#perthax

Its piercing-bright eyes peer at me. I breathe deeply, with another brief burst of pain, and I feel it reach out, trying to connect the mask (that wasn't in its wraith-grip a moment ago) to my face.

I don’t need it.

You cannot channel my full power, it says, and in those syllables I hear curiosity warring with warning.

I'm only dreaming now. What's the harm?

The harm? If I didn't know better I'd say it sounded fond. I could boil your blood and scorch your bones to powder with no more effort than you'd use to crush an ant.

(I want it to hurt.)

(I do not want to die. But I want it to hurt so much that it drowns out everything else.)

You can't measure it out? Can't practice a little restraint? I thought you were still building your strength, anyway.

Orthax chuckles. Your reach exceeds your grasp.

I breathe again. It takes conscious effort, my dream resenting the imposition of plain logic even as the cavern of my chest feels tighter, a distant burning beginning to make itself known.

It occurs to me I would collapse, eventually, in the waking world. Perhaps I'd stay on my knees for a time. I wonder if it would find that appropriate. Probably not. It thrives when we are working. I believe it's been idle more than long enough.

If you do not stop that, I will have to withdraw.

My stomach remembers what it was like to almost drown.

NO.

Then heed my words.

...Fine.

The mask disappears, along with the distinct projection of a body. I don't know how to wake myself from here, or to move into less lucid dream. I don't even know where the impulse to do either comes from, really. Wasn't I trying to speak with it in the first place? Hoping to provoke a reaction? Now I've gotten one and my first instinct is to sulk?

The smoke curls around my arms as if moved by a breeze. A ghost of a touch, no real heat.

Why are you here? The eyes flicker for an instant. Not quite a blink at me.

I...don't know.

You are lying.

I'm not sure, then.

Speak what you know. Find the answer aloud.

A moment. Then: I'm tired of the nightmares.

Orthax waits. Any second now it's surely going to scoff at me. I'm not a child, this isn't a stormy night, and it is certainly not a god of soothing dreams or reassuring platitudes.

But it is here, for the moment, and every moment I'm doing this is a moment I'm not choking on a scream.

They're interfering with my sleep. If I'm to bring this weapon—

(you)

—out of the realm of theory, I can't afford exhaustion, or prolonged disorientation.

It makes a quiet sound that isn’t completely unlike a laugh. And what exactly do you think I can do about them?

That’s not a refusal. It’s far from a confirmation, but a sliver of hope bleeds into me nonetheless. I don’t presume to know. But in case you can do anything I’d be a fool not to ask.

It makes a careful, considering hum. You think that because I speak in your thoughts, I could alter them for you.

No! Gods, not alteration.

The smoke around me ripples; a strange stiffness to its movements, like it’s thinking of solidifying. Orthax’s tone is stiff as well. You are with a god now, Percival. A stunted one, perhaps, but a god still. Would you reject the gift of pleasant dreams?

I don’t want pretty lies.

(I don’t want you mucking about in my head any more than I fear you already do.)

And you don’t seem like the type that deals in...peace.

I am not. Victory, however…

I said no. Victory? You’d give me distraction from the work, a facade of progress that I might gorge on and forget about reality? I want them dead. Them, not their conjured likenesses.

A moment of silence reigns. Then another, more dreadful moment rears up, in which I wonder if it’s possible here to talk out of turn. I’ve no idea how divine patronage works, but if it’s anything like nobles’ expectations, I have certainly just warranted a punishment. Will it wake me, whatever pain—?

I chose well.

What?

You make an excellent adherent, Percival.

I don’t...understand what’s happening. If I were awake I would pace. As it is, I flex my hands. The motion registers too slowly. Not like I’m underwater. More like moving in a fever.

I only granted my favor, in bygone ages, to those of truly single-minded aim. I was not entirely certain you fit.

But you

I am hungry. I have spent a thousand years on the brink of oblivion and beggars, as you are well aware, cannot be choosers.

Oh.

But it seems that the tide begins to turn for me, now. With you.

Oh. It’s a stupid repetition. I should have something more to respond with. My face is warmer than the dream around me.

I can divert you from the nightmares. From dreams at all. You will rest in sightless, soundless, untroubled abyss. But you must trust me. You must let me help.

What do I have to do.

It’s not thin smoke anymore; the billows all around me sweep in close. Some twine around my limbs in concentrated ways no ordinary smoke should. Much of it hovers around my face. If I were breathing as before, I’d be suffocating.

I can still see Orthax’s eyes through the haze. The only truly solid points here.

Then the eyes disappear, but its voice hisses from the smoke. Its words and tendrils feel one and the same, scraping lightly along my skin: You will feel you are dying, at first. You must trust that you are not.

Do it.

I hear a quiet, eerie laugh, and the smoke pushes in all around me, and everything goes dark. More than dark; for a moment everything is empty, and I

something identical to empty, fading. Drowning.

I’ve never fully drowned, but I’ve come very close ... Close enough to—

I am constricted, body numbing—everything in myself crackles and pulls against it I am fading, fading and something in me screams

Then: Percival. Trust me.

I am held I am smothered I am not going to die.

I am not.

Almost there. Go still.

With the last of me, I see myself push to the surface of an ocean. But no sky, no stars reflected. No way up or out.

Be still, Percival. Rest.

It is antithetical to everything I am to close my eyes and sink, even with the voice pulling.

But I do.

Rest well.

***

The light from the window, glaring. I suck in a breath and come back to myself and

My sight, blurry but not bleary. My senses, flaring and ready. I sit up. No yawning, no body aches from all-night tension.

I feel as if I’ve broken a fever.

I feel excellent.

As I find my spectacles, I also find that I cannot stop grinning.

Well, Orthax. Thank you hardly seems like enough.

I know I can push through assisting the smith in record time, like this. When she closes the place early I’ll have her resources all to myself.

So I’ll make a breakthrough today, and we’ll call it the beginning of even.