Asharielle and the Hidden Realm, page 26
“I continue to be awed and amazed by every one of you,” she said, “but, Nick, you keep growing and there is something I have been wondering…”
“I bet I know what it is too.” He grinned and once again she noticed the mischievous aspect of his personality spark to life within him. “Go on, ask me your question.”
“Well…” She hesitated. “It’s just that you entered Sanctuary as a toddler and now you’re virtually a teenager…so, um…where do your clothes come from?”
“You’re wondering if I’ve really been naked this whole time and my clothes are simply a manifestation of hue, aren’t you?”
A little embarrassed, she grinned and nodded.
“Hey, Ryder,” Nick called out. “Asharielle is thinking about me naked!”
“I’m n—” she tried to say but Nick cut her off.
“Who can blame her? They all do when I get old enough,” he crowed, striking a model-like pose that saw him half turn so Ryder could see his backside and his cheeky grin.
She looked over at Ryder and saw his face had darkened like a storm cloud. Gone was the joyful exuberance at having the ullmae by his side. Eviath whispered something to him, and his face cleared. With a pleasant smile, Ryder looked at Nick and said, “Isn’t it about time we got moving, old man?”
Chapter 31
The skimmer flew over the terrain like a hovercraft. At Nick’s insistence, Asharielle had widened the platform keeping Ryder alive into a vehicle that could transport her and Eviath as well. He had said it was to make up lost time, but with the quakes that now rolled beneath the disc, she couldn’t help but wonder at his sudden sense of urgency. Extending the skimmer had been easy; flying it, a little more difficult to master.
All she had to do was keep up with The Guardian who ran with unearthly speed toward the mountain range that now loomed in front of them. It was a feat easier said than done. She had needed to manifest sunglasses to reduce the glare that blazed like a comet’s tail behind him, but that was the least of her pressures.
So far, it had been an incredibly busy day. She had fought a mock battle, helped Serra and her companions with their re-birth and now she was trying to maintain a speeding craft while draining Sanctuary of its hue, while keeping Ryder alive. She glanced skyward, looking for Nick as she stretched stiff shoulders and rubbed her sore neck. He had told her that multi-tasking with hue would become easier over time, but right now, she remained stiff-backed as she checked and re-checked everything she had manifested.
For the first hour of their journey, she had revelled in the feel of the wind in her face as they moved at a slow pace toward Drakensberg. For her initial design, she had widened the platform that Ryder sat upon. It looked similar to the large disc that Kyron used, but she had added seats for Eviath, Nick and herself. The Guardian had refused a spot, preferring to keep his feet on solid ground. To give her time to adjust to the moving craft, he had trotted for the first half an hour, a fact which she had appreciated.
She found herself focusing so hard on doing one thing well that another aspect would start to slip. Ryder helped nudge her in the right direction when the skimmer’s speed wavered. Eviath guided her driving and prompted her when she needed to change direction to keep up with The Guardian. Nick had needed to remind her to draw more hue from Sanctuary, not just into the craft, but into herself as well. She tended to forget about that area the most—but that was only because she was focused on steering and not crashing.
Draining the right amount of hue from Sanctuary had been difficult at first. She had to pull as much as she could through the skimmer and into herself without absorbing the craft. Then there was the horrific toll it took on the land. The void of grey behind them was not as bad as the charred and blackened landscape that Kyron left in his wake, but it still left her feeling numb. Nick had insisted that it was necessary, but it was hard to ruin something beautiful, and every glance at the desecrated vista felt like a splinter was being pushed further into her soul. In the end, she just stopped looking back.
At some point, Nick must have felt she was doing okay because he shot up into the air, leaving her in the cabin with Ryder, who fell asleep, and Eviath, who moved to sit in the front seat next to her. At that point, The Guardian sped up, galloping through the fields and forests like a racehorse in the Melbourne Cup, which she had presumed was his top speed.
