Emerald Dreams

To find the truth, you must hunt in the darkest of places.

I kill the engine, my breath coming out in visible puffs in the bone-biting cold. The sudden silence is almost deafening, and I sit back for a moment, with my fellow agent and case partner Zoe Lai by my side, the only sounds to be heard being the quiet rustling of leaves in the wind... and our own, expectant breathing.

I shiver. The atmosphere is eerie.

Well. No cases will be solved by just sitting inside the car. With a surge of determination, I step out of the vehicle and take a deep breath of the cool, crisp air. It's the middle of the night, and the sky is still dark... but not as it should be.

The entire forest is bathed in the sickly, otherworldly purples and greens of the aurora borealis.

Before the... change, in a past life that now seems so much simpler, I'd never even seen it in person. Now, though, it's visible at all latitudes, even by day. Just looking at it makes me shiver in the embrace of my jacket.

I look up, searching for the North Star, but I can't find it. The stars seem to shift and change every night, and I find myself staring uncomprehending at an unrecognisable, alien sky.

The glow of the aurora provides unnatural levels of visibility, so I study my surroundings. I'm standing at the edge of a frozen lake, surrounded by tall pine trees. Their branches are weighed down by snow, making them look like they're bowing in reverence. I take a step forward, and the snow crunches beneath my boots.

The sound of a car door closing resounds behind me, as Zoe joins me. I contemplate her in the eerie afterglow of the aurora. She's tall, lean, strong, with black hair that look almost like a shroud in the jade afterglow of the aurora.

She's a brilliant young woman, eager to prove herself in the field. I've never been someone's... mentor, I suppose. I'm pretty young myself, after all. But since the change, the Agency has needed much more staff than ever before, and that meant lots of promotions.

So here I am, trying to show Zoe the ropes, acting like I know what I'm doing, which sometimes really feels like a straight lie.

I push the anxiety away, try not to let the sense of responsibility choke me. I check the safety on my gun, just in case.

We unpack our gear, moving in silence. Flashlights, radios, first aid, flashbang grenades... perfectly routine stuff, and yet it feels like nothing but. The woods seem almost impossibly dense, the trees reaching high towards the firmament, an alien forest under an alien sky, painted in colours that don't belong to any normal night.

I almost feel like the trees arere watching us, disapproving of our presence. That makes me shake my head. You don't become a field operative for the Agency by thinking such silly thoughts. Then again, most of what's happening out there in the world is, frankly, silly.

Not just the stars, but the people.

The word mind control is used so freely among us in the Agency now, that we have to check ourselves when out in public, since the topic it's still classified. I mean, there's no doubt that's what it is... and what people are using their newly awakened powers for.

It's still a minor phenomenon. But it's spreading.

I'm suddenly aware of Zoe standing beside me, her equipment ready to go. Mine is as well, so I shut the trunk of the car, turning to face her.

"Anything yet?" I ask Zoe, keeping my voice low.

She shakes her head, her breath misting in the cold air. "Nothing, ma'am. It's as quiet as the grave out here."

I nod, my eyes scanning the area. "Well, wouldn't be the first time we go off on a wild goose chase. But if there really are cultists out here... we need to find them."

Zoe nods, though I can sense her hesitation. Cultists. I can't believe I've actually said that word out loud, like it's perfectly normal. Still, it's pretty much the one lead we have, and we must follow it... even into the darkest of places.

In my experience, that's usually where the truth likes to hide, anyway.

We start to walk around the lake, our boots crunching on the snow. The only sound is the occasional rustling of pine needles as a gust of wind blows through the trees. As we walk, I can't shake the feeling that something is watching us.

In fact, the air seems to be... pulsing with something. A vibration. I signal for us to stop, and close my eyes, focusing on the odd sensation. It's the first time I've noticed it, but it's unmistakable. Almost a sound, but not quite. It almost sounds like distant breathing, welcoming and threatening all at once.

Zoe and I trade looks. No words are needed. In a world where constellations break and reform in the night sky, where perfectly ordinary people suddenly gain the power to beguile and enthrall, what's one more inexplicable phenomenon?

