A Chronicle of Lies-Book 1- The Dark Sculptor (High Fantasy/Isekai)

The traumatized terrain surrounded the three landriders. Fractures both big and small cut through the land, carving miniature canyons and valleys. Flowers and flora took refuge in these crevices, filling every crack. If the badlands had been lush instead of barren, they may have looked something like this: sharp and jagged, yet fertile. The river and its smoothed flanks appeared unnatural amid the shattered terrain surrounding it.

Clayde and Ro'ken departed while Tuls rode with Vincent, eventually coming upon the Misan Strait. Mola trudged through its water, spraying her flanks and sending schools of fish scattering downstream. When she reached the opposite shore, Tuls brought her to a halt and waited. He scoured the horizon for Clayde's signal.

“So...” Vincent said, awkwardly breaking the silence. “What are we doing?”

“They are scouting the herd we spotted earlier.” Tuls said, “We are waiting here, where we will keep our distance, in case the herd cascades.”

“What do you mean ‘cascade’?”

Tuls scratched his chin, “I have never seen it myself, but when a herd of kelta are spooked, they become frenzied and rush for the nearest source of water. Sometimes, they encounter other nearby herds and spook them as well. Those herds can spook other herds and so on. They...” he made a gesture with his hands, “'cascade'. They can be dangerous. Which is why we are both over here, where we are less likely to be trampled.”

“Right. And...they just left you alone with me?” Vincent thought it was odd.

“Was that a bad idea?” Tuls jested, “are you going to attack me?”

“No. But you guys were sent to apprehend me.”

“We would rather continue our work. I think the order we’ve been given is stupid. So do Clayde and Ro’ken. I don’t think you’re a danger and clearly, neither do they. But we are being paid to do it. While we wait here...I want to ask some questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“How different are we supposed to be from you?”

“What?” Vincent asked.

“You claim to come from another world, friend. I was wondering how different we were from...eh...whatever race you claim to be.”

“We don't have wings,” Vincent said, “or tails, or snouts. Our faces are flatter and our skin is smoother. We don't have glowing eyes or green hair.”

“Your hair color...is unusual...and your ears...they are ridiculous, Brother! It looks like somebody came up to you, grabbed them...” Tuls raised his hands to the air to grab an invisible set of ears, “and stretched them out! As for the channeler’s eyes, they are rare...though as you can see when you met me, not unheard of.” Tuls stopped, clearly expecting Vincent to ask what a channeler was. He did not. “Do...do we frighten you?”

“You're acting like you believe me.”

“I am humoring you.” Tuls freely admitted, “I will not lie about that! It is an unbelievable tale, but I want to hear it nonetheless! After listening to Clayde flap his jowls all day all day and every day and Ro’ken ruminate...this is a refreshing thing”

“You resemble dragons.”

“Drahg gons?” Tuls repeated, “Is this some sort of insult?”

“They’re fictional creatures from our fables. You're supposed to breathe fire, attack villages and eat our women and children.”

“That...” Tuls almost sounded amused. “I do not know how to respond to this thing.”

“Neither do I.”

The creature gave him an inscrutable look over his shoulder.

“The Triasat nectar,” he said after a moment of silence. He adopted a more serious inflection. “It is incredible that such a thing ended up in your hands. You still have it, don’t you?”

“Yeah?”

“Hold onto it.”

“I will.” Vincent palmed the pocket that had the vial in it to make sure it was still there.

“You said we are all hallucinations?” Tuls asked.

Vincent was about to elaborate, but he saw Ro’ken standing on top of a hill.

“I think your friends are ready,” he said, pointing at him.

Tuls used his wing to shield his face from the sun as he gazed in the opposite direction, waiting for a signal from Clayde. Then he turned his attention in their direction and made some sort of gesture with his wing, Tuls nodded in response and waited. Vincent wondered what was going through the creature's mind right now.

“Ah...there,” he said, pointing to faint shimmering along the distant hills, “You better hold on.”

