Has nobody ever taught you how to talk to people? Madison yelled. The sound echoed through the air, stirring the grass with its passing. Who goddamn raised you? Ulysses could feel how her fists were clenched tightly on the woven-grass reins, how the cold air of the plains stung as she drew it back into her lungs. He held his hand in front of his face, with the golden thread still wrapped around it. Such a tenuous connection to the facsimile of life. He'd gone so long without worrying about the petty needs of the body. Was that why this was falling apart so badly? Had he forgotten what it meant to be a human in the company of humans? Did he even deserve this second chance, removed as he was from mortal understanding?
Ulysses let the thread slip from between his fingers. Perhaps he did not. Ignoring Madison's last admonishment, he walked away from the thread, towards the edge of the cliff. He had been planning on walking its edge today, finding a safe way down to the thin black beach that bordered the choppy ocean. Safety- what a laughable concept. He had gone from a state of constant paranoia in Trailsend to a state of complete helplessness in the mansion. And now he was here, with no corporeal form at all and no knowledge of what could even happen to him if he fell. He knew in that moment that there was no way he could ever be safe again. He was a coward, after all. Too cowardly to kill Nikolai. Too cowardly to stand up to the demons who stole his body and his agency. And now he was hiding out in the mind of a woman who had fought her way out of the clutches of both of those enemies, who had stood up to them when he was too afraid to do so. A woman who he owed his freedom to. A woman who he had failed.
Perhaps he could still be useful to her.
Ulysses looked over the edge of the cliff. That cave- there was something there, something powerful. Something that had been calling to him ever since he had entered Madison's mind. He knew what was inside of it. He did not know what would happen to him if he entered it. He could be injured, or killed, or completely unmade- after all, what was he now but a soul made vulnerable? But perhaps complete annihilation was still preferable to whatever hold the Stranger would have over his afterlife. And he owed it to Madison to help her. She had rescued him, and asked for only his assistance in return. And now he was in a position to give it.
How had he reached the cave before? Only when Madison was asleep. It was still early morning, so little chance of using that route. But what had truly been happening? What did it all represent? Many wizards went their entire lives never seeking the why of arcane knowledge, only the how. How to cast this spell or the other, how to bend the world to their will. Few ever sought the reasons behind a particular herb's mystical resonance or why one arcane scribble worked better than another. Ulysses had been one of those wizards, once, only seeking knowledge that could give him an edge against his foes. In Molmaster, his only aim was power. Once he had fled to Trailsend, his only aim was concealment. Ironically, his imprisonment within the mansion was what had finally given him the freedom to study the theoretical aspects of magic. Once he no longer had to worry about the everyday needs of the body, he could spend days upon days reading without even pausing to blink. It had been incredible. A true scholar's paradise.
And it had come at the cost of untold lives, sacrificed so that he could satisfy his selfish whims. He had unleashed an ancient evil into the world, and all he could think about was how nice it had been to have uninterrupted reading time. Pathetic. Retreating from the world hadn't done him any good then, and it wouldn't do Madison any good now. He had to put that theory into practice.
He had done a little reading on the nature of magic as manifested in the mortal mind. Most of the research regarded memories and dream-journeys. There had been one book that was about shrinking down to a small size and physically exploring the brain, but the author had had the ridiculous name of "Fufflerumpkin" so Ulysses was fairly certain it was meant as a joke. Many of the tomes were lacking in objectivity, being primarily individual anecdotes and descriptions of adventures. What most of the texts agreed upon, thankfully, was the importance of metaphor in the manifested mindscape. If the narrator walked through a city, the city represented consciousness. If the narrator met a wise old man, he usually represented common sense. If the narrator was led through a dark forest by a helpful owl, the forest was probably childhood trauma and the owl was hope or curiosity or the wonderment of childhood. It was sometimes difficult to take magic seriously when it insisted on manifesting itself so whimsically.
