A Quantum of Solace

"Promise not to tell mom."

Melora's eyes flared at the request. That couldn't mean anything good. "If it's not something to be spoken of in mixed company, I should point out-"

"I may have a demon in my brain."

Melora paused, reeling, calculating, and quickly making peace with the reality of her situation. "Give me a moment to grab my coat."

She left the door open a crack, and Selina heard someone else's voice in her room. "Who's that?" the voice asked, and it was--kind of familiar? But not very.

Melora responded in hushed tones, as if Selina couldn't hear "I'll be a while, you can sleep here if you want." With a satisfied hum, the woman seemed to take up the offer, presumably already in bed. Melora emerged, wrapped in a simple robe, and closed the door behind her. It wasn't for modesty--not Melora, if anyone--but it was mighty chill at midnight, and she didn't feel like shifting into a bear or something.

"Where--?" Selina started, but Melora hushed her.

"You are the warchief. No signs of weakness. Not a word." It felt almost like her mother's admonition, and some very tired part of her wanted to protest, to protect her ego, but...

She yawned.

Three days now. Not a wink. It was maddening. But necessary. Curse that witch.

The city was set into valleys, partially natural, and partially formed by earth magic. The bulk of the structures were built there, but the narrow canyons connecting them were dense with market stalls, shops, and low-rent apartments, as natural high-traffic thoroughfares. Through one of these they wended, the stars and moonlight abandoning them to gloom. Places like this weren't all that safe at night, not that either had anything to fear, but dark canyons are spooky enough without a hundred spikes and a thousand eyes in the dark looming over you.

Maybe it was paranoia, or hallucination, but Selina kept seeing eyes, and movement, and shadows jumping at her. She was sweating in the cold, dry air, and had an insatiable itch growing across her patterns, still hidden by her magic, but perhaps threatening to emerge. In such a state, she was literally starting to fall asleep in mid-stride, only to snap back at the precipice of consciousness, enough to stumble like a drunkard.

"Great party, hey warchief!" she heard someone shout approvingly, although it may well have just been her imagination. She was starting not to care either way.

Rather than emerge into the next valley, they were descending into the rock wall, underneath the mountain. The last of the light truly abandoned them, and the dim smell of volcanic gas and sulfur wafted up from below. The Depths, she thought. We're going to the water...?

Great Crag sat above a caldera, an ancient one in the process of receding, having formed the mountains protecting the city millions of years ago. As it cooled and receded, it left behind vast craters, which filled with water over thousands of years, mixing with chemicals forged in the heat of magma, and dissolved sediment from the inside rock walls. The heat of the caldera warmed the water, and it formed a natural hot spring beneath the city. A toxic, dangerous hot spring in a lightless cavern--not exactly a vacation destination.

Except for the city's aquatic inhabitants, or rather, the few exotic ones that could handle the relatively extreme environment. No little mermaids here, just some bizarre fish-people who look like the creatures at the bottom of the abyss.

Images of her dream under the sea flickered into her mind, and she wasn't sure if they were memories or dreams. Well, they were memories of dreams. What does that make them? No dreaming! she chided herself vainly.

"Wait here," her sister whispered, and thought after a couple seconds to turn back and take her hand again. "Nevermind. Can't risk you falling asleep."

They walked into the shallows of the water. It was like a warm bath, and kind of soothing, if you could ignore the smell (which may have been intensifying the hallucinations). Once up to her waist, she wanted for all the world to flop down, floating in the salty water, like a sensory deprivation chamber. The perfect bed.

Her sister was a dolphin. That one required a couple of double-takes, and a good eye-rubbing. No, she really was a dolphin, she heard the clicking and could feel her wet, rubbery skin. "I can't follow you down there," she cautioned, unsure of Melora's intent. Was this really Melora? Was she following some half-mad dream around, beckoning her into the void? Was the warchief going to drown to death from fatigue on her second day in office?

You'd think if anyone drowned me to death, it would be the siren. Or...maybe it is her? She squinted again, trying to remember if she'd heard any alluring music. Maybe a drumbeat or two. But then it wouldn't even have to be music, would it. But why would she drown me to death? She has no reason to. Unless she's pregnant, and she's going to hollow me out and-

And something emerged from the deep.

He was scaly, with great big, black eyes, with double lids. His gills ran from the throat, around his back, and down between each rib, their...gill-flaps? gill-meat?...slowly stacking and compressing as the water drained from them. He was...definitely male, as his lower half emerged, but he did have legs, if rather cresty and finned. His feet were under the black water, but he seemed stable enough to be standing on two feet.

The dolphin stopped clicking, and stopped being a dolphin. "Abe," she said, "this is Selina. Your new warchief."

