144: The Fate We Make
Chapter 144: The Fate We Make
CAYLA
Cayla’s fingers ran through the thick fur again as she listened to the contented rumble. Valesfen had finished explaining what he could of how things worked for him now. She wasn’t sure what to think of it.
“Does it worry you? Are you frightened of the new dreamers?” She hesitated before adding, “I think it might be possible for me to join you now, if you wanted me to someday. Not now, but some time in the future. I know I can’t play the Great Game yet.”
Valesfen let out a quiet snort of amusement. “Yet. You truly intend to join me fully, hmm?” He himself had encouraged trying it, but her casual implication that it would happen still tickled him. She reached over and ruffled under his chin, coaxing the enormous, ancient beast of power let out something akin to a purr.
As he drew back, Valesfen answered her question. “We are cautious. They understand our task, but like ourselves, they are uncertain why we have similar tasks with different philosophies. Their own Great Game has similarities to ours, yet does not affect us.”
“I know about Upside,” Cayla murmured. “You can mention it to me. I’ve seen it in my own Dreams and… other ways. A strange place.”
“That is something that we have decided to keep to ourselves,” Valesfen rumbled. “Perhaps not forever, but the world is changing. The people here do not need something else to confuse them.”
Cayla smiled and placed both hands on the huge snout. “I know. I’m just glad to have you back. Will you have trouble falling asleep again?”
One furry ear flicked, which Cayla saw as a no.
“It was frightening,” Valesfen admitted. Elder Dragons would rarely even speak to another species, let alone admit such a thing, but Cayla was practically seen as a dragon even by the few Elder Dragons she had met – though she was not sure they liked her relationship with Valesfen.
“It was like being tossed around by a stormy sea.” The dragon closed his eyes with a small flex of his wings in bringing up the memory. “I could not find anyone. I could not even find my way to waking. I was lost… like being a pup again. For the first time in a long, long while, I did not know what to do. No matter how I struggled, I only found fragments of dreams others were experiencing.”
“You don’t need to talk about it right now,” Cayla reassured him. “We have time for you to think about it, and speak with me. I had my own experiences at the time. Maybe they can help us understand what you went through… but it can wait until your next time awake. I know you’re tired.”
Valesfen bobbed his head with a low rumbling, withdrawing it from her touch to curl his tail about him. Like all Elder Dragons, he spent more time sleeping than awake… though Cayla had noticed his periods awake had been growing longer, not shorter in the last hundred years. The restless sleep during the restructuring of the Dream had left him exhausted, though. Her suggestion had been welcome.
“Rest… I’ll join you shortly, after you have had your Game.” Cayla smiled, then stretched her wing-arms wide, fighting off a little of her own fatigue.
In truth, she had also been sleeping more as she drew closer and closer to becoming an Elder Dragon herself. Part of her worried about it… she knew that she was the only vaskan who had a dragon Totem, so becoming an Elder Dragon that way was beyond understanding. All she knew was that the System had told her it was possible.
Now that the world had changed… maybe it was time, if an opening presented itself soon.
Cayla breathed in deeply, then stepped outside into the chill mountain air.
The small city below her, sprawled out on the mountainside, bustled with activity. This was the only place that anyone could even hope to see an Elder Dragon… but almost all were disappointed when they arrived. Valesfen did not take visitors, normally. He was the most involved in the affairs of the vaskan, of any dragon… but that only meant that once a year he would allow someone to ask him a question about classes and abilities.
Even that much had met with so much resistance from the other Elder Dragons. The once a year question had been a compromise, and Cayla knew her own existence was the only reason it had been allowed at all. Valesfen was not the only dragon curious about her kind… but he was the only one who called one family.
It was better than the family she had left behind, so many centuries ago.
Now there was a place where the two species could meet, instead of anyone having that terrifying moment she’d had as a youth. She had truly thought Valesfen had been there to eat her, at the time.
Cayla closed her eyes and breathed in deep again. The crisp, thin air was different from the city below, and she enjoyed it. The path up to her lair was long and arduous, and she liked it that way. No one visited without good reason… and she only had one expected visitor coming any time soon.
“I do hope you are coming, Culling,” she breathed. “It would be nice to see you, even if it isn’t the same you.”
Her ear twitched, hearing someone move on the stone ledge nearby. Who would be up here? How did they approach unbidden?
“He won’t stay, even if he does come.”
The voice was speaking even before she’d finished turning around, and Cayla laid eyes on another of the small blue people of Upside. An elf, she knew now, though she was not familiar enough to tell which type. The sudden and silent appearance, the fact that they were a species not found in her world… she knew it was one of the beings she’d met before.
“Akasha?” Cayla tilted her head uncertainly. “Or Duck?” Her mouth struggled with the odd-sounding names.
