The Mirage on the Brink of Oblivion (The Epic of Aravinda Book 3) by Andrew M. Crusoe Read Free Book Online

grab his arm, and in a moment of confusion, Zahn turned around, just in time to see his sleeping body shrink into the distance as he drifted up, up, up, through the mesh. As he passed through the ceiling he felt a familiar ticklish feeling before finding himself standing on a white, perfectly flat surface. He blinked, feeling a familiar presence that he recognized instantly.

CHAPTER8
     
    IMPOSSIBLE ARCHITECTURE
     
     
    When he turned around, Asha’s appearance startled him.
    Now, her face was lit from below as well as from above. She was still wearing a silvery Confederation uniform, but her entire form wavered in the middle distance, as if her shape might change at any moment.
    She squinted at him. “I’ve been waiting for you for a while. They weren’t kidding about the time dilation.”
    “Oh.” Zahn hesitated. “I’m sorry. I got on the bunk right after you did. I guess we’ll have to be careful about that.”
    Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something impossible and turned around in surprise.
    Rising up to the ceiling of the expansive chamber were magnificent, curving structures that sprung out of the sides of the chamber itself. Upon closer examination, Zahn realized that some of the structures weren’t attached to anything at all.
    “It’s remarkable, Zahn. I know that we’ve done this once before, but waking up here, to this.” She looked past him, up to the impossible architecture that surrounded them. “It’s like waking up for the first time.”
    Zahn could think of nothing to say and grew absorbed in the fantastical constructions that surrounded him. Several figures clothed in bright, billowing colors flew through the air between the structures with an elegance and grace that mesmerized him.
    “Are these… buildings?” He held his gaze on where one structure in the far distance curved down from the ceiling, coming to a sharp point. A small balcony hung off of the bottom of the point, and Zahn thought he could make out a few people above it.
    “Yes,” Asha said. “I’ve already been over there, actually. They’re really sweet people. They’re having, ah, I guess you could call it a dinner party. They invited me to stay, but I thought I’d wait over here for you. I felt rather overwhelmed when I first came up, so I thought you’d want me to be here.”
    Zahn tore his gaze away from the eccentric forms around him and looked over to her. “Thanks.” He reached out to take her hand, and when he touched it, a rush of ecstatic energy flowed through him. “Whoa!”
    “Hey!” Asha inhaled sharply. “I think touch is different here, Zahn. It must be a lot harder to hide how you feel about someone when you’re in this state, you know?”
    He grinned. “Well, you already know how I feel about you…”
    Her eyes smiled back at him. “And you already know how I feel.” She leaned in and embraced him tightly, filling him with a profound warmth that felt even more pure than when they’d embraced with their physical bodies many times before.
    Zahn brushed back her hair and admired her olive skin. Even in this out-of-body state, her etheric body must have automatically assumed the form of her physical body. He could even see the flecks of green in her eyes. In short, she was as stunning as ever.
    “Zahn, look!”
    He whipped around, just in time to see a large group of people in bright clothes emerge out of a smooth patch in the ceiling with great speed. Each of them were zooming down, but in different directions. In a blink, they had all dissolved into one of the huge, white cubes, no different from the one he was currently standing on.
    “Yikes,” he said. “I wonder what sent them back so quickly.”
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe that’s what happens when you wake up.”
    “Yeah, Jyana did say that we would need to wake up to eat. Maybe they’re all eating together.” Zahn turned to her. “What do you think they eat, anyway? Did you see anything when