by Hanna Peach
“Israel wake up.”
Alyx shakes at Israel’s body but he lies still. She slips her hands under his limp form and pulls him up over one shoulder. Dammit. The window is too small to let both of them out like this.
Alyx hears a muffed voice outside the door, “Alzeke, the key. Now.”
The door thuds, the lock rattles behind her. She looks out the window. Two demons have rounded the corner and are drawing their demonswords. They see her too. Placing his sword in his teeth, one of the demons starts to climb the side of the house towards her, his feet scraping across the brick as he scuttles up. The other follows.
Alyx kicks the remaining shards of glass from the base of the sill. The lock clicks in place behind her. She swings Israel’s body, throwing it forward head first out of the broken window.
The door behind her bursts open. Alyx grabs at Israel’s feet and lets the weight of him pull her out through the window. She hears the sing of steel cutting through air and feels a slice of pain across her calf as she dives out. Alyx thinks she hears a girlish voice call Israel’s name.
They fall over the heads of the demons clinging to the wall. The dry grass, littered with pieces of glass, is coming up fast. Alyx yanks Israel towards her, grasps him around the waist and pulls up. His limp fingers knock against the ground as she swoops up, just in time.
She can hear them behind her, yelling in fury. She ignores the pain in her leg, lifts her head towards the clouds and rockets up.
Chapter 51
The back of her calf is still throbbing and bleeding when Alyx stumbles into the warehouse. Israel is still out cold as she lays him on the cold concrete slab. She rips up some material from a discarded tarp and makes a tourniquet. Her calf should have stopped bleeding by now. She feels dizzy. Light headed.
She brushes back the hair from Israel’s forehead and calls his name. He doesn’t stir.
Just going to rest my eyes, Alyx thinks as she lies next to him. She laces her fingers through his. He doesn’t stir. Won’t go to sleep, just resting my eyes.
The steel rafters across the high ceiling looks like cage bars and they flicker in and out of sight behind her eyelids. Alyx moves her head to get more comfortable and she hears the dirt under her shift.
Dirt?
Her eyes fly open. She is looking at a dirt ceiling. Her heart beats with horror when she realizes she is lying in the grey maze. This time the walls are closer in. A slight acrid smell of smoke hits her lungs.
“Hello precious.”
Michael has found her.
“Israel, wake up,” Alyx screams and launches to her feet. A searing pain shoots up through her calf. Even in the DreamScape she is still bleeding from her wound.
The air is thick like tar and she can’t fly through it. She limps along favoring her right leg. This time the change about her is keeping up with her. She can’t out run it. Everything is shifting too fast for her injured state.
“Please Israel, you have to wake me up.”
“Israel you have to wake me up. Help me Israel,” Michael’s voice echoes around her, mocking her. Alyx hears a crunch like gravel underfoot and snaps her head around towards it. No one behind her. She turns her head forward again only to find herself slamming against a solid wall that wasn’t there before. She pushes off the wall and runs in the other direction.
Michael’s voice crackles in her ear, “Want to see another trick, little girl?”
Her scream is cut off as her stomach drops into her throat. Her feet leave the ground. Her arms grasp for anything, finding only air.
Alyx falls against the dirt ceiling, landing hard. She pushes herself up and braces for the drop back down to the ground. But she stays stuck on the ceiling. She looks down.
No, down is now up. The floor is now the ceiling, as if Michael has turned the box that holds her upside down. Another trick.
“Boo.”
Alyx jumps to her feet, spins. No one behind her, just a wall.
A wall with a face. Alyx’s heart leaps to her throat.
Run.
But fear keeps her limbs frozen. The face grins. The brick-creature starts to pull itself out. The wall stretches as if the creature’s skin was made of stone and moss.
“I’m not scared of you,” Alyx says, trying to keep the shaking from her voice.
“Oh my dear, you have me all wrong,” the brick-creature says, pieces of mortar crumbling from his moving lips. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Liar.”
“I don’t deny that I like to play games, but it’s all just in good fun. Life can be such fun. You like having fun don’t you, Alyxandria?”
“I’ll never let you find us.”
He tilts his head. “Really?”
Alyx doesn’t see the mossy-brick arms stretching from the wall behind her. Stretching for her. They grasp her around her chest, pinning her arms to her side. She screams.
The brick-Michael leans close to Alyx as she struggles against the cold stone arms. “Show me where you are little girl.”
“No.”
Alyx tries desperately to think of something, anything else than Israel, lying beside her, unconscious, in the dark of the warehouse. But the more she tries not to think about him, the clearer her thoughts of him become. The walls around her start to swirl and shift.
“Help me,” she screams to the sky. Please Israel, wake up.
Calling for him only seems to make the walls shift faster. Grey stone swirls into the flat dusty floor. The grey ceiling above soars into the high warehouse rafters, the arms of the cranes start to drip down. Pieces of machinery start to form around her. Alyx screams again and bucks against her stony prison.
She hears the blade falling for her before she sees it. Alyx just has enough time to squeeze her eyes shut and brace for pain. She feels a jarring as the blade makes its impact. The blade missed her.
