^ "Past Below": Perfect for a lonely, empty place like the dreamweave

Dreamweaver - Chapter 10

Griselda's glee was slowly turning into outrage. Outrage because things were not going to plan.

Seconds ago, the girl, Edon Stones still shining in her ears, had been on the edge of death — coated in Griselda's dreamweave magic, the old witch had been able to discern her condition from afar, and seconds ago her heart rate had been slowing to the stillness of death, her breathing shallow, her internal organs going into arrest under the duress of the manufactured dream. The hellfire coating her had been all but pulling her soul into the pit to join her dead friend's.

But now, amazingly, the flames were fading — and not because the girl was dead. No, now her breathing was returning to a regular, healthy rhythm — color bloomed in her cheeks, chasing away the pallor of death, and her organs restarted. She'd overcome her trauma somehow, and while that infuriated Griselda, she had to admit that she was grudgingly impressed. She could not directly see into the dreamweave, but she could control its strength — it must've taken a massive amount of courage on the girl's part to overcome such trauma. Trauma that should have induced heart failure and a subsequent death.

"Milady?" A witch at Griselda's side spoke softly, as though not wanting to anger her frustrated leader. "What does this mean? If she has overcome that hellfire...will she be able reawaken?"

Griselda laughed. "Reawaken? It will take a strong persuasion to revive her from such a strong dreamweave, my dear. And even if she does awaken, my deathstroke spell, as I said earlier, will strike her down."

"So what if she decides to stay within the dreamweave?" Annette asked.

Griselda shrugged. "Then I will strengthen the spell, and command it produce horrors that will induce cardiac arrest. One way or another—"

She suddenly paused, movement out of the corner of her eye catching her attention. She peered in the corona of violent light, down at the sleeping girl's hair. It was moving...just ever so slightly, shifting up and down. What kind of magic was this?

It hit Griselda a second later. "No," she breathed, stepping forward subsconsiously. The corona's corrosive light stung her hands, but again, she ignored it, staring at the girl's hair. "This cannot be!"

It wasn't the girl's hair that was moving — it was the chest underneath it, belonging to the boy that had fallen to her first bolt of deathstroke magic. The cavity should have been cold, dead, but it now moved up and down, warm and alive.

The boy...the boy was alive!

--

The climb up the side of the chute was long and arduous, but Forrest never once slowed his pace. He dragged himself and Siegbert up as fast as his feet allowed, not even feeling the burning exhaustion coursing through his thighs, his back, his arms. The darkness below followed at a thankfully sluggish pace, darkening the walls of the chute and chilling the air below Forrest's bare feet.

But in a surprisingly short amount of time, Forrest found himself at the top of the chute, pushing himself over the top the last of the strength in his calves. He flumped down into the grass, Siegbert tumbling down beside him, and choked out a raspy gasp. His arms seemed to throb with liquid heat, and he stared at them for a moment, stunned that they'd had the strength to carry him and his armored cousin all the up from the depth of a pit. It was amazing, the strength panic lent to someone in a time of desperation.

"Brynhildr?" he rasped.

"Here, Forrest." The aroma of mountain lilies wreathed around him as the tome dragon approached. "Are you all right?"

"F-fine." Forrest closed his eyes, trying to fight the urge to sleep. Sleep...could he even fall asleep in this place? He was dreaming, according to Brynhildr. Was it possible to fall asleep in a dream?

He wanted to ask, but decided to voice a more pertinent question: "The darkness?"

"We've a head-start. We should make the most of it."

Forrest opened his mouth to reply — specifically ask for a bloody minute to recover from his terrifying ordeal — but was interrupted by a ragged cough from beside him. Forrest jolted and twisted, and saw Siegbert's chest jerk in a round of heavy coughing.

"Siegbert?" he gasped, scrambling forward — he sat his cousin up, dusting off his shoulders. Siegbert's face scrunched up, as though in pain, and he succumbed to another round of coughing before his eyes finally opened, dark and dilated. He squinted at his cousin.

"Forrest?" he groaned.

--

"What?" a witch cried in disbelief. "He's alive?"

Dismayed murmuring broke out between the spellcasters, and they gazed at Griselda, dumbfounded by this. The boy had been subjected to a direct bolt of Griselda's deathstroke magic, and should have been dead from his toes to the tips of his ears. He was not wearing the Edon Stones, as the girl was — there was no reason he should have survived such an attack.

