Ascension

by Sophia Sharp

  Laura looked at the mountain. There, solidified rivers of lava ran down its side, long since crusted over in an unforgiving black. The mountain had erupted once, very long ago, and since that time the earth had not recovered.

  LAURA.

  Laura jerked around. She heard the voice in her head. Gabrielle was speaking to her. But, how? Could he reach her when she was inside the dreams of an elder?

  LAURA. It sounded like Gabrielle was shouting, straining to be heard over a great distance. LAURA, YOU HAVE ARRIVED IN THE DREAM. HEED MY WORDS, FOR THEY MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE. His voice echoed strangely, creating an uncomfortable dissonance in her head. EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS FALSE. NOTHING CAN BE TRUSTED. REMEMBER THAT, AND YOU WILL BE SAFE. SAFE…

  His voice trailed off, dying away to silence. Laura was sure that speaking to her here took a lot out of him. She fingered the figurines inside her pocket. Everything that she saw was false? She was not sure what that meant. But she did not have to think twice about the other thing Gabrielle said. She wouldn’t trust anything here if her life depended on it.

  She looked around again. The land was eerily quiet. Not only was there no life here, other than her, but there was also no movement. She could not feel the wind on her face, nor the sun’s warmth on her skin. The whole thing was like being in a sealed vacuum. It just didn’t feel right.

  Now that she was here, though, what was she to do? Find the elder whose dream this was, of course, but how? She had no idea where she was, or where he would be. When the torrial brought her into his dream, it transported him here as well. Of course he would know somebody was coming. Even so, it was only her and him in this barren land. And, thanks to the torrial, she had the upper hand. She set out to search.

  The only landmark visible was the mountain. Surely, if the torrial brought her to this exact location, there was reason for it. It was painfully obvious the mountain was where she needed to go. She turned toward it, and ran.

  She ran over the hard earth as fast as her Vassiz-enhanced speed would take her. Every time her left heel struck the ground, a dull wave of pain shot up through her leg. She ignored it. Now was not the time for self-pity. Now was the time for action, and haste. Every second that ticked away was a second lost.

  She ran toward the mountain at full speed, but it did not seem to get any closer. In fact, the distance to it appeared to stretch out before her, lengthening the harder she ran. She picked up speed, going faster, and the mountain moved even farther away. She stopped. What she was doing was like a dog trying to catch its own tail. She could not get to the mountain this way.

  But how, then? And, why was the mountain behaving that way? She was the one who was supposed to have control over the world, not be subject to its whims. Running would get her nowhere. Maybe it was like back in the ethereal matrix – physically moving disturbed the balance holding everything in place. She had to take advantage of the properties of the dream, now, not fight against them. She closed her eyes, and willed the mountain to move closer to her.

  She opened them. The mountain was in the same place, far in the distance, mocking her. Why didn’t it working? Before, in the dream realm, all she had to do was will something to happen and it did. But this was not the pure dream realm that she knew; rather, it was some elemental piece of it that existed within an elder’s mind. Perhaps that made it behave differently.

  Well, if she could not move the mountain closer, perhaps she could prevent it from moving further away. She focused her eyes onto it, and seared the image in her mind. She took a step forward. The mountain did not move. She took another step. Again, the mountain did not move away. She took a series of steps, unable to run because of the focus required to keep the mountain in place. Thankfully, the landmark did not move away.

  She relaxed a little, easing her focus, and instantly the mountain propelled itself farther. She growled irritably. Was the balance here so precarious she could not lose focus, even for an instant, to get to the mountain?

  Suddenly she remembered the three torrial in her pocket. Alexander had said they afforded the user better control over this place. Control was what she needed.

  She reached in and pulled the figurines out. She looked at them. She did not know how to use them, how to activate any of them. Perhaps simply holding them was enough? She tried, but could not see the blue light that was characteristic of torrial. There was something else that triggered them.

  She examined the three figurines. All were depictions of females dancing. But there was something more to them. The way the arms and legs extended on all of them, it looked as if the three were made to be linked. Laura squatted to the ground and laid them out. She picked up two, and brought them together so the arms touched. Immediately, they clicked into place, as if there were tiny but strong magnets within the extremities. The two figurines made up two-thirds of a circle. Laura took the third torrial and linked it to the others. It also clicked into place. And as soon as that happened, an unearthly blue aura appeared around the shape.

  Laura picked up the newly-formed circle. Its circumference was no larger than the palm of her hand, and the figurines blended seamlessly into one another. The aura it gave off shone with the light she was expecting.

  She turned her attention back to the mountain before her. The jagged shape of the huge slab of rock reminded her somewhat of an upside down fang. She hadn’t notice it before, but there was a certain curve to the side of the mountain unlike any she had ever seen. The mountains that surrounded her old Washington home were all hard slopes and angles. This one, however, had that peculiar curve. She wondered why that was, and if it meant anything.

  It didn’t matter now. She had to reach that mountain, and fast. Time was ticking away. Feeding off the power emitted by the torrial, she cemented the image of the mountain in her mind. Then she imagined it staying in place, rooted to the ground that was linked to her. If the mountain moved, so would the earth she stood on. It would not be able to outrun her this time.

