Rianne the Changeling of scotiaand her steed

Dark RiderRianne Scotia had a preternatural sense of her surroundings - a freakish sense of her surroundings. Before she went underground -literally and figuratively- she was heralded 'Rianne the Changeling of Scotia' and the subtext promoted '& her steed Dark Rider perform Demonic Death Defying Stunts Done in Total Darkness. Most of her act was performed blind, no gimmicks. The crowd 'ooh'ed and 'ahh'ed awaiting the point in the show when she would put on the blindfold. She would trick hazardous gaps, flipping and spiraling her bike through swinging migrating fiery hoops . Any miscalculation in her trajectory surely resulting in tragedy. Before she performed the finale, and most terrifyingly sensational stunt, she would ask for a volunteer, "Someone that would like to try on my helmet.." Often she would pick a young girl from the audience.

As the dainty volunteer approached Rianne would remove her mirror shined jet black helmet revealing a face with eyes sealed in an unbroken black clay- to gasps of incredulity. Then she would have the child put the helmet on and, "Tell them what you see!"

To which the child almost always responded, "Nothing at all!" or "It's pitch black!" or something revealing the fact that Rianne's visor was utterly opaque.

Rianne's favorite of all time was a rare boy named, "Jimmy J. Ulrup age 5!" who approached with an extended hand and a rather firm grip. When Jimmy J. Ulrup age 5 put the helmet over his ears as it wobbled about his shoulders he described what he saw as "Utter Darkness!" in such a melodramatic tone that everyone, even the incredulous, gave the boy a hearty guffaw and spontaneous applause. He responded with a bow and returned the helmet with another firm handshake and casually strode to his front row seat.

After the child had been applauded and reseated Rianne would ask for a couple more volunteers.

"You must be fearless! No fear of fire! No fear of a naked blade! NO FEAR OF DEATH!!" drum roll pause, "Look into your hearts… I tell you I will give you cause for fear"! she had a flair for the drama, for the sale and the mystery. Then she would laugh and scoff, "Now..Who's afraid of a little blind girl?"

From the crowd she would choose 2 robust males; maybe a late teen full of arrogance, ignorance and foolish testosterone, fluffing with bravado, smirking beneath doubting eyes looking for the trick, the secret, the lie behind the blinds; or sometimes a hearty war vet or grizzled working class scrapper, maybe even confessedly awestruck and willing to believe she could see in utter darkness, but hoping to endure a test of valor and/or by approximation learn some mysterious martial secret. The latter was rare, but the former were plentiful. In a good crowd she could find one of each, but didn't mind a couple of the former. She took a bounty of pride in breaking some rutting teenage braggart at the apex of insolence and stupidity.

Once the volunteers(or victims) had been paraded to the front and center like champions entering the ring, introduced and interviewed , prepped and positioned (often hoisted and suspended amongst the fiery rings in strait jackets with some form of fruit dangled from them or stuffed in their mouth) Rianne would slip her helmet back on and kick start Dark Rider… Then the lights would go out, all the lights, all the monitors. It was utter darkness. There was only the sound of Dark Rider groaning and screaming through the utterness. But if the people strained with the right kind of focus they could see with their ears. They could see her maneuvering the course. They could see her approaching a ramp. They could often see her victims whimpering as she approached the crest. And a ring would burst into flames, and their eyes would be rent open as Rianne spiraled through it. Then Darkness. And Rianne would pull front and center and when the spot light hit her a mean industrial beat began to pulse from the speakers as she pulled the Swiss Degen from its leathern sheath woven stealthily down the spine of her jumper and held it valiantly up into the light. Then moving in rhythm with strobing lights and music Rianne would race around the course jumping and tricking and stunting and toying with the her blade and slowly with terrifying precision cut, slice and skewer every piece of fruit dangling from those delicate places as her victims swayed and writhed amongst the swinging migrating fiery hoops. In the last pass she would cut the ropes that suspended them and they would fall screaming…into the netting that had been raised to catch them.

The audience loved it.

The victims didn't.