It was simple enough to apply this lens to the parts of Madison's mind he'd experienced directly. The field was her conscious mind. The bubbles were her memories. The golden thread was a manifestation of her connection to him. The beach, the ocean, the cave- these were the mysteries he needed to solve. And there was only one good way for him to gather the information necessary. Ulysses kneeled by the edge of the cliff. Hands firmly planted to steady him, he leaned forward as far as he dared. This close to the edge, the cliff seemed a dizzying height from the black sand of the beach. Ulysses' stomach clenched and he leaned back reflexively.
If this had been a normal cliff in a normal place, casting Feather-fall would have taken no more than a moment. But he owed it to Madison to be careful in her mind. He didn't know what the Stranger had been doing in here, but the thing was the embodiment of evil magic. It certainly hadn't just been doing cantrips. He had no desire to repeat its depredations. So, out of an abundance of caution, Ulysses was going to have to do this the hard way.
A memory rose, unbidden, into his mind. It was of one of the few nights he had little to no memory of, not because of a willful forgetting on his part, but because of a truly heinous amount of alcohol consumed. The reason for that alcohol swam hazily in front of him in the memory, listing dangerously to the side like a collapsing tower. A bright red tower with horns. They had been walking together down the lamplit streets of Trailsend, drinks in hand, no particular destination in mind. Enna had been talking, as she usually did whenever she had anything stronger than water in her system. "The fuckin- the, the fuckin problem, with all you wizardly types-" here Enna had sloshed her drink onto herself while gesturing, and Ulysses had let slip a deeply undignified giggle- "is that you're all like, oh look at me, I can command fuckin time dragons-"
"Time dragons aren't real," Ulysses had pointed out in what he had thought were reasonably sober tones. "There are ice dragons, and poison dragons, and metallic dragons-"
Enna had clapped a large hand over his mouth and shushed him dramatically. "Not my point! My point is, y'all can all cast Potion Of Fire Explosion-"
"You can't cast potions-"
"Look at this dipshit who can't cast a potion!!" Enna had bumped his shoulder affectionately with hers, which had nearly sent him sprawling and had spilled his flask all over the cobblestones. "My! Point! Is! You magical fucks are all about how you can do anything with your magical spells and shit, but the minute you don't have 'em, you're fucked! You can lift a fuckin horse with spells, but the minute you have to run ten feet you're fuuuuuucked!" She had jabbed him in the arm with a finger and he had mock-yelped and pretended to be grievously injured. "That's why you and me, we gotta work out together- I'm gonna get you toned biceps. And the first abs any wizard has ever had."
Ulysses had scowled. "There's never gonna be a situation where I need biceps."
"I'm never wrong, man! I'm never wrong."
In the present moment, Ulysses groaned.
Ulysses swung his legs out from under him. He inched his feet over the precipice and dropped them down until he was sitting with knees bent and feet swinging in open air. He swallowed. If he bent his knees, his soles touched the cliff face, but the rock was slick and he found no purchase. There was a tingling spasm in his legs, a feeling of vertigo completely unaffected by the rational knowledge that none of this was, strictly speaking, real. He moved back from the edge and pulled his knees up until his feet could touch grass again.
What would be the worst that could happen if he fell? A broken leg, perhaps. It couldn't be more than two stories down. If he found himself falling away from the cliff, there was little chance he'd land on his neck. A sprained ankle was far more likely. He would be fine. Ulysses unbent his knees to stand shakily. He peered over the edge and squared his shoulders. There were outcroppings of rock that piled halfway up the cliff face, but the face was a sheer drop for more than the length of his body above that. That was fine. He could handle that. Granted, he hadn't done anything more physical than walk up a flight of stairs in the past year, and nothing physical- or even corporeal- in the past few months, but surely he could manage some mild rock-climbing. How hard could it be?
Moving off the cliff felt like his memories of being drunk. He could not recall consciously deciding to roll onto his stomach and inch his way backwards, but he was doing it. A trick of the mind, perhaps, to keep him from realizing what he was doing. In only a moment he was dangling by his fingertips off the cliff, and the sudden realization of his actions jolted his brain into awareness. He swallowed heavily and took stock.
