Dreamweaver - Chapter 12

"So...I died." Siegbert's throat tightened around the words, feeling as though he were trying to swallow a tough piece of game. He glanced at his cousin, still trying to wrap his head around the idea. "You're sure?"

Forrest nodded, feeling a little queasy himself recalling the details. "Yes. There was no doubt about it. In the seconds before she..." He swallowed. "Before she hit me with my own deathstroke spell, I checked for a pulse. There was none."

Siegbert shook his head once before gazing skyward — Brynhildr was high above, drifting along on the breeze as she guided them across the isle's large, rippling field, towards the hillocks and dark smudge of trees that lay on the far horizon.

Forrest was filling in some of the gaps that up to this point hadn't been addressed: how the two of them had ended up in this manufactured nightmare, and how the giant spider that Forrest had faced only an hour earlier had somehow or another taken Siegbert hostage; apparently, he'd been suspended in the creature's web by his feet. That was a chilling enough tale, but something else disturbed him more than that.

"Why don't I remember any of this?" he asked as the two boys stepped across another stream gurgling through the grass.

Forrest shrugged. "I don't know. Perhaps the spider injected you with some kind of venom that induced memory loss."

"But the spider wasn't real."

"You didn't know that at the time."

Siegbert shook his head, not even going to pursue that line of thinking: the whole if you think it's real, it is bit was threatening to give him a headache.

"But not just the spider," he said. "Why can't I remember getting attacked by the witches? Like you did?"

"I hardly think that's important right now," Forrest sniffed. "I'm more concerned with getting out of this place." He paused and suddenly glanced up at his cousin, who'd fallen into a brooding silence. "Siegbert?" Forrest's voice was anxious. "What's the matter? You've got that look in your eye."

Siegbert shook his head. "I'm fine," he lied. In truth, his concerns about his faulty memory were nagging at him. Something about it didn't seem right...it was as though there were gaps in his head. He could remember Forrest. He remembered Lord Leo. He remembered his father, his aunts, their retainers, the castle staff, the castle itself. But when it came to the witches and how he and Forrest had been struck within an inch of their lives, there was a ragged disconnect, as if someone had cut that bit out of his memory and thrown it into the garbage.

"You don't look fine. You're as pale as a sheet. What's the matter?"

"You're imagining things. Why are you still holding my hand?" he snapped, attempting to distract Forrest, and himself. "Doesn't your feminine side only come out when we're under duress?"

Forrest scowled, offended. "Can you blame me?" he snapped back. "I was seconds away from waking up. Seconds! You heard what Brynhildr said. The minute I open my eyes, the deathstroke spell will strike me down, for real this time. I think I'm due for a little hand-holding." He squeezed Siegbert's hand for emphasis.

Siegbert swallowed his sarcastic reply. In truth, he was just as rattled as Forrest by what had happened. His cousin was right. If Bryhildr hadn't intervened and somehow brought Forrest back down to earth, then the last image of his cousin would have been of him fading into oblivion, to awaken into the wrathful, vengeful claws of Deeprealm witches. He squeezed Forrest's hand in apology for his stinging words.

"I suppose you are due for some hand-holding," he admitted. "But you're safe now, aren't you? You're not in danger of fading away again, right?" His voice dropped in uncertainty.

Forrest shook his head. "I don't think so. Not yet, at least. If I keep from looking at the sky and focus on your voice, I think I'll be fine."

"What? The sky? My voice?"

Forrest nodded and tightened his grip on Siegbert's hand again. "I saw their faces in the sky," he said. "The witches that...almost killed us. And I can hear them talking in the depths of my ears. If I concentrate too hard on them, I start to feel sleepy and light." He gave Siegbert a reassuring smile. "But you and Brynhildr are really helping me focus. You ground me."

Siegbert smiled. "Glad to be of service." He glanced skyward and frowned. "But I don't see anything up there."

"Maybe it's only that way for me. Maybe a different kind of stimulus will make you want to wake up."

"I hope you're right." Forrest's statement led to a dark thought: if the truth of the dreamweave wasn't enough to make him want to wake up, as had been the case with Forrest, then what would? Could he wake up? He hoped so. Because the alternative was pretty frightening: if he couldn't wake up, that implied that, unlike Forrest, who was alive back in reality...he was not. He existed only in this unnatural, dangerous place, as a part of the dreamweave as the floating islands and man-eating spiders; he was something those witches had constructed for their own purposes. He stopped thinking about that, quickly: he was already starting to feel queasy.

