“What happened here?” she exclaimed while her eyes searched for Forbat, who didn’t see her enter—too busy contemplating the abyss his friends had jumped into. “Father! What are you doing?” she shouted with burning eyes, rushing toward them. “I told him everything about Kaura! You can’t send him to the enemy!”
“Wait! The fl—”
Before he could finish, Sandara made a fateful step and fell into the abyss, screaming, quickly followed by the two artificial intelligences.
“Nooo!” Forbat cried. “What have you done?” He gazed at her until she disappeared in the brown clouds. “My daughter is lost,” he whispered, barely moving his lips. “Why didn’t you disconnect? Why do you never listen to me?”
Brown spots gushed out of his temples. Petrified by pain, he stepped forward, falling after her.
The cold reappeared—the sinister presence, ready to seep inside his kyi and steal his memory. This time, Gill was determined to fight for his secrets. However, to his great surprise, instead of feeling the jure’s ice claws squeezing his ganglions, a heavy drowsiness oozed into his bones—a sleepiness he couldn’t oppose, considering how little he had slept in the last several days. I’m so tired, he thought, but I have to resist!
Hey, someone pinched my tail! How do utrils scratch when their tails itch? Gill felt suddenly confused about his species. Hmm, am I an utril dreaming I’m an Antyran, or am I an Antyran dreaming I’m an utril? Hard dilemma, he asked himself, utterly baffled.
In the end, he reached the just conclusion that he was an utril flying in the sky.
The beast’s instinct to navigate through the endless streams of air drafts became entangled with the inhibited dreams of flying of his childhood kyi, pleasantly conquering his every thought. Yet, even though he was just a dumb beast, he knew that there, somewhere under his thick skull, a serious problem lay hidden. His kyi, however, was too numbed to understand it. He couldn’t think; he couldn’t clarify what he was doing there, what his purpose in life was. Therefore, he did what any decent utril would have done in similar circumstances: he ignored it.
He was flying slowly toward the Ricopa Glacier, lazily fluttering his membranous wings, convinced that he’d find a way to defeat Voran and save Acanthia from the plague that engulfed it like a wildfire. When the first rays of the star pierced the mist of the cloud through which he was climbing in his path to the glacier castle, the problems started… without warning, as the worst of them usually like to come…
He had only a short distance left to fly before he’d reach the glacial trough when something whispered to him to look down. He knew he shouldn’t have listened—his intuition was telling him to keep flying: Look forward, utril, look forward! The foreboding couldn’t have been the fruit of his mind because until then, he was happy and relaxed, the gliding was gentle, the flight gave him a great sense of security, and he even felt a bit of exuberance at the thought that he was going to meet Sandara. The feeling of anxiety had to be induced from the outside, although Gill had no way of knowing that Ugo was playing with his ganglions.
And the order was an order. He had to do it, for the need to look down increased with every passing moment. In the end, he gave up and looked in the direction indicated by the jure… where a giant vortex was waiting patiently, ready to swallow him!
Gill had no clue for how long it had been shadowing him, but the twister seemed animated by a hideous life of its own. When he hadn’t looked down, the storm had followed him in the deepest silence… But now that it was discovered, it started to scream with the voice of a thousand guvals—the sinister fog covering the realm of the dead becoming visible through its lower end.
He was promptly sucked inside, screaming in terror, his head spikes congested painfully in anticipation of the impact. His yelling ended abruptly when he reached the black walls of the twister. The shock emptied his air sacks, and he began a desperate fight for his life. He had no air at all… His hearts were struggling to the point of breaking while the last traces of light disappeared as he sank into the storm.
The suffering had no end. Each time he hit the walls of the vortex, the pain became worse. He had the feeling that the storm was trying to break his skull to get inside. It took some time to realize that the source of the storm was in fact his kyi because the more he remembered who he was and what he was doing there, the more the fury of the tornado increased. When he figured out that Ugo was behind all this and that he was falling into the realm of the dead, he couldn’t resist the relentless torture anymore, and he passed out…
Gill woke up from the nightmare, amazed that he was still alive. He opened his eyes slowly, prepared to face the full horrors of Kaura. Instead of that, he saw the ceiling of the cave where he was held prisoner in Ropolis!
He had no idea how much time had passed since he had connected to the virtual world. It seemed weird that Ugo left his head without killing him or delivering him to the temples as Forbat had promised—and even weirder that he allowed him to recall every single detail of the terrible adventure.
The bracelet! Gasping for air, he tried to touch it through the fabric; to his huge relief, he found it on his arm. A moment later, he remembered that he had no reason to feel relieved, considering that Ugo had seen his secrets. All his secrets.
Of all the unhappy experiences he had lived lately, this was the hardest to swallow. The Antyrans seeded and cherished the memory of their most secret thoughts, hidden in the depths of their kyis—memories in whose absence the rites of the aromary art had no meaning. They were often compared with the platinum and iridium treasures of the ancient baitars thrown into the marshes at their deaths, seeding the filthy Gondarran swamps and turning them into the stuff of legends. And he had no secrets from the jure. For the first time, he felt naked, truly naked, exposed and at the mercy of the jure’s perverse curiosity…
He swallowed his bitterness, trying to come up with a plan. No idea came into his kyi, no Guk aromas, nothing. The escape through the skylight wouldn’t be a surprise for Ugo. In fact, nothing he could do would be a surprise for the abomination. He got to his feet to leave the nest, noting in passing Urdun’s stiff body in the other nest, no doubt dead for some time. His legs were trembling, and he could barely walk, so he had to sit on the nest’s edge. How long did I stay connected?
He badly needed a breath of air less stinky than that in the room. Gill decided to check the door to see whether it was unlocked. With a final dash, he reached the hidden door and opened it.
It took him less than one tailbeat to understand the cruel reality waiting for him outside and to accept it fully, as it came. He wasn’t in his room in Ropolis. Or rather, he was, but the familiar view of the mining city didn’t greet him anymore… The door led to an almost vertical slope studded with jagged rocks resembling the ruins of huge, ancient temples. Further down, the detritus gave way to an abyss lost in the gray mist. Everywhere around, hideous slabs of rock raised their fangs among the fleshless funnels of the brown clouds. The world of darkness, Kaura!
The room was on a mountainside carved by an apocalyptic deluge that spread its grotesque debris through the cracks and valleys around; seen from above, the rubble looked like parasitic dolmec eggs ready to multiply the stench of decomposition. I’m dead, he thought. Then he remembered what Sandara told him about the dead. Their metabolism was frozen, unable to make new connections. Am I another shadow in the realm of death, or did I reach here alive? He was pondering which possibility was more appealing when his gaze was drawn to something. He could see his reflection in a long, brown icicle hanging from a crack near the door—perhaps not exactly ice, as the surrounding temperature wouldn’t allow it. At first glance, he looked normal, save for his spine, which had a translucent creature stuck on it—a giant parasite. The parasite…sucks my kyi’s essence? An invisible creature… I think I saw it somewhere else…