And yet, there he lay on the bed, breathing steadily, his chest rising and falling in an even rhythm.

Several of the witches exchanged glances. Was...was Griselda's magic not as powerful as it should be? She had been hit by a Fire ball just yesterday, and by any other witch, a little weakness after such an ordeal would have been expected. But not with Griselda. The old witch's power had only grown as she had gotten older, or so they'd thought. Was her age belying her magic after all?

It was a suggestion none of them dared to voice — they all wanted to keep their heads, after all.

"Milady," Annette said, the first to speak, "what can this mean?"

Griselda stared at the two children, both of which had now defied her magic, her power. It infuriated her and shamed her — curse them! Why hadn't they died? What had gone wrong? What had she done wrong?

She clenched her fists, her nails digging hard into her palm as she thought. "It could be," she began, "that we have accidentally invoked a mind-meld."

"A mind-meld, milady?" a witch said, trying not to sound skeptical. "What is a mind-meld?"

"A melding of the minds, fool," Griselda snapped. She pointed to the Edon Stone corona. "Notice that they are touching. When I cast the dreamweave and inserted it into the corona, it is possible that the Edon Stones scattered the magic, spreading it across both their persons. If that is the case, then the dreamweave spread from the girl to the boy, encasing them both."

"But what does it matter if the boy was absorbed into the dreamweave?" another witch asked. "He...was dead. It should have had no effect on him."

"Didn't I tell you," Griselda snarled, "that dreamweaves have been used to lure patients out of comas? The same may have happened here. When I thrust the deathstroke spell at the whelp, the Edon Stones' power may have blunted the attack before he knocked her from the bed, and as a result, pushed him within an inch of his life and simply rendered him catatonic rather than dead. Then, when I cast the dreamweave spell, the part distributed to him reached deep into his vegetative state and pulled him back from the brink of death.

"Furthermore," Griselda continued, "the girl, while wandering in the dream, possibly encountered the boy in an area where their minds melded and pulled him the rest of the way out of the clutches of death. And thus..." She gestured to Siegbert's breathing form. Behind her, the witches exchanged glances, more than one of them still skeptical, but again, none of them dared to voice their doubts.

"So what do we do now, milady?" Annette asked. "Do we still attempt to kill them within the dreamweave?"

"We don't have a choice," Griselda rasped, taking a seat back on the edge of the vanity. "The Edon Stones are our relic, and we must retrieve them. They have to die."

--

Unbridled joy at Siegbert's consciousness swept through Forrest like a torrent of warm water, and the relief that was hard on its heels made him feel as though he would float up into the sky.

"Oh Siegbert!" He fell upon Siegbert, who'd been trying to sit up and was rubbing grit out of his eyes. "Thank the Gods! Thank the Gods you're all right!"

"What...hey!" Siegbert roared as Forrest began kissing him fiercely him on the cheek. "Take it easy, you ingrate!"

"Alive and in his right mind!" Forrest said, nearly weeping with elation. "I don't know what I'd do if you weren't there to berate me ever again!"

"Will you get off me?" Siegbert snapped. When his cousin finally relinquished his death grip, he rubbed his neck and said, "What the devil is your problem? You're acting like I was..." He trailed off, suddenly seeing the tears leaking down Forrest's cheeks.

"...dead," he finished, after a beat. "Forrest, what's the matter?" He glanced around, a more pertinent question suddenly arising. "Where are we?"

It wasn't anyplace he recognized — they seemed to be on some high, grassy ridge somewhere, surrounded by massive pines gently undulating in the breeze. A massive hole — no, not a "hole", that word didn't do the gigantic opening justice; a chasm — lay some ways behind Forrest: some natural opening in the earth? Whatever the case, it was a pretty distinct landmark, something Siegbert surely would've recognized had he been anywhere near here sometime in the past — which he hadn't.

His confusion made Forrest's words all the more worrying: "Er, I don't really...know," his cousin said, sounding sheepish.

"You don't know?" Siegbert repeated, incredulous. He frowned. "Um, why are you wearing your pajamas?"

"This is what I was wearing when I got here."

Forrest's words only served to confuse Siegbert further and induce a dozen or more questions: namely, What the devil have you gotten us into now, Forrest?

