Beyond the Dark Gate

by R. V. Johnson

  The light of mid-afternoon blazed as she stepped free at last and straightened.

  In the shadows, off to one side, a dark shape writhed with tendrils outstretched… flicker.

  Warmth, security, and divine happiness flowed through her. No! She knew this for what it was! Flicker.

  Glee, there was no escape from its touch, it was going to feed… finally, it would feast! Feeding had been so long, glee… flicker.

  No, please! This can’t be happening again! To survive, she had to run, just as she had in the Dark Citadel. Flicker.

  Why was she afraid? Why would she run? Was she frightened of something as gentle as her own mother was? Flicker.

  Evil, dark and malevolent floated near… Jade needed to scream… but she couldn’t… her voice had failed. Flicker.

  The dark entity had only one desire, instinctual and primitive, it needed to feed on a soul. Something evil was coming… Flicker. Flicker.

  COHERENT THOUGHT

  Crystalyn watched Jade as she doubled over and vanished inside the tunnel at the end of the clearing. Crystalyn envied her sister’s energy. How did Jade do it? They’d been fighting and circling around the Vale, trying to break through to their besieged friends for most of the day. Jade must be as tired as she was, though she had the added benefit of two seasons of youth less than she did.

  “Something comes, Do’brieni!”

  Crystalyn scrambled to her feet. “Which direction, show me.”

  Broth leapt to her side, gazing into the trees behind her.

  “Everyone, someone is coming,” Crystalyn said. Atoi and Hastel needed little urging; they’d heard her side of the conversation with Broth.

  Drawing her dagger, Atoi stalked beside her as Hastel wound a crossbow bolt. When it locked in place, he indicated his readiness with a nod.

  Crystalyn visualized the pattern for her black gale symbol she’d read in the Tiered Tome of Symbols, tier three, in the last chapter titled: Much and Greater. So far, she hadn’t used it or any of those under the heading during battle. In effect, this test would decide if she ever used it again.

  Bringing the symbol out to hover before her, Crystalyn sent a silent query to her link mate. “Have you caught a scent yet?”

  “Aye, though it is not strong. Whoever it is mixes the scent of many trees to mask the true scent.”

  Crystalyn motioned Atoi and Hastel to move to the center of the clearing to wait.

  The wait was not long. The rubble brush at the back parted. The branches sidled out of the way, scraping and screeching loudly, as they drew to the side. A large form stepped through.

  Breathing hard, Lore Rayna paused at the new entrance, her green, leafy dress slithering back and forth with constant agitation, revealing too much of her bosom and thighs. The big woman appeared not to notice, her eyes sweeping past Crystalyn to the end of the clearing. “One of your companions is in grave danger. There is foulness… in the foliage,” Lore Rayna said between gasping breaths.

  Dread raced through Crystalyn. She looked to her companions, and then toward the rounded opening. Crystalyn dashed through the passageway of deadfall.

  Jade stood straight and rigid to the left of the tunnel’s exit. Black tendrils had wrapped around her waist and upper torso, dragging her toward a flickering shape writhing with multi-wisps of dark radiance.

  The shape exuded a petrifying fear.

  Earlier in Crystalyn’s life, on another world, the sight of such evil might have frozen her in place, hammered her with dread. Not now, not after the betrayals, or going through the impalement of a spiderbee, and the many other brushes with death. Now it made her angry. The bloody thing thought to take her sister from almost right beside her. Did such wickedness believe she’d ever let that happen?

  Thinking to sever the tendrils gripping Jade, Crystalyn brought out her absorption symbol and sent it chopping through them. The symbol dispersed on contact. Jade’s motion never ended. If anything, the darkness seemed to sense the attempt, pulling harder. Soon, Jade would encounter its flickering embrace.

  Hastel shouted from somewhere near. “Do something, Lore Rayna! My bolts do not affect it!”

  The tunnel dispersed, reforming as a giant wooden fist, which wrapped around the flicker and squeezed. Then, exploding, it threw wooden shrapnel and rubble ringing outward.

