The Pilgrims

37

Nightmare drifted. Spread out below him, the people and the creatures swarmed across Levaal’s night-time surface slept, lived, died. He saw not them, he saw patterns: some were pleasing, but some disturbed, disquieted.

It was not the patterns as they were now which disquieted him; it was the way they shifted and moved, how some invariably swung towards others to meet like waves in a pool, and what, from that, would result.

He switched perspective as he drifted, the way others may shut one eye to look out from the other. Now down below appeared as machinery, pistons moving, spoked wheels spinning in place, steam bursting from a vent. This way, things seemed a little more sure … but there were many ways to view things.

There, look at that interesting little bolt, up high on the tall rocky platform. Important, that one was, tucked in between many other key parts. Yet something hindered its function. Nightmare would have to think about it, later.

Actually not much later … for the bolt was a human, and those did not function for long. Should he act? He thought about it, foresaw two likely futures spreading before him. One was terrible, one most desirable. And if he did nothing, just drifted and watched? Five other likely futures stretched before his view. All were bad, very bad, save one. This part of the machinery should therefore function well.

Nightmare switched views again, and now saw the world as music, mostly playing as it should, though a dramatic crescendo approached, booms and crashes coming loud indeed. The futures he saw through this lens boded similarly to those seen through the others. There, that one important instrument named Eric was not playing its notes correctly. Much of the symphony relied on it, and soon the instrument would break, the man be slain. He switched view to the patterns he’d seen before. Again, a fault in the complex web of colours and shades, a smear of jarring red, a stain spilled across it.

It was becoming clear, now. But an hour longer to think wouldn’t hurt, so he stayed in that space of sky, above the rocky platform, and thought. He could think quickly when he had to, distasteful though it was.

It was that Invia’s Mark causing all this trouble. Nightmare would have liked even a year to consider it longer, to have the impressions swirl about the deep volatile mix of his thoughts before choosing an action. But the man would be killed in so little time.

Nightmare reached down and smothered out the Invia’s Mark like a hand snuffing out a candle.