But before he could determine which question he wanted to lob at his cousin first, an urgent shout sounded over Siegbert's shoulder: "Forrest! Siegbert! We must keep moving!"

Siegbert spun, in time to see an agile, reptilian shape dip down through the trees. He saw claws and fangs, which told him all that he needed to know: that he and Forrest were in danger of being devoured.

"Get down!" he roared, leaping backwards and driving his cousin into the dirt with a shoulder. Forrest went down with a surprised "Mmphf!", and Siegbert spun back around to face the creature, who'd landed before him some distance away. It was a slender beast, a long graceful neck and pointed tail hinting at the cunning and agility of a snake, while its dagger-like teeth left no uncertainty as to its ability to shred and flay skin.

Siegbert reached down, automatically groping for the sword that always hung at his waist, but his fingers only brushed the worn material of an empty scabbard — Gods, he was unarmed! What's worse, he found with a downward glance, he was unarmored: he only wore his favorite woolen, long-sleeved shirt and the thick leather vest that served as padding during sparring matches. Capable of stopping a wooden facsimile of a sword, perhaps, but certainly not those teeth, which could probably slice through it like so much butter under a hot knife.

But he had no choice, if he wanted to keep Forrest safe: "When I say," he hissed down at his cousin, who was grunting down where Siegbert was pinning his head into the dirt, "I want you to run into the trees. Don't stop, and don't look back."

With effort, Forrest freed his face from the soil. "Will you listen to me?" he snapped. "I was trying to tell you that it's all right!"

"Quiet!" Siegbert snarled. "No sudden movements!"

"It's okay! We're in no danger—"

"Shut up! Don't argue!" Movement caught Siegbert's eye — the creature had leapt into the air, its strange, lace-like wings carrying it aloft. The sight stunned Siegbert for a second — not because the creature was flying, but because the image was strangely familiar. He could have sworn that he'd seen it somewhere before...

He snapped out of it: "Run!" Siegbert hissed. "It's going to attack!"

He released Forrest, but his cousin, the idiot, did not run: in fact, he actually sat up on his knees and glared at Siegbert.

"Siegbert, it's all right!" he said. He sounded exasperated. Exasperated! If Siegbert hadn't planted himself between his cousin and certain death, trying to keep the creature's focus on him, he would've punched Forrest — in the shoulder, of course.

"She's not going to hurt us," Forrest continued. "She's here to help us."

"Help us?" Siegbert repeated, incredulous. "Have you gone mad? The only thing she is going to help us with is how fast we reach the afterlife!" He glowered at Forrest. "Now, I thought I told you to run!"

And then the creature spoke, and Siegbert wondered if he was the crazy one.

--

"Forrest is right, Siegbert." Brynhildr's voice was calm, but Forrest knew her well enough by now to detect the dangerous impatience underneath — she was swooping through the air overhead, not bothering to disguise her anxiety. "I'm not here to hurt you. I am here to help."

Siegbert twisted around to stare at Forrest, his mouth hanging open. "Did that thing just—?"

Forrest nodded. "See, it's all right! You can trust Brynhildr. She's the one that led me to you. If we hadn't found you—"

"Brynhildr?" Siegbert interrupted. "Brynhildr like...?"

Forrest nodded. "Like the tome, my father's tome. She's the spirit that inhabits it, allowing him to spellcast."

Siegbert's jaw worked — the dozens of questions he'd thus far kept to himself had now tripled, buzzing around like annoyed bees in his skull. But for some reason, the stupidest of the bunch tumbled out of his mouth: "So she won't eat us?"

Brynhildr suddenly hissed — for a second, Forrest thought she was annoyed at Siegbert's question, but when she spoke, her voice contained barely reigned-in fright: "Forrest! We must go! NOW!"

The two boys followed the tome dragon's gaze, and saw a massive shadow creeping up out of the lip of the earthen chute they had exited minutes earlier, expanding from the hole in all directions. It swallowed everything in its path, relentlessly, indiscriminately — the boys watched in a kind of fascinated horror as the grass, the flowers, the shrubs and bushes withered and died as the darkness eked around them, the trees creaking as their trunks were devoured, crumpling beneath the wave of death. As it skulked closer, they saw that the blackness wasn't darkness as much as it was a wave of what looked like...ink. Dark blood. Black acid.