“Akasha,” the elf confirmed. “I prefer this shape, and I know you’re safe to talk to this way. Very few know we exist, but I think that will start to change now. Dreams will start to slip through.”
Cayla nodded quietly. “I know. I haven’t heard from Crown or Duck… but everything looks to have worked.”
Akasha looked away. “Yeah. Yeah, you won’t, not for a while. Crown and Duck can’t talk to us right now. They also can’t do their jobs. I can handle a little of it, but the dungeons aren’t nearly as managed as they were before.”
The wording made Cayla’s tail sway slowly. “Are they all right? Will the dungeons work without them?”
A shrug answered her. “I don’t know. Most of how the dungeons work is automated, and I can fix any of the minor problems. I can feel where they’re needed most, and there are ways to handle assigning someone to them, like you were to the City of Sound. But it’s not the task I’m supposed to be doing. I know more about them than any mortal, but I’m not the one who designed them.”
Taking a seat next to Akasha, Cayla settled there and reached out toward the much smaller girl, then hesitated to actually touch her. Akasha settled the issue by leaning closer and tucking her head in, letting the fingers sink into her wild mane of hair.
“We’ve already asked a lot of you,” Akasha mumbled. “But… will you help me if something goes wrong? Will you help me keep this place running while they’re gone? I can’t… keep appearing like this. I need to run the System. And appearing like this too often… I’ve started to realize it may hurt their chances of coming back soon. But I wanted to speak to you in person about this.”
Cayla rubbed gently along the head, brushing the base of the ears. Akasha’s response was a pleased chirruping noise and a tail sway.
“It’s nothing I wasn’t already prepared to do,” Cayla murmured softly. “It sounds like there will be some hard times ahead.”
“I’m trying to make it less difficult,” Akasha mumbled. “You and the Deep Watch are the only ones that can help me Downside. We need to keep the world running smoothly until father wakes up. And I don’t know how long that will take.”
The suggestion already made sense to Cayla. She’d lived long enough to know where Akasha was leading the conversation.
“I understand.”
Akasha’s tail flicked faster, and Cayla could feel the relief from the tiny being.
“Can you answer my question, though?” Cayla thought to return to her earlier musings now. “You said that Culling Hive – or whatever he is known as now – wouldn’t stay. How can you know that? Is that what you arranged?”
An ear dipped down, and somehow Cayla understood that the elf was denying it, even before she spoke.
“No, not exactly.” She let out a long breath. “My parents handled most of the requests, but I arrange a lot of them through the System. So no, it isn’t that. We… well, my parents at least, aren’t allowed to force mortals to do things. I’m not sure I can do it either, but I think there’s an exception if I’m enforcing it because of another… this is complicated. Let me try to explain what you actually asked.”
Her glowing emerald eyes wandered over to the city below, just watching for a long time while she considered. Eventually, Akasha had gathered her thoughts enough to provide an answer.
“The one you call Culling Hive had a different request, and just one.” Akasha looked upward at the sky as she spoke, her toe claws tapping on the stone below. “I don’t know your exact request, but it required three separate adjustments. It was complicated, but I liked it, and I think father did as well. I was um… figuring out love at the time. Seeing a vaskan and a dragon could be together made me think mine would work out with no problems.”
Cayla was tempted to ask, but she could already see it was a delicate situation. She stayed silent while Akasha shook off her thoughts and continued.
“Culling Hive only remembered being a minor worker in a hive, answering to the Queen.” The elf curled her tail around with a flick of the tip in her lap. “He’d grown more aware of who he was than most workers… that’s why he earned a chance to be a dungeon in the first place. He remembered what it was like serving someone so completely, and he hated it. So his request was to never be bound to another again.”
She paused, then added, “Forever.”
“Ah…” Cayla nodded slightly. “So he doesn’t want to be in one place, even for an old friend. Not that he remembers me.”
“He’ll think well of you, but he won’t stay.” Akasha perked her ears in an elfin smile. “Nothing can bind him, in any lifetime. He didn’t even want to remember any of his previous life, he just didn’t want any life afterward to ever be controlled. His power is unique… I designed it myself. Nothing can influence his mind to sway him, and no physical restraint can hold him. Or her, he was female once. Tends to end up male though.”
Cayla nodded again. “I see. That’s why it was so hard to pull him into that Dream Walk.”
“Yeah, he had to want to come.” Akasha huffed out a breath. “But part of him still feels you, even if he can’t remember. Souls don’t lose everything when they’re wiped. For him… he wanders, and he doesn’t like feeling restrained, but he still wants to be useful. It’s… a wonderful soul.”
Smiling to the strange creature, Cayla chuckled. “Perhaps he can help you as well. Should I ask when I see him?”
Akasha forced her muzzle into something like a smile, showing tiny sharp teeth. It wasn’t cute, but the effort was appreciated.
“Can’t hurt to ask.”