71
~ PRESENT DAY: JOSLYN ~
Once, what seemed like a lifetime ago, Joslyn had battled a nightmare come to life on the side of a mountain. She had defeated it, but it injured her first, and that injury dragged her into an entire realm of nightmares. At that time, Joslyn was trapped inside the Shadowlands only for minutes. But she’d experienced it as months.
She’d spent those months on the run, fighting yet more nightmares, perpetually caught in battles she could not win.
And the monsters she had to defend herself from sometimes took the faces of those she loved. Ku-sai. Tasmyn. Anaís.
Tasia.
Despite knowing nothing of the Shadowlands back then, some part of her – instinct, perhaps, or the dormant dreamwalker within her – understood how to claw her way back to the mortal realm. The memory of Tasia had been her anchor, her doorway back.
Now Joslyn was trapped inside a realm of nightmares once more, but this time she could not leave, because she’d hidden Tasia within the nightmare for safekeeping. If she woke herself again, she feared she would not be able to get back. And Tasia would stay trapped in the Shadowlands forever.
Defeating Rennus had not been easy, but ultimately Joslyn had proven the better dreamwalker and the superior sword master. But from the moment the deathless king had manifested inside Linna’s dream and attacked, it had been all Joslyn could do to stay one step ahead of him. Just like the time Joslyn had been injured by the undatai on the side of the mountain, she fled from nightmare to nightmare, sometimes forced to fight for her life, sometimes managing to hide for hours or even days before she was discovered and fled once more.
Relative hours. Relative days. Who could say how much time was passing in the mortal realm while she was here, lashed to her nightmares.
How was the King doing it? Joslyn hadn’t thought the ancient man had the strength to sustain such a battle within the Shadowlands. On the other hand, Linna had told her that years had passed since the battle in Pellon. Evrart had always said it would take years for the undatai to recover enough strength that it could create a new form within the Shadowlands. Perhaps that was why he had appeared inside Linna’s dream. Perhaps enough time had finally passed that the deathless king was now sufficiently strong enough to fight Joslyn himself instead of sending someone like Rennus to do it for him.
But the passage of time wasn’t anything Joslyn could be certain of anymore. Not here. She’d been a Shadowlands refugee ever since the deathless king appeared inside Linna’s dream, and to her, it felt like years. Maybe as long as a decade.
Joslyn could only pray to the merciful Eirenna that it had only been that long in the Shadowlands, not in the mortal realm.
These were her ponderings as she sat beside a desaturated campfire inside a small, plain q’isson, nursing a wounded leg. She was accustomed to more elaborate q’issons, constructed from her imagination or that of the deathless king’s. This one was noteworthy for its very lack of noteworthiness – a blank canvas of a dream, its only feature the fire. And even the fire had the color of something faded and tired. The place reminded Joslyn of the q’isson Ku-sai had left behind for her, the place where he’d managed to hide the sword together with an echo of himself to protect it. Would she have to do that herself one day, leave a ghost of herself inside the Shadowlands for Tasia or Linna or Milo to find, long after her death?
It was a skill she needed to learn, because she was fairly certain she was going to die here. There were two q’issons Joslyn needed to preserve after her death – a place like this, where she would hide the sword and hope that Linna would one day find it and finish the deathless king at last, and the q’isson where she’d hidden Tasia for safekeeping.
“Tasia.” Joslyn’s voice sounded unfamiliar to her own ears – strained, exhausted, and hoarse from disuse. Yet it felt good to say that name, that precious touchstone that had nourished her for all these long years, so she said it again: “Tasia.”
Joslyn stretched out her leg towards the fire, rubbing the place where the gash had almost healed. Fortunately, she was still able to heal herself; it was a matter of holding the mind just so, remembering that what her eyes told her was there wasn’t necessarily the truth. But lately she had grown tired. So, so tired. That made the healing come much more slowly.
She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d slept for more than an hour or two at a time. One would think sleep would be unnecessary in the Shadowlands. After all, her body here wasn’t actually her body but a dream of a body. Joslyn’s true body, the body in the physical realm, was still fast asleep inside the palace in the city of Persopos. That should have given her all the sleep she could ever need. But apparently it didn’t work that way.
“Are you well, Tasia?” Joslyn asked the empty q'isson. She cleared her throat, trying to push the rust from her voice. “Have years passed for you, too? Do dreams of small men watch over you?”
Joslyn could feel the q’isson where she’d hidden Tasia tickling at the outer edge of her mind. The q’isson was certainly still intact, but Joslyn had no way of knowing if Tasia still inhabited it.
She’d wanted to go there many times, if only for a minute or two. She would visit Tasia, reassure herself that Tasia was still there, still safe. As long as Tasia was safe, then this years-long game of hide-and-find with the deathless king had meaning. But if Tasia was gone…
Joslyn rubbed her leg. No point thinking like that. No point thinking about visiting Tasia, either. Wherever Joslyn went, the deathless king or the shadows he sent after her eventually found her. Which meant that if Joslyn went to Tasia, she would almost certainly lead the king right to her.
“He has our bodies already,” Joslyn told an imaginary Tasia. “He’s probably strong enough to possess them both by now. But he wants our minds, too. He wants to create two more just like himself: Half-human, half-undatai. We have to be strong, Tasia. We cannot let him have us. The longer we stay out of his reach, the longer we protect mankind.”
Joslyn traced the runes marking the flat of Ku-sai’s blade. She’d tried to defeat the deathless king countless times during the years she’d been in the Shadowlands, but each time, he overwhelmed her with swarms of shadows before she could finish him, and she had been forced into retreat. They were locked in a never-ending stalemate.
She couldn’t beat him. And yet she couldn’t give up, either.
Emotion swelled in her unexpectedly. Joslyn dropped her face into a hand and let out a single choked sob.
Tasia was a hole in her heart that nothing filled. Joslyn missed her beyond words, longed to see her face, to feel the touch of Tasia’s fingertips upon her skin.
“Please hang on,” Joslyn whispered to the Tasia of her imagination. “I will come for you.”
I hope.