  She took a few steps forward, and the mountain did not move away. That was to be expected – she had managed as much without the help of the torrial. The trickier bit was what came next. If she walked the entire way to the mountain, it might take her hours; if she ran, she would be there in mere minutes. But she could not focus on the mountain staying in place if she ran.

  Slowly, tentatively, she relaxed her focus. She felt the power flowing outward from the torrial, enhancing whatever she did. Bit by bit, she eased her concentration. And took a few steps toward the mountain. At the first hint of the giant slab of rock beginning to slip away, she stopped and refocused at the previous level.

  She focused less and less, walking toward the mountain, until the impression of it in her mind was almost an afterthought. Without the torrial, even a single lapse in her concentration would send the mountain jetting away. But with it, it seemed, she had exponentially more control. She barely even had to think about the mountain to keep it there.

  She started to run. The concentration level required for her to keep the mountain still was miniscule. So much so that she did not even need to find the lower limit anymore. She could run toward it with the level she was currently at.

  She picked up speed, feeling the torrial feeding her control from the palm of her hand. The mountain did not move away. She ran faster, skimming over the dark and desolate rocks of the plain. Not even boulders stood here, in the barren land surrounding the mountain. It was just dark, parched stone. Laura ran over it all, racing toward the mountain’s bottom.

  As she got closer, the sheer size of the mountain began to dawn on her. For one, it was much farther than she expected, which meant that it was much taller than she thought. It looked like the part that extended past the clouds would be at least as tall as the part leading from the earth to the clouds. And for another, she was becoming less sure of how she was going to scale that rock.

  From far away, she had assumed she would be able to simply climb up. The angle of the slope was steep, yes, bu
t not so steep as to give her no way up. As she was getting closer, she began to realize that the mountain was not made of angular slopes. Instead, it was a fortress of solid, vertical slabs of stone. Each one of them was as wide as a football field and at least three times as tall. There was no way she would be able to get up that.

  She ran even faster. The only way she could think of was to follow the solidified rivers of lava up. Except that, she could now see, the lava had not cut through any of the enormous slabs of stone. Instead, it had pooled to the edge and then fell right off, vertically like a waterfall. She hoped the tuff would be porous enough for her to scale.

  Finally, she arrived at the bottom of the mountain. The torrial allowed her to reach it, and she silently thanked Logan and the others for giving her the three figurines. They had been right about her lack of experience – she doubted any of them would have had problems keeping the mountain in place.

  She stopped, and looked around. The enormous slabs of rock jutted out right from the ground. They connected to each other in such a way that there was no break in the façade, no space between them Laura could use to climb the mountain.

  She glanced up. The peak of the mountain wasn’t even visible from where she stood. It extended to a dizzying height in the sky. White wisps of cloud swirled around the mountain, giving the impression of an eddy. The sun that shone overhead provided neither warmth nor life.

  Absently, she wondered why Gray had not followed her here, or even if he would. Then she shook her head. She couldn’t waste time wishing for things that didn’t exist.

  Laura considered her options. She could try to scale each one of the rock slabs individually, providing the overflowed volcanic rock gave her enough grip to climb. But doing so would take entirely too long, especially when she did not know how high the mountain extended above her.

  She knew she could not jump nearly high enough, either. Then, abruptly, she remembered something Logan had done the first time that he brought her to the dream realm. When they were sitting on the hood of his car, with her still unaware they were even in the dream realm, he had pushed himself off and… floated… through the air. Laura hadn’t had much experience in the dream realm since then. How had he done that again? He said the trick was not to make yourself gravitate, but rather to push the entire rest of the world down.

  Laura traced her fingers over the torrial in her hand. With that, she had been able to keep the mountain in place. Surely it would be enough for her to do what she needed? Logan had only managed to lift himself a few feet off the ground. She would need much more than that.

  She backed away from the mountain. At the very least, she would have a running start. After she had given herself enough distance, she gripped the torrial tightly. It would be the only way she could get to the mountain’s top.

  She sprinted toward the mountain, and leapt. At the same time, she focused all her energy on pushing the world around her down, through the torrial.

  The world moved with such unexpected force that Laura found herself hundreds of feet in the air, arms and legs flailing, falling quickly toward the ground.

  Quickly, she relented on the force she was sending through the torrial, and caught herself in the air just as the mountainside the opposite way to meet her. She landed forcefully, and with less grace than she hoped, sending a jolt of pain through her entire body. Her injured leg cried out in protest.

  It took her a few moments to ward off the pain in her leg. When it subsided, slightly, she hobbled to the edge and looked down. Laura marveled at the sight. She had made it up not just onto the first enormous slab of rock, but onto the third one. No wonder the landing hurt.

  She looked around her. The top of the slab was much like the side: bare, dark rock. The angles of it were so perfectly straight that it looked like it had been carved by a human hand, rather than created by forces of nature. But Laura knew that the dream realm mirrored the real world, and so this mountain must have been formed naturally.

