Mind Over Matter
Episode 2 of Staring Into the Abyss
A Story of the Second Realm
By R.J. Davnall
Copyright 2012 R. J. Davnall
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Cover License Notes:
Cover distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 1.0 Generic license; based on a photo by Wj32
The Second Realm
Van Raighan's Last Stand:
Episode 1: I Can See Clearly Now
Episode 2: You Can't Go Home Again
Episode 3: A Hole In Her Mind
Episode 4: Touching the Void
Falling With Style:
Episode 1: Wild Hawk Down
Episode 2: She Stoops to Conquer
Episode 3: Falling Off the Face of the Earth
Staring At the Abyss:
Episode 1: A Knot Better Tied
https://itsthefuturestupid.blogspot.com/
Contents
Mind Over Matter
About the Author
Staring Into the Abyss
2. Mind Over Matter
Bile surged up Dora's throat. She gagged, but managed not to throw up over Thia's supine form. The Clearseer was fine, just sleeping off the worst of her burnout. Dora's stomach convulsed again as the Sherim sent a vicious twist through reality. She pushed unsteadily upright and turned away, a hand pressed to her belly. Beneath her feet, the world wriggled.
"You alright?" Wolpan's voice was as hard as ever, but at least she'd stopped sounding outright angry since Dora had saved her life. If only she'd gotten more careful to go with it. Her words swished straight out at Dora's back, silver blades of sound that Dora didn't even need to turn to see. She waved a hand in automatic self-defence, and the words splintered back to breeze.
The ground spun sideways as Wolpan gasped, and Dora dropped to her knees, gagging again. She fell forward, her hands pressing into soft, damp grass, acrid smells from her own gut filling her nose. A spasm ran through her, trailing a wake of chills, but the nausea subsided. She spat tainted saliva and sat up.
"'Ware the Gate!" It wasn't Wolpan or Thia who'd made the shout. The voice was smooth, controlled. It emerged from a Gateway a little way around the edge of the Sherim clearing, rippling into the air and dissipating before its traces of amusement could strip so much as a leaf from the nearest tree.
Keshnu's silver-haired head rose neatly from the opening, his ever-so-slightly wrinkled face following. His usual simple robe was creased at the shoulders by half a dozen straps; he carried a backpack, and, blessedly, water. Not the plastic bottles from the Sherim chamber in Vessit, but more modern leather. Well, however much better the plastic would have been, Keshnu would not be shifted in his insistence that the Sherim chamber remain undisturbed.
The water might go some way to settling Dora's stomach. She shuddered again as Keshnu let his Gate close. The Wilder turned and began to walk toward them, his robe actually darkening with moisture picked up from the grass. Dora tried to grin at him; this close to a Sherim, that level of detail amounted to showing off, and for a Wilder even showing off was showing off. Taslin more or less understood the concept, but only Keshnu had really mastered it.
His face widened with concern as his eyes met hers, though. She wondered how bad her smile must have looked. Keshnu ignored the startled Wolpan, stepped primly over Thia's legs, and came up to Dora. She took his offered hand and let him help her to her feet. He gave her a brief nod, turned his head slightly to one side, and said, "Good, you're with us. I was worried." His agitation showed as the words spiralled orange light into the trees.
"Worried?" Looking uphill towards the still-seething Sherim, Dora tried to sound nonchalant. Her voice cracked on the second syllable, though, the sound leaping from an indistinct green cloud to a shower of blue sparks as it passed her lips. At her feet, black spots peppered across the grass.
"You're blazing with Wild Power."
There was such concern in Keshnu's voice and kindly face that Dora actually glanced down at her sleeve, half-expecting to see it blackening. "Blazing?"
"Is the metaphor incorrect?" With his head turned to one side but his eyes still on hers, Keshnu almost seemed afraid. "You're aware that to us, and some Clearseers, your Gift appears as a golden aura?"
Like the fatigue-splotched nimbus around Thia, and the fainter one around Wolpan, glimpsed over Keshnu's shoulder. Dora hadn't yet told anyone about seeing auras. She nodded, glad of the opportunity to break eye contact.
