58. Becoming the Storm (Vaye)¶
The candles burned with glossy smoothness, lines of dark smoke falling upward to join the other shadows, as the balance trance pulled Vaye deep into her mind. Adranaya’s eyes fluttered open, followed by Gadarien’s, both their pupils dilated wide. It was time.
She placed the page in the center of the circle of candles and carefully arranged the thorns atop her pack, wishing she had a clean and level surface. The three sets of thorns, which she’d fabricated from the leftover witchglass, were just like the ones she’d always used, but the Siphon itself felt more like something she’d given birth to than a tool she’d built. She’d constructed it in a sort of daze, following the fading path of her dream. Even holding it in her hands, she didn’t fully understand its structure, the multitude of miniscule channels spiraling upward from the super-fine tips. The witchglass shimmered oddly, distorting the candlelight as she waved the first point above the flame, a step the spell said would drive out “impure spirits” that might otherwise enter their bodies.
“Once we start the process, we can’t stop,” she said, making sure she locked eyes with both of them. “If we don’t pass the Siphon to the next person before it cools, the first person will end up paralyzed. And if we don’t complete the whole spell, the pent up energy will drive us all mad. We either commit to this or we don’t. Do we all understand?”
Gadarien straightened, rolling his shoulders back. “Understood,” he said.
Vaye turned to Adranaya. The Sarmalan’s eyes were as black and still as the water, her expression grim. “I need to hear you say it,” Vaye said.
Adranaya’s face didn’t change. “Yes,” she said, her voice low and steady. “I understand.”
Keeping the Siphon’s tips off the ground, Vaye passed the device to Gadarien. “The point I just heated up goes above my tailbone, at the kurukemyi meridian crossing. You might not feel it go in.”
The Cantereian frowned. “Your kurukemyi crossing? Are you sure?”
“Right between the vertebrae,” Vaye said quickly, somehow keeping her voice steady. She knelt on her heels and bent forward, resting her head on her forearms. “And make sure not to let the other points touch the ground.”
Gadarien moved behind her, holding the Siphon like it might bite him. “You’re absolutely certain about this?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Gadarien sighed. “Okay, it’s in.”
“Really?” Vaye said. She hadn’t felt a thing.
“I promise. No secrets, remember?”
“Okay, good. Now I need you to suck out just enough fluid to fill the reservoir.” Adranaya stifled a gasp, but Vaye kept her head down. She could sense Gadarien’s hesitation in the way his breathing changed. “Now, Gada. Before I change my mind. And whatever you do—whatever I do—don’t stop until it’s full.”
Gadarien’s hair brushed her lower back as he placed his lips on the thorn. At first, she felt only a slight tingle. But soon a sense of pressure began to grow, like a bubble in her spine. The tingling became a vibration, then a flickering spasm, each pulse like a tiny shock. The pain spread down her limbs like a colony of ants biting her from the inside. Soon it invaded every fiber, marching into her marrow.
She gritted her teeth and squeezed her fists, holding her breath, but she couldn’t fight the pain head-on. She retreated into her mind, tucking herself away into a corner that it couldn’t touch, the place she went when everything was too much. In that place, the pain was just another sensation, a river washing over her. It belonged to someone else.
So did the screams.
The pressure eased a little as Gadarien hesitated. “Don’t stop!” Vaye gasped. As the pressure returned, she screamed again, digging her fingers into the sand, her feet cramping as her toes involuntarily curled. Her whole body seized up, muscles straining until she thought her bones would snap. There was no running from this pain. So instead of running away, she ran toward it, turning her screams of pain into screams of rage. She dared the agony to break her. When it got close enough for her to grab, she leapt atop it and rode.
And then, suddenly, it was done. She lay in the sand, sobbing, emptied out and wrecked, snot running from her nose. But she couldn’t afford to rest. The ceremony had to proceed before the Siphon grew cold. She pushed herself up with shaking arms, the device embedded in her spine.
Adranaya sat with her hands covering her mouth, her eyes wide. Gadarien’s face had a greenish tinge. Vaye’s muscles felt like they had torn loose from the bone, a fierce headache stabbing at the back of her eyes, and her vision swam, her skin racing with chills. It was all she could do not to curl up in a ball.
“Holy Harmonies, Vaye,” Gadarien said, carefully passing the rest of the Siphon back to her.
She forced herself to smile as she took the witchglass loop, the threads emerging from her back slowly turning milky as they absorbed her spinal fluid. “It’s not that bad,” she lied, her throat raw from screaming.
Adranaya barked a laugh and then immediately covered her mouth again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just… we were supposed to have an exam today. Comparative Theosophy.”
