Chapter 14

My hair was plastered wet to my scalp but was quickly dry again. My conya stuck out of this water, which on closer inspection was a different liquid altogether. It was quicksilver, though it had a luminous quality. So did I. Raising my hand out of the undulating expanse, I saw that it was my red hobgoblin flesh, pride of Mog, but idealized, no scars or pores, made of solidified light energy, prana, a substance technically within Mana’s infinite spectrum. My body under the rippling water was also a shining duplicate of my physical one, fishtail now gone, having only been part of the dream plane. Gazing at my chest, the dark brand was peeking out from the water. This once and only once, I was glad to see it. It meant that I was no longer in the subconscious realm of dreaming.

This sky was a color I cannot precisely describe, nor conjure, for it is not one of the physical dimension. But it is called deveshina prime, something like magenta, cyan and coral vibrating together. Far above was a sun, almost familiar, but smaller than the one on hybrid earth, fainter, a corona of sky around it so brilliant with stars it semed like the sun wiped the atmosphere around it blank, the sight of such a starry sky so unfamiliar to someone of Earth, hybrid or not, that it made me feel like this silver sea was suspended in space. Galaxies and nebulae were strewn across that circle of space around the sun, strewn like femna sheer gowns—and perhaps they were, the remnants of unimaginable gods once fjeezing in a century long bout of passion.

The quicksilver sea extended as far as I could see in every direction. I dipped my conya back into the water. For a quarter mile below, the sea was luminous. I spotted strange fish swimming there, balls of algae floating lazily. Deeper still, the water became darker with the promise of more subconsciousness. I did not want to plummet again into that plane. Back on the surface, there was a massive column of vaporous clouds rising up from the water somewhere in the distance. Recalling my research, I guessed that somewhere in that direction must be my goal: the Eclipse Gate.

I swam. The silvery water parted at my strokes almost as if I was simply willing it to. As I realized this, my swimming became steadily easier, almost gliding. I swam for what had to be half a league this way, with seemingly limitless energy, my face peering just above the water like a shark fin, and with a shark’s speed. Getting accustomed to this world's reality, I willed myself to rise out of the water with a full body stroke. Rivulets of quicksilver ran down my naked, luminous body as I actually stood on the water’s surface like some pond bug. A ghostly silver cord extended out from my back. I smiled. Now I could see more clearly, see those foggy towers rising from the sea, swaying apart. In their parting, a denser promise: land.

Now I was doubly certain: I was no longer in the murky waters of the collective subconscious, a border realm with this one. Now I was in the true Astral World.

Most people don’t realize that on rare occasion they glimpse the Astral. They only take these passing visions as especially vivid dreams, flights of fancy inspired by books or movies, or eating that tuna sandwich two days out of the fridge. What they don't realize is that when we dream we touch the collective subconscious, and that this vast umbra of thoughts and memories serves as a border region forming the bottom of a literal sea within the Astral World. As one rises through the ocean’s layers up toward the surface, one gets closer and closer to the Astral World proper. For millennia a dreamer’s consciousness would rise past the surface now and then, most often by some metaphysical being’s intervention or simply by sheer dream wandering, and so they would enter the Astral world and there experience prophetic visions, messages from deceased relatives and other remarkable noumena. These miraculous entrances were now sealed off. By the government no less. 

You see gang, the Arcanum was a kind of world government formed by a league of mages, their collective power unfathomable. As I mentioned, they were called many things. Archons, Masons, Reality Architects. But now let me explain the reason behind those epithets. You see, with godlike magic, they spread a... permanent enchantment, let us say, spread it over the planet. This enchantment was called the Tellurian Veil. The Veil could tweak the very fabric of reality, to seal off magic or enhance it, to separate planes of existence, to unite them. One of its purposes was to seal off the physical world from the Astral. In this way the metas, metaphysical beings, who remained could no longer interfere with the peoples of Hybrid Earth (the Arcanum had been thorough, but not even they could off or commodifying every last god, fae, demon, angel and so forth). The material plane’s primacy was at the heart of the Arcanum’s philosophy, at the heart of MagiSci, its foundation. And so the Veil made travel between the Astral and physical planes nigh impossible, even in dreams.

However, the Archons could not separate the two planes entirely. They existed in a kind of symbiotic relationship and so some connection had to remain or our physical planet would become uninhabitable. Physical beings’ minds needed access to the collective subconscious while they slept (they would quickly go mad without it), and because this collective subconscious formed the bottom edge of the Astral plane's oceans, access to the Astral was technically open. The Arcanum saw it as a low risk compromise, as physical beings dreaming themselves into the true Astral planes (Arcadia, Angelus, Malfeon, the elemental planes, and so forth), was incredibly rare especially without the influence of metas; their dreaming was too cloudy and unfocused. But to give further insurance, the Arcanum had altered the Veil over the years, and dreamless sleep had become more and more common, what dreams people had becoming more pedestrian (all recycled pleasures and worries, a vomit of nonsensical memory bits and emotional sludge. Prophetic dreams hardly being dreamt neither); additionally, they had set a nightmare force that prowled the edges of the collective subconscious, seeking dreamers who were drifting too close to the true Astral Sea and terrorizing them into wakefulness or back into muddled, common dreams. In this way, Astral bodies always remained trapped in their physical ones.

