Dreamweaver, page 5
The hairs all over my body stood on end as I slowly crept forward, keeping a pale-knuckled grip on the daggers Anessa had loaned me. Cay’s solarlight was hardly up to the challenge of pushing back so much darkness around us and I squinted, unable to truly make out the size of the cavern. It reeked of mildew and dampness, the wind moaning around us clawing its cold fingers across my skin and tangling my hair. The moment I found one curving edge of a rock wall I set my back to it, smirking as the Molts followed suit. Feeling slightly better at being a tiny bit less vulnerable, I crisscross stepped onward and ignored the slight whirring of the sphere camera as it slipped past me.
“How long left on your light?” I whispered to Cay.
“Ten.”
My head whipped his way. “Ten—only ten minutes?!”
He shrugged with a scowl. “Least my gun works.”
Grinding my teeth together, I tilted my chin at Anessa, who rolled her eyes in annoyance but answered me anyway. “I’ve got three-quarters left.”
Which meant she had a good six hours, which was a relief. “Well, I have three hours, so hopefully this isn’t a days-long excursion down here.” Then again, this was all Commander Flow’s bright idea, so it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility...
She actually gagged in response. “Oh gods, please, I can’t handle the proximity with you for so long.”
My returning smile was tight-lipped. “I’ll remember you fondly after some monster bites off your head.”
Cay was actually rubbing his temples, muttering some mantra to himself. Maybe a prayer for patience. Maybe a summoning of a demon to come eat me. “Would you two just—”
Phwish!
Almost instinctively, I jerked backwards, bowling into Cay, who crashed into his sister, and we all went down in a heap as the rock wall where I had just been. A massive explosion flared to life, effectively blinding me as pebbles and smoke rained down on us. Coughing, I covered my nose and mouth with the crook of my elbow, blinking rapidly, but it was useless. My sight was all one golden flare. So, I listened.
Anessa had shoved her brother off and was brushing off her uniform. “What the hell, fat ass?”
“Pardon me for not wanting to be flambéed, ugly! Now shut up, I’m—” I didn't finish my sentence.
Phwish!
Instead, I dove for cover.
Cay yanked on his sister’s arm, pulling her away from the wall as another explosion set off, momentarily lighting up the cavern. Better prepared this time, I squinted away and out, trying to take note of what surrounded us. I caught the briefest glimpse of a vaulting rock ceiling with far, far too many shuddering stalactites for my liking. Then we were plunged back into darkness that was thickening with dust.
Whoever built this place must have known rule number one for anyone who had taken the basics of the military mandated defensive training when joining any of the Divisions: don’t leave your back open. They were forcing us away from the shelter of the wall. I imagined Flow watching us in her office with partially contained glee, holding a remote to the detonations in her lap and jabbing at the buttons one by one, trying to blow us up to bits. Picking my way carefully over broken shards and lumps of stone, I motioned for the Molts to follow me. Clearly, we were meant to go onward.
“I’ll just wait here.” Anessa plopped her butt on a lump of rock and crossed her arms, only to squeak in protest the next moment as her brother snatched her elbow and hauled her to her feet again. “Oh, c’mon, can’t you two just go? My feet hurt.”
“Suck it up,” Cay said. The sphere camera whizzed past his nose, and he batted at it. “It was your choice to wear those shoes.”
She blew a raspberry at him, holding aloft one foot so that his solarlight shone directly on her four-inch-heel boot. “These shoes are gorgeous, thank you very much. They spruce up an otherwise unflattering unifo—AAAAHHHH!” A stalactite crashed into the ground behind her, nearly skimming her back as she clutched unhelpfully at her brother's arm. “WHAT THE HELL?!”
I was already racing ahead as fast as I could, leaving it to Cay to shove at his sister and bark out, “Move, move, move!” Stalactites came raining down like the cavern was losing stone teeth, which is when, of course, Cay’s flashlight died. Swearing under my breath, I swerved back, tapping my solarlight on to try to brighten their pathway, and I went tumbling the next moment as a lump of stone gunned me in the back. Sprawled on the ground, momentarily winded, I was forced to roll to avoid another stalactite and jumped to my feet, wincing as my back protested. It was going to bruise something fierce.
