On the beach of the bay of dreams, Lirran sat up. He had managed to maintain his awareness as he fell asleep. He looked around him. A few dreaming minds could be seen, mostly humans, but there was one figure sticking out: a tzappatt.

Navigator Kaza was not in her luminous form of seafoam. Roots entangled her, dark and greedy, trying to burrow into her mind’s form, drawing her deep into the sand, keeping her suspended between inaction and unrest. Without easing of the symptoms, her body would pain too much for her to recover and rest during sleep.

Lirran looked to the forest’s edge. If her mind was entangled, it would not be able to leave, fight or flee from anything that would dare to step onto the beach. Only minds could enter the beach, but as Lirran knew, there were those minds that while without body, had managed to hide away in the borderlands. He would have to guard her for the night.

He tried tearing at the tangle, but when he touched the roots, they coarse bark cut paint into his hands, he felt his awareness slip. He had no way to help her directly. Kaza herself had her spear, a representation of he bone and stone tool, his old master had a sickle, fashioned after that of Clossa, but Lirran had nothing.

He concentrated his thoughts with which he could awake her. Navigator Kaza, can you hear me? But her mind did not respond. The last thing he knew to do was enter her dream forcefully, his original sin, where he could fight whatever was frightening her on the terms that her mind had set up. He could only imagine a monstrosity of the deep in the lightless waters; not a place he would be able to hold his own.

A feeling of powerlessness settled on him, he felt his own form growing weak and vulnerable. All he could do is watch as Kaza’s mind went from weakness to pained struggle and to weakness again. He despaired for his Navigator, maybe even his friend, the one that had shown him a way out of the deepest darkness. Now that she needed help, he was powerless to do so.

Please, Navigator, hold on through the night.

Then he saw the figure at the edge of the forest.

It was a tangle of twitching desires, held back by fear as it looked upon the easy pray and its weak guard. A shade.

Lirran stood up and tried to show strength, but he knew he had none. The mind-shaped husk of basal emotions took a step onto the sands of the beach, beyond where any root of the hungering maws pretending to be trees could reach. Lirran could not prevent himself from taking a step back from his Navigator’s mind.

He was not even within reach of that creature and he was already losing against it. He gathered all the thoughts he could muster up against it. Stay back! Wretched thing, I will never become like you, I will oppose you with all my might. I have already learned much from her, I have already seen hope, though a gentle hill it thrones above all of despair!

But the shade approached undeterred and Lirran kept stepping back. Every piece of its mental body seemed greedy, demanding to feed before any other part got a chance, reaching out from everywhere, bringing forth teeth and fangs, claws and suckers to acquire that strength that laid before them on the ground, unable to leave or run, powerless to fight back and unprotected by the only one who could. The shade knelt and its entirety reached out.

When the thing touched Kaza, a painful thought arose from her, a struggle began in vain and Lirran was forced to witness her agony. He could even in the bay of dreams feel his body contort in resistance to this; his heart cramped, his throat demanded to expel cry, his eyes watered.

NO!

He ran towards the shade torturing his Navigator and jumped on it, trying to push it off. He hit the mass of emotions and was overcome. It writhed and wrapped around him, then expelled him back onto the sand like an annoying piece of cartillage. He saw visions of his past mistakes mixed with those of another living thing, a thing that was now merely a husk before him. He knew what he had done wrong and he knew he would do more wrong in his life. Like from a wound, he bled his thoughts across the sands of the bay.

What good is there in me? What good can I do? I was a fool to follow her guidance, I can never go where she went, I can never acquire her light from the depths. I can’t even hold my breath for a while yet I hoped to gain the strength of one that gathered baubbles off the ocean floor?

He saw again the scene, his Navigator being drained by the abomination of mind. He wished to rise again and scream at it, but he could not muster a single good thought that did not pale in comparison to the evil he saw before him. Then he saw behind the two the moonlight island. He remembered the prayer to Clossa he had been taught under his old master.

Maiden of the moon, shine mine way.

First wanderer of the swamps, grant me sure step.

Banisher of first nightmare, grant me vision to see the dark.

Guardian of souls at peace, grant me the strength to show mercy.

Mother of moths, place thy sickle in the night’s sky.

And should I disappear, guide thy moths to find me whole.

He reached his hand out to the island and when he retracted his hand in dead hope, he saw before him something in the sands of the bay. He crawled towards it an reached for it. It was a shell like of a clam he had never seen before, large as his palm, on the outside rough and grey, pocked with dead barnacles, on the inside iridescent with the colours of the rainbow and at the edge, sharp like a knife.

He saw again the shade and heard again his Navigator groan in pain. He knew what he had to do. He gathered his strength, stood up and raised the shell in his hand. He focused on the foe at hand, that grotesque mockery of a mind, the husk filled with selfish desires. Then he charged forward, letting aggression and hatred flow forth from him like a reverberating warcry.

The shade turned around, Lirran brought the shell down, cutting through slime and tendon. Blackness gushed, tendrils grasped, appendices whipped around in fear. He weighed the thing down with his full determination. With fear and desoaration, it lashed back, scratched into his mind, sought for something to feed on but all he allowed himself to feel was destruction of the foe.

You stand in the way of my redemption. You hurt my only friend. You thirst for nothing but pain. You deserve not to exist.

Again and again, he brought the razor-sharp shell down onto the squirming mass, opening the shape so that all its selfishness was in vein. He denied it every movement or flight, when it tore itself loose and crawled to the edge of the forest, he grabbed it, dug his fingers into the black mass, dragged it underneath him.

Movement ceased, hatred ebbed away and Lirran dropped from the mass of flesh, now hollow and bloodless. He saw a face. Where previously was a monster with a visage like oozing roots, now he saw the faintest hint of lips and eyes, dead and almost shapeless, cut many dozen times across all of it, a husk of mere shape and no substance.

Lirran’s heart cried.

I am sorry. Being once of love, I am sorry.

He remained lying, winding against the splatters and stains of what he had hacked and cut. Without the evil at hand to hate, his hatred turn inward.

His pain was interrupted by a light of white. A fluffy moth of moonlight fluttered above the husk and sat down on it. In its light, a dust seemed to cover the colourless thing and when the moth took flight again, this dust rose with it, the shape of a mind, almost hollow but still containing something that deserved salvation.

Thank you, Clossa, for taking this poor soul.

The remainder of the husk fell to sand, dissolving into the beach as if nothing had happened at all.

Lirran observed the moth fly to the moonlight island, where the doorframe stood alone, and disappear into what laid beyond. Then he rose. Kaza was still entangled by her own nightmare, he still had word to do. Careful to not cut his Navigator, Lirron severed the roots than entangled her mind and immediately her form became calmer, relaxed, sleeping peacefully. The frayed pieces of tangle fell to the sand and dissolved like the husk had.

Then Lirran finally let himself fall into the sand. His mind had jot even the strength to dream.