Then Rianne returned front and center, let Dark Rider idle, took off her helmet and, illuminated by spot and up lighting, crumbled the black mask… revealing her otherworldly eyes. It was the only part of the performance in which she looked outward with naked oculus. As she had unsheathed her Swiss Blade, now she slowly withdrew the ebony red rivulets occulted in her jumper. The audience was a sea of whispers as her strikingly otherworldly features were framed in tight focus on every monitor under the tent. She needed to say little to drive a fearsome mystery into the hearts and minds of her audience at that moment. She needed only to say…

"I AM RIANNE THE CHANGLING OF SCOTIA! GOOD NIGHT!"

And the people would erupt. Wonder and Mystery and Awe had the people swooning on their feet as the otherworldly beauty twisted the throttle- Dark Rider screaming, rivulets of blood flowing behind her- and raced from the spotlight into the reticence of the night.

Subopolis

Subopolis - the localism for C-Base Leviathan - was far more than some rustic clandestine military encampment. There were permanent structures, numerous science labs, a massive hospital, bars, casinos, social centers even a stadium big enough for football (American or otherwise) . It was lit up like Vegas or Times Square, seductive, frivolous imagery flashing and glowing from all angles. The enwombing reinforced dome was spangled like the night sky moving through dawn into the glory of the day then to twilight with a cycle intended to mimic natural rhythms.

There were 3 such subterranean burgs in the labyrinth somewhere deep beneath the dearth of the Syrian Desert: Leviathan, Titania, and New Atlantis. Of the 3, C-Base Leviathan was the biggest.

There were 400,000 civilians operating in many capacities in the burg beneath the desert. Many were scientists but more were there to keep the party going for the innumerable military personnel moving through to forward positions or returning to loiter, drink, gamble and raise a ruckus when on leave. There was money to be had. MERCs had the big money to spend and nowhere else to go, so there was a reason for merchants, and whores and anyone that wanted a generous wage to sequester themselves deep within this great mine for an indeterminate period of time. No one that went underground, with few exceptions, would be allowed to return to the surface or have contact with the surface until the some undefined period after the war had ended.

The people below could move about with a general freedom amongst the complex tunnel systems. There simply wasn't a way out. Not one generally known nor accessible. Merchants are seldom adventurers . So most travelled about on familiar paths and took Transit between the 3 burgs. Beyond the burgs there was little for a civilian, or soldier to do with down time. For the sake of morale, professional sports teams, movie starlets, comedians even rock bands were smuggled in and out for events broadcast on the surface. Information leaked when these stars returned to the surface about a city they thought was under the sea. Information about glittering lights and new technologies, orgiastic parties and innumerable indulgences. It was information to tantalize, to create mystique. It was perfect propaganda.

What Lies Beneath

She had been under for 3 years- or so according to the reckoning of Subopolis Standard Time. She had been recruited to fight in a great war, her Merc Unit attached to the mysterious Colonel Wingright. And though her home base was the forward and deep Megiddo Complex under his command, she never had met nor seen the elusive general. Nobody had. "He doesn't exist, " or "The man is a myth," was the general response to questions probing into his mystery.

Nor had Rianne ever encountered 'The Enemy' despite many Chariot Missions and even deeper forays using the guided iG-Bore, a football size and shaped torpedo that moved through stone like water by displacing mass.

The iG-Bore could carry a payload of just about anything they could cram into one of its fitted cartridges. Anything from an explosive as bourgeois and rustic as TNT to the experimental Time Matrix Manipulation Implosion Devices - affectionately dubbed 'Time Bombs'. This was all crazy new technology that nobody got to play with on the surface.

The imagery a Pilot received from the iG-Bore's sensorium was an abstraction of sonar, and electro-magnetic readings constructed to be perceptible to the bandwidth of human vision. In the foreground a live data feed detailing relevant syntax, vectors, graphs, interactive menus even strategic suggestions if Master Circuit 'felt' it helpful or someone at Control had a whim on the fly. The information was exchanged and processed by Adaptive Sigmoid Lucent Nanocircuits and shared between the Bore, the Pilot, Master Circuit and anyone monitoring the mission at Control. Either of the latter might override the pilot capriciously, though the commands from Control/Master Circuit arrived with enough latency and truncated data packages to represent an unnecessary strategic risk. The vast majority iG-Bore sorties were completed by the assigned pilot, unmitigated. An override was exceptionally rare.

