The Truth at the Edge

It was supposed to be noon, but it felt a little later than that.

Kraft and Lucius took turns resting against the relatively clean plank. They went through several shifts before the sleeping residents finally woke.

It was like a gigantic alarm clock that made no sound had gone off. Within minutes, the residents of the sleeping district woke in unison, more coordinated than students getting up in a high school dorm in another world.

The previously silent houses filled with sounds of movement. Different feet stepped across the planks; unknown metal and wooden implements clattered together. Amid the noisy conversations came a few curses they couldn't understand.

Human consciousness was returned en masse from dreams, tossed back into reality to begin a day of which they had already missed a good part.

Then came the harsh, rusty creak of poor-quality door hinges. One after another, people pushed their doors open, carrying things that looked like they might be food. They ate as they headed toward the harbor.

Kraft stopped a middle-aged man carrying some mold-spotted dried fish.

"Hello. If you don't mind, could I hire you for a while?"

"Of course!" The man agreed as quickly as he could, then glared at someone nearby who was looking over. "Just four copper coins. I can work for you for half a day, maybe."

Perhaps because it was so hard to find work this late in the day, he accepted Kraft's offer for a very low price.

His yellowing, blackened teeth sank into the somewhat brittle fish. He crushed its fibrous flesh and bones together, making a sound that set one's teeth on edge. After chewing a few times, he struggled to swallow.

"So, what do you need me to do?"

Kraft was appalled by the man's glass-swallowing eating habits and felt sorry for his mouth and esophagus. "No rush. Finish eating first. I wanted to ask you something: how long ago did you start noticing that you were waking up later and later?"

"Thinking back, it started about a month ago. I didn't think much of it at first. Never expected it to get this bad. Life's getting harder and harder."

Though he didn't know why anyone would care about that, the middle-aged man answered as he ate. Crumbs and spittle flew everywhere, and he didn't notice his new employer sidestep to avoid standing in front of him.

Kraft stood nearby and watched him finish the fish. The man swallowed his last bite, his Adam's apple moving with difficulty. Kraft thought he could write a case report on scarred esophagus caused by an unusual diet.

"We came here because we were curious about this. We suspect there's something wrong with the water you drink. Could you take us to have a look?"

"Sure. My family usually fetches the water, but I know the way." The middle-aged man pressed a hand to his chest, apparently in pain. "Let's go, then."

He led Kraft and Lucius back through the winding, narrow alleys. Along the way, they kept running into people who had just come out to look for work.

Since they were headed in opposite directions, they had to squeeze past each other frequently, or one side had to step into a side alley to make room.

They were traveling in roughly the same direction as before, skirting the route they had already investigated. After passing near the Red Algae Well, they walked another ten minutes or so and reached their destination.

It was a well that looked fairly normal, ringed by the neatest stones Kraft had seen here.

An open space had been left around it, and the people coming to draw water had formed several long lines. There was no winch; they lowered rope-bound wooden buckets and hauled them back up by hand. The process was slow, and getting them to give Kraft time to inspect the well would probably be difficult.

Kraft wasn't fond of crowds, especially when these people didn't bathe very often. All clustered together, they made the already stale air even more suffocating.

The nose he had just gotten used to the local air with was now assailed by the smell of sweat, body odor, and something else he couldn't quite identify. He quickly abandoned the idea of joining the line himself.

"Here are eleven copper coins. Five are your payment." Kraft fished most of the loose coins out of his purse and handed them to the middle-aged man. "Use the rest to buy a cleaner bucket, then help me get a bucket of water."

Being a lazy bum was shameful, but it sure was comfortable.

Kraft and Lucius found a shady spot and watched the others queue. The small well opening could accommodate at most three people drawing water at once, so near the well they could just about make out three separate lines. Farther back, though, the lines sprawled into a jumble, and it was impossible to tell which was which.

After talking with some people at the ends of the lines, the middle-aged man managed to buy a bucket. He moved inconspicuously from side to side in the loosely defined lines, edging toward whichever direction seemed shortest.

Kraft soon lost sight of him in the crowd. With nothing to do, he began to doze, propping his head up with one hand.

The sun was high overhead. It was around the time he would usually take a short nap after lunch. His body clock urged him to find a comfortable surface and press his face against it, enjoying the rare moment of relaxation he got each day.

To leave time for the investigation, he had set out from the Academy early. First he'd gone to Elm Street, then to the Salt Tide District. He hadn't eaten lunch, and he hadn't felt like eating, either.

The moment he had some free time, exhaustion crept in. He felt as though he could fall asleep standing up.

Through the red lenses, his half-lidded eyes saw an increasingly indistinct scene. The crowd swayed before him, its outlines blurring.