But here's the thing gang: A good wizard knows that every door can be opened, and a good rogue knows every lock can be picked.

The dream chamber was the skeleton key. It allowed my Astral body to separate from my physical one entirely, and for a prolonged period of time (an bootleg casting of the spell Astral Projection, you might say). And so, through this technique, I could roam the Astral world with conscious cohesion, to truly interact with it in defiance of the Arcanum’s One World Order. 

So here I was, swimming the astral sea, having escaped the nightmare force and snuck past the Arcanum’s laws. Yes, the brand remained, its ominous glyph shimmering on my chest. The Archons had made it indestructible, irremovable, but they had done so with the assumption of mortals trying to remove it in the physical world. Here such limitations did not apply.

Land was in sight, a dot of an island rising from the endless sheet of sliver; that must mean I was nearing the gate, I could feel it, and there I would find the power that would remove this brand from me once and for all... and let me ascend to my rightful place in the world.

My feet rippled the silver sea’s surface in circular echoes; the indents of water I stood on were delicate as lily pads. It took concentration to stand like this—I was practically a newborn in this world after all, still learning its foreign physics. The physical laws of the astral world were in truth metaphysical. Sentient beings here were all a sort of sorcerer. Through instinct and will they could bend the world around them. Had I roamed the physical world in my astral body I would have been a ghost, going right through walls and other solid objects, unseen by living beings. But since everything in the Astral was made of light and energy, my interaction with this world resembled that in the physical world, though its physics were more forgiving. So each step on the ocean’s surface became more natural, until I was sprinting, leaping.  Testing the quantum physics of this world, I wrapped a wad of kelp around my loins with just a flick of my wrist and a commanding yelp, and it clung fast to me in perfect obedience to my will. I ran all along that glassy ocean surface, the silver sea streaking below me.

The island was looming larger and larger. It had an odd shape, more round than an island should be, like a deformed skull, its craggy underside in dark violet shades. There was lush alien vegetation sprinkled throughout its many ridges, especially on its round top crest, and there were dozens of smaller floating isles adorning it like a wreath, like berries on a tree, tiny things really that couldn't have been larger than a house, some just small stones the size of cars or sparrows. All of these, even the large skull island itself seemed to tilt ever so slowly, some completely amid the sky, so that it was clear that they were not supported by earth or even the sea itself but by some other power.

A roughly diamond shaped boulder hovered, dark rock glistening, its lowest point dipping into the quicksilver. I water walked over floating algae and leapt up onto this floating diamond stone and landed with a feather touch.

Straightening on this rock, I eyed the principal island. Standing on its top crest was something twinkling. The gate? Perhaps. But climbing the isle was a daunting thought, even in this world's forgiving gravity. However, there seemed to be an entrance into the island’s bowels, cave mouths which the quicksilver sea lapped into.

I walked this cave’s jagged dimness. It would have been utter dark but for the quicksilver’s inherent gloss reflecting on the rough walls, making them shimmer with the sea’s undulations. I came to a pillar of swirling bubbles. The sea itself seemed to gurgle at this spot. Peering at the bubbles closely, I saw that some of them took on the shape of toadlike creatures, their bulbous eyes blinking at me with amphibian awareness. It reminded me of my dueling days, a simpler time when I would have summoned etheric creatures just like this out of playing cards and prowled the block like a razor taloned fighting cock, my Mythic Masters deck in hand. Ah. To be a child.  But those days were done and gone.

The bubble pillar swirled all around me, floating up the rocky tunnel that ran through the island’s core. At its end far above, there was light.

Timing my leap, I jumped onto one of these bubbles, a big one the size of a twin table. I crouched on it, let its drifting bobs take me up to the light.

On the island’s top crest now, I walked amid strange vegetation, multicolored trees which could have just as easily been abstract sculptures in an art museum, plants resembling alien insects, one that clicked long blue stick legs out of a predatory freeze was exactly that. I wandered. A few of the toad bubble creatures hopped away from me in fright. Glowing slugs wriggled on the petals of a carnivorous flower before its maw shut around them. A mantis of some kind sharpened its scythe arms on the dense moss covering a fallen tree. Wandering on through this astral jungle, I spotted something in the sky, a huge bat, and I hid behind a tree trunk and its foliage. Stygian smoke trailed from the bat’s soot flesh, and in its claws, I cagg you not, was a Cig Life magazine with a chelana wrapping her bare arms around a chisel faced mal with his shirt buttons undone, both having cigs on their fashionably dour lips (you see, solidified dream forms wash up on the astral sea now and then, a kind of ocean debris).

