Chapter 254: Distant Dreamscapes (Xalla POV)

“I’m sorry,” Xaz said in exasperation, her mental avatar frowning as she tried to picture what they both had to do. “But Walter’s plan is what?”

Xalla sighed and went over the key points one more time with her sister, although she knew that it was just for show. There was no way that Xaz misheard her the first time, especially since they were meeting in the family Collective Conscience, not to mention that she was a fellow Xollon. Xalla looked around the mental space, safe from unwanted eyes and ears, and sighed again as she finished telling her sister Walter’s hare-brained idea. 

“I know,” Xalla continued, “It’s absolutely-”

“Genius!” Her sister exclaimed, “I didn’t know your fiance was such an artist!”

“We’re just dating, Xaz, he’s not my-”

“A true visionary, I tell you!” her sister continued, completely ignoring Xalla like usual, “But we can’t go through with his play alone! We need him here with us, we need his directorial skills here!”

And there Xaz went again. If Xalla was a fan of reading those engrams, then Xaz was a superfan of movies. The woman was practically obsessed with it, especially the overly complex, cheesy soap operas. To be fair, Walter’s plan did parallel some of those low-budget films, so Xalla could understand her sister’s fervor, and once Xaz was in one of these moods, there was little Xalla or anyone else in her family could do to snap her out of it. \

“We can’t talk with Walter; you know that,” Xalla reminded

Xaz rolled a frill. “Oh come on, baby sister! I know you’re trying to keep that hunk of flesh all to yourself, but it’s about time he’s introduced to the rest of the family! At least to me!”

“Do you honestly think I forgot what you did to my last boyfriend?”

“Pfft,” her sister snickered. “You should be thanking me for that! That good-for-nothing sack of tentacles was just using you for your status, and you know it! Would have drained us dry if Xeze and I hadn’t intervened. You never thanked your brother for that, by the way, or to me now that I think about it.”

Xalla sighed again. It was true; her last foray into romance had ended poorly, and while technically it was her siblings who helped her see the truth, the way they did it was a memory that she never wanted to recall again. Hence Xalla’s insistence on keeping her status in Xolloid secret from Walter in the beginning, but she hardly wanted to admit that to her sister. That woman would never let go of any embarrassing moment in Xalla’s life, and she wasn’t going to give her any more fuel. 

“Still,” Xalla continued, “The whole reason we’re asking for your help is because Walter and I are under constant surveillance. We can’t even risk Sendings, at least not for long periods of time.”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s why we’re meeting over CC, I know,” Xaz said, “You’ve explained it a million times, and it’s still not very convincing. Who has the ability to overwhelm a Xollon’s mind, much less one of ours?”

“Well, you never know…” 

“Fine, I’ll give you that since you’re the head of security,” Xaz continued, not sounding impressed or convinced. 

Xalla perked up. “Great, so that means that you don’t need to see Walter-”

“I didn’t say that, baby sis,” Xaz said with a wry grin, “It just means that we can’t communicate through Sendings. But there’s certainly one method that we know that’s spy-proof.”

Xalla frowned, turning to her grinning sister. “Xaz, there’s no way…”

“And why not?”

“It’s for family!” She retorted, “And it’s not your decision to allow him access in any case.”

Xaz chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’ve already gotten permission from the whole family.”

“Wha-”

“It’s true, sis,” a voice, Xalla’s brother’s, said. “He sounds like a swell dude.”

“I just wish you took me with you, Xalla,” her younger sister interjected, “Xaz gets to have all the fun!”

“Ugh…” Xalla groaned, rubbing a feeler on her frills. She had the distinct feeling of a headache coming along, and she longed for a glass or five of Xollon wine. Maybe just give her the whole distillery at this point. 

“It’s okay, hun,” her mom’s voice followed, “We’ve been dying to meet this Lord Arbiter! We’ve seen the pictures.”

“He’ll be welcomed, don’t you worry!” laughed her dad, “Heard he’s got an appetite for Shoggoth, and we just got a new shipment in!”

“And there you go,” Xaz finished with a playful smile. “He’s more than welcome to join the family CC.”

“Or the family!” her mom added.

Xalla sighed for the hundredth time and supposed that while they could keep outsiders from spying on their conversations here, it didn’t apply to family. 

“But-”

“Or what,” Xaz continued, “You’re not serious about Walter? You’re not the only single Xollon around, so if you’re going to pass…”

“That’s not what I meant!”

“Then it’s settled,” Xaz clapped, “I’ll get Walter now.”

And before Xalla could say anything else, her sister disappeared from the mental dreamscape, leaving her to brood alone. How did things escalate so quickly? No, it’s quite obvious how things escalated so quickly, and it was one of the reasons why Xalla had decided to leave her home to pursue a career far, far away. Her siblings could be a little extreme, and they certainly didn’t give Xalla any privacy. Still, she loved them all the same, annoying as they were. 

But things were moving too fast! Letting a date join something as private as the Collective Conscious was practically akin to asking their hand in marriage, and they’ve only gone on one formal date! What if he’s weirded out by Xalla’s family? She didn’t want to appear clingy. And what if he refused? No, regardless of what the others may want, she couldn’t allow Xaz to ruin their budding relationship.

Xalla steeled herself; regardless of her position in Central, she was going to stop her sister! She was just about to exit the CC dreamscape herself when a familiar voice called out.

“Uh, what’s going on, Xalla? You’re mumbling to yourself.”

“It’s just,” she answered automatically before her mind caught up to the rest of her. “Just…” She frowned and turned to see the new visitor. 

“Xalla?” Walter said again. Xaz was giving her a shit-eating grin right beside her boyfriend. 

“W-Walter? What are you doing here?”

Walter gave her another confused look. “You invited me? That’s what Xaz said anyway, is that wrong?.”