Clayde was chasing a herd of kelta toward the Misan Strait. His landrider weaved back and forth as though it were a border collie herding a group of sheep. He was shouting all sorts of gleeful expletives at the frenzied beasts while Ro'ken grabbed his weapon and placed his feet onto his landrider's back. One hand gripped the saddle while the other held the spear so that it pointed towards the posterior.

Proximity gave Vincent a truer impression of the creatures. Their lean, light forms shimmered with iridescent scales. Yet their broad snouts were equine and gaunt, containing holes in the side of their heads for ears and they had the eyes of amphibians. Long legs shaped for leaping propelled them forward, allowing them to jump heights several times their own. They navigated the broken land with dignified fluidity, allowing the herd to 'pour' over any obstacle. Seeing the frenzied kelta move in such a manner, it was no wonder Clayde worried about “cascading”. They traversed the plateaus as water flowed over rocks in a stream.

When they reached the Misan Strait, pandemonium was unleashed. About fifty or so kelta crashed into the water. Fins unfolded from their legs as the forerunners of the stampede attempted to dive into the shallow depths, only to find they had insufficient room to escape. Meanwhile the rest of the stampede mindlessly collided with and tripped over their leaders. Frantic splashing obfuscated what was happening from Vincent's sight, yet the scene was somewhat comical. Kelta kept leaping straight into the air to escape from the madness in a manner that reminded him of trout. After a few moments of chaos, a few of them escaped from the brawl and began to run downstream just as Clayde said they would. It did not take long for others to follow their lead. The barking creatures leapt over each other like grasshoppers.

Ro'ken waited for the herd to regain its coordination and then he gave chase. His landrider launched with a speed that took Vincent by surprise. At the same time, he felt Mola lurch forward. If he had not maintained a firm grip on the cord, he would have been hurled off. The beast's feet pounded into the earth as Tuls attempted to keep up with Ro'ken. Clayde soon joined them, hunched over his own mount and laughing with glee. The wind ripped past Vincent's ears, blowing hair into his face.

Ro'ken began to close his distance between his landrider and the herd, carefully moving his mount to the side of the ongoing rush. Several kelta continued to leap into the air but as the rush went on, their efforts became less erratic. It was as if the creatures were caught in some sort of trance, all galloping to the same cadence. He used the tip of his spear to slice the water. At first, Vincent didn’t know what the purpose of such a thing was, but then he noticed the kelta nearest Ro’ken quelled from the noise. Using this to his advantage, he shaped the herd, narrowing its formation. After being satisfied with the results, he took his landrider and sped up ahead of the stampede.

His mount gained so much momentum, Vincent was sure he would be torn off by the drag his unrestrained wings created. But the creature held them with such precision, he appeared to slice through the wind. He outran the herd, leading in front by at least fifty feet...then one-hundred feet. He appeared to be intentionally leaving the kelta behind. But without warning, he spread his wings and launched from the back of his mount. He pulled into the air like an enormous white kite, the membranes of his wings vibrating. Using the momentum he had gained, he performed a 180 degree arc in the air, turned around, and dived toward the incoming kelta. When he swooped upward, one of them near the back went down with a spear jutting out of its skull.

Tuls and Clayde pulled their landriders to a stop as Ro'ken used his remaining momentum to spiral down before splashing into the water. After taking a moment to massage the pits under his wings, he waded over to the slain beast to retrieve his spear. He grabbed hold of it and motioned for Clayde to approach. They both used a strap to tether the spear to Clayde's mount and dragged the impaled kelta along the water. When they reached the shore, he dismounted his landrider. Tuls did the same and Vincent, following his lead, slowly lowering himself down the beast's side.

“Spear is stuck in the beast's skull.” Clayde grunted as he dragged the kelta onto the shoreline. Streams of turquoise blood trickled into the river. The kelta's amphibious eyes were widened as if it were frozen in a perpetual state of surprise with a spear disappearing into its temple.

“Are we stopping for the night?” Tuls asked.

“Aye,” Clayde scanned the horizon momentarily before pointing to a stone arch nearby. “There. That should do it.”

Ro'ken rejoined them and helped Clayde to haul the slain beast over to the arch. Clayde allowed the kelta to slump to the ground and then he untied his wing strap. Tuls untied his and they both stretched their wings. Vincent, who was following their example, did the same. His wings sprung outward. A sharp pain lanced up his shoulder blades, causing him to utter a terse profanity.