Getting to where he was now hadn't been too bad. Laying on his stomach and scooting his legs backward off the edge of the cliff had been awkward, sure, but there was nobody around to see him in Madison's mind. Dropping his torso over the edge had been a sickening drop, but his hands still had purchase on the blessedly solid ground above him. But it was only now, feeling the earth crack under his grip, that Ulysses realized how stupid going down facing the cliff was. He couldn't see the rocks below him. They could be one foot away or a hundred for all he could tell, cheek squashed against rock and toes dangling in open air. He had seen the rocks when he had looked down earlier, and they can't have been more than ten feet down- a four-foot drop wouldn't kill him. But what if he had judged incorrectly? He was in a mindscape, after all. What if the cliffs represented Madison's secret deep-seated fear of falling off a tall cliff? What if he fell and injured some integral part of his spirit and died? What if-
Ulysses could feel the strain of his weight on his fingertips, but it did not hurt. His arms didn't ache, and his grip on the ground felt solid. He felt that he could hang there for an hour or more, twisting in the wind of his indecision. His body was no longer a body. He had already suffered the consequences of his actions. Madison, meanwhile, was risking her life to save his, inadvertent though that might be. There was no length she was not willing to go to in order to return home. She had escaped the mansion, unlocked terrifying power, and was now on a days-long odyssey through hostile wilderness. Was he so cowardly that he would dangle here forever for nothing more than fear for himself? Would he run once more from his duty to another?
Ulysses took a deep breath and relaxed his grip. As the ground slipped from underneath his fingers, there was a strangely peaceful moment where he was tethered to nothing at all. His hands rose above him and his feet swung away from the cliff face. There was no drop in his stomach, no vertigo running up his spine. Just him and the open air.
And then gravity reasserted itself in his consciousness as his feet hit the rock below with a jarring shock. He felt himself tipping backward, away from the cliff, the jagged boulders below rushing toward his very fragile spine. Some part of his panicked brain jerked his body sideways and he curled into a ball, hoping to every god he'd forsaken that it would be enough to protect his skull. He rolled and bounced down the rocks and ended up in a groaning heap on the black sand beach.
Gingerly, Ulysses levered himself into a sitting position and took stock. He felt like he'd been run over by a caravan's worth of workhorses. If he had had a body, he would have been sure to have a constellation of bruises the next day. Nothing broken, though. So that was good. Small victories. Ulysses stood up to take a look at his surroundings.
He had bounced down a pile of slick black rocks that were stacked against the sheer cliff in a manner too steep to provide for his ascent. To either side of him was the black sandy beach, stretching out as far as he could see. Before him was the ocean of pitch- undoubtedly the same one he had nearly drowned in before. "No exits to the North or South," he said to himself in a mockery of a children's book he had once picked up on a whim. "You can only go East or West. How do you proceed?"
Ulysses recalled the day previous. He had spent it walking aimlessly along the cliff, searching for any landmarks or safe passage down to the beach. The cliff had seemed eternal, unchanging, infinitely spread out along the unceasing breadth of the mindscape. He had been unable to discern any change in landscape in a whole day's worth of walking. What Ulysses now realized was that he had been treating the mindscape like a physical location, with the quirks of geology and cartography that one would expect from a real place. Of course simply walking along like he was at a seaside holiday would get him nowhere. Mindscapes were governed by intent, not location. It was only when his intent to change things overcame his fear that he was able to descend to the beach. Therefore- Ulysses could feel the giddiness of understanding welling up in his chest- the cave was reachable. It would take some doing on his part, but he could reach it, and by doing so finally help Madison.
Ulysses paced up and down the beach, pivoting well before he got too close to the surf. If moving through this mindscape was governed by intent, then it was no wonder that the Stranger had been able to wreak such havoc in it in so little time.That thing was pure intent made manifest. He had no desire to move through this landscape as that thing did, of course, but that didn't mean he couldn't use its techniques to further his own understanding.
His approach had not only been too literal, it had been too human. The Stranger was an elemental force, a being of chaos and darkness, an extension of the goddess of evil herself. It certainly hadn't been strolling along the seashore when it was wreaking havoc in here. Ulysses swallowed, looking out at the churning black sea in front of him. The last time he had made it to the cave, he had fully surrendered himself to its pull. It was only Madison's waking that had stopped him from falling into it against his will. Now that he was actually aiming for it....