"Forrest!" Brynhildr snapped.

"R-right." On shaky knees, Forrest rose to his feet. "Siegbert, can you walk?"

It took his cousin a minute to tear his gaze away from the impending wave of death slowly slinking towards them. "Yes, I-I think I..." He stood, only to promptly tumble back to his knees. His face was white, sticky with sweat — Forrest didn't think he'd ever seen him so terrified.

"Here!" Forrest ducked and yanked one of Siegbert's arms over his shoulders. "Lean on me."

"This way!" Brynhildr soared off into the trees, and Forrest and Siegbert followed as fast as they could on weak knees.

The line of trees was short, and they soon thinned out, yielding a view of a small valley pimpled with hills. Over their rounded tops, Forrest could see a tiny, rigid skyline: buildings!

"There's a town up ahead!" Brynhildr shouted. "Move!"

She swept down into the valley, and Forrest and Siegbert struggled to follow — Siegbert was not helping their progress, as shock and disbelief were continually tripping up his feet. After all there were bloody islands in the sky — floating islands! Floating islands, tome dragons, black waves of death...Siegbert could feel his rationality slowly but surely wearing down to a thread. Was this real? Was any of this real? Or was this just some elaborate dream?

Nightmare, more like.

But though the young nobles' progress was slow, the wave of death dissolving everything behind them into oblivion was even slower — Forrest and Siegbert were halfway to the hill-nestled town before the darkness even broke out of the trees behind them. The black muck reduced the landscape behind them to sludge-like deposits of slag as it followed, slowly but surely, at a snail's pace.

But a different kind of darkness fell over the two when they finally reached the first cobblestones of the empty town: overhead, a small island, this one the size of a small providence, drifted in front of the sun, plunging the village streets into shadow. First glance, the floating rock's silhouette seemed oddly hairy, but after a moment, Forrest realized that the silhouette wasn't hairy so much as it was...rooty. The spindly appendages of what had to be massive trees poked out through the tree's underside, twisting outward like a halo of electromagnetically charged hair.

"You must board that island before it passes from your reach," Brynhildr called from overhead. "If you do not, you will be devoured by the darkness at your heels!"

"What?" Forrest cried. "How?" The island was floating close to their current locale — dangerously close, in fact, maybe only a couple dozen feet overhead, groaning slightly as it floated forward on the wind. But there was no way they could close the vertical gap between them.

Not from where they stood down in the streets, at least.

Siegbert jabbed Forrest in the ribs and pointed. "Look!" he said. "A clock tower!"

Indeed, some ways ahead of them, the roads opened up into what must have been, at one point, a marketplace — it was empty now, of course, and ringed by a circle of shops and official buildings. But in the center, standing like a kind of stone sentinel, was a large clocktower, rising high above the rest of the modest village buildings. The timepiece itself was housed in a blocky stone balcony, one that sheltered it from the elements and provided any mechanic a degree of protection in which to perform any necessary repairs.

Forrest glanced up at the small island floating steadily above them. The tower wasn't tall enough for them to climb and then leap directly onto the surface of the island...but maybe they could grab one of those jutting roots and climb aboard?

The only problem was that Forrest's rope climbing, like his spellcasting, was rather pitiful.

But again: I don't suppose I have a choice!

Siegbert pushed from his side, his knees seeming to have recovered some of their steadiness. "Come on!" he shouted over his shoulder. "There isn't much time!"

Together, the two of them covered the rest of the distance between them and the clock tower in a mad dash, fighting to keep ahead of the island's shadow as it encroached behind them like a giant ghost. Siegbert threw his shoulder against the door of the tower as he reached it, but he needn't have bothered — it was unlocked and even slightly ajar, and he tumbled down to a stone floor, clapping his knees painfully.

Forrest hurried in after him and helped him to his feet. "Stairs?" he asked.

It didn't take long to find them — the stairwell filled half of the room, leaving the other to function as a kind of storage area, which was jammed with sacks, pots, tools, and an assortment of other miscellaneous items, all of which the two boys ignored as they vaulted up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

Two bends in the stairway put them half a minute later at another wooden door which was, again, hanging ajar. Sunlight greeted them from the other side as they stepped out onto the stone balcony — waning sunlight, warning them that the island was drifting close.