It wasn’t. As her confidence in maintaining the craft grew, The Guardian’s speed increased until his feet were barely touching the ground. Following him was like trying to keep up with a jet plane. The wind hammered her face, and within minutes, her eyes felt dry and grainy despite the sunglasses she wore. Windburn stung as much as sunburn, and Asharielle knew she needed to modify her skimmer on the fly. Without losing speed, she adapted the platform to look more like the cabin of an Airbus helicopter without the rotors or tail. It was an ergonomic design. She had curved the front so the wind would flow past them and not hamper their speed. She kept the craft translucent and even added a sunroof for Nick so he could enter and exit at will.
All had been going well until Nick dropped onto the roof just after noon and informed them that Kyron was getting closer. His words filled her with panic, and she glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see the red skimmer behind them. The craft jerked to the side, but Eviath was there, telling her to keep her eyes to the front. She spun back, gasped, and corrected their path, narrowly avoiding a tree.
“I said getting close, Asharielle. Not right on our tail. Calm down and focus on your tasks. There is still a chance we may get out of Sanctuary without any sort of confrontation whatsoever.”
The thought of escaping without seeing Kyron gave her hope and she clung to it, coaxing as much speed out of the skimmer as she could. Yet the knowledge that he pursued them made her so jittery that every time a tremor shook the ground, it made her feel that Kyron had caught up and was attacking them. She was grateful that Eviath was there to keep her calm, or she was sure she would have caused an accident.
As the day progressed, the tremors grew worse. Sanctuary was breaking apart. The skimmer cushioned them from the devastation, but it was still frightening to hear the thunderous sound of trees being uprooted and dirt exploding into the air as the land cracked and split.
The noise had even jolted Ryder awake. He had looked at the terrain with dismay. Glancing at him, she felt that she might have the exact same expression on her face, so she looked away. She didn’t need him to see that her dismay was for his ragged condition. The crystal in his chest was huge, and its glow could be seen through his shirt. His lids were heavy with exhaustion, and he looked as though he were fighting to stay awake. To distract him, she asked why the tremors were getting so bad. He told her that Sanctuary was weakening faster because she and Kyron were draining too much energy. It didn’t surprise her when he likened it to two vacuum cleaners sucking water from a bathtub; he was great with analogies.
“You and Kyron are like the two hoses,” he said. “Put a hose at either end of the tub and the vacuum cleaners will suck up water at an equal rate. Try to picture, Asharielle, how the water level will look as it struggles to maintain equilibrium.”
When she’d pointed out that their motors would cut out, he’d simply raised an eyebrow and told her to focus on the lesson and not the logic.
“Now, if we move Kyron’s hose to your end of the bathtub, what happens then?”
He always made things so easy for her to visualise. “Well, both are sucking water, but they are also competing with each other…so the effect would be chaotic,” she replied. “But that’s not all. Even though there’s no hose on the other side of the tub, the water level still decreases.”
“And as the water gets lower?” he prompted.
“It would be very violent as each hose fought for every drop.”
“Yes, and if this was a competition, then the one with the most water in the vacuum canister is the winner, right?” She nodded and he continued. “So, if Sanctuary is our bathtub, and you and Kyron are the hoses, who do you think is winning, Asharielle?”
Her thoughts went to Kyron. He had been absorbing the hue within Sanctuary for days and she had only started this morning. But then she remembered that whatever he drained was reduced to half that amount because of the conversion process. It gave her hope that she might be able to draw enough power to keep her friends safe. She was grateful for Ryder’s analogy as it made her realise that the more she drew, the more it increased their chances of escape.
As Ryder dropped back to sleep, Asharielle tested her ability to draw hue from Sanctuary, but she could not find an upper limit to what she could hold. As she opened her mind, she felt as if she could draw it all into herself, but if she did that, this dimension would die. She did not mention this feeling to anyone and decided to keep drawing hue at the rate that had made Nick confident enough to leave her side.
