by Ramy Vance
Alex watched as her two worlds blended seamlessly together. Chine probably would have fit in nicely as well if he could have fit into the house.
Liza and George instructed Alex’s team and Vardis on how to set the table. Dinner hadn’t taken too long to cook due to the many hands at work. Alex even offered a little bit of help, even though she was a terrible cook. Setting the table was something she knew like the back of her hand. She’d spent years doing it blind.
Once the table was set, she helped her family and her team cart the food out. She hadn’t had human food cooked by human hands in a long time, and she had forgotten how much she loved her parents’ cooking.
When they were all seated, Liza proposed a toast. She raised her glass of wine and said, “To new friends and new adventures. To the people who keep my daughter safe!”
Alex couldn’t help smiling and looking at Jim. The night was going better than she could have imagined.
Across the table, Vardis reached for the pumpkin pie.
George clicked his tongue playfully as he passed the pie to Vardis. “You know, most places on Earth, you have to save dessert for last. Not in the Bound household, though.”
Vardis smiled politely and nodded. “I greatly appreciate your hospitality. The last planets I have visited have not been…” He looked at Alex, who mouthed the word “normal.”
“What I mean to say,” Vardis continued, “is that this is a beautiful meal. Thank you.”
Vardis cut a piece of pie and placed it on his plate. He watched everyone eating for a second before grabbing his fork and cutting himself a bite. He tossed the pie into his mouth and chewed slowly. “Oh, that is delicious.”
Suddenly, he screamed. His body convulsed, and his screams grew shriller.
Alex stood to go to Vardis when her head erupted in searing pain. She grabbed the back of her head as she lost her balance and fell to the floor. Whatever had happened to Vardis was happening to her as well.
Chapter Four
Alex couldn’t see anything but red. The pain she felt was beyond anything she’d ever experienced. It felt like someone was slicing her open, starting at the spine, dragging the knife, taking their time, carving up her nerves until they got to her brain.
When Alex opened her eyes, she saw her family and friends crowding around her and Vardis, who was still screaming. She wanted to reach out, ask for their help, but she couldn’t speak. Her jaw was clamped so tight she thought she was going to crack her teeth.
Another wave of pain wracked her, her back rigid as her hands clenched, frozen as if she were trying to hold onto something.
More pain, and still more. Her vision was starting to blur, the world around her fading. But not into darkness—into something more troubling and confusing. She watched herself on the floor, convulsing.
If Alex chose to look away, which she felt the strong urge to do, she could see stars flashing behind her as if they were rushing to be someplace. There were suns and moons, and they watched as Alex turned away from the small girl on the floor, quivering in agony.
Instead of staying, Alex walked through the cosmos, looking at whatever caught her attention. She was aware that the girl was still on the floor. So was the alien, but it didn’t matter. The stars were more interesting.
Alex continued to wander, stopping here and there at an interesting planet, wondering what scurried across its surface or if it had life at all.
Then without warning, the universe went cold. It hadn’t been warm before, but now it was freezing. Her bones ached from the sudden temperature drop. She hoped the girl she’d left behind was going to be safe.
She headed in the direction of the vicious breeze.
It was not long until Alex found what she was looking for. There was a small boy, pale as the whitest snow, wearing a fox-skin robe that reached his bare feet and a mask made from a deer’s skull. The cold was not coming from the boy, though. It emanated from what he was staring at.
Ahead of him was something like a planet but nothing like one at the same time. It had mass, but the surface swirled and moved as if the skin were revolting against itself. Occasionally tendrils of the black skin-like substance shot out from the planet as if it were grasping for something around it.
The cold came from the thing.
As Alex watched the living black planet, she saw it shudder and expand. The expansion was slight, and as it grew larger, everything around it grew colder for a second as if it were sucking out the life of all that surrounded it.
Alex did not know why, but she wanted to reach out to the black planet, wanted to touch its slippery skin. She knew what would happen if they were to touch. It was a visceral knowledge, something that had been within her since birth and perhaps existed in all sentient beings.
Whatever that thing was, it would kill Alex if she touched it like it was killing that planet. One touch was all it would need. The black wasn’t part of the planet, it was the thing that was killing it, and it could spread easily.
While Alex was drawn to the planet, she was also disgusted. Whatever had caused this to happen was unnatural. It disturbed her on a primal level. If she’d had a body, she probably would have been sick to her stomach. Oh yeah, my body, she thought absentmindedly, looking over her shoulder as if she would see it trailing behind her.
The little boy ahead turned to face Alex, his eyes glowing white-hot behind his mask. “What are you doing here? I didn’t think I would see you again.”
Alex heard the boy, but she had no idea what he was talking about. She stared at him blankly, wondering if that was his body or if he was like her—something outside of a body, floating about, trying to make sense of the universe in which it was merely a speck. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m not sure what I’m doing here, either.”
The boy pointed to the planet being swallowed up by a darkness vast and perverse. “That’s what he does. That’s how he eats them, and he wants to eat them all.”