Vaye managed a weak chuckle. “Yeah, at least we’re skipping that.” She handed the loose points of the Siphon to Adranaya, then quickly reviewed the diagram.
“What next?” Gadarien asked, for once too anxious to joke.
“Now I pin you,” Vaye replied absently, still staring at the page. She glanced up and noticed the abject terror on his face. “With a normal thorn, not the Siphon,” she added quickly. She’d never seen him lose his composure so thoroughly. It might have been amusing if she hadn’t been so petrified herself. “This part shouldn’t hurt. Lie down face-up.”
He settled down on the sand, fairly vibrating with tension, and closed his eyes. Vaye fought off a shiver and loaded the thorn with blood from her tongue. “I’m going to pin you at each of your Seven Sacred Crossings, starting with the root.”
He snapped one eye open. “Seriously?”
Adranaya snorted. “Don’t act like you haven’t been pinned there before, lover boy.”
Vaye just nodded, not even having the strength to make a wisecrack. Gadarien sighed dramatically and lifted his legs, clasping his elbows behind his knees. “This had better fucking work.”
“Balance, please,” Vaye said. She traced the line of his kurukemyi meridian to its terminus between his legs. It was, perhaps, fortunate that sex was the furthest thing from her mind. The flowstream emanating from the cave seemed to have grown brighter, the contrasting darkness coalescing overhead. Gadarien’s breathing stilled as he descended into balance. She matched her breath to his, then slid the thorn into his root crossing and willed the tiny glassroots to fan out, coiling around his nerves. The connection was deep and immediate, the threads of viriyeshet persisting at the edge of her vision.
She followed the meridian up his torso, inserting thorns in his lower abdomen, his diaphragm, the center of his breastbone, the hollow of his throat, and the center of his forehead, timing each placement with their shared breath. She paused before the final thorn and gestured for him to get up, not wanting to disturb the trance with speech. They knelt, staring into each other’s dilated pupils. Vaye slid her fingers through his hair and found the final Sacred Crossing at the very crown of his head. They locked eyes as she reverently slid the thorn home.
A strange force emerged within her. It burst forth as a plane of light, streaming between them, their spines connected by a sheet of coruscating threads. She cried out in surprise, although she felt no pain. In fact, as the light gradually flickered out, her post-Siphon malaise was replaced by a wondrous relaxation, like finally laying down to sleep after a long night at the Hall of Vapors. The connection was raw and intense, a waterfall compared to the trickle of a normal pinning.
Gadarien, however, was shivering, the weight of his misery feeding back into Vaye’s mind. She had somehow passed her suffering on to him. She wished she could take it back and tell him it would be better soon, but she knew that wasn’t true.
“Are you all right?” Adranaya asked.
“I feel like a bridge that’s about to snap,” Gadarien said, his face harrowed.
“Well, that won’t matter in a moment,” Vaye said, taking the Siphon back from Adranaya. “I’m sorry.”
He swallowed, then straightened his back and lifted his chin. “I’m ready.”
Vaye smiled. This was the brave boy she remembered. She instructed Gadarien to rinse the sand off his back as best he could while she purified the second point over the flame. When she was done, she handed the Siphon back to Adranaya.
“So, I just…”
“Insert it at the crossing and then suck on it, yeah. Not too much, but don’t stop before it’s full.”
Gadarien took his position on the sand and Adranaya placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I’ll try to be gentle.”
“Just be quick,” he said through his hands.
Adranaya closed her eyes, leaving her hand resting lightly on his back. They breathed together, then she slid her hand to Gadarien’s tailbone and wordlessly slipped the point into his spine. Vaye tensed up as Adranaya began to pull. It was almost worse watching it happen to someone else.
Gadarien’s self-control was admirable, but he couldn’t resist screaming any more than Vaye had. His pain ripped through her like a saw, amplified by their connection. It was almost like experiencing the agony a second time. Somehow Vaye stayed silent, cutting crescents into her palms with her fingernails. She couldn’t afford to disturb the process.
The few moments it took to fill the Siphon felt like hours, but at last it was done. Adranaya leaned back on her heels and wiped the sweat from her forehead, Gadarien moaning on the sand below her. Vaye leaned down and stroked his scalp. “The worst is over,” she said. He nodded and took a ragged breath, then pushed himself upright and choked down a mouthful of water from his canteen.
Vaye readied the next set of thorns, wishing she could give Gadarien more time to recover. “We have to continue before the fluid cools down,” she said gently. She handed him the first thorn as he set aside his water. He snatched it irritably, making her flinch.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, kneeling heavily on the sand. “I just hate being weak.”
Adranaya put her hand on his cheek, turning his head toward her. “You’re not weak, my love,” she said.
