Chapter Fifty-Eight: Soul Doctor
Cass Galavis could not stop staring at her friend.
Was he even her friend? It had been nearly a week, and Cass still was not sure.
He was sleeping at the moment, curled up within the fork between two tree branches, the glow of his body waxing and waning with his breaths. He had Adam's face, he had Adam's voice, he had Adam's memories…he sounded like Adam, spoke like him, shared his facial features… Cass tried to see past the feathers and wings, past the energy-based sprite body; she really tried, but…
Deep down, Cass knew she'd be lying to herself if she tried to believe that the creature who'd saved her life was Adam. He had not spoken very much to her, but Cass could tell that he was definitely not Adam Tarrant. Sure, Adam could sometimes lean slightly towards the depressed end of the emotional spectrum, but his higher qualities had always outshone that aspect of himself. Cass had always been drawn to the vitality, levelheadedness, and humor that seemed to radiate from him. When he was happy, he could light up a room. Adam did this without even being aware of it, and this was part of why Cass was drawn to him.
But with Adamsprite… There was no radiance. Instead, there was a gray mist—a sadness, a deep bitterness within the sprite that Adam had never possessed. And it seemed to penetrate to the sprite's very essence. For the first couple days, the spritified version of the boy Cass liked had barely spoken two words to her. As they made their way through the underling-infested jungle, Adamsprite fought alongside Cass every time they encountered a swarm of monsters. But in the quiet stretches…he kept to himself, silent, angry. He would not answer her when she spoke to him, would not look her in the eye. And during the nights, when he thought Cass was sleeping, she could hear him weeping quietly to himself.
And the worst part about it was his throat. Adamsprite's throat had been slit. The actual wound seemed to be benign—there was no blood, Adamsprite could breathe perfectly normally, did not even seem to notice…but his throat was slit. The gruesome wound, luckily, was not a wide open one, but still… Cass could see some of the tissues and insides within the sprite's throat if she looked too closely. She'd never had the courage to ask him about it, how he had gotten it. But she knew that if her curiosity held at its current level, it would not be much longer until she had to broach the subject in some way.
Maybe it would not be such a humongous deal in a few days. Cass could see Adamsprite calming down. He wasn't exactly getting better, but he was calming down. Maybe in a few days, Cass would be able to question him without fear of another episode. Maybe it wouldn't even take that long. After all, Adamsprite had been enduring the jungle and underling swarms together with Cass for nearly a week—it is impossible for two people to survive an underling-infested jungle for that long without developing some sense of trust between them, however slight. The past five days had been difficult for both of them, and yesterday had been no exception.
The day before had been the hardest. After evading no less than six separate swarms of imps and ogres—not counting the additional two flocks of winged basilisks that swooped down on them from above—Adamsprite and Cass had limped their way through the jungle until Skaia set below the western horizon, ushering in twilight and heralding the approach of nightfall. Knowing that it would be suicide to attempt to continue through the jungle at night, Cass and Adamsprite had been forced to seek shelter.
That shelter had come in the form of one of the colossal banyan trees that grew all throughout the jungle. These trees were truly humongous—their trunks at their thickest could have fit seven or eight grown men lying, head-to-toe, in a straight line.
he massive tree trunk then split into seven or so main boughs; these boughs continued to grow, though in a much more roundabout way—they spread outwards before continuing their upward climb towards the light that gave them sustenance, twisting about in seemingly-random directions, sometimes weaving around each other, providing the structural support for the Giant Banyan's 'thicket' of branches.
From those boughs, hundreds more secondary branches sprouted, each of those branches having their own smaller limbs that bore the tree's massive canopy of emerald green, golden yellow, and amethyst violet leaves.
The giant banyan tree towered over all the surrounding trees—from its very top, other Giant Banyans could be spotted in the near distance. Upon locating this particular tree, Adamsprite chose it as a resting place for him and Cass to take shelter in before nightfall.
Cass was already asleep by the time they reached this particular Giant Banyan, exhausted from all the running and fighting, carried up into its boughs by an equally-exhausted Adamsprite. The sprite had seemed to have an unlimited amount of strength, but this was not true. Thanks to the vitality provided by the strength of his eagle half, the powers of a Knight of the Force Aspect, and the energy of his sprite body, Adamsprite was able to endure much more than a human being should have ever been able to…but he, too, had his limits.
The vibrant crimson light of Adamsprite's energy-based body had dimmed to a faint glow by the time he brought Cass up into the Giant Banyan, but now… Now the sprite's aura shined with a brighter glow. The once-erratic pulsing of Adamsprite's aura had also mostly stabilized, along with his breathing, save for the semi-frequent irregularity in the rhythm. This was a rest he had desperately needed. He could only hope that he'd feel better after he rested, and so he curled up and went to sleep immediately after setting Cass down and ensuring she would not somehow roll off the large bough.