“I mean- yes, uh, as in yes, I did invite you, not no as in you’re wrong!”

“Breathe, Xalla,” her sister said with a wry smile, “Don’t want your cortex to shut down on us now.”

She gave her sister another deathly stare before composing herself and addressed Walter again.

“Er, you are invited I mean. but-” she stuttered, not sure what to say seeing him so nonchalant. Surely he knew the significance of accepting the invitation here. He was displaced in time, but this tradition was ancient, predating even her mentor’s time. Even newly hatched Xollon would know the significance of such an act.

Which meant… 

Xalla blushed. 

“Now, now,” Xaz tutted, patting her sister gently on the side. “Stop embarrassing yourself and greet our newest CC member!”

“It’s great to be here?” Walter said when Xalla didn’t answer. 

“Right, um, welcome, Walter.”

“Welcome to the family!” A chorus of cheers said at once. 

Xalla gave one final wave of exasperation before erecting a barrier, kicking the unwanted eyes away from the three of them. She felt the waves of playful disappointment from her siblings and parents, but they knew when to retreat. It was one thing to push some of Xalla’s buttons and another thing entirely to actually anger the woman. 

“Sorry, Walter,” Xalla said nervously, “Um, hi.”

He chuckled and waved back. “Hi, Xalla.”

“Okay now,” Xaz interrupted, “Let’s skip over the awkwardness and just get straight to the point, yeah?”

“R-right!”

Walter chuckled. “I heard that you needed me to go over the plan in person?”

“I did…?” 

“You did, sis!” Xaz said before turning to Walter. “We thought that we needed your directorial touch for what’s to come!”

Walter arched a brow. “Xalla said that?”

“Of course she did!” Xaz lied through her maw. It didn’t take a Xollon to know that much, but Walter only laughed and nodded. “My sister was quite amazed by your ideas, but it wouldn’t be the same if we took over without your oversight. Now, I have a few ideas of my own if you’d like to incorporate them…”

“Gladly,” he said with a grin. 

“Perfect!” Xaz exclaimed, “Now I know that you originally wanted to reuse that bum’s old napping spot undersea, but now that you’re one of us, we can’t have you disgrace our image like that!”

“So what do you have in mind?”

“We’ll use the CC as a backdrop,” she continued naturally, “That way, we can do some trial runs to get the image of an imposing god just right. Trust me, I minored in Divine Theology. I know what I’m doing.”

Xalla sighed and rolled her eyes. “You failed Divine Theology, Xaz. Remember the look on your professor’s face when he checked up on your civilization for your finals?”

“Ignore my sister,” Xaz said forcefully, shoving the other Xollon to the side, “But that’s all hearsay in any case!”

Xalla scoffed and produced the final progress report from her memories. She shoved the paper in her sister’s face, pointing at the sad grade she got and the scathing remarks of a very unfortunate, aging professor. 

Xaz dematerialized the thing immediately and pulled Walter to the side. “All fabricated memories. I was a model student, that prof didn’t know what he was doing when he graded me..”

Xalla could only roll her eyes at the blatant lies that her sister was spouting. “You thought it would be a good idea to have your temple situated inside an active volcano, Xaz, and let’s not talk about your great idea of sending devote worshippers into a neutron star.”

“And ignore my naive sister,” she continued, “She doesn’t understand the importance of a proper backdrop. How can you have a proper cult in some crappy place like R’yleh? Now a neutron star? Perfection!”

“It is beautiful…” Xalla admitted, but quickly shook her frills, “If any of the followers lived for even a microsecond once you got them there that is.”

“Semantics,” Xaz dismissed, “Anyway, this is not about me. It’s about Walter, and allow me to make a modest suggestion for the perfect setting.”

Walter smiled. “I have to agree with your sister here, Xalla. This will be the first time that my cultists will see their god, and first impressions are important. I’ll be needing quite a bit out of them for this stage, so let’s get this right.”

Xalla sighed again and decided it it would be easier just to let the two have fun. Once her sister got in this kind of mood, it was next to impossible to get anything productive out of her until she got her fill of fun. Now that Xalla thought about it, her sister resembled that human Noel in some regards, although she wasn’t sure how she felt about that comparison.

It didn’t matter either way. In some respects, Walter did have an immature side to him whenever he concocted one of this schemes; she had thought it was due to his limitations as a human, but apparently not. He, like her sister, had the habit of making things much more complicated than necessary, but at least she knew that he’d fit right in with the rest of the family. Xalla could already imagine the sort of antics that Walter would drag her younger brother and sister into. A little bit of fun chaos never hurt…

“All right, just do what you want then,” Xalla sighed, finally giving in, “But I’m here to make sure that you two don’t go overboard!” 

“Excellent!” her sister exclaimed, “So let’s decide on the basics first. I’m thinking galactic, all seeing entity. All eyeballs and primal chaos. Your the Devouring Truth, so we gotta get some devouring motifs in there too.”

She waved her hands and the bland dreamscape started to shift immediately. Gone was the solid ground they were standing on and in its place was the expanse of the cosmos. Distant stars and galaxies started to light up one by one, beautiful if not for the massive maw that spanned half the horizon. Everything, including the space around the three Xollon, started to converge into the thing’s jaws, all while time and space ripped and teared at the seams. 

“Cool, eh?” Xaz said with a satisfied smile. “Now that’s what I can a first impression!”

“And how do you expect Walter to give instructions if he’s several light years across?” Xalla asked with a shake of her head. 

“Ah… good point,” Xaz waved her hands again and the scene depicting the end of the universe disappeared. “Do you have any suggestions, Walter? You know the humans better than I do. What do you think’s a good image to fit that species?”

“I have a few ideas,” he answered with a smile.