“The Eater of Worlds.” Vardis had used that phrase to describe the Dark One. She had thought he was speaking metaphorically. He had explained how the Dark One took a planet’s resources. Alex hadn’t realized he meant the Dark One quite literally devoured planets from the inside.
What exactly was the Dark One? How could something that inhuman be able to control armies or create technology? What Alex was looking at right now didn’t seem to have any more intelligence than lichen or a fungus.
Then something changed on the planet’s surface. The earth broke apart, swirling as if caving in on itself, and something forced itself from the opening rent. Teeth lined the gash as something like a fetus forced itself out of the planet’s wound, its body frail and skeletal, its head encased in a shroud of some sort as clouds gathered, covering the thing’s obscene nakedness.
An eye opened in the caul. It was large and angry, and it turned its cyclopean gaze upon Alex.
The thing knew she was there. It had seen her. She was terrified.
The thing snarled, its tendrils pulsing as they caressed the surface. Another blast of cold hit them as the planet grew larger.
A voice called to Alex from the darkness far behind her, back where the body of the girl and the strange alien were laying. Alex! it shouted. Alex, come back!
Alex recognized the voice. It was Chine. What was he doing out here? Dragons couldn’t survive in space. Not without special equipment. She realized she couldn’t survive in space without special equipment either. How the hell was she out here?
Come back, Alex! Come back now!
Alex didn’t know if she should listen to the voice. Even though she was afraid of the thing clawing its way out of the tendril-filled planet, she knew it wouldn’t hurt her. Or at least, she thought it wouldn’t hurt her. She wasn’t like the rest of space. She was like the pale boy. Where had he gone?
Then without warning, Alex felt hands on her back. They pulled her hard, and she fell back into the body of the girl who was lying on the floor. Her eyes had rol
led back, and she was as rigid as a corpse.
Alex, back in her body, bolted upright fast enough to make everyone in the living room jump. Blood was pouring from her nose and her ears, and she felt sick to her stomach. When she tried to move, she fell over and coughed up a bloody black mass of something she would have preferred not to look at. Then she passed out.
When Alex woke up, she was bundled in a blanket on the living room couch. Vardis was also wrapped in a blanket in her dad’s chair on the other side of the room. Liza and Gill were in the room, both of them looking worriedly at the rider. “What happened?” she groggily mumbled.
Liza rushed over and covered Alex’s forehead with kisses. “I didn’t think my pumpkin pie was that bad,” she managed to joke.
Alex laughed, but her stomach clenched, cutting her laughter off abruptly. “Your pie could never be bad enough to do that.”
Across the room, Vardis was staring at Alex with his deep, dark eyes. Gill was doing the same, but his gaze was much softer and worried as well. “It was an attack,” the alien said. “By the Dark One.”
Alex tried to sit up. Her body ached less, and she felt like she needed to start moving to ease her muscles’ cramps. “Why the hell would he attack me like that?” she asked. “He shouldn’t even know I’m here.”
“The attack was not on you, it was on me. As I told you before, we are linked psychically. I did not know that if someone invaded my mind to inflict harm on me, it would also affect you.”
Alex rubbed her head as she tried to focus. Everything still felt very fuzzy. “Wait, are you saying the Dark One knows you’re here?”
Vardis shook his head as he made a futile attempt to stand. “No, he does not. The Dark One is a powerful psychic. He does not need to know where I am to find me. All he needs to do is search out my mind. Usually, there are defenses up. Unfortunately, the meal provided to me was so delicious that I let my guard fall. It will not happen again.”
There were still things that didn’t make sense to Alex. “How come it stopped? If he caught you off-guard and I can’t defend myself, why did we all of a sudden stop being attacked?”
Vardis glanced at Gill, who was crouched in a chair, watching Alex closely. “Your friend did something he has yet to inform me about.”
When Gill spoke, it was with the measured attention to detail and pronunciation that Alex had started to realize stemmed from a lack of trust. “I connected your mind to Chine’s,” the drow said, “using my own. I amplified the telepathic link between you and the dragon until he was able to help you.”
Alex knew Chine had the ability to sense when she was in danger, but that was only good up to a certain amount of distance, and she was far beyond it. “Wait, are you saying you’re psychic too?” Alex asked, suddenly realizing what Gill was implying. She could see why he would have wanted to keep that a secret.
Gill tapped the side of his head as he slowly shook it. “No, I am not. There are some abilities that drow possess that I have, and one of them is the ability to increase the innate abilities of those around me.”
Liza’s face brightened as she realized there was something she understood. “Kind of like buffs in VR, right?”
“Exactly. All I did was amplify the connection you and Chine already have. It’s something I unconsciously do all the time, making Jollies more charming, Jim more adventurous, things like that. This was the first time I’ve tried to direct it, though.”
Alex half-wondered what Gill was amplifying about her when she was around, but that could wait for another time. “So, that was Chine who pulled me out of there?”
“Exactly.”
Alex looked around the room as she tried to hold everything together in her head. Her mind was still swimming. “Okay, now we know the Dark One can attack Vardis from anywhere. What do we do about it?”
Gill came over and sat next to Alex. “We move the plan up. We find this weapon and end this once and for all.”