And that was where he still lay.
Cass awoke before dawn, fully rested and ready to face today's challenges. She took a moment to get her bearings, understand and remember what had transpired the night before, connecting the dots in her mind. She decided to rest against the tree trunk and settle in, waiting for Adamsprite to wake up.
Adamsprite's sanity was unstable at first, and Cass feared he'd either leave or explode if she pressed him for answers too soon. Much as she wanted to understand what Adamsprite's deal was, Cass did not want such knowledge to come at the price of driving the troubled sprite-boy away.
As messed up as he was in the noggin, Adamsprite was a deadly-capable fighter, and Cass knew that she would not stand a chance against all the underling swarms by herself, not without her own sprite there to help her. Ever since the unfortunately sudden, fiery demise of Cass's infant-like dragonsprite, she needed Adamsprite more than she wanted to admit.
Even so, after nearly a week of running away from underling swarms in this jungle, the sprite boy's lack of communication was beginning to wear at Cass's patience. She simply needed someone to talk to.
Consequently, while she waited for the sprite boy to wake up, Cass decided she would attempt once again to break the ice after several days of relative silence. Adamsprite seemed less volatile than before, and there had not been an underling swarm in many hours. She did not know when she would get another chance as good as this.
Skaia slowly peeked its head over the eastern horizon.
There were no clouds in the sky, which was a rarity on the aptly named Land of Thunder and Dwarves. The daytime sky, when visible, was a rich golden-yellow. During Skaiaset, before nightfall, the sky would be shot through with beams of brilliant amber and scarlet.
But now, as Skaia rose in the east and ushered in morning, the sky was filled with softer colors. Violet and lavender, rose and pink, with traces of deep red and maroon. The breathtaking radiance was caught by the hundreds of floating isles and mountains that drifted through the skies, their rocky foundations glittering in the morning light.
Birdsong began to fill the jungle.
Adamsprite's aura pulsed once with a bright pink haze as his eyes snapped open, quickly resolving into its usual crimson hue. The sprite boy sat upright, his wings briefly stretching out to their full span, easing out the aches and kinks.
It was the birdsong, Cass hypothesized, that roused Adamsprite. She wondered if, being half eagle, the sprite boy could make any kind of sense out of the other birds' musical calls.
Adamsprite noticed Cass looking at him and promptly folded his wings back up, casting his gaze downward. But this time, Cass was not going to let him sink back into his misery. This time, she acted.
"Why won't you ever look at me?" Cass asked the sprite, keeping her tone inquisitive and gentle, not confrontational.
Adamsprite surprised Cass by glowering at her and actually giving a verbal response, if not the kind of one she was hoping for. "Don't talk to me."
"No, Adam." Cass shook her head, still calling the creature by her friend's name, in spite of herself. She could never bring herself to call him 'Adamsprite'; that name just sounded unnatural and undesirable in her mouth. She'd only called the sprite boy 'Adamsprite' once, and after noticing how deeply affected he'd been by it, Cass had never done so again. "You've spent the whole week giving me the cold shoulder, and I'm driving myself crazy trying to find out why. Why won't you look at me? Have I done something to you?"
"Yes," Adamsprite snapped, almost making Cass jump. She could never tell when the sprite boy was about to cry, screech, or shout because his mood shifts happened usually without warning. The sprite then settled back down into his resting spot, leaning back against one of the smaller tree limbs. When he spoke again, his tone had softened a bit, dropping the hostile sharpness in his voice...but he still would not meet Cass's gaze. "Well… No. No, forget it."
"No, Adam." It was Cass's turn to raise her voice. It was the first time she'd done this, and it caused Adamsprite to wince slightly. Already swearing at and kicking himself for yelling, Cass quickly tried to salvage the conversation by changing tack. "Look… Look, I'm sorry for yelling, it's just I've… I've got my life at stake, here, and I'm scared, okay? I need you, Adam; I won't last a minute out here by myself. I've never asked you about what happened to you because I was afraid you were going to leave me alone out here if I pried…but I can't do this, anymore. I need to know—what did I do to you?"
"It's nothing you've done…" Adamsprite murmured in reply, blinking several times as the partially-repressed, forgotten, ignored memories came back to him. "It's what you'regonna do. It hasn't happened yet. I don't want to talk about it."
"Was…was I the one who…?" Cass gestured at the wound in Adamsprite's throat, running a finger across her neck to get her point across. Even if she could not get another word from the sprite, Cass wanted to at least know that she had not been the one who slit his throat. She could not imagine herself doing such a thing, but she still needed to be sure.
Adamsprite got her meaning, shook his head. "No, you didn't kill me—that was someone else… What you did was worse."