Keshnu's pause told her he wasn't completely fooled, but he went on, "The aura is a symptom of the Gift's interaction with First Realmspace. Yours is normally bright, but not normally this bright. If it is true that humans can be blinded by very bright lights, I would caution any Clearseer to avoid looking at you with his Gift."
The Gift-Giver's words stayed gentle, but Dora could see the ripple they cut into the air. The Sherim was still active, still leaking power between the Realms after whatever it was Dora had done to get it open. She'd given up attempting to converse with Wolpan, so hazardous had it become to express any emotion within the clearing. Could some part of that be due to Wild Power pent up within her?
She flinched as Keshnu lifted a hand and cupped her cheek. His skin was dry, just warm enough to be welcome, his touch soft as he lifted her chin. She met his grey eyes, noticed they managed to glitter even in broad daylight. He frowned, pinching his faint wrinkles to sharp lines, then looked away to speak. "Do you feel well?"
Dora's stomach chose that moment to gurgle. She tried to keep from grimacing. Keshnu would know if she lied. "I've been having bouts of nausea and dizziness since we returned to the First Realm." Her words pattered across the grass in thick, heavy black droplets. "I don't think I've noticed anything else."
"No conceptual effects?" Keshnu's eyes narrowed, his head tilting ever-so-slightly to one side. Dora knew the face all too well; it was the one he called 'compassionate doubt'. Over the last week, she'd given him far too many opportunities to practice it, and the result was utterly human.
She looked away, then realised she'd looked straight at the Sherim. The tangled interlock of the ashtmer and ghiten stared back accusingly. To a human, they should be nothing at all, or at most a confusing jumble of intangible gossamers. Dora stopped her mind dead before it could follow through the thought that she could see exactly how the two things should come apart. She could even see where they'd lodged against each other instead of closing all the way back up.
"Dora?" Keshnu refrained from waving a hand in her face, but she could feel the edge that worrying had put on his voice.
She tore her gaze away from the Sherim, not willing to risk her words carrying far enough to interfere with it. "I... When we were leaving the Second Realm, I think I opened the Sherim the way a Child of the Wild would."
Keshnu glanced up at the Sherim and froze. His voice went flat and hard. "What do you mean?"
Dora stuttered, stopped, swallowed and tried again. "When you part the ashtmer and ghiten, do they spin..." No, that wasn't quite the right word. "Do they come apart like this?" She spun one arm around and over the other, and almost jumped out of her skin when her wrists banged together.
Keshnu's features blurred, his entire form losing definition as he absorbed the shock. A chill shot down Dora's spine, even as she sidestepped the razor edge of Wolpan's gasp. An inexperienced Wilder, new to the First Realm, might have such a loss of control if severely startled. For one of Keshnu's powers to weaken like that, Dora knew her interference with the Sherim had to be truly drastic.
The Gift-Giver's face rose back into focus,
skin grey, eyes wide and hard. "What exactly did you do?"
"I don't know." Dora felt her voice wavering, and forced herself not to cringe.
"You have been trained better than that, Dora." Keshnu's eyes narrowed, but not nearly far enough to make him look human. "I want your every impression. Every detail."
Dora floundered for the right words. Playing for time, she emptied her lungs, trying to blow her mind clear in the process. She hadn't even mentioned the Lentu that had followed them back from the Second Realm yet. There'd be trouble over that. Remembering the vicious blow with which she'd dispatched the creature finally brought her back round to the memory of it following them as they fled the Second Realm.
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes, forcing herself not to pay any attention to what she saw. "We'd recovered Thia and Wolpan had connected us to the Sherim. We were returning as fast as we could, but we drew the attention of a Lentu and I judged that we'd be unlikely to get through the Sherim without it catching us.
"My impression was of splitting myself into millions of pieces, each matched with an element of the Realmspace around us. The shards buried themselves in the cracks between ashtmer and ghiten. When I pulled myself back together... well, I have no impression of what happened, except that it got all three of us and the Lentu through the Sherim."
Realmspace rippled with Keshnu's stunned curse. Dora's