“THE NEST OF DESPAIR” ARC CONTINUES…
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The sound of dripping water echoed through the cave, eerily in time with the thuds of their boots as they strode across the black stone. George repressed a shiver; it was cold down here, and damp too – neither of which he found especially pleasant. Following behind Hugh, he threw a questioning glance the reaver’s way, fiddling with his blonde fringe.
‘Not long now,’ said Hugh, answering George’s question before it had even been uttered. His voice was wearied. In one hand, he held a torch; his other hand was splayed defensively before him, as if he was preparing to use that fireball spell he had just shown George.
The memory of the fireball, blossoming simply in Hugh’s palm, stirred wonder in George’s chest. Magic was real. He could not deny that now, after seeing everything. Magic was real.
However, one thing Hugh had said stuck with him. According to the grizzled reaver, George had powers. Impossible…George thought. He was just a street urchin, working laboriously at a spacer garage. There was nothing even remotely special about him that could say he had powers.
And if it was true that he had powers, that terrified him. He recalled Hugh’s Carthigians and elephants metaphor, which he had used to describe George’s powers. He had described the powers as great – but with the twist of fear and horror. The powers were able to turn a person against their own kind, doing as much destruction to their allies as to their enemies. George did not like that. He hated not being in control of himself, let alone hurting others he cared about. These “Powers of the Ov’l” Hugh had mentioned…he wanted nothing to do with them.
As these thoughts whirled through George’s mind, he paid less attention to where he was going. His foot caught a pebble on the cave floor, and he tripped. Before hitting the floor, he reached out to hold the side of the cave for balance, when a strong hand gripped his arm and pulled him to his feet. George gasped, looking up.
The tight face of Hugh Fisher leered back at him, brows furrowed. Hugh’s scarred, leathery face twisted into a grimace, and his jaw clenched. ‘What did I tell you about the cave walls?’ the reaver growled.
The hairs on the back of George’s neck stood on end.
Hugh sighed through his teeth. The tension in his face relaxed somewhat, though was still evident in his features. ‘This isn’t a cave – not like you think.’ He pointed at the side of the cave. ‘If you touched those walls, not even I could save you.’
George let out a wavering breath and nodded. The reaver scared him a little, he had to admit. He was gruff, and his voice held a world-wearied quality that grated against George’s eardrums. Hugh’s eyes, too, gleamed with shadows of the past that sent shudders running down George’s spine. ‘Sorry, sir.’ George was proud of himself for keeping as much of his squealy tone from his voice as possible. He fixed his eyes on Hugh’s face, as Lilly had told him. ‘Sorry.’
Hugh exhaled in a slow, heavy breath. ‘It’s okay.’ He tried a reassuring smile, but it did not fit his face. If anything, it made his grizzly look even more fearsome. ‘Just keep it in mind.’ He clapped George on the back.
As they resumed walking, George recalled what Hugh had said earlier, when they had first passed under the Dream Arch and into the cave. Hugh’s concern had been evidenced by his furrowed brows and hard tone.
“It’s like I thought: we’ve entered a Dream Realm, a pocket dimension inhabited by dream-eaters and infused with psychic and phantom energies. Don’t touch anything – not even the walls. While everything may look and feel real, it’s not. Pocket dimensions like Dream Realms are unreal: they are simply illusionary. Of these pocket dimensions, Dream Realms are amongst the most dangerous. If you touch those walls, the psychic energies of this dimension will infect you, and you will become theirs. The dream-eaters will ravage your mind and tear out your soul,
“Those Barrens I was telling you about earlier – that’s what you’ll become. Only worse. Dream Realms require inhabitants with psychic energy; those without psychic energy cannot survive. Barrens, lacking a mind, thus lack any psychic presence.” He had swallowed. “You will have about a minute of life as a Barren before your head explodes, overwhelmed by the Dream Realm’s psychic energies. No reaver has ever survived flesh contact with a Dream Realm. Ov’l or not, you should be careful.’
George turned to Hugh, frowning. ‘If I’m so powerful, as you say, why should I need anyone to save me?’
Hugh grunted softly, a sure sign of irritation. ‘You’re untrained. You may be powerful, but it’s experience which makes the best reavers – not power.’
That only made George’s frown deepen. Experience made for nothing – everything was power. If he was Power Level Ten (for instance) against a fighter with Power Level Four, it was obvious who would win – him – regardless of any experience either of them had. He thought the reaver’s point was flawed.
‘That’s the sort of thing my dad would say. Fat lot of good his “experience” did when Rod and his boys came by asking for trouble–’ He cut himself off. Talking about his father was never a happy conversation. He remembered that day vividly. That day was Lilly’s last as his siter; from then, she had been his mother. Thinking of Lilly only made the pain worse.