That had given Cass some measure of relief…only for it to be ripped away a moment later. She had not asked the obvious questions, yet—who was Adamsprite really, how did he die, how did he end up prototyped with a sprite? She had not asked them because she knew they would likely push Adamsprite back over the edge…but she still did not have the answer to the biggest question: what had she done to him? She knew she would not be able to get that answer straightaway—she had to build up to it, like dipping her toes into a pool before easing herself in.
"If what I did to you was so horrible…" Cass went on, choosing her words as carefully as carefully as Jesus had chosen his disciples. "Why…why did you save my life, then? Why didn't you just let me die, back on my rooftop?"
"Because I wasn't trying to save you, Cass." Adamsprite finally looked up, finally met Cass's eyes. Though the sprite's body was composed entirely of red energy, his eyes still looked like they were real. And Cass could not fathom the depth of the pain she saw in them. And there was something else she could sense in them, as well... Was it guilt? "I was trying to kill you."
Cass blinked once, his brow creasing in a frown. Shaking her head slowly, she said, "What? No, you… You took that fireball for me, fought off all those wyrms, you…you helped me through my first gate! I'd be dead if it weren't for you!"
Adamsprite shook his head, fighting the urge to avert his gaze, his efforts to maintain eye contact with Cass clearly visible. "No, I was trying to kill you. That fireball I saved you from? I didn't see it coming. It hit me before I could attack you. Snapped me out of it, I guess…kinda like a splash of water to the face...wish it hadn't taken a fireball to make me come back to my senses..."
"But…but why, Adam?"
"Because, thanks to you, I wasn't exactly sane at the time," the sprite muttered in reply. He snapped his talon-like fingers, conjured a tiny mote of flame, twirled it around his thumb and forefinger. Cass noticed this—it was a habit the sprite boy got into whenever he was uncomfortable. His own way of biting his fingernails, Cass figured. "And you really should stop calling me that. It's not… It's not my name, anymore. Never was."
That made Cass's frown deepen even more as her confusion increased. "Don't think like that. Just because you self-prototyped doesn't mean you aren't still Adam-"
"Shut up!" Adamsprite snarled as another surge of fury burst through the floodgates, the aura of his ethereal body flaring with an angry scarlet blaze. There were flames, too; a blast of almost blistering heat that nearly gave Cass first-degree burns.
The sprite was taken aback by the searing rage that had torn through him so suddenly, hadn't meant to shout, couldn't even remember why he'd raised his voice. He saw Cass jump, startled by his loss of control, frightened by him…then the rage came to a standstill, dissipated, and the all-too-familiar sadness came back, his sprite body's burst of fiery red energy subsiding back into the calm, stable rhythm that pulsed faintly in tandem with his heartbeat.
Cass immediately regained her composure, but Adamsprite had already seen her jump. He had the vision of an eagle, now—there was little that got past him undetected.
"It's not my name…" Adamsprite repeated himself, his voice now quiet and subdued. It almost sounded like he was trying to convince himself of the fact, rather than inform Cass of it. "I'm not… I'm not him. I was just his dream self. You made that perfectly clear to me..."
That got another blink from Cass. She was fairly sure the sprite boy hadn't even meant to utter that last statement; Adamsprite already looked like he regretted saying it. But it was too late—Cass had heard it, and now she was beginning to get an idea of where to take the questions next. A few puzzle pieces were sliding into place, but the puzzle itself was painfully incomplete. There were many large pieces that were still hidden from her...
"Dream self or no, you're still you," Cass countered. As she spoke, Cass rose from her resting place against the secondary tree limb, took a step towards Adamsprite, steadying herself by grabbing hold of some greenish-yellow vines. "It doesn't matter if you're a dream self or not," Cass explained. "A person is the sum of his experiences, right? You have Adam's memories, and from those you also have his experiences. You are him. Telling you that you're not...well... I mean, that just sounds so cruel! How can you think I'd be that cruel to you?"
"Because you've already done it—it's already happened," Adamsprite reiterated. Then, remembering that he was currently 'living' over a month in the past, relative to his own temporal path through paradox space, the sprite tried to clarify, to alleviate Cass's confusion. But he was trying to talk about some very sensitive issues, and he had to focus to keep his turbulent emotions at bay. "Look, after I…um…died… After I died on Prospit, my…my consciousness ended up in one of those dream bubbles, out in the Furthest Ring. That's where we go if we flatline, and we get to relive all our memories, thinking we're actually living those memories...until we become lucid, at least... But my dream self's physical body…my body, rather…" Adamsprite swallowed painfully as he corrected himself. His emotions threatened to destabilize him once more, and the sprite looked away. Better to stop digging, before the tense, fragile balance in his mind was thrown back into disarray. "Forget it…"
"Your body, Adam?" Cass prompted the sprite, taking another step towards him, gently coaxing the truth out of the creature. "It's okay, you can tell me… What about your body?"
