...is in another castle
Ward’s wandering path looped on itself infuriatingly, but he slowly made progress. It was maddening, trying to find the thread of direction in the thought-paths that bled through the atmosphere here. As long as he clutched the engraved message tube and kept the Cathedral of Illuminism at the forefront of his mind, he could almost taste the direction he needed to go, but the image of Nimragul and his payment kept interfering.
I could just take power from the Pale and use it to fuel my own magic. Who cares about the Pale anyway? I could craft an item to channel their essence, shield myself from overload, never have to expend my own power again! Near-limitless capacity!
The thoughts goaded him, chafed at him. Terrified him. The thing he presumed was his conscience told him to leave it alone. What if he failed? Worse, what if he succeeded? Besides, soul-carving sounded far more interesting. He fought himself as his feet made false starts and retraced paths until the temple appeared before him.‡
It was, frankly, boring. Unadorned, uninspiring, unremarkable. He stepped inside to find no one awaiting him. The air felt stale, un-lived-in. There was no dust underfoot, no indication that anyone was inside. Absolutely nothing on the walls held any spiritual or symbolic meaning for Ward. An empty book motif paraded across the center of the walls in a line, repeated ad nauseum into the next room and broken only by a wisp of mist in the shape of a woman sculpting braille into the stream that ran across her desk. She looked up and smiled.
“How can I help you?” she asked while her hands continued their motions.
Ward waved a greeting. “Um, hello. I’m here to see Prelate Wallace, if I can.”
The woman paused. “I’m sorry, who?”
“Prelate Wallace,” Ward repeated. “That’s the name I was told to ask for; I have an epistle for him?”
She shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry, there’s no one here by that name. Do they come to the meetings?”
What is going on? Ward thought. “There’s a quarterly meeting that I attend. It’s in Indigo, but I don’t think he comes to those.”
She pulled a thin book out from a drawer in front of her, flipping it open. “You said Prelate… is that a given name?”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s a title.”
“And this title is for what organization?”
“The Cathedral.”
“Which one? Any cathedral in particular?”
The question seemed utterly ridiculous, and yet she seemed sincere. “Illuminism?” he said incredulously. “This one? The one we’re in?”
She burst out laughing, the echoes reverberating through the room and Ward’s head. He couldn’t see the joke.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
She regained her composure and smiled again. “You’ve come to the right location, but wrong side of the sun; this is Nightside.” She waved a hand at the rest of the building. “This is a cathedral, I suppose, but this is the Church of the God Who Is Yet to Come.”
Ward nodded, feeling dreadfully confused.
“I’m sorry that I can’t make the introduction you wanted, but I’d be happy to show you around.” She got up and made her way over to him. “Have you been on nightside long?”
Ward sighed deeply. “One very long day. It feels like two. We’ve been traveling a bit, and this was supposed to be a stopover.”
She nodded encouragingly. “Where did you start from?”
“Indigo. We’re all from Satyrine, on our way to Nightside Green. I think I left the others back at the Dreamt Menagerie.”
“You’re on the right path for the quickest route to Nightside Green and back,” she assured him. “But you’ll have to be careful. The currents only travel one way—it’s difficult to go upstream.”
“My friend Rhea is taking care of that,” Ward said. “As for here, anything you’d like to show me, I’d like to see.”
She walked him through the building. The reception room doubled as the narthex, and it led quickly into a midsize nave with one aisle running down the middle. A small ambulatory with lit candles at regular intervals formed a semicircle behind a raised lectern, and each side had a gallery that overlooked the room. It felt cold despite the light, almost neglected. The woman, who introduced herself as Tierce, narrated the unfamiliar features of the room, including a large, blank-faced, androgynous statue placed before the lectern.
“Since god has never yet existed, we’re not sure how to represent them. This is a placeholder of sorts,” Tierce explained. “I don’t know your order’s tenets, I’m afraid, but here at the Church of the God Who Is Yet to Come we believe in an all-encompassing being. Omnipresent, omniscient, all-loving…” She paused. “Mostly just omni, if we’re going to be succinct. One who creates heaven and earth, judges the evil and unworthy, creates a hell, all the typical aspects of divinity.”
Ward tried to do the math. “Wait, you worship a god who doesn’t exist yet and hasn’t done any of these things, and you don’t know what they are?”
Tierce’s face took on a reverential glow. “Not yet. But when they appear, they will always have been. And in the meantime, we keep the candles glowing.”
“Do you know when they will be? Is there a timeline?”
“Well, it’s all a bit complicated,” Tierce confessed. “Our leaders are renowned for their studies in hyperchaos, and all they’ve been able to confirm is that the date and time are impossible to ascertain. But in the meantime, we have faith that the meaning of life will ultimately be secured. We have a prayer I can lead you in, if you like.”
“Is it binding?” Ward asked concernedly.
“Semi-exclusive,” she corrected. “It doesn’t nullify all commitments, but some can’t coexist.”
“I think I’ll pass, then.”
They continued on, Tierce waxing poetic in her proselytization, Ward nodding along. When the tour finished, she brought him back to the desk and pulled out a wide circular platter with several orbs decorating it and handed it to Ward.