Instead, he looked back into the sky, tracing Brynhildr's slow flight across the sea of blue that spanned above them. The clouds and empty sky were broken up by a half a dozen or so floating islands, drifting along like rubble. Two collided with a rocky crunch, making Siegbert flinch.

"You know what this place reminds me of?" Forrest said suddenly.

"What?" Siegbert asked. A second later he said, "Don't say it."

"The kingdom of Va—"

"Shut up, idiot! Do you want us to cease to exist?"

Forrest laughed. "Oh relax. Queen Kamui dissolved the curse, remember? Xander gave that huge speech in the capital square about it and everything."

"And has anyone tested it, to make sure that it's sound?"

"You don't trust Kamui's magic?"

"Not yet, and neither does Father. If you recall, he used the words 'invisible kingdom' instead of the V-word throughout the entirety of that speech you mentioned."

"You are such a wimp! You have no trouble fighting on the front lines, but you can't even say the V-word?"

"Apparently, you can't either."

"Yes I can. Watch." And then, before Siegbert could stop him, Forrest straightened and shouted, "Valla. Valla, Valla, Valla. The kingdom of Valla. Vallite. Valla. Valla. Valla."

Siegbert bristled, waiting, just waiting, for his cousin to disappear, snatched into oblivion by the curse of the Silent Dragon's kingdom, but a minute passed and nothing happened. He deflated in relief — then he locked his arm around Forrest's neck and yanked his cousin down, giving him a fierce noogie.

Forrest shrieked. "What're you doing?"

"Idiot! Stupid idiot! You're lucky I'm not putting you over my knee!"

"Scaredy-cat! You're just jealous that your bravery was trumped by a troubadour!"

"Shut up! That curse is nothing to joke about!" Anankos's War had been over for nearly two years now, but soldiers and citizens alike were still having trouble saying Valla's name aloud, thanks to that terrifying curse. In fact, people treated speaking about Valla the same way they would saying Bloody Mary three times in the mirror.

Forrest straightened. "But I'm right, aren't I? Doesn't this place look oddly like Valla?" He pointed into the sky, to the silence, the floating islands, the all-consuming sky.

"How would you know?" Siegbert asked, face still flushed from Forrest's stunt. "We've never been there. We were stuck in our respective Deeprealms while our parents were out saving the world."

"Yes, but I've heard plenty of stories about the barren wasteland kingdom comprised of floating islands. I'd say this dreamweave matches its description."

Forrest was right. This place did seem like it had come straight out of the war stories. "Do you think they did this on purpose?" he asked his cousin.

"You mean the witches?"

"Yes. Do you think there's a reason they made this place look like..." Siegbert's mouth worked for a moment as he struggled to get the word out. "...Valla?" he finally managed. Again, he sucked in a breath, and again, he didn't disappear.

Forrest shrugged and took Siegbert's hand again. "I don't know. Maybe. But we won't be in here long enough for it to matter."

Siegbert squeezed his cousin's hand, hoping that he was right. A lot of terrible stuff had happened in Valla. Realizing the similarity between this place and Queen Kamui's ancient kingdom seemed like a bad omen.

--

Another mile later, trouble found them.

A guttural groan cut through the sound of swishing waves of grass — a second later, the earth rumbled beneath the two boys' feet, as deep and threatening as the growl of a dragon.

Forrest looked to the tome dragon. "What was that?"

Brynhildr swooped down towards them, green eyes bright with panic. "Blast! It seems we've been discovered!"

Before either young lord could ask what that meant, tiny holes began to appear in the field around them: pockets of earth collapsed inward, taking topsoil, grass, and weeds down as they drained inward. One such hole popped up by Forrest's right foot, and with a cry he jumped backwards.

"Both of you!" Bryhildr shouted, soaring away. "Get away from those holes!"

The two rushed to obey, dashing towards where she twisted anxiously in the distance. The second they sped into a run, the holes began to appear at a faster rate, popping around them and sucking in soil and grass as though the boys were being followed by a colony of hyperactive prairie dogs. One suddenly appeared under Siegbert's foot: he crashed to the ground, and Forrest slammed down behind, skidding hard against the rocky soil.

