3

I sat back up after an indeterminate amount of time, bleary and red-eyed with fatigue.

Thankfully I was still among the loamy soil and fields of wild grass, nestled like a shrew in the shadow of the Monument. I regained awareness of my motor functions, but it still took a while for me to get back up onto my feet. I looked upwards; the sky had began to cloud up; baby blue became infused with wisps, then from the imperceptible distance came great cumulus clouds that drifted lazily through the atmosphere. Woolen white but some shaded pale gray; those ones reminded me of bog corpses, petrified into still sleep. I hadn't sat there for much time. Wasn't sure if I even rested for more than an hour. But an hour was too much. By then the world had already moved on without me, and now my day had been shortened. Atleast one thing remained an absolute constant, which was the sun that still hung limply in the middle of the sky. Now its heavy-handed blows and searing gaze had become an indifferent, ignorable warmth. I rubbed my eyes with soiled hands, like some slack-jawed idiot who refuses to learn from the past, then slogged through mental refuse piles until I found the list again. What was next. Oh Right. The Barrier.

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The trek to the edge of the valley was long and far, far away. Like usual.

I left the shadow of the monument, then made my way through fields of whipping grass and loamy black soil. Crossed the ancient stone Bridge across the river, clambed up the sloping hills, washed my face in a shrub-enclosed pond, then continued up to the apex of the hill. Around there, I took special care to not slip. The risk of slipping came to a close when I reached the apex at last. A few dozen meters further across the hill curved, then plummeted down uninterrupted, until it ended in a snaking golden beach and a vast ocean. I had seen this all countless times, but the vast drop from here to the beach would always make my stomach turn. Here all it would take was an uneven rock or a screaming gale and I would plummet down, until I shattered into gory fragments on the rocks. I winced, then tried to take my mind onto other things. Like the wind. So high up, the gentle wind became whipping in its intensity, murmuring irefully in my ears, pushing along foreign odors and the smell of the ocean. The aromatic miasma of the ocean and sea-dwelling bacillus had become intoxicating now; it made the air woozy and pleasant to breathe.I felt myself get stronger just by being here. A squint of the eyes and I could see the outlines of an archipelago among the ocean, each individual island a gentle green, mounds of earth drowned underneath mossy green forests and sunbaked sand. For a while I just sat there in silence. I counted the wispy clouds in the sky; watched the frothing waves lap at the golden shoreline. Occasionally they'd would lurch high and billow over the farthest portions of the beach, only to regurgitate them seconds later, the gold turned to a damp brown.

But I had not come here to sight-see. Slowly I stumbled back to my feet, extended my hand and pressed it against the empty air infront of me. For the briefest of moments it went forward like nothing was there and in those moments there wasn't, until it extended just beyond the cliff edge, and it stopped against a very real, very hard surface. The air shivered and melted as if distorted by heat, until a shimmering barrier coalesced itself into reality, then became still. I shot my hand back like I had reached into a roaring fire, taking a few steps backwards from the cliffs edge. For a moment I stared up at the barrier, at how the air flickered and hardened until it spanned the entirety of the cliff and further, extending across the edges of the valley, separating it from the ocean. Even in the far distance I could still see the giant shimmering wall, splitting the great nimbus clouds that approached from the west.

Even now the thing amazed me. The Barrier was my magnum opus; the greatest accomplishment I had made in thousands of years. It was something created purely from the abstract, violently forced into a physical shell, or atleast as physical as I can make it. The definition is slippery nowadays. Reinforced and strengthened over the millennia, its purpose was to preserve my little slice of relative normalcy, and seal myself off from the outside world. Foremost it functioned as a stabilizer, keeping my few dozen miles of sanity preserved and sheltered from outside influence, hiding its existence from the things that lie and hunt further in the Antumbricane. So apart from the erratic sun movements and the streams sometimes flowing uphill and the rare thing that managed to slip through some infinitesimal fault in the barrier, it was almost safe within the barrier. Could probably write a book on the individual quirks and minuscule details that went into its formation, but it's not like there's anyone around to read it, anyway.

But outside the barrier, even just a few steps, was an entirely different world. When I felt brave I ventured beyond the barrier, fished around the beach or sailed to the archipelago, then darted back behind it. Sometimes it was peaceful, nothing bothering me other than the chilling wind. Other times the sand nipped at my bare feet and the ocean would weakly grasped with damp hands at my bruised ankles. But apart from the occasional unsettling apparition or ghosts of feeling, atleast nothing attacked me out here. Or atleast, those that would and could tear me to shreds, only appeared every once in a few centuries. Besides. Even beyond the barriers reach, this was a calm spot within the Antumbricane. An eye in the storm. The valley and the planet itself was situated within a serene pocket of inconsistency that spanned around one solar mile, getting worse the further one ventured away from the barrier, eventually becoming the unpredictable, raving lunacy of the Antumbricane. The Antumbricane is fickle and Dionysian. In some slim way it can be compared to an insane old man, temperamental and whimsical, huddled in a ball of ranting, screaming lunacy. His brutalized subconscious is lucid and chaotic; today he is King Arthur of the Seventh False Moon; Tomorrow he is the lone survivor of an intergalactic demon expedition into the wilderness of Peru. But unlike the insane old man, the Antumbricane can impose its lunacy on the perception of others. Reality is molded by its delusions and somewhere in that awful molding they become grounded fact.