  Crystalyn somehow escaped harm.

  Blood welled and then streamed from a gash on Jade’s head.

  Tinged with anxiety for her sister, Crystalyn’s anger mounted. Reaching under a tendril, Crystalyn gripped Jade’s hand and brought her silver and gold healing symbol out. Part of its oval edge brushed the flicker.

  The creature shrank back from it.

  Crystalyn had little time to marvel. Attaching her awareness to the symbol, she let it sink into her sister.

  “It’s too late! The blasted thing has—”

  Hastel’s shout cut off abruptly. Silence descended as Crystalyn floated the symbol to where she’d viewed the crack in Jade’s skull.

  The wound was easy to find. Floating inside a vein growing ever smaller, her symbol rushed toward it, swept along as if it were silk webbing caught in a storm pipe, causing a moment of panic. The flow nearly carried her outside before she thought to paste part of the symbol into the opening. Then she plugged the vein from the inside, staunching the flow of blood.

  Most of the symbol remained, so she passed through the capillary, attached it to the gray matter of Jade’s brain, and nearly recoiled, receiving a brutal shock. Jade cognizance wasn’t Jade’s. Something dominating, alien with its base desires of hunger and subversion, shifted its awareness to her.

  Only from instinct, Crystalyn clung to her symbol after severing the connection to the gray matter, her mind in turmoil.

  The creature was aware of her, but she cared not. What mattered was how to help Jade without killing her. She’d have to fight the thing, but how to start? If she somehow managed to destroy the creature, would it leave her sister a mindless shell? Or was she already? No! Crystalyn squashed the panic rising within. Crystalyn would do Jade no good with her mind slipping, looped inside another anxiety attack.

  Again, Crystalyn attached the symbol to the gray matter, at the left side of the frontal lobe this time.

  Concentrated, pure instinctual thoughts bombarded her, an all-consuming yearning for self-awareness, any self-awareness, as long as it was an awareness of one’s self, something it had never had. The dark thing wants her soul, Crystalyn knew with a certainty that repulsed her. The dark creature lusted for something it could never truly know.

  Even if it consumed all the countless little filaments of Jade’s central nervous system, swallowed all the minuscule dots of her sense of self, and overrode all her synaptic compilations moving around in her brain, it could never discern truth. The creature’s own sense of inner vitality and purpose had not been included in its makeup by the evil that had created it—an old, and chillingly strong, power. What such power wanted with a soul, Crystalyn wished she knew.

  Crystalyn had no time to think about it as a dark flow of rushed toward the frontal lobe and then slowed, as the creature gained in strength.

  Without a second thought, Crystalyn pushed into the rush of alien thoughts careening toward the front lobe of Jade’s brain. Now she hovered within Jade’s prefrontal cortex, the part of her mind that held her consciousness, precisely where she’d expected the alien thought pulses were streaming.

  Crystalyn had no doubt they were aware of her now. Many of the pulses racing toward a ball of throbbing blackness stopped. Uncontested, Crystalyn kept going, though not long. Swarming her symbol, the dark pulses stacked about her in a sphere, keeping back from her symbol. The ball surrounding her crashed into something and halted. Dented, the sphere compressed inward on one side.

  Floating onward, her symbol plowed through the pulses, bursting them on contact, obliterating a partial line of her pattern but opening a tiny window t
hrough to a transparent bubble. Her symbol and awareness contacted the dome. Coherent, frightened thought flowed into Crystalyn’s mind.

  She’d found Jade.

  FORETOLD

  The swarm of black pulses clinging to her bubble covered it completely, but Jade felt it was holding. The flicker was as powerful as the mesmerizing ability of the dominion wraith in the Dark Citadel. Her attempt to expand her dome outward by sheer force of will had failed. She’d only fought off the stupor the creature exuded just as the psychic swarm of its essence reached her, installing her tiny bubble of protection at the last moment.

  Now she wondered about the rest of her. Trapped inside her own mind, it was an odd feeling losing the sense of her body. Disjointed and disconnected, she was at a loss what to do. Black and oblong, the pulses swarmed along her barrier. They seemed unable to penetrate the shell, for now.