  She had a higher vantage point now than before, and saw that the entire land around the mountain was flat and bare. It extended in all directions as far as she could see, ending only at the horizon. Scaling the mountain seemed to have been the right choice: it was the only thing around here for miles. And, of course, there must have been a reason the torrial brought her before it.

  She turned and looked up. The mountain continued on as high as she could see, connecting the enormous slabs of rock to one another in a pyramid that rose higher and higher. Now more in tune with how strongly the figurine torrial magnified her power, Laura ran forward, jumped, and pushed the world down.

  This time, her control was better. She went up into the air just high enough to land deftly on the next highest peak. She smiled. The verticality she achieved with the torrial was thrilling. Scaling the mountain like this was actually fun.

  She ran toward the next rock, jumped, and pushed the world down again. Once more, she timed it all to land perfectly on the next peak. Not wasting any time, she ran at the next slab, jumped, and pushed the world down. She landed and kept moving, running toward the next slab and jumping up, pushing the world down, and landing gracefully. Over and over she repeated the process, until she had reached the first level of clouds.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ~A Cabin~

  That was when Laura stopped and did a double take. The mountain that she was sure extended high into the sky simply stopped. It was as if the upper half of it had been cleaved right off.

  She looked back over the edge, and couldn’t see anything below the cloud. She was becoming less sure that this mountain was a natural formation. It cut off right when the clouds, and not an inch lower or higher. From the ground, anybody would be right to assume that the menacing mountain would just keep going up. But it did not. Instead, it plateaued strangely.

  Laura took a step forward. Here, the mountain was shrouded in cloud, and the misty fog made it difficult to see very far. Was this it? Had she arrived where she needed to go?

  That would make sense, except that there was nothing there. Well, nothing that she could see immediately, anyway. The fog from the clouds prevented her from seeing farther than twenty feet away.

  She picked her way forward carefully. She might have expected there to be howling winds up here, but there was absolutely nothing. The air was still, keeping the clouds at bay. Why was it that she thought she saw them swirling before, when she was on the ground? Nothing about this place made much sense.

  The top of the mountain might have been anywhere from a few miles to a few hundred feet in diameter, and Laura would not have known the difference. Once she stepped away from the edge, misty cloud just swallowed everything up.

  She proceeded forward carefully. She was acutely aware that this was not just any random place in the dream realm; no, this was one of the Vassiz elder’s dreams. How much influence did he have over this place? She did not know. But she knew she had to find the elder before he did her.

  It was eerie how quiet it was up here. Not a single sound penetrated the white barrier of the cloud. Laura could barely even hear her own footsteps against the rock. There could be anything lurking beside her, and she would not even know of it until it was right on her.

  Laura kept walking until she saw a dark shape ahead. Instinctively, she froze. The shape did not move. She counted ten breaths to see if the shape moved at all. It did not. It was about the height of a man, although significantly wider than any she had seen. Laura crept forward carefully. She was on edge; she did not know what the shape belonged to.

  She came a little bit closer. The shape still did not move. In fact, from where Laura stood, it looked more like an upright rock than the figure of a man. She relaxed slightly. Hopefully, there was nothing to worry about.

  She walked even closer, until she was a mere ten feet away. The foggy cloud still obscured her eyesight, but she could now tell that the shape was no ordinary rock. It was the carving of an unclothed man, and he towered over her.
His back was to her, but she could see the heavy muscles running from his shoulders to his waist. She came closer, and started to circle around to look at him from the front when her foot caught on something.

  She nearly stumbled, but caught herself in time to avoid falling over. She looked down. There, carved into the ground, was an odd hollow that extended from the statue at her side out until it was hidden by the clouds. She couldn’t see where it led. But she noticed that it curved inward slightly, in the direction the man was facing.

  Laura turned her attention back to the carving of the man. She saw now, from up close, that the features of his face had washed away over time. The carving was probably ancient. Cracks ran along parts of the rock that made up the man’s torso. In one hand, he held a long spear, fixed sturdily to the ground. In the other, a circular shield, although the lower half of it had broken off a long time ago. It was nowhere to be seen.

  Laura wondered what the statue was for, and why it was here. She looked up at the face again. At one point, the eyes would have stared straight over her into the distance. At what? The carving reminded her of a guard, a sentry of some sort. She wondered what it was protecting.

  The curving hollow caught her eye again. Even though Laura could not see far, the way it angled inwards made her feel like it was part of a larger circle. She decided to investigate.

  Laura walked away from the statue until it was lost in the fog behind her. She followed the path of the hollow, staying to one side of it. It was about the width of her wrist, and maybe an inch or two deep. It made her think of a river bed, although what its purpose possibly was, she could not say.

  She was right about the curve of the hollow. It never strayed from its circular angle. Laura continued walking along the hollow, wondering where it led, when she spotted another shape in the distance. This one had the familiar form of the previous sentry. She walked up to it, unafraid, and found that it was a replica of the carving she had seen earlier. The wear on the rock was different, of course, and this one had his whole shield intact.