Selina was blinking, stretching her eyes in the way you do when you're so desperate to not look like you're falling asleep in a meeting that you don't realize how fricking obvious it is that you already have, several times. That gave him time to, awkwardly, and evidently with some discomfort, clear his...lungs?...of water. He couldn't seemingly switch from water-clicks to air-words without some deference to the laws of physics, it seemed. More credit to Melora, who can do it in a mouse's...butt? No wait, what's the adage? Two shakes of a...rabbit's tail? Cat?

I'm losing it, she thought to herself, then some other half of her brain finished erecting a rickety Indiana Jones bridge to the current half, so it could finally deliver its message. It's Abraxes!

"Ab? Abax? Tabaxi?" Her words were slurring. The earth was spinning.

"Cleanse the air," he commanded, his voice still sounding like there was water in there somewhere. Maybe it always sounded that way. Melora reached for the elements, and the air swirled obligingly. That smell was gone, at any rate. "She's exhausted. What is this?"

"A witch's curse," she said, not at all joking. He cocked a head at her, but took it seriously. "Yes, that one. She hasn't slept for days. Says there's a demon in her head. She's just...lit up with magic, I can't tell one aura from the next."

His dark eyes shone with arcane light, and for a moment, she could see their depth, both the vast, alien complexity of his low-light abyssal orbs, but into the depths beyond, into his very soul--

Then he turned his gaze away, analyzing her body, her clothes, what she was carrying. "Not so powerful it can't be nullified. But if it's one of the three, there must have been a reason. Did the matron have anything to say?"

Melora just gave him a cocked half-shrug, and he nodded. "Doesn't know," he acknowledged.

"And time is of the essence, no doubt. It's a good thing I have some essence of time." Like a magician, he produced some strangely-glowing dust, from one of his grand total of zero pockets. It shone in the eighth color, the one just beyond the seven you know, the ones that can possibly exist. "Quintessence. Spread it in a circle on the land, and lie her down."

Melora carried her--her legs had become useless at some point she didn't remember--while Abe emerged fully from the water. Rather than sloughing it off, he sloughed it up, schlorping some quantity of water into a sort of water-suit, clinging to him everywhere but his head, magically staying in the shape of his body, plus a couple inches. Neat, she thought, with considerable effort.

As she lay on the warm stone, craggy and uncomfortable, it may as well have been a bed of clouds and roses. In the half-second after Melora let go, and before Abe replaced her, she'd almost fallen asleep.

"I apologize for this, but it's necessary." With her lying prone and face-up, he cradled her head, and water rushed from his water-suit and directly up her face. Immediately, there was panic. What adrenaline her heart could find in the couch cushions surged through her veins. In an instant, she became certain she was drowning, and thrashed in a raw fight-or-flight response. Her body, weakened by exhaustion and half-comatose with toxic air, couldn't really put up much of a fight, and in her panic, she didn't think of a single spell or magic trick, just pure survival.

But it was only a moment. She was still a warlord, and a warchief, and a witch's daughter, and by the hells, she wouldn't go down like a chump. The deepest core of her will turned to iron, commanded her spasming monkey brain to shut the hell up, and focused all her remaining mental energy into a spell. A simple spell, one she'd learned as a young girl: the ability to command the elements. That water was going to get the hell out.

As she summoned her power, she could feel the occult athame within her arm as it focused and amplified her Vitae. And Abe could see it.

"Now," he said, and time...stopped.

Where does the mind go, when time stops? If some get to think and act outside of time, why can't others? If all atoms stopped moving, the time stopper wouldn't be able to walk, as the air would be solid. If photons stopped flying, everything would be dark. Hell, without any particle motion, their atoms would stop having mass, they wouldn't be able to touch anything and phase through it, and their atomic nuclei might just fly apart in a cataclysmic explosion.

Time Stop doesn't stop time. It just makes everyone else move really, really slowly. Which, in some ways, really sucks. Like if you were stuck in a moment where you were drowning, and now that moment seems to last forever...bummer.

But she wasn't stuck in time. She wouldn't notice time stopping if she was. The water yielded to her commands, and she expelled the remains from her throat and nose. None had gotten to her lungs, she wasn't truly drowning yet, but it certainly felt realistic. And she was lucid, for the time being.

Gathering her breath in raspy heaves, she glared at Abe, a rush of very mixed feelings in her mind. For one, she'd always wanted to meet him, to know why he was so secretive, why it was forbidden even to go into these caves. But he did just waterboard her.

"Greetings, sister," he said sonorously, without a hint of contrition. "Apologies for the shenanigans, but I'm no emergency medicine specialist."

"I am," Melora chided, but he brushed it off.