“Ease them open, boy!” Clayde said, “you'll rip your back in two if you throw your wings out like that after they've been pent-up.”

“Mmhmm. Hooked the eye socket on the other side.” Ro'ken frowned at his work. “We will have to drive it through.”

“A clean kill though,” Clayde chuckled, “it was dead before it hit the water.”

“Remember when you asked why I spent a fortune on a lodestone lance? Huh?” Ro'ken said while disassembling all but the last segment of his spear, which remained implanted in the beast’s head. “Remember when you gave me an earful of shit? This is wh.” He fished a stone out of the water, draped a piece of leather over the end of the spear, then he raised the stone up high. “Less length to drive through.”

Vincent looked away just as Ro'ken brought the stone down upon the shaft. After several strikes there was a grotesque squelching sound. When he looked back, the spear segment was free of the kelt’as skull. It’s shaft was coated in the beast's blood. Ro'ken walked over to the river to wash it off while Clayde withdrew a knife and a ball of twine from his pockets. After using the twine to secure the kelta's back legs together he dragged it over to a nearby tree and hung it upside down. Vincent knew exactly what he was about to do so he averted his gaze once more.

“Oy,” Clayde said, “Tuls, have you ever prepared a kelta before?”

“I have.”

“Then kick the dirt and give Ro'ken a hand!”

Ro'ken dropped the shaft next to the rest of its segments and accepted the knife from Clayde. There was an exchange, but the words were lost in Vincent's daze. The mountains...they held him in a daze. He became agitated, unable to shake the feeling that something was just barely evading his perception. It wasn't until Clayde tapped him on the shoulder that his spell was broken.

“Oy, outsider,” he said, “you aren’t thinking of running away, are you?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Vincent said.

“Why are you staring at the mountains then?”

“I don’t know. They’re...nice?”

“Ah...they are that,” Clayde agreed.

Vincent stood in place while Clayde called his landrider over and removed some kindling from her sacks: a bundle of crudely split wood and twigs for tinder. He arranged the tinder in a teepee formation, then he withdrew two sealed jars. One was red, the other was black.

“What’s that stuff?” Vincent asked.

Clayde gave him an odd look, then he pointed to the black jar.

“Sai” he said, then he pointed to the white jar: “Kio. Sai and Kio. That is how we start our fires near the rift.”

He removed the lids from both, revealing a black putty in the black jar and a red putty in the white. It was the same stuff he’d seen Xalix use. Clayed used his bare hands to scoop out chunks of both “Sai” and “Kio” and roll them into separate strands.

“Sai and Kio,” Clayde said with a cadence to his words, “two insignificant lovers born worlds apart. But when they are together, they shine bright. A poem to help novices remember, so that even in the rains, they can start a fire.”

“A poem?” Vincent asked, “that's what that was?”

“Mmhmm.” Clayde grunted.

That doesn’t even rhyme, he thought.

Vincent watched as Clayde kneaded “Sai and Kio” together into a ball. After twisting it together several times, he thrust it between the twigs. A few moments later, it began to smolder, then it burst into flame.

“If you’re dealing with a compound that's capable of triggering a rapid exothermic reaction,” Vincent said, “shouldn't you wear gloves?”

“Eh?” Clayde grunted, “You speak in ravings. I do not understand a word you just said.”

“I'm just saying,” Vincent added, “you have that stuff on your hands. That has to be caustic.”

“Not enough to worry about,” Clayde shrugged, “only a slight warming.”

Vincent shrugged and watched Tuls and Ro'ken. The former had made an incision down the kelta's torso and Ro'ken was showing him how to flay the skin off its hide. The ground was pooled with the creature's blood. As Ro'ken peeled back the beast's scales, he revealed the green muscle underneath. Feeling rather nauseous, Vincent looked back at the fire. Smoke rose from the tinder as the first flames licked the twigs. Clayde used a stick to poke at the logs.

“Do you have any family?” Clayde looked up at him, his patchy mane making him look like a discarded stuffed animal.