  Eventually her body would grow weak. When that happened, her strength at maintaining the shield would weaken also. She’d give it a moment of rest, and then she’d work on pushing the swarm outward, bubble and all, throwing her fright into it. She didn’t want to die like this, but at the back of her dwindling cerebral hemisphere, Jade feared there was no escape.

  Then her bubble bulged inward on one side. Crystalyn’s strong but chaotic presence flowed inside her awareness, filling her with the warmth and familiarity of her big sister. If she’d had access to her tear ducts, Jade would’ve cried with joy.

  “Is that you, Jade?”

  Crystalyn’s thoughts flowed through hers.

  “Oh, Crystalyn, how did you get to me?” Jade asked with a thought.

  “Not now, those black pulses are attacking my symbol. They die upon contact, but it wipes out a small portion of it, and every strand counts. I had to use a part of it to heal you, though I still have the golden side of the symbol left. If it holds true, like when the mind worm had taken control of Lore Rayna, we should make it. Wait! They’ve stopped.”

  Crystalyn was right. The swarm had ceased pulsing. As one, the entire ball shuddered, and the oblong shapes dropped away. “Come on, Crystalyn, I can expand my barrier and sweep them out,” Jade thought, expanding her barrier a little.

  “Something is coming.” Crystalyn sent. Anxiety came with it.

  Ancient and vast, a great malice slammed into Jade’s barrier, shrinking it by half. Then, a gale of malevolence, as strong as a radiation hurricane blowing about Low Realm, gusted into her bubble with a crushing, indomitable will of monumental power.

  Frightened, Jade pushed back with all she had, denying it access but barely. Intensifying, coming at her with a sense of unlimited power from another direction, an immense force of malice thundered into her dome, crushing her with the strength of an exploding nebula. Her bubble shrank, compressing smaller at an alarming rate. Soon there would be nothing left of her resistance.

  Jade couldn’t stop it.

  All at once, the gale of malevolence stopped.

  Jade sensed why immediately. Crystalyn had shifted her symbol between the alien intelligence of black malice and her bubble.

  With the pressure off her, Jade expanded her barrier, rising above and to the side of where Crystalyn had previously been with her symbol. The malice attacked as soon as she did, slamming into her bubble around Crystalyn. Hard-pressed, Jade recoiled, sending a query to her sister. “Can you push it back? I’m not getting anywhere.”

  “It’s too strong; my symbol won’t hold it long even though I have the black crystal candle artifact. Can you access the Flow?”

  Without control of her body, Jade felt certain she couldn’t, but she made the attempt. Surprisingly, the Flow was there but not the endless supply of the great, frothing river. There was only a remnant, a single brilliant strand floating within her mind. Having no time to analyze, she transferred it to the comforting awareness that was her sister. “You have all I have. There is no more.”

  “Then it will have to… what’s it doing?”

  Shying away from her sister’s symbol, the darkness split and stretched around both sides, reaching for her.

  “Crystalyn, can you move forward?”

  “Good idea,” was the reply as the symbol began to move.

  Jade kept in contact, moving with it. The darkness receded noticeably. “It’s working! Push the blasted thing to the edge of my mind!” With the darkness receding, as fast as Crystalyn swept her symbol forth, Jade expanded her bubble, reclaiming lost neural synaptic imbalances. Vague connections to some of her internal functions became available as the front of her mind came into view, apparent by the two cornucopia-shaped tubes leading to the back of her eyes.

  “See you on the outside,” reverberated through Jade’s thoughts along with a black snarl of unbelievable rage from Crystalyn. Then nerve endings, muscles, and body weight crashed upon Jade making her reel. Sight returned all at once with skull-searing brightness. She nearly swooned, only saving herself from a fall by snapping her eyelids closed.

  When she opened them, Crystalyn was close, her blue eyes round and moist. Her wonderful sister, the best sibling ever on two worlds, no any, leaned forward putting her forehead against hers.

  “I am so glad to have you back, my sister,” Crystalyn said.

