232. [POLSKA] The Third Eye

  Renna had known him only as the haughty Viceroy from Serac’s stories. Somehow, that was enough for her to recognize Realgar aft’Enright—even in his 15-year-old, transmigrated form.

  The boy reclined on the operating table, dressed in a loose-fitting hospital gown. His antlers had been shorn off and a patch of his head denuded of fur, all in preparation for open-brain surgery.

  But if the boy felt vulnerable or self-conscious at all, he didn’t show it. The haughty Viceroy was alive and well, despite being a few decades of aging and an entirely different existence removed from the version Renna knew.

  “&#^~%*$^?”

  The 15-year-old Realgar kept a mild, dignified tone as he called across the OR. His seemingly disinterested gaze was fixed on the tablet in Renna’s hand, which she’d been ‘flipping through’ with intense curiosity for some time. This version of Realgar didn’t know a single word of the CMV, but the gist of his question got through to Renna all the same.

  I can sympathize. If I saw my surgeon reading up on material minutes before the operation, I’d also wonder a thing or two. Especially when that operation involves cutting open my skull.

  Renna kept mum a while longer, and not only because of the language barrier. Truth be told, she felt intimidated. As a Yaksha Wayfarer, she’d rarely ever been ‘out of her depth’, but this had to be an exception if there ever was one. She’d be a fool to think herself qualified for what she was about to attempt.

  But attempt it she must, now that she’d been thrust into a role only ‘she’ could fulfill. That souls expire and reincarnate was merely a fact of the afterlife. What Renna had never before entertained, however, was the possibility of transmigrating backward. Or was it somehow also forward in this case?

  All very bizarre and confusing. And all made only possible by SKYVEILS and their inscrutable magic. A Realm reluctant to let go, and an Immortal’s Instrument at the heart of it. What is it you wish to get out of this, Keeper? What do you demand of your people—past, present, and future?

  Stand-in or not, Dr Renate aft’Sandvik had a job to do. Yet she would’ve been utterly lost were it not for the magical tablet in her hand. The thing was a veritable treasure trove of information (that she could read and understand!), capable of cycling through various displays despite its solid surface never moving an inch.

  Truly remarkable. Not to mention tremendously helpful. The tablet was how she learned about Realgar’s medical history, including detailed images of the tumor’s exact shape and location inside his brain (it’s like they ‘mapped’ the ripples in visual form). ‘Tapping’ on certain keywords took her to codices and treatises, from which she gleaned at least a cursory knowledge of the procedure she’d been tasked to perform.

  Presently, Renna put away the tablet, though with considerable reluctance. She pattered over to the operating table and hopped onto a footstool custom-made for the diminutive Dr Sandvik. Having brought herself eye-level with the reclining patient, she spoke for the first time since waking.

  “You might not understand a word I say, but I still need you to listen carefully. Because I believe… the fate of this Realm—or a version of it that matters to you, me, and many other souls we know and care about—depends on it.”

  Realgar’s veneer of disinterest cracked within the first several alien words, and fell away completely by the end. He stared first at Renna with wide, stricken eyes, then glanced up and around the room… as though another voice had spoken to him from somewhere else. A curious reaction, but Renna was unfazed. She thought she even knew the mechanism behind it.

  After another second or two of stunned silence, the 15-year-old somehow managed to compose himself. He even affected a somewhat pompous air as he suggested, “%$#@.” Maybe Renna was biased, but it sounded to her a lot like ‘go on’.

  Go on she did. She introduced herself as a visitor from another life and on borrowed time. She theorized about Tidereign’s existential struggle that had spanned at least centuries if not millennia and Kalpas. About the role of Mrigas, Tiryagas, and outrealmers alike—of the choices made by individuals in history’s myriad branching points.

  She ended by putting forth a hypothesis—based somewhat on observable evidence but also on a whole heap of faith—that she and Realgar were at one such branching point now. That they too had a choice to make, within the confines of a 15-year-old boy’s skull.

  “The pineal gland lies deep in your brain and is exceedingly difficult to access. The safest way to excise a pineal tumor, then, is to remove the gland altogether. We could do that. Your headaches and balance problems should go away. More importantly, it’ll cure you of the underlying disease. You might suffer insomnia because of it, but the benefits would outweigh the adverse effects.”

  Renna maintained a neutral expression, but the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her. In another life, Realgar would transmute his pineal gland into a Primal Instrument called HIEROPHANT. It also happened to be the very organ that regulated a soul’s circadian rhythm. At once the source of his powers and the bane of his existence. Two sides of the same—

  “@#$%^&?”

  No help from Pathsight, but Renna understood all the same. Is there another way?

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  “I believe there is.” Evidence. Faith. And a feat of applied Wayfaring. “At least, I believe I can find another way. I’m something of a specialist when it comes to digging around in places where I’m not wanted. I’m obliged to warn you, though. My proposed method would significantly increase the risk of the procedure. Severe bleeding. Permanent brain damage. Even death is a real possibility.”

  Renna let her warning hang and settle where they might. She trusted the boy’s intelligence. His sense of self and the future that spread before him in all possible directions.