We move forward, gliding as quietly as we can on the snow-covered ground, using the preternatural glow of the aurora for guidance. We proceed for what feels like hours, the expansive and ethereal breathing in the air growing stronger with every step. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, and I start to wonder if I'm imagining things. But then I see something up ahead.

The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I grip my gun tightly. I turn to Zoe and signal for her to fall in behind me, providing cover. We make our way to the edge of the lake, where the snowy shore meets the water.

As we get closer, a sound begins echoing across the clearing. It's a voice, singing in a language I don't recognise. Bingo, I suppose.

As soon as we reach the edge of the treeline, I see robed figures moving in the clearing, seemingly dancing in a rough circle, chanting.

I guess it shouldn't surprise me that recent events would cause sects to spring up all over the place, but it still feels so bizarrely specific to me. Why the robes, the dancing, the chanting? I shake my head. We've arrested plenty of these loons already, and most really are just disaffected middle-aged men LARPing... or worse.

The only depressing reason we keep following up on reports of cult activity, is that we have no better leads to chase. I want the truth, and this is a flimsy lead to follow, in order to reach it.

Then again, I can't deny the eerie quality of the scene. Bathed in the alien glow of the aurora, the cultists look menacing, their odd language sharp and aggressive to the ear. Throughout their entire performance, their head is tilted upwards, as if they're communing with the sky.

The strange breathing permeating the air is so strong now that it feels like it's inside my head, throbbing in time with my own heartbeat.

That's when, suddenly, one of the cultists turns to face us. Woman, I think, even though I'm not sure how I know, because the only feature of hers I can truly discern, under the darkness of her hood, is her eyes.

Her eyes...

They burn bright, emerald green, the colour jade would have if it was merged with fire. A shudder courses through my body, and then, everything goes black.

* * *

Zoe and I sit across from each other in the dimly lit diner, our plates of greasy food half-eaten in front of us. We've been on the road for days, following reports of strange, robed figures performing rituals in the woods and remote areas. It's our only lead in this bizarre investigation, and we're both feeling uneasy.

Wait, what?

For a moment, I'm confused. I look around at the diner, at the patrons eating in awkward silence, the sound of cutlery and half-whispered conversations augmenting the odd mood. To my left, two girls--a goth in the appropriate attire, and a blonde in a totally unseasonal summer dress--are unconvincingly picking at their food.

To my right, a man is wolfing down food, while his female companion--with no plate in front of her, I notice--stares very intently at the wooden surface of the table.

My eyes narrow. We were in the forest but a moment ago. What is this?

"Here's the thing I don't get about min--err, I mean, about Overlord," Zoe says, her voice low. "You could use it for so many things, right? The possibilities are almost endless."

My eyes widen in realisation. Oh, of course. I know where, and when, I am.

It's yesterday.

Seemingly oblivious to my discomfort, past Zoe carries on with her monologue. As she should, since this is a memory.

"Really you can boil it down to a few core priorities, I suppose. Money and material possessions, and love and affection. Ultimately, securing a control over scarce resources, loved ones included. But you could also seek to fulfill so many intangible desires you might have. Act on your beliefs. Change the world."

I nod, as my past self did yesterday. It's a reasoning I myself have followed many times, as I tried to reason through the things we've been seeing.

"Instead," Zoe continues, "every case we've been investigating so far has been about one thing. And only one thing."

I shiver, recalling the latest victim we... debriefed. Her controller, from what we best understand a local pharmacist who woke up one day to having mind control powers, died in a car accident. So much for supernatural powers.

But the girl wasn't showing signs of... recovery, and her friends and family were worried. Of course, we were on the scene before anyone else, and after transferring her to a safe location, I interviewed her myself.

She never, not once, stopped bobbing her head up and down during our interview.

I tried everything I could to ask her about it, to reason through it with her, or to get her to stop. Nothing worked. She just kept... fellating a cock that wasn't there. This was no drone-like behaviour either, she was enthusiastic in her performance. Lips, tongue, eyes begging for mercy, worshipful expression...

Her words came muffled as if her mouth was full, which of course, it was not. I got the gist of what she was saying anyway. That this was the only thing she could do well in life, her vocation, her religion, and she wanted to exercise her right to religious expression in a free country.

