Every sound, every feeling, scene of direction, everything was getting fuzzy. The darkness was enveloping Viriya until she couldn't think of anything else. The last thing she remembered was the feeling of Shereka standing on guard and another figure hiding near the fields.
Viriya found that her thinking sense was returning. She burst out in thinking,
What was that?
Did Shereka do that?
Was that someone else? Was that the killer from the seashore?
Was that...
Slowly, white and red swirls materialised a long table in front of her. It was a familiar place, where she spent her time every night during sleep. This was the same dream space where, at one end of the table, Original Viriya sat, and at the other end, Current Viriya-Anish was seated.
Anish still didn't feel anything physical — no pain, no smell, no sound from that blackout. He could think, touch and feel the table, the throne he was sitting on. But there wasn't any sound or smell in that space.
He wasn't sure how much time had passed outside the dream, because it couldn't be said whether he had immediately woken up inside the dream or not.
After he was out of the panic, even if he was calm, he didn't know what he could do. He couldn't see if he stood up, he couldn't do anything but sit there.
He still got up from the throne. It was clear for a little while, like always. He moved forward slowly until the fog came out from him and enveloped him completely.
He had developed a rough intuition of the area around the throne over time. Moving even more, he jumped around, punched at nothing, tried to open non-existing imaginary doors, if he could somehow wake up in reality. Thinking being lucid in a dream, could've actually made a door out of nothing.
While trying all those things, the thought of what had happened to the body outside was creeping up on him. But he was sure that Viriya's body was alive, otherwise that space wouldn't exist. Or at least he hoped so. He didn't really know what it was. But it was a place where two people inhabited the same carriage.
Even later, he went towards Original Viriya, because it was her body, to see if Anish could find any way to get out of the dream. But no, he didn't find any.
When he was coming back along the table's edge, he remembered the moment when Viriya's left elbow hit the ground. He felt, or saw, a little glimpse of the area around her. It was like a small area of a place mapped in the mind, scanning the whole place for just a moment.
That was where he had felt Shereka behind her and another person hidden at the field. He knew the left hand of Viriya was unusual; it had more strength. And apparently it could see through the environment as well, for one reason or another.
The left hand was different. It was kind of an anomaly. Locking onto that, he tried to lift the long table with his left hand, to check if that worked there. Maybe that hand could do something, because it wasn't just strong — it also gave Anish a kind of aerial sensation when he fell down on his elbow. After trying with all the force he could use, the table didn't move at all.
He thought that maybe the asymmetrical hand belonged to Viriya's body, so Original Viriya must have been the one who could use its strength there as well. Or maybe it just worked in a physical space, not wherever he was then.
Not able to achieve anything, he went back towards his side. While going there, he once more tried to lift the table with both hands. His right hand had the spiral bangle, so maybe that would work in some way. The results were the same as the last time. The table didn't budge. Not able to do anything, he followed the guidance of the table and sat on his throne.
Slowly the fog around him internalised into his body, which felt like a missing part of him every time it went inside him.
After the fog faded, the feeling of the fog being a part of him gave him an idea. If his intuation was correct, he was more complete with the fog than before. Sitting on the throne, he looked at the table — the carvings on it, the huge scale of it. Without thinking much about anything else, he held the table from the left corner on his side. Then he started to drag it right and towards the top simultaneously.
The force he used was light at first. But pushing the table even harder, it almost slid in the right direction. Not the whole table, just the top slab. After releasing the table slab, it slowly started to move again, trying to return to its original spot. As Anish had guessed would happen, a similar thing happened after his second nightmare. Then there was a third void corner which was fading into void. The side of it was slowly shrinking, until it became a two-sided long table the next night.
After knowing that the fog was in him, he could use his left hand. When he was out of the throne his fog didn't stay in him. But the fog didn't get out from him immediately after getting of the throne.