He managed a smile, then scowled playfully and pushed her down into the sand. “Damn right I’m not.” Adranaya chuckled as she raised her legs, and Vaye smiled sadly, remembering the ease they had once shared, the effortless joy.
After quickly filling the thorns with his blood, Gadarien found Adranaya’s root crossing, pausing there while they both sought the Balance Point. He took a final deep breath and began pinning her. Vaye’s connection to him allowed her to subtly prompt his timing, keeping it within the precise parameters of the spell, and she used him as a conduit to unfurl the roots of each thorn in Adranaya’s flesh. He helped the Sarmalan up before reverently placing the final thorn in her crown.
A sheet of light burst from Gadarien’s center and streamed into Adranaya, illuminating their gasping bodies from within. A beautiful pink glow lingered in their veins after the filaments had flickered out, and Vaye was struck by how beautiful they both were, like beings from a better world. The secondary connection to Adranaya flooded Vaye’s senses through Gadarien, another set of lungs and blood and skin.
Gadarien sighed in relief and rolled out his neck as the misery that accompanied the Siphon’s magic pressed down on Adranaya instead, the pressure of the flowstream even stronger now that there were two people above her in the chain. Even filtered through Gadarien, Adranaya’s suffering brought the sweat back to Vaye’s skin. With a start, Gadarien realized where his pain had gone and looked to Adranaya in dismay. Outwardly, though, the only sign of her discomfort was her slightly quickened breath. “Adra, are you—”
“I’m fine,” she said, her eyes snapping open. “I don’t experience pain like you do.”
“This isn’t just any pain,” Gadarien said, holding up the Siphon’s final point. His voice was rough as old bark.
The Sarmalan shook her head. “I have one more thing to explain, something I should have mentioned before. What they did to me in the House of Healing…” She paused. “They don’t just hurt you. They make you feel other things. Things you’ve never felt before, things you can’t stop thinking about.”
“What are you saying?” Gadarien asked. The need to continue the spell was growing in Vaye’s mind, a restlessness that would soon grow maddening, but she held her peace. Whatever Adranaya was trying to tell them seemed important.
The Sarmalan sighed. “You remember when we played with thorns, turning pain into pleasure? Well, the Healer is much, much better at it. That’s how they create Orumir. They don’t just break you—they change what you want. They take away your desires and replace them with desires that serve the Helix. The Orumir live in ecstasy, addicted to suffering. They didn’t finish with me, but I still can’t stop craving it, that mixture of pain and ecstasy. Even though I knew what they were doing. Even though it would have been the end of me.”
Adranaya suddenly seemed exhausted, and Vaye shuddered involuntarily. Her own rage and humiliation had, of course, shaped who she was. But at least her motivation, the thing that drove her, was her own, the one thing that could never be taken away. Having your desire replaced was a violation Vaye couldn’t even imagine.
“I know it will hurt,” Adranaya said at last. “But at least it’ll scratch that itch for a while.” Vaye nodded. She knew she couldn’t fully understand, but she could trust Adranaya to know herself. She owed her friend that much.
As Adranaya curled up on the sand, Vaye noticed a number of scratches and bruises on the inside of the Sarmalan’s thighs and along her torso. She’d seen them earlier and assumed that Adranaya had somehow acquired them either at the House of Breezes or during their escape. But she realized now that Adranaya had given them to herself. Another small piece of Vaye’s heart crumbled and fell away.
Looping the thread of the Siphon around Gadarien to encircle all three of them, she purified the third point and immediately eased it into Adranaya’s spine, afraid she’d lose her nerve if she hesitated for even a moment. The Sarmalan moaned when Vaye began to pull. Her ribs heaved, her muscles tensing and toes curling, but she didn’t scream like Vaye and Gadarien had. In a way, it was almost more disturbing than Gadarien’s reaction. But Adranaya’s screams had plagued Vaye’s imagination so often that she was glad she didn’t have to hear the real thing.
When it was over, Adranaya sat up and brushed herself off, her body trembling but her face more dreamy than stricken. A sheen of sweat glued the sand to her skin. Gadarien still looked unwell, his eyes haunted by Adranaya’s reflected agony.
Adranaya held out her hands for the Siphon and thorn. “You sure you don’t need a moment?” Vaye asked.
The Sarmalan smiled. “I told you it would be different for me,” Adranaya said, calmly filling a thorn. Vaye noticed suddenly that Adranaya’s crooked tooth had been Healed straight, as perfect now as the rest of her smile. She was shocked that she hadn’t seen it before. For some reason, the change saddened her immensely.
