The name Atjani Kelsever is etched into the back of my helm.

We made it to The Far Away Dream. My group wasn't the first to arrive. The first Lam Lathi wave knocked around some bodies. Their bodies were still steaming with their armor and shields, mixed in with Neandelerian warriors. Next to them were civilians, who tried to join the fight and died with their handguns. Everyone was dead, and the massive concrete blocks that once protected the outside of this massive skyscraper, leaned in behemoth pieces. They were like stepping stones reaching toward me. I take a breath.

Behind me was a sea of midnight blue armor and uniforms. Tower shields thickened with plating and a mix of rifles and machine guns. We filled the streets and the occasional flying machine made everyone watchful, afraid it was a Neandelerian one. Even if it was, the tempests were too numerous to count. I take another breath. My shield was starting to frost with their presence. The air was saturated with our invisible friends.

“FauX Company forbids the passage of any unauthorized persons in this sector. All transgressors will be shot indiscriminately without needed cause.”

There was a warning sign I couldn't read above me. I stop, then take a step closer to the building entrance.

We move into our groups and step over the broken glass doors. We enter a lobby with hanging lights, still flickering as they try to hang on. The elevators were to either side of the lobby. They would take us to a lower floor where we would have to change elevators to go lower. The whole maze of large elevators was set up to make it difficult to reach the bottom. Each floor was like a check point with well-equipped Neandelerians.

“Let's get this over with.”

I make my way to an elevator on the left. I hear a multitude of footsteps and watch others speak with their hands. Everything was quiet and I even wished my other half was with me to talk to. My possessor being was somewhere. I felt him get on the flying machine with me.

The next floor comes. Those in front form their shields into a wall. The elevator doors rumble open. Lam Lathi soldiers run into the middle of the room. They plan their shields, pulling levers and sticking them into the ground. I hear the crack of the floor tiles, as I run up to the metal wall. A few of us begin to move around the room to the the next elevator across the way. There were too many bodies to count. We wait for our tempests to saturate, before boarding the elevator. We head down again. I try to keep my hands warm.

Endless elevators later, we reach the bottom floor. It led to a wide chamber. There was a large door leading to the picture chamber far ahead. My legs were dying from the incredible distance. Everyone slowly forms into their positions again. The shields get placed and our rifles were pointed. A familiar face pulls me. It was Alana. She had been waiting here, the whole time.

“Well, well, Atjani. It looks like you made it after all,” she smiles. Alana motions for everyone to wait and allow her to speak to me. She had entered with the wave ahead of us and was the sole survivor. She had important information to reveal. Alana reassures me.

“Don't worry. I'm not one of them,”

“One of what?”

“The leechers. The ones who take souls and store their energy for later use.”

I think about Nelessi. I look back at Alana, as she takes a look around her. There were stacks of armored bodies and loose limbs. Most of them had been pushed aside, forming small barricades. Many of them were the Lam Lathi soldiers who followed her around.

“It's a lot of life, for a little picture,” mocks Alana. She smears her red eyeliner with a single finger and looks back at me. I feel her cold hands on mine.

“Don't worry Atjani. I will translate everything. There's a long tunneled chamber. It leads to another containing The Far Away Dream.”

Alan gives everyone instructions in silence.

Moment's later, I step deeper into the room. It was monstrous in size, like an open warehouse with nothing in it. A desert of concrete, filled with bodies. Around me were lights and sensors, built into the floor. The occasional hologram flickered on the ceiling, half-living next to the giant lights above and around me.

I look above me to the floor above. The room was two stories high. The second story was visible and filled with mounted gatling guns an rocket launchers. There were also strange looking weapons I had never seen. The dead soldiers who manned them were still sitting in their seats behind the bullet proof glass that protected them. They had committed suicide. All the weapons were still aimed in the direction of The Far Away Dream, to keep everything inside.

The alarms had been shut off, but I could tell the panic they created by the positions of those who died fighting. The Neandelerians fought bravely to keep the picture safe from Lam Lathi. I hated them both, but my respect grew a little. As we walk through the room, the corpses switch direction as if they they were fighting something to their rear instead.

“Why are the doors shut? Didn't the wave before us close them?,” I mutter. I look at the massive doors. They were heavy and layered. Two levers had to be pulled to open their sliding jaws.

“Those aren't doors, Atjani. They are illusions meant to make you feel safe walking up to them. Weren't you paying attention to me earlier?,” replies Alana.

“Who made them?”

Alana touches her neck. “I'll let you find out.”

With a shaky breath, I head to the doors. Others approach cautiously with me. I reach my hand out and pass it through the illusion. I recoil and take a look around me. I reach out again. Alana grabs me. Her lips press lightly against my ears and she whispers.

“Just so you know. We have to enter the picture quickly. if you want to save your little friend. Lam Lathi has its orders. No one is to enter the picture, when it is under our control.”

I look at Alana as she steps back. She moves her bangs to the side, giving me a wink with her passing hand. Alana smiles at me, resting her head on her fist. She moves here eyes to the side at the fake doors, and back at me. She keeps her gaze on me. We walk through the illusion together. My eyes widen.

The Far Away Dream took up the whole room. It was one large picture spread everywhere like a cohesive picture made of smaller ones. It reached across to unseen lengths and around the ceiling and room. Only the floor remained untouched. Everything was conjoined to the film of energy coating the picture with mystery. It was living and breathing, filling the vast spaces like a beating heart. Even with its missing pieces, The Far Away Dream felt healthy and alive.

I felt like I could touch it and retrieve the contents within. I could create anything I desired and reach for it, until my hands bumped the picture and disrupted its ruby vespers. You needed a possessor to get in. I take in more of the room.

Fluorescent smoke rose from every section of the picture. More vague, ruby auras moved all around it, parting at the movement from those of us treading its domain. The strangest part of the ancient drawing wasn’t that it felt alive. It wasn’t even the awe that it instilled in me, as I gazed at the ancient masterpiece. It was the very realization that the picture was peering into the outside world, as if my soul was the picture's own artwork to gaze into.

Alana places the backside of her hand into my palm, so I'm forced to grab it. Her eyes drift, making sure everyone was distracted, before we took a dip into the picture.

Alana stare at me and focuses her possessor. She reaches out to touch the picture. Only, we are stopped. A hand reaches out of the picture, stretching the ruby vespers. I back up immediately with her. The hand stops to think, as if it had planned to grab Alana, and had delayed too long when she reached for it. The hand remains open with fingers tense, frozen in thought. One of its fingers was abnormally long. The hand quickly pulls itself in, sending massive ripples across the picture.

The other Lam Lathi soldiers form up and aim their guns. Many of them re-plant their shields and wait, as the room grows cold from our ready tempests.

A foot steps out, followed by goggles, helmet, and scarf. A smile grows on a pilot's face as he steps out to face us. His stands there. The room swarms with bullets.