Chapter One - Elf in the Interstice

Rosine's mind floated through a sea of wavering dreams and thoughts, sinking down ever deeper. She knew where she was, of course. The knowledge had been given to her upon her rebirth, just as it had been granted to all her kind in their turn.

She was in the astral world.

All of her kind existed partially within the physical world and the astral world at the same time. As with all astral beings, their existance ran in cycles tied to the moon. As the moon waxed, they rose further into the waking world. As it waned, they too faded, and on the few nights where there was no moon, they sank completely back into the darkness of the Interstice where they had been reborn.

Rosine's current circumstances didn't fit her knowledge, leaving her disoriented. At the time when her kind slept, this shallow layer of the astral world should be full with their presence: quiet gossip passed from mind to mind, jubilent greetings among friends, hostile taunts and challenges among enemies, and the loud, raucous boasts of the prideful, all resonating through the sea of dreams.

The only things Rosine could pick up around her this time were vague mutterings and the briefest flashes of thought... the others were clearly in the physical phase of their cycle, so why was she here, alone?

As she sank deeper, she became more aware of her own form. Although she had no eyes with which to see in this state, she realized, with a shock, that she was injured. The eddies of energy that were her astral body churned madly, fragments of her own being spilling out slowly into the void.

With the realization of her injuries came the memories. The aborted attack on her former village, the Black Swordsman somehow tracking her to Misty Valley, her attendants burning away in the inferno, and the cruel bite of the Swordsman's blade, the terrible, terrible pain as it cleaved through her living flesh...

In the interstice, there was no need for words. Beings touched mind to mind and spoke with thoughts alone, and the pain invoked by her turbulent memories was enough to draw the attention of several of the denizens of this deeper layer. Their small minds swarmed around her, barely self-aware, but nasty and inquisitive.

'Hungry'
'Pain Its pain'
'Fear! Fear!'
'Pain Fear Food?'
'Food! Food!'
'What is it what is it what is it?'
'Apostle? Apostle. Apostle!'

The cloud of small minds buzzed uncertainly, panic spreading through their ranks as they realized what she was. They were far weaker than her-or at least they should have been, if she wasn't injured.

One of the minds, sharper than the rest, advanced slowly and cautiously. Rosine felt it probe at the edges of her conciousness, before it broadcast a ripple of satisfaction and triumph through the void.

'Injured!'

The other small minds closed in eagerly, yammering away in short, truncated thoughts.

'Injured!'
'Weak!'
'Injured! Weak!'
'Hungry'
'Its pain! Its fear!'
'Feed'
'Feedfeedfeedfeed'

'NO! GO AWAY!' Rosine ordered, the strength of her command as an Apostle enough to drive a few of the smaller weaker creatures off-but not nearly enough, as the rest of the swarm descended upon her.

The creatures glommed onto her astral form, and Rosine screamed as her mind distorted under their presence. Small sharp fingers of thought forced their way into her, wriggling and seeking for the memories-the memories-!

-The tidal wave of despair as she watched the figure of the Swordsman standing amidst the flames, a towering black shadow in their twisting crimson hearts, as all around him her attendants burned, years of her effort gone to waste-

-The crushing, burning pain in her innards, whatever enchantment the Swordsman had fired from his hand ripping through her organs, her stunned incomprehsion as she struggled to make sense of events, how her victory could have fallen apart even as the ground reached out to smash her-

-The brief flash of triumph sucked away too soon, turned to sour, blood-curdling terror in those few seconds, long as years, as the Swordsman's silhouette rotated, firelight revealing her lance threaded through his cheeks instead of buried in his skull. The moonlight shivering along his blade as it swung toward her, its terrible bite, and the pain pain pain pain-

The ravenous things seized her memories eagerly, bloating on her agony and despair, forcing her to relive those few moments over and over, the moments where her destiny, once so sweet, had gone so wrong.

Suddenly as it had began, the psychic assault ended. Relieved, Rosine groped for some explanation. She caught a few impressions of the psychic vampires fleeing upwards into shallower regions of the interstice, trumpeting pure terror as they went, but she was too dazed from the assault to make heads or tails of why they should be running. She was still sinking into the void, now deeper than she had ever gone before.

As Rosine collected herself, she became aware of something rising towards her from the depths of the abyss: a truly enormous will, dwarfing even her considerable presence as an Apostle. Clearly, it was this which the small minds had sensed and fled from. A momentary spike of panic shot through her, before she realized that she knew this mind. She had encountered it twice before, both on occasions of great importance, one of which had changed the course of her life.

'You seem to be in difficulty.' A massive psychic voice emanated from the being. Focused and incredibly powerful, it nonetheless held a jovial, casual tone, ripe with curiosity, as if remarking on some pretty flowers or a particularly unusually-shaped fruit. 'Were those Incubi bothering you?'

