Unconnected to his component pieces, a mere collection of marbles, inert. Unsurprisingly, Berun was not happy to find himself back in this place. How had he arrived here? Where had he last been? He did not know the answer to either question. He watched the sluggish behemoth fish turn around him, recalling the dread, the absolute certainty of death. To be shut off forever: this was the thing Berun most feared. Some men believed in heaven, or at least a type of continuity, and Berun could see why. The body remained warm for a time after it died. It rotted, split apart and offered its contents to the soil, spurning new growth. But a construct was not a man. It went cold, and then became exactly as it was before life touched it.
If souls existed, they resided in flesh.
Berun threw his head back and roared the tone of a great brass cymbal. Dark water muffled the wordless cry, extinguished it only inches from the ringing cavern of his mouth as if it were nothing, had never existed—yet the fish jerked and dropped to the lake bottom around him, stunned or killed by the pressure of his voice. Small and large, they littered the ground at his feet. He took no joy in this. It had not been his desire. He had not acted with intention, only feeling.
The fish lay still, and it was only a short while before others came, curious, and began feeding, turning the water cloudy with blood and scales. Blind, Berun rocked back and forth as the immense, slick-skinned bodies pushed against him. Twice, a mouth closed around his arm, scraping its needle teeth over his spheres before spitting the limb out convulsively.
The feeling of dread increased.
Spheres knocked together in his stomach. A lonely drum roll, echoing into the endless night.
He did not bother to feel hope, for he had no reason to expect salvation a second time. He tried not to conjure the memory of being saved, but it shouldered its way forward: Light blooming in the distance, shifting closer and closer, growing in definition until it became the blazing form of a small girl. White from head to toe, but for eyes the color of light passing through shallow seawater. Her soft voice speaking indiscernible words, her hands urging him forward.
What had he felt? He did not entirely recall. He remembered the slow progress, slogging through knee-deep muck, staring so long at the girl’s light that it became his entire world. If he moved too quickly, a cloud of silt rose from his feet, obscuring her from him. Yes, at these moments he panicked, stumbled, fell into the muck. He learned to wait until the cloud cleared, allowing him to find her light again. Only then did he continue on. Eventually, his foot struck rock and the going became even more difficult. He fell into narrow crevices and mired his feet in loose sand, but still he followed the girl. He crawled until his head rose above the water.
It had been madness, yet it could not be rationalized away.
He had reached the island, after all.
Or had he? Doubt took root in his mind. Perhaps he had only dreamed of Tan-Ten, reunion with Churls and Vedas, Ynon and the Grass Trail. Maybe he had not stood on the shore of Uris Bay and looked through the shimmering glass dome at the island of Osa. Those traveling on the trail, even those few who possessed spyglasses and amplification spells, were not able to see that far. They asked him to describe the life that anchored itself to the clear wall. Filled with pride, he had done so. “I see huge vinetrees, crawling toward the sky. I see gigantic multicolored wyrms, perching on the tops of honeycombed nests.”
Devastating, to think he had only imagined these wondrous things. Even worse, to know he had never dreamed alone, that he had always been manipulated into sleep, coerced to take part in another’s vision.
Have I ever admired something for myself? he wondered. Am I just a dim reflection of my creator?
Berun roared again, and this time it was the word Father.
‡
The lake bottom shook. Dead fish slipped against one another, shuddering slowly into the muck like earthworms into soil. Berun made his feet large and flat to stay upright. Gradually the tremors subsided, and the bottom of the lake was smooth again, its dead buried.
A light bloomed in the distance before him, like it had when the girl appeared. It jumped closer and closer, moving from one position to another instantaneously. Berun felt the first faint stirring of hope, only for it to be extinguished as the source of light became obvious.
A pair of silver hands.
“Father,” Berun said, words now audible. “This is your dream?” Ortur Omali lifted a hand to his hood and removed it. Instinctively, Berun stepped back, nearly tripping on his oversized feet. The great mage no longer possessed a mouth, just a smooth patch of skin from nose to chin. His skull looked as though it had been crushed and reformed, or pulled like melted wax into the caricature of an elder. His eyes were large, liquid pools of amber in which two doubled irises swam.
This is no dream , Omali’s voice resounded in the spheres of Berun’s mind. There never was a dream. This is my place. An extension of my mind. A universe unto itself, folded inside you, enveloping the world. It is both here and not here, alive and not alive.
“That makes no sense, Father.”
Omali’s irises spun slowly. Indeed. But sense is hardly a requisite of existence. Strength and strength alone dictates success. Pure will sets the stars and the planets spinning.
Berun dismissed this claim as useless. He had no interest in cosmology or philosophy.
“Why have you brought me here?” he asked.
Omali rubbed his fingers together, producing a sound like singing bowls. You are here because you sought release. When you pleasure yourself, you become susceptible. He clapped his hands together and they tolled like bells. You have been bad, Berun. Very bad. You have kept your mind from me.
“You took control of my body.”
Omali’s eyes widened. This was a surprise, that I should treat you this way, my own creation? At what point did you begin to consider yourself an autonomous creature? You are not—nor have you ever been—your own man.
Indignation pressed Berun’s hands into fists. “And yet I’ve managed to keep you out for some time.”
Now the eyes narrowed. Truly. You have discovered that your physical form and my influence over your mind are related. This is a small inconvenience and a greater disappointment to me. In time I will overcome your resistance, but your character is not so easily mended. When I am animate again, you will submit to some adjustment.
Berun parsed this language. The possibility that his father existed without a body had never occurred to him, perhaps because he did not want to consider the implications. He had grown in his father’s absence, had he not? He had always half-believed himself capable of overcoming his father’s dream-specter, but what chance did he stand against the great mage in the flesh? Berun would be defeated, made into little more than a tool. A weapon.
It did not require a vivid imagination to picture the target. Vedas would die, and Churls would very likely die defending him.
The thought of being used to these ends caused a tightening of the spheres in Berun’s shoulders and chest—a slight but distinct darkening of his vision, a wavering of the figure before him. Berun raised his right arm, opened his fist, unsure of his intent.
Stop! Omali commanded, and the world snapped back into focus, crystallized on him like ice. You are not a man. You are my creature.
Berun resisted the compulsion to lower his arm. It felt as if a great weight had been attached to his wrist. “You have threatened my friends,” he said, though opening his mouth and forming words took a massive effort.