Adamsprite did not look like he wanted to continue, but something about Cass's voice… Like the whispers of the Phantom who haunted him in the dream bubble, Cass's voice seemed to fill his mind, encouraging him to speak, reassuring him again and again that everything was going to be alright. A painful lump rose in the sprite's throat as he went on with his story, against his better judgment.
"My body… Someone, probably Anna, sent my body back in time and dumped it in my house. Remember that pic I messaged you? After that I tried to take my body outside and bury it, but some shit happened, my body collided with my sprite, and… Well. I woke up with feathers and talons and a complete loss of identity. Get the picture? You, at this point in time, haven't hurt me yet, but you will."
"No. I won't."
"When the time comes, Cass, you won't have a choice. Skaia doesn't give half a blue fuck about what you want. This game is not about getting what you want. It's about making choices—crappy, blowtastic, catch-22 choices that, sooner or later, whether you want to or not, you'll have to make. There's no avoiding it. There's no getting around it. That's a lesson everyone's gonna learn eventually—you especially."
"I… I don't understand…" Cass spoke quietly, now, deeply disturbed by what Adamsprite was now saying, by the ugly memory that he'd brought back to the surface. The pic of Adam's dead dream self bleeding all over the floor was forever burned into her memory.
"Cass, just… Just let it go." Adamsprite tried to deter his companion from prying any further. "Please, just this once…"
"Tell me, Adam. Tell me what I did to you." Cass did not relent—she could already feel herself beginning to penetrate the creature's weakened mental 'shield', could sense Adamsprite faltering. She was close, now. Very close... "You're torturing yourself, keeping everything locked up inside! You're the one who needs to let go."
"I can't let it go! I've tried-"
"Everything will be okay. Do you trust me?"
"Stop." Adamsprite protested even as Cass continued to speak over him, pressing him.
When his consciousness nearly drowned in the psychological upheaval caused by the sudden forced resurrection, threatened with obliteration by the twisting, deep-rooted grip of psychosis, Adamsprite only barely managed to keep the memories of his timeless existence in the dream bubble from tearing him apart. Repressing those experiences felt like his only way to retain his last few shreds of sanity.
Now Cass wanted to dig it all back up. Was she out of her mind? Didn't she know the frail balance of Adamsprite's shattered psyche was dependent upon those memories staying in the shadows? She had to stop, he had to make her stop, before...
Already, Adamsprite was beginning to think of them. Names slowly flowed back into his mind. Names of neighbors, names of classmates and teachers, names of people he hadn't even known he remembered. Whenever a name came back to him, a face would immediately follow.
Adamsprite's heart pounded with alarm as he tried to stop thinking about his past. Unfortunately, it was too late—once jogged, there was no holding those memories back. He would have better luck trying to stop a tsunami.
"What happened to you, Adam?" Cass pressed.
"Stop." Adamsprite's tone grew forceful, angrier. Even as he tried to shut Cass out, her voice…it continued to fill his mind, subtly, giving him a sense of…of safety, of gentle encouragement. It was utterly terrifying. More names, more faces flowed in. "Stop!" he shouted, his wing feathers beginning to twitch as the eagle portion of the his shared consciousness retreated to the furthest corners of his mind. "Why are you doing this? Stop it! I'll lose control again!"
Cass was getting through to him, now; she could feel it… She couldn't give him the chance to take a breath, had to keep pushing. Sweat now beaded all across Cass's forehead, beginning to drip down the sides of her face. She could not stop now even if she wanted to. "Why did you try to kill me?"
"Cass, please!" Adamsprite's voice started to falter, tears of luminous white sprite energy now welling up in his eyes, making them seem like they were shining with a light of their own, his heartbeat growing faster… He was still yelling, but the anger was now gone, stripped away, laying bare the raw fear underneath. "Please," he begged, "I don't…I don't want to remember! Don't make me remember! If I lose control again, I don't know if I'll be able to pull myself back together-"
"Why did you go insane?" Cass took one last step forward, crouched down in front of her companion, refusing to back down. "What happened to you, Adam?"
The sprite bared his teeth and let out an earsplitting screech.
All the nearby birds took flight, streaming out of the treetops in droves.
Cass winced at the harshness of the scream. Her ears were ringing. The screech had not sounded even remotely human—Adamsprite's most blatant eagle-isms always poked through when he was angry or under extreme stress.
"STOP FUCKING CALLING ME ADAM!" the sprite raged, his high-temperature, fast-burning fury lasting only a moment or two before dissolving back into nothingness, extinguished by luminous white energy-tears as he started to cry.
Cass was silent, her momentum of questions dissipated.
"A dream bubble is made up of the memories and experiences of the consciousness inhabiting it…and mine was no different," Adamsprite explained to Cass, tears streaming down his face.
