Purple Miasma

***Please note, this is part 5 of my story, found in my collection called the Solitude of Fireflies. It is not a stand alone piece of writing!***

I’m falling like a stone, down through a psychological well of thought, an abyss of colours and emotions strung together with a pattern that’s beyond me, a pattern that uses the most exquisite mathematics to chart the workings of reality, real or imagined, illusion or delusion; in short, everything that has ever or will ever exist.

Shapes appear before me, so fleeting is their occurrence that I fear I may have imagined them. Slideshows of people who exist in other times, other worlds perhaps, flicker and die between the darkness. I cast my mind back to something in my distant/near past, a memory of who I was before I was cast out into this place of death and longing.

I heard the voice and I was nothing. For a time I was only a memory, and then I became something; a spark of consciousness, the glorious light of awareness. I remember that I was alone, with my purpose lost somewhere along the way. I remember Mari, who never was, just an illusion of my silent musings; a delusion, perhaps. Was my whole life a lie? One big elaborate sideshow in the great game of the gods? I do not know and I do not have the will to care. Fuck this, I think, I’m tired of the dark…

Then wake up, Noah.

And the voice carries my memories in a basket of dreams, sets me down upon a river of careless souls, and relents it’s grip upon my carriage of Illusion, leaving me to travel towards the land of the Beginning. I open my eyes.

***

Mari wakes with a start, sweat dripping from her unkempt hair and running down her face, stinging her eyes. Her deep breaths come in erratic heaves as she grips the ruffled bed sheets, the material acting as an anchor to reality. Outside the window she can see the grey ambience of early dawn play upon the plain white walls of her small room, producing a vaguely soothing sensation. She closes her eyes and runs through a method of relaxation, a form of meditation. After a while her heartbeat slows and her mental processes return to a calm calculated readiness.

She knew that was Noah. She saw his face in her dream and knew straight away, as if some memory of her past had been unearthed. She called out to him, to warn him about his peril, but he never heard. She saw her imposter, followed her from a position above them, out of sight and sound. She’d been having the same dream the past few nights. She assumed they were the product of the stresses and strains from traveling from Haven to Haven, trying to stay undetected. With the war, personal freedoms for members of both factions had been effectively erased. This Haven had been erected from the husk of a long abandoned Victorian building near the city centre. Prefects, working under the utmost secrecy, had scanned the place to determine its suitability as a temporary recluse for agents working to undermine the Dividers, through subterfuge and planned sabotage. They set up small self enclosed units, ultra black even within the Prefect hierarchy. Mari was allowed to tag along, not because she was a member of these elite squads, but because her mission was much more important. Find the key to Eden and end the war. But after her dream, she began to wonder how close she was to achieving that.

Dawn was a couple of hours away yet, but sleep, surprisingly, was not forthcoming. She cast her mind into Illusion briefly, scanning the immediate area to check everything was normal and nothing compromised. The welcome rush of ecstasy accompanied her excursion into its murky, kaleidoscopic depths. She went from room to room, floating on something infinitely more insubstantial than air; an inertial mass of awareness. Slowly, almost unsuspectingly, a pang of doubt spawned within her, forcing her upright. There was a silence suspended in the air, motionless. The only sound is the quiet controlled rhythm of her breathing, her chest rising and falling in a synchronized motion. This isn’t right, she thinks. The building is usually a thriving, bustling hive of life, at all hours of the day. People are always talking, shouting, issuing commands and questions. Now there is nothing.

A metallic smell hangs in the air, heavy and acrid to her nostrils; the aftertaste of death. Something else has been here in the night.

She got up and walked towards the door. She had abilities outside of Illusion, but nothing strong enough that could overcome a trained Divider combatant, if they were involved in this. So she chose caution instead. Ever so slowly, she edged out into the hall, conscious of her peripheral vision incased anything moved. Walking from room to room, she was startled by how deserted the house was. This would have been what it felt like before the Prefects inhabited its rustic innards, a memorial of an era long passed, not forgotten, rather smothered by modernity. Computers and special equipment littered the floor and walls, some lay on their sides; great metal creatures with wires and switches, fallen but otherwise unharmed. The modern age had benefits, even to the angels. They may feed off the power of Illusion, but technology still has its values.