Thinking the plan might work, he quickly stood up. For a little while the fog usually stayed within him. He tried to move his throne and moved it without any problem. It slowly grew heavier as the fog kept coming out of him and blocking his view, until it fell from his hand. He sat on the throne again so the fog could internalise. Even if slow, at least he could move and observe everything around him.
The throne was off-centred then. He tried to stand on it to check the area around him. He could only see the front, the side of Viriya. Because of the width and length of the back side of the throne, he couldn't see the complete area behind him.
The general back side of Original Viriya was visible, but not the exact back side of Original Viriya, because her advanced ancient floating throne was blocking his view.
Looking back at the throne, he noticed it was sliding on the ground, trying to return to its original spot.
After all the fog was inside him, he quickly got off the throne, rotated it so it would face backwards, and quickly sat back on it again. The fog almost came out and enveloped him during the process. He sat there waiting for the fog to get back into him.
The back side was empty, not exactly empty. All the floor and the structures around him were converging into a single point. The point was exactly at the straight back of where the throne used to be. Around that converging point, walls were standing with something intangible engraved on them.
The point was black. His intuition was telling him that it was the way out. He wasn't sure if that was true or not. He started walking towards it.
But the fog enveloped him again. He then repeated moving the throne towards the convergence point, with several iterations. When he was close to it, he ran towards that point as the fog was coming out and slowly blocking his view.
At the moment he stepped on the point of convergence, all the fog around him shrank in an instant and wove into a silver string. One end of it was coming out of Anish himself and the other was tied to the throne, which was moving even faster to return to its original position.
The black point of convergence enveloped him not long after.
Slowly, glints of glowing dots filled his vision. He looked towards his hand — it was faded. Through and around them he could see the glints through his hand. The dots were slowly moving in every direction. It was almost like a night sky, but with no moon.
Anish panicked at that moment. He felt suffocated and claustrophobic even though he didn't need any air and had unlimited space around him to move.
It wasn't hard to understand — it was space. He had stepped out of that weird space and was now in literal space, with nothing connecting him back to that shared space. Not exactly nothing; the string coming out of him was still there, ending very close to him. He could hold the string. He tried to go back somehow with the string, in countless ways, but with no result.
He hoped he would only return once Viriya's body woke up. He moved around from where the string was coming out — nothing was there. He just waited, without moving at all.
He noticed a dot of light slowly getting bigger and brighter. Maybe it hadn't even been there before. He knew that if it was a star, and at the rate it was growing and coming towards him, he couldn't outrun it. He stayed still, watching the star grow. He was quite far away from the end of the string he was tied to. He stayed there.
As it came closer, Anish saw a very familiar structure. It was a solar system — the solar system within which Earth exists. During the time he was thinking, he found himself floating over Earth as everything came close to him.
It was Earth, but not the Earth where Viriya had become unconscious. It was very familiar to him. The sun was in the sky with no floating debris blocking it. There were homes, roads, humans, their clothing — all very familiar to him. It was the twenty-first century. He looked at his silver string's end. It was leading to a crowd formation. It looked like an accident site. He knew the road — it was the road he had always taken to work. In twenty twenty he had lost his job, then fallen into a car crash. After connecting all the pieces in his mind, he quickly floated forward following the string as fast as he could. He could see a bit of red — his motorcycle — through the gap in the crowd.
Before he could go any further, he felt her breathing rise. It was like something was covering his nose. Everything started to move like water, everything warped, and the string coming out of him retracted into him. Everything slowly went black. Again there was no sound, no light, no stars, nothing.
Not sure how much later, he heard a tapping sound on something hard, and he could again feel the same heavy breathing as before, followed by pain in both his ankles and wrists. He-She couldn't think properly then, but the sharp metallic smell — the smell of blood — covered her nose.
Maybe she tried to move during that time or maybe she didn't. The tapping sound stopped and everything went silent. Viriya understood she was being tied up. If she wanted, she could easily have torn off whatever was restraining her hands, which she intentionally or unintentionally didn't do. Her mouth was tied and her eyes were covered.
She heard a soft male voice: "Viriya, you ok?"