Before Forrest could try to figure out how close, Siegbert yelled, "This way!"

They hurried to the far side of the tower balcony, passing the clock face, whose hands were anchored rigidly at 12:54 — time, quite literally, stood still in this outlandish place.

As they entered the tower's easternmost side, a skyward glance showed the young nobles that the island was passing by directly overhead — its massive underbelly seemed close enough to touch, and the roots projecting from its side undulated as they brushed across the side of the stone structure. Above, a dull thud, followed by the clank of stone, filled their ears — a second later, a stream of stone, pebble, and shingle poured down from above them as the island actually clipped the roof of the tower.

Brynhildr appeared, rocketing from up below. "Quickly!" she cried. "The darkness approaches!"

Forrest wished she hadn't mentioned that, because when he looked down, he saw the nightmarish wave of blackness indeed growing closer — it poured down the town's main thoroughfare like a flood of ink before spreading across the empty marketplace. It was going faster than before, as if it wanted to catch the two nobles before they escaped its grasp completely, and it ate across the cobblestones like acid — Forrest watched in abject horror as the stonework of the town buildings began to hiss, bubble, and sink, rumbling in their moorings before tilting and dissolving into the darkness.

Siegbert smacked the back of Forrest's head. "Focus!" he snapped. "And while you're at it — jump!"

He followed up the blow to the head with a jab to Forrest's kidneys. With a yelp, Forrest stumbled forward, tripping over the lip of the balcony and tumbling out into the open air. For a horrifying second, the darkness loomed beneath Forrest, bubbling and hissing, eager to devour him, meat, bones, and all.

Then, the roots of the island stopped his fall — they were thick and coiling, and some were heavily knotted together, and they caught Forrest within their grasp like a fishing net. Forrest quickly dug his fingers into the knots, anchoring his hold, but he needn't have bothered — the roots twisted around his wrists, as if determined not to let him go, seemingly of their own will. Or, rather, Brynhildr's will: the tome dragon was swooping across the roots, which animated at her passing. A group of them stretched out towards Siegbert, who was still standing on the tower balcony, as if urging him to grab on.

"Quickly, Siegbert!" Brynhildr shouted.

Siegbert focused hard on the roots, trying not to let what lay below him — a cobblestoned square dissolving into a black sea — disrupt his focus. Under Brynhildr's magic, the roots had stretched out another two or three feet, leaving only a yard or so between him and the island. Siegbert braced a boot on the edge of the balcony, prepared to jump — when the tower shuddered beneath him.

"Siegbert!" Forrest shrieked — he hadn't been seeing things. The tower was literally quelling beneath his cousin, and he saw why: the wave of darkness had reached the foot of the structure, and was dissolving the stone at the base of the tower, reducing it to melted slag that threatened the entire building's vertical integrity. It trembled as its load-bearing capacity was compromised — suddenly, it barely had enough strength to hold itself up, let alone the teenage boy fighting for his balance on its balcony. As the black acid below melted a huge chunk out of its side, the tower let out an almost pained groan and shunted crookedly to the side. Forrest screamed as Siegbert was jarred from his perch, but the boy's lightning-fast reflexes saved him — he grabbed the lip of the balcony before he was thrown fully into the hissing black acid below.

"Brynhildr!" Forrest shrieked. "Do something!"

The tower underwent another tremble and dropped another yard — below, the darkness was slowly consuming the shaft of the building, eating its way up to Siegbert foot by precious foot. Siegbert grit his teeth as he — and the tower — dropped under another shudder. Blast it! The world was shaking, but a skyward glance showed him that the image of his cousin tangled in the roots of the island was smaller than it had been a second ago. There were a couple of roots hanging low enough that he could still possibly reach, but both of his hands were currently busy hanging on for dear life — the tower was shuddering so violently beneath him that he knew he'd never be able to let go to reach for one.

But suddenly, just as Siegbert was considering praying to the Dusk Dragon for a quick death, one of the roots began growing, twisting down towards him at such an accelerated rate that he knew Brynhildr must've passed close by overhead. It brushed across his shoulder like the head of a snake before slinking down his chest and winding down around his thigh. It didn't stop until it had spiraled several times around his calf, lashing firmly around the sole of his boot.