The one time she "came up for air", so to speak, she said she was destined for a purely decorative role in society.

Those words have been haunting me ever since.

So far, we haven't confirmed a single case of mind control that wasn't completely focused on sexual slavery. I'm not saying it was central, I'm saying it was about nothing else, except sex.

"And then there's the astronomical phenomena," Zoe continues in the memory, just like she did in the real world. "The constellations, the aurora borealis..."

I cradle my face in my hands. "We don't even know for sure there's a connection," I groan. "I mean, what are the odds it's a coincidence, right? But still, that's the truth. We don't know."

As my hands leave my face, movement catches my attention. I turn to my left, to the table occupied by the man and the woman.

... Wait. Weren't they sitting to my right a moment ago? And besides, where's the woman?

It takes my eyes a moment to locate her. But then, I do.

The woman has fallen to her knees, crawling under the table, her face disappearing between the man's legs. He has a hand down there, too, probably gripping her hair, regulating her pace as she bobs up and down. In the deadly silence of the diner, the soft, muffled sounds of feminine whimpering and submission are inescapable. There's no way everyone present isn't hearing.

Yet, waiters stop at the table to converse with the man, as if nothing is amiss. Zoe herself eats in silence, totally oblivious.

I turn to face her, in shock, wanting to bring this up, to ask if she's seeing this, when I remember the two girls--now sitting to my right, as opposed to my left. The goth has her boots nonchalantly resting on the table, crossed at the ankle, and the blond girl, well...

She's leaning across the table, her plate of food long since sent flying to the ground, desperately panting like an eager dog as her tongue runs the length of the goth's boots. Polishing, worshipping, leaving physical evidence of her veneration on the now glossy surface.

I turn towards Zoe again, my heart beating like crazy against my chest, especially because there is one question I can't shake off, one question that means everything to me right now.

Did any of this actually happen yesterday?

In the real world, with our conversation over, Zoe nodded with a grim expression, saying "Let's get to it. Our work is not yet done."

Her expression, right now, isn't grim.

Her chin is resting on her hands, as she studies me with a curious, inquisitive look.

"Do you remember, agent?" She asks. "The green eyes? The jade, the fire?"

I shake my head, the world around me spinning, the soft sounds of bootlicking and cocksucking and Zoe's words whirling around me like a storm. "What?" I can only ask. "What is this?"

"Remember," Zoe says again, "you must wake up and see." Her face seems to be distorting, twisting, an elongated shape that looks less and less human, her voice turning deeper and deeper.

"Come and see come and see come and see come and see come and see!"

* * *

I wake up in a dream.

I don't know what the cultist woman--her jade eyes--did to me, but I know that that scene in the diner... it's not real. It wasn't my memory, but a horrific, nightmarish distortion of my memory. I'm happy it's over.

Unfortunately, I'm still in a dream.

The world around me is not like anything I've ever seen before, and yet it feels familiar, like I've been here before in some distant, hazy memory. I'm surrounded by the aurora, but it's not just a colourful display in the sky. It's as if the colors have seeped into everything around me, staining the very air I breathe. The stars are moving, pulsing to a beat that feels like it's coming from deep within me.

I see people, or at least they look like people, half-visible silhouettes in the maelstrom of colours. I somehow know, in my bones, that some of them wield power, and some of them are tools to be wielded and exploited and discarded. Their wills, bent, their minds, dulled, their necks, adorned by the yoke.

Bodies intertwine and writhe, struggling for control, wills battle in the colours, and the victors are elevated, the winners reduced, a fundamental part of their humanity snuffed out like a candle. This is as constant as the colours--the weaker entity, yielding to the mastery of the stronger.

And then, I see her.

The female cultist turns to face me. Her boots are so shiny they reflect the dancing colours of the aurora. They can only be so clean because they've been worshipfully licked to a high sheen. I know, because in the dream, I was the one doing it.

But the thing that sticks with me the most are her eyes. They're the brightest green I've ever seen, like they're made of fire and emeralds. They burn into my soul, and I feel like she's looking right at me. She beckons me closer with a flick of her wrist, and I follow, like an eager lesbian lapdog.