The siblings coalesced to either side of me and we sprinted. Cay was fastest, hauling on my wrist in an effort to get me to keep up, and I took a moment to kick at him, but he dodged and lugged me onward. We skidded the next moment to avoid colliding into the wall that reared up ahead of us.
“Dead end?” Anessa wiped her forehead. Probably wasn’t used to sweating. Ever.
Cay scanned the rock wall, like its secrets would be written somewhere, and I didn’t bother telling him the futility of it. Instead, I jogged, following the curve as it rounded out. A dense shadow snagged my attention, and I pointed my light at it, discovering an opening that was going to force us to crawl to get through. Crouching down, I squinted to see as far into it as possible, which wasn’t much, and reeled back with a sneeze as my nose filled with dust.
“Literally, what is the point of all of this?” Anessa practically wailed as I dropped to my stomach and crawled into the opening. If my boot just happened to faceplant Cay a few times as he followed, well, too bad. I knew when Anessa entered the tiny tunnel as her stream of complaints echoed around me, remarking on the insanity that Flow must be experiencing, and she was so totally going to bill Flow’s office for a new uniform after this.
I nearly bit through my tongue a moment later as my right arm stretched out, fully expecting to slide across stone, and instead finding nothing. Nada. Freezing in place, I carefully scoped out the area ahead of me, gripping the edge of the hole with one hand and unable to locate anything else with my other. Cay shoved at my heels impatiently and I kicked back, hoping to break his nose.
“We’ve got a problem,” I told him through gritted teeth.
“Just now realized you’re scared of the dark?”
“Shut up, Molt. There’s a giant hole ahead of us. Ground is gone.”
“What?” Anessa’s shrill voice made me flinch as it reverberated through the tunnel. “Are you kidding me?” Scrabbling sounds from behind told me she was trying to scoot herself backwards out of the tunnel. “No, no, no, no, not being buried alive today.”
“If you go back, you’re going to be squashed instead,” her brother bit out, “does that sound better to you?” To me he said, “Are you certain there’s nothing ahead? Not just a gap or something?”
“Your trust in my judgement is commendable.” With the light of my solarband, I tilted my wrist towards the yawning crevice ahead of me, unable to see the bottom of the drop. “No, I don’t think this tunnel goes anywhere else but straight down. Hold on, though.” Snatching hold of the camera sphere, I drew back my arm and hurled it down as best I could, sending it sputtering into the yawning darkness, maybe to be smashed to bits. Flow was going to skin me alive for that.
The next moment, the sphere hit something liquid, the splashing trickling back up very faintly to my ears. A long way down.
Silence reigned for a moment until the faint whirring of the sphere camera announced its return. Snatching it once more, I looked at my wet fingers and sniffed. Just water. “Well,” I said cheerfully, “hope you two can swim.”
“Wha—?”
Curling myself over the edge of the drop, I flipped down into the gap and let go.
Chapter Five
I expected to hurtle down through darkness, praying I didn’t smash myself to bits on a rock or something equally immovable, and hopefully the drop wouldn’t be too long, and I’d soon stop feeling like my stomach was going to fly out of my mouth. If I was lucky maybe I could have a second to mentally record Anessa screeching in terror.
Nope. Instead, I hung suspended in the air, like I was caught on a string, but there was no string. And I couldn’t move. I could only look.
Images zipped past me, almost faster than my mind could register them, sliding down like chalk dripping in the rain, and none of them made any sense. Was that a person I saw? They stood in murky shadows, and I couldn’t make them out clearly. Then I saw a well, crumbled with age, gold-colored lichen growing through its cracks. A golden ladle, gripped by one deep mauve-skinned hand with nails that curled black around the handle. Then pulsating colors, almost too bright to look at, spiraling faster and faster together, growing hot—I could feel their energy starting to sear my skin, singe away my clothes, dry out my lungs—
The images snapped into nothing.
I dropped.