She had never encountered ' The Enemy' per se, not as she believed-though she would be debriefed ex post facto against her own perception. Rianne had encountered something though, living things, not people-well at least not human people- moving about languidly in a massive cavern below sea level just south of the isle of Cyprus. Tall slinking beings, weak heat signatures, apathetically shifting through a cavern that seemed to occupy far more space internally than externally.

She had been sent forward in her chariot to a strategic node. From there she remotely piloted an iG-Bore out under the Mediterranean Sea. Though she had not been informed Rianne was more than suspicious that her Bore had a Time Bomb payload. Something in the mission just didn't vibe right.

Information gleaned by the IG-Bore's sensorium that day had strained the adaptivity of the Sigmoid Circuits. The data bombardment indicated vector relationships far outside the parameters of anything it could diagnose, dissemble or adapt except for Sensorium Malfunction, Asyncronous Apparatus, or Truncated Data Errors in the millions. Adaptive Sigmoid Lucent Nanocircuits for all the technological

wonder they represented were still oppressed by the limitations and paradigms of the men that tweaked their matrix. The technology couldn't think outside the box.

The foreground display was a stuttering glitch of malfunction warnings and occasionally outrageous data that was probably correct. But Rianne had an intuitive understanding of the Abstract Visual Feed and knew what it was she was looking at as she guided her torpedo through the earth's crust 1000 meters beneath the Mediterranean sea like a solitary fish in an ocean of stone. The chamber was unnaturally rectangular - a construction, not erosion- data identified its proportions as phi^3 x phi^2 x phi and its volume as just under 2km^3. Still more than 1000 meters from the hallow the Sensorium and Central suggested life forms within. But the approach was interceded by increasing interference that made it very difficult to remotely pilot. The visuals were distorting and bending and finally the Sigmoid Circuits went nuts. At 100 meters from contact Rianne could see clearly an amplification of internal space. Looking through the hallow of the chamber was a protracted expanse that ran off for an indeterminable span. There were ominous structures, columns stretching ever upward toward an undetectable ceil, ornate fixtures even readings that Rianne believed to be plant life …and tall languid beings, with weak heat signatures, apathetically moving through an eternal chamber as though time itself held them captive in its viscous sap.

Her vital data showed a jump in heart rate and several other symptoms of the onset of shock but what Rianne was feeling at the time was something like ecstasy, yet ominous and threatening, surreal and wondrous. The sudden black shock of her remote monitors being overridden startled her so violently that she thrust her head forward slamming it into the top of her chariot. She was threatened and upset but tried to mask it in her response when the Audio Feed from Control blasted her instructions to return to Mothership for an emergency dispatch. It was a diversion. She knew it.

An Order to run an Emergency Dispatch was for Rianna like telling a child "Stop doing tedious chores this minute and go play!...THAT'S AN ORDER!". But having a sortie overriden was always either insulting or suspicious. It had never happened to Rianne before. She was worth every pound of her healthy Merc compensation. She was the best pilot under Wingrights Command. Something felt terribly off about the entire operation.

Had it all simply been Sensorium Malfunction… Asyncronous Apparatus?

Something in her gut just didn't vibe right.

At least she would get to really let Dark Rider run. Nobody ever went more than 100Km/hr through the lit passages…unless they had an emergency dispatch.

the movie

Catalyst

The movie 'Catalyst' was visually sumptuous. The score was engaging, exhilarating, titillating, tense , romantic and morose, even playful and comical in the few moments that called for it. The music moved seamlessly across genres. Acid Jazz melted into full orchestration punctuated by chemical beats and grinding metal guitars then shifted and slowed into pulsing hip-hop or tribal percussion then shifting into ambient tinkling of bells and symbols accented by wandering chromatic piano leads…seamlessly, continuously. The score lead the movie, summoned strange complex emotions and immersion with almost hypnagogic perfection. The sound effects- even the voices in the dialogue seemed finely tuned for ubiquitous harmony and rhythm . In her private booth, seated in a bio responsive recliner that rumbled and jolted, tickled and breathed with such immersive synchronicity that she could feel leaves and grass rustling and crumbling under her feet, wind in her hair or even the jolt of a knife in the back, whispers landed in her ear and moments of music seemed to form standing waves in her chakras.

