The Wraiths of Will and Pleasure - By Storm Constantine Page 0,230

a sky blistered with huge stars, with the ammonite whorls of spinning galaxies, with great nebulas of purple and blue gases. Comets scrawled across the night, in a thousand different trails of light. The firmament was alive above her.

Before attempting to get up, she flexed each limb and mentally scanned her body for injury, but found none. If anything, she felt more alert and vital than she had for years. I am alive, she thought, and I am in another realm.

The landscape was immense, huge cliffs and pinnacles of obsidian rock rising all around her. They were so much younger than the mountains of her home plane, roughly sculpted, their sides raw and sharp. The sand beneath her feet was silver grey in the light of the stars, and it glittered with mica. There was no moon, but even so the light was brilliant. The air smelled of the same strange scent she’d experienced during aruna with Terez: there was no way to describe it, other than mustily sweet, but not unpleasant. At least she could breathe it. She hadn’t considered that important fact when she’d planned to come here: the air might have been toxic. Was this not another sign that she was meant to come?

She must look for Terez. Not for one moment did she think he was hurt or dead. She was in a deep valley that looked as if it had been gouged from the rock by a gargantuan machine or perhaps a glacier. The sides of the cliffs were scored with horizontal crevices. There was no sign of life, either of plant or animal. Lileem began to walk around, carefully scanning the ground. She wondered how, if the air was breathable, there was no life. It didn’t make sense.

She found Terez in a hole near to where she’d woken up. He was conscious and unhurt, but very disorientated. Lileem offered him an arm and he managed to haul himself out. For some minutes, he had to sit on the ground, breathing deeply. Lileem put her hands on his shoulders and blasted him with healing energy. Eventually, he reached up to touch one of her hands and said, ‘I’m OK.’

Lileem stood up. ‘We did it,’ she said.

Terez looked around himself. ‘Anyone else here?’

‘Doesn’t seem so. We have to find the opening in the ground we saw. It must be around here somewhere.’

Terez stood up beside her, caught hold of her shoulder to steady himself. ‘What is this place?’

‘I think it’s another realm of existence, another dimension,’ she said. ‘Look at the sky.’

Together, they gazed at the stars. ‘It’s beautiful,’ Terez said. ‘Amazing.’

They walked up the valley for hours and then the sun came up. That, in itself, was magnificent. It was an incandescent inferno, so much bigger than the sun they knew. It rose above the horizon like a god. They could hear it: the sound of a thousand furnaces igniting at once. Before it rose fully, they could see white flames shooting from its surface, but once it had risen above the mountains its light was blinding. The black cliffs lost their colour. It was like being in a void of white light. Terez and Lileem held onto each other’s hands, because they could hardly see each other. They had become like cloudy ghosts.

‘We should be burned,’ Terez said. ‘We should be blind.’

‘But we’re not,’ Lileem said.

It was difficult to keep travelling, because they could barely see anything. Strange how in this place, it was easy to see at night, but the opposite during the day. Lileem could feel the heat on her skin, as she could smell the air, but it was not uncomfortable. She wondered whether the journey had changed them somehow, made them able to withstand the unfamiliar elements.

At mid-day, it became impossible to keep moving. They kept bumping into rocks. Terez noticed a faint shadow to their right and when they went to it, they found a narrow cave entrance. Once inside, they could see each other again. They groped their way deep into the rock and then sat down on the sandy floor. It should have been as black as pitch in there, but it wasn’t. They could see each other quite easily.

‘I’m not hungry or thirsty,’ Terez said. ‘Are you?’

Lileem thought about it. ‘No. We should be. Neither have I needed to take a pee or anything.’

‘Nor me. I don’t feel hot or cold either. Something has happened to us.’

‘We’ll just have to hope it’s reversible.’

‘Of course we might