PHANTASIA by R. Atlas Page B

sensations and those of his team.  
    “Go!” S shouted softly, catching everyone by surprise. As he stared into the crystal, Red felt the thrill of his consciousness slipping away for the second time during the field test.  
    “Does anyone have any idea what her nightmare is going to be about?” Butz asked in a dazed voice. “It occurred to me, we have no idea what we’re getting ourselves into.”  
    “I do,” S replied. “Brace yourselves, and pray that it doesn’t feel too real.”  

Chapter 5: Gnashars and Nightmares

    The rocky interior of the cavern had vanished behind a thicket of ghost white pillars with skeletal branches that extended from the ground like frozen claws. It took a moment before Red realized that the pillars were trees, albeit gaunt and desolate looking ones that resembled nothing he had ever studied. Each of their branches were finger thin and shaped into elaborate spirals like the braids of a miniature galaxy. He looked down and saw that his body was waist deep in a pool of slush. There was no solid ground anywhere in sight, only a vast marsh steeped with carpets of a black algae and estranged bits of floating ice. The land stretched on like this for as far as he could see — a frozen everglade that conquered its horizon with a collection of eccentric flora. He looked to his right, where he saw Butz, Magnus, and S, all of whom looked equally bewildered, and then up, towards the sky, where something seemed to be off. It took a moment for the question to register in his head.  
    “Why are Avalonia’s stars so far away?” he asked out loud. From where he stood, both stars were mere specks in the sky, shrunk against a backdrop of misplaced constellations. Their unusual distance created a dimmer daytime atmosphere than what Red was used to. The blue star, Aleph, seemed disproportionally closer than its red sister, Gama, drowning the hue of Avalonia’s usual starlight into an ultra-blue tone and rooting the sky into a perpetual state of twilight.  
    “Because we’re not in Avalonia anymore,” Magnus answered in a dazed tone. “We’re in the glacial swamps of Takis,” he added while intently observing their surroundings.  
    “Takis? We’re in Takis? How did we get here?” Red asked curiously.  
    “We’re in Raven’s dreamscape, Red. You can’t forget that — this isn’t real,” S answered while pinching him. It seemed obvious now that he thought about it, and he wondered how he had forgotten. None of this is real, he repeated to himself. He looked down at his hands. He had both of them. Takis. Takis. Suddenly, he realized what Raven’s nightmare was going to be about.  
    The glacial swamps of Takis loosely referred to a collection of arctic wetlands encircling the planet’s equator. The subzero temperatures of the forested region spawned a diverse set of ecosystems with creatures that exhibited an extreme tolerance for cold and acidic environments. Takis itself was the first planet to be colonized beyond the metroid belt, even before Iris, despite being further away from the center of their solar system. Roughly about twice the size of Avalonia, Takis was too cold to be habitable anywhere beyond its equatorial regions, where hundreds of major cities had formed around major Cron deposits. Speculations were made that underneath Takis’ beds of frozen ice, warm oceans could have given birth to underwater civilizations like the mnes of Eaut, but nothing of the sort has ever been confirmed. Like the three other outer planets, Takis’ sources of Cron led to a rapid pace of colonization, and after only a few centuries, its population exceeded that of Avalonia.
    “We’re supposed to find Raven in this?” Butz groaned. “At least I don’t feel the cold.”  
    “Don’t be so sure,” Magnus replied quaintly.  
    “What do you mean? I feel fine, and I’m sitting in half frozen water. My body’s not using mana to warm up the area around me either, isn’t that what