Oddly, there were no bodies. No sign of blood, and the only sign of violence were the machines lying on there sides. The smell was the strongest indicator that something was amiss, the scent of an angel or, perhaps, something worse.

Finally she came to the front hall, with its high vaulted ceiling, elaborately carved in swirling arcs of a design that would have imbued elegance, wealth and, more importantly, power to its original occupant. Now its gothic façade only served to heighten her unease. Anything could be lurking up there, or in the shadows between the windows, where the moonlight bled an eerie light upon the floor. What could have happened, she thought? A Divider attack? They couldn’t have been compromised so easily. There were safeguards in place to prevent information being leaked to the highest bidder. Their operation was a tightly packed, close knitted secret. It was watertight.

She started towards the door when a flash of light lit up the room for a split second; a purple miasma that pierced her eyes with a sudden intensity that made her blink. Something spoke in the darkness.
“Not that way”. Mari froze.
“What? Who are you? Speak your name and business, or be called down by the Evergreen.”
Slowly, in her reduced vision, Mari picked out a small child. She looked up at her with her startlingly round eyes, jet black; a piercing gaze that made Mari nauseous.
“I have no name, and my business is simple. I have come to warn you. Please do not go through that door. It is a basic plea, spoken for concern of your safety. If you go out there, you will die.”
“Did you do this?” She asked, trying to find the time to summon up a defence matrix from Illusion. But as hard as she tried, she could not enter. An invisible wall lay between her and it.
“I did not” The child spoke as if distracted, uninterested.
“Then who did? And why am I unharmed?”
“I am aware of your quest to find Noah. You have a link with him, hence the reason you have been tasked by your superiors to find him and unlock Eden. What you are not aware of, however, is that there is another who holds the key; Noah’s opposite, if you will. He is a corruptor of the system; a dangerous, wily pawn, and the one responsible for killing your kin. I grieve for them, for their cause was noble. You were in Illusion when it happened. That is why you were spared. The Reclaimer came here for you, in the hope that you would know the whereabouts of Noah. But he did not find you. A grand act of coincidence, if I may say so. Your dreams saved you.”
“What do you know of my dreams?”
“I have been following you for some time, Mari. I know of what you are, even if you do not know yourself. Have you not wondered why you had those dreams of Noah, before you realised what he was?”
“I…It is not my place to question the link between me and Noah. I follow the will of Eden . What are you? Some creature of Illusion?”
“I am a guardian of Eden, and I follow the will of its creators. They tasked me to find Noah. I have not been able to do that thus far, so I have come to you. I feel it is my duty to help you find him. Our aim is the same. Save him from the Corruptor.”
“What do you want with Noah? Our intentions might be very different.”
“No, I believe we seek exactly the same thing.”
Just as she was about to probe deeper, the door flew apart in a shower of splinters and light. A sound like metal scraping upon metal reverberated around the room, echoing around the high ceiling. She acted quickly, enveloping herself in a psychic cloak, deflecting the flying splinters deftly enough. Something stepped through the door, a figure bleeding black light like oil, flowing and swirling upon its ruined body. The child was no longer there. In its place stood a tall, thin creature of a light so bright it burned her retinas, standing directly in front of the dark wraith, towering above it. In a sudden movement which shocked even her perceptions of speed, the wraith flew at the radiant creature, slamming into it like a hammer on anvil. But it had little effect upon the stance of her guardian, who pushed the wraith back with an immense force of psychic control, far beyond anything she was capable of. A profoundly broken sound emanated from its mouth.
“Fool! Eden is mine! You will cower before the machine you created, your invention of light and myth.”
“I feel otherwise, Reclaimer.”
The black being launched another attack, in the form of a shimmering wave of sparks. This time the guardian’s reaction was alarmingly slower. It shuddered from the impact, white light dripping from its body as it struggled to absorb the brunt of the attack. Mari stepped forward in a bid to help, but was pushed back forcefully.
“Get out now. I will come to you, at the beginning of the world. Find Noah, and end this war. He’s buried himself deep; only you can find him. The dream is coming to an end, and he must make it happen. It’s for humanity’s own good. Now go”. And with that, she was thrust into Illusion, away from the battling creatures, and up, up into the blinding sky of another world, hidden deep inside our own, unseen and unknown. Things were unraveling faster and faster, and time was of the essence.