#cylion

Maybe not a waking nightmare in the traditional sense, but there is certainly something dreamlike about it. So unexpected that if Weasel was surprised, then Cylion himself is astonished as the world around the pair falls away. Though, he is still dimly aware of Weasel watching somewhere on his periphery, a muddling of light blue fog separating him from them. A forest of trees grows in between.

“What…What is this?” A meek, irritating whimper.

Cylion says nothing. Not for a while. Dreams when someone is asleep are one thing. A subject that is awake requires infinite more focus. The scene around them starts to come into a much sharper focus. The smell of long grass after rain, of leaves rustling in the wind, all fading in from nothing as he broadens his search, all the while the troll in his grasp squirms uncomfortably but cannot pry his attention away from the depths of that irregular eye. Lacks even the ability to shut his own to keep the depth from leering back at him. Into him.

“What are you doing?” He begs, scrabbling to get a good grip on the vice holding his head in place.

“Shut up.” Cylion sneers, the scene wavers for a split second. The shape of Weasel, the dining table, the outline of his kitchen, a phantom among the trees for only a tick and then gone.

“I’ll tell you! Please! They’re… They’re…” The plea dies on his lips. Again, Cylion is silent. This time a growl that turns into thunder all around them is all the reaction that pathetic display earns. Once he finds what he’s looking for, a wild grin spreads across his face. A hive, nondescript, really nothing special, looms high where once the entrance to the kitchen was. The recreation of the place was not intentional, but apparently rooting around for the details brings it to the forefront. A thrill rushes from his finger tips to his spine.

Having never navigated this aspect of his power before, the absolute control is almost enough to make him lose focus.

The dream flickers, solidifies again.

“You’re – You’re in my head!”

“Mm. Did you know that dreaming helps with the organization of memories, emotions, and the like?” A gasp, something overturned in the mind that makes the dreamer go rigid, then slack. The scent of lavender hangs in the air.

“They are said to contain fragments of the waking world, influenced by the humdrum and day-to-day, a consolidation of it all. Snippets pulled from the long term.”

The dreamer winces.

“Or, being organized for the long term. Oneirology is a fickle science. Hard to pin.” Ah, there it is. “I have long wondered what so-called dreameaters, of legends of course, might actually subsist on.”

An empty stare back into his eyes, the smell of lavender so heavy now Cylion scrunches his nose at it.

“Tell me. Where does Persep have my sister?”

“My – They’re at my… He has plans for my hive…”

“Mm. And where is that? Your hive?”

“I,” he shakes his head. “Where… I live. It’s…” He doesn’t know. He can’t remember.

Cylion’s grin borders on the manic as he releases his hold of the dreamer, metaphysical and otherwise, watches him fall unceremoniously at his feet as the thicket of the forest fades back into the kitchen.

~~~~

“She wants the doll to try dreaming?” Cylion scoffs, barely trying to hide his disdain. Little Friend glares at him from its perch atop Archie’s palm, painted eyes narrowed in defiance.

“No, not exactly,” the clown ventures, free hand scratching at his neck. “S’more like… Sendin’ him back to hers.”

I wish, Cylion thinks, fighting off the scowl that tugs at his lips.

“He comes from Nymira’s head, s’what Finala was sayin’. So he should be able to drop back in, dream logic n’ all that, yeah?”

“We don’t need him for that.”

“Right, cause you were just rarin’ to get in there yourself.”

Cylion bristles. They both know why he hasn’t visited her yet. Even beyond the risk of Persep intercepting somehow––what the defunct prophet touted as his main concern––it’s obvious what he’s really afraid of.

That Nymira wouldn’t have him.

Archie raises an eyebrow, lifting Little Friend as if in question.

Cylion sighs bitterly. 

“Fine.”

~~~~

“Someone’s cooperative today,” Persep’s voice infiltrates Nymira’s thoughts with an audible grin, condescending and smug. The godling frowns in response, retreating further into herself as she tries to grasp at something fleeting.

She knows what he’s thinking. He believes that death, temporary as it was, has shaken her.

It has, to some extent. It would do so to anyone, she imagines. But Persep believes it has broken her. That she has lost the will to fight.

She facilitated that assumption herself, actually, ghosting about the hive in a near-catatonic state and shrinking away whenever he approached. Nymira has played the part he cast her in, and she has done so diligently.

She doesn’t want him growing wise until it’s too late.