I reached the edge of the island, opposite from where I had approached. There were more islands in that direction. They were curved protrusions, all near equal in size and seemingly paired up; then I realized that they were monolithic ribs rising up from the sea. I understood where I was now. The corpse of the slain titan Oceanus. My study of the Astral realms and the many years of practiced dreaming had paid off, and I had emerged relatively close to my intended destination. The bat wasn't native to this plane. It had flown off the island, away from the sun. The Eclipse Gate must be in that direction.

A trail of rippling quicksilver and my silver cord trailed me as I sliced across the sea, each breast stroke a harpoon’s thrusting force. Swimming this way was even faster than running, I’d realized.

I must have been a strange sight, as rainbow dolphins followed me in the distance plunging in and out of the water in curious arcs. Up ahead past the spray that my arms tossed up—its drops touched my lips tasting astringent, salty, almost like a heady liquor—something glimmered, a foggy black dot, what looked like small stones floating around it it. I paused a moment, and foam settled in dwindling oblong shapes around my protruding neck. Yes. That had to be the gate. I rushed on.

Many strokes later, half a mile perhaps, there was a great rumbling, peels of thunder, and far off to my side lightning began to thread clouds. The dolphins broke their route, vanished under a swell. On the horizon was a storm. Then I realized that it was expanding, more than that, exploding. A wall of glowing spray coming my way with hurricane power, green lightning writhing in it like eels. I propelled myself, skidding on the surface in my frantic strokes, the roar coming closer and closer. My limbs pinned in a perfect aerodynamic dagger, I dove.

 From far below the water’s surface, almost to the  subconscious dark, I watched as the ocean above became white foam, then was hurled myself for long churning moments, until the bubbling settled and I regained  my sense of gravity,  and watched in bewilderment as debris sank through the ocean, a shoe, a doll, a whole wrecked car, then were lost in the subconscious depths below.

As quickly as the storm had blasted through it now dissipated, leaving only league long ripples on the water surface, the surface that I now broke.  A mile high fog lingered and my sense of direction was disoriented.

There was still a greenish cloud, a vestige of the storm, not too far. Out of some suicidal curiosity I swam toward it.

I stopped, my nose half below the water line, spying. Even from a hundred yards away I could see what it consisted of. It was a great steaming cloud, at its core a nauseous green radiation, embers crackling within it like it was murmuring in fireworks, then on closer inspection, within it was a swirl of debris, loose bricks, car tires, roof shingles... charred shrieking faces.

This cloud was a dream emanation born from the Mana bombs that were dropped on civilian populations in the War. A psychic echo. Memories of mangled bodies,  exploding skeletons caught in the whirring green of its cyclical explosions. Whether those perpetually dying corpses were truly souls was debated among the Magi. I doubted it. But perhaps that was only a biased wish.

 One of these skeletal faces steadied amid the maelstrom. It seemed to actually catch sight of me, its scream easing to bewilderment. The academic framework around such phenomenon flew out the window. Slowly, I descended back into the water, swam away, not too suddenly. But the green cloud followed.

I veered left, and it did too and I quickened my pace and it matched it, surging over the ocean. Then I realized  my hiding was of little use and I broke water and set myself to a sprint of a swim fast as a dolphin, the irradiated cloud roiling after me.  Everything was blurry spray and my arms slicing.

 I discovered that exhaustion existed even in the Astral World as I came to a string of floating islands and I grabbed one, its rock solidity reassuring, and searched all around and saw the bomb cloud only as a faint wisp in the distance.

Whether it did not have enough sentience or speed to absorb me into its cyclical destruction was a mystery I would rather not solve.

Swimming away, I gathered my bearings best I could and aimed my strokes  toward the Eclipse Gate once more.

A string of vaporous stones were scattered along the ocean surface and they grew denser as I neared a vortex slowly twisting over glowing mana leylines that were clearly crafted by some intelligence and that the ocean lapped through without disturbance, and the edge of the vortex was a purple swirl and its center darkness.

Finally. The Eclipse Gate.

I slowed as I neared it, and breathed deep, though breathing in this realm was closer to its fundamental nature, the absorption of energy, and could be done with your eyes or neck or with your entire body. I knew that entering the gate would require deft skill that I had been honing all these many years and nights, and there could be no flaw in my entrance. As if in response to my trepidation, the sky clouded and a cold mist enveloped on me. Shoulders peeking above the water, I drifted on, mesmerized by the gate’s ethereal darkness, its shape like an oval, a coal the size of a small house, lower half underwater, upper half seething its cryptic mana, bathing the sea in strange twilight.

I came to a slowly rotating stop, stayed a cautious distance from the leylines though nearing them didn't pose any sense of danger or pain. It didn't matter now. The gate was at hand, just a short walk from me now. Straining for balance, I climbed onto the water’s surface, rivulets streaming off me. The ocean stilled to a glass like form once more. My eyes closed a moment as my mind reached for the gate’s invocation.

A ripple.

A gurgle.

Close.

Something... alive.

My eyes panicked open.

A strange tide buoyed me then sucked me into an iridescent rip current, frantic bubbling all around as my hands reached for the disappearing sight of the gate.