An inhuman shriek fills her ears and the tension behind her releases as the stony arms break apart around her. Her eyes fly open. Another swoop of blade and the face in front of her explodes into pieces. A hand, flesh and blood hand, grabs her and pulls.
Pale eyes like mint tea.
“Thank me later,” Jordan says. “Move.”
Jordan clutches her hand and takes off down another stony wall corridor as the wailing echoes around them. He is half-dragging Alyx. Her calf won’t let her move any faster. He looks down at her leg and grimaces. Before she can protest he sweeps her feet from under her and has her in his arms. Their eyes lock for a moment.
Jordan focuses his attention forward as he runs, Alyx clings to him with her arms around his neck.
As they turn another corner Alyx glances back over his shoulder. The walls are undulating towards them in a wave, pieces of stone and rock exploding off, as if some great hoofed beasts are thundering under the skin of the rock walls.
“Through here.” Jordan lets Alyx down near a small wooden door about half her height. Where has that come from? The wooden frame cracks as Jordan kicks the door open with his foot. The inside looks like dark and nothingness.
“Really?”
“Go, dammit.”
Behind them the beasts roar. The ground shakes. Alyx jumps into the dark feet first.
And lands in a field of blood.
Chapter 52
No. Not blood.
A field of poppies. Filled with so many poppies they cover as far as her eye can see. So many poppies like a sea of blood. They stand perfectly still, no wind to shift them.
Jordan lands next to her. The door suspended above them closes up into nothing.
“How did you do that?” she asks.
“No time. We can’t stay here. They’ll find us too easily.”
Jordan steps forward and drops to his knees. Where there was none before there is now another door, this time round and wooden, lying amongst the poppies.
“They?”
“Move now, talk later.”
He opens the door and it reveals another black ho
le. The sky far off in the distant starts to shake and crumble. Alyx doesn’t hesitate. She steps out over the hole and drops into nothing...
She lands on a plateau sparsely punctuated by trees, some way away from a cluster of simple houses, a snowy mountain range in the distance pointing at the sky with its blue and snowy tips. Jordan turns to a nearby tree trunk and opens another door. Alyx steps in without a word...
They keep moving, fleeing from Michael through DreamScape after DreamScape…
snowy fields…
the edge of a snaking river…
the base of a looming golden temple…
sand fills the space between her toes and Alyx gasps at the sensation. Soft white waves lick the shoreline beyond a glittering blue ocean.
“I think we are right to stay here for a short while, but not for long,” Jordan says, as he closes the door behind them, a smooth polished surface looking very out of place against a rocky cliff. Then the door isn’t there.
Alyx tears her eyes from the water and looks around. The small cove is crowded with white boats and colored sails. Behind the cove soars a steep cliff, on the top Alyx can just make out the peak of a turret. Back from the beach pink and cream houses are arranged like rows of coconut ice. Something seems very familiar.
Urielos. Alyx recognizes the coastal Seraphim city. She turns to Jordan. “Back there you said ‘they’.”
“That DreamScape you were trapped in was too powerful to be the work of one seraph, even an Elder as powerful as Michael. I suspect he must be using the powers of other DreamWalkers as well.”
The idea terrifies her. Michael using the other Elders’ powers...
“Is that even possible?”
“It’s very possible. The Seraphim can magnify the magics by working together but the Elders keep this secret.”
What other secrets are the Elders keeping?
“How did you find me?”
“I’ve been skimming your dreams since we first met, especially after you fled from Michaelea. You should let me teach you how to escape the DreamScape.”
Alyx shakes her head. “I’m not a DreamWalker. I can’t control the DreamScape.”
“You don’t need DreamWalker power to influence the DreamScape. The DreamScape exists in your subconscious. Your subconscious is what you can control. I can show you how.”
“I appreciate you saved me back there but I don’t even know you. And you’ve just admitted you’ve been stalking my dreams.”
“I won’t call what I do stalking. More, monitoring.”
“Monitoring?”
“That’s what I do. Help new Freethinker’s. I figured that you may need my help since, you know, since you’re too proud to ask for it.”
Alyx splutters. “Listen here Rogue...”
“Jordan. The name’s Jordan.”
“Listen Jordan, I’m not too proud, I just don’t need your help. I can take care of myself.”
“I’m not saying you can’t but,” Jordan places his hand on her arm, “you don’t have to do everything alone.”
Alyx stares at his hand, firm, strong, and considers what he is offering her. She shrugs his hand off. “I’ll be fine.”
“Just think about it, okay?” He frowns. “What happened to your calf?”
“I was running from a den. A Darkened sliced me with his sword.”
Jordan peers closer at her leg. “It can’t be possible.”
“You know what does this. Tell me.”
Jordan looks around them as if he suspects that someone may be listening. “Not here. We have been in here too long. When you wake, ring the tower of the church that I took you too the first time we met.” He lifts his hand towards her. “This won’t hurt.”
“What are you doing?” Alyx cries, as the world around her starts to dissolve.
“Letting you wake so Michael can’t get you for now. I’ll be watching just―.”
Before he finishes his sentence everything fades to white.