She hoped that the grey landscape behind them would impede Kyron’s ability to travel over it. She hoped it would cause his skimmer to break down. Then he’d have to pursue them on foot, and that would be all the time they needed to escape Sanctuary. She sighed, pulling her mind back from the brink of such wayward fantasies. It did no good to think about what might happen. She had to concentrate on what she could control, which was following The Guardian and keeping Ryder alive.
With Kyron on their trail, time slowed to a crawl. Minutes seemed like hours, making her already stiff neck and shoulders knot so badly that her head began to throb. She didn’t share her growing nervousness with Eviath, or complain about her headache, as she knew how much everyone was relying on her to get them safely to the doorway and she didn’t want to let anyone down. Her anxiety grew as the trees, boulders, and streams ahead of them began to look more translucent than solid. Even the strength of the afternoon sun had waned, and though it still glowed in the sky, it held little warmth to it. Sanctuary was fading.
It was a daunting prospect, but it didn’t seem to affect The Guardian, or the ullmae who ran patrol around the craft. She had only caught glimpses of Serra and her kin throughout the day, mostly when they drew close enough to report to Nick. At those times, they would drop their camouflage, and their white coats sparkled even with the muted sunlight. Having reported or received their orders, they would dart away, suddenly invisible as they blended into their surrounds.
She spotted Serra more than the others because she ran at the front. She easily kept pace with The Guardian and Asharielle wondered whether it had something to do with her tail movements. She noticed that when her three tails pointed straight back, Serra relied on her body strength to sprint forward. If her tails moved in a consecutive wave behind her, it created momentum which allowed her to take giant leaps across the ground.
Nick swooped down toward The Guardian and pointed to the right. Following the change in course, Asharielle steered the craft through a fading forest and out onto an open plain. The slopes of Drakensberg lay in front of them.
The tension burst like a balloon inside her. They had made it! She glanced over her shoulder at Ryder. His breathing was shallow, but she knew he would be alright. Dragon would save him. Excited, she looked at Eviath, but the woman’s gaze was pensive.
“We're not safe yet, are we?” she asked. Eviath just shook her head. Disappointed, she refocused her efforts, determined not to let her façade of strength slip now.
The mountain range was so close that she could have thrown a stone upon its slopes. With a sense of anticipation that shifted her to the edge of her seat, she waited for their ascent. It never happened. Her anticipation became exasperation when she realised that Nick and The Guardian were meddling with time and space. If they were driving in a normal car, they would be ascending the mountain range by now. But this wasn’t the real world and things worked differently here.
She had to remember what Nick had told her about how Sanctuary worked. She understood the whole treadmill analogy, which was why the mountain wasn't getting closer, but she had been so excited that she’d forgotten for a moment that it wasn’t real. It was just an image to represent where the door to Drakensberg was. Still, this part of the journey was the most disconcerting, for now that they were close, it felt as though Nick really had put a poster of the mountain on the wall just in front of the treadmill. She grew impatient. She knew she could absorb the hue it was constructed from right now and it wouldn't matter because the doorway back to the real world would still be somewhere nearby but waiting for someone to announce its presence was frustrating. As though he had read her thoughts, The Guardian’s voice ran in her mind.
“We are close to the exit point, everyone,” he said, confirming what she already knew. “I can sense it.”
Asharielle stared at the scenery in front of them, looking for a shadow, or a doorway, or a well-worn path through the field that might indicate where the exit was, but she could see no obvious clues.
“Where is it?” she said aloud.
“I said I can sense it, not see it, Asharielle. Be patient please. I’m not looking for a physical destination as you have probably already worked out. The exit to Sanctuary is more like a split in the fabric of reality. You seem to be mastering your hue, so you may be able to feel it too. Cast your mind ahead of me. What you are looking for feels like a freshly sutured cut from a scalpel blade after an operation. The cut feels sharp and hard against the soft and spongy background.”
