Snakes and Ladders

[Dorian]

((Continued from Scaling Heaven (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?p=105366#post105366)))

Their voices were whispers across water, whimsy and woe, wit and wracking. Dorian heard their wail, and he wanted to weep while whooping with wild wicked wan wisdom. They spoke with a breath beyond breath, an alliteration in whimpered words spoken in wiles, width without weight, a hiss of slurred speech draped across the skintight surface of a drum. He had no idea where it came from, but it seemed hospitable yet hostile, soothing and staggering, full of hope and horror and promise and peril.

He was floating on the boat where the others had left him. He had watched as Ashiakin and Aerran went through the portal, and for a moment had wanted to follow, but something held him back, this very sound that seemed aimed at him, directed towards his benefit and release. He tried desperately to remember why he was here: they had been chased through the cathedral, had landed in this odd room where the water seemed to exist only as a memory, they had set sail on it looking for something, then Aerran and Ashiakin were taken while he was left alone. He remembered these things, but his mind saw them only vaguely, like he was looking through a clouded glass at events in another man's mind.

Those voices! It was a song that seemed to touch at the corners of his memory and tickle the edges of all perception, and he had to go closer. And so he listened, falling backwards in the boat, never noticing that the corners of the portal were fading fast and he was moving, inexorable as an iceberg, towards a dim horizon. The night around him was growing cold, ever so cold, but he felt nothing except the caress of the sound on his ears, as if warm tendrils were wrapping him up and keeping him safe from the outside world.

Through this clouded vision, he noticed with befuddled curiosity that the horizon seemed to be coming closer. The thought fascinated him as he sat up and began paddling, pushing himself ever forward ever faster. The liquid seemed to roll between his fingers, so he clamped them together tight to create a seal; it was odd indeed, but he felt the cool wetness and grimy texture of a salt-rich ocean as his hands slipped under the water's surface, but when he pulled them out again they were dry, as dry as a bone left in the grave for a century.

He did not know why, but he wanted to reach that darkling line where the star-studded sky intersected the salt-sea. All his thought was bent on it; he knew it held secrets. The answer to life was beyond there, if he could only reach out at the edge and grasp his hands around a star; then he would hold wonder and lightning, he would know the painful bliss of enlightenment, could kindle hope and spirit in others with the fiery breath that would ignite his body. The star would burn him to a cinder and he would shine like the heavens, for a moment he would be gorgeous in death, a beacon for the world to know true light.

And then the surface stilled in front of him and he saw the reflection of the stars in the mirrored depths, like gems shining from deep within the ocean's watery bourne. He knew somewhere within him that he was bewitched, that he had to fight this siren-knell leading him somewhere he could not go, must not go. For one cataclysmic moment he fought his doom.

But the water shimmered once more and the jeweled depths vanished, and again he heard only that crooning that seemed to come from both miles away and from right next to his head. It was irresistible, and it came back now with a vengeance, as if it knew how close it had been to losing its prey.

He did not know it when he fell, when he reached that moment where the horizon-line was underneath him, where ocean vanished into sky. But as he fell, boat and water and air giving way beneath him, he reached out to try to touch the stars.

He realized one second too late how far away they were.

[Dorian]

He grew to like the falling. It was soothing, the way the air seemed to whip about him as if trying to catch him. It seemed to thicken, the air, seemed to grow in substance and weight as he tumbled downwards, as if the arms of the wind, once so weak and ethereal, were finally growing up and finding the strength to capture their prey.

And then he realized that it wasn't air he was falling through anymore, but some thin liquid like oil. It was the sort of thing one might pour on a salad. He thought, for a fleeting moment, about how he was still breathing, but then the thought was gone.

And then he was falling through water, moving slower, and then it was jelly, thick and fruity. Next syrup, and he thought he could smell the faint sweetness of sugar-sap wafting to him on some imagined current of air. And then he was in molasses, moving painfully slowly. His breath was catching up to him now, his defiance of reality as he fell through the oil and water earlier, and each breath was becoming a weariness.

Finally he was falling through what almost seemed like metal; something so solid and thick he could not see around him, only taste in his mouth an acrid smoke, like blood poured over copper. And at the last he could not breathe anymore, and he could barely perceive himself as falling anymore. Only a vague certainty in the pit of his stomach drove it home.

With a crash, he landed on a bed of leaves. His fell with as much force as if he'd fallen from a great height, and all the layers of thickness that had been breaking his fall had been for naught. His head flashed with lights upon lights wrapped in light, and through the bursts of color he saw a face looking down on him, and a voice speaking to him as he faded from consciousness.

"We've been waiting for you, Dr. Ionos."

[Dorian]

He was in a cocoon of light.

It swooped in dizzying spirals before his eyeballs, wrapped him in refractions and reflections. The light looped in infinite elliptical patterns; he was lost on its wavelength and in its patterns, which unfolded with a complexity far exceeding the most ornate kaleidoscope. He would follow one strand of effervescent shimmer, which would then collide with some invisible prism of the air and shatter into infinitesimal shades beyond spectrum. He had the oddest feeling like he was seeing colors he'd never dreamed before, colors he had no words for, as if some preternatural force had granted him the brief, fleeting ability to see beyond the normal rainbow and into the depths of true sight, where all colors collapse into one union of perfect dimension.

And then he felt it...something very close. A presence, and for some reason it filled him with fear and loathing, and something else: fury. The lights in front of his eyes were suddenly hot and fuming; had anything been there to burn it would have sent up smoke in great gouts, choking the very life from the world. It almost burned him, and he opened his mouth to utter a cry of pain.

And he screeched; the sound was worse than anything he'd ever heard, but he liked it nonetheless. It cut him bare to his bones, as if he was made of some titanium colossus that squealed against itself at every motion. And he knew he was moving, but towards what? Towards the presence, the evil thing that had entered his domain and tried to assume his prerogatives. He screeched again as the blessed pain flowed through him, the fire that roasted the pit of his stomach and singed the very hair from his head. The screech echoed like a chorus of iron violin bows scraping wildly across steel srings.

He knew not what he hunted; only that it was the hunted.