  For one moment, something akin to vulnerability did jostle Realgar’s slitted eyes. The boy looked up again, past the bright LED lights and even the ceiling that contained the room. What or who he saw there, he kept to himself. Renna didn’t pry.

  The ripples settled. The moment passed. The boy turned back to his surgeon with a seemingly disinterested gaze and nodded his consent.

  As for Renna, the final piece of the puzzle soon fell into place. Nurse Feverfew joined her in the OR, bringing in a surgical tray assembled to Dr Sandvik’s very particular specifications. And as the sterile packaging unraveled to reveal its contents, Renna finally understood the why of her.

  An array of metallic instruments in varying sizes, each connected to a blunt blade with a slight depression. DREDGERs, plural. Vials of liquid medicine, labeled with foreign words yet colored in a way that was intimately familiar to a veteran potion-slinger. A parallel variant of OYSTER.

  This time, Renna couldn’t quite suppress her emotion. Good thing her surgical mask too had been custom-made, broad enough to hide her inopportune smile. For at least one Ksana, she almost felt envious of her parallel self. That waffly, wrinkly pink frog must’ve led a very interesting life to have ended up here.

  And after that, it was down to business. Knowledge crammed in the eleventh hour, bolstered and elevated by plenty of lived experience. Her potions worked just the same on souls native to this timeline. The ripples flowed in predictable patterns, as they danced atop the blades of mini-DREDGERs.

  But the procedure wasn’t without its due difficulty. As Renna reached the last of the tumor’s tethers to the surrounding anatomy, she detected a disturbing irregularity in the ripples.

  A portion of the tumor was severely friable, liable to crumbling at the lightest touch. The ensuing fallout would seed the disease elsewhere, spread through the rest of Realgar’s brain. A catastrophe that needed avoiding at all costs—including giving up the pineal gland itself.

  Is there no other way, after all? Renna asked herself—not just the one that was here, but also the one that should’ve been. Was Realgar aft’Enright of this reality always destined to lose his connection to the Gloam, no matter how deep we dug for another solution?

  Renna’s instrument hovered above the tumor, unable to execute the decisive strike. She had the means to corral and direct the flow of ripples, but the outcome here was too unpredictable to be worth the risk. The tumor would collapse. Its malignant components would disseminate into the myriad crevices of Realgar’s anatomy, too quickly for the surgeon to react.

  If only there was a way for the ripples to s—

  Suddenly, a kind of umber filter spread across Renna’s perception of the world. In the same instant, time itself slowed, stretched to the unknowable scale of Immortality, every Ksana a cosmic cycle unto itself.

  Renna read the ripples in ‘real’ time. They reacted to and changed with her intent, showing exactly where they flowed before it happened.

  The surgeon understood what was required of her. The branching point. One door opened and another left untouched—only out of fear for the unknown. She gripped her instrument with both hands and freed the tumor from its last tether.

  [Auxiliary Technique: ELEMENTAL FLUX]

  The most precise, most compact [Flux] pocket Renna would ever whip up, in this or any other reality. She then gently, gingerly guided the tumor and all its runaway components past the crevices of a young man’s anatomy… and out through a sizable hole in his skull.

  ***

  The patient slept on in the next room over, still blissfully under the effects of [Serenity]. Dr Sandvik remained in the OR, letting Tiryaga nurses and orderlies busy about the place as she sat at a desk and wrote.

  She hadn’t overcome the language barrier. Nor did she know how to log new entries on the magical tablet that had taught her so much. All she could do was borrow Feverfew’s pen and paper, and leave a note in the only way she knew how.

  Renna didn’t stop to consider the possible ramifications—the inherent paradox—of writing to herself in the CMV, centuries, millennia, or perhaps even Kalpas before the language even existed. She didn’t owe the Keeper anything. If her action in the here and now had altered something on a cosmic time scale, well, that was best left to an Immortal to worry about.

  The note started out dryly enough. First a brief summary of the pre-operative discussion with the patient, leaving out some of the more unwieldy details. Followed by a rigorously clinical report of the surgical approach, the findings, and the ultimate twist on an established formula.

  Renna paused and reflected for a moment. She then decided to add a postscript, markedly more self-indulgent and waffly than the rest of her note.

  What I didn’t share with the patient is a personal anecdote from my home Realm. I remember reading about the pineal gland, a brief passage in an ancient document that was more a treatise on meditation than a work of medical scholarship. To the best of my recollection, it stated:

  ‘The pineal gland resides dead center of a soul’s mind, directly between the two hemispheres of the brain. It governs perception beyond sight or indeed even the ripples. It is, in other words, a third eye—a soul’s conduit to the spiritual realms and all the intangible secrets hidden therein.’

  In truth, I never knew what to make of that passage, and I don’t think it’s been made any clearer after my most recent experience. I do wonder, though. Perhaps the patient sensed the conundrum faced by his surgeon. Perhaps, in that critical juncture, he opened his third eye to seek and share guidance from the beyond.

  And perhaps this isn’t the end of it. There may come another time for him to open that eye ever wider. To see clearer and further than anyone else can. That he might guide his herd to the far side of the Gloam.

  real Dr Renate aft'Sandvik after she comes back from her transmigratory holiday: "I convinced a 15-year-old patient to do what???"

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