“Yes.”

“Siblings?”

“Yes.”

“You don't talk much, do you?”

“No.”

Clayde shrugged. “Have a son myself. Does not like the hunt, never did. A wife too.”

Vincent cringed at the creature's effort to make small talk. But the questions caused his mind to wander. The fire, the smoke, they invoked memories, recollections from his past. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine seeing his cousins...his cousins...why couldn’t he remember them? His mind was reaching for a specific memory, one that involved camping, but all it could grab was a void. Though Vincent remained passive, inside, he was beginning to panic. Why couldn’t he remember? What was the fire reminding him of? It was like seeing the frame of a picture: something was supposed to be there, but the frame housed an empty slate. Something was wrong, profoundly wrong.

Tuls returned, wiping his bloodied hands on a rag. Clayde and he exchanged a few jibes and ripostes while Ro'ken prepared the kelta. As the fire steadily climbed into the air, the sky began to turn crimson with the setting sun. Shadows grew forth from the broken terrain like blood from a wound, coating the land until the last light was extinguished, leaving behind the purple gaze of the planet in the sky. The red one was nowhere to be seen. Ro'ken wrapped the kelta meat in large green leaves, which he had apparently stored just for this occasion. Clayde and him had a short argument about kelta preparation while Tuls stared at them with intense interest.

“Look at me, air jockey!” Clayde said, “I am as wide as my mouth is loud! I know how to cook.”

“No! You burnt the last one!” Ro'ken exclaimed, “this is my kill, I'm not going to let you turn it into ash! I learned this from a Selk chef. She folded it like so and placed it directly on the fire. Kept in all the juices.”

“A selk chef...” Clayde scoffed as he reached for the kelta meat. Ro'ken grabbed his spear and pointed it at him.

“I will gut you,” he said, “I am serious! I am sick of your shit! I will run this into your gut and watch the fat spill out!”

Clayde put his hands up and chuckled. Ro'ken laid the spear back down and continued to wrap his kill. Then he placed it at the edge of the fire and covered it in embers.

“So...stranger...are you a spy?” It took Vincent a few moments to realize Clayde was addressing him.

“A spy?” he repeated.

“There are talks of another war possibly breaking out with Jalhara,” Clayde grinned. “There may be no scars on your head, but you could still be a scarhead spy. Is that why we’re taking you to Meldohv Syredel?”

“Meldohv...Syredel?” Vincent repeated, “I've gathered it's a pretty important place. Is it your capital?”

“This act is growing tiresome,” Ro’ken said, “who are you really?”

Vincent stared at him. “I’m just an engineering student,” he muttered.

“Maybe it’s not an act?” Tuls proposed, looking at Vincent. “He nearly drowned in Lorix’s Eye. Perhaps that experience addled his brain?”

“Meldohv Syredel is mid-Admoran’s capitol,” Clayde explained, “but there are four of them. Meldohv, Rydic, Sinyu, and Jalhara. But Jalhara lies across the other side of the Skein.

Vincent massaged his temples and groaned with frustration. “Okay...what's a Syredel?”

All three of the creatures exchanged half-amused, half-confused looks, perhaps wondering how much of his delusion they should entertain.

It was Tuls who answered this time, “It used to refer to any major city in which channelers could gather in solidarity and have a safe haven. Now...it refers to any city that harbors large aggregations of lore and knowledge.”

“Channelers? I gather the glowing eyes sets us apart...but what is that supposed to mean?”

Tuls waited a few seconds before he answered, “Friend, I have to wonder if you are jesting, you’re bending our wings.”

“You better not be a damn fivendai,” Ro’ken muttered, “I swear if you are one of those...”

Vincent didn’t know what the creature’s problem was, nor did he know what a fivendai was.

“What is a damn channeler?” he insisted. He felt like he was slowly losing his mind. His memories were filled with voids. Every question felt like a trap, a snare meant to fill those voids with Falius’ ideas. But he couldn’t stop asking them.

“One who can wield Weaver-fire,” Clayde said, “or rather...one who has the potential to.”

“You are not joking?” Tuls looked at him with incredulity. “You don’t feel the gate?”