Cold water enveloped me as I plunged down, unprepared, my lungs already screaming for air as I fought to orient myself in the murky glow of my solarlight and kick my way towards the surface. Immediately I could feel the right side of my body start to stiffen in protest, and I forced the muscles to straighten and flex, straighten and flex. My leg brace may as well have been fifty pounds in the water, my uniform along with it; when I finally broke air, I managed one gulp before I was dragged back under. Then a hand clamped itself around my arm, hoisting me up with dizzying speed, and I was at the surface again, sputtering, finding Cay’s white hair and his grip towing me forward. When my boots finally purchased ground, I felt like I was turning into heated wax, soft and pliable, but freezing instead of burning. Cay hauled me from the water, panting with effort, and let me go abruptly so I belly flopped the gray sand below. I didn’t care. I gasped and coughed and managed the energy to glare at the sphere camera as it came whirring overhead. With my glasses gone, everything beyond the hovering sphere was a blurry mess.
“You suck at swimming,” Anessa noted, wringing out her hair on the bank a good distance from me.
I didn’t bother arguing that I actually could swim, but some wild, insane vision had sucked away most of my energy prior to my dunking. How was I supposed to explain hallucinations? What had just happened, anyway? Gathering myself to my knees instead, I held up my solarlight, steadying my quivering arm with my other hand as I tried to get a feel for what surrounded me. Black stone curved around us, seemingly smooth as butter, cupping the pool or whatever we had just climbed out of on one side and an expanse of sandy beach on the other, sloping up and away from where I knelt. This place reeked of something like hot metal, gritty and sharp, making my nose wrinkle.
“Something doesn’t make sense.” My gaze was drawn to Cay as his boots crunched over the sand, finding he was watching me with narrowed eyes, arms folded tightly.
“What? All of this?” I asked, getting to my feet. Wringing out my shirt, I grimaced as the frigid air slapped against my wet clothes.
“No.” He scowled against my solarlight as I lifted it. “You dropped first, but you hit the water last. Way last.”
Uh…
Knowing exactly how to deflect, I sent him a large grin. “Are you calling your sister fat?”
Predictably, Anessa’s hair whipped in a slicing arc as she spun around. “What’d you call me?” I had a moment’s notice to sidestep as she swung at me angrily, clipping my elbow with her knuckles, and I lifted a soggy boot and managed to plant it into her hip, driving her back as she tried to claw at me.
“Chill out,” Cay ordered, grabbing his sister by the collar of her jacket and dragging her back. Her high heels dug rivulets into the sand as she protested. “We’ve got work to do.”
“Just what are we supposed to do now?” she snapped, slapping away his hands. “So far, we’ve been nearly crushed and then nearly drowned, but aren’t we supposed to be here to try and test our strength against essence? Where is it?” She directed this last question my way, though I couldn’t quite make out what her expression was. Given her waving arms, I’d guess she was agitated. “Aren’t you supposed to, I don’t know, bait it here or something?”
“Sure, I’ll just whistle, and it’ll come running.” I hoped she could see me roll my eyes at her.
“That’s better than just standing here, you imbecile.”
“Maybe screech a little louder and you’ll draw a nightmare out.”
“You’re a nightmare!”
“SHUT UP!” Cay exploded at us, looking like he was going to tear his hair out by the roots. Then he stiffened, his head swinging to the left, looking towards the thick shadows, and I already knew what he sensed. I could feel it too, only for me, it wasn’t a welcome sensation. The chill biting against my exposed skin and tapping slowly like trailing fingers across the back of my neck, stretching out across my skull, trying to bite down, was all the warning I needed that free roaming nightmare essence was here, and it was forming.
Question was, whose nightmare was going to present itself?
Drawing the knives Anessa had begrudgingly given me, I crouched down, digging my back foot into the sand as Cay and his sister slowly stepped backwards, settling behind me as I lifted my solarband. “I sure hope neither of you are afraid of the same thing I am, or this is really going to suck.” Especially since I was going to be practically useless in fighting back against this specific kind of essence. Maybe they’d both take this chance and let the nightmare beat me to a bloody, broken mess.
The stench of something rank slammed into my nose from out of nowhere, making me gag and cover my lower face with my elbow. I could hear the other two respond in similar kind, and I took a step back, splashing in water up to my ankle—
Wait, what?