He took one last look at the sea- had it become rougher since he last looked at it?- and closed his eyes. There was nothing wrong with adopting the Stranger's methods if he was doing it for a good reason. He breathed in and out, taking notice of his lungs for perhaps the first time since he manifested here. Slowly, in an active effort, he extended his awareness along magical lines. Not the warp and weft of Mystra's loom, the bright threads of magic that he had been trained to wield since childhood. Instead he extended himself into the negative space that existed around and under this fabric. A realm of pure void, only given form and definition by its absence. The Stranger's domain. This awareness of nothingness was what he had spent his months in the mansion's library studying to the exclusion of all else. It was his best shot at helping Madison.
If there had been an observer on that beach, she would have seen Ulysses begin moving towards the ocean with uncertain steps. She would have seen him, eyes still closed, go close enough to feel the spray on his skin, to sink deeper into the wet black sand. She would have seen the waves draw back, as if to crash upon him. And she would have seen them continue to draw back as he continued walking. The ocean did not part, but instead pulled back in an ever-growing wave. He continued walking further and further from the shore. The ocean continued receding in front of him. The wall of water grew higher and higher, reaching all around him in a hollow column. It held, trembling, high in the air, until Ulysses finally opened his eyes and it gleefully crashed down on him.
Ulysses was sent tumbling into an ocean suddenly deep and fathomless. There was no light, not even the spinning motes he knew from earlier dreams in this ocean. There was only the screaming rush of water and the irresistible riptide pulling him deeper. He gasped, and the water rushed into his lungs, filling him too completely to scream. He was pulled deeper and deeper into the crushing void without a chance to struggle. His limbs were useless here. He had no chance to use a spell to save himself. He had failed himself. He had failed Madison.
The current dragged him further and further. His brain was starving for oxygen, his lungs burning for air, and no amount of knowledge that this was nothing but a manifestation would keep him from drowning. Then, as suddenly as it had crashed down on him, the riptide released him. He tried to get his bearings. The only thing he could even conceive of in this perfect void was further beneath him. It was a faint glow, like a far-off sunset. Though it meant going deeper into the crushing ocean, Ulysses tried to kick towards it. He struggled, limbs heavy, every stroke feeling more and more useless. But he was either making progress or getting closer to death. The light was getting brighter somehow, feeling closer as he strove downward-
Ulysses surfaced, gasping, head bobbing above the waves of the ocean. For a moment it was all he could do to tread water and thank every god in the planes for the gift of air. He threw his head back and laughed, wheezing, at the miracle of his survival. It was all he could do to float on his back and let the water rock him back and forth. There was no sun to warm him in this strange sea, no wind to move him. There was only the gentle movement of the pitch-black water. He closed his eyes and drifted.
He was not sure how long he drifted, recovering his strength after that ordeal. Time had few markers in this upside-down sea. In any case, rest should have meant nothing to a being of pure thought such as himself. But old habits died hard. Even in the mansion he had slept and ate when he left his tower, albeit only when seeing the mansion's "guests" had reminded him of his mortality. He had seen so little of what had happened in that place. He had been busy with his studies, after all- no. No, Madison had been right. He had chosen to wall himself off. He had chosen to cut ties with the few people in the world who cared about him- which, gods, was that number of people two? His eyes shot open and he grimaced. Had he really left this world with only two people who cared whether he lived or died or gave his body over to immortal demons? While Madison.... she must have had dozens. Her friends, the people she worked with, her family, all left with no knowledge of her whereabouts or safety. Because of him. Because he had failed to stop the Stranger and Elysius from kidnapping her, and had tried to help them experiment on her. That was what he owed her. He exhaled and started treading water again. That was why he had to keep going.
He closed his eyes again. The cave couldn't be too far from here. The riptide must have brought him to this place for a reason. He extended his awareness once more. In this place, deeper in Madison's subconscious, it was easier to find the broken strands of magic that the Stranger had left in his wake during his intrusions. The negative space between the magic that made up Madison's consciousness and will- a dark current of things made unwhole and unholy. Ulysses followed that current, swimming along the surface of the sea. The water seemed to carry him forward, the waves always pushing him towards his destination. He could no longer see a division between sky and sea in this place. There were no motes of golden light rising or falling here. There was only himself, the water, and the knowledge of his destination.
