I jolt up from my bed, eyes wide but clouded from my abrupt rousing from sleep, my pulse was through the roof, and my skin was glacial cold. Whether this was due to fear or my body being affected by something being in the room was hard to tell. However, what wasn’t open for discussion was the existence of a vague, foggy outline of a roughly humanoid figure sitting at the end of my bed; the natural darkness of the night certainly didn’t help the situation either.

“You humans are so peculiar….” A slow yet rough female voice echoed around the room as if they were speaking from everywhere yet nowhere all at once, reverberating off the walls of my room and pulsating around me in vicious spirals. “Your primitive solution to fatigue is so bizarre….” The voice continued, a short, dismissive chuckle bounced around me as it taunted my need for sleep.

I could feel my heart pounding against the inside of my chest, and my whole body twitched from the adrenaline coursing through me. I quickly shoot my open palms up to my face to rub my eyes in a desperate attempt to regain my vision; I didn’t know what was in here with me, but I’d be damned if I didn’t at least try to catch a glimpse of it.

“Relax, if I wanted to kill you, I would have by now.” The voice spoke again, only a touch lower and followed by yet another dismissive chuckle. “Quite easily, as a matter of fact. The archivists were right; you humans are really poorly warded against Protasi….” If the person behind the voice was attempted to calm me down, it was failing spectacularly at such a task; this only made me even more worried as I pawed at my eyes to try and regain sight.

“W-who is this?” I raised my voice, demanding an explanation for the intrusion by this strange cloudy figure. My vision had almost entirely sharpened up by this point as the foggy outline of a humanoid came into focus.

The figure sitting at the end of my bed appeared to be the same figure floating around the library during the day; its long flowing blonde hair was rolled over my bed and spreading across the quilt. Its choice of attire was identical to earlier in the day. However, I noticed that its ceramic mask was lying on my end table. The hollow sockets and slightly glimmering gemstone gazed upon me with empty, desolate contempt.

“Who precisely I am is none of your concern, for now at least.” The figure turned its head to look at me, and my heart froze when I saw this thing with living, mortal eyes…

The figure’s face was, at the very least structurally, remarkably similar to that of a fellow human; nose, eyes, ears and so on were precisely where one would expect such features to be located. However, this thing appeared to have no skin to speak of, only what seemed to be a mixture of bone, chitin and sinew, creating a bony simulacrum of an actual face. Due to the limitations hard plates have when it comes to facial expressions, its face had entirely exposed jaws and teeth, which, while highly disturbing, appeared to be functionally identical to a human’s set of teeth. The thing had corner-less lips made from sinew, thin and pale, which were gently shifted into a partial smile. Their amber eyes pierced my mind with deep burning pain in the back of my neck. There was something so enthralling about the figures gaze and how it was flaying my mind.

“What matters, human, is that I am greatly intrigued by your presence in The Iridescent Abyss.” She spoke slowly as if she was talking down to an insolent child rather than an adult. Wait, why did she know what I was calling the weird nightmare place?

“How did you….” I was cut off...

“… Know what you’ve naming my homeland.” She chuckled again while speaking over me. “My my, I didn’t think you humans were as poorly warded as our preliminary checks suspected.” She crossed her legs and frowned at me, presumably out of disappointment. “We have many names for our homeland, The Realm of Knowledge, for instance, but it feels far more appropriate and sensible to refer to it in the tongue of those we speak to.” She cocked her head to the side; the silent degrading this thing was doing was starting to get to me.

“What do you mean, you’ve read my mind or something?” I ask in an attempt to make any sense of this thing’s cryptic chatter; the way this thing spoke and how it acted, it was as if the thing was expecting me to know what it meant or exactly why it was there talking to me.

“Of course I have; I’ve been reading through it meticulously ever since I first saw you earlier.” She laughed slyly, her lips shifted into an open, mocking smile, her viciously sharp teeth glistened faintly in the dim starlight shining in through the window. “Auspicious but very narrow-minded, by the standards of my kin, of course.” Her head rocked back the other way while she shifted herself around so that her torso faced me while she sat there. Now that I had a better look at her attire, I noticed a massive array of embroidered texts across her entire robe; it appeared to be a nearly unbroken continuous prose from head to toe.

“H-how did you get in here?” I exclaim, scrambling back in my bed to sit upright at the opposite end to the being. “How did you get in here?” I shiver while looking at the thing at the end of my bed. I only assumed it was a she due to its voice and appearance, but this alien thing defied any other classification or identification.

“My kind have spent many a year learning about the many intricate twists and turns within the flow of the mind. Ways to take those notions, thoughts and concepts and use them to manipulate the world around us.” She shimmies a few inches down the bed away from me, presumably aware that I was no longer prone. “It allows us to change the parameters of reality as and when we see fit, shift from one plane of existence to another with little effort on our part.” Her smile returned to a flat, unemotional expression. The bony plates making up her face appeared to shimmer softly in the light.

