Chapter XXIV: Stefi Ascendant
Perhaps you forget that it is our dream too. Or perhaps you have become so tainted by the very Nefairu you sought to contain that you no longer care to remember. Just know that it is also we who dream Feregana. Shizai’s voice roiled, rising into a roar like a flash flood. And we can change it too.
Serena only laughed, her voice growing darker every second. Stefi recognized it. Kardin. “Still, it will perish by the human’s hands, or my own.” A darkness slid across her eyes, turning the purple to the shade of night. “Forever to escape that wretched prison of a dream,” the dark voice in her said. “Trapped for an eternity by the accursed race of ferrets, this damned Furosan, you elementals. But no longer. The very Furosan who sought to contain me, her hatred now proves a gateway back into Awakening. You, Stefi,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger, “are going to die. No one will remember you. No one will mourn.”
Serena dashed forward at an impossible speed, slipping through the air as she drew a knife from a hidden scabbard at her back. Before Stefi could react it flashed before her eyes, silver death and-
“Rhaka!” Quicker than even Serena, the Otsukuné appeared from nowhere and leapt between Stefi and Serena. He tumbled a short distance and didn’t move, the knife meant for Stefi embedded in his neck.
“Damn dog,” Serena spat. “Accursed shard of Larnia.” She smiled, though the smile was Kardin’s, Nefairu given form, not hers. “A race whose death at last gave me form through the Kalkic human friend of the Final Fieretsi. Kill a race, no matter if it doesn’t truly exist, and the grief from one individual is beyond measure, enough to take form, to become strong enough to assault the bonds of Dream and Awakening.”
“What… what do you mean?” Stefi stammered, not quite believing that Rhaka lay dead on the grass, bleeding red upon green. Nothing was making sense. Nothing. A prison for Nefairu, the Otsukuné saved by the ferrets into Feregana? All she wanted was answers. And her friends back again.
“It means,” came another voice, hauntingly familiar and dripping anger, “Rhaka was no more a dream than a lingering spirit. The Otsukuné, Larnia given form, were saved by the ferrets into Feregana when the blue moon fell from Crepusculum’s sky. Such kindness, the Devil means, might prove to be their undoing. Kardin, Nefairu incarnate, drove the humans to kill them all, creating manifold grief in Sansonis, giving birth to itself. Nefairu, standing in opposition to Furosa, once the greatest threat to all free life.”
“Cédes? My Cédes, I mean?” Stefi gasped.
“Yes, dear heart. We are all here,” her Cédes said with a smile.
“Can’t let you have all the fun,” Sansonis said from beside her, holding Ifaut’s hand in one hand, the spear Mustela’s Fang in the other. For reasons Stefi couldn’t comprehend he was dressed in light armor eerily similar to that of Sol-Acriman soldiers. “Sounds like all this is partly my fault. That poor girl. I feel her pain.”
“Yeah,” Ifaut piped in. “We’re Fieretka, aren’t we? We can’t let you go on alone. Shizai and the rest called us back from the blackness to help, but they’re fading now.” Like Stefi and Sansonis, her clothing was inexplicably strange: battered leather armor on top of a terribly ragged shirt and skirt. Only Cédes was unchanged.
And we can’t let Maya have died in vain, Gemmie said from Cédes’s shoulder.
Stefi’s heart lifted, feeling hope for the first time since she’d seen them all collapse, supposedly dead, in her room. The despair, created by Serena at their deaths, evaporated at once. “Everyone,” she said, overwhelmed by emotion. “How did you… I thought you’d…”
“The elementals used their power to bring us here,” Cédes said. “That Devil forgets it is their dream too. They have used much of their life to bring us here, to this in-between. Rhaka gave his to save you. Let neither go to waste.”
Stefi looked to the elementals, now realizing they appeared weakened, drained, mere outlines of what they once were.
I feel it coming at last, Shizai said serenely. Sweet death.
The next second Serena lurched forward, clawed hands stretched to Stefi’s neck. A flash of starlight met her and hurled her backwards to the ground where she lay, stunned.