The words came freely, now, without any fear to block them. He suppressed his crying enough so that he was able to talk without having his chest heaving, but the tears of luminescent white energy still flowed.
"In the future," he continued, "you'll end up out in the Furthest Ring. You will hunt down my dream bubble, and you will…alter it. You will make me relive all my memories from the wrong perspective. You will reverse my entire life. You really want to know what I remember from my time in the dream bubble? Fine. My Sis raised me since I was born, and we lived in a house in Chester Springs. We both went to Downingtown East, but you didn't end up there until the end of freshman year. I met you in the beginning of sophomore year, at that party Gino had in his old house. Remember? The one I got really smashed at? You have to remember. If you managed to forget getting knocked flat on your ass by my wasted sophomore year self, then the Pope is Chinese."
Cass remained silent as Adamsprite allowed the memories to fly free.
Adamsprite's eyes glimmered as he recalled in vibrant detail the best parts of his life. Despite the earlier promise he made to himself in the rainclouds of LORAR, he no longer tried to stop the tears from flowing. He wept as he spoke fondly of his and Cass's conversations, old jokes they'd had with one another…details Cass knew only waking Adam should have known.
She seriously began to question where the dividing line between waking and dreaming consciousness was, or if it even existed at all.
"And then, one day...we all got a game in the mail." Adamsprite's voice grew bittersweet as he moved his story into the present, his sadness beginning to creep back. "It was called Sburb, and it caused the end of the world…" He recounted how the game had ironically saved all of the eight friends' lives by zapping them into the Medium. He then went on to describe a quest of almost epic proportions that he'd undertaken on his planet, the Land of Rain and Rivers. He spoke of how he had to learn the nature of his quest all by himself—his sprite had abandoned him on the very first day, leaving him lost, cut off from the vital knowledge he needed to understand everything that was happening, and completely on his own.
Adamsprite shared more memories, telling Cass of how he'd started to master Force, his Aspect, as he roamed all throughout his planet for over a month after his arrival, finally managing to rally his beleaguered, squabbling cobra-consorts into a single, unified army. And it was a particular source of pride for him that he was able to accomplish all this without the help of his absent sprite. Acting solely on trial and error, best guess, and instinct to figure out the meaning behind his quest and his nature as a Knight, Adamsprite described how he had been forced to leave his comfort zone and befriend many of the consorts he encountered. And were it not for the connections he made with all the consorts he met, the bonds he'd forged with those cobras who had been closest to him.
Glimmering Scales...
Cass listened intently to the story, enraptured, fearing the conclusion.
"My consorts' army mobilized at the Forbidden River, and I was about to march on my Denizen's Palace…" Adamsprite's voice faltered again, more tears sliding down his face. "Then I was woken up as my dream self on Prospit, right in the middle of a battle. The Dersites...we never saw them coming. They launched a direct attack on Prospit. Overwhelmed the garrison of the Golden Keep, breached it... I was there, in the throne room, when the Dersites tried to take out the White Queen. I tried to protect her, and…and she did survive the assault, but I… Not so lucky."
As he spoke, the sprite boy gently touched his index finger-talon to his neck, unconsciously tracing the sharp line of the fatal slash wound that had opened his throat, the burning agony of the wound always fresh in his mind. The memory of the wound's pain nearly overwhelmed the sprite boy, but he quickly calmed himself by recalling the last sensation he remembered before the end, what had comforted him even as his body finally failed.
"You can't really remember the actual moment of death, you know…" Adamsprite pointed out to Cass, wiping the tears from his eyes and cheeks with the back of his hand. "You remember some things. Flashes…sensations…maybe even a final thought. When I was slipping away, the White Queen was comforting me, and…and I can't remember anything she actually said, but…but I remember the sound of her voice…and then tears. The tears were the very last thing I remembered before I flatlined—I felt tears falling on my face, and I know they were tears because one of them fell in my mouth and it tasted salty, so...
"And then, when your dream self dies, you're supposed to wake back up from your little nap right away, right? Dream self dies, dream ends, back to the real world, right? Well, I didn't wake up. Instead, I ended up inside that fucking dream bubble, where I was told by a future version of you that—plot twist!—that I'd actually been stuck in this dream bubble the whole time. Everything I fought for and suffered through, everything I learned and accomplished…nothing but memories of challenges that someone else already overcame. My entire life, everything I even knew… Nothing but a big fucking lie. An illusion, fabricated by you... And boy, you sure didn't waste any time sugarcoating it, either…"
"So, I…" Cass swallowed loudly when there was a lull in the story, sitting down in front of her companion, crossing her legs indian-style. "You're saying I… I'm the reason you went insane?"
Adamsprite was silent at first, unsure of what his reply should be. When he replied, however, his voice carried no traces of anger or blame. "You didn't force me to wake up. That was beyond your control and beyond mine. But you were not gentle."