It was one of her saviors, lords, masters, objects of worship, one of the Angels who had come to her in her deepest despair and revealed her true destiny as Pirkaf. The Godhand, Ubik. Her panic and terror faded away. Surely, at last, here was someone who could help her!

'My Lord.' She began, careful to keep her tone respectful and submissive. It wouldn't do to presume on an Angel, after all. 'What's wrong with me? What's going on? Why am I here in the astral world?'

'Oh, that.' She had the sense that Ubik was circling her, examining her from every angle, if such terms could be applied to the non-existant geometry of the interstice. 'That's to be expected. You ARE dying, you know.'

'Dying?' Rosine was taken aback. The panic beginning to flutter again within her. She forced it down and forged ahead. 'I... I know I lost the fight with the Swordsman... but I was flying... And... I don't feel like I'm dying... What do you mean?'

'There's no mistake!' Ubik sounded positively gleeful. 'You ARE dying, even if you can't tell. Even now, your physical body lies unconscious and mortally wounded. When that happens to an Apostle, their mind comes here.'

Rosine was still sinking. The psychic structure of the Astral World was changing, becoming denser and darker, her spiritual senses gradually able to perceive less of the depths around her. She tried to wet her lips with her tongue, an ingrained physical response, which only dismayed her more as she realized her astral body had no mouth.

'My Lord... what will happen to me when I do die? Will... will you take me to heaven, like the priests said?'

Ubik's response was a roar of high-pitched laughter.

'Heee heee heee heee! Oh, you precious child! No, of course you're not going to heaven! I suppose you would call where you're going hell. Even though neither term really applies here, you know. You are going... to this place.'

Ubik's presence reached out to touch her mind, and her senses shifted. She could suddenly perceive far far down below them, into the very depths of the astral world. Tremendous rivers of mental energy flowed, crushing together mercilessly in a mighty torrent, its turbulance forcing itself back into a great vortex.

'That's what awaits YOU, dear child. That is the common grave of all beings touched by fate. In that twisted blackness, there are no hopes or dreams, nothing resembling thought or ego. There is only the darkness of the suffering of countless souls. When you fall into that darkness, you'll be crushed away like a drop of water in the ocean!'

Rosine's mind shrank back from the horror, but the vision persisted. She thought she had been sinking slowly before, but now she was sinking much too fast, growing ever closer to the vortex of souls beneath her. 'Why are you telling me these things?' She shrieked. How could this be? Why was her Angel tormenting her with this knowledge? Was it some kind of test, like the test she had to pass when-

'It's no test, my dear. Not this time.' Ubik giggled again. 'I admit, I'm curious.' Through her terror, Rosine realized sickeningly that he was acting in much the same way she had, when she would hound humans intruders through the mists of her valley, to see which way they would turn in fear. The same way she, as a human girl, would capture ants near the stream and channel water towards them with a piece of bark, to see how they ran.

'It's not very often that I get to break the news to Apostles like this,' Ubik mused. 'Your kind don't die very often, and when they do, it's usually quickly, because they've been killed by another Apostle. But ever since Slan's favorite boy showed up... He likes to kill them slowly.'

Ubik touched her again, and Rosine suddenly could see, all at once, as if she'd grown dozens of eyes, the Black Swordsman slaying Apostles. Big and small, furred and scaled, filled with the power granted to them by the Angels and made to rule over humans. But their power made no matter; the Swordsman cut a swathe through them like cheese, butchering and mutilating. The lucky ones were dispatched quickly with lethal blows. Others had the ill fortune to be crippled before death, and these he tortured, carving their immobile flesh slowly with knives, filling them with arrows until they bristled like pincushions, burning them with torches, cutting out their tongues, gouging out their eyes... there were so many of them, dozens upon dozens. Watching the images made Rosine sick. If it hadn't been for Jill shielding her, would the Swordsman have tortured her to death as well?

'This one here...' Ubik muttered, and Rosine found her attention focused on one of the images, a great furred ape-like Apostle in a forest. She watched as the Swordsman clambered over the Apostle's body, cutting and stabbing, until the great Apostle collapsed into a heap on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

'He was the first,' Ubik's thoughts were filled with amusement. 'When I informed him of his fate, his fear was so great he woke and rose again, despite his injuries. But his life could not be extended beyond that which fate decreed, and in the end he was slain by the hand of another Apostle.'

The visions ended, and Rosine was once again falling through the void. She was so deep now that the only thing she could perceive was blackness-and the horrific fate that awaited at the end of her journey.

'Since then,' Ubik continued, bouncing with glee. 'No other Apostle has ever replicated his feat. To a one, they were all crushed within the vortex. I tell you this now because I wish to see if your terror can wake you too before the end?'

