The next day, an odd group met at the Blind Well.
Madrid arrived, holding hands with Wren. Her face was composed, but a certain tightness around her mouth belied her nervousness. Elledia came, too, clutching a rifle like a security blanket.
Ruith arrived, carrying a small bottle of clear liquid, and followed by a crowd of Guardians. The Guardians laughed and talked, playing with their ghosts and weapons. They had come to try to give the Blind Well three weeks' worth of charge. If it succeeded, as Cayde had once said, there would be a ton of loot.
Jayesh and Uldren waited upstairs, near the portal. Uldren wore a helmet that obscured his face, and wrapped a cloak around himself to conceal his royal armor. It was the only thing he wore of Limerick's gift.
Madrid and the Corsairs entered the portal room, and terse introductions were made. Elledia and Wren both stared at Ruith as she explained about being Taken and restored.
The Guardians, downstairs, began pouring charge after charge of Light into the Blind Well. The air clouded with murk and enemies. Upstairs, the portal ring began to flicker with lightning.
"Phoenix," Jayesh thought. "Here we are. Will you stay or go?"
"I want ..." The ghost could barely speak from terror. "I want to stay."
"Stay here, then. Don't change your mind and follow me. You'll never find us. Promise me."
Phoenix appeared above his outstretched hand. "I ... I promise."
Jayesh tried to smile, but couldn't manage it. He gently pushed Phoenix away, sending him to hide at the top of a statue. His heart trembled at this separation - venturing into danger without his friend - but he couldn't make Phoenix suffer any more. Not after all he'd been through.
"Jayesh!" Ruith approached him, holding out the bottle. "The Guardians have already boosted the Well past fifty percent. The portal will open soon. Drink this."
He took the tincture of Queensfoil and pulled out the stopper. It smelled awful - a cross between cheap alcohol and day-old lawn trimmings. He poured it down his throat and tried not to gag at the overpowering green taste. It burned. Coughing a little, he handed the empty bottle back to Ruith.
She took the bottle and studied him as she set it aside. Her silver eyes seemed to glow even brighter. Jayesh looked around. Every Awoken in the room shimmered with Light, their eyes blazing. He looked for Phoenix and saw the ghost as a spark of bright fire. Uldren, too, burned a dull orange under his cloak.
"Being Ascendant is weird," Jayesh said. "I see Light and Darkness everywhere."
"It's working," Ruith said approvingly. "It should last for four hours. That should be enough time for us to traverse the pathways." She examined his face, leaning uncomfortably close. "Such Light you have, Guardian Jayesh. You must have been resurrected with the first Risen."
He forced a smile. If she thought he was seven hundred years old, he wouldn't correct her.
Downstairs, the Guardians added more Light to the Blind Well. The portal suddenly flashed to life, a swirling black hole appearing in its center.
"Go!" Ruith yelled. "It won't stay open long!"
There was no time for hesitation or doubt. Jayesh and the Corsairs hurled themselves through. A few seconds later, the portal flickered and died.
Phoenix shuddered. His connection to Jayesh had just been cut off. Instead of his Guardian's warm, living spark, he felt nothing but cold emptiness. He would never know if his Guardian lived or died - he was suddenly as alone as he had been the moment the Traveler created him.
Jayesh, Uldren, and the Corsairs landed on a stone platform in the Ascendant Realm. It had once been part of a balcony, complete with a railing and a small tree in a planter. But the tree was long dead, and the railing was broken and sagging. There was no sky, no horizon, only deep blackness. The darkness, itself, had tangible presence, like fog. It drifted across the balcony, sometimes obscuring it. The atmosphere was cold and very dry.
But Jayesh could see through the fog, a little. The balcony's stone seemed to glow faintly. This must be why he had needed the Queensfoil.
"We're really doing this?" Elledia said, aiming her rifle this way and that. "You think we can evade the curse like this?"