Siegbert fought to his elbows. "Forrest!" he shouted. "My foot! It's caught!"

Shaking soil out of his eyes, Forrest crawled madly towards Siegbert's ankle and saw, with an awed kind of terror, that that the hole had closed around his cousin's boot like a sphincter, holding it fast in place. He began digging at the soil, trying to widen the hole enough to get Siegbert's ankle loose.

Brynhildr suddenly shrieked. "Forrest!!"

He snapped his head up to see the tome dragon gazing at something behind him. He turned in time to see a column of black sludge spew from one of the holes, a half a dozen yards back, like a geyser of ink. It splattered to the ground like chunky, dark rain, consuming the golden waves of grass with a sizzling hiss as it began to roll towards Forrest and his cousin.

The deathstroke spell! Forrest nearly went numb with terror.

Nearly — Siegbert delivered a blow to the back of his head, jarring him out of his stupor. "Hurry!" he roared. "Before it reaches us!"

Just then, another pillar of death magic blasted from another hole, this one closer: the deathstroke magic splattered like black blood onto the ground, dissolving anything unfortunate enough to be beneath it. Heart in his throat, Forrest forced himself to turn back to Siegbert's hole, digging with a desperate, panicked fervor as geysers of black magic continued to blast into the air around him, filling it with the sour tang of decay.

Finally the hole was big enough — Siegbert leapt to his feet, grabbed Forrest's hand, and launched forward. They were a dozen yards away when Siegbert's hole, the one his foot had been caught in ten seconds earlier, let loose its own column of death into the sky.

"Hurry!" Brynhildr screamed from up ahead. "HURRY!"

The path to the tome dragon became a virtual minefield — all around them, towers of deathstroke magic exploded out of their holes and soared into the sky, dropping into a congealing sea of corrosive slag that rolled sluggishly behind them. The boys ran wildly, mindlessly, barely mindful of where they were going — their heads were down, shoulders hunched, in an attempt to avoid the globs of acidic rain that fell behind them. It splashed at their heels, their flanks, making it hard to avoid the gurgling blasts of black gunk that exited the earth on all sides.

They reached the hills, and then the trees, and bolted past Brynhildr without seeing her.

"Stop!" she shrieked.

Remembering the cliff on Castle Krakenburg island, Forrest pulled to a stop immediately, jerking hard on Siegbert's hand — his cousin's feet were yanked right out from under him, and the two of them crashed together before flumping to the ground. They tumbled to a stop precariously close to an edge of soil and stone that dropped out into the Panthalassan blue below.

Siegbert scrambled to his feet and gazed at the sheer drop in horror. He wasn't sure of what scared him more: the thought that he'd almost run over the edge in blind panic or that they were now stuck between oblivion and certain death.

"What now?" he asked, not even trying to disguise the terror in his voice.

Brynhildr swept past them, arcing over the edge of the cliff and inspecting the underbelly of the island. Forrest and Siegbert both glanced behind them nervously. Luckily, it seemed that this deathstroke spell was as slow as the last: it had not yet cleared the hills, but they could see the first wave beginning to roll over the tops of the hillocks, reducing their rounded forms to bubbling black puddles.

"Here!" Brynhildr said suddenly. "A path!"

Siegbert sidled over to where she was hovering and struggled to quell his trembling stomach as he looked over. In surprise, he saw that, indeed, there seemed to be some kind of path jutting out from this side of the island, a rugged series of dirt, mud, and rock steps descending in a slow spiral down the island's root-infested underbelly.

Siegbert glanced back at his cousin. "You first."

Forrest came up beside him and blanched when he saw the rocky staircase. "Er...are you sure that's safe?" he asked.

Brynhildr swept downward, animating a series of roots in her passing. They wove themselves into a makeshift railing that anchored itself into the side of the rock face. "Now hurry!" the tome dragon snapped.

Forrest swallowed thickly and took the first step downward, making sure that the muddy path could support his weight before taking another. As soon as he was clear, Siegbert dropped down after him, quickly grabbing onto Brynhildr's railing to establish his balance. The tome dragon swooped down from overhead, checking once to make sure the boys were following before sweeping along the earthen path, which seemed to circle down towards the underbelly of the island.

