Locke's understanding of things like electricity is partial and confused. Any mistakes are deliberate.
Chapter 3: Evil Dreams
in the ink of an eye i saw you
bleed
through the thunder i could hear you scream
solid to the air i breathe
open-eyed and fast asleep
falling softly as the rain
no footsteps ringing in your ears
ragged down worn to the skin
warrior raging, have no fear
Secure Yourself, by the Indigo Girls
The small cave was decorated with bright, geometrically patterned rugs and tapestries, and illuminated by strange, fragile-looking glass globes which seemed to contain their own inner fire, fueled by no oil or candle that Locke could see. He wondered briefly if the lights were electric – if magic wasn't the only wonder the strange creatures had kept all these long years – but he knew enough about the recently rediscovered technology to realize that such things required cords and wires for the lightning to flow through – free-hanging electric globes were completely impossible. Magic it is, then, a thought that both troubled and reassured him. Locke had always held a fascination that bordered on obsession for the old stories and legends, but his experience with such things had always been across the distance of a flickering campfire, or a thousand years of dust and ruin. The idea that he himself might live to see legend made flesh seemed increasingly likely in these troubled times – if, he thought, with a glance at the girl who now lay sleeping on a soft mat, her silvery-green hair falling across her thin, pallid face in a tangled veil – if that hasn't happened already… The thought left him with a strange, disjointed feeling, as though nothing he was experiencing was truly real. The girl herself seemed half dream and half spirit, not truly tied to reality at all. The girl… she's real enough, and… I'm worried about her. It was almost funny, how quickly his attitude toward the Sorceress had changed. He could still remember hearing tales of the Imperial Witch, her power and her utter ruthlessness. He had believed those stories, when many people hadn't, and he could remember, distantly, the tense fear and cold hatred which that mention of the Sorceress evoked – in himself as well as in others. Old Arvis's slave crown had changed all that. Looking at that vicious thing, he had been forced to see her differently… as a puppet, a living weapon in the hands of cruel masters, with neither knowledge nor control of her acts. But even then, he had not truly seen her as human; but now, watching the girl sleep, seeing shadows of pain and terror ghost across her face and vanish as she twisted in the grip of some evil fever-dream… now, he was beginning to.
And he didn't like it. He didn't like the fact that he was coming to care for this sleeping child, partly because, in some dark, hidden place in his heart, he still saw the Imperial Sorceress when he looked at her face, and that old fear and hate was difficult to dispel completely. Partly because even as he recognized that she had been helpless to prevent her actions, he was still deeply, deeply frightened of what she might do with her powers now that she was free. But most of all, because she reminded him, lying there, pale as death and twice as silent, of another ghost he hadn't been able to save.
Her situation didn't seem logical, and though Locke had never placed quite so much faith in reason as his friend Edgar – that man seemed to believe that there was a perfectly rational explanation for everything, up to and including these espers that the Empire was so fascinated by – he was becoming more and more troubled by the girl's bizarre condition. She survived a fall that should have been lethal practically unscathed, and now… this. I'd guess a bad knock on the head, but that doesn't explain this fever of hers, or, for that matted, why she looks so gods-cursed frightened. One of the girl's hands was still wrapped around the pendant she wore around her neck, clutching it like a lifeline. Her fingers had not loosened, but they had slipped enough for Locke to see glints of a shimmering crimson stone which caught the warm light of the fire-globes and reflected it, seeming to glow with its own light. The girl's other hand was flung limply across a tasseled pillow, and Locke took it in his own gloved hand, holding it tightly. Its all right, you don't have to be afraid. He marveled again at how unnaturally warm her skin was, wondered if she was aware of anything outside of her own fear-laced dreams, and if so, whether or not his gesture had provided any comfort. He thought perhaps it did, because she closed her fingers around his hand, grasping it almost as tightly as she did the crimson pendant; he found himself thankful that he was wearing gloved, because if he hadn't been, her nails surely would have been drawing blood. Even so, her grip was painfully tight; those frail-looking fingers held an unexpected strength, and Locke suspected that if she clenched her hand much more the bones in his own would literally snap. Still, he didn't let go or try to pull away; he had a sudden, strange feeling that his touch and the odd necklace were the only two things she had to moor her to this world. She's not just sleeping, he thought suddenly, she's trapped. I can hold her here, but I can't show her the way back. Maybe the moogle healer that his guide had gone to fetch could, but Locke found himself doubting it. He thought she would have to find the way back from wherever she was by herself, and he wasn't at all sure that she could.
Meanwhile, Terra dreamed…
She was in a small room with walls of corroded metal, walls that seemed to press down around her where she sat, manacled hand and foot to a hard metal throne. She could feel the steel chill of it through her thin clothing, and the manacles cut into her skin, drawing thin trickles of blood, but she had long since stopped caring. Time was beginning to take on new meaning; she had given up counting seconds, because every second seemed to reach past the horizon of eternity, time stretched to the breaking point, each successive moment promising a future of pain. Her own breath seemed blasphemously loud in the silent, stagnant air, as though too loud a noise might rip right through the tenuous fabric of the moment and send her spiraling down into a haze of nightmare and delirium. She waited, white-knuckled hands clenched on the metal arms of her prison, listening for the sound that she knew would come.
Footsteps.
"I won't scream this time." She whispered to herself. "I won't scream."
She knew she would. She always did, eventually.
Footsteps, and then the click of a key in a lock, and the sound of a heavy metal door swinging open. And then he was there, draped in bright scarves and feathers, his sadistic doll's face painted in a carnival mask. He smelled of greasepaint and blood, and old, sour magic. She shrank back, shuddering convulsively, while her mind cursed her body's reflexive reaction. She hated to let him see her weak like this, helpless and at his mercy. She hated him. It made no difference, in the end, but hatred, like pain, was something to cling to. It forced her to remember that she was still alive, was still a person. That they could do what they wanted to her body, but they would never touch her mind.
He stepped toward her daintily, a twisted smile on his blood-red lips. She saw that he was holding something, some machine, a spiky crown-like thing that he cradled with vicious glee. Someday, she promised him silently, someday I'll repay all my pain tenfold. Someday it will be you screaming. He smiled as if reading her mind, his dark eyes twinkling with almost childish delight as he stood over her, staring down. He ran a slender finger down her face from temple to jaw line, tracing the contours of her skin, almost gently until the end, when he twisted and dug his nail into her, cutting deep. She didn't flinch, made no sound; she had been expecting it. She forced a mocking smile. Then he tilted her chin up, another disturbingly tender gesture, and stared into her eyes, sleek amusement playing about his emaciated features.
"My sweet little mageling," he whispered, hefting the metal crown and fitting it to her head, "with this slave crown I'll practically own you…" He trailed off in a high, lunatic giggle, flames of madness dancing behind the darkness of his smile.
No.
No, don't.
Please, no. Please, no.
Please don't.
She did scream, in the end, in the darkness of her own mind, as she felt her thoughts ripped away and scattered like ashes on the wind. She remembered that, and hated it; she had screamed and not stopped screaming until the cold clamped down like a vice, stilling her mad struggles for freedom. She had screamed.
No more.
Please.
This isn't happening.
It isn't.
Just let me wake.
This is a dream.
Please let me wake.