Glancing down, I found black, foamy water licking my feet, swallowing my boots, and my gut sank like a stone as I spun around to find the pool of water we had emerged from previously was frothing across the sand, swelling like an incoming tide. It reeked of decaying things, leaving a filmy coating in my mouth and nostrils that stung.
“Okay, who has nightmares about drowning?” I gulped out.
Anessa’s whimper and her tapping her solarlight into life was enough to answer that question.
“Alright, do something,” I said, aiming my solarlight towards Cay. “This is your specialty.”
But he didn’t respond to me, gaping towards the same direction he had been watching previously, like he was unable to tear his eyes away. Squinting, I could only make out blurs in the dark, blurs that were creeping, creeping like thick smoke towards the pitiful puddle of light my solarband and Anessa’s were capable of making, clicking and whispering as it slowly devoured the outer edge of the circle of light. Eating it. Getting closer.
“Drowning and darkness. You two really know how to throw a party,” I muttered. Forget any repercussions—I was going to dangle Flow from the tallest building in the capital by the neck and make her beg for forgiveness for doing this to me. If any of my nightmares started to manifest, this was going to become really, really bad. Grimacing, I splashed toward Cay, noticing with dismay that the water was now slipping around my thighs. With a rough shove, I snatched hold of his arm and shook him. “Hello? Capture it already, dumbass!”
He blinked, jerking back, before looking towards me like he had never seen me before. The blackness gnawing its way closer was nearly at my wrist and I reflexively jumped away, swerving to avoid impact with Anessa as she suddenly screamed and lost her footing in the water, flailing in a panic before splashing down into the dark water. She burst back up a moment later, sputtering and spitting, shouting out a stream of profanity that, by rights, should have made the water evaporate into steam.
“Do your thing!” I demanded, catching Cay by the scruff of his jacket and hauling him forward. Despite Anessa now smelling like she had bathed in a sewer, I caught hold of her hand and tried to bring her level to where I stood, fighting for balance as the sand shifted below the churning water, which was pulling me by my hips this way and that. My solarlight was fizzing out, like a desperate candle in the guttering wind. We had seconds of light left. Just seconds before—
Then the helplessness started.
Enter: my own nightmares.
With a tumultuous roar, the nightmare essence snatched hold of me with icy claws and pulled, dragging me away from the Molts, and I rolled, plunging into the foaming water. It was so cold it burned and my right leg, already fatigued, immediately cramped, rendered useless. When I managed to tear my way to the surface, my solarband’s light vanished with the last few gulps the darkness took and Anessa’s light followed right after, blanketing the cavern in an impenetrable darkness.
Then a fizz, and a blinding flare, as Cay shot his solargun. The nightmare essence shrieked, forced to draw back for a moment, leaving a small circle around Cay of dry sand and feeble light from Anessa’s solarband, no longer smothered. Coughing on the smell as much as the water filling my airways, I tumbled to his feet, my right leg shaking so bad I was barely able to hobble to my left one. Anessa had her arms wrapped around her brother’s torso with her face pressed into his back. For a moment, I actually felt pity for her. She wasn’t a Harvester. She was a Spinner. This wasn’t her realm of work or experience.
I mean, granted, this was a bit more intense than Cay or I were used to either, but still. It’s the effort that counts.
“Why can’t you capture it?” I asked as Cay shot his solargun once more. The resounding screech from the nightmare made me wince. He couldn’t have that many shots left. How much time did we have?
“It’s too much,” he bit back, and I could practically feel what it cost him to admit that.
“That’s because you two are supposed to work together, right? That’s what Flow intended.”
The glare Cay aimed at me was miserable and furious. “Anessa can’t Spin.”
“I—what?! Why didn’t you mention that before—?”
The rest of my alarmed sentence ended in a scream as I was hooked from behind, hitting the sand like a ragdoll that was dragged backwards into the water that pummeled forward. The next shot of Cay’s solarlight forced it to recoil back, just barely, and I scrambled as best as I could away from the essence’s limit, panting for air. On top of the nightmare’s stench, I smelled copper, and a swipe of my sleeve against my nose showed me glistening blood. Great.