Hugh was silent, and George saw something in the man’s eyes. Those eyes hid so much…so much pain…so much guilt…George had never been much for understanding people, but their eyes he could read like a children’s book.
At last, Hugh let out a sigh, rubbing at the scar along his cheek. ‘Listen, lad, you’re young yet. You don’t know the value of experience. But trust me: experience is a very valuable thing, a tool which can make even the lowliest scum into a hardened warrior. Experience teaches wisdom, and more, it teaches you not to make the same mistake twice…’ At that, his voice trailed off, leaving George a little confused. He looked at the reaver’s eyes and saw that same pain and guilt in them.
‘What is that?’ George asked.
Hugh frowned. ‘What is what?’
‘Your eyes…’
‘My eyes are brown and yours are blue – what of it?’
George hesitated. ‘Why do you hurt?’
Hugh shrugged. ‘Experience. Memories are pain.’
George fell quiet, thinking to himself. How profound. He was surprised the gruff reaver was capable of such profoundness.
Indeed, it seemed George’s memories had a lot of pain, to do with his family. However, there were many good memories too: his mother’s smile, his sister’s laugh, his brother’s kind heart…He was glad he had not lost those memories to the dream-eater. Memories were pain, yes, but they were also a strength. They gave him something to fight for. I will not let my family down.
Adrenaline coursed down his veins like liquid lightning. He marched forwards, overtaking Hugh into the black depths of the cave tunnel.
Hugh jogged to catch up with him and cast George a glance of slight bewilderment. ‘What’s got into you?’
George didn’t reply, furiously marching through the dark. Hugh grunted something under his breath, then turned away, walking alongside him.
As they continued through the cave, they soon came across an inkling of green light. The green light grew as they neared the source, until it had engulfed the whole cave tunnel in its ill glow. The light spilled through an opening in the cave wall. Hugh peered through the opening, making sure not to rest any part of his body on the stone wall, then turned back to George. The look on the reaver’s face did nothing to quash George’s nerves. George decided – against his better judgement – to look through the opening.
The opening fed down into a large chasm, as wide as three buses lined end-on-end and at least twice as tall. It was carved from the same jagged black rock as they’d been walking over for the last half an hour, which twinkled like onyx, shining with strings of reflected green light. The gentle pitter-patter of running water echoed through the cave.
As George looked through the opening, he spied the source of the luminescent green glow; his eyes widened to globes. Sat at the centre of the chasm on a sharp pedestal of rock was a bright-green, egglike structure. It was huge (at least twice his size, he reckoned) and dimly reminded him of some of the dinosaur eggs he’d seen at the Marsheton Museum – except, of course, that those dinosaur eggs did not glow green. He also noticed a plethora of greyish-brown rootlike structures snaking across the walls, feeding into the egglike structure at the centre of the chasm.
‘A delaeon,’ said Hugh, pointing at the glowing egglike structure. ‘That’s where the dream-eaters keep the souls they steal. It’s like a larder of sorts. The dream-eaters are bound-by-life to the delaeon by their psychic tethers.’
‘But where are the dream-eaters?’ George asked.
Hugh answered his question by pointing at the cave floor. As George looked down at the floor, he gasped – the floor was moving, writhing, and squirming! But as he looked closer, he saw the floor itself wasn’t moving; rather, there were a plethora of odd-shaped creatures wriggling across it. Their chatter and footsteps echoed through the cave.
He spied creatures like the one he had fought back up in the hospital – “vendigs.” Their translucent, teardrop-shaped bodies shimmered in the delaeon’s green light. He also spied others of different shapes: doglike creatures with shaggy, purple fur, wearing what looked to be brains on their backs – though he convinced himself they couldn’t possibly be brains – and large apes with round heads and single golden eyes. Like the vendigs, they had pink “psychic barbels” – the doglike creatures had one at each corner of their mouth, while the apes’ were wrapped around their wrists. As George eyed the creatures, Hugh told him their names: the doglike creatures, he learned, were “por’avas,” and the apes were “cothelids.”
George was so immersed in watching the dream-eaters scurry about the chasm that he didn’t notice his hand inching closer and closer to the cave wall. Luckily though, Hugh spotted it.
Two strong hands gripped George’s shoulders and pulled him away, just before his hand could touch the wall. George turned to see Hugh looking at him, face grim.
‘Don’t touch the walls,’ the reaver warned sternly.
George nodded shakily. The reaver’s look was much kinder now than it had been before, but it was still unnerving. He gritted his teeth. ‘So, how do we destroy this Dream Realm, then?’ he asked in a hushed whisper.
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