Pishti, the little ferret made of starlight said, his light pulsing ever stronger. I trust you know what to do. Take them to the centre. It is time. I shall call the others Home. It’s all up to Stefi now. Let her choose whatever feels most right.
Pishti said only one word in reply. Yes. He turned and hurried away, closely followed by Stefi and the remaining Fieretka.
Stefi stole a glance over her shoulder as she ran, catching sight of streaks of silver light falling from the heavens. What looked like ferrets of delicate glass materialized in Serena’s path, only to be smashed asunder as the Furosan raged through them. As more and more shimmered in her path, then were destroyed in showers of rainbow light, Stefi realized the horrible truth. The stars, souls of ferrets long dead, were sacrificing themselves to buy her time for whatever it was she needed to do.
Worry not, Pishti said, appearing to read her thoughts. They have been around for far too long. To them, what comes next is but sweet release.
Stefi found no comfort in his words but kept running, hoping her unusual clothes wouldn’t slip off. At last she could no longer see the stars flinging themselves at Serena; only silent sparks flying across the heavens.
Here sleep the elementals, Pishti said as the ground leveled out around them, revealing a sight very familiar to Gemmie.
They felt an unusual force hanging in the air, subtle reverberations and nascent energy that even Cédes could almost see.
“Who built this place?” Cédes asked.
Someone long dead from this world, the sandy ferret said as they skirted about a fallen column. Come. He led them to a collection of little shrines, ignoring their questions about the larger temples and line of statues in the distance.
“The elementals,” Cédes said in whispered awe. “I feel them here, forever asleep in Feregana, the forces that give our world real form.”
Not forever in sleep, my dear. Shizai’s voice came a second before her dull outline shimmered into existence, accompanied by the six others.
Release… Only Cédes recognized the voice as belonging to Raphanos, the burned little ferret with whom she had shared so much pain.
“What do you mean?” Stefi asked, her gaze flicking between the elementals and the sleeping ferrets in the shrines. Even before she asked she knew, even if the thought seemed unfathomable.
“You want me to…” She swallowed hard. “…wake you up and kill you?”
It would be a kindness, Shizai said.
“I don’t understand! You give Feregana, my Feregana, its form. If I kill you…”
Fear not, Shizai said with a surprising smile. Feregana doesn’t need us, princess. It needs you. Yes, we will die, but it’s what we want. Kill us, and you remove Serena’s influence over Feregana.
“No…”
She brought us here, she put us to sleep.
And with me and Uespera’s arrival, Utnali said, Feregana became whole, its own world. A dream, yes, and still dependant on Crepusculum, but complete. She used the Ferrets’ Dream, a world of pure Furosa, as a prison to contain the very Nefairu that made Crepusculum what it is now, created the Fieretsi to sustain the souls that sprang forth. Those were her mistakes. Nefairu, Furosa, two polar opposites that are reliant upon one another, necessary for the other’s existence. Put them together, add the memories of the old Feregana’s elementals, and not even she can predict what might happen.
“A true world,” Stefi whispered.
Hopes, dreams, Uespera said, and love. Things that fallen girl can’t and won’t understand any longer.
“But why kill you all? What will that achieve?”
Fairun answered. Freedom for Feregana. Kill us, and you take our power and give us rest. Only then can you hope to halt Serena, devil of an Alzandia past, and prevent all Feregana’s fer
rets from Awakening. Or you could Awaken them and end everything.
Suddenly Stefi felt faint, and it had nothing to do with killing the seven elemental beings that helped give her world its form. “If I take your power,” she said hesitantly, “seven elementals, what does that make me?”
Dreamer of Feregana, Shizai said. You and you alone. More than human, more than Furosan, even more than ferret or elemental. Now you can only end it. Soon, you can keep it alive forever. Should you so choose.
“Let me guess,” she said, her voice surprisingly dark, “I become a god.”
More or less correct.