"It's better than dying over and over," Wren pointed out. "Last time, I was in agony for twenty-eight hours. Anything is better than that."
Ruith walked a little apart, her silver eyes shining as she peered about in the gloom. "This way," she said, stepping over the broken railing.
Jayesh expected her to plummet into infinity. Instead, a path of broken pavement appeared under her feet, glittering with crystal veins. He gestured for the Corsairs and Uldren to follow her, and brought up the rear, gripping his graviton lance and keeping watch.
"Was this Mara Sov's throne world?" Elledia asked.
"Yes," Ruith replied. "I prowled it often. A beautiful place it once was, but the Hive God Oryx has destroyed and befouled it. However, we are using it as a stepping stone to elsewhere. Stay close."
They followed the floating pavement, which had gaps in it. They leaped across these, not daring to look down.
Jayesh automatically reached for his Light to aid in these jumps. With a shock, he found no Light, no Phoenix, no Traveler. He'd never been utterly cut off before. All he had was the Light he had brought with him, enough for a single supercharge, or a couple of healing rifts.
"You all right?" Uldren muttered to him, as they waited their turn to jump a gap.
Jayesh nodded. "Fine, fine."
Uldren gestured to him. "Look at yourself."
Jayesh looked down. To his horror, his feet and legs were outlined in burning black and white, as if he'd been Taken. The rest of his body had faded into shadow. He gasped a little. "What's happened to me?"
"You're Ascendant," Uldren said with a laugh. "It'll wear off. Right now, you blend in with this place. Be glad."
He didn't mention that the Light that always flickered in Jayesh's eyes had become an alarming blue flame.
Jayesh tried not to look at himself as they journeyed onward. No ghost, no Light, and he appeared Taken. They hadn't even encountered enemies, yet, and already the nightmare was enfolding him.
They followed the broken pavement for a while. Then they came to a part of a temple suspended in the blackness. A ring of pillars surrounded a central space with a raised dais in the center. A great tree had once grown atop this dais, but it was dead, its branches reaching for the sunlight it would never see again.
"How did trees ever grow here?" Jayesh asked.
"A good portion of the Dreaming City is in the Ascendant Realm," Wren told him. "It drifts between realities. But it wasn't like it is now. Oryx destroyed the Light."
Ruith held up a hand for silence. The four of them stood still, watching her, as she slowly walked around the tree, counting the pillars. She pointed at a space to their left, beckoned to them, and slipped between the pillars.
Another path appeared, this one a mere scattering of boulders floating in the murk. They shifted and rolled as each person stepped on them. This led to a tense procession having to leap, balance and scramble for footing.
Somewhere in the middle of this, Jayesh began to sense that they were being watched. He had no attention to spare for anything except the next boulder, yet the hair on the back of his neck began to prickle. Traveler, grant me courage. I haven't the strength to face the beings out here.
Silence. No connection. Jayesh took a firm mental hold of himself and continued onward.
From the final boulder, they leaped onto a long stone pathway, once adorned with glowing orbs every few feet. But most of them were broken, only a few remaining to give a weak, flickering light.
"This way, hurry," Ruith whispered. "They're aware of us."
So they had all sensed it. Jayesh hurried along with the group, following the pathway, scanning the gloom about them. He saw nothing, but the thick, misty darkness could conceal monsters ten feet away.
Ruith increased their pace to a jog. What did she sense? Jayesh didn't want to know.
Nearby, Uldren flinched and pressed one hand to the side of his helmet.
Not daring to speak, Jayesh touched his arm and gave him a questioning look. Uldren shook him off and made an impatient gesture. I'm fine.
Uldren had a ghost who could block out infernal whispers. Jayesh had no such protection. But for the moment, the lurking powers weren't interested in him. Still, he missed Phoenix with a sharp pang. His friend, his little light, was gone, utterly severed. Jayesh was alone in a way he hadn't been since his resurrection. Alone and without Light. He tried not to think about it. He had to get through this, had to save the lives of Wren and Elledia. That was all that mattered.