“Allow me to demonstrate.” She rose an outstretched arm towards me. From the palm of her hand, a violent cracking and fleshy squishing and tearing sound rang out as a jagged shard of sterile white erupted. “You see, I haven’t conjured such a perfectly pure fragment of bone from thin air, but rather reconfiguring the layout of the bone from my body.” The shard splintered in her palm and retreated into her hand. The disgusting and stomach-churning noises were almost too much for me to handle...

“I’d rather you didn’t do something quite so disturbing again.” I shudder, feeling like I was nought more than a few short steps away from violently vomiting. “If you would be so kind,” I begged the figure; it was abundantly clear that I was close to my limit.

“Why not? The powers and abilities of the Protasi are a gift that few can learn. Even less can master, even under ideal circumstances.” She lowered her hand slowly, her unblinking eyes fixated on me, studying me. “Oh, my mistake, you humans are far from accustom to these gifts just yet, an understandable reason to be turned away by such a display.” She chuckled again while she stood up from the bed. She then walked up the side of the bed and sat back down around where my shoulders would normally be. At this short range, her eyes were not just glowing amber but visibly burning and flickering with life.

“That’s c-close enough.” I shimmy away as far as I could onto the corner of my bed, coincidentally the very corner of the room. Panic was now well and truly setting in as the floating thing was now easily within arm’s reach of my person. Lord knows what this thing could do to me if it wanted to. “Back off!”

“You’re such a strange, delicate thing.” The thing leans a little closer, hand slowly reaching out for my face. “Such soft and malleable skin, a far cry from the hard, cold plate of my kind.” She seemed to be rather intrigued by the fact that I had skin, though one could argue that there are far less disturbing ways to express their intrigue than how the figure expressed theirs.

“I really don’t like this,” I murmur under my breath. At the same time, I pull myself as tightly into the corner as possible, hoping that my apparent discontent for the ongoing situation would persuade this thing to leave me alone. My squirming was enough to prompt a reaction from the thing. She retreated her hand and idly tilted her head, observing my reaction to her proximity to me.

“Curious, the last one to get so close to me was far more cooperative.” It chuckled dismissively, waving its hand to the side to mock my apparent fear. “never mind, in time, you’ll come to appreciate my gifts and how they could benefit you.” She looked away after cryptically responding, seeming mildly disappointed by my reluctance to let her get closer to me. “In time, all things will eventually understand.” She stood up and reached for her mask, and the mask leapt from my end table and into her open palm; her long flowing hair whispered around in the air, twisting itself into a singular long braided ponytail while small slickers of energy began to shimmer away from her armour. Perhaps it was about to leave me alone?

“Wait.” I raise my voice after gritting my teeth and forcing my way through the fear; since this thing was more than willing to talk, as cryptic as its speech was, perhaps I could learn something from it. “Before you leave, may I ask you one question.” The fear that had consumed me not moments ago returned while the thing slowly turned its head to look back at me.

“That depends entirely on whether or not you can process the answer, human.” She craned her head to the side slowly while her eyes narrowed and her face shifted into a slight frown. “Speak, though I make no promises to the integrity of your mind after I have answered.” She turned around to face me. The gentle flickers of energy retreated into her armour while her hair loosened back into long floating sheets of blonde.

For a few moments, I thought about all the possible questions I wanted to be answered, though how she claimed that the mere knowledge of something could affect the “integrity of my mind”, whatever that meant, worried me to an immeasurable degree. After a few more seconds of thought and watching her head slowly tilt and eyes narrow further, presumably from frustration with what they must have perceived as a slothful response, I finally speak up and ask my one question.

“Why am I visiting the Iridescent Abyss in my nightmares, and why are other people experiencing what I am?” I ask. “I’ve seen other people react to chills or strange things happening around me, like in the library earlier with the whole floating entity, who I assume was you. Why are you doing this?”

“Greedy…” She snickered. “I’ll let that slide, for now; your curiosity and desire for knowledge is fascinating to me after all.” She sat back down on the side of my bed and put her mask on. I could hear what sounded like dozens of miniature little clamps or insectoid legs within the mask locking onto her face with a hollow, clamorous clicker. “Let's just say I can’t really answer those questions as they are; there are things that my kin keep under a very close watch, stops some of the less knowledgable members, such as myself, from accessing.” She folded her arms. “Though what I can say is that the frequency of your kind notice the oddities of the other side reaching out for them will… Increase dramatically in time.” She explained that the notion that an impending ramping up of influence from the other side was especially troubling.

“As for the reason why you are being affected so differently to others….” She paused and looked away for a moment, only to turn back after a moment of thought. “I… I do not know why….” Her voice was laden with frustration and confusion. “Strange, normally this kind of information is well documented, an anomalous result perhaps?”

