92 Zi'da 718
Through the door, a portal of writhing tentacles, Zarik slid past a tunnel of ichor and into another dreamscape. He fell directly into a hedgerow, leaves fluttering outward like butterflies as he crashed into the thin branches. The biqaj rolled aside, landed on an undulating grass, and sprinted. He didn’t pay a single iota of thought to the unusual formed creatures that meandered around the courtyard grounds. This was not his dreamscape. It was not Kasoria’s. It was some random person, and he wasn’t about to stop and look, no matter what Mister Kiwi had taught him about quiet patience. Not while he had another dreamwalker hot on his heels.
In the sky, past the portal, the Eidisi walker followed. Skin of blue and fur cloak floating like a shadow behind the man, Zarik didn’t need more than a glance to know he didn’t have time to linger.
Zarik grabbed onto the fabric of the dream, tore open a door, and slid through it in the hope that the Eidisi would not follow.
Such hope was misplaced -
- as it had been for all the other attempts to rid himself of his stalker.
The Eidisi slipped past the torn dream, grabbed onto the biqaj’s shoulder, and stabbed the metal end of what was known as a Videnese extractor into him. Hooked clamps embedded into the curve of his muscle like the talons of a hawk. Zarik swore, took hold of the taller man’s wrist, then yanked him through to the Veil. They stumbled together and he felt ether melt from him and into the vialed container. Whether true or not, he didn’t know but he reached to remove the implement from his emereal skin.
“Not so,” said the blue-skinned entity. He blocked Zarik’s attempt.
Yet the biqaj was tired of this. He was weary of the chase and they were not in the physical world, no… they were elsewhere. Zarik grabbed the fur cloak with both his hands. He left the extractor to its painful clamp on his shoulder, then he pulled the Eidisi to the side. The other man didn’t seem to expect the direct aggression. They crashed into one of the tables - however it appeared to the Eidisi within the Veil, Zarik didn’t know nor care - and he picked up one of the quills. He stabbed it into the blue skin just under the ear and when he pulled it out, light brightened around them.
Away from the Veil, the two landed in a bank of icy snow. The Eidisi removed the extractor, a hissing snap sounded from the removal, and then he started to crawl along the ivory dune to get some distance from the increasingly desperate mage. Zarik realized where they were. He'd finally found an advantage over his pursuer. This was the Eidisi’s dreamscape. He grinned slightly, at the small sense of victory, then took after the other man.
“You chase me all night,” called Zarik, in a mocking tone. “Then I come here and you’re going to leave finally?”
“I got what I wanted,” sneered the Eidisi over his shoulder. His eyes narrowed in a glare. “You can go about your dour life again now.”
Zarik lifted through the sky, his gossamer wings spread, and he flew in a darting pattern to land roughly in front of the Videnese man. “If I ever see you again…”
“You’re in no position to make threats. You’re inexperienced here. You know not what you contend with.”
“That may be, but it still stands,” insisted Zarik. “If I ever see you or with my…”
He hesitated, unwilling to refer to Kasoria as he wished to. Regardless of his hesitation, however, the Eidisi filled in the blank for him: “your branded?”
The leering smirk that thinned the nearly lipless mouth filled Zarik with a certain frustration. He swiftly reached and swiped the extractor from the other man. He lifted in flight, through the snowy air, with the implement and whatever of his that had been collected in the vial. Whatever it was, it shone a pale blue in the light of the frigid dreamscape.
“Fool! That does not belong to you.”” said the Eidisi, who lifted a pillar of ice underneath his feet to take chase into the air.
“It does now,” replied Zarik simply. For a moment, he searched for a door and then remembered what Mister Kiwi had taught him. One does not find a door… he turned, prepared to leave, only to feel his wings give out. Frost had frozen them in place, guided by the Eidisi’s hand. The young mage plummeted through the dreamscape. He felt a pull on his hand, to take the extractor back, and then…
…a door opened up. He let go of the extractor, fell through, and it closed behind him without the Eidisi in pursuit.
Zarik continued to fall, past a bloodlit sky, and he landed on a soft bed of flesh.
The blond, silvery-skin biqaj rolled onto his hands and knees. Wide-eyed, irises of crimson, he looked around at a dreamscape that looked as if it belonged in the internal organs of a human. It wasn’t his first time in such an environment, but something about this one felt… different. He glanced under his palms, where the soil of flesh squished with fresh blood.
He placed a hand out, but found no door to grasp.
Off Topic
Reviewer's Note: Got approval from Pegasus for Zarik to be lucid in this dream series even though it's dated prior to his initiation in dreamwalking.