122

You head across the cloud plain towards the hunched figure. The man turns and looks at you, apparently unsurprised by your sudden appearance. He is dressed in grey, tattered rags and, with a start, you see that the flesh of his hands and face is almost transparent, revealing the veins, bones, and tissue that lie beneath his skin.

‘No peace. No peace,’ he mutters to himself. ‘So many interruptions … the passage of strangers, asking directions and breaking the silence.’ He gazes at you with a sad but steady stare. ‘I am Drear, wanderer between worlds,’ he says, as if reciting a litany. ‘Sailor upon pointless seas, traveller of timeless lands, born of a world grown old and tired. You are in the Neverness, my children, the unformed and unclaimed void of the Daziarn, where no one yet resides.’

‘What of yonder building?’ you ask.

‘The Crystal Tower, home of the Academicians, scientists and scholars from another plane. They are mad, my friend. Do not waste your time with them. Instead, follow me and find peace in the calm of wandering; shed all purpose and responsibility. Come, follow! I seek the salvation of silence, the tranquillity of endlessness.’

He beckons insistently and, with a glazed expression, Tanith steps forward. Persuasive, inviting, and increasingly irresistible, Drear’s hypnotic voice pulls at your mind.

If you wish to follow Drear, turn to 81.

If you wish to turn away, turn to 43.