The Perfect Nightmare

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  Beyond the brightly lit caverns of my mind I did not dare venture. They say it is unhealthy to dwell in the dreams of stillness and forget reality. I think it is the other way around. My mind has always been sheathed in illusion, and my parents found it puzzling at first. Some said it was a birth defect, that my parents had been too powerful, and their magic had destroyed my spirit, destroyed my sanity straight from the womb. In my many short “coherent times” I often wondered why they speculated such things when my twin siblings had been released from the watery prison in my mother’s belly unscathed. Or so it seemed.
  Few knew of their natures. They hated each other, were narcissistic and coveted the power of my parents’ positions. In one word they were psychotic. Many talked about the fast deterioration of my sanity when they said nothing about my siblings. I had seen my bother and sister torture each other as well as others of their generation. I had seen if from the very beginning, even while in my suffocating birth-grave. My mother, how fondly I remember her, had been one of the only kindred spirits to me. She termed me special, she never knew how close to the mark she’d hit, even as I took the throne.
  Ah, my mother . . . I think she was one of the only ones that loved me in the end. My father was cold and unyielding and I think I greatly disappointed him. There was many a time when I was alive enough to understand their words. My mother did not want my twin brother and sister to inherit such different thrones, but my father dubbed me “damaged”. He knew I would always succumb to the sweet call of oblivion. He knew I preferred to be numb more than to feel pleasure and pain at the same time.
  Though there was love, I don’t think any one really understood me until the day I met Sevitan. He had the same tendencies as me. Among them, the inclination to escape the world of reality where everything was so crystalline bright to a world of white shimmering towers, gold glimmering autumn fields and snow that sang purity. We made these worlds, so startling in their beauty compared to the stark ugly truth of reality. No one ever understood how to make such beauty except for my dear Sevitan. He would spin webs of the most wretched cities great enough for gods and offer them freely to me with no hidden agenda. Ours was affection strong and true. Not many knew of the fantasy we communicated. I remember the night I had met him. He had unknowingly stumbled into my shattered truth, and terrified, he tried to fight his way out, only to nearly get himself killed. It was weeks before I walked my illusionary fields of harvested snow to find him shivering, half-dead in my world, comatose in reality. My power was greater than anyone but Sevitan or I had ever realized and I felt an instant regret for having called him into my magic, even if I did so without knowledge. He looked so beautiful, sprawled haphazardly in the silver grains of snow. He was very weak, I remember and would not respond to my voice, which, my brother had more than once remarked, could tear angels from their god if I had wanted it to. I reached to touch him and he awoke. At first he didn’t understand.
  You are the master of illusion, with the power to warp fate herself, he had said to me, and yet, you create a nightmare.
  It took him a long time for him to understand the beauty of vicious truth. It was true, I had created a nightmare. Scenes of blood and glass and fangs and things that make you tremble in the night, and yet it was a nightmare I had spun, just as a seamstress with her spindle. I had never known why these sights of death and the ruthless truth of life had weaved themselves in the halls of my mind so strongly. Nor had I known why cruelty, in all its injustice granted me peace, but they were the ladies that called to me, and I rode their power as effortlessly as a piece of cotton caught on a summer breeze.
  It had not always been so. At first, the glare of my fantasy had caught me off guard and the first time I nearly drowned in my own power, just as Sevitan had almost done. There are many levels to consciousness but there are only four we need concern ourselves with. Humans have a mind for only two the ego and id, the conscious and subconscious. These are the main two, the sleeping and the wake, beyond sleeping is the world of my people, humans would call it insanity, though, that is not even close to the truth. Beyond the veil of my parents’ magic is The Void. Humans can not accept The Void; it is something they are programmed to ignore. The live perfectly ordered lives and The Void is just the opposite. The Void is chaos, the chaos of every creature’s existence. Few succumb to it, none have tamed it, but there are those it shelters. There are those it lets mold it. This is where I make my home, I am charge to The Void and The Void is my home.
  The Void scares many, being as it is, but if you can learn to make peace with chaos - learn to see beauty in disorder - then you may learn to love The Void, and then, you may begin to learn how to use and shape The Void. The Void is very fickle, it calls to some so strongly the call can not be ignored, resulting in nearly killing the inhabitant of The Void the first time they land upon in obsidian shores. My first time scenes of death met my eyes. Blood splattered all over the black glass as I choked on my own visions of what could be. I saw a war that shattered the glass on which I lay. The fall would have not been so bad, had I been older, but I was young, and fought for my life, which ironically, nearly killed me. I saw eyes, silver-blue staring at me blankly, staring at me dead. I saw my brother’s graceful form broken, tossed to the floor with my sister, a shattered soul above him. I pushed the visions away. I sought solitude, numbness, black oblivion, a white fortress to hide me from my visions, anything to stop the sights I was seeing. One by one, I saw my loved ones fall, I could not understand, the harder I fought, the more The Void wanted me. I was an innocent . . . then.
