Bereft: Foretold

43 | A Dream's Guardian

A crushing weight attached itself to my legs and I was brought to a sudden stop. Thin, gauze-like restraints wound about my calves and knees, one branch of it fitting around my neck as crooked appendages clutched at the silver chain. 

Though the loa pried at the links, the chain held fast.

Much like the void itself, loas didn't conform to a specific shape or idea. They were amorphous, and typically chose to reflect a spirit's interpretation, not unlike an Absolian's glamour. Cuxiel had told me the loas were translucent in their natural form and I was displeased to see he was correct: I could only see the vaguest of outlines against the blackness of the void, and the sheer size of the creature was daunting.

The loa held my spirit tight as it spun silent circles in my vicinity. It reminded me a of a deep-water fish gliding in the dark of the ocean's lowest reaches. It was visible only by the arbitrary glints of light that bounced off its dim scales.

"What are you?" it said in a voice like a whetstone sliding across a dull blade. The sheer dissonance of its words was a jarring nightmare that pierced my spirit in places I hadn't been aware of moments before. I grunted in pain.

It pulled and yanked at various parts of me, and at the chain. It obviously found the line of links an object worthy of contention, and was more interested in discovering how to rip it apart than it was in me.

I thrust my hand between the loa's inspecting tendrils and the links, dissuading the creature's interest. It hummed.

The loa adopted a more humanoid form, the tendrils taking on the aspect of bladed fingers, the epidermis becoming tangible and partially scaled. Where there'd once been suggestion of presence now rose a manifested being that resembled the Baal.

I glared at the shadows still pinning in my spirit place, their origins seeming to come from the nothingness below my halted feet. It was not the Baal who was here in the void. The loa managed to capture an image of him, an imperfect rendition based upon my skewed perceptions of the King Below. As such, the loa was too tall, too large, its talons bared swords and its smile unveiling a mouth crowded with too many teeth.

"You fear this one." It drew its talon across its face, stretching the discolored skin.

I would have snorted, had I known how. 

It lifted an arm and again tapped its malformed fingers against the chain. "What is this?" the loa inquired, its curiosity palpable. As creatures of energy, loas held no conception of morality or emotion, and viewed one another as predators. They fed on the essence of "feelings," the energy of magic, and each other. The Dreaming Children had named them "the Dream's Guardians," because the loas had once served to return the essence of the Children to the Isle—back when the Isle existed.

They did understand survival, however. Cuxiel had made that clear when we'd discussed the subject of the loas, and he'd warned me against hunting them. The idea of capturing and consuming one had been intriguing, but they knew of the Sins now. They were wary.

"It keeps this one together. It holds it all in." Again the nails tapped against the chain's physical form as the loa sought to break it. "If it were not there, I could eat this one."

I bristled, but kept my anger in check. Strong emotion was what the entity sought, and if I proved too difficult a target, perhaps it would abandon me in search of an easier meal.

The loa went to touch the chain one more time and I wordlessly covered it. I was fortunate to have one arm free of the loa's bindings, though it could have pushed it aside if it'd truly wanted to. 

A shiver ran through the creature as its shape darkened and distorted again, parts of its body losing opacity as it siphoned images from the memories that floated upon the surface of my mind. It became Balthazar, and like the image of the Baal, it wasn't quite accurate.