The Day My Dream Died

63 - Pressed and Passive

— 63 —

Pressed and Passive

//\\

Lise regrets reality. "I'm back." She says, grinding the words between her teeth. She lifts her head to look for her companions and regrets that too, feeling the strain in her chest. They appear before her silhouetted against a starlit tapestry.

Eclait says, "Well? What's going on?"

"Fiends inside The Dwelling."

Pelanea gasps, clutching at her coat, "What?! The whole city?"

"Just The Dwelling... The dome." She elaborates, realizing they are as unaware of the distinctions as she'd once been. "The cities around the dome are sort of a separate thing, but not entirely. It's hard for me to explain—I never ventured outside The Dwelling while I was here. I knew some dwellers here who would trade for their services in the outer city, so there's some interaction but they don't treat each other as one city for some reason, even though most of The Dwelling's population come from just outside it."

"I don't care about all that." Eclait cuts. "What's the plan? If there's fiends there, where do we go?"

"We'll have to go to Loh Corone—the stretch north of The Dwelling. That's as far as I've gone regarding plans."

"Let's go then," Eclait says, gesturing for Pelanea, "I'm hungry."

The wheels creak over the hard ground, cart-bed juddering painfully. Lise grits her teeth and keeps from complaining; she is as eager to arrive—if not for the same reason. As they near the city, veering north between the dark spires, they come to a road leading them in and the cart starts to roll smooth. Thank the land... or rather, thank the people who paved this road.

Pelanea grunts, "Are we going to be alright here? This whole fiends in the city thing seems more concerning than... well, how we're acting about it."

Eclait is quick to say, "You want to head home?"

"That's not what I'm saying but home's no safer, is it?"

"Speaking of," Lise clears her throat, "what happened in Kellean? In one of your memories I remember seeing some people dying of fiends."

"One of your memories...?" Eclait turns to Pelanea.

"Oh, um, I'm not the best person to explain, I only saw that much. If Bente... Well, The Kelle had everyone go to the caves early, but everyone still in the city—most everyone, anyway—died all at once. Me and some of Harmony's servants survived it... Oh, and you, of course, Lise. I didn't see it or anything though. I don't know."

Lise frowns, "You didn't hear of anyone else seeing the fiend that did it? It just killed and was gone?"

"I don't think anyone saw it. I don't know how fiends are supposed to act—is this not normal?"

"That fiends are killing at all is abnormal. It's happened in the past, from what I've been told, but before the outbreak in Opis Luma fiends were as often benignant as malignant. Memory loss, paranoia, trouble sleeping, anger, depression—those kinds of manifestations. Nothing so severe as what we've been seeing. They still killed from time to time when neglected, but a visit or two from a dweller and you're fine. Now I can barely protect myself from them. They've changed in some essential way, adapting and multiplying more rapidly than we can. If The Dwelling is bloated with them I don't know that there's any place safe."