Alyx feels a lumpy mattress under her, a soft pillow under her head. An awareness of a dull throb somewhere on the lower half of her body. Someone’s fingers tracing her face.
She opens her eyes. Through her lashes Israel’s face appears above her, concern pressing his brows together. “You’re awake.”
“What happened?” she asks, rubbing her forehead, trying to piece together her last few memories. Everything at the moment is blurry.
“I was hoping you’d tell me. Last thing I remember you went into that demon house. I went after you. I reached a window and everything went black. When I woke up we were both lying on the concrete. You were moaning in your sleep.”
The memories come flooding back to her.
“Michael had me trapped in a DreamScape again.”
“I tried to wake you but suddenly you relaxed... Who’s Jordan?”
Jordan. His face flashes into her mind. She thinks about his offer to help, his offer to teach her to escape the DreamScapes, to tell her about the reason why her leg isn’t healing.
She realizes that Israel is waiting for her to answer him. “Jordan is this Rogue...”
“Rogue?”
“A Rogue is a Seraphim who has broken away from their society, someone who lives outside of their rules, outside the Code.”
“Like you.”
She said their rules, their society, as if she is no longer a part of it. “Yes, a Rogue like me.”
“You called his name in your sleep.”
“Jordan is another DreamWalker. He’s been watching on me since this whole thing started. He saved me from Michael. He has offered to help train me―.”
“Watching you?” Israel crosses his arms. “A friend of yours, then?”
“Not really. I’ve only met him once before. I don’t even know him.”
“But you’re going to let this Jordan train you?”
Alyx peers at him. “Are you angry at me?”
“No, why would I be. Have fun with your little Rogue boyfriend.”
“What? Israel you’re being― Ow.”
As Alyx sits up a sharp pain moves through her leg. She grimaces as she rotates her leg around to study her calf. The tourniquet has been replaced with an off-white linen bandage.
“It was still bleeding when I woke up.” Israel’s voice is softer now. “I bandaged it using stuff from an old first aid kit I found.”
Alyx unwraps the makeshift bandage. The bottom layers of bandage are soaked with dark blood. Her lips press into a line. The wound has started to scab over but wet blood still clings to the cut. She should be fully healed by now. She is healing like a mortal.
Alyx feels the oppress of fear on her chest... the missing Thread, the prophecy, the greater demons gathering at the den, now a flesh wound that won’t heal...
“I don’t know why I’m not healing.”
The last of Israel’s anger fades from his face, replaced with concern. “Maybe it’s a type of magic?”
“I’ve never heard of such a magic,” her voice cuts off as her throat closes with panic.
“Hey,” he guides her jaw with his fingers until she is looking at him, “it’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
No, we can’t. Alyx places her hands on his chest.
“I’m sorry, Israel.”
She pulls at the hidden DreamWalker ink at her ribs and pulses it into him. It doesn’t take much. His eyes widen before they close. He slumps forward into her arms and Alyx eases him down.
She brushes her lips against his in a goodbye.
Israel,
I’m sorry, but there is somewhere I have to go. It’s too dangerous for you to come with me. I know you wouldn’t have let me leave without you.
I will return. But if I don’t, don’t come looking for me.
Alyx.
Chapter 53
Alyx adjusts the fur cap on her head, a recent creation of hers, and presses further into the forest within the Michaelea wards. A bird squawks nearby and she jolts rustl
ing the leaves around her.
Stop jumping, she scolds herself. They won’t be expecting you to come back here so they won’t be on the lookout.
Alyx presses aside the leaves in front of her. There’s a light on inside Mayrekk’s hut. She is about to move forward when she notices movement near the entrance. From this angle she can’t quite make out who it is. Mayrekk? Alyx moves silently through the canopy leaves to get a better look.
There are two figures standing outside Mayrekk’s door, facing out at attention. Lightwarriors? What are they doing here? Are they guarding Mayrekk from something? Or guarding him? Did the Elders suspect that Mayrekk helped her? Did she cause him trouble? Alyx grits her teeth against the flood of guilt that runs through her.
She doesn’t hear him coming up behind her.
A hand closes over her mouth, another around her, trapping her arms to her side. She starts to struggle.
“Relax Alyx, it’s me,” a familiar voice whispers in her ear.
She stops struggling and the grip around her releases. Alyx blinks as she turns around.
“Passar?”
He places a finger over his mouth and glances towards Mayrekk’s hut. He motions for her to follow him. Alyx hesitates. Is this a trap?
She follows him but she unsheathes her sabre silently.
Passar leads her further around the mountain base away from the city. They are almost to the Hollows when finally he stops. He glances around the woods before turning to Alyx. His eyes drop to the sabre in her hands.
“I didn’t steal it, Passar. I’m being framed,” the words tumble out in a rush. She is vaguely aware that her sabre is shaking as she speaks.
Passar’s raises his hands in a show of placation. “It’s okay Alyx. I believe you.”
“You believe me?”
“You can put the weapon down.”
“Are you trying to trick me?”
Passar looks pained. “Are you really asking me that? I’m not the one brandishing a sword here.”