Until he gets exactly what he wished for.

~~~~

“Cylion,” the witch greets him, smiling as she swipes a hair from her face.

He nods in response, gaze flashing briefly to her own pupil-less eye. It looks natural on her.

“I’m glad you’re here. I think you’ll be a great help.”

He nods again as he sits, face tight.

Finala takes her seat opposite him, gently setting her fingertips on the table. Nymira’s doll emerges from the greying locks that cover her shoulders, traipsing down her arm to stand at attention between the two trolls.

He keeps his back to Cylion, tiny head angled back to gaze up at the woman with something he imagines must be hope or reverence. 

She guides Little Friend to lay down with a slow and delicate touch, and it glances warily at Cylion before allowing its face to take on the facsimile of sleep. Neither of them have forgotten how he chose to handle the thing when it was in his possession.

“Just try your best,” Finala instructs, fingers tracing a star-spattered sigil into the air. “Guide him to her.”

~~~~

Even Persep’s footsteps have become more confident, more arrogant. Nymira hears his passing through the haze of half-sleep, each tap roaring through her aching skull like thunder. She accomplished today something she had previously thought impossible.

A stale dream, something come and gone, found its way into her hands, plumbed from the depths of her mind and pulled into being with a process far longer than her usual. The artifact itself was nothing mystical, a pen much like those Marrie had gifted her just before her world caved in. 

But she had dreamed it four nights ago. 

Persep had been thrilled.

After testing thoroughly that the pen bore no special properties, he allowed her to keep it, a decision perhaps helped by the cautious way she held it, as if questioning whether this too could be used to end her if he so willed it.

Nymira knows she must fulfill her role to get her way. She learned that from a very young age. 

She doesn’t bother wishing that she had conjured something more conducive to escape. It’s enough that it reminds her of Marrie. Of home.

Holding the pen to her cheek, she allows herself to drift, down, down, down through a twinkling sea of stars that widens and envelops her in a shifting, yawning light. She squints in the brightness of it, raising a hand to block her eyes and finding the motion completely ineffectual. Even when she closes them, she can see only a blinding, radiant white behind her lids.

With nothing else to do, she allows it to wash over her, gazing into the flare until at last shapes begin to form within it.

She sees herself in shaky silhouette, tail fanned open at her back. The light pours from it like a window, and Nymira tentatively unfurls her own. As it opens behind her, that incandescent light begins to fade, melting slowly into a soft, pulsing glow that blankets her like a veil.

The other figure dissolves into a faint and delicate warmth, shimmering particles floating towards her to collect around her palms. In a motion all at once familiar and alien, Nymira pulls her hands apart and focuses between them, drawing from a well within her that she, too, lies within.