Cass sensed now that Adamsprite had reached the end. Already she found herself leaning forward, holding her hands out towards the sprite. Before she touched Adamsprite, she hesitated. "May I?" she asked, nodding to her hands.
When Adamsprite gave her permission with a nod, Cass took a deep breath and gently pressed her right thumb to the center of the sprite's forehead, laid her left hand onto the crown of his head. She wasn't entirely sure why she'd chosen to touch him in those specific places—it simply felt 'right'.
Cass was surprised by how real Adamsprite's body felt. If her eyes were closed, she would easily have believed she was touching real human hair. Adamsprite's hair did not feel even remotely like it was ethereal, energy-based sprite matter.
The physical contact seemed to have a boosting effect on Cass's ability to connect with Adamsprite's mind. She could now feel the unbalanced remains of his psyche, full of 'glitchy' paths of thought, erratic surges of emotional energy running.
Still… There was a pattern to the chaos that Cass was able to sense and recognize.
"What are you…?" Adamsprite started to ask the girl as she touched his hair and forehead, but his voice trailed off as he felt the effects of her touch. Tension dissipated from all over his body, including from several spots where he hadn't even known muscles existed. The stress from sharing his most traumatic memories…he could actually feel it lessening. His turbulent emotions calmed down, settled, no longer threatened to drown out even his own thoughts.
Since his prototyping, Adamsprite had been locked in a constant mental grapple with the consciousness of the eagle—at Cass's strange touch, however, even the rebellious avian presence in Adamsprite's head had ceased its endless struggle against the boy's mind, finally growing still, tranquil. The relief was almost beyond the sprite's ability to describe. Before, fighting with the Eagle felt like Adamsprite had cotton balls stuffed into his ears while standing in a small room surrounded by a thousand TVs, all with their volume jacked up really high. But now, the cotton balls had been removed from his ears, the TVs silenced.
For the very first time in weeks, from his point of view, Adamsprite was finally able to experience relaxation. It was a level of peace he realized he hadn't felt since before his revival, back when he was still stuck in the dream bubble. But he wasn't able to relax all the way—a few final repressed memories were all that stood in the way.
"Don't stop talking," Cass encouraged Adamsprite, keeping her hands in place, not breaking her focus. Already she could feel the healing beginning to take root. Misfiring neurons were calming down, disconnected pathways of internal communication slowly reconnecting themselves. "You need to face it all."
Adamsprite took another deep breath. Now, as he spoke, his voice was lighter, less shaky. His eyes were still welling up, but he was no longer crying uncontrollably. "When you told me I was dead... You did a really good job at explaining the situation to me, actually; I just wasn't really able to wrap my mind around it, you know? Telling someone their entire life has been an illusion and that all their memories belong to someone else…it's pretty heavy stuff. I didn't actually believe you until I was resurrected…"
Adamsprite found he was able to focus on the last memories without feeling too much anxiety. The memories were still quite unpleasant…but they no longer threatened to send him back over the edge and land him in the nuthouse when he actively thought about them. The pain was no longer quite so sharp…the sprite could actually feel it ebbing away.
"I'm not sure I can even describe how it felt," Adamsprite declared, trying to convey the frenzied, chaotic sensations into words. Insanity was difficult to translate. "Imagine a clone of yourself being the first thing you see when you wake up. Then you look down at yourself, and you realize that your body is all wrong. You're floating, you have no legs, you look more bird than human from the neck down. And then it dawns on you…your sprite? Your psychopathic sprite who went nuts and tried to kill you when he was accidentally created? When you realize that, all along, that sprite was you… Now you're the abomination… And your clone is not a clone at all."
"I'm sorry you had to go through that, Adam," Cass said to her adopted spirit guide, still touching the sprite's forehead and cranium, hunched over in concentration. She made definite progress with the healing, noting how Adamsprite did not freak out when she'd called him 'Adam' just now.
"I guess you don't really have anything to be sorry for," Adamsprite sighed, wiping his eyes dry with the soft, wispy down feathers that now grew from his forearms like a layer of fur, taking care not to disturb either of Cass's hands. "It was hell, but…but if I'd been revived without your intervention? Just…just ripped straight out of that lie, without being forced to see who I really was, first? I probably would've exploded, or gone brain-dead. So…yeah, I guess that's that. I know you didn't want to hurt me, and…and I think I get it, now…"
The image of Cass's echeladder popped up in the back of her mind, interrupting her train of thought. She'd seen it several times, had learned that it seemed to monitor her fighting prowess—it first appeared as a ladder of dark rungs, the bottommost rung shining with light; the more underlings Cass killed, the more rungs she unlocked on her echeladder, climbing higher each time. But now…at least half the once-dark rungs were pulsing brightly with multicolored light. Whatever she'd accomplished...well, it must have been big.
