The Endless Solvent

Ralos, Son of Suns, dreamed.

He dreamed of holding onto a rock with one hand as winds buffeted against his body, whipping him into submission. Pain lacerated every inch of his body and his hands grew weak, even if he was blessed with manus abilities. Every muscle in this body and every ability of his solute failed him and the rock slipped from his grasp and he fell hard onto the ground. He would look up to a sand storm blasted sky and see various Somas faces peer down at him.

Mikol, where was Mikol? He was nowhere to be seen. Ral was alone. He tried to get up but his limbs won’t listen to him. He was trapped. He thought he heard Melette say something harshly in Yscian - he could see the stone walls of her room down in the ravines, in the cave where the Wisdom and the Healer.

He then dreamed of the pine forest of Caelis. It was so far from the Ivassk, so far from his life. Maybe he had dreamed of Caelis when he was a boy. Here he questioned the validity of his memories of childhood.

The snow crunched under his feet and he looked up to see Rask look down disapprovingly at him. But the frown softened and the Captain cocked his head towards the castle. At the distance, Ral could see Nilda’s form standing at the gate of the castle. By Nilda’s side was a little girl dressed in a pale blue dress.

“You must wash up before dinner, my prince,” Rask said, offering a huge hand to Ral.

“You shouldn’t call me that,” Ral said before he realized what he was saying. He looked up to see Rask’s confused expression. “I’m not a prince anymore. We are… we are Aris and Ral.”

“I see,” Rask said solemnly. He bowed slightly, then seemed to dissolve into the ground, like the way the Unseeing do when a Gate closes. Ral turned around, confused at the rapidly changing surroundings. The trees were still what he recognized to be Caelisian but the snow was gone and the castle disappeared. He was suddenly surrounded by a dense forest, the air strangely warm.

He heard the wail of a child - no, the cry of a baby. Heart pounding for some unknown reason, he fought his way through the thick foliage towards the sound. Why did he dread it so? The feeling wasn’t external, like when a Gate opens, it was entirely from within. He caught an unnatural glow of runes and the clamor of a dozen or more people.

When he reached the clearing of the forest where the crying originated from, the first thing he saw was a Gaian woman in the middle of the enchanting circle. She was thin with long dark hair, smooth and sleek. Her eyes were not looking at him but he could see they were gray in color. Her face looked a lot like what he remembered his mother, Taurin Leyton, had looked like - a spitting image.

“Aris,” he breathed. She didn’t seem to hear him. In fact, she looked very distraught, her eyes much too wide, her face too pale. She was saying something angrily at someone but Ral couldn’t make out the other people around them, even the baby on the ground was blurry and without features. He could only make out the rough outline of a small, defenseless body. “Aris, what happened?”

He watched his sister act erratically, walking back and forth and arguing with someone he couldn’t see. He saw her smash something with a rock, he watched her writhe in pain from something he couldn’t understand.

“What are you doing?”

Her face was so familiar yet so foreign to him twisted in pain. Ral felt his hands shake as he watched her cry from it. Aris never cried. But now, in the middle of the enchanting circle, she cried strange glowing tears as she clutched her head, screaming silently. He couldn’t hear a single sound.

“Aris, why do you hurt?” he cried out, tears choking his voice. He should be there with her. She shouldn’t be suffering all alone, angry and afraid. He tried to reach out to her but she suddenly lurched back towards the crying infant on the ground. Ral clapped a hand over his mouth as he watched her reach towards it and made her hand dissolve into it.

“No!” He tried to scream at her. “Stop it!”

The dream blurred violently as if affected by his sudden wave of nausea. How could she? Did she really do that? What was happening to his sister?

He thought he could hear Melette again. One or two other voices spoke with her, arguing. They must have been speaking in Yscian because he couldn’t really understand it - perhaps if he concentrated… But his limbs burned and he couldn’t concentrate. The voices ebbed and flowed and Ral didn’t really have the motivation to keep track. They faded after a while, leaving him in peace, until one of the voices returned, clear and bold.

“My spirit seeks forgiveness.”

A whisper of words he immediately understood. Was it in Yscian? It was from a voice he wanted to hear. But in the back of his head he knew it wouldn’t make sense for him to say that. Maybe he should wake up and confront his problems, confront that voice, but Ral dipped back into the cool peace of unconsciousness.

He went back to dreaming of pine forests and snow covered forest floors. He heard crying again, this time of a little girl. Aris, as a child, crouched against one of the trees while sobbing. Aris never cried.

The one time she did was when Rask finally brought them to the Academy Island, across the Aortic straight from the Heart of Gaia. When Aris first met Professor Camaz in front of his strange lighthouse home, he greeted her by her new chosen name, ‘Aris’. When he put a large hand on her head and told her everything was going to be alright. That was the only time Ral ever saw his sister cry.