“No,” she shot back, trying her hardest to shrug off the stares of her friends. “I don’t want to. Look at Kardin, Nefairu, whatever you call it. The humans called it a god. Look at all the evil carried out in his name! Do you think I want people to worship me?” she shrieked. “Do you think I want people to commit atrocities in my name? All I want is for everyone to live in peace!”
“Dear heart,” Cédes said, reaching out a hand until she found Stefi’s shoulder, “we cannot have peace as long as she persists, if I understand correctly. I am her, she is me. From other times and places, yes.” She leaned her forehead against Stefi’s and nothing else seemed to matter. The world about them fell still, the silent streaks of light all that watched. “I now know why I saw the future. As a dream of her, one who had seen it all before, I was remembering what had already happened.”
“Wrong,” Stefi said. “You’re different people, different times, places, events, lives.”
“I do not understand it either, dear heart. Or what you must do.”
“I understand,” Stefi said, pulling Cédes close. “I have to end this, become a god or whatever, save Feregana.” She began to cry, forehead pressed against Cédes’s, feeling the same hot tears welling in the Furosan’s eyes. “I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but I just know Feregana will be all right without me. It’s got you and the others.”
For the longest time she tried to take it all in, everything about her friend held against her: the warmth of her body, the unseeing eyes of red that shimmered and reflected her own crystalline eyes, the white hair that hung about them smelling soft and warm and reassuring.
“I’ll get rid of that Furosan,” she whispered. “Set the elementals free. But I ask one favor from you. Promise me you’ll do it.”
“Anything, dear heart.”
“Kill me before I can become something more than human, something that tries to end the Dream.”
Silence reigned, and Stefi wondered if Cédes had heard.
“Cédes?”
“I have promised. Remember when, long ago, I told you we were doomed to failure, that I would be the one to end your journey?”
“Yes.”
“Here we are. I thought the death of the Final Fieretsi was the path to failure. I realize now. With your death or hers there can be no bridge from Dream to Awake, the bridge to end the ferrets’ dream. Stop the other me, the real me, and set Feregana free from the path to death.”
“But if she dies…” Somehow, Stefi couldn’t bring herself to say aloud what she was thinking. If the Cédes from the world of Crepusculum died, then…
“I may very well vanish too. But remember, Gemmie and Maya existed alongside their Crepusculan counterparts with no ill-effects. And, if what I think has happened has come to pass, I am my own being. You see how different we are! Now go. Fate awaits.”
Pushing Cédes away with the greatest reluctance, Stefi stepped towards the shrines, each reflections of the element of the ferret within. So beautiful and peaceful, she thought. Too bad she was about to change that.
Me first, if you don’t mind.
Stefi raised her eyes to find Shizai beside her. Her watery form shivered despite the warm air.
“I… I don’t want to do this, you know.” She hoped her words held conviction, knowing the elemental could see through her just as well as she literally could her.
I want you to. Watery fingers found Stefi’s hands and held them with surprising strength. End this, show me one act of mercy, set my soul free.
“But you said you don’t have a soul,” Stefi said, squeezing the elemental’s hands. They felt strange, warm, like condensed sunlight.
I do, Shizai said, kneeling beside the shrine that sat in a pool of shallow water. Ice crystals gleamed upon its roof and it held a small ferret coiled in sleep. She has been here for a very long time.
Stefi could say nothing, knew she didn’t have to speak. Shizai had already told her how she wanted to pass on, to experience the release from countless lifetimes of pain. The best thing she could do was set her free.
Without knowing what she was doing, she knelt beside Shizai and slid her hands into the small space of the shrine. They closed about the sleeping albino within and pulled it into the open light. The little creature shivered in the fresh air, its closed eyes stirred, then it fell still. Dead.
“Shizai…” Before Stefi’s eyes the elemental froze, a flawless statue of glacial blue. The next second she shattered, leaving nothing more than a gleaming powder upon the breeze. Then the ferret in her hands became dust. An eternity of aging in an instant.
“She’s gone,” Ifaut whimpered, eyes shimmering like the watery elemental once had. “Gone!” She buried her face in Sansonis’s shirt, emerging only to breathe.
