"But you have... silent... silence... nothingness... emptiness... but you have... nothing... you have nothing... nothing but silence greats your cries... silent cries... cries of silence... gone... dead... all gone... dead and gone... gone and dead... gone to die... illusion... life... death... life is... life is illusion... death is illusion... all illusion... I am illusion... but you have... comfort... agony... comfort is agony... agony is comfort... nothing is everything... you have nothing... I am illusion... I am nothingness... I am silence... you are doomed..."
Those words of poison whisper in my brain, over and over and over, never ending. I don’t know who whispers them to me, but I know in my heart that they are corrupting me somehow... but yet I must listen to them. Compelling... they are compelling. There is so much truth within them.
I can almost feel the silence, the nothingness, the emptiness, press in upon me. I can see the illusion of life. Some beings aren’t illusion, though; I see them sharp and clear, bright as the noonday sunlight. The landscape is as nothing to me, dim, transparent, an illusion of life. Beings who aren’t illusion are rare in the world I live in. Maybe... maybe we’re not real? Maybe we are the cast aside ideas of writers who no longer write? The ideas that used to be true, but now are not? Those who don’t have anyone or anything to believe in them anymore?
Am I illusion? I don’t know. The voice says that I have nothing, says that I am doomed. But isn’t every being doomed from the minute it’s born? Doomed to laugh and cry, live and die? I have myself, so I do have something. But is that enough? Can I believe in myself enough to be not an illusion in this world of illusions? Can I somehow make someone believe in my existence enough that I can be taken out of this world of nothingness?
Maybe.
How? I don’t know. Maybe the voice is enough. Maybe if I hear that voice then something does indeed believe in me. I wonder what it would be like to live in a place where almost nothing was illusion.
Belief... what is belief? How can I make someone or something believe in me? Belief is insubstantial, giving only a soul, so how does that soul take shape into a being? A more exact belief, a belief of appearance, that’s what decides it, deep in my heart I know that it is so. Hair color, eye color, shape, form, size, height, all those are decided by belief.
To believe in myself, I must know how I look. But doesn’t that very belief change how I look? What if I have gold eyes and hair, but instead believe that I have black hair and silver eyes? Wouldn’t I then have a different form? Or would I have always had black hair and silver eyes?
Appearance, then, is as insubstantial as mist, isn’t it? Fine then, I shall make up my appearance here and now.
I have gold and black hair, sort of like a cheetah, short hair, falling down only to my neck. My eyes are two different colors; my right is as the noonday sun, while my left is as the rising sun, a red pink in color. My skin is as mist, silvery and pale, untouchable by the sun. I am tall, six feet four inches and a human male.
There, now I have an appearance, but what of a life? Do I have a life yet? Is my belief enough or do I need more?
There is one being that is not illusion within this world. It is strange, a being that is at once here but yet not here, almost as if it was bouncing between two different worlds, but it shines with life and belief. Maybe if I ask it it will tell me how to achieve belief so that I am no long part of this illusion world.
A dragon... that is the being that is not illusion, a dragon and her rider. I have seen some of them within this world, but they have always been as insubstantial as the mist that the sun banishes from the world of the living every day. I wonder if I was ever part of the world of the living. Maybe I am the reforged soul of some forgotten person. Maybe that is why I hear the voice whispering words of doubt within my brain, words that have shown me the emptiness of this world.
"Who are you?" the rider of the dragon asks me.
I look up at her, who am I? I am a being of nothing! A being who desires belief, who needs it be truly alive.
I have no name.
Maybe I should give myself one? She seems to expect it.
"Kardaren, the Forgotten One."
"I am Kardaren, the Forgotten One."
"Why forgotten?" she asks me, her eyes almost seeming to widen.
"Because there is no belief for me. Without belief I am forgotten."
The dragon swings her large head towards me, ::Maybe there is one on the Ryslen Sands for you, one who will believe in you.::
I watch as the woman looks around again, and I see a question forming within her mind, so I quickly answer it, "This is the world of those who have lost the belief of other beings. Most are illusion, for they loose the belief of themselves as well. Legends, myths, ideas of writers who no longer write, all are forgotten within this place."
She looks down on me from her perch, "Do you accept my dragon’s offer? We can take you to a place where you will find one who will have unquestionable belief that you exist."
I incline my head, "I accept."
With that I climb up on the dragon’s back with the woman’s help. Maybe, just maybe, what the dragon said would be true, and I would find a being who would have such a great belief in myself that I would never be in danger of coming here again. And maybe, with time, I could return here with that being and save other beings from becoming the mist of illusion.
I stood watching, as dragon after dragon hatched and spilled out onto the sands, then chose their bonds.
Everything around here seemed vividly sharp beyond belief, people's outlines so completely there that they seemed almost unreal in their sharpness. And I... I stood to the back, no one really ever noticed me.
Except... one hatchling, an irridescent blue, spilled out of his egg as it ruptured. As he righted himself, I heard, in my head, ::I believe that the one I seek is here. Kardaren, my name is Ivsibarth, and I believe in you.::
I looked up, it was amazing! Some creature believed in me so strongly... I could feel his belief as his mind twined with mine, I could feel it and I reveled in it.
::As you should,:: he remarked to me, a smile in his mental voice.
With that, I led him off to the kitchen, to get some food for him, as I could feel his hunger myself, a gnawing, starving hunger that demanded to be sated.
I was more than willing to help him sate it.