“Gate?” Vincent stared at Tuls.

“The gate,” Tuls said, “or a doorway. Some of us think of it as a valve or a key.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Neither do we,” Ro'ken scoffed, “every time a channeler has described 'the gate' or 'the doorway'...I knew one even called it an itch. It's like describing sound to somebody who is born deaf. Tuls here has a sense we do not.”

“You’re claiming you don’t sense the gate? That you can’t sense The Flow of Falius? Weaverfire?”

“Uh...I keep looking towards the mountains because something is bothering me,” Vincent said.

Steam began to spit from the folded leaf, its edges began to yellow. The fire illuminated the stone arch above them, flickering with its incandescence, painting the creature's winged shadows along the walls. Clayde, Tuls, and Ro'ken were all staring at him as if he were some sort of aberration.

“There...” Tuls broke the silence. “There should be no confusion. The gate is unmistakable...”

“Hey, don't get angry at me.”

“I am not angry,” Tuls said, “I am baffled. What you just said is absurd.”

“Right. So...‘Weaver-fire'. What is it?” Vincent moved his feet close to the flames, allowing the radiance to warm their arches.

Tuls scrutinized him, perhaps wondering Vincent was carrying out some sort of charade as Ro’ken suggested. “Creation and destruction,” he finally said, “the Flow of Falius is the raw power with which everything and anything can be created. It is the Weaver's fire.”

“The 'Weaver', is this your god?” Vincent's feet were slowly getting too warm for comfort, so he retreated a few inches. An aromatic smell began to make its way towards his nose, reminiscent of salmon with a hint of steak.

“The Weaver is the creator, yes...”

The way Vincent was being looked at was the same way one looked at a child that’s been asking a series of incredibly stupid questions. He had come to realize he had been asking too many of them. It was dangerous, with all the gaps in his memory that he discovered. He had no defense against this world, and he was becoming too curious about it and its lies.

Dragons didn’t exist, nobody had eyes that glowed, and what Tuls was describing was magic. There were only two types of people who believed in magic: children and idiots. Yet here he was, surrounded by shattered land, and enjoying a campfire under the light cast by a purple planet. He was accompanied by creatures whose existence had no place outside the pages of some novel.

Ro’ken peeled the steaming leaves from the meat, revealing browned flesh with a hint of green. The lithe creature reluctantly offered him a piece and he accepted, muttering a lame thanks and tore the kelta meat into small pieces. Clayde watched him with a look of amusement but to Vincent’s gratitude, he didn’t say anything. A light breeze blew the smoke column his way, giving him an excuse to push himself back away from the fire. His gaze wandered back toward Lorix’s Observatory. He could barely make out the cliff in the distance and wondered if Xalix and the brothers could see the campfire from their home. Then he looked back at his escort and began to weigh the possible ramifications of agreeing to go with them.

“–No, they wouldn’t go to war,” Clayde said, breaking Vincent out of his trance. “Jalhara wouldn’t risk it, neither would Meldohv. Neither of them have any reason to. Both have plenty of lyacite deposits to mine from, so there won’t be another clash over that.”

“My dorm-brothers used to say Thal’rin scares them too much for a war to break out,” Tuls said while unwrapping a loaf of bread. It must have been stored on his landrider’s side for it looked as though it had been squashed and beaten.

“Mmf.” Clayde tore off a piece of the kelta’s leg, bit down and twisted his snout until his teeth ripped a chunk from its bone. In a few quick snaps, it was gone. “Every leader in Admoran is afraid of Thal’rin. He wields a power that can devastate armies.”

“Thal’rin is his own army,” Ro’ken muttered, “the shandan should be glad they still have jobs.”

“Thal'rin is not immortal. You still need an army.”

“I–” Tuls was about to respond when Vincent cut him off.

“One of the first things you learn in physics...” he said, “and I mean the most basic physics, is that energy can’t be created from nothing, nor can it be destroyed.”

The three of them stopped to look at him.

