Звездопад / Starfall: Глава 10

Chapter 10

Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 16:55

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Camrad_RIP 27.05.23 в 16:55

She had lost her ability to see before she even touched the floor. Her eyes were simply too tiny a source of information, like a candle flame in a flooded spotlight, too small to be discerned. Her renewed mind was filled with the icy glow of knowledge. Like a blindingly bright flash that repeated over and over again millions of times every moment, in each of these flashes was everything - the state of the whole world was instantly highlighted in her mind, only to be immediately erased by another flash and another version of the world that burned itself out in the Taer's mind. More and more, The flashes of awareness did not stop. The icy stream of consciousness consisted of them, and it only intensified. It was immeasurably larger than she was, and there was less and less room for her. She felt like a vortex through which the ocean of time was pumping. She was drowning:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:03

//This is me." Taer thought. It was as if she were in a convertible, accelerating and accelerating, and the icy wind that she liked so much was becoming so much that it was hard to breathe. She felt she was beginning to suffocate, but it was not scary at all. She was calm - she did not need to breathe.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:05

She didn't know at what point the flashes of awareness finally dissolved her mind. Time simply made no sense to her. There was too much of it, so much that there was no room left for her body, for her eyes, for her breath, and her consciousness. Only a blindingly bright stream in which only a tiny thought remained of her:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:24

// I'm back.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:22

When Taer regained her ability to see, she saw a light. Not blindingly bright, but a calm, even milky white light, it was everywhere, and it bled.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:26

Blood was everywhere, too. She was covered in blood, bright scarlet streams of blood wrapped around her in scarlet lace, and there was no other garment she wore. Blood gathered in a scarlet hem at her feet and poured into the crimson puddles that surrounded the mutilated bodies. They were her bodies. She was standing over her own body in a huge pool of blood. Her empty eyes on her bloodshot face stared unseeingly upward through her. Her own body lay before her, slashed from the shoulder obliquely, and behind it was another with a torn throat, and another, and another. Everywhere in this white field were her own mutilated bodies in pools of blood. Thousands, hundreds of thousands.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:53

Scarlet streams of blood stretched from puddle to puddle, connecting all these bodies into a giant scarlet web:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:56

// That's all me.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:57

The body closest to her was suddenly in motion, abruptly, as if an invisible hand had grabbed it, pulling it upward. Taer reflexively recoiled, and the body hovered in front of her, literally sucking blood through its wounds. It was like a tape being played backward - a bloody scarlet splash flew into the wound, and it rapidly fused as if it had never existed. Very quickly, just a few moments later, there she was, standing in front of Taer - like a mirror, but the reflection was very different. That Taer looked at her with calm confidence in her superiority, that Taer was strong and confident. That Taer was better at everything:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:59

// Is this what could have been? Or is it what it was?

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 18:59

Her copy, which stood opposite, hesitated for a moment, as if it were a visual recording with interference, and when the interference ceased, instead of the fingers of her right palm she had curved sharp claws that shone with metal.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:03

Taer looked at her right hand. Instead of fingers, it had the same claws, only all covered in blood. She knew what was about to happen:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:05

// She's going to kill me. Taer realized. She's much stronger. I don't belong here at all. I'm too weak.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:06

She looked around - there was only light, blood, and bodies - it was pointless to run.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:07

// She can't, and there's nowhere to run.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:08

The other moved toward her, and Taer reflexively raised her arms in defense:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:08

"Please." She whispered miserably, looking pleadingly at her looming self. But the woman looked at her with the weary indifference of someone who'd done it a thousand times, ready to repeat it over and over again as long as it was necessary.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:10

Taer did not notice the blow, so swift it was, only the blood spattering and the gurgling wheeze in her own torn throat, and the world was divided. She was simultaneously slowly settling, covering her own torn throat, and looking at her dying self at the same time:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:17

// It's all me - at the same time. She realized, and it also became clear that the real her died a long time ago. - She was one of the first to die. I'm really dead.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:18

The thought gave her back her ability to feel emotion, and she was bitter, bitter that she had been dead a long time and that she could not change it. She was in pain. It hurt from being alone because there was only her, and there was too much of her.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:20

Something happened in her divided world. Something noticed her, something huge. She felt the attention as if she were a tiny insect that the giant was paying close attention to. The white light that filled everything around her moved. It began to crumble around her, to pull her in like a swamp, to dissolve her.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:22

Everything was gone. Only the light was left.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:00

As the light receded, Taer realized she was lying there looking up at the sky, a bright, calm, pale blue sky. A light breeze was blowing over her. It was cool but not cold, and the wind brought the tangy smell of tree resin and pine needles.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:24