According to her echeladder, Cass was now a Soul Doctor.
Adamsprite's eyes were the only thing that Cass noticed any real difference in, appearance-wise. The sadness was still there but the angry bitterness was gone. And there was a light to them, now—a very faint spark that had not been there before.
Cass's hands dropped down to her sides. She sat down, rested back against the tree trunk. Her heart fluttered several times as another wave of weariness hit her. She examined her hands, observed how pale her skin had gotten. Her fingernails were a light shade of purple. She could not hold her hands flat without having them tremble.
"You look like you just worked a twelve hour shift." Adamsprite observed, bringing Cass back to her senses.
Surprise was the first thing Cass felt—she had not been expecting Adamsprite to speak to her again for a while.
"That was you, wasn't it?" Adamsprite asked.
"What?"
"You did something to me, Cass. I feel…" Adamsprite hesitated, trying to find the right words. "…different. My mind's finally calmed down, and… Well, let's just say I haven't even been able to hear my own voice in my head until now. That shit doesn't happen on its own. Was that Sylph of Death shit?"
"Well, I… I think so." Cass nodded in reply. "I'm still figuring what 'Sylph of Death shit' even means…" Cass let out a long yawn before she could say anything else.
"I guess you're probably too tired to keep going," Adamsprite said, noting how exhausted Cass now looked. He doubted she was capable of fighting off and outrunning the underling swarms in her current state.
"I…yeah," Cass was hesitant to admit that she didn't feel like she could continue, but she knew that going on like this would put both of them in danger. "Whatever I did, it made me really tired, and…" she paused momentarily for a yawn, already feeling her eyelids drooping, "…and I just need… I just need some…" another yawn, "…some sleep…"
I watched Cass as she literally fell asleep midsentence. She was still mumbling unintelligibly as her eyes closed. Within seconds, her mumbling had been replaced by slow breathing. She was out colder than a college freshman after a festive Thirsty Thursday.
I gazed over at Cass while she slept. No, I wasn't being pervy, if that's what you're thinking. I was pensive, deep in thought…more within my own mind than on this tree branch. That was the wonderful thing; I was now able to get lost in my own thoughts like I always used to without having the consciousness of an eagle suddenly hijacking our mutually-shared body. I could hear myself think without having to sort out which thoughts were mine, and which were the eagle's impulses.
I was free.
It occurred to me as I glanced over at Cass that this was the first time I'd ever really met her. I mean…yeah, technically I'd already met her when she party-crashed my dream bubble and made me go full lucid, but… I didn't really count that. That Cass had been different—unemotional, detached… I guess I couldn't really pass judgment until I knew more of the story. She told me she'd been hunting down my dream bubble for a long time, and that it had taken her even longer than that to gain access to it.
Cass had been a fully realized Sylph, then, obviously managing to reach the god tier somehow beforehand. And as a god tier, Cass would have been immortal…so it then begged the question: just how long had she been stuck traveling through the Furthest Ring? Seeing as how time and space do not matter in the Furthest Ring, I guess that's a question that really can't be answered.
It was the growling in my stomach that brought me back to full awareness. Yeah, in case you were wondering; being forcibly reincarnated as an energy creature apparently doesn't exempt you from needing to eat, drink, sleep, and breathe. I still needed to do all those things. I'm not complaining because it reminded me of a time when I was fully human, but it just surprised me—I'd never known that sprites were still subject to the needs of the flesh until I went and fucking became one.
But yeah, anyway… Growling stomach, not okay. Time to do something about that.
I got back up onto my feet, and—no, scratch that. Keep forgetting I don't have legs, anymore… I floated up from my resting spot. Casting one last glance over at Cass, I 'jumped' off the giant tree limb.
Sprites naturally have the ability to fly and float in midair, which is good considering our overall lack of a lower body. This would normally have made my wings redundant and unnecessary, but I found that I was able to sort of 'turn off' my resistance to gravity and enter into free fall when I chose, allowing me to truly use my wings to their full potential. I preferred flying with my wings, avian-style—it was faster, it felt fucking awesome, and it was the one thing the Eagle and I have ever been able to do together without battling each other. At least, without battling each other quite as fiercely as we usually did...this was the first actual time we'd flown together, as one.
I did not close my eyes, watched the ground rush up from below as I jumped from the high bough. Then I flared my wings, stretching them to their full span. A surge of adrenaline coursed through my muscles as I forced my wings to give a powerful flap, arresting my fall and propelling me forward into a glide, nearly skimming the top of the ground—I'd cut it pretty close, this time. A second flap increased my speed and gained me some altitude.
