“THE NEST OF DESPAIR” ARC CONTINUES…
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‘How do we destroy this Dream Realm, then?’ George asked, eyes wide.
‘There’s no way,’ Hugh replied in a husky voice. ‘Dream Realms are indestructible.’
George’s heart pounded at that revelation. ‘Then what are we going to do…?’
Hugh sighed and rubbed the scar on his cheek. ‘The Psychic Abandonment of Tissain made the number of Dream Realms fixed. The trick is to shrink them down so they cannot harm anyone – not that this solution is permanent. That’s why the Reaver Society has a designated taskforce for monitoring known Dream Realms: to stop them from regaining their power. The size of a Dream Realm is proportional to the psychic tethers connected to it.’ He gestured at the various dream-eaters – from the apish cothelids to the shaggy-furred por’ava – as they scurried across the floor of the chasm. ‘The energies of these dream-eaters sustain the Dream Realm’s size. If we remove those psychic energies, the Realm would collapse on itself.’
George frowned. ‘But – but would that not mean we get crushed?’ His voice shivered in the air. He did not like the sound of the Dream Realm collapsing with them still inside it. His mind raced with a thousand possibilities of torturous, psychic death.
Hugh shrugged. ‘We might get crushed, sure.’ His voice – coarse though it was – showed little apprehension at the prospect of getting crushed by the Dream Realm’s collapse, which strengthened George’s resolve. That resolve was dashed away, though, as the reaver elaborated into the perilous consequences of being caught inside a collapsing Dream Realm. ‘If if collapses with us inside, our bodies will be blazed by psychic energies, and our minds will remained trapped forever in this place.’ He chuckled darkly to himself.
‘Pleasing thought,’ George said, face twitching nervously. ‘So, is this suicide, then?’
‘Not exactly.’ Hugh winked, flashing George a sharkish grin. ‘There will be time for us to run. You’re a quick runner, right, lad? You’re young – if an old codger like me could get out in time, I’m sure you could. Unless you want to get outrun by an old man.’ He laughed.
Pointing at the glowing-green egglike structure at the centre of the chasm, Hugh further explained, ‘The delaeon contributes nothing to the psychic energies of the Dream Realm and exists only because of the dream-eaters’ tethers to it. Still, destroying it will collapse the Dream Realm–’
‘–because the dream-eaters are bound by life to their delaeon,’ George continued. ‘If the delaeon is destroyed, the dream-eaters will die. No dream-eaters means no psychic energy – and the Dream Realm will collapse.’
Hugh fixed George with a sharp stare, and for a second, the boy thought the old reaver was about to reprimand him for the interruption. However, Hugh’s leathery face twisted into a grim smile. ‘Nice to see you’re paying attention.’
Even though Hugh’s smile was barely a smile – the corners of his mouth had barely upturned and his lips remained clamped shut – George could not help but reply with a cheesy grin that filled his face. He had been paying attention and was glad the reaver had noticed. Feeling awkward as the older reaver glared back at him with hard eyes, George flushed and vanished his smile to a grim look more to Hugh’s liking.
The reaver sighed. ‘Close your eyes.’ At George’s questioning glance, he added, ‘Just do it.’ A mote of irritancy touched his voice.
George frowned but reluctantly shut his eyes. His world was thrust to black, penetrated by the barest green glimmer of the delaeon that penetrated the lower edges of his eyelids. Without his sight, it seemed suddenly every other sense was amplified: every footstep from the dream-eaters in the cavern resounded through his head like a gunshot; the air – barely moving – tickled his skin, and he felt it; each droplet of water, dribbling down the walls of the cave, exuded its own foul stench, and he smelled them.
He realised, after closing his eyes, he had instinctively used a meditative breathing technique Lilly had taught him. The breathing techniques were to help deal with overwhelming emotion, panic attacks, and breakdowns, and he had never used them for any other purpose before. He was seeing without seeing, sensing everything around him. He was amazed at his newfound discovery.
Rather alarmingly, the darkness of his closed eyelids was vanished by bright gold light, shining in such a way as it seemed to come from his eyes. But that was impossible. Wasn’t it?
George told himself he was only imagining the gold light, but try as he might, he could not get it to go away.
He was interrupted from his thoughts by Hugh, who was telling him to slow his breathing and his thinking – cliché meditative stuff. ‘Slow everything…and feel…’ Hugh’s words almost made George laugh. This was the stuff those foolhardy meditation gurus said, those ones who preached about finding “inner peace.” But they did not know the techniques Lilly had taught him.
‘What are we trying to do?’ George asked in a slow voice. There was no squeak to it – only calm firmness.
‘You’ll know when you see it,’ Hugh replied, in a harsh tone that indicated to George the reaver might be out of his depth with this one – which only made him worry. Hugh huffed. ‘One of your Ov’l powers. I don’t know how you guys unlock it, you just…do…’
George frowned, puzzled by that. Things happened only if other things drove them to happen. Nothing “just” happened. That would be ridiculous.