It wasn't VR. There was an enormous Virtual Reality facility 100 meters from the theater used for both training and entertainment. VR was 'real enough' according to the many soldiers that ran lines around the block anticipating a very personalized encounter with a comely creature not bound by the limitations of human genetics, or just a coups hours of massive multiplayer virtual gaming. The real VR experience required a Neural Interface Implant. It was Standard Issue for all enlisted soldiers going underground but not mercs. Upgrades were for sale to enlisted men as well as the many mercenaries and most of the boys had at least the 2 Standard Issue Atlas Implants plus a Sacral. The advantages for upgrades had practical as well libertine utility. A Full Spine was a status symbol worn almost exclusively by the high end mercs and interfaced with many other strange new technologies nobody had ever seen on the surface. Still Rianne found the very thought of wiry tendrils laced into the spine and brainstem abhorrently intrusive.

Rianne preferred the dark seclusion of the Opulent Theater. There was simply nothing like it on the surface. The decor in the foyer was plush red on gold against black with chequered tile underfoot. Two grand staircases spun up 10 floors of suites, no general admission. Each suit had a small kitchenette and bathroom configured around an efficient little lounge connected to a balcony with as many as 5 Interactive Bio- Responsive Recliners facing a great screen that filled the forward view with vivid imagery. A small suite with 2 recliners ran 150 Euros for a 6 hr block. Significantly more expensive than VR but she had allot of money and nothing better to do with it.

'A Brazen Dawn' was set in a future dystopia. Not a desolate, desperate post apocalyptic wasteland but a twisted dystopia, a great steel and concrete paradise for the hedonist, a ' Great Society ' blistered with neon spangle and technologies that leave men idle, wallowing in shiftless consumption, their lives having been extended by technologies they no longer need to understand, the system perpetually

stabilized by forces they no longer need to manipulate. Most live long slow restless lives. Some still pursue philosophy, some music or art, math or science for entirely intrinsic reasons, and a very few still understand the technology that stabilizes everything.

Amidst this Fabian vision a growing number of men, jaded and dissatisfied with an unlimited sea of amoral indulgence, are beginning to feel an atavistic urge, something the geneticists thought they had rooted out 10 generations previous. Man having fulfilled every lust, seeks finally to fill that one forgotten -The lust for blood.

It was a spinning thriller that posed more philosophical questions than moved plotlines. It was a spaghetti of loose ends entangling the romance of a young woman and a middle aged dystopian prophet, a burgeoning blood cult, and a society about to implode around the vacuum of its ignorance.

After 2 hours of provocation and entanglement we find the blood cult deep in an ancient vault that had been sealed for 400 years only to discover that the 'Ancient Orders' had never left the earth, as 'The Histories' extolled, but rather the 'Great Society' was a construct of their Ancient Orders and compacts that stretched back for millennia. The Great Society is rent and divided by politics and intrigue and a martyred philosopher is an incipient Civil War. Finally we see the young woman, leaning on a rustic pick, working a rustic garden outside a simple yet beautiful adobe cottage looking out into the morning sun hanging in golden light above the eastern horizon as a toddling child coos in a rustic cradle. This culmination was expressed in a series of composed shots without dialogue. It moved with a tempo that gave the audience but a count to collect the implications of the imagery before moving to the next imperative sequence of frames, finally lingering for a hesitating moment on the golden light from the eastern sun shining on the child in the cradle. Then it cut. No credits. No Names. No Studio Iconography. Just the gentle audio loop of the needle skipping at the end of a record…

The movie had her head swimming with conundrums, questions and the gutting eating sensation that she was about to stumble into some new reality as the answers she had always trusted sloughed away like gangrenous flesh. The movie wasn't the sole stimulus to this burgeoning philosophical metamorphosis, it was more of a catalyst to a twisting awareness that Rianne could sense just beyond her grasp for some time.

Local time said it was Saturday sometime around 5 in the evening when the movie let out but Rianne was pretty sure time was being monkeyed with down here 5000 meters below the surface. There was a small crowd flowing into the lobby for concessions between films. Rianne still had 4 more hours of entertainment waiting back in her suite but she was feeling stir crazy. She could feel her rutting steed snorting restlessly for a hard run. It had been months since she had let Dark Rider burn his heals and run amok.

