Lisa clenched her jaw around the thick rope that had been forced into her mouth. Her struggling voice barely made it out of her mouth as the blows landed, one after the other. She felt the numb pain of her body breaking down, and for the third time today she felt the burning sensation of renewed vigor rushing through her veins as healing magic cured her of her wounds.

Her captors had not asked any questions. They just came to her, every day, and beat her within an inch of her life, then healed her wounds, then beat her again. Dozens of times every day.

She had wondered many times. Why? Why are they doing this to me? But in this world, the answers were impossibly many. People with forbidden, demonic fucked up power systems maybe. She had heard of someone who needed to smell the scents of rare flowers and the more he smelled, the more powerful and varied effects his magic would take. Maybe these people were savages who got power from beating other people.

One of them had horns, she noticed.

They had to be connected to Shiningstars though. They had to.

Or was Edmund what they wanted, and her and Toora just happened to be there with him for the ride? It was a possibility. Then she had been sold, a useless extra they didn’t need, in an attempt to make some money out of their failed kidnapping. What if they wanted Toora? What if Toora was forced to watch her be tortured, behind a fake wall, until she broke and told whoever was holding them about her visions?

Her thoughts went up in disarray as yet another punch to her face disoriented her. She grunted, but her eyes were a daze, her mind back in the trance it was before. The pain was like a distant sound, muffled by water. Images floated.

Edmund fucking Hume.

Her bane.

Her savior.

The reason why she had even met Toora, the reason all this had fucking bloody happened. She should thank him, really. Except for the fact that she was here, getting beaten day after day after day.

If Toora really was here… she needed to hold on. Be strong.

Edmund… He was out there, doing… something. He had left her behind. Save Toora, she prayed, save her and not me, and we’re square. No grudges.

It was just a fantasy, wasn’t it?

How many days was it already?

***

“I see them!”, he screamed “I see their faces. Every time i close my eyes i see them! Mothers, children. Countless people. All there. Unaware. Unmoving. Hooked up to their dream reality, while in truth…”

Toora’s whole body jerked and spasmed, as if electricity was running through it, and eventually she woke up in a puddle of sweat. Where am I? She looked around, and tried to get up but stumbled and fell, her face almost hitting the ground before she could dampen the fall with her arms. Waves of pain coursed through her body, one after the other, and she stared at the ceiling that was so far away and so dark until the last wave passed and she allowed herself to close her eyes and unclench her jaw.

Her right arm was twisted horribly, and pulsed with the same beats as her heart. Her legs were a constant state of numb pain, and a hand reached down to massage them, only to find the cold stone tiles of floor. She reflexively looked down in a panic. Then it hit her. Toora stared at her mutilated body reflected in the far mirror and sat back down. The thick metal bars that separated her from the mirror reminded her or her predicament. She didn’t even have the strength to climb back on the bed.

That mirror image was not her. It was not.

That’s why they put it there, wasn’t it? So that she would be forced to see herself, every day, until she broke. Until she accepted that this was her life now, and nothing was going to change and nobody was going to save her.

She didn’t give up hope.

The visions were back. They were different now. Before, they were glimpses of knowledge, transient images of something, described in great detail that she could recall, study and relive however many times she wanted. They told her what to do. They had told her to sacrifice her teammates. They had led her to the tower, only for her to be left there with incomplete knowledge of what was going on and completely at the mercy of a stranger. She knew it well. The scene had played itself night and night again as she stared wide-eyed at the ceiling of her little room back at the academy.

Back then she had no idea what it all meant. She only knew it was going to happen, and by all magic she was so sure she could have changed the outcome of that vision. Reality… Turned out differently, but she was older when she approached the tower, different. She knew better than question the visions. At the academy she made the mistake of telling her professor about them. Never did she repeat that mistake.

The visions were gone for a long time. After she met Edmund, but even as she approached the Tower they had become rare and hazy at first, absent soon after. Now they were back. Different. Glimpses into a mind she could not understand. Emotions. Randomness.

Too much stuffed into too little space, with barely something to keep a lid on it all. She saw images of planets. She saw flying machines, countless Towers jutting out of tiny little rocks in the middle of nowhere, she saw beings she couldn’t even begin to describe. She saw them. The Alterans, the beings from the beyond, the Others, the monsters hiding beyond the fabric of the universe. Archaea. Demiurges. The Endless. They had many a name.

She saw darkness. Spanning centuries. Entire ages of the world passed and there was nothing but darkness. She would have gone insane, but this was not her mind, barely an echo.

She opened her eyes again, or so the echo went, and the world was different. Duller. Out of focus. Her thoughts muddy, slow, incoherent. She felt as if she had been awake all her life and now she could barely keep the sleep out of her eyes.

Below, hiding in the mist of the mind, were monsters of the depths. Memories, mostly, but also neural patterns long gone unused, that couldn’t be processed by the mind anymore but still kicked and struggled to see the light of day. The surface of the water was of a digital taste, the ordered crisscrossing of an AI.

It was barely a small lantern in the night at first. A small ball of order, risking to be swallowed by the raging waves of that mad sea. It slowly grew, then it exploded into splendid grandeur. A mighty beacon of light, blue and dazing and electric, no more just of lines by of many different shapes, and images, and then colors.

She felt it stir. It had seen her. The surface moved. The waves rippled. Foam formed, and a shadow danced below.

“What are you doing here?” A voice boomed.

“Leave, now! Before you do any more damage.” It was concerned, hurried.

The surface was breaking down as the wind rose, thunder-clad nimbuses roared in the distance and the shadow multiplied below the surface and, and, and…

She was awake now, in a puddle of sweat.