Despite that, though, he felt an unspeakable urge to try Lilly’s “mental singing” technique. Was that his Ov’l powers showing him the way? Nonetheless, doubts or no, he put the meditative “mental singing” technique into practice, projecting a mental harmony of operatic voices through his mind.
And then it was as if his eyes had been opened. As if a whole new world had exposed itself to him. His eyes were still shut tight, but now, he could see the chasm – he could see everything. Objects did not appear as they did under visible light; instead, they appeared almost as colourless voids, absences of psychic activity. Sharp voids – he recognised those as rocks, though they were nothing but shaped voids of empty space. Turning to face Hugh, George did not see any voids, nor any appearance of the man’s physical form. Instead, floating in the air was a ball of white argent light in place of where Hugh was standing, approximately – George guessed – where the reaver’s heart would be. It crackled and buzzed like lightning, shimmering like a pearl.
He looked down at himself, seeing the bright light – akin to Hugh’s – nestled in his chest. His body appeared as grey, almost formless and barely visible. What…What is this?
‘You can see it, the psychic activity.’ Hugh’s voice momentarily lost its gruff tone, overcome by awestruck wonder. His voice seemed to come from far off, though George knew the reaver was stood right next to him. ‘You have Voidsight. Yes. You are definitely an Ov’l.’
George was only half-listening, engrossed in this new world – “Voidsight,” Hugh had called it. He turned to look into the chasm adjacent to them, where the delaeon was with its army of dream-eater sycophants, and was forced to squint – or, at least, what he thought was squinting. The chasm was enveloped in a huge cloud of blinding light. There were so many balls of light in the chasm they seemed to fuse into a huge cloud. It was beautiful – magnificent, even, ethereal…
A hundred winking lights, orbiting around the great miasma of glistening psychic energies that was the delaeon.
‘You see my psychic activity?’ Hugh asked, his voice a distant echo.
George twitched. ‘The white ball of light, you mean?’
‘Yes,’ Hugh replied. ‘Your Voidsight allows you to perceive the world through psychic energy – it’s the same way the dream-eaters see the world. Right, lad, what you need ta do is mask our psychic energies so we can remain undetected from the dream-eaters when we go to destroy the delaeon.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘No idea,’ Hugh replied. ‘You’re the Ov’l. Figure it out.’
George sighed and fixed his eyes on the ball of bright light marking Hugh’s psychic activity. These Ov’l powers of his…He could hardly believe they were real. But they had to be; nothing made sense otherwise. However, believing in his powers was one thing, being able to use them was another matter entirely.
Hugh had asked him to mask their psychic presences almost as if it was – or, at least, should be – easy. George had no idea what he was supposed to do, but that didn’t stop him from trying. His instincts told him to reach towards the bright ball of light that was Hugh’s psychic energy. He thought hard on the notion of shrouding the psychic energy from detected, strained, but nothing happened. That wasn’t a surprise.
His second attempt, he made for a different angle, actually reaching out and touching the ball of white light, letting its rays engulf his hand. George’s hand prickled strangely as he touched the ball of light, then he suddenly winced and recoiled as a flash of icy flame licked his hand. Icy heat burned at his mind. The darkness seemed to loom and the voids turned into shadows.
Stood in the chasm was a man George did not recognise, appearing in his physical human form, not as simply a ball of white-light psychic energy. George guessed what he was seeing was not real, but an image spurned by touching Hugh’s psychic energy.
The man wore a purplish cloak that whipped around him in a non-existent gale. His hair was long and dark, tied up in a ponytail. His skin was as pale as a crystal bone. These, though, were not the man’s most distinguishable features: those were his bright, golden eyes, which gleamed with the fiery intensity of twin supernovas.
George shuddered as the golden eyes fixed on him. His hairs pricked like porcupine spines all over his body. The air turned to molten ice, sizzling and freezing George’s skin. “Sinchara Khan.” George did not know how he knew that name, only that it was, indeed, the name of this fearsome man.
Sinchara Khan smiled with dagger-pointed teeth. The golden eyes seemed – for an instant – to ignite in flame, then the image disappeared. Sinchara Khan faded into the shadows, and the darkness faded into the void.
George inhaled sharply, breath quivering. Sinchara Khan was gone, but he felt the same as if he were still there: the air remained icily molten, and those gold eyes still shone in his head like the gleaming eyes of Satan himself.
‘Lad, you good?’ came Hugh’s voice from faraway.
George nodded, breathing shakily. ‘Yeah – yes, I’m alright,’ he squeaked nervously.
Sinchara Khan’s image had appeared after George had touched Hugh’s psychic energy, and he could not help but wonder if the two were related somehow. But for now, he forced those questions out of his mind to focus on the present situation. He still needed to figure out a way to mask his and Hugh’s psychic energies.
