Until now. As his arms rise to the skies, he throws his head back. A word seems to form on his lips as his eyes burn like torches.
All at once, a cover of night shakes the ceiling.
Then, like a blanket, the illusion of darkness collapses over the arena.
And I feel myself falling.
Act III: Scene XXVIII
A fountain gurgles pleasantly beside where my head lies, my body stretched out on the cool marble floor. I seem to be in some sort of grand hall or atrium.
Where am I? How have I gotten here? My mind is too foggy to recall.
My stomach twists like a braided rope. There’s something I’m supposed to remember right now. Somewhere I’m supposed to be.
“Riven?” calls a voice, echoing down one of several long hallways surrounding the fountain.
I inhale a sharp breath. Iknowthese walls.
“Riven,”says the voice again. Female. Older. Deceptively sweet and patient. Fear slides into my veins, cold and nauseating. I know that voice, too. The woman who etched my mark as a child.
Clambering to my feet, I make a dive for the farthest corridor from the voice, ducking into the first unlocked room I find. The room is bare, save for a long table littered with tools used for Eleutheraen marking.
“There you are.”
My blood freezes at the sight of the woman standing by the table. Graying hair, stout shape. She isn’t threatening. But the scars at the base of my throat burn like hellfire when she tilts her head at me.
The woman smiles, her teeth slightly crooked. She dips a sharp instrument into a pod of Eleutheraen gold.
I stagger back for the door.
“Come now, Riven,” she says. “Don’t be frightened. This is how we do things here.” She spits that last part, unable to hide some edge of disgust.
That’s what wakes me up.
“Jude,” I whisper, more to myself than to him.
Not real. Illusion.
Jude had access to my memories during that first Reality Suspension. And he’s resurrected one of my most frightening recollections to parade it before an audience. Not that I have any idea where the audienceis. The illusion is too thick, too all-consuming.
Mattia warned me to remember that the Great Dionysia is as mental as it is physical, a battle of deception. The goal is to destroy your opponent’s sense of reality so thoroughly, they don’t know to fight back, don’t even knowwhoto fight back.
It’s hard to combat an opponent when you can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.
My gaze flies over the stone walls around us to the windows, hunting for the eyes of spectators beyond. I don’t see them, but I feelthem. A shiver races along my spine as I realize what I’m dealing with. We draw our strength from our audience, and Jude’s is growing. A lot.
It all looks soreal.
The woman clicks her tongue. “Sharp, aren’t you? But then…” Her bored eyes dip to the gold pod in her hands. “You let them do this to you.”
I startle at his bold words, and the woman laughs, but it’s Jude’s voice that comes from her mouth this time. “They can see us, dear heart. But I’ll take care that they only hear what we want them to.”
He’s playing tricks with the sound.
“Sorry for all…this, by the way.” He gestures broadly to our surroundings.
Right. He’s painted this awful scene intentionallyforthe audience, a memory so many of them know well from their own lives.
