Chapter 27 - Dancing of Souls

Jude woke up early the next morning, his mind pondering all that he had learned in the few weeks since he left his camp. Nothing seemed to make sense, from the destruction of the camp to the mystery of the tower, from the aurora-script to his friends. He could not make sense of any of it.

He wandered further in the direction in which the sun rises, although he did not know where he was going. He hoped that he would figure out exactly what Survivor had meant soon so that he could find his friends.

His body ached from his ceaseless journeys, and his mind could barely keep focused on the task at hand. Night was already beginning to fall again, and he had not stopped once to eat or think.

Needing some sort of escape for his restless mind, Jude decided to light a fire for the first time in a while. The weather had been warm and he usually ate his food raw, so it hadn't been a necessity before. And this time he was only doing it as a distraction.

And so he gathered pieces of homes that he knew would burn, such as timber from supports that had long collapsed. He piled them in the road, and then shot a low-powered blast from his gun at them. They lit with only a minor explosion from the weapon.

He sat down and watched as the flames crackled and burned. Despite the fact that the night was already rather warm, Jude felt his spirits lifting as his body heated up from the flames.

Flames circled around, engulfing the wood and waste that he was burning. Using only the light from the fire, he began to look at the Kryonomicon again.

Somehow, the aurora-script within did not seem quite so foreign and alien to him. He still could not comprehend its message, but it did not seem contrary to the human thought process any longer.

Jude suddenly could have sworn that he heard a voice. It seemed to be coming from the flames. And it sounded like Survivor. He looked into the flames, and they seemed to take the form of Survivor's head, albeit an ethereal and wispy form of his head.

"Jude," it said, now clearly Survivor's voice. "Ukl shïkal ûkaj kif ukl Kryonomicon. The answer lies in the Kryonomicon."

It had happened. Jude looked down at the Kryonomicon, and the script now flowed in a linear fashion before his mind, despite the fractal-like patterns that were actually written on the paper. He could actually now understood some of the words there.

And he finally learned what the six words meant. Ukl shïkal ûkaj kif ukl Kryonomicon. The answer lies in the Kryonomicon. This was his Rosetta Stone, and given time, it would surely be able to help him read the Kryonomicon.

He stared at the fire again. The flames had reorganized themselves into their chaotic patterns and no longer formed Survivor's face.

Smaller flames leapt up from the fire, and each one seemed to form a face from Jude's past. Whether they were his mother whom he had never known (but who he figured the face was) or Tyra or Relik, he saw the faces in the fire, the burning souls of the ones he loved, dancing in the flames.

And then he had his second revelation of the night. He had seen the Dancing of Souls in the fire, and he figured that the fires themselves were the dancing.

But he still didn't know how to follow them. Both fires and auroras moved in chaotic patterns that were not followable by the human mind. They did not point in a direction. He would not be able to follow them.

So how was he supposed to follow them? Jude pondered this but could not find the answer. He picked up the Kryonomicon to try to read it, but there was not enough light left from the sun and the fire was dying.