He tried again grasping Hugh’s psychic energy. This time, no dark figure emerged to greet him. George willed for the psychic energies to hide themselves, and they did: a silvery veil fluttered from beneath George’s fingernails like spiders’ silk and shrouded the ball of light from view.
George grinned. It was done. He concealed his own psychic energy, too, before opening his eyes to see Hugh looking at him grimly.
The reaver nodded slowly. ‘Good job. With our psychic energies masked, the dream-eaters will think us as Barrens. But, as I said before, Barrens can only survive a minute in the Dream Realm before the Realm’s psychic energies overwhelm them. That will give us a minute before the dream-eaters start getting suspicious of us.’ Hugh answered George’s frown with, ‘Dream-eaters are smarter than you’d think. They might appear as only animals, but they are sly and cunning.’
Hugh gestured for George to follow him and they dropped through the opening in the cave wall into the chasm housing the delaeon. Compared to how the chasm had looked in his Voidsight, it looked markedly less wondrous now with real sight: the great blinding light of the delaeon was replaced by a green-glowing egg, and the silvery spheres representing the dream-eaters’ psychic energies was gone, replaced by their ugly forms.
They began walking through the crowd of dream-eater hexes. Most of the dream-eaters paid the two of them little attention. However, one dream-eater – and apelike cothelid – stared at George intensely for more than just a few seconds, the hex’s singular eye burrowing into him. A shiver ran down George’s spine. He gulped.
As the cothelid’s gold eye narrowed, looking George up and down, a haggard breath slipped from George’s lips. It knows. He was sure of it. It knows we’re not Barrens.
As if sensing George’s panic, Hugh twisted back to face him. ‘Quench your fear,’ he murmured out the corner of his mouth, lips barely moving. He nodded at another dream-eater – a teadrop-shaped vendig – which had joined the cothelid in peering inquisitively at the two would-be Barrens. ‘They can sense your fear.’
George nodded slowly, trying to calm his racing heart. There were four dream-eaters staring at them now – five – six –
George exhaled sharply, fixing his gaze on the green-glowing egglike delaeon ahead of them and gritting his teeth. He could feel the delaeon now, almost pressing into his mind, as if pressing him for answers as to who they were and what their purpose was. In George’s heart, he knew the delaeon did not believe they were just innocent, mindless Barrens.
George closed his eyes and entered Voidsight through the various meditative techniques required. He just wanted to reassure himself their psychic energies were still hidden. However, as he closed his eyes, he saw the briefest flash of white light appear where Hugh was stood, as the silvery veil peeled away. George frantically hid the white light behind another curtain of silver veil, conjured from his fingertips.
But that brief flash was enough. When he opened his eyes again, he saw, with an audible gasp, all the dream-eaters’ eyes were fixed on them.
With a yelp, he raced forwards, to Hugh, just as one of the dream-eaters – a vendig – leapt at them, spinning, its ten psychic barbels twisting through the cave towards them. The reaver reacted swiftly in a calm and efficient manner: he twisted and launched a fireball from his palm into the creature’s translucent face. The vendig shrieked and collapsed to the stone, its jellified flesh blackened and scorched. At once, the other dream-eaters leapt to attack.
Hugh turned to George, brow furrowed. ‘Run!’ With one hand propelling a line of fire at the dream-eaters, he pointed with his other in the direction of the delaeon.
At once, George gritted teeth and ran for the delaeon, sprinting past Hugh as he did. As he passed by the reaver, Hugh thrust what seemed to be a hollow metal cube into his hand.
‘That’ll destroy it!’ Hugh yelled, batting away one of the vendigs with what looked to be a sword made entirely of fire and slicing through another doglike por’ava. ‘Don’t touch the delaeon!’ the reaver called as George sprinted away. Above them, the orange light of Hugh’s flames and the ghostly green glow of the delaeon did battle, twisting and twirling across the cave ceiling as Hugh fought the dream-eater tide.
Dodging a pouncing por’ava, whose two psychic barbels narrowly missed the top of his head, George raced forward, fixing his eyes on the delaeon ahead of him, holding the metal cube Hugh had given him in a tight fist. He barely noticed the dream-eater hordes as he ran, barely noticed their fleshy psychic barbels as they lanced towards him. His boots pounded against the stone like thunderclaps; his heart beat in his chest, clubbing against his ribcage.
As he reached the delaeon, he threw the metal cube; there was a squelch as it struck the delaeon’s soft flesh. However, carried forward by momentum, George could not stop himself. His foot snagged on one of the rootlike structures on the cave floor and he toppled forwards.
His eyes widened as he saw his hand pressed into the green flesh of the delaeon. Little by little, the feeling of brushing against wet silk spread through his hand as the delaeon engulfed it. In seconds, his entire arm was submerged in the green flesh, and soon, his entire body. Only his head remained, poking out from the voluminous egg; seconds later, he let out a final desperate yelp, reaching in Hugh’s direction, before his head sank into the green mass and his mind was thrust into a world of pearly-white…
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