I'm straight. But the dream rejects this logic. Here, there is only the weak yielding to the strong, and right now, as I feel annihilated by her sheer presence, there is no doubt which one I am. I crawl before her, in supplication, my spine suddenly unable to keep a straight posture.

I have seen her before, in my nightmares. In half-forgotten dreams of smoke and fire.

Sensory inputs come fast and furious, like a fever dream. All around me, there is a riot of colors and shapes, swirling and pulsating in time with the throb in my head. I see flashes of the aurora, brilliant green and blue lights dancing across the sky like a celestial ballet. The stars move in the sky, in time with the distant pulse.

Then, a switch is flipped, and suddenly I turn around, only to find I'm standing on the edge of a precipice. I feel like I'm at the ends of the earth, looking out into...

The entire universe.

I'm struck by a sense of vertigo as I look up, taking in the simultaneous presence of all things.

The stars are like diamonds, scattered across the infinite expanse of space. I see galaxies spinning, nebulae glowing, and black holes warping light itself with their presence. It's both beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

The vision before me is so vast and complex that my mind can hardly comprehend it. I see colors that I've never seen before, swirling together in an endless dance across the sky. There are greens and purples, blues and pinks, all blending together in a beautiful yet terrifying symphony.

But I'm inexorably drawn by what sits at the heart of it all.

A black, pulsing, mass.

It's a writhing, tentacled presence that seems to be alive in ways I can't even imagine. Alive in ways far more meaningful than I could ever dream to conceive. Its tentacles seem to move the entire symphony of the universe, writhing and undulating with a sickening grace.

I can't begin to comprehend the enormity of what I'm seeing, but crumbs of understanding come to me, not in concepts, but in feelings, like radiation emitted by this immense entity.

I feel power emanating from this thing. The power to beguile, to enthrall, to domesticate, to enslave. The power to create, and the power to destroy.

I sense a... mind, a will, behind this. One that thinks of humans as infinitely puny, barely even a blip on its radar. It's an evil that I can't begin to fathom, a horror that's beyond my understanding.

I can sense an intelligence behind the tentacled mass, one that is both ancient and powerful. Its disdain for us radiates in pulses. I am overwhelmed by the inexplicable, and yet undeniable knowledge that our entire species, our whole biosphere, could be destroyed with a single thought.

As I look closer, I begin to feel as though I'm being drawn into the mass itself. It's like a vortex, pulling me in closer and closer until I'm almost inside it. I see the sky, the way it's changing, being reordained, and I understand it isn't random at all. That the stars are aligning, forming a pattern that looks like a cosmic sigil.

And then, the vortex claims me.

* * *

I awaken to the cold frozen ground beneath me, desperately gulping for air, my lungs on fire. My aching muscles spasm in panic, and I feel as if I've just emerged from the very depths of the sea. My vision is hazy, and I struggle to make sense of my surroundings. But slowly, the real world begins to cohere before my eyes.

The frozen lake looms before me, and I realise with a start that Zoe--and the cultists--are nowhere in sight.

My heart races as I try to stand, my head spinning with each movement. The snow crunches under my boots, and I start to stumble around, frantically searching for any sign of Zoe. But the only remnants of the cultists' presence are the bizarre symbols etched into the snow.

Sigils.

I... I don't know what I've seen. A desperate part of me wants to believe the cultists drugged me, that my lysergic vision was entirely the product of my own imagination.

But as I look up at the aurora, it's harder and harder to ignore the feeling that I've just stumbled upon a truth I lack the tools to understand.

I sit back ruinously in the snow, cradling my face in my hands. I begin to sob, I don't even know why, my mind is reeling, I don't know what to do. I don't even know how to process everything I've just seen! Can I even trust it?

I take in deep breaths, trying to calm down. What even are my options? Do I withdraw, call this in, write a report, ask for backup?

But Zoe is still out there...

And so is the truth.

All of a sudden, panic recedes. I feel calm, collected, determined as I stand back to my feet. Zoe is my field partner, is supposed to be under my guidance. I can't leave her in the clutches of the cultists, regardless of who they actually are.

And I refuse to leave this mystery half-solved. Whether it was drugs, or... or. I will get to the bottom of this, even if doing so requires to breach the heart of darkness.