Rianne left the theater stunned and pensive. She wasn't even sure the film she had just watched was real. What happened next? Will there be a sequel? She wanted answers. She wanted solutions. But more than she wanted answers she loved the questions. And the more she sought solutions the more she found conundrums.

She wanted to hear dark rider scream. Something in the soul of her steed sang to her, brought her into focus. Together they were almost complete. Dark Rider needed to run amuck.

There was no place in Subopolis were anybody would even want to travel faster than 40km/h and the lit passages were never limited above 100km, lined with cameras and patrolled feverishly by MPO. Without the cover of an Emergency Dispatch she was unlikely to get Dark Rider much over 80 anywhere.

If she really wanted to let Dark Rider run amuck she could only free him in the dark passages.

She had heard that 'some really weird s#@+' happened in passage 116. It had been blasted and sealed but there was 'a secret Chariot Burrow that opened up into the 116 system and soldiers party or explore there. The MPs don't know about it so anything goes, but really weird s#@+ still happens.'

Rianne felt like a little bit of really weird s#@+ might be fun. Rianne went out hunting for more questions.

Running Amokin

Passage 116

Dark Rider sat stirring in anticipation. The lot was full of bikes, but dark rider was not like other bikes. The lot was full of soulless machines. There were bikes decked with holographic paints, neon lights, indulgent body work, fitted with all manner of gadgets and gimmicks and technologies not available on the surface that ran on all manner of exotic fuels (even Dark rider had received some hi-tech fuel fittings). Bikes were very practical and available in Subopolis but nothing could replace Dark Rider.

Rianne settled into the saddle and her steed ignited. Dark Rider shuttered with anticipation. He knew he was going for a run. Getting out of the confines of downtown Subopolis would be a test of patience.

The Cheese Field was a chunk of unreinforced white stone that had been bored into by a thousand chariots before Subopolis was under the map. It sat just outside the great dome of C-Base Leviathan in a decrepit system of caverns that was generally outside the MPO patrol. It wandered about for more than 1000 meters and resembled a giant chunk of Swiss cheese. It had an ominous ancient feeling about it though the bores had dug in less than a decade before. Soldiers had gotten lost wandering though its internal tapestry and collapse was almost likely. Its caverns moaned hissed, growled and sometimes spat dust and debris as corridors collapsed and settled. Still stir crazy soldiers went there from time to time seeking thrills.

The 1 tunnel that drove into the belly of sealed passage 116 was a little known secret. It had once been marked by a red swath about a meter inside the mouth on the ceiling but some funny guy or the MPO had gone about decorating the caves with swathes of red or green or yellow, obscuring the original marker and any subsequent marker that might be created in another readily available color. Quite recently a culture of artist had emerged that were slowly turning the field of cheese into a grand canvas. The MPO seemed quite content to allow it. There was a restless energy that seemed to boil underground and the growing mural brought a vital life to a suffocating culture. Still 200 meters in around a subtle bend and there was only trace ambient light wandering in from The neon glow of Subopolis. Few artists had yet ventured this far into the darkness.

Just beyond a housing complex mostly habituated by scientist the mulling congestion dissipated and Rianne opened Dark Rider up to an anxious trot. The Cheese Field was clustered by artists

at work and on looking admirers but 200 meters in the crowd had dwindled to almost nothing. The end of the paved surfaces terminated at about the same place and the unreinforced cavern slowly twisted into darkness.

A couple hundred meters farther and Rianne was flagged by a couple of wide eyed Mercs straining to find something hidden outside the dancing misty red penumbra of a tactical flashlight thrusting its beam into the wounded mass of stone. Dark rider had no forward beam just the subtle glitter of blue LED lights that flit like sprites in the darkness as she hustled over the uneven terrain. Although Dark Rider's panting engine could be heard moving toward them, the Mercs were confused seeing nothing approaching till the red beam landed directly on the bike.

It was Mikey Frank, and Dyler Lions from her SLM unit. She slowed to a stop and laughed as the 2 boys panicked in fear of MPO fines that could be quite obtuse for what they saw as overpaid, underage Mercs.

"Free Scotland!" Rianne hailed. And the two boys scurried from their rat holes like rodents.

"Changeling?" they questioned. But it could be no one else moving blind through the darkness.