Rosine was already terrified; moreso than she'd ever been in her short life. But she had no idea how to use that fear to wake up. She felt as if she was trapped in a nightmare, filled with horrible dread and terror, and yet unable to escape.

It was too much for her to take. She began to cry, screaming and wailing incoherently into the darkness. Sinking alongside, Ubik watched, laughing to himself.

'Why?' She sobbed, addressing everyone and no one, directing her questions towards Ubik and at the void around them. 'I thought you were my Angels! I thought you were going to save me! Why did you save me back then and not now?'

'Save you?' Ubik howled with glee. 'Precious child of destiny! We didn't SAVE you! We told you were in the hands of fate and we meant exactly that! Fate chose you for that role: to ascend to existence beyond humanity. And perhaps...' Malice leaked into his tone, overshadowing the jovality. 'Perhaps fate has chosen for you to die now.'

After that there was nothing left. Rosine sobbed to herself, trying desperately to wake from the nightmare her existance had become, but to no avail.

The vortex grew and grew beneath her, far larger, it seemed, than the world she saw in flight with her mortal eyes. It stretched on in all directions away from her, inconceiveably deep and broad and terrifying... and Rosine's soul shuddered with fear as a small tendril extended from the mass, rising to meet her.

'Ah! They've sent out a welcoming party,' Ubik chuckled. 'My time as a chaperone is over. Away you go.'

Rosine recoiled from the tendril. As it closed in, she realized it was composed of souls, interlaced and clinging to one another; souls so distorted from the psychic pressures within the vortex that they were barely recognizable as once being human. The borders between their minds had blurred and merged into one another, and the misery and suffering emanating from them was palpable, as palpable as the scent of blood would have been to her physical body.

At the tip of that tendril was a single figure, and Rosine's thoughts froze as she recognized it.

It was her mother.

Did her mother hate her that much for what she did? Hated her so much that even after being compressed in this river of souls for years, her mother still retained enough of herself to make sure she was the first to greet Rosine upon entering hell?

Ubik faded away, his presence rising towards shallower layers of the astral world, and Rosine screamed in despair as her mother's shade drew near, phantom tendrils of her thoughts brushing the edge of her consciousness, allowing her to feel the endless torment that was to be hers forever as one of the damned-

-and miraculously, Rosine found herself rising, rising away from her mother's ghost, from the serpentine string of souls, from the vortex, up, up toward the world of the living.

She gained speed as she rose through the darkness, the structure of the astral world growing less dense, brighter and lighter, and above her, the vast consciousness of Ubik came into range once again.

As she rose past him, Rosine had the impression that the powerful being was gaping in confusion at her progress away from the depths. She could feel Ubik's perception focusing on her, razor sharp, peering at her, into her, and then finally through her, dragging her mind along as he bore a hole through reality.

With her perception filtered through Ubik's consciousness, she saw two figures, big and small, walking through denuded trees. The larger figure held some crumpled shape in his arms. With a shock, she realized that she was looking at herself, cradled in a man's arms, while a boy hurried alongside.

The scene shifted, and now she was looking at a the same man indoors and her own torn body lying on a bed. The boy was gone now, and a woman was wrapping linen strips around her wounds, binding them and stopping her bleeding.

And then her perception was back in the interstice again, detached from Ubik's mind and still ascending. She soared upwards, leaving him behind in the gloom, rocketing up faster, faster, almost as if she had wings once again. Below her, she could hear the Godhand's muttering.

'Not what I expected... not what I expected at all. But interesting! So very interesting! Heee heee heee heee!'

It was bright now. She was flying along a tunnel of white light, faster and faster, seemlingly faster than she had ever flown through the skies-

-Rosine opened her eyes, an unfamiliar timbered ceiling above her.

Everything hurt. All of her, from her toes up to her antennae, and it was a chore just to keep her eyes open. She sucked in a breath, an explosion of agony radiating through her chest-but at the same time it was the sweetest breath she'd ever taken. She was alive! Alive!

There was a gasp from her left, and her eyes slid over to see the boy she'd seen through Ubik's vision, peering closely at her. He had also sucked in a breath. Big blue eyes goggled wide in a round pale face beneath a cap of light brown hair.

"You're awake!" The boy crowed, much too close to Rosine's ear and much, much too loudly for her liking. "Are you okay? What's your name? Are you an Elf?"

"I'll live." Rosine croaked. Her voice was a papery whisper, but as she said the words she could hear the truth in them. She was alive! And she was going make sure she stayed that way! "I'm..."

She paused. What was she? Not Elf, no. And not Pirkaf. Somehow after she'd seen the creature Jill found, she couldn't bear the thought of lying about what she was anymore. Not to herself or to anyone else.

"I'm Rosine," she said. "I'm an Apostle."

Chapter 1 End