Anlov Record

Book 03, Chapter 16

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Admire these thriving children.

Makes one proud, time and again.

Alas, one has drawn ire.

Forsaken…

“Awaken”

Drim stirred from his sleep. The all too familiar darkness greeted him. With a dejected grunt, he climbed out of his narrow bunk. He was careful to not raise his head as the bunk afforded little head room. However, he was so used to the tight confines of the cramped ship that he could navigate it blindly and not scrape an elbow. 

After climbing down, he left his meager personal quarters and stepped down the large, empty hall towards the lavatory. Turning into the room, the cold tile tickled at his feet. He shuffled towards the toilet and braced himself against the wall beside it. Relieving a bladder that had reached critical mass, Drim sighed in relief.

After washing his hands, he put aside the scented bar of soap and collected water in his hands to splash against his face. Several handfuls were thrown before he shut the faucet off.

He took an expensively soft towel from the side of the sink and wiped his face. As he pulled it away, he saw his face in the mirror before him.

A single remaining drop of water fell into the sink, sending a pang echoing through the spacious bathroom. 

He heard the water stop filling in the toilet. His toes felt the cold tile. One of his hands felt the gentle fibers of a towel. The other gripped the porcelain sink. He could smell the scented soap resting in the dish next to the faucet.

He could see his own eyes.

Drim’s hands trembled, reaching up. Before him was his own eyes, peering from behind his bangs. The eyes too trembled, shocked at their own self recognition.

His hands groped at his face. It wasn’t scarred. His eyes hadn’t been sealed shut.

Everything was wrong.

This wasn’t even his ship’s lavatory, and it had no such hallway. It was all an insultingly sick dream. He had never seen his eyes in his own dreams. Whether it was just something his mind didn’t fill in, the universe adding to his sentence, or if this was the first time seeing a mirror in a dream, he couldn’t say.

Drim punched a corner of the mirror just hard enough to crack, intentionally cutting his knuckles. There was pain and no jettison to the waking world. A shockingly high amount of pain actually. He slapped himself with a barrage, but still nothing. Nothing aside from disproportionately higher pain. 

As he leaned in again to gawk at his eyes, he wondered if his reaction was appropriate. Perhaps it would be better to enjoy seeing his crippling reversed. Who knows when he would have such a dream again? As he was ready to admire his old beautiful self again, a shadow in the mirror instantly seized his attention.

This shadow drifted into a humanoid form. Ghastly teeth flickered in the void. Drim steeled himself, gripped the sides of the sink, and kept his gaze fixed on the Shade.

It spoke.

“Found you, vile wretch of darkness.”

In the dim light, it was pure blackness. Nothing could be discerned aside from metallic teeth. Its voice spoke with stern focus. No anger or glee. Likewise its teeth neither smiled nor snarled. 

“In the mire of sinfulness,”

Since the form was pure darkness, there were no points of reference to see it moving, aside from it just getting bigger. However, it wasn’t noiseless. Where its formless feet stepped, the ground itself buckled and cracked, accompanied by sickening crunches. 

Drim ripped the sink out of the wall. Launching it with all his might, he chased after it, ready to tackle the menace after the sink hit. Drim staggered upon what he saw. The form had caught the sink in its undefined hands. But only after the sink had instantly shrank to 1/20th its size. Drim continued his charge defiantly. 

“Low in perdition,” came the voice, resonating through the room.

As he ran into the form, Drim felt no resistance. Instead he felt himself falling. Or gliding. Sliding perhaps. All through an imperceptible nothingness. Suddenly he stopped. His feet stood on something solid, but he couldn’t see. 

Then a metallic surface formed beneath his feet. Then another panel formed next to it. And then another on the other side. Panels kept forming to the left and right. Another row of panels formed in front of Drim.

His curiosity peaked, Drim started to step across to the other panel. He took his foot back as the two rows of floors separated. 

Out erupted the voice.

“By Her volition,”

Drim crouched to stabilize himself on the panel. But this floor gave way as the rows separated too quickly. He fell into endless abyss.

“Now you are bound.”

Light pierced the darkness. Drim raised his hand to shield his eyes. In the back of his mind, he was preemptively angry if something were to happen to his eyes again. 

Before him, a giant tower, curling upwards like a claw, reached for a glowing moon. Its craters formed what resembled a wailing face. 

Then it was back.

Atop the finger, the form materialized.

“Yet still Redemption may bless you.”

It began to glide down the claw. The tower was truly in the shape of an exponential function. As was the speed of the form.

“Your glory could be born anew.”

Drim again steeled himself for an attack.

This preparation was met with chains erupting from the ground. They coiled around his limbs like tentacles, tearing into his flesh. Drim struggled at them, but found the chains instead burrowing into his skin.

He looked up to see the form rapidly approaching. He stopped his struggle as the form began to take more shape. Its arms and legs formed first, detail smokily drifting into place.

“Pain and blindness is needed.”

It now stood right before him. It’s face was still a dark abyss. But Drim could feel it’s piercing gaze. It’s stare seared his eyes just as intensely as when he had them burned out. An inferno that ripped his soul through his eye sockets; he would never forget the agony.

“In this murk, it is seeded.”

It had returned. The infinite nothingness that was his normal vision. Somehow, due to the impossibility of dreams, it was somehow even darker than nothingness. A soul chilling absence of all light down to its very suggestion.

“Great deeds, it does beget.”

Drim clenched his jaw and burned with his anger. He defied the icy dark inferno he plunged through. Nightmare or reality, Drim would always defy. 

Then he felt motionless, frozen in place. No feeling. No light. No direction. Nothing. True nothing. 

“So too is the void your domain.”

Light. Burning. Heat and pain. Drim felt his flesh erupt into a blaze. But he felt his own blaze within. He roared along with the flames ripping his skin off. 

“For your eyes have known fire’s disdain,”

And jerked back to the world of darkness, Drim felt a sharp pain in his head. His hands frantically drifted about. His sense of touch had returned and so too had he. He felt the top of the bunk where his head had just hit. He couldn’t help but feel glad for the injury. 

He lied back down. His harsh mattress was a comfort after that madness. 

But what madness? Already, as is the nature of dreams, it started drifting away. What was so vivid before was now a mishmash of mere words and concepts. He remembered only how agonizing it was, a feeling that lingered as he grumbled while climbing out of his bunk. 

As his feet hit the ground, he slipped and fell. And just as painfully, it all came back. Drim sat in silence and anger as his night of dread replayed in his mind. As he reached the end of the memory, a distant voice spoke, echoing from behind the veil of perception.

“But will they see the sun’s glow?”

And then… silence and nothingness again.