“Take this clockless clock as a memento of your visit here,” she told him. “It can be a lens to focus your will as you prepare yourself for the arrival of the God Who Is Yet to Come. It may never be, but when it is it will always have been.”
Ward thanked her and left. He fidgeted with it a little, then decided he’d pull it apart and reassemble it later. He held it with his undelivered missive and, disappointed, set out once more for the Dreamt Menagerie.
By the time Ward returned, Rhea had left.
“She wandered off with an old friend of hers,” Winstead told him. “Maybe we should go find them?”
“We’re not getting to Nightside Green without her,” Ward replied.
Winstead led Ward toward the rendezvous point, but navigation in this sun was tricky a best. A half-hour walk brought them instead to a massive, winged metal vehicle, the back half of it visibly turning to dust and drifting away.
“Is that a, a . . .” Ward snapped his fingers, trying to find the word.
“Airplane?” Winstead supplied. “Looks like a seven forty-seven.”
“Yeah, that’s it!”
Ward squinted at the plane. There was something off about the whole thing. He stood still for a solid minute, watching the stream of particulates drifting away from its edges in a steady but irregular spiral.‽ He pointed it out to Winstead. “It’s disintegrating over and over again. It’s like a time loop.”
“It’s not affecting them.” Winstead pointed to the two short lines of people going in and out of the plane.
Ward’s expression grew intrigued. He looked at Winstead. “You in?”
“I’m game.”
Ward approached the woman at the back of the line. “Pardon me, but what is this place?”
“Do you ever wonder what happens to the endings of your dreams?” the woman answered, pleased by the attention. “The good, the bad, the horrible, the ecstatic? You always wake before they finish, and you never see them. Here”—she pointed to the plane—“is where they go. Every single dream’s ending is in the disintegrating fuselage. I’m still trying to find one of mine; I’m sure it’ll come up if I go in often enough.”
“Is it always a different dream ending?” Ward asked.
“It’s always been for me.”
“I’m not looking for any particular dream,” said a panther on its hind legs in an overcoat in front of her. “There’s just a certain flavor of ending that I’m looking for.” It licked its lips. “You won’t know what you get until you’re given it.”
“Where do you get tickets?” Ward asked, scanning for a booth.
“Oh, no, dearie, there’s no tickets. It’s open to the public.”‡
“If everyone went in at once, wouldn’t they all experience the same dream ending?” Winstead objected.
The woman shrugged. “I’ve always had distinct experiences, darling.”
Fifteen minutes later, the aircraft door opened and a group of people filed out. Ward and Winstead boarded and followed the others to the rear, where they settled into the economy seats that remained intact.
It came upon him with no warning. One moment Ward was staring at the unlit Fasten Seat Belt light above his chair, the next he saw a disorienting time-lapse collage of familiar hospital rooms, patients, and his own hands performing medical procedures. Except they weren’t his hands. The dreamer was tired, exhausted, straining to maintain focus on the next person through the door. People went in and out of the room so fast it couldn’t be real, and yet he saw each one distinctly as though looking into their eyes. People demanded of him, screamed at him, pleaded with him. A whole day of care and attention to the sick flashed before him, stress and anxiety building and building with no outlet, no release. It grew unbearable, the images flashing faster and faster, the hour hand on the clock turning quicker, and suddenly it stopped and he knew he lay on a hospital bed himself, staring at the white fluorescence above him. All was still.
As time slowed to a crawl, the whiteness of the light grew more and more intense, filling the room and constricting his pupils to pinpricks. Then it broke off from the fixture and moved away, taking up a place at the foot of the bed. Ward watched it slowly form into an essence, a familiar face from a former life.
It looked right at him. “Thomas?” it asked.*
Ward recognized Remy, his old colleague … who knew me as Thomas. Ward had all but forgotten the name he had gone by while in Shadow. Remy had taken Thomas’s disappearance hard and had been confused and frustrated by his temporary return. Ward’s heart broke for him.
“Yes,” Ward replied. “It’s me.”
“Thomas, I can’t get out.” Remy’s soul paced back and forth. “I tried to get to the Pale, but I got lost. Can you help me?”
Ward swallowed. “I can try,” he said gently. “Reach out to me.”
As Remy leaned forward, Ward closed his eyes and opened himself up.‡He willed himself to make space for his guest, and he felt Remy’s presence slide into him. A gratefulness warmed his own soul as the dream faded and the seats of the airplane came back into view.
He was the last to leave the plane. Winstead approached as he exited the craft. “Took you a while, Ward. You all right?”
Ward nodded. “That was… intense. I found an old friend. How about you?”
Winstead rubbed her temples as though they ached. “Not great,” she said. “I caught the landing at the end of someone else’s fall.”¶
‡ Silver Sun, Lucky Coin
‽ Teratology, pg. 50
‡ Green Sun, Hunter
* New NPC: Incriminating Skull (reconnects with an old friend); Assassin (friend is dead)
‡ Mysterious Rune, Angel drawn as rolls (9 & 7; wordless communication, assistance)
¶ Ward gains +1 joy, +1 acumen.