The double images spread and the red filter deepened. Human-shaped patches of color shifted slowly, like red paint merging and bleeding together on a slanted surface. They weren't vivid; instead, the color gradually darkened.

Red usually felt stimulating and made people more alert, but this shade made him feel even gloomier. He thought of viscous venous blood flowing along the walls of a transparent container, clotting as it went, no longer alive with the vitality it had inside a body.

He felt himself falling. It was the weightless sensation he usually felt in dreams, only lighter and gentler. Half awake and half asleep, he slipped away from the tangled, tiresome real world and sank deeper, hiding somewhere without surgeries, complications, or investigations.

His hearing dulled, too. The noisy voices faded, and his ever-active consciousness stopped paying attention to what people were saying. The language center of his brain slipped into low-power mode, unwilling to translate the vibrations in the air into useful information.

The dull splash of a bucket dropping into the well, wooden objects striking stone, a loud cough—he could still just barely make out simple sounds.

Instinctively, he let himself drift into a drowsy, half-awake state. He ignored the nerve impulses sent by his senses and let himself detach from the world.

Kraft felt as though he was still in the same place, yet somehow no longer there. In that hazy state, he heard an unusually clear splash beside him, and the feeling of weightlessness abruptly stopped.

His dazed state wasn't broken; instead, it settled into place. The sounds became finer and gentler, as if they had turned from grit into flour that had been ground smooth. They were also harder to make out.

His consciousness spread softly across the moment, enjoying a brief peace.

The only flaw was the strange smell still lingering at the tip of his nose. It wasn't sweat, a foul stench, or the herbs in a bird's beak. It didn't seem like something his sense of smell had picked up at all.

It seemed to be growing stronger, and the soft, comforting part of the sound drew closer with it. It went from shapeless to tangible, brushing against the clothes on his back and caressing his consciousness.

Every one of his senses was pleased by it, sending signals of "softness" and "comfort." Even his sense of smell joined in, finding its scent strange but soft and pleasant.

Like a young girl's hand, like a silken veil, it edged closer. The feeling of weightlessness returned.

His eyelids drooped. The black-red light before him grew thinner, nearly disappearing altogether, replaced by moonlit darkness. A gentle White Light grew brighter.

His consciousness bathed in it. Just as he did whenever he enjoyed a nap, a thread of suspicion flickered through his bliss.

It gently reached out with a cool, soft hand, wanting to pluck away that discordant note in the tranquility.

That clumsy attempt roused Kraft's keen awareness. Suspicion quickly turned to alertness, and he dredged up everything that had happened to analyze it anew.

Amid the soft, gentle sensations, his instincts tasted a malice that shouldn't have been there.

It suddenly drew much closer, apparently noticing Kraft's change in state, and wrapped itself around him faster from behind.

Its reckless movements exposed more of what was wrong with it. It was like a starfish turning over its beautiful, colorful back and spewing out its stomach to feed. The extreme wrongness, the sticky revulsion, assaulted his senses, which had been immersed in comfort just a moment earlier. The sudden shift in the signals bombarded his brain, reaching the depths of his soul.

Before the part of him from the other world could react, the conditioned reflexes formed by years of training in Kraft's native soul kicked in. His grandfather's countless lessons—and beatings—had given him extraordinary reflexes.

He brought every muscle in his body into action, ducking to avoid a possible attack and driving his elbow backward. He turned and retreated in one fluid motion, putting distance between himself and the threat.

He felt as though he had torn through something as he moved. Fear drove his hand toward the sword hilt concealed beneath his robe. His eyes had only just opened, and, unused to the light, he could see nothing but the red of his lenses.

The blade left its sheath. He swung it diagonally upward toward where he sensed his opponent to be, fighting the urge to put all his strength into the blow and leaving himself room to change course. The first strike was only meant to drive the other party back and buy him time for his vision to clear.

He focused on the force coming through his hand. Whether his opponent chose to avoid the strike or meet it head-on, either outcome suited him.

To his surprise, the blade seemed to cut into something. It cleaved through the loosely packed, fragile material, breaking apart several structures of uneven consistency.

Gasps and screams came from behind him. The disorderly footsteps receding told him that plenty of people were fleeing the area. Fortunately, no approaching footsteps interfered with his judgment.

His vision gradually returned. He peered through the red glass at the results of his strike. Whatever it was—human or ghost—being slashed open like that couldn't feel good.

Kraft forced his eyes wide open. The glaring light made the muscles around his pupils contract sharply, and tears welled in his eyes. He fought the reflex to shut them and did everything he could to see what lay ahead.

He saw the huge, jagged gash. It wasn't in some mud monster or mysterious enemy.

It was a wooden wall.