The boys went as fast as their balance allowed, ducking under protruding roots that jutted into their path, but it wasn't long before they heard the tale-tell hiss of the deathstroke spell's corrosive approach. A backward look showed them that the sea of black magic was now dripping down their muddy pathway, consuming it whole as it encroached towards them. More distracting than that was the isle's death knells — as they hurried downward, following the way as it curved beneath a portico of mud and rock, a terrifying sound followed them: a mix between the gurgle of dissolved stone and the crack and splinter of the rock and loam above their heads.

A tunnel appeared, a rugged, muddy passage that, if Forrest hadn't known any better, had been drilled straight into the heart of the island by some large creature. Brynhildr darted into the darkness without hesitating, and the boys had little choice but to follow: the hiss of black magic was growing stronger behind them.

The tunnel was cut from cold rock, not at all like the sandy soil burrow Forrest had suffered through back on Siegbert's island. It was large enough to crawl comfortably through, but the crackle of the disintegrating rock above their heads made Forrest feel sweaty and light-headed all the same. He couldn't help but feel like the cherry at the center of a chocolate truffle, and felt that he was going to be doomed to the same fate at the hands of the witches' magic.

His breaths came easier when the tunnel finally ended, opening up into a pitch black chamber filled with the din of running water. His voice echoed as he spoke.

"Brynhildr? Siegbert?"

"Here." Siegbert's voice came from behind, and Brynhildr's somewhere before him: he spotted her glittering pink mist a few yards away, weakly illuminating a pile of water-slick rocks and the pebbly bank of a riverbed. He reached out and found Siegbert's sleeve, and together, the two maneuvered towards Brynhildr.

"Where the devil are we?" Siegbert asked.

Brynhildr ignored his question. "This river will take us off-island," she explained.

Forrest glanced downward, struggling to see the body of water he heard rushing at his feet. He didn't look for a source, as there didn't need to be one, not in this twisted sleeping spell, but it didn't sound like a river as much as it did a dangerous stretch of rapids — the roar of the crashing water nearly drowned out Brynhildr's words.

"Is it another portal?" Forrest shouted. He felt Siegbert flash him a questioning look.

"No, and we must hurry! This island is ready to crack apart."

As if on cue, the ceiling of the cavern abruptly collapsed inward: an avalanche of boulders poured down from above, pulverizing the cave floor and nearly jarring the boys right off of their feet. A sickening splatter followed the storm of rocks as a wave of black sludge poured down through the opening in the ceiling like the world's vilest and deadliest black pudding.

"Go!" Brynhildr roared.

Forrest and Siegbert dove into the river without further protest and instantly found themselves unable to fight the current. It shoved them forward in a barrage of icy water and foam, sweeping them along its course as they fought and struggled to keep their heads above the surface. Siegbert tried to call Forrest's name, but he could hear nor see his cousin as they rushed through the darkness at a blistering speed. He coughed and spluttered, spreading his hands around in the vicious, merciless current and trying to find a hand, an arm, a foot, anything, but his cousin, wherever he was, was out of reach.

Then, he slammed into a low-hanging rock, so hard that it knocked him underwater.

Siegbert struggled — struggled to breathe, struggled to stay upright, struggled to stay calm, struggled to stay conscious. But he was alone in the water, helpless and frightened, unable to tell in the pitch darkness which way was up. He kicked his feet, trying to find the river bed, and the tips of his armored boots plowed through a bank of pebbles. Putting all of his flagging strength in his calves, he flailed his legs, struggling to kick upwards.

But before he could get anywhere near the surface, the dome of his skull smacked a low, stony ceiling.

WHAT?

Complete and total terror engulfed him from one end of his body to the other: he was in an underwater tunnel. He couldn't resurface.

NO. NO! NO! NO!!

He let out a strangled scream, and a flood of ice water shot down his throat like a cold arrow. It froze his insides like a blow of Ice Tribe magic, and he felt his lungs begin to crumple, his heart begin to swell as though close to bursting like an overinflated balloon.

No... no... Forrest!

His cousin did not answer. But as the dots in Siegbert's vision began to grow larger, someone else did.

"SIEGBERT!" Brynhildr's voice, clear and distinct. Something undulated beneath him, and Siegbert felt a ripple of scales brush against his cheek. Her eyes glowed in the darkness.