My lips parted. I think I let out an involuntary sigh. I couldn't care enough to stop it, or visibly react too much. Despite my efforts not think about the Antumbricane or what lay beyond my little solar mile of only slight lunacy, it's always an omnipresent threat gnawing at my subconscious, clawing and scraping with clammy hands at the back of my soft skull. Even now, after thousands of years, I still must keep watch. But I shouldn't be wasting time. Slowly I got back up, then pressed my hand to the shimmering barrier. It was warm to the touch, just like all those thousands of years ago. With care I closed my eyes, and began. I felt my brain pulsate within my soft skull, then the ripples spread across my body in the form of an unnatural warmth. The warmth grew to a tickling heat, and a sensation like a blood-bag emptying filled my being. I channeled that heat, and let it concentrate in my hand, then channeled it into the barrier. The barrier shuddered, then flickered with the sudden intake of new life-force. A thousand years of energy became a thousand and one. At the end of it all I was drowsy and disoriented, like a blood donor. My peripheral vision became hazed and watery and I almost tripped when I stood back up. But I recovered. Besides, the shimmering had become just a tiny bit more defined, and that's all that mattered.

My post-donation mind stared out, visualizing the ocean just beyond the shimmering gold barrier. It envisioned the fish; of their small twisting shapes lurching out the ocean, only to collapse back into it seconds later with a gentle splash. The sloshing sound of their lithe tails flailing in the water. The taste of haddock. Mackerel. I was tempted. Besides. I kept my fishing spear over here anyway. Maybe I'll have some fish for tonight. Slowly I stumbled back to my feet. Blinked rapidly, then straightened my back like a measuring rod. Turning away from the edge of the hill, I began to walk, going down the rocky, uneven path eroded into its side. The path twisted and turned; sometimes requiring me to jump over an unstable gap or crane my head down to avoid colliding with a jagged protrusion. Somewhere around midway from the cliff to the sunbaked sands, I came to a stop beside a tiny nook in the stone. The interior was obscured by shadow, looking like the den of some insect. I reached my arm into the tiny crevice, and for a brief few moments my hand grasped and clawed blindly in the dark. Then its grip hardened around a hard surface, wrapped in a tubular material. I pulled my hand out, and with it came a lengthy object, wrapped tightly in uneven canary reed. I gripped it tightly, not stripping it of its wrapping just yet, and continued on.

With effort and care I had reached the beach. I trudged across the sea of golden grains, and when I crossed roughly parallel to the cliff edge, the barrier reappeared on the sand. I prepared for what may come, then forced myself through the barrier. It shimmered and bent upon itself, then like translucent wax it gave way and I passed through. The second I left I was awashed with the suspicious tingling sensation of something being wrong. The gentlest back-water idea of suspenseful intrusion, like being deep within a cave. It was unpleasant, but ignorable. There was no sound, except the frothing waves and the now gentle wind. Would have been tranquil, but I knew that while out here, beyond the protection of my little bubble of sanity, my safety was no longer 100% guaranteed. And I wasn't in the mood for anything, right now.

I moved quickly and quietly. I rushed my way to the shoreline, almost stumbling in my effort to move with haste. When I reached there, I unfurled the wrapping and withdrew a stout wooden fishing spear. It's fire-hardened edge was jagged and menacing, flakes of rotted wood peeled off the canary shaft. I carefully waded into the ocean, not stopping until water sloshed around my waist and every step caused rocks and sand to tumble off deeper into the water. Then I began. I waited for a few moments, absolutely silent, looking more like some malnourished statue than an actual person. I saw movement in the distance and I lunged. A flash of dull wood into water, then the splash of it lunging back out. I had speared a fish; Skewered the thing on the wooden edge of the spear. It flailed its golden body wildly, bulbous eyes alight with primitive terror, then the final vestiges of its mind died, and it went limp. with I got back into position and waited. Eventually I got impatient. I didn't want to wait more than ten minutes for each fish. So I projected myself into the water telepathically, reaching out into the waters nearby. I commanded them to come to me, echoing through primitive minds and overwhelming any other notion. Didn't extend my reach too far — I didn't want an entire shoal right now.

A dozen seconds later, a fish swam towards me, and I repeated what I did earlier. And another. After a while the spear began to resemble some morbid parody of old earth food. I tried to get one more, but as it approached it saw the spear through the shallow water, twisted and distorted by the waves, yet still understood the intents of its wielder, and flitted away through the water. I tried again, stabbing madly at the shallow ocean water, until eventually I just watched it go. Three fishes. I figured I had made a profit. So I cut my losses and waded out from the ocean water, wrapping the spear up in its dried reed covering, not bothering to remove its skewered decorations from its jagged edge.

But as I left the water and trudged across the sand I swear I heard something cry.