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Chapter 3 - A Sea of Bones
Indion recognized the dream immediately for what it was, for it was the only one he ever had.
A dead forest midst a sea of bones, each branchless tree a tombstone of flaking white bark, their tips rising out the shifting remains of a million corpses, rising like spears beneath a sunless gray sky high above.
Long ago, he learned that he was not meant to participate in this dream. He took no shape, nobody, and would not manifest any kind of form. His role was that of an observer, his ego detached and left behind. Indion knew, in a detached way, that he had always known this place and had been born into it; it was like trying to recall your first memory.
As a boy, there was a certain excitement to the freedom that came when not confined to the restrictions of a physical body, his first discovery in this new world. He could command his perspective to move with a mere thought, and he sailed upwards, high above the trees. He saw that the forest was vast, reaching for miles in all directions, and he wondered what things he might find hidden within. With each return visit, he would choose a different direction, soaring high above and moving through the trees.
The excitement faded as the years passed; each return visit became more mundane. There was an ancient weight within the emptiness, and he knew the forest had been this way for a very, very long time. And he feared there was nothing to find but bones and dead trees in every direction. Eventually, he stopped searching altogether, resolving to wait for his ego to summon him awake and rescue him from this purgatory.
It had been his fourteenth birthday when the dream underwent its first change. His father had visited him unexpectedly. “Stop waiting, boy, and start listening.” The visit lasted all of five minutes. Indion recalled feeling anger as he watched him go. Stubbornly cryptic even in his goodbyes.
When he returned to this place, the anger left behind by his ego, he realized the words had made perfect sense. Instead of waiting, he listened. And that’s when he first heard it. The forest was not empty, after all.
Two figures, the man leading, dancing purposefully, keeping something from emerging from the sea of bones. The woman’s eyes were two saucers of molten gold cast in skin of midnight ebony. The soft curve of her lips painted a dark horizon line underneath angular cheekbones dotted with freckles that twinkled like stars. She danced with a weightless elegance to some unheard song, her hair trailing behind her like the sparkling tail of a comet, the sea of bones beneath her feet undisturbed as she leaped and spun across its surface.
Indion knew that it was the last night he saw his father, fifteen years ago, when the dream changed again. The man was weaker and slow, the woman leading but struggling as the sea stirred with unrest.
He also knew that it had been the night after his last fight that the dream made its final change. The sea of bones rolled in turbulent waves, falling over the edge of a cliff into a bottomless abyss. Indy watched himself standing between a gap, keeping the bones from spilling over like a man trying to hold back the currents of a rushing river. He pushed himself over, relishing the brief fall, anticipating the sweet release of death. But it never came; as always, she would catch him, her body morphing like a mirage, ever-changing and fleeting, yet with eyes that held all the sadness and weight of the world. She was otherworldly and vast, its size and power impossible to comprehend, and yet it always seemed to catch him in its grasp, trapping him in its surreal and unsettling presence with eyes of deep melancholic gold, the dancer’s eyes, filled with sorrow and longing, caught him every time, and then he would awake.
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The Hermit groaned above as Indy dangled precariously from his harness, some fifty feet below the grind of gears and steam. A rough rock wall faced him, a generous gift from the unforgiving Sector 3 landscape, while a gut-wrenching three-hundred-foot drop awaited below. His arms, taut with strength inherited from his enigmatic father, deftly manipulated the heavy machinery—the drill bit into the stubborn Condi deposit, whirring and sparking as it tore through the earth.
“Adjust resonance to 47.3!” Gage’s voice crackled through the buzzbox, tinny and faint in the cacophony of grinding metal.
“Got it,” Indy grunted, fingers tightening on the knobs and levers, sorely missing the dexterity his misshapen and malformed prosthetic had granted him just the day before.
As he worked, his thoughts meandered back to the bizarre dream that had haunted his sleep the night before. A creature – no, a being – unlike anything he’d ever encountered, with sad golden eyes and an air of mystery that hung about it like a shroud. It had saved him from a great fall, plucking him from the abyss as if he were weightless. The memory sent a shiver down his spine. Indy was not one to remember his dreams, but this one was proving unshakable, sticking to his mind like tar.
“Resonance stable,” he reported, sweat beading on his brow despite the chill air. “Keep an eye on that dial, Gage.”
“Have you tried punching it?” Shine said. " One-punch knock-out, I hear you used to be quite the expert in that field.”
“Very funny,” Indy said, rolling his eyes and focusing on the task. The Condi seemed to quiver, sensing its impending doom or perhaps mocking him. Either way, it wouldn’t elude him for much longer.
“Or shoot it, one shot, one kill. I hear your old man used to be quite the expert in that field.”
“We’d need the gun for that,” Gage said, stating the obvious. “If anyone knew where it even was.”
“Maybe his son’s been hiding it up his arse this whole time. Eh, big man?” Shine replied.
“You can check for me when I get back up there,” Indy grunted as the drill’s blade began to sink into the crystal. “Hold it right there, Gage. We’ve got them singing together nicely now.”
Indy’s attention wavered for a fraction of a moment, the echo of his dream lapping at the edges of his consciousness like oil on water. A shudder cut through the air, ruthlessly slicing through the swirling memory.
“Wha—?” he stammered as the earth bucked beneath him, as a violent tremor rippled through the crater. His harness jerked and swayed, sending the drill careening off course in a wild arc. A metallic screech tore through the air, and Indy felt the sudden weight shift as the drill bit cleaved through one of his harness chains.