"Siegbert! Can you hear me?"

How? How was it that she could breathe underwater, speak as though they were out chatting in the sunshine, rather than drowning in an underground river? How, Brynhildr? How...

"Don't you dare fade away, Siegbert! Listen to me! Hear me! Focus on my voice!"

The tightness, the ice, in his chest was becoming unbearable — his lungs felt like raisins, dry and withered and incapable of inhaling the tiniest squick of air.

"Focus, Siegbert! Focus and BREATHE! Open your mouth and breathe!"

I can't. The water... Siegbert felt his rationale, his sense of self, and his hold on reality fading, all at once. The water...throat...lungs...cold...dark...hurt...help...

"Breathe, fool! Have you forgotten? You are not dying! You are not breathless! You are not underwater! You are not wet! You are in a dreamweave! None of this is real, and none of it can hurt you! Now breathe, curse you! Breathe or die!"

Breathe... Can't...the water...ice...cold...lungs...breathe...dream...real...not real...dragon...death...black...water...cold...breathe...can't...Forrest...breathe...breathe...breathe...

Darkness drowned out his vision, but only for a second: in the next, a barrage of images flashed through his mind's eye, bright and dark, clear and smudged, none of them making sense. Noise drowned out his ears: not the roar of the river, but hushed voices, the scraping of shoes against stone. The images began to mash together, stirring together like a thick soup before sharpening, coming into a blurry sort of focus. He saw a dark room. Shadowy figures. A sphere of red light. A curtain of golden hair.

Voices: "Is it happening finally, milady?"

"I don't know..."

"Why are the two of them bucking like that?"

"It looks as though they can't breathe. Are they finally going into cardiac arrest?"

"Possibly. Though it's too soon to get our hopes up yet. They've both survived this long into my dreamweave. They might yet survive this duress."

"Perhaps you should strengthen the dreamweave again, milady."

"Yes, I think I'll—"

"SIEGBERT!"

In a snap, the vision was gone. Siegbert was suddenly back underwater, pulled along through the tunnel by the swirling mass of dark liquid and foam that surrounded him. Only he was breathing, easily, steadily: he glanced down at himself, just to make sure that his chest was moving, and it was, without effort. He blinked in awe and saw Brynhildr drifting in the water before him, her slender neck turned back towards him. There was relief in her eyes.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm alive." Siegbert lifted his hand, feeling the dark river thread through his fingers — he could feel the liquid, and yet, it didn't seem to be going down his throat. "How?"

"It seems you nearly woke up."

Shock bolted down his spine. "I..." He trailed off, remembering the fuzzy vision, of the dark room, hearing the whispers in the shadows. And just like that, he remembered: the Deeprealm, the rescue, the sleepover, the witches, the deathstroke spell, the pain, the cold, the dark.

"I saw the witches," he gasped, suddenly breathless, despite the fact that he was not breathing water. "I heard them talking about us. One said we were having trouble breathing...and then..."

"Then you came back."

"But how is it I can breathe?"

"It's possible that you waking up reminded some part of your subconscious that you were indeed dreaming, and that the implication of you being underwater should have no effect on you. When you returned, your belief negated that part of the dreamweave."

Siegbert shook his head, feeling dizzy and flushed. "Where's Forrest?" he asked.

Just then, light appeared at the end of the tunnel, quite literally. A watery glow drowned out the darkness, growing stronger and stronger as the underground river thrust him towards it with blistering speed. Before Siegbert could prepare himself, the current hurled him through.

The whistle of wind and the icy splatter of falling water disoriented him, but not as much as gravity's merciless downward pull: for a second, he couldn't tell whether or not he was still in the river, or falling in the rain, but as he opened his eyes, he found it was the latter: the dreamweave's blue abyss yawned beneath him, and the river rained down in a waterfall above him, driving him harder down towards the azure oblivion as it punched out of the side of the island above.

A bone-jarring rattle, deeper than dragon laughter, made him look upward — past the free-falling waterfall, through the rainbows that danced around the falling water, was a much scarier sight: the entire island blackened as though swept in shadow and disappeared within the depths of a black explosion, one that swatted Siegbert downward like the hand of an aggravated giant. Siegbert spiraled wildly down towards the deep blue as a hailstorm of shrapnel joined the river rain.