"The malady was magical in nature, requiring metaphysical medicine." His sing-song tone suggested he enjoyed his wordplay, and still just couldn't fathom the audacity of his actions.

"You should have said 'mandating', you missed one," her elder sister vindicated, but she too seemed to be treating the matter less seriously than it deserved. In fact, both seemed distracted with other things.

She took a moment (or was it not a moment, in this place?). Around their circle, all was white. It hadn't started out that way, but very quickly all the light around them seemed to "build up", gradually brightening until peaking as uniform white, with the last few, darkest places finally sealing over about now, whenever now was.

All of the sounds were tinny and echoing, as the walls of the circle were perfectly reflective, and every sound they made could only bounce until it absorbed into one of their bodies or the bit of trapped air inside the cylinder.

And the strangest thing of all was invisible, inaudible, and couldn't be felt or experienced in any way. She...wasn't tired!

Well, she was dead tired in truth, but this was her true state, beleagured and drained, but not barmy and slurring words. This wasn't just insomnia, this was...

"It does appear you've been cursed, but this--" he pointed to the place on her arm where the occult athame had merged with her body, "--is only part of the problem. It forfends you from sleep, but something is gnawing on your subconscious. You can't sense it, because...you're conscious. But as soon as you fall asleep, chomp chomp!" He sounded almost giddy. His emotional cues weren't nonexistent, but it was like he was from another planet.

"A demon? Some fel spirit?" she asked. Melora twisted her mouth in uncertainty, clearly unconvinced.

"The dragon below has a smell that can't be hidden. I don't think that's it. Besides, this is a psychic affliction; that's not out of the realm of possibility for a demon, but not exactly their forte."

"Which is why I invited an expert consultant!" Abe proclaimed proudly, gesturing at a featureless white wall of light. Selina arched an eyebrow at the nothingness.

And nothing happened.

"Which is why-" he repeated, but was interrupted by something shifting within the light, something slipping between the layers of reality, hitching a ride on the back of a photon and popping into a baby universe for tea. Something, or rather, someone.

He was made out of stars. Like, not some sort of animated constellation, a glorified stick-figure, but as if a man's body were an invisible trap for starlight, and when it entered the volume, it kept looping around forever inside, each mote of light occasionally colliding with another in a burst of photons, the rest of the time forming a dim haze of almost electric light. His form could be made out, as a sort of three-dimensional silhouette. He clearly had a face, but it was featureless...at least until he gathered some spare starlight into the volume where eyes usually go, and it did wonders for humanizing him.

"Hello, sister," said a voice that could have been playing on a concert speaker stack a mile away, save for the odd lack of an echo (doubly odd in this place). "I am Elijah."

She gasped, unable to find words. He was, quite simply, unlike any creature she'd ever imagined. She could see magic when she wanted to, but his body had blurred the line between magic and mundane, and he glowed with arcane light without any use of her sight.

"I'm...it's nice to meet you."

"We've met, but it may not seem like the past to you, not yet. So I am pleased as well."

"Don't mind him," Melora warned, unimpressed by his theatrics. "He's just partially fused with infinity."

"He discovered the dividing line between reality and imagination, and found it to be fundamentally 'fuzzy' in nature, transcending physical norms-"

"Lines," Elijah corrected his...slightly less weird?...brother.

"Lines, dividing the various layers of reality. And how many are there?"

"Uncountably infinite," the seer replied.

"All right you two," Melora chided, her voice hinting that she'd heard all this before. "No more transcendentalism, we're here with a purpose. Psychic curse in her brain, go."

"Is it not obvious?" Elijah asked, without a hint of sarcasm, and Melora rolled her eyes so hard she might have used Wild Shape to enable it.

"Not to mere mortals, oh wise one," Abe sang.

"A parasite. A hitchhiker, hiding in a disused part of her mind." His bizarre unface grew close, scanning her carefully. "Sister, you've not dreamt, correct? Not as long as you can remember?"

"That's right," she said. "Except, there was once, and it was quite recently. In fact..." The thought occurred to her, but it was too absurd to be true. But then, she hadn't slept last night, nor on the airship, nor during that all-night rager, nor on the flight over. She almost slept on the plane, if not for that damn siren's jam session of her new hit single "oh god, oh god, right there". Which means...

"The last time I slept, it was a dream. A Quori imposed it upon me, to tell me a story, so I could...honestly, it's hard to remember. The details were so vivid, but they're fading now. I'm quite certain an entire starship rose from the abyss and I could physically prove it all happened, if only we were a few thousand miles away. But I must sound mad."