“Shit,” he muttered, his heart thundering in his chest. As the severed chain whipped past him, Indy’s instincts took over. His fingers, cold and unyielding against the biting wind, found purchase on the remaining chain with near-superhuman speed. His muscles strained with the effort, cords standing out along his forearms like the gears of some great machine. The abyss yawned below him, hungry for his fall.
“Indy! What the hell just happened?” Shine’s voice blared through the buzzbox, her concern palpable.
“Minor setback,” he grunted, trying to sound nonchalant despite the precariousness of his situation.
“Setback? We just lost tension on your harness rig!” Gage chimed in, incredulous. “You’re hanging on by a thread down there!”
“Technically, it’s a chain,” Indy quipped, struggling to steady himself as the drill vibrated wildly in his hand.
“Cut the power, Gage! Shine barked into the buzzbox, “Indy, just let go of the damn thing!
The airborne drill swung like a pendulum, its weight amplified by the force emanating from the tower. His prosthetic hand creaked under pressure, synthetic fibers groaning in protest but holding firm.
“Indy, for fuck’s sake, drop the drill!” Shine’s voice crackled through his buzz box earpiece.
“Can’t,” he grunted, more out of pettiness than any real need to preserve the drill. The thought of having to make a trip up to the city to order a replacement rankled him more than the prospect of death. “Not yet.”
His heart pounded, each beat echoing in his skull like a hammer against an anvil. Every muscle screamed in agony as they strained to maintain his grip on the chain.
“Stubborn bastard,” Shine muttered,
“Almost there,” he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. With one final surge of strength, he swung the drill up and onto a narrow ledge jutting from the crater wall, its metal teeth biting into the rock with a satisfying crunch. The sudden release of tension sent a cascade of pain through his arm.
“You’ll all be relieved,” Indy announced through ragged breaths, “ or perhaps disappointed that I am still alive.”
“Yay,” Shine said flatly before adding, “Stubborn ass.”
“We’ll work on getting you back up,” Gage replied in a decidedly more cheery tone. “At least the drill is unscathed. Perhaps if you-. "
“Wait,” Indy said, “There’s something…strange here.”
Indy set the drill down with a deliberate gentleness as if tending to a wounded animal. The pulsating hum of the machinery stilled, and Indy found himself in an eerie silence that seemed to envelop him. Gage and Shine’s frantic, questioning voices fade into the background,
Before him stood a pair of intricate, alien doors made of strange metallic substance bearing unrecognizable symbols and lettering.
Indy reached out, his hand hovering just above the cold surface of the door. The strange metal felt like ice and fire, and something deep within him trembled.
The doors creaked open with an agonizing slowness, revealing a dark tunnel stretching into darkness,
A faint glimmer caught Indy’s eye in the far distance - a pair of golden eyes. Indy stood, frozen, a powerful wave of nostalgia and familiarity washing over him. He knew those eyes more intimately than any friend or lover he had ever known, but he did not understand why or how.
The eyes began to move, a formless shape in the dark, around the bend, and out of sight.
“Wait!” Indy called out, stripping out his broken harness and sprinting down the darkened hall.
Time lost all meaning; the tunnels seemed to turn in on themselves. There were no lights, but the material emanated a soft glow. Breathless, Indy began to consider the possibility that he may never find his way out of this unnatural maze. Then again, the golden eyes, so vivid and familiar, would appear as if they were imprinted on his very soul. Eventually, he entered a cavernous space filled with the remnants of a ruined city. High above, atop a broken spire, the golden eyes watched balefully at a figure spotlighted below.
A feminine entity enveloped in a robe so white it seemed to pulse with energy, its form constricted as if strangled by its clothing. A shattered golden crown hovered above its head, fragments of regal splendor suspended mid-air.
Suddenly, the golden eyes were in front of him, hovering in darkness. Sadness and urgency mingled within their molten gold depths.
“I…know you,” Indy said.
“You have always known me.”
Indy’s eyebrows nearly pushed his hat off his head. There had been no sound, yet he had heard the voice anyway.
The woman’s gaze suddenly snapped to the shrouded figure in white. “They will come for her,” she warned, urgency lacing her words. “And for you.”
A chill raced down Indy’s spine as the voice appeared in his head once more, his heart pounding as he struggled to understand
“Who will come?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
“Those who seek to wield The Blade Wetted in Times Blood.”
Nearby, weak whimpers quickly escalated into violent outbursts, the shrouded figure shrieking incomprehensible words so foreign to Indy’s ear as impossible to articulate as describing the smell of color. The emotion, however, came through clear as day—sadness and grief, raw and unfiltered, and then, more clearly, the desire for violence.
A pair of dark lips formed beneath the golden eyes, uttering a single word that reached into the depths of Indy’s soul, for it was spoken in the unmistakable timbre of his father’s voice.
‘Run!’
Then, an unseen force slammed into him, hurling him backward through the darkness. His body tumbled and rolled uncontrollably, every impact jarring his bones and stealing his breath. The world spun in a disorienting blur as he was sucked backward through winding tunnels, colors and shapes melding together as he desperately fought to regain control.
At last, his battered form skidded to a halt outside the ancient doors, his mind registering two red stars shining bright in the night sky before losing consciousness.