Cédes sniffed. “Exceedingly strange,” she said. “A moment of intense sadness. So why do I feel so happy?”
“It’s Shizai’s last gift,” Stefi answered as the same happiness bubbled up inside her. “She was happy, and she wanted us to feel it too. Death isn’t something to be feared, she’s saying, it’s a relief, a rest. Only something immortal can truly understand that.”
She stood up. The dust, the shards of a dream now ended, sifted through her fingers. “Who’s next?”
Me, Fairun answered in her breezy voice. Whatever comes next can’t be any worse than what the humans did, fracturing my being to power their stupid ships.
Stefi nodded and took the sleeping sable from a shrine encased in a whirling tornado. For a moment the wind surged about her, tugging disconcertingly at her clothes and hair, but then it too died, along with the ferret in her hands. And Fairun was gone just as suddenly.
Me next! a voice Stefi had never heard before sparked, crackling with excitement. A moment later it too was stilled forever as Stefi pulled Guratzu’s slumbering form from her shrine. The tingling numbness that shot through her arm took longer to shake.
Makora turn. The elemental of earth lumbered to Ifaut and nudged her with his rock-hard head.
“Oh,” she squeaked, pulling herself away from Sansonis. “Hello there.”
His sonorous moans could’ve been nothing but dooks as he rubbed his head against her legs, his grassy fur soft against her skin. She scratched behind his ears and he dooked even louder, sounding like a far off earthquake.
“He’s saying thanks,” she said and smiled. “But it’s really me and Sansonis who should be thanking him.”
Kalkic keep spear, he rumbled. Mustela’s Fang. Helpful.
“What do you mean?” Sansonis asked, examining the spear he had pulled from the elemental’s neck. Even beneath another sky it was unremarkable, little more than a shaft of wood topped with an iron spearhead.
Gift from Mustela, ferret in the sky.
“That… didn’t quite answer my question,” he said.
Sleep now, was the only reply.
Still turning the weapon over in his hands, he watched as Makora stumbled and melted like water into the earth. Stefi had set him free.
“That leaves Raphanos,” Cédes said. Not so long ago she would’ve been willing to be done with the ferret of fire, whose own grief fed off hers. Now the prospect of his departure brought a sadness that was all her own.
I am sorry, he said, his patches of burnt skin flaring momentarily like sunspots. I am sorry for my temper and the dead little girl. I am sorry I had no t
ime to make it right.
“It is all right,” Cédes said. “I am not blameless myself.”
It was a lot of fun at times, though, wasn’t it? Raphanos said, surprising Cédes. Thank you.
Cédes nodded at Stefi, who reached into the flaming shrine and removed its ferret, a small sable covered in shiny burns. A second later both ferret and elemental were little more than ash.
“All that is left,” Stefi said, heart heavy with the forces she had just removed from Feregana and taken upon herself, “is Dawn and Twilight. It’s funny,” she continued, turning her dusty hands over before her eyes, “I don’t feel any different.” Somehow she’d expected more, flames to burst from her hands, lightning to flash about her. Nothing.
“And that is a good thing,” Cédes said. “Still the same Stefi we all love.”
“The same Stefi that will end the Dream!” came another voice, dark and menacing. Serena. The possessed Furosan stumbled forward. Twinkling shards of starlight fell from her body like broken glass, all that remained of the souls of ferrets long dead.
Stefi looked to the heavens. Empty. Every one of them had perished.
Smiling at Stefi’s shock, Serena waved her hand and an unseen force threw Sansonis and Ifaut from their feet, bringing them crashing down upon the last two shrines. Sansonis fell on Uespera’s, Ifaut on Utnali’s. Neither moved.
“Utnali! Uespera!” Stefi cried as the final elementals wavered and died, their physical bodies broken by the fall of her two friends. “Ifaut! Sansonis!”
“Kardin!” Serena chimed in. “And now, Stefi, Cédes, Gemmie of Farān, you die.” She flashed forward, and the last thing Stefi saw was blackness.