"Siegbert!" Brynhildr's cry came from somewhere up above. "Let go!"

Siegbert did not want to relinquish his grip from the stone, as the tower was still shaking beneath him, but a downward glance showed him that hanging on was no longer an option — the darkness had all but consumed the tower now, reducing it to a corroded lump of black sludge. It rolled calmly up towards Siegbert, continually eating away at the stone, and brushed across the toe of his foot.

A horrifying cold bolted up through Siegbert like a strike of ice, and an even more terrifying numbness followed, reducing his foot to a lump of unresponsive muscle. Horrendous images flashed behind his eyelids: images of death and pain, of blood and suffering, of evil and demons.

With a terrified cry, Siegbert let go of the tower.

His body swung down and away from the tower, but the root wrapped around his leg held on hard, keeping him from falling an inch further. The wind brushed teasingly against him as he hung, helpless, upside down, watching the last of the darkness engulf the street, the tower, the entire island.

In the next moment, the island disintegrated in a blast that rivaled the trumpets of Armagheddon in power and sound. The massive isle of rock and earth disappeared within a hellish red and black cloud. The power of its destruction thrust Siegbert upward, and a second later he found himself tangled in the net of roots beside his cousin.

From here, the two of them ducked, covering as much of their exposed skin as they could as a hailstorm of blackened debris and shrapnel raced up towards them, faster and more deadly than the bolts of a thousand crossbows. Luckily, the other side of the island seemed to take the brunt of the explosion, rocking slightly as it absorbed the storm of shrapnel. Only a few pieces hit Forrest and Siegbert's side.

But Forrest shrieked when a sudden bolt of pain lanced into his eye—"ARGH!"

"What is it?" Siegbert cried in alarm, still cowering.

"MY EYE! MY EYE!" Forrest covered his face, gasping, his eye stinging and throbbing uncontrollably — a thick stream of liquid poured from his lid, coasting like a river down his face and dripping from his chin. Tears? Or blood?

"Keep your head down!" Siegbert shouted. Wheezing in pain, Forrest forced himself to gasp through the blazing agony in his eye and duck as the last of the island shrapnel strafed past them.

After a long minute, Siegbert said, "Forrest, I'm coming to you."

Forrest unfurled from the fetal position and gasped as he tried to open his eye — vision from both was reduced to sludge by the watery fluid pouring from his left. His cousin resembled a dark, lumpy blur as he climbed up towards him. He quickly shut his eyes back, hissing as another bolt of pain lanced through his skull.

"Forrest!" Brynhildr's voice — she was nearby. "Are you all right?"

"He was hit in the eye," Siegbert said as he reached Forrest, who had curled up into a trembling ball. He grasped the side of his cousin's face and forced his eye open again before grimacing.

"That needs to be looked at," he said. "Can you magic us to the surface?" he asked Brynhildr.

"I'm afraid not. I'm not distinct enough to interact with this world, and much of my power has been muted."

"This world?" Siegbert repeated, momentarily forgetting Forrest. "What do you mean, this world? Are you telling me we aren't in Nohr — or Hoshido?"

"You haven't yet grasped that?"

He hadn't — he'd been too preoccupied with running for his life. "Then where the devil are we?"

"I will explain," Brynhildr said. "But not here. Let's take care of Forrest first, and then I will tell you all you need to know."

Not leaving room for argument, she sailed upwards, leaving a trail of pink mist in her wake — the mist brought the roots hanging under the island to life again, and they twisted of their own accord, twining together into an earthen ladder that spanned where they currently hung in the sky all the way up to the surface of the island.

The sight relieved Siegbert — he'd feared they were have to somehow climb through the twisting matrix of roots, which thinned out near the surface of the island. He prodded Forrest. "Can you climb?" he demanded. "We're almost to the top."

"I...I think so," Forrest wheezed. His eye had swollen shut when Siegbert had been questioning Brynhildr, and now resembled a red, throbbing plum. On a normal day, Forrest would have been horrified at how battered the swollen eye made his normal delicate, impeccably unblemished face. But this place had stripped away his concern for his appearance, leaving a stalwart drive for survival in its place — and it was beginning to do the same for Siegbert.

"Good." Siegbert grabbed Forrest's hand and thrust it onto the first rung of the twisted ladder. "Let's get out of here, then."