They were desperately seeking the secret tunnel that fed into passage 116. They were on a five day pass and bored stiff before they had wasted their first. They had small packs and intended to spend a few days wandering about hoping for something freakish and weird. Rianne said she had the same idea and assured them that if she should find it she would tell them after and burnt off before they could make any more requests.

She didn't know where the entrance was. She only knew it was far towards the end of the cavern and tucked in a nook so that one might not see it at all scanning the bore wounded surfaces. She counted on her preternatural instinct to guide her.

She slowed as the cavity terminated, scanning the darkness. There was a chunk of stone jutting out from the cul-de-sac of swiss that natural occluded a facet. she wound her bike around loose rocks and debris. behind a sizable boulder, at the foot of the hidden face a bore opening cut down at 45 degrees a strange cold pocket hovered at the mouth and the sharp pinch of ionized air met her nose.

The tunnel was vitrified smooth and debris free. The funnel of the bore was tight but Rianne tucked herself into racing position and opened up in that 1000 meter stretch of twisting and winding terrain. She had mere centimeters of clearance overhead. Still she managed to attain a smoking velocity then shot out the upward bent of the chariot bore, flying into the open

cathedral of 116 with enough speed to sail into the air with a twisting back flip for the spectating specters of the Haunted Highway.

She settled to earth from her glorious floating leap like Baryshnikov and transitioned the energy instantly into a burning spin out that stood into a backside wheelie then danced about in graceful pirouettes and stooping swoops whirling like a capoeira dancer- skipping and swooning torsions and illusory imbalances that seemed to defy the laws of physics until she let her momentum die out and she settled onto both tires and placed her left foot to the ground. Somewhere in her mind she could hear the circus crowd applauding with hiss and thunder but the lightless caverns of 116 were still but for the smooth pant of her idling steed.

She had loved the tumult of the crowd once, but was just as pleased to perform for the specters of 116. She never rode for anything but her own love and passion and a mystical connection to the soul of her steed. But more than it was an exercise in joy it was a spiritual compulsion. She had to ride.

* * * * * * * *

Dark Rider chomped at his bit. The Specters held their breath in anticipation. An endless hallow stretched off before her. She revved Dark Rider into an angry wail and disengaged the clutch into a sliding, screaming, smoking start that pealed the tires into a sticky tarring grip.

The passage of 116 was full of erratic chunks of blast debris but Rianne and her preternatural sense of her surrounding had the animal galloping at 160km/hr+ in 4 seconds. She skirted around the huge chunks of sinewy reinforcement that littered the haunted highway, often only subtly manipulating the gyroscopes and cornering around obstacles so closely she could feel a gentle grind on her helmet or leathers as she subtly grazed their surfaces.

The tunnel seemed to wander on forever. She had never been in a passage that stretched for more than 7-8 kilometers underground but she had been burning at a hot pace for more than 10 minutes. She was sure that she had put at least 30 Km between herself and the Chariot Bore. Yet she still sensed in front of her a seemingly endless hallow.

'Strange…' was the only dialogue that traversed her mind at the moment she made the decision to chase the snake to its tail, ' I wonder if anyone has ventured this far since the place was sealed?'

10 more minutes of frantic sprinting into the depths of 116 and something even stranger happened. The highway opened up into a great dome like that of Subopolis, the massive gnarled monuments of debris disappeared entirely, there wasn't even an errant pebble on the road that sped beneath her.

Rianne's preternatural sense of her environment told her little…or nothing. The truth she admitted to herself, as she pried off her helmet to peer into the dark depths with her naked otherworldly eyes, 'This thing could go on forever for all I can tell'. The most pointed and frightening oddity was that Rianne's preternatural senses and otherworldly eyes told her there was nothing beneath her or Dark Rider except a normalizing force that engaged a falling surface wherever the ground had ought to be.

She should have been leery.

She wasn't.

She revved Dark Rider to a shrill scream and sent the most of the torque to the gyroscopes. She and Dark Rider began to dance like courting swans, spinning entanglements, tragic dramatic moments as Dark Rider's gyroscopic flywheels were manipulated to create impossible perceived imbalances. All the beauty and grace performed for the rapture of the dancers and the delight of the specters of 116.

…and the depths of the dome seemed to stretch out infinitely in all directions. With nothing beneath her she felt like she was pirouetting on a pinpoint precipice that fell into an eternal well of empty space.

