a ghost?
Ghost or not, Anusha wondered about Yeva's strange coloration and features. The woman was a member of no race she'd ever seen or even heard about.
She decided not to pursue either question. Instead, she asked, "Xxiphu-what is that? Is it where we stand?"
The woman gave a curt nod. "Xxiphu is a city of primeval aboleths. So I have learned, to my despair. I did not seek it, but those I hunted tricked me and lured me here. Where my mind was caught." The woman's fists clenched. "And now I am nothing but a figment." Her eyes slicked with a new surge of moisture.
"More than a figment, unless I'm imagining you," Anusha said, smiling.
The woman studied Anusha and said, "Perhaps you do but imagine me. If you hadn't reinforced me somehow, I'd be gone. I felt my mind slipping away, dissolving."
"You said that before. How can you be sure?"
Yeva tilted her head. "I have abilities too, Anusha. Potent ones, if not suited to my present predicament. I sense a burning power in you, despite your lack of physical form. You are not a memory like me. More like a… construct of psionic power. A thread of your will keeps me here."
Anusha shook her head, not really understanding the woman. "You have abilities? What sort? Can they help us to escape this place? My body lies on the surface."
The woman looked out into the surrounding darkness, toward the ice face, then back at Anusha. She considered for a long while, saying nothing. Finally, she shrugged. "Even though reason suggests our attempts shall fail, we should try. I am not the sort who gives up my quest while reasonable hope remains. I don't know what my fate will be if we do win free. Nor do I know how many years have passed since I was trapped. But I'll never know if I do nothing."