  Tears blurred Jade’s vision. “I couldn’t have done it without you. How did you do it?” she asked, sobbing with relief between each question.

  Crystalyn wrapped her in a fierce hug. “The ability to move along neural pathways is an aspect of the healing symbol, I suspect. But the symbol requires guidance in order to perform the right mend. I’ve adapted it to include mind afflictions,” she replied, breathing softly beside her.

  Crystalyn’s scent and the sound of her voice was uniquely her sister’s—all strength and determination with an underlying vulnerability. Jade had smelled and heard it all her life and loved the warmth and security it gave her, though she only now recognized it for what it was. “Though it’s too bad I cannot use it to cure my own broken mind,” Crystalyn added, nearly under her breath as she moved away.

  Jade had heard it though. “No! Don’t think that way, Crystalyn! Broken or not, I love you the way you are, don’t change.”

  Hastel lowered his axes, one in each hand. “What just happened? Why did it leave?”

  “Why did the flicker withdraw to the shadows?” Lore Rayna asked right after.

  “Not leaving, fleeing,” Jade corrected.

  “Methinks we should go after it and destroy it then,” Atoi said.

  Broth moved beside the little girl, his great form throwing her into shadows.

  Crystalyn looked to the east; she seemed to know the way the vile thing fled.

  As Jade had known, the thing’s malice left behind a fading sense of arrogant evilness. Even though it fled at a colossal rate of speed, it still believed itself far superior than they. Not the flicker. The great malice that rode within the fleeing monstrosity.

  Crystalyn looked at Atoi and Broth, shaking her head. “That thing is moving faster than we can travel, even for you, Broth. Besides, I don’t want you confronting it, the creature and the evil with it, nearly overcame both my sister and I.”

  Hastel sheathed both axes with one fluid movement. “What creature with it? We only saw one.”

  Jade sniffed and wiped away a final tear. “Something dark and vast, more than a flicker. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it isn’t just a flicker.”

  Crystalyn glanced at her sharply and then back to the rest of the little group circled protectively around them. “Well, there you have it. We let it go, for now.”

  Hastel’s broad, grizzled face swiveled between the two of them. “There’s something you’re not telling us, but it can wait. We should keep moving. Stick with the original plan?”

  Crystalyn looked up at Lore Rayna and smiled. “I take it you’re here for a reason. I mean, besides giving a warning to dangers when sorely needed. I owe you a lot for that. A minute later may have
been too late…”

  The big woman’s eerie, glowing eyes brightened, but her beautiful, round face stayed placid. “You would have done the same had the situation been reversed. Do not think of my timely arrival as counting toward my life debt to you; it does not. Nonetheless, you are correct. I have sought for you. The Vale is in grave danger. Bad things attack and burn our beautiful Vale. Dark creations stalk the land. Dire portents and momentous events have occurred and have yet to occur. With some of these, you are mentioned.”

  “Yes, yes, we know about the codices, how Jade is an anomaly, and I’m the ruination or savior of everything,” Crystalyn said. The impatient tone of her voice matched her words. “Can we get through to the Vale?”

  “I believe I can get us there,” Lore Rayna replied, though she didn’t sound confident.

  Feeling weak after the encounter, Jade shivered. At least the tunnel was gone, replaced by a wide swath of bare earth; with the characteristics of the rubble brush though, it wouldn’t last long. “Please, let’s move away from this foul place,” she said.

  “What codices?” Hastel asked.

  Crystalyn kept her eyes on Lore Rayna. “Not now, Hastel. Jade’s right, we should leave this place, it’s not safe. Lead the way, Lore Rayna. Broth will help, alerting me if you two run across Dark Users or something.”

  Hastel scowled. “You’ll probably never tell me then, you rarely do,” he grumbled as he moved behind Atoi, taking rear position.

  Crystalyn clasped Jade’s hand and led her into the forest using the path Lore Rayna and Broth had taken.

  Jade glanced back. Hastel still frowned. She found it hard to feel sorry for him. Knowing what the codices foretold would not lighten his mood.