Back then, nobody knew what would be safest for them. However he had been determined to stick with Aris, his brave twin sister who always had his back. She was the one to stare adults in the face when they got in trouble for anything, she was the one to shroud him in her hiding ability when there was danger. When he cried, she would hug him and tell him she would make it better. Even with their parents dead, with Nilda dead, she didn’t shed a single tear and did everything Rask told her to do as they escaped to the Heart of Gaia.

But when he saw her cry like that in front of Camaz, he knew he couldn’t stay. He understood at that moment that she couldn’t cry because of him. Even if a part of him died that day he left his twin on that island, even if he missed her every day, he did it because he believed she could finally cry without him around. She needed someone like Camaz who would let her be more of a person and less of his minder. The sun left the moon so that she could glow on her own.

Then what were these dreams? Why was she crying so pitifully alone? Ral thought he had left her so she would be herself, so she could be free. What were these disturbing visions of her? He slowly made his way to Aris’s child form and knelt down beside her, reaching out to touch her shoulder.

Her head snapped up and a deformed face stared at him. Two large green gemstones were crammed into where her eyes should be, her face bleeding and split apart to accommodate the gemstones. She gave an unholy scream and reached out back at him, hands harsh and clawing at his skin as he scrambled back.

She kept screaming and spasming on the ground in pain as her face became more bloody and the gemstones glowed. He watched in horror as her form morphed into that of the Unseeing, the unnaturally white flesh and the red gaping mouth full of teeth except there the eyes were usually missing were now two gemstones rammed into the white skull.

The Unseeing brayed at the Gate that suddenly appeared amongst the trees. Runes sprawled out, glowing pink against the snow, dark fire swirling against a tree trunk. Another child stood next to the Gate, a child with long brown hair and liquid green eyes, the exact same green as the gemstones Aris had jammed in her face.

Ankle, the Part, gestured at the Gate and tapped their temples. They were now dressed in a yellow silk tunic with gold embroidery - Ral recognized it was something he used to wear to banquets as a child.

“The brother succeeds where the sister fails,” Ankle said, their words clearer than Ral remembered. Perhaps they spoke clearer in the dream world. “But it would be useless if you forget how.”

“I won’t forget,” Ral replied indignantly.

“Well?” Ankle gestured at the Gate again. Ral hastily got up and remembered the feeling back in the cave. Of the stillness, of wrapping his hand around a Solute. In a flash, he recalled Aris reaching into the body of the infant and he shook his head in disgust. Is that what she was doing, reaching towards the Solute of the baby? Ral remembered shattering the Solute in his grip. He was washed with another wave of nausea - was he killing something?

Ral opened his eyes to see liquid green eyes stare up at him. Ankle was by his side, staring intently at his face.

“Yes, yes, it’s like that,” Ankle said impatiently. “But try to get over it, okay?”

Get over it? He opened his mouth to argue but Ankle sharply gestured for silence.

“The Solute keeping the Gate open is already lost,” Ankle said, sounding impatient. “If you don’t shatter it, it will run out anyway and dissolve into the Solvent after a few moments. Either way, they are already dead. It is showing mercy to end it quickly.”

“I understand,” Ral said reluctantly after a few moments.

“You better remember all this when you wake up,” Ankle said, pouting a little. “I can’t believe you hear everything I say here. You people and your dreams. It’s so unreliable.”

“Well, it’s not exactly my fault you can’t speak in real life,” Ral said. He turned to glare at the Part but the dream shifted again and he could only hear the faint exasperated sigh of Ankle’s fading child-like voice.

“See! And there you go thinking of something else - why can’t you plan out your dreams? Uhg!”

He struggled to figure out if he was awake or dreaming. He dimly saw the rocky surface of a cave wall or ceiling, rough surface lit by a flickering torch. A cool cloth passed over his face. The angry voices were now hushed and at a distance - it seemed whoever argued by his unconscious form decided to take the fight out of the room.

“My spirit… seeks forgiveness,” someone whispered. “Please.”

It was that voice again. The one he wanted to hear yet didn’t want to hear. Ral remembered pale blue eyes staring coldly down at him, the memory searing into his heart. He didn’t want to remember. It’s why he had been asleep for so long.

He didn’t want to remember. His mind turned to dreams again and he saw his crying sister. His poor crying sister. Something was wrong. Aris never cried and he never dreamed of her like this.

This time Aris was grown up to her current age, crying her eyes out. Her tears were shimmering emerald green and stained her hands as she wiped them away. “I’m going to make it right,” she said between sobs. “I promise, Ralos.”

Ral’s heart clenched with a heavy sadness. He tried to reach out to his sister again. Why was the little moon crying so? Was this sadness hers or his own?

“I’ll make it right for us. I’m going to take back what’s ours.”

Strong headed Aris, always fixing things, always making it right. Seeing her cry again, Ral understood it was like the way it was back then at the Academy. He had to help her. Something was wrong and he had to help.

No more dreams. No more escaping. He had to wake up to his memories and his reality. Aris needed him. Finally Ral opened his eyes and weakly turned his head until he saw Melette and he rasped for water.