Curious to see if she could sense it, she shifted her perspective until the landscape melted away. She saw a hued platform, filled with lines, shapes, and mist. Ahead of her, The Guardian ran through a fog of blue. Concentrating, she saw denser patches of hue that stood out amongst the fine mist. It was these that The Guardian followed. She watched him for a second before she pushed her senses past him. He was right; she could feel something ahead in the distance. To him, it felt like a cut, but to her, it felt more like her mum had sewn a random zipper in the middle of a curtain.
“Oh, I can feel it.”
“That’s good, Asharielle. Your understanding of the hue is developing nicely, but in finding the doorway, it also means my time here is ending, for you must re-absorb me before we go through the portal.”
“I know, the thought of it makes me sad. I feel like we have had little chance to get to know one another. I’ve been busy with training, and you and Eviath have been inseparable since we entered Sanctuary… I’m guessing you knew her before you were a unicorn?”
She looked at Eviath, who remain oblivious to the conversation she was having with The Guardian. She had been meaning to ask how they had known each other in the past, but there had been too many distractions. Where possible, the two spent every second together; Eviath had even slept out by The Guardian’s side rather than with her companions. Nick’s role as The Guardian’s Watcher and best friend was clear, but Eviath’s relationship to the unicorn was as mysterious as the woman herself.
“I knew everyone before I became The Guardian, but that is a story for another day. Now, let me concentrate, I have work to do.”
Chapter 32
“We’re going to make it Eviath,” Asharielle said. “The portal is close. Did you hear that Ryder? Wake up.” She looked over her shoulder and screamed at the sight of flames burning the material covering the crystal.
“Eviath! His shirt is on fire!” She sprang to her feet, but Eviath beat her and began patting the flames out with her bare hands. What they saw shocked them both. The dragon scale on his chest now covered most of his sternum. It no longer looked like a polished stone. Its depths had ignited into a fiery vortex of red, orange, yellow and gold flames. The crystal infection that had spread across his body burned like a coronal mass ejection of plasma from the sun. It was both beautiful and deadly, and Asharielle knew she was failing him. Though she was flooding Ryder with hue, the dragon blood was becoming far too powerful. Even now, she could see the flaming light of his Citrine eyes shining beneath his closed eyelids. What was more concerning was that despite the danger, Ryder had not woken.
After checking him over, Eviath shook her head and moved back to her seat.
“How is he?” Asharielle asked. She glanced across at the tiny woman and followed her gaze down to her hands. Large angry blisters covered them. “Oh, Eviath, look at your hands! Are you okay?”
“Yes, I will be fine, Asharielle. They are only second-degree burns. Nick can heal them for me later,” she said, blowing on her fingers. “That crystal on Ryder’s chest is taking over his body. It felt like I was touching the hot plate of a stove. Dragon is the only one who can help,” she said solemnly. “I’m afraid there is nothing else that you or I can do for him.”
Asharielle nodded, understanding the grim truth behind those words. She had never felt more helpless. She longed to discuss it with Eviath, but the woman was in enough pain. She wished that she could help her, even a little. Wait! A light bulb flickered on in her brain and she realised that there was something she could do.
“Here, put your hands in this,” she said, manifesting a bucket of icy water at the foot of her chair. “It’s not much but I hope it helps, even a little.”
Eviath smiled in relief as she submersed her hands. On impulse, she also manifested a cooling towel and placed it around her own neck. She hoped it would provide relief for her headache. If only helping Ryder could be that simple.
All she could do now was place her faith in her friends and hope that they could reach Dragon on time. He would fix Ryder, and she would be right by his side when he opened his green eyes. She missed the way they darkened when he looked at her. She missed the soft curve of his lips when he smiled at her. She missed everything about him, even the way he would flood her with so much hue that she would fall into his arms, though she now knew he had only done it to hide her energy signature from Kyron. Now that she recognised what a shield felt like, she could acknowledge how hard he had worked at school to stop Kyron from detecting the presence of hue in her body.