“Oh well, that’s just wonderful, isn’t it.” I sarcastically retorted, shaking my head and turning away from the thing; nothing quite like being told that your existence was anomalous to make one feel better about them-self.

“I understand your displeasure at the lack of any tangible answers to your questions, human, but unfortunately, there is only so much I know at this present time.” She stood back up. “Or rather, that I am permitted to know at this time. All that I know is that you are being watched intentionally.” Her voice was once again laden with disappointment while she shook her head. “However, there is only so much I can do to explain to you the intricacies of my kindred, so for now, I must bid you farewell, human.” The flickers of energy reemerged from her armour, drifting around her in many hundreds of individual orbits, the flickers growing faster, larger and brighter by the moment, the very air becoming noticeably warm. At the same time, my skin felt like it was being sucked into the warmth.

“Until we meet again…” She spoke one final time while turning away from me before the now blindingly bright flickers consumed her, and a violent shock-wave of energy erupted from where she stood, blowing me back against the wall with a hard thud. My head smacked against the wall, dazing me while I laid in a crumpled mess. I felt myself drift unconsciously not long after she had vanished entirely.

I woke up a few hours later as the sun gracefully rose over the horizon, a splitting headache menaced my head, and some rather serious pain wracked my shoulders in radiating arcs. Everything beneath my ribs was cold and numb, presumably due to how I had crumpled up after being launched against the wall. The air smelt extremely strange; it smelt like the garden I was wandering around in the Abyss a few nights ago, but there was nothing that could be producing such glorious fragrances.

I clamber around and crawl to the edge of my bed, sitting on the side while my head throbs and my arms ache. I rub the sides of my head and breath heavily, trying to work my way through the cramps. While sitting at the edge of my bed, I notice something that was not in my room before I slept or before my encounter with the figure. Laying on the end table was a crumpled note with a series of scribbles that appeared to be written by somebody who didn’t entirely understand how to write English upon closer inspection.

“To whom it may concern, it is unfortunate that I did not get your name earlier, but I wanted to make sure you understood that I am not your enemy here. I appreciate that I am anathema to your world, but I hope we will come to an understanding.” The note read, though I must confess that the spelling and grammar were far worse than I let on, the person who wrote this definitely tried their best to make it legible.

I sat there at the edge of my bed and thought about the figure from the night, how unusually willing she was to talk to me and how she managed to appear in the real world. At the same time, I would have preferred a much less ominous or potentially malicious entity such as Kliviero to appear instead of the floating bone-thing. Still, it appears my luck in regards to the weirdness of the Abyss only stretched so far...

I placed the note back on my end table and stood up, wandering off to the en-suite to get showered and dressed for the day; something told me today was going to be a slow day, though my suspicion was not helped by the lack of classes or pending research which needed to be done.

I tried the best I could to keep my mind as stable and calm as possible, a task that turned out to be far harder than I had originally expected. Most of the day was pretty mundane and boring, other than going out to town for a walk and witnessing a pickpocket get his ass beat by a group of three upstanding civilians. Though part of my mind was troubled by this, while it was greatly satisfying to see a group of random people taking action to protect a far more vulnerable member of society, one must also equally understand and wonder if the level of response was entirely warranted.

Other than that, nothing really of particular note happened. I went and did a bit more shopping for a few odds and ends, some extra bits of food for the fridge for example, but everything did feel a bit quieter than normal; far fewer people walking around than I would have expected, especially in a place as densely populated as this.

Once I got home, I put my shopping away, made myself a coffee and decided to spend the day trying to keep my nerves under control; I knew that, at some point, I would be going back into the void during the night. I knew that it was only a matter of time before I was going to be finding myself waking up over there again. The best thing I could do was keep myself as calm as possible during the day to plan and prepare for the night.

On that note, around six in the afternoon, I decided to make myself something to eat and get a nice hot drink before winding down for the night. I remember cooking a chicken korma with some small pieces of naan bread on the side, added maybe a bit too much pepper to the rice while cooking it, but the meal was otherwise fantastic.

I finish my food and several small bits of work for the night and decide to get to bed early for the day; I had a disturbed sleep this morning thanks to the figure deciding to just show up in my room without warning, so I wanted to get some early sleep in while I had the chance. Shortly after I considered this opportunity to get some sleep, the chill from the previous day returned in full force.

I shrugged off the ever reducing temperature around me; I had already decided that this was the Abyss’s method of informing me that something was going to happen, especially considering the number of times the chill had come in advance of something occurring before this very moment. Switching over to my pyjamas after a hot shower, I climbed into bed, set the alarm for the following morning and attempted to get some sleep for the night.

A few minutes into my slow wander into eventual sleep, I felt my body progressively become numb and cold, unable to react or move as fatigue strolled across every fibre of my being. I could hear the distant calls of the weird bird, things in the distance and the faint buzzing of ceramic bees not too far away.

I could feel the Abyss slowly coming back to me, or rather my return to the alien world...