“The final thorn will feel different for all of us,” Vaye said. “Brace yourselves.” She lowered herself to the sand and took a moment to center herself before raising her legs.
Soon she felt Adranaya’s fingers slide up her spine and come to rest between her thighs. Vaye struggled to remain calm and find balance. Without distractions, Adranaya’s touch couldn’t help but feel erotic, as inappropriate as that was. But Vaye had to stay in balance, or the whole spell might unravel and doom them all.
The first thorn slid home and unfurled with a pleasant tingle, as though a wire were being dragged up and down the center of Vaye’s body. As the next five thorns entered her meridians, the sensation only grew. The viriyeshet flickered in her peripheral vision, making the room appear brightly lit. Through the medium of Gadarien’s mind, she guided Adranaya’s timing, carefully unfurling the roots into her own flesh. It was a bizarre sensation, like pulling her own puppet strings. Before placing the final thorn, Adranaya helped her up, and they looked into each other’s eyes.
“Ready?” Adranaya whispered. Despite the calm with which she had endured the Siphon, she looked scared now. As she ought to be.
Vaye swallowed her own fear and nodded. She had opened herself to these two in ways she’d never imagined herself capable of. She could only pray that it was enough.
Adranaya reached out and closed Vaye’s eyes with two gentle fingers. The thorn felt normal as it went in, just like any number of thorns in the past. It wasn’t until the roots began uncoiling into her nerves that Vaye felt the first hint that something was wrong, but by then it was too late. The pressure built quickly, a raging river dammed up by her mind. It ground into her, radiating from the thorn, driving her into the earth. She planted her hands on the sand, gasping.
“It’s wrong,” she heard Adranaya say, her voice wobbly and distorted. “There’s something wrong!” Out of the corner of her vision, Vaye watched the Sarmalan clutch her head and fall to the sand, her face turning purple and white froth bubbling from her lips. Gadarien, too, was writhing on the ground, an uncanny guttural sound emerging from deep in his throat.
Something was blocking the flow. It wanted out, but it was trapped, a volcanic pressure building within the loop. Vaye couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t breathe, crushed under the weight of a thousand boulders. Blood began to drip from her nose. She thrashed, unable to even make herself scream.
And then, suddenly, she knew. It was the page. Adranaya wasn’t stupid—she had to have guessed Vaye’s role in the incident. But Vaye had never openly admitted that she had hidden the artifact in Adranaya’s room, nor that Adranaya’s ordeal had been a direct result of her actions. She had never sought forgiveness.
Shaking, she somehow found the strength to push herself up, feeling as though she were digging herself out of a grave. She forced air into her lungs. “Adra!” she gasped. “The page. I hid it in your room. Everything they did to you—it should have been me. Merciful Goddess, I’m so, so sorry.”
Adranaya’s eyes widened in shock as the words landed. Something dark passed between them, like a cloud drifting past the sun. Then the world exploded.
A sheet of radiance burst forth from Adranaya and streamed into Vaye. But this time, it didn’t stop—it continued from Vaye to Gadarien, from Gadarien to Adranaya, around and around, faster and faster. Vaye’s eyes were shut, but the blinding light was inescapable, emitted from within. She could feel herself screaming, but all she could hear was a loud rushing sound, as though she were inside the Eyewall. No, as though she were the Eyewall. The fiery tempest grew until her universe was ablaze, and she sat paralyzed, her head and arms thrown back as the power streamed through her.
The pulse of light flew around the circle countless times, reaching its apex before slowly diffusing. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it flickered out, leaving only an image of a bright ring seared across her retinas.
A new reality was born.
Vaye sat trembling, suffused with animal power, overwhelmed by her senses. Was this her flesh? It suddenly felt so strange, an alien suit of muscle and bone and skin. Patterns rippled through the water, through the sand, though the rocks, endlessly repeating and folding into themselves. The world was nothing more than patterns made tangible. It had always been so, but now she saw it for what it was.
A shaft of moonlight descended from the hole in the cavern’s ceiling to create a second moon on the surface of the black water. Gadarien and Adranaya’s eyes were just as black, their pupils dilated to the limit. Wordlessly, the three of them arose. As they stood, the Siphon dissolved into fine particles and vanished into the sand. They looked at each other in silence, understanding that speech would be a sacrilege. Their closeness had transcended mere intimacy to become their very existence. Vaye was within them and they were within her, three bodies made one, infinite reflections of one another.
Gadarien reached down and scooped up some sand, rubbing it between his fingers. Vaye felt the texture of each grain in her own hand. Adranaya gasped, finally breaking the silence.
Vaye grinned. And then she started laughing, and couldn’t stop, and soon the other two were laughing along with her, hysterically, the sound echoing off the dark water.
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