“The heat from that fire comes from the energy being released via rapid oxidation,” he continued. “–which gives us the flames. The heat needed to trigger this came from the exothermic reaction produced by that resin. The same law applies to matter. It can’t be created or destroyed, it simply changes states. When the firewood is burned, all that’s left is mostly carbon. The rest of the wood is converted into volatile gases, in other words, ‘smoke’. It’s the same matter, just a different state.”

They stared at him with blank expressions on their pointed snouts as he listed off his rebuttal, fueled by the clear mind the Triasat provided.

“That...” He pointed to the column of smoke rising into the night. “That's our firewood, some of it...anyway, only it's now a gaseous form of carbon and oxygen, among other stuff. You can’t create something from nothing. It is physically impossible. All you can do is work with what you have to release stored energy or to convert matter from one state to another. But you can never create matter, nor can you ever create energy. This 'Weaver-fire', doesn’t exist.”

A few moments of silence followed in which both Clayde and Ro’ken exchanged quick glances. Vincent expected a rebuke and awaited it eagerly. He had only been with them a few hours and he had already insulted their culture without knowing anything about it. They’d already been sent to apprehend him and maybe this would give them more motive to treat him as a criminal. He didn’t care. Falius needed to be refused, it needed to be countered. Instead of showing any offense, however, Tuls simply gawked at him, then glanced at the others, his jaw dropped in half laugh, half shock.

“Vincent,” he said, “skepticism is understandable, but what you just said is wro–”

“–You’re right,” Vincent interrupted, "maybe seeing will make me a believer. You said you were a channeler, didn’t you? Do it. Wield 'Weaver-fire', show me how to create something out of nothing.”

Ro’ken scoffed and Clayde sucked air between his teeth.

“Aye...” the lion-like creature said with a nervous laughter to his voice, “you are not one for etiquette, are you? Most around here consider it rude to ask any channeler to contact the Flow of Falius, even as a jest. Most follow the Naikiran way.”

“Who said I was joking?” Vincent asked, meeting Tuls’ curious stare. “I want him to show me that all the great scientific minds, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Stephen Hawking, were all full of it. So...do it.”

“Isaac Newton?” Ro’ken repeated.

“I can’t,” Tuls said.

“Even if I could open the gate,” the coal-faced creature said, “I would destroy myself. Very few people have been able to channel since the Severance.”

“The Sev-...just, nevermind.” Vincent rubbed his temples, an action that felt strange with clawed fingers. “It sounds like magic. Granted, in our world dragons...oh, sorry, ‘Falians’ are often associated with magic, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. But if you’ve got nothing to show for it, then I’ll be forever a skeptic.”

“You're not alone,” Tuls said, poking the fire. “Many thought it was a myth until Thal’rin used Weaver-fire to save Meldohv from a giant wave. He is the one of the only people in living history to wield it.”

“Tomorrow,” Clayde interjected, “we cross one of the interstice threads. They were created by Weaver-fire during the Great Landweave.”

“The fuck is an ‘interstice thread’?” Vincent demanded.

Clayde simply gaped at him.

“Humor me, please.”

“I like Tuls’ suggestion that drowning damaged your brain,” the creature said, “it gave you some memory loss perhaps. So I’m going to pretend you don’t know anything about them. An interstice thread is one of the threads that holds the continent together! Or so the legend goes. Admoran is known as the ‘patchwork continent’.”

He grabbed a stick and began to draw a crude map in the dirt. “Look. This is where we are,” he said, poking the dirt. “This is Lorix’s Observatory, and these are The Fractured Meadows. Do you see this patch of land right here to Admoran's East? That was not originally part of our continent. It originated from one of Admoran's sisters. Collided right into us. That is why these meadows are so rent. Now, do you see these threads right here? They hold together the Goraiah Interstice.

“Again, why are they called threads?” Vincent asked.

Clayde looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Threads!” he exclaimed, “like the kind used in your clothing! Only instead of holding bits of cloth together, these hold pieces of land together, so that they don’t float off and cause more devastation.”

“Ugh...” Vincent felt as though he were about to have a migraine, he really needed to stop asking questions, “What do you mean 'float'?”

“You are daft!” Ro’ken said, “the continents float freely on the waters of Falius.”

Vincent closed his eyes and shook his head in disbelief.