  Now I understand, never fight The Void, she becomes cross when she does not receive her charges. Many things can call a creature to The Void. Sometimes The Void herself wishes an audience with you, and then other times it is soul calling to another, and then, even rarer still, it is a lost soul being called by another’s song. The latter was what happened between Sevitan and me. He was lost and heard my song. My haunting song of loneliness that my soul sings out over the shattered cries of The Void. So far, I believe I have made it farthest into The Void, The Lady favors me, for which I am grateful. We have a tentative relationship, The Black Lady and I, we care for each other. She keeps me from harm and I make sure She is never lonely. I never fight her calls, for She is my one and only master and my privileges as her subject are far greater than that of physical freedom. She offers me protection, offers me a hideaway, offers me love and companionship, should I need it. Few dare intrude upon me here, The Lady is not merciful to many and I have had only two draw me out of The Lady’s tight clasp before. One was Sevitan and the other . . . Well, that is not important now. She nearly killed Sevitan that day, as a warning, but The Lady favors Sevitan too and spared his life. She understood he had his reasons.
   My sister had been planning an uprising and had finally succeeded in marching against my parents, and me, their heir, albeit a mentally reclusive one, but heir, none-the-less. Sevitan drew me from The Dark River just as Aaralyn burst through the doors. It horrified me to know this was one of the moments I had seen when I was four. I loved both my brother and my sister, but Castien had always been the one I cherished, in secret. Aaralyn was spiteful, and while I loved her, I could not stand her self-righteous sermons. She was the one leading an uprising that could kill us all, not my brother. Together, my parents had the power to control her, however, my father was off in some distant land negotiating trade terms. I had really never paid attention to his absences. I knew I would have to deal with it. I had not seen my sister if 3 years, but I would have to deal with it.
  I first went to find Castien, to make sure that he was safe. I told him to stay out of the way, that Aaralyn was out for blood. He did as told, having bound himself to me several years before. I was always sure this was why he was among the creatures that could reach me in my own dream fortress. There are times when I am grateful for Castien’s eternal loyalty and then others I wish I would have listened to my heart instead of my head.
   Aaralyn broke into my room first. I knew she had intended to slaughter me in my unconscious wake. The cowardly way, she should have known better. The Void is as dark as it is light. The Void may create life, but it can also destroy it. I summoned My Dark Lady so that she might have given me the courage to kill my sister if that became necessary. And then my world went dark with the single-minded fury of a lover who has heard her loved one’s call. Sevitan let out a shriek like a grounded hawk, a shriek of fury and pain, a shriek telling just how lowly Aaralyn was.
  The Lady called out to me furiously as she felt her charge fall. She must be stopped! It was the first time I had heard The Lady’s melodic voice, but had no time to ponder it. Our pain merged in a blaze of frozen fury as I realized Aaralyn was no longer my sister, but some sort of foreign monster. She had killed him, killed him to get back at me for something that was not my fault. She had wanted the throne, I had not. I let out a haunted shriek of despair that strengthened when The Lady cried out with me.
  Our beautiful Sevitan! we shouted wordlessly, bonded as one by our pain and rage, she has slain you! Your beautiful life was not hers to take and she shall pay!
  The Lady cried out within me again, her fury stronger than mine. It was then she used me, and I let her, for even though my beloved conjuror was gone, I did not think I could summon the hatred to slay his murderer. My grief was too much and I watched as my offensive powers slammed against my sister at full force, crumpling her body to the ground. I fell to my knees as The Lady retreated within me and I begged her to stay.
  Stay, be my fury, protect me from my pain, I am your charge, Lady, please protect me! I stood shakily, groping through the dark haze that grief had left on me and stumbled upon the lifeless broken from of Sevitan. It was then I realized as I dropped to my knees and saw my sisters scarred soul staring down at us in distaste, it was not Castien I had seen surfing The Lady‘s dark waves, but my beloved Sevitan.
  He had been stabbed twice, I saw as I inspected him. Both wounds appeared in the stomach, the most painful place anyone could take a wound. I reached down to touch his ashen flesh, accidentally getting his blood all over my shaking hands. I stared at the dark red liquid that covered them and I realized I no longer wished to live.
  “Coward!” I screamed at the soul who now smiled in self satisfaction. She had not reached her full objective by slaughtering this beautiful, broken innocent, but she had come close enough. “I hope you rot in the blackness prepared for you! Sevitan was a Favorite, The Lady will not let you off easily!”’
  Take me! I whispered to The Void and I found her compassionate as I realized lay on the black marble floor of the guarded fortress she would keep me in. No light, no sound, no sense, only black, only oblivion. The sweet numbness The Lady grants me. We share our grief and build great red towers in his memory. The Black Lady in my only friend anymore. They had all let him die, I had let him die.
  No, we both pushed the memories away. Lost for 12 years and still so much pain, how could one memory hold so much pain? The Lady forced the memories away from me as I moved another tower into place, screams of torture coming from them. I smiled, she had gotten what she deserved, an eternity of pain without oblivion. They would always pay for taking a favorite. She would pay for taking our favorite. Suddenly, I found myself wondering the difference between My Lady and myself.
  Nothing, a tragically exquisite, slightly familiar voice whispered. We are one now.