Brynhildr appeared, twisting around him until she was alongside. "Island!" she shouted. "There!"

There was indeed an island about three miles below and two miles to the right. Brynhildr tucked in her wings and angled towards it, and Siegbert struggled to follow.

"Forrest?" he screamed, shouting over the whistle of wind.

"Already there!" Brynhildr said.

Together, the two dove down through the storm of wind, water, and falling rock, trying to outrace the shrapnel into oblivion. The island Brynhildr had mentioned seemed to race up towards them: through wind tears, Siegbert saw that it was occupied by a large pond and an ancient, knotted oak.

"Brynhildr!" Siegbert shouted. "We're going too fast! This fall will kill me!"

"No it won't! Not if you don't want it to!"

Siegbert grit his teeth. "I can't slow down!"

"You don't need to! Just believe that you won't die, and you won't!"

"It's not that—" The wind stole the rest of his words. It's not that easy! Drowning had been different, vastly different: that had been death, slow and agonizing. This was death shooting up to pancake his face.

Okay, it's not going to be a hard landing...it's not. It's going to be soft, fluffy, easy...this a dream and... But as the island zoomed up towards him, fear drowned out his resolve.

"Brynhildr!" he screamed.

In the last possible seconds, the dragon veered off, zipping over the twisted oak and trailing pink mist as she zoomed over the island. The oak came alive, its joints and brittle sinew creaking as it leaned over into Siegbert's path. The branches of its canopy opened up like a hand, ready to stop his fall.

And it did, hard. Three tree limbs snapped under his weight and momentum, and two others clotheslined him, driving every breath of air from his lungs and causing them to implode like popped balloons. The elasticity of the tree snapped him back, sending him spinning a yard into the air before crashing back down into the fluffy upper canopy, sending up a cloud of broken twigs and leaves into the air.

He lay there for a full minute, kicking and wheezing and trying to get air back into his uncooperative lungs. The rain didn't make it any easier: the water from the underground river poured down across the island like a monsoon, heavy and cold and filled with black island debris . Siegbert spluttered as Brynhildr landed beside him and began speaking, but for a second he couldn't hear her over the throbbing beat of his heart and rasp of rain. But after a second he realized that the tome dragon wasn't speaking to him, but to something sticking out of the canopy of the oak a yard or so away.

"Forrest? Forrest, are you all right? Forrest, speak!"

Siegbert jolted upright: his cousin was indeed sticking out of the tree canopy — his legs, at least. Siegbert picked his way over and grabbed his cousin around the waist. His skin felt cold and clammy, but before Siegbert could fear for his cousin's life, Forrest hacked and coughed, spewing up a stream of river water as Siegbert yanked him upright. His cheeks were a splotchy red, and his hair, sticky with leaves, had turned rusty brown in the rain.

"Thank Gods!" Siegbert cried. "Are you all right?"

"F-fine," Forrest gasped. He let out another ragged cough before gripping Siegbert's shoulder. "You?"

"Fine, somehow, though I barely survived."

"What?" Forrest squinted at him - the rain was finally let up, tapering off into a featherlight drizzle that finally evaporated in the sunlight.

"I nearly drowned," Siegbert explained. "I can't recall exactly what happened, but somehow or another, me being near death triggered a vision. Well, not a vision, really — I almost woke up."

Forrest stiffened. "What? But...what stopped you?"

"Brynhildr. She called me back. After that, I found that I could breathe underwater. What happened to you?"

"I think I got flushed out of the tunnel very quickly," Forrest replied. "I barely had time to feel scared before I was falling from the sky and landing in this tree." He glanced upward, and Siegbert followed suit: the both of them gazed up at the debris cloud hovering where their island had been only minutes earlier. "Whatever the case, it seems we both got out of there right on time."

"Yes, though I'm afraid that we must keep moving." Brynhildr had followed their gaze, and her green eyes were glowing with distress. "The deathstroke spell found us fairly quickly that time. I'm certain this next reprieve will be even shorter than the last."

Siegbert and Forrest nodded in agreement. "Then where to next?" Forrest asked the tome dragon.

She grimaced, bearing rows of sharp teeth, before looking eastward, across the pond that spanned across their current tiny island. "I'm afraid that last fall was just a warm-up," she said. "The two of you have an even bigger jump ahead of you."