Soon enough, the current began picking up speed. He could see the cave on the horizon- black on black, nearly invisible, but enormous in its presence. It had the same pull that he had felt earlier. The sense of inevitability, the weight pulling him in. He was no longer swimming towards the cave. He was falling forward through the water as irresistibly as obeying gravity. It dragged him up onto the black sand beach and into the yawning mouth. Ulysses reached his hands out and plunged headlong into the cave.
Ulysses passed through the throat of the cave. Its floor pitched downward, and was slippery with seawater. He managed to keep his balance by placing a steadying hand on the dripping wall as he moved forward. There were no branching paths, no side passageways. Only a deep arched tunnel forging straight ahead into the earth. Curious, Ulysses paused to feel the wall under his palm. It was far too dark to see anything, but the walls felt strangely rough. A cave like this, even a metaphorical one, would have been worn smooth as river rock if it had existed for as long as Madison had been alive. Even if it had only existed as long as Madison had known of her powers- his hand caught on a sharp edge and he flinched, bringing his hand closer to himself. This cave was not a natural manifestation of Madison's mind. It had been put here. It had been blasted into her mind by force. He shuddered and continued forward.
As he continued, a flickering glow appeared up ahead. The glow widened and brightened into the opening of a large space. Ulysses had to blink and shade his eyes in order to adjust to the sudden light and color after so long of black on black. He squinted ahead. It was a circular cave, high-ceilinged, with balls of glowing red and purple light hanging from stalactites above him. Beneath his feet there were precisely-cut channels in the rock that sloped upward toward the raised center of the room. They met a semicircular moat that ringed half of the room and funneled outward into a shallow pool across the room from him. And in the center, at the peak of the raised stone, was a gaping, jagged, burned well.
He followed the channels upward to the well. It pulsed with the absence of light, drawing the glow of the orbs above it into its dark stone. There was an apparatus for drawing water above it, complete with crank and bucket. Ulysses almost laughed at the thought of the Stranger having to haul the bucket up and down by hand. Could he not have chosen an more efficient construct? And then he looked over the edge of the well, and his stomach dropped.
The well went deeper than the magical glow could sink. It was a blasted hole that had been bored so far that it was impossible to know where it ended. Ulysses was seized by another wave of vertigo and reeled back from its depths. He clutched at the apparatus to maintain his balance and fought to contain his nausea. He had seen stairs. Rough stairs hewn into the side of the well, spiraling further than he could imagine. This was where the force had been drawing him this whole time. Drawing him far beyond sight, beyond thought, beyond memory of who he once was. It wanted him to lose himself down there, to be sucked into the seething power beyond imagination that waited at the bottom of that scorched well. And if he had waited a second longer at the edge of it, he would have stepped into it.
He took a deep breath. This fear would never help Madison. He had to gather himself. The Stranger had certainly not gone down to that dark void. He must have used the well to draw the power out, into those channels and down into the shallow pool to release it. He could do the same. He was as skilled a manipulator of magic as any. He could release the power that Madison needed. He would be able to help her. He could do this, at least, do the one thing he knew he could do that was right-
Right? Was this right? This place, this construct that the Stranger had planted deep in Madison's mind- could anything he did here even be right? Ulysses gripped the crank and stared at the scorched stone of the well. It was the only thing he could do. It was the only way to help. He could use the Stranger's own tools against him- couldn't he? Would it truly be helping to do this to Madison again?
A hand gripped his shoulder and he shrieked, dropping the crank and staggering away. He stumbled on the uneven rock and turned to face whatever it was that was behind him. Lit up with the red light of the cavern, as incandescently angry as he had ever seen her, was Madison. She reached down and grabbed his arm, yanking him to his feet. "OUT." She pulled, and Ulysses was ripped out of the cave, streaming past a confusion of golden light and thundering sound.
Author's Notes:
Written 9/18/21. This one took a while to finish (six months!) but through the power of sprinting on Reading Rainbow I was able to get it done!