A wave of vertigo rips through her, and she cannot tell whether she is spinning or still. When her vision is once again steady, it lands on a familiar figure cradled in her palms. Little Friend blinks as if waking up, then turns to gaze at his creator.

~~~~

Somewhere far away, Cylion remembers to breathe.

“You mistreated my Sprout. You. Hurt. Her. And now Roatus,” his voice was distinctly softer on the Sprout and by the time it got to Roatus, it dripped with acid. “Has taken her away from me.”

“Us.” Cylion felt himself say, but it was hollow.

“Must I teach you to do everything? Pitiful thing. Speak up.”

“He took her from us.”

Favion growled.

It was beginning to rain, a low thunder that rumbled between the clouds like an angry and monstrous god lie just behind them; warning the little things below to vacate.

Cylion sighed. Incapable of dreaming as he was, he was clearly not immune to the siren call of the maladaptive daydream.

Though, he wondered, is it a siren call if it was something that the sufferer wanted desperately to gain some distance from? Probably not, but he didn’t want to dissect it. He wanted it to go away.

He turned his head up to watch the clouds crash against the previously blemishless sky, warring with the shine of the moons to cast the city into darkness.

Ailzea Roatus enjoyed rain immensely, he read that somewhere before, or maybe his father told it to him. As little as he spoke about their childhood together. So much did Roatus enjoy the rain that his congregation made a big deal of celebrating the first rain of a new season together.

Thanks to the Nymira-Persep situation, Cylion was there for that. Of course, he made himself scarce, lest he be guilty of some sort of sacrilege for having the audacity to join. Despite Archie having tried, for some reason, to invite him out into the courtyard for the festivities.

The light drizzle that started to paint the world around him was hardly worthy of a celebration. It made sense that he was alone on the fringes with only scraps to enjoy.

Though the rain was dismal at best, it dredged up that pleasant earthy scent that had a tendency to linger in the air in the warmer seasons.

“Petrichor,” he said to the open air as he moved in closer to admire the handiwork of the grounds’ gardeners.

A crack of lightning briefly brightened up the sky, illuminating the patches of radish sprouts he nearly trampled on in his aimlessness.

Crack! Cylion’s fist made contact with Favion’s face.

He’d taken advantage of being lifted to his eyeline and punched him square in the jaw, reacting unthinkingly to the anger that swelled from his chest all the way to his ears and fists.

The sudden movement took Favion off guard and he dropped Cylion in his shock, grinding his jaw again. This time no doubt in an attempt to get it working again.

Another growl assaulted the silence. He couldn’t tell whose chest it rattled out from.

Then he was swinging blindly in his rage. Another punch, this one in the chest, brought the behemoth to his knees. When they were eyelevel again, Cylion swung hard at his temple.

Favion tried to grab at his wrist, but he just swung and hit him from the other side.

Before he knew it, before his thoughts caught up to him, his ancestor was on the floor and bloodied.

“Us! She was taken from us! What claim did you have over her when we were the ones taking care of her?”

Something crunched under his fists, but he didn’t stop.

The garden was well taken care of, just like everything else on the grounds. How could this place exist on Alternia? Even just outside the steps of the church itself bad things, terrible things, happened, nevermind the rest of the planet. Did it really come down to Ailzea Roatus?

Cylion couldn’t fathom what was so special about him, he could sift through the sweeps worth of dreams he’d stolen from the patron for the rest of his life and still never come to the answer. Special enough for the Reverend to force into this life, for his own ancestor to stick around despite being killed by him at least twice. It couldn’t all boil down to his ability to take and return life.

He found cover beneath an overhang that jutted out of the side of a shed and watched the rain as it started to pick up, quickly saturating the soil as it struck. Out of nowhere, a pang of guilt struck him in the chest.

There he was just admiring nature while God knew what was happening to his sister. It was difficult to breathe around the idea. Persep Lycaon had his sister, and he was hellbent on doing what with her? Could he really force her into the mold that Cylion had a hand in building for her? It probably wouldn’t have been possible if he didn’t just follow orders like a good little soldier.

He rubbed a hand over his face and pulled away to find that it was wet, but before he could question whether it was from the rain or tears he didn’t realize were falling, the sound of squeaking drew his attention in the direction of the door to the shed.

It could have been a squeak, or maybe it was a hiccup, all Cylion knew was that the sound pulled him back into his mind — He was standing over his father, covered in his blood, and taking big heaving breaths. Beneath him, Favion was still, save for the occasional ragged breath that said that he was alive.

The source of the sound was Somnia, standing in the doorway to his bedroom with panic painted all over his face. He didn’t need to have pupils for it to be obvious that his gaze was trained on Cylion’s still balled fist, their father’s shirt gripped tightly in the other hand.

Anger thrummed all through him now, louder and louder. He could find out, once and for all, what the limits of this beast of a man’s mortality was. Give him back what he’d doled out for decades. Find out if he knew how to beg for a life that was over centuries ago. But Somnia was watching, unmoving, his big brother manhandle his father. Hesitant to make another sound.

Cylion already lost Nymira. Passed right through his fingers. He would lose Somnia the same way. Abruptly, he released his hold, not breaking his concentration on his little brother.

“I’m sorry.” He said after figuring out how to make his voice level, and stood up straight. “Can you clean him up?”

Somnia only nodded, stepping out of the doorway to collect their bloodied father from the floor.

Someone stepped out of the shed and was walking toward him, carrying a shovel and spade in each gloved hand. Sunflower printed, because of course they were. Just like her dress was.

Marrie Roatus.

“Oh! Sorry, did I scare you?” She asked, because he bristled.

“No,” he said, because that wasn’t it at all and they both knew it. “Bit wet out for gardening.”

“It’s good to move the soil and tease out the invasives while the soil is wet, actually! I was hoping to get to it before the rain got really bad. I think I can still swing it!”

Cylion nodded, turned his attention back to the garden.

Silence settled between the pair, save for the sound of the rain hitting the roof of the shed and ground.

“I can go.” He finally said.

“Why would you do that?” She beamed brightly, instantly striking the gloom of the evening out of the air. “Don’t you think you’d be happier giving me a hand?”

There was no helping that he cracked a small smile at the insistence in her voice. He wondered what that quality looked like when faced up to Nymira’s stubbornness.

Small wonder they gravitated toward each other.