"And this dream...you're sure you awakened from it?" Her heart dropped. No, no, gods damn it no, this couldn't all be a dream. All of it? The war, the weird spaceship, the magic? Her family? Her mothers' respect? Her marriage? Her life, finally fulfilling its purpose? Tears began to flow.

"Is this real?" she asked, almost begging.

But the Seer was merciless. "What is real? How you define 'real'? If you're talkinga bout what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real in simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain. A psion can redefine your reality, an illithid tadpole can rewire your brain, but does that change your reality?"

"All right Cosmic Man, this is the literal worst possible time for this discussion." Melora took her sister firmly by the shoulders, staring right into her eyes. "Selina, honey. Look at me. This is real. You are real. I'm real." They locked eyes, and though they'd soulgazed long, long ago in her youth, she could tell there was a soul there, something deeper than the mind, deeper than any illusion.

Melora embraced her tightly, rubbing her back, breathing heavily. "Breathe with me," she urged, "feel my body, my warmth. This is real. Our blood is real. I love you, we all love you, and love is real. Love is why the fire loves the water, why the earth loves the sky. Love is why the stars burn, why the grass grows, and why you've made it this far. You've come so far, little one. You've hurt so much, and fought, and bled, and given everything you had for a dream."

She retracted just enough to look Selina in the face again. "You have dreamed, Silly." Her baby name, Melora's favorite, from when she was too young to pronounce her own name quite right. No Quori knew that, did they? "You dreamed every day and every night, of this future, of this life. You dreamed of peace and happiness for our people, for the lives and health of your family. You dreamed whole stories into being, and millions shared your dreams on the screen. You are a dreamer, a beautiful dreamer dreaming beautiful dreams. And that is why you are real."

She held her for a long time. Only tears and her sister's warmth mattered. The others offered what warmth and solace they could, which amounted to a slight rounding error of zero. But Abe did get some good data for understanding human interactions.

"It's real," Selina said, with the voice she used to weave magic. "Because I choose to believe it is real." Melora nodded in assent.

"Well, you could have just asked," Elijah continued. "You did sleep then, but the Quori's meddling opened a dormant part of your mind. Perhaps it knew, perhaps it didn't, but it was dormant for a reason. Teraza's clever meddling with the time stream, if crude and fumbling by comparison, did successfully provide a stopgap measure to see you across the last mile of this ordeal, but the rest of it, the rest of your entire life, you did not dream, for the same reason, and by the same hand."

"My mother? Mothers? All three?" he nodded.

"The wise one saw the truth, the mother knew the cost and paid it, and the warrior cursed them both for their callousness, but spent your whole youth watching you closely, warding you, praying for you, to keep the darkness at bay, the darkness your mother knowingly birthed you from."

"I...do have a demon."

His face was unmoving, an invitation to dig deeper.

"I...am a demon?"

"No!" Melora retorted, a hint of a bear's growl in her voice. "She's not a demon! She has a beating heart! And a soul! Demons have neither!" But Elijah was unswayed--not by Melora's impassioned defense, but because he wasn't satisfied yet.

"I'm...neither?"

"You have great potential. The stars have not yet aligned, the threads are not yet fully woven. You are as much demon as human, as much warchief as peon, as much a dreamer as a sleeper. You are still young enough to choose. But your choice was taken away, for your own wellbeing. What child could make such a choice? You saw the world they wanted you to see, while your other side was muted, unable to make its case, to tempt you into its darkness. Until..."

"Until that damn Quori." He nodded at her conclusion.

"So the parasite is...my demonic heritage?"

"Not just so," he countered, and she was confused. "Yes, your long-silent side now has access, and now doubt has already begun to pull on you, offering this or that temptation, the usual fare. But that isn't the parasite, that's just your nature."

Selina looked at him like he just suggested she was made of bacon. "I just...picked up some parasite by chance, on the same day my lifelong dream ablution was taken away, and the same day I learned about my demon dad? Maybe this is a dream. Or a really bad movie."

"The parasite is only following its nature, but you are a poor host for it. It is as compatible with you as a live dragon embryo would be in your womb." An oddly specific, and strangefuly hurtful comparison. But effective. "It consumes your mind because it must, and your mind cannot heal, because you do not sleep."

"Can we kill it?" Melora asked, her voice dead certain she was going to try, regardless of his answer.

"Of course. Even death may die. But it needn't be so cruelly dispatched. It can be transferred to a new host, one that can nurture it properly. You already know someone who can help on both counts."

The hard-light walls were beginning to fade and flicker. The long moment was almost gone. "I am fading. Seek your friend, the Dreamer in the Depths."

"Wait!" she called out, as he began to unravel into the cosmos. "Will I still...be me? Am I going to be real when this moment ends? Is my mind--"

But there was only silence.