“I wonder if anybody on Earth used to think that before we discovered geology,” he said, “if your planet is anything like mine, then your continents don’t ‘float’ on a body of water. Chances are your planet started out as a big ball of molten rock orbiting your star. The surface cooled and hardened to form land. Then over time, a series of complex chemical reactions formed clouds, the clouds rained water, which eventually filled the deepest pits in this crust to form oceans. Those bits of land that are still exposed, that never got covered? Those are your continents.”

“You just uttered a bunch of nonsense,” Clayde said, “the interstice threads are enormous, rigid threads that we use as bridges.”

“It wouldn’t work either way!” Vincent exclaimed, his mind was racing. “Let’s say your continents do ‘float’ on water. No ‘thread’ you build would be able to hold them together.”

But he saw they were completely lost. Vincent knew there was no way he would be able to explain the relationships between material strength, relative density and volume to these creatures and he silently laughed at himself for even trying. Floating continents? It was an idea that was beyond outrageous.

“Perhaps tomorrow your ‘unbelief’ will be challenged, friend,” Tuls said.

“Doubt it. Even if we do cross a ‘thread,” Vincent said, “it just means some idiot politician of yours who knew nothing about geology or science, decided to build a bunch of bridges.”

“Bridges do not have their own gravity,” Clayde said.

“What?”

“Each thread has its own gravity. It is impossible to fall off. No ‘idiot politician’ can build something like that.”

Bridges that had their own gravity? Vincent’s brain hurt. When they finished their meal, Clayde tossed the bones in the fire and withdrew several thick fur mats from his landrider. They resembled crude mattresses made by sewing leather to fleece and stuffing it with cotton. After slapping one on the ground several times, he handed it to Vincent. He laid it down near the support of the stone arch, where the wind would not blow at him and wadded up one end to use as a pillow.

As he closed his eyes he listened to the crackle of the fire, hoping it would serenade him to sleep. Instead, he remained awake and alert as he considered his situation. The unfiltered silence of his cured schizophrenia continued to deafen him. On Earth, he would have been overjoyed at this unprecedented lucidity but now, it seemed like a form of torture. He seemed all too aware of the beautiful land which surrounded him, bathed under the violet light of the celestial. He seemed all too aware of the occasional breeze brushing against his wings, of the tail twitching against the dirt. He looked at his hand, once olive, now blue, and placed it against a rock to test its solidity. If this were a dream, a normal dream, it would have phased through. It didn’t.

He tried to go to sleep, but the silence was loud, and the gaps in his memory were haunting him. The more his mind wandered, the more he stumbled across new voids. It was as if something had reached into his mind and scooped chunks of his life out. Bits of his identity were missing. What in the hell was going on? Had they been there from the moment he entered Falius? Did he only just now notice them because his mind was so much sharper and clearer?

These questions kept him awake, but the physical discomfort did as well. The ground asserted itself through the mat so that no matter what position he took, there was always something jabbing into his body. He was no longer human. Therefore, he could not be comfortable with the positions a human being normally took. Eventually, a whisper broke through the night, startling him. Tuls was looking at him curiously.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Can't sleep,” Vincent said.

“You sleep on your side. That can’t be comfortable on hard ground. Your neck is bent and your arm, pinched.” He quietly sat up so that he did not wake Ro'ken or Clayde. “Oy, look at Ro'ken. He lays on his back and has his neck supported as opposed to his head. Notice how his arms cross his chest and his wings folded in front in the same manner as his arms. If you prop your head, your horns will bend your neck, creating uncomfortable pains in the morning. If you prop your neck, the horns will not impede you. There will be disorientation, but it will lead you into sleep.”

“Right...thanks.”

Vincent lay back down on his back and tried Tuls' advice. He folded his wings and arms as though he meant to hug himself then made sure his neck was propped up. Then he looked towards the sky and closed his eyes. At first there was no apparent difference. The position felt unnatural. The tail propped up his lower back and the wings gripped him. He could feel his form through their membranes. But this discomfort slowly began to subside, and his thoughts began to lose their coherence. The idea of sleep slowly sank into the deepest recesses of his mind until he nodded off.