No longer in danger of getting caught by the foliage on the jungle floor, I found myself already rolling into a leftward bank, barely avoiding crashing into another giant tree. I'd only just gotten clear of that tree when I threw myself to the opposite direction, angling upwards now—the tree I'd avoided had been part of a large grove, and my rightward turn ensured that I did not splatter against the rest of the giant behemoths.
I guess I'm taking a little too much credit when I say I did all those things. The only reason I was able to do these crazy avian-style antics was because the Eagle was working with me. It was a bird; flying wasn't even second nature to it—it was first nature. In a way, we were copiloting the same body—it kept us flying and aware, while I continued to manage the higher thinking centers of our shared mind during flight.
After a third wingbeat, I shot up through the treetops, breathing in deep through my nostrils as I took to the open skies. The skaialight felt warm on my face, and my body seemed to draw energy from it. There were thunderstorms close by—I could not see or hear them, but I could sense their charge in the air, could feel the changing patterns in the wind currents that they caused. The sky was clear and sunny right now, but I knew that would not be the case for long. Unlike the Land of Rain and Rivers, where the rainstorms were almost a constant factor of life there, the Land of Thunder and Dwarves had a much more capricious weather system—it could be beautiful and clear one moment, then within half an hour a giant storm system could roll through and pound the area.
Whenever I flew, it was a cause for joy. I was even able to mostly forget that I barely had a body, anymore, whenever I took to the skies. Feeling wind against my face, sensing all the shifting air currents and knowing instinctively when to follow them, and when to avoid them. The Eagle stirred slightly, affected by my joy. I think it was probably confused—even if it knew what joy was, the Eagle probably wasn't going to feel overjoyed to be flying anymore than I would when I'm just driving a car.
The jungle below spread in almost every direction as far as the eye could see—a brilliant, natural carpet of vibrant green and orange—save for the 'west'. To the west, I could see the thick jungle actually beginning to thin, becoming much more savanna-like in the far distance. Vast stretches of yellow grass, rolling like gentle ocean waves in the wind. And not far in that direction was a small mountain of glittering orange stone, rising up from a collection of hills that sat not far from where the jungle thinned out.
A twinge of uneasiness took root in my gut. There'd been something I thought I'd seen, a dark shape… It had appeared briefly from behind the mountain, turned around, dove back down out of view… It had been so fast it could have been my imagination. But the unease remained…
Perhaps some investigation was in order. And besides, a mountain like that could provide me with some fruitful hunting grounds—I've been hunting small animals to keep Cass and myself fed for the past five days, but the jungle never offered me very much. This mountain was certainly worth checking out. Hell, I dunno where all this energy was coming from... I guess I was just glad to be on my way back to being one hundred percent.
I soared over the jungle, watching the treetops zoom past in an emerald blur. The air smelled of ozone. As the orange mountain drew nearer and nearer, the twinge of unease morphed into full-on hostility—before I even knew it, I was baring my talons and getting ready for battle. The Eagle was obviously spooked by something…
Sounds were beginning to drift into my range of hearing—snatches of shouting and screams, the discharge of weapons, the clash of metal… As the mountain grew close, I banked off to the left, gliding into a wide, gentle arc around the mountain's southern face. Whatever was going on, it was happening on the far side.
As the western face of the mountain came into view, I was able to spot a town below. The best way to describe that town would be 'medium-sized'—it was too large to be considered a mere village, but not nearly large enough to be a city. It was a comfortable-sized town; buildings of stone, brick, and wood, an open square in the center…but its most telling features were the thick stone walls that surrounded it, and the multitude of towers that lined those walls.
Small figures were running this way and that in the town below—manning their posts on the walls and towers, taking shelter in the buildings, etc. Smoke was rising from the town as other residents struggled to put out fires. And from above…
Those 'dark shapes' I'd spotted from afar, sure as snow falls in the winter, were underlings. Wyrms, to be exact—the giant, hulking, scaly, clawed, toothy, fire-breathing bigger cousins to the winged basilisks. They were attacking the town below, setting fire to the buildings and surrounding fields. These were the same species of shitstains who'd nearly charbroiled me on Cass's rooftop, back when I'd…well… You know the story, by now. They'd gotten the better of me five days ago because I was slightly insane at the time and hell-bent on tearing Cass's throat out.
Not being sane while attempting to tear someone else's throat out tends to dull one's overall level of awareness in a fight, somewhat. But not this time. This time, the Eagle and I were working together.
My vision focused in on the winged underling shitstains. I bared my teeth, opened my mouth wide, let out an angry, inhuman screech at the Eagle's behest. Vestiges of a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth as several of the wyrms heard my challenge, breaking off from the attack on the village below and wheeling about to intercept me.
Small motes of flame curled around my hands and fingers/talons as I drew a short blade of crackling red sprite energy out of thin air, leveling it at my soon-to-be-deceased opponents.
I hope those wyrms are ready for a rematch, because I sure as fuck am.