The pathway reached an intersection. Ruith paused, studying each direction. They waited, peering about for attack.
Elledia pointed in silence. They all looked. Far away, but not far enough, stood a single Taken thrall. It perched upon some other piece of floating architecture, lit only by its own burning outlines. It stared at them, unmoving, an eye for a greater power.
Uldren raised his rifle and shot it. The report was strangely muffled in that place. The thrall vanished in a swirl of burning black.
"Now we've done it," Jayesh muttered.
"They already knew," Wren whispered. "We stand out like beacons. They taste our Light."
Ruith seemed to figure out where to go. She took the left hand turn. "This way. Quickly."
"How much farther?" Jayesh asked.
"Distance," Ruith replied. "Some. Maybe more, if they add to our route."
This told Jayesh nothing, yet everything. Distance was relative in this dimension. Some travel was required, yet even that varied, depending on the humor of the powers that occupied the space.
They seemed to walk for hours. There was no time in that place, no day or night. But Jayesh's legs grew tired, and hunger began to growl inside him. His biological clock said that they had been in the Ascendant Realm for hours upon hours. Yet onward they went, Ruith picking her way through the fragments of the Dreaming City with only a short pause now and then to remember her travels as Taken.
Uldren's hand grabbed Jayesh's shoulder. Jayesh looked around with a start. Uldren pointed.
High above them and to their left hung a glowing purple eye. Or was it an eye? It was ringed in teeth. Burning white tentacles radiated outward from it. A Taken Servitor - a chimera. There was no way to tell how close it was, but the slow rippling of the tentacles implied monstrous size.
Uldren gave Jayesh a terrified, questioning look. Was that the monster ...?
Jayesh nodded.
Neither of them said a word, only hurried after Ruith. The chimera didn't follow them, but it turned to watch as they passed. Jayesh hated to turn his back on it - it was too easy to imagine the stealthy touch of tentacles curling around him.
The pathway narrowed to a stone rail a foot wide. They walked single file along this rail, hardly daring to look up for fear of missing their footing. When the rail bent to the right, up ahead, one of the Corsairs suddenly swore. Jayesh and Uldren looked up.
Looming over the rail up ahead was an Ahamkara skeleton the size of a house. It was posed like a museum display, jaws open, claws uplifted, poised to attack anything that passed along the rail beneath it. Every bone was fresh and brown, not yet bleached by age. The teeth and tusks glittered ivory white.
A female voice emanated from the bones. "What scampering mice have entered my domain?"
Ruith stood frozen, mouth open, staring up at the skeleton. They clustered behind her, peering up at the remains of Riven.
The skeleton didn't move. "You have nothing to fear from me, little mice. I'm dead. Dead at the wish of six Guardians. I see Guardians among you. Silly little mice."
Ruith bolted along the rail, beneath the skeleton's claws. Nothing happened. The rest of them followed, passing beneath the shadow of the bones. They didn't stir, but its consciousness watched them.
Once they had left it behind, Jayesh glanced back. The skeleton had vanished. This unnerved him so badly, he nearly missed his footing. Uldren steadied him, and paused for a second, scanning the darkness for the skeleton. "Eyes up, Guardian," he whispered to Jayesh. "She's toying with us."
They ran along the rail for a few minutes. The skeleton suddenly loomed up out of the darkness again, this time in a roaring position, the head thrown back and jaws wide. But it didn't move.
"I see your plan," Riven said. "You're stealing lives from my curse. Clever. But did you not think of who you might encounter here, O sisters mine?"
They didn't answer her and hurried by the skeleton. As before, as soon as they passed it, it vanished.