Alex looked at her mom, trying to force a smile. “Sorry dinner got ruined, but we’ll have another one once this mission over. The next time, I won’t get attacked by a psychic planet.”
Liza hugged Alex, holding her tightly as she ran her hands through her daughter’s hair. “Be safe, sweetie. If that thing can hurt you like that here, you need to get rid of it as fast as possible. I’m so proud of you.”
Alex managed to pry herself away from her mom and stood. “Gill, get everyone ready. Time to put in an end to this.”
Chapter Five
Team Boundless arrived at the base before nightfall. They were all tense. No one had spoken much about what had happened at Alex’s home. There wasn’t much to say. It made her uncomfortable.
An explanation outside of Vardis’ would have been appreciated. It wasn’t that Alex didn’t trust the alien, she thought. Instead, it was that she was used to having information fed to her by Myrddin and Roy. She had to admit she’d been caught up in the chain of command. Having to think for herself in this situation was more than she’d expected.
That was not to say she was bitter about it. Initially, taking orders had been difficult for Alex. She’d have preferred to think for herself. Now she had to admit that there was a lot of comfort in knowing Myrddin usually had the answers.
Maybe Chine had something to help her get a better understanding of the situation. He was linked to her mind, and a strong enough telepath to pull her out of whatever that attack had been. There was a chance he might have learned something from the attack.
Team Boundless met Manny in the stables. He looked stressed out, all of his eyes whirling in a frantic way that made Alex uncomfortable. She hated seeing Manny stressed. He was incapable of hiding it, and naturally, it ended up freaking Alex out.
The dragons were already on the augment platforms. They had been outfitted with an apparatus that Alex had never seen before. There were tubes stretching from the dragons’ mouths and wrapped around their backs, ending at the spinal anchor each of them was fitted with.
Goggles had also been attached to the dragons’ eyes. Something that looked like an exoskeleton was being attached to their wings. It created the effect of having the bones of their wings on the outside, making them look bat-like.
Alex walked up to Manny as the rest of the team moved toward their dragons. “What’s all this?”
Manny hardly looked up from his paperwork, floating back and forth. Alex hated it when he did that. The Beholder’s anxiety was so intense that it was contagious. “What’s what?” he mumbled distractedly.
Alex gestured to Chine, who was fidgeting uncomfortably as human scientists fiddled with the tubes that had been inserted in his mouth.
Manny glanced up for a second before returning to his paperwork. “Oh, that? We’ve had to adjust for the dragons being in space. I don’t understand it all. You’re going to have to get the technicians to explain it to you. And I need you to explain some things to me.”
“You heard about what happened at dinner?”
His main eye gave Alex all his attention. “Of course, I heard about it.” Manny sighed. “Gill and Jim both reported it as soon as it happened. But neither of them was very clear about what was happening, so I expect you to fill in the details.”
Alex hoped she had a good enough understanding of what had happened to give Manny a satisfactory report. Truth be told, she was a little confused. She knew she’d been attacked telepathically by the Dark One due to her connection with Vardis, but she wasn’t certain what the attack constituted.
Her body had been in pain, but at the same time, she’d been outside of it. That was the part that was confusing to her.
Alex figured it was best to just tell Manny what she’d experienced. “Vardis was attacked by the Dark One. I was dragged into it as well because we have a link. A psychic one.”
All of Manny’s eyes focused on Alex. “Does Myrddin know about the connection?”
Alex shifted her weight from foot to foot. “Yeah, he does. He wasn’t hap
py about it. Made him more uncomfortable than I am. But we’re linked together. I guess whatever hits him telepathically hits me as well.”
“What happened? Jim said you were in a lot of pain.”
Alex tried to find the right words, but there weren’t any. “I was, at one point. My body was in pain, but my mind was detached. I was watching something. A planet. It was covered in some kind of black stuff, and then something like a baby came out of the planet and looked at me, but I don’t know if it saw me. That was what was hurting me.”
Alex took a second to think and see if she was forgetting anything important. “And that kid, the one I saw in the meteor? He was there as well. He said he was part of the Dark One.”
“He was the one who helped you blow up the meteor, wasn’t he?”
Alex thought back to what had happened then. She was annoyed that she couldn’t remember nearly as much as she wanted to. Was her mind intentionally hiding things from her?
After an extended period of silence while Manny waited patiently, Alex finally said, “I don’t know if he was trying to help me. At the time, that’s what seemed like, but now I don’t know. Everything is confusing, and it’s not like when I experience things in real life. I can remember those, and they don’t confuse me. But what happened on the meteor or just now? That feels like trying to remember a dream. Everything starts to fade, or it doesn’t make any sense.”
Manny’s eyes softened, showing that he was at least trying to understand. Whatever was happening with Alex was outside his experience. “Wait!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Can’t you see multiple realities or dimensions or something like that?”
A few of Manny’s eyes turned their attention back to the papers floating in front of him as if he were avoiding the conversation. “Yeah, I can. It’s not as simple as you’re probably thinking, but I can perceive dimensions and realms outside the one I’m currently in.”