// A pine? The smell was strange, distinctly woody, but also very fresh and bright. Somehow she knew it was called a pine. It seemed perfectly natural to her.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:26

She lifted herself on one arm and saw that she was lying on a smooth, springy carpet of soft red needles, which tickled rather than stung and adhered to her blood-covered body in great numbers. She reflexively touched her throat - it was all right - and rose to her feet, gingerly, with the help of her hands, her body not listening very well, and looked around.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:27

She was in a small forest, or grove, surrounded by tall strange trees, with a bare trunk without branches, covered with large red bark scales, branches were only at the very top, and instead of leaves on them were these same needles that covered everything around. It was not red but pale green. It was from them that the smell of tree resin and this other aroma of "pine" came.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:29

// The Pines.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:29

The trees were sparse and barely obscured the sky, and she had no sense that she was in the woods, so bright and clear and very peaceful.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:32

She looked around, at the same time mechanically trying to remove the clinging needles from her bloody hands. The grove, the sky, the red carpet of needles, ahead of her was a small building, a small two-story house in a very bourgeois style - with chopped rectangular shapes, without any decorations, with huge windows. The first floor was of large unworked blocks, and the second was of dark red wooden planks. It somewhat resembled the country house of the Marquise of Turang, where they had recently been together with Lord...

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:34

// Recently? Some part of her was sure that she had been lying here forever, staring up at the sky, simply forgetting that she could do anything else, she could exist and think. And another part remembered, remembered that she had only been in the capital for a few days, remembered her visit to the Marquess of Turang a few decades ago.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:35

Taer realized she was asleep. Her memory was coming back to her. She remembered the Fenote she had taken and everything else.

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:36

// I almost always have nightmares after I activate the haunting. So I'm just having a nightmare? Taer thought, wrapping her arms tightly around herself and looking around confusedly. The dream was frighteningly realistic. "Like the time with the fireball. Besides, I took a Fenote. Could there be hallucinations in a dream?

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:37

But that was not important. The important thing was that she realized that she was asleep, which meant she could control her sleep. At least try to:

Camrad_RIP 29.05.23 в 19:38

// I want to find the source of my nightmares. Mentally she concentrated. I want to find the source of my bloodlust.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:51

She did not know how long she concentrated like that, but soon a dog barked nearby:

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:52

// As in the manual! The fabric of the dream obeyed! Taer rejoiced, trying to find the source of the sound with her eyes.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:52

A dog jumped out into the clearing where she was, unnaturally huge. Its head must have been at Taer's hip level, almost the size of an adult vorskl. And fluffy - covered in long golden hair, it wagged its tail happily, holding a healthy, dry stick in its teeth, and despite its size, it gave no impression of being a dangerous creature at all, quite the contrary.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:54

The dog ran happily toward her but, at about ten paces, stopped abruptly, literally sitting on its hind legs. Her ears flattened against her head, she yelped uncertainly, started to back away, and turned around and ran away toward the house.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:55

// Was she scared of me? - Taer was surprised, but she looked at herself again and remembered that she was completely naked and covered in blood from head to toe. - "No wonder."

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:56

Taer tried to imagine wearing clothes or at least just cleaning up the blood, but it didn't work:

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:57

// It must be one of those dreams where you walk around naked.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:57

Unsure of her footing on the carpet of soft needles, Taer walked toward the house that was visible at the edge of the grove. // Perhaps the dog is the guide that leads to the root of the problem.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 17:58

From up close, the house made an even more laconic but very solid impression. There were no decorations, only measured lines, stone, and wood. It was surrounded by a small lawn of trimmed dark green grass, and a path lined with a few large flat stones led up to the front door.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 18:00

The entrance door of dark lacquered wood, with a simple straight handle gleaming with chrome, was closed, but there was a huge window in the wall nearby. It stretched from the floor to the ceiling of the first floor and was ajar, pushed aside to form a narrow passageway in which the wind was fluttering the edges of the thick blue curtains, and the floor outside the window showed the wet footprints of a dog's paw.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 18:02

Taer froze in indecision, not quite sure what to do, but she heard a woman's voice from behind the window:

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 18:02

"Don't be shy."

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 18:02

The speaker was out of sight, and Taer, shaking with a little doubt, decided that it would be foolish to be embarrassed about her own dream. She wiped her hands and feet on the grass as best she could and, with a sigh, grasped the doorknob.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 18:06

With a quiet click, the door opened, and she stepped inside. In the spacious hallway that transitioned into the corridor, there was a semi-darkness and the same geometric and laconic decorations that matched the whole house. Then there was an even more spacious living room, full of light thanks to the giant window with the curtains pulled back, where on a white sofa facing the window a woman was sitting with her back to Taer and a dog swirling around with her.

Camrad_RIP 30.05.23 в 18:08