She should have been frightened .

She wasn't.

She should have been cautious.

She wasn't.

She was Anna Pavlova performing her fatal ballet. He was Vaslav Nijinsky gracefully leaping and swooping in counterpoint then unison. Every gesture, every tragic plunge, every amorous turn and heart rending dip landing ever so delicately on the surface of an ever expanding sea so as to bell the surface of the waters in a woven expanse of radiating rings with every touch of the pointed slipper. Yet never even an errant drop would splash.

Then up-lights illuminated everything and they were on a great stage moving to a haunting nocturne singing mournfully from a pit that separated the performance from the invisible attendees of the hall. And the vision began to be intensely vivid and real. So real she could smell the sweat from the players in the pit and the starch from the collars choking the necks and perfume drowning the breasts of the attendees of the hall. So real it seemed plain to her preternatural senses and other worldly eyes. Even the hypnogogic symphony was occasionally interrupted by a shamefully stifled cough into a silken kerchief.

Without a moments transition or fractured break the strange immersing waking vision wandered seamlessly, perfectly and unnoticeably instantaneously from a great theatrical hall where the elite come to be entertained in high culture, to under the Main Tent of the circus were the Rabble come to seek the strange and wondrous, the slapstick and the infantile, the curious and profane, anything to speed them away, if only for a moment, from the pits were they facelessly sweat away their days and lives.

a serene musing of the French horn and oboe crying out from a faceless pit morphed on the beat into a fanfare of jazzy brass punctuated by a gruesome metal riff in syncopation to a beat that was more like hip hop on street tweak than Rock. The fanatical circus crowd was an army of wailing banshees heralding the sure death of another rutting teenage braggart at the apex of insolence and stupidity as Rianne pulled off her helmet and crumbled the clay mask revealing her other worldly eyes. She unsheathed her occulted Swiss Degen, unzipped her black leathern jumpsuit and laid the collar in an open V . A rushing river of sanguine pitch flowed behind her as Dark Rider leapt and whinnied, rubber burned and tires smoked as they sped into the inclination of the ramp.

Rianne's victims dangled like fresh kill in the gap. But as she jettisoned into some defiant blade wielding areal maneuver everything flashed a macabre red and the audience screamed in terror as she slit into the bloated belly of a monstrous beast that burst into a terrible seething fractal of worms, clawing nails and tearing teeth in a lustful feeding frenzy that consumed itself until all that was left was bone and a coil of writhing intestine that finally tumbled from the skeletal cage and slopped into the catch nets.

The audience tried to flee in terror but while they had been immersed in Riane's riveting performance an insipid viscous ooze had seeped in …eerily… languidly. Hampering every fleeing footstep, deepening slowly the ooze patiently consumed them, though they fought all the while. They strained until the fainted and awoke to strain until they collapsed again. They climbed upon the backs of their fellows burying one another's facelessness in the drowning trap, thinking to lift themselves above the ooze, only to find themselves bound to their neighbor's back.

Rianne ran in terror then! Her steed burning fire and rubber out the circus doors into the night as the ooze flowed in patiently behind. Rianne knew she couldn't save a soul but herself. Though some place deep in her soul bellowed 'COWARD!' she never dared to even look back. She knew she could out-run the ooze but it would always be there, flowing patiently, drowning steadily, until it ran her into an inescapable corner or caught her in a vacant moment, sneaking in languidly from behind.

In only a few heaping breaths she had put enough distance between herself and the horrors of the circus that the terrible screams of the people had quieted to something more like the buzzing of flies. The tormenting Kafkaesque buzzing of flies, wings beating in frantic hopelessness, beating with the slow climbing, interminably mounting mania of terror as creeping insipid ooze slowly suffocates and engulfs until every fly is locked in eternal failed flight, preserved for endless ages, drowned in sap.

"TO HELL WITH THE CIRCUS!!" she screamed aloud racing into a foggy night in Wales. The waking dream had cornered Riane's reality and she looked out into the luminescent beings of the night sky, more proud and brilliant and vivid and real than she had ever known them to be. All the stars kept their proper places in the nocturnal precession as she raced along the coast content to flee the circus until sunrise. The first sunrise she had seen in a long time. She was sure they had been monkeying with time down in Subopolis.