Jayesh kept his thoughts carefully blank, his head down. If Riven noticed that he had no ghost and was vulnerable, she wouldn't hesitate to exploit him. Uldren seemed to be holding up well, but it was hard to tell with his helmet on. If Riven had recognized him, she gave no sign. Her attention was focused on the Corsairs. For some reason, she wanted them dead.
The skeleton reappeared ahead of them, the skull bent so close to the rail, they would have to duck to avoid the curving tusks.
"You are doomed," Riven whispered as they passed. "Lives I demand, and lives I will take."
The skeleton vanished and reappeared ahead, arched over the rail, so they had to pass beneath its ribcage.
"You feel no fear?" Riven crooned. "Oh, mighty Awoken? I feel your desire to live and escape me, little mice. But there is no escape. I push your exit further away each time. You will run forever. Until you die. Or ... until you wish."
Ruith halted and turned to their little group. "She's manipulating us," she whispered. "We should have arrived by now. This rail isn't that long."
"What do we do?" Wren whispered.
Ruith looked at the waiting skeleton. "I don't know. Guardians, could you distract her?"
"I will," said Uldren, before Jayesh could move. Uldren pulled off his helmet and faced the skeleton. "Hey Riven. Remember me?"
"Prince Uldren Sov," Riven said, her voice thick with glee. "Once, my dutiful puppet. Now a Guardian. This is delightful. I shall feast upon you. Come, what do you desire?"
Ruith led the Corsairs in a mad dash beneath the skeleton. Uldren and Jayesh followed. The skeleton didn't move, but that didn't mean it couldn't. As before, it disappeared and reappeared ahead of them, the head alongside the rail, the empty eye socket poised to examine them.
The Corsairs hurried by the skull, but Uldren stopped to face the eye socket. "I'm not beholden to you, monster. And neither is anyone else."
"They wished," Riven whispered. "They wished to see the end of the curse. I granted that wish by ensuring their deaths. Each death is the end of the curse as they know it."
"You sick bitch," Uldren snarled. He raised his rifle and fired into the eye socket. The bullets pinged inside the skull.
The skull whipped away into the darkness with horrifying, snake-like speed. Out in the void, something wailed.
"She didn't expect that," Jayesh said with a grim smile.
The rail was clear for a few minutes as they ran along it. It curved to the left, and Ruith sped up, beckoning. They were nearing their destination at last. In the distance, a point of blue light shone steadily through the darkness. An exit portal.
"What's this?" Riven whispered inside Jayesh's head. "This one has no ghost, yet is Ascendant. You take an awful risk, you know."
Jayesh didn't answer her. He kept his eyes on that portal, forcing his body to move faster.
"What do you desire?" she whispered. "Escape? Freedom? To gain the lives of your friends? I see you, Lightbearer. You have been granted far more Light than any Risen your age should possess. Does it not weary you to be such a favored slave?"
Jayesh tried to block out her voice, the way Phoenix did. "I had this conversation with Limerick. It's all lies."
"Who in existence would say that?" Riven purred. "The Traveler? It keeps you as a pet slave. Of course it would refute the knowledge of the Ahamkara."
The portal drew closer. The five of them were running, now, sprinting along the rail toward that gate back into reality.
"Still, you puzzle me," Riven mused. "Why does a Guardian give up its ghost? Such a foolish action. Could it be that you two disagreed?"
Jayesh didn't answer, tried not to think. She was probing his mind, picking through his thoughts like a raven sorting through sticks and leaves to find a shiny pebble.
"No, that is not it," Riven continued. "Was the ghost a coward? Ah, yes, I'm getting warmer. The ghost was afraid of the Ascendant Realm. And what's this? What love you have for him, Lightbearer. Love! Such a treasure. Devotion and desire coiled together like the springs in a clock. You really must stay and chat with me."
They reached the portal. But as the others leaped through, a hard, bony claw hooked Jayesh around the waist.
"No," Riven said, dragging him backward with inexorable strength. "You shall remain with me."
The day before, Phoenix had faced Limerick. "I wish that ..."