Marked

by Dean Murray

  "I don't feel anything. Do you think I need to be closer?"

  "No, I think it doesn't work on you. I think that Dream Stealer designed the exit to be as impenetrable as possible to me within the rules of this place, but he never even considered that I might have help from the outside."

  "Okay, well, I guess there's only one way to be sure."

  I reached out and grabbed hold of one of the bars with my right hand, unsure whether I was going to have my soul pulled out through my fingernails, or whether the experience was going to be completely anticlimactic.

  I was completely unprepared for a third option.

  When I was in ninth grade I got hit in the face with a basketball during gym class. I can still remember how it felt at the exact moment the ball hit me. When you're completely unprepared for something like that the shock is more than just physical. It was like the ball hit my face and the force of the blow continued past my skin and bone and tore something inside of my brain.

  This was like that. When I touched the bar it delivered a shock that wasn't electrical, but which still rocked me back on my heels. I tried to let go, to distance myself from the bar, but my arm felt almost disconnected from the rest of me.

  I dropped to my knees, but I retained just enough awareness to yell at Alec. "Stop, don't get any closer."

  "What just happened, Adri?"

  I opened my mouth to tell him that I didn't know, but before I could get the words out I realized that my eyes were closed…they were closed but I could still see everything around me.

  All of my senses seemed to have been thrown into overdrive. I could hear Alec's heart beating from three feet away, could smell one of the creatures—one of the shadows—approaching from more than a mile away. I was aware of my body in ways that I'd never been aware before.

  The dull pain in my arm beat a slow counterpoint to the sharp pain of my headache and it seemed almost as though I could feel each separate pain neuron firing off to tell my brain which parts of me had been pushed too far.

  I felt a god-like sense of awareness regarding what was going on around me, but all of that paled in comparison to the scene that had painted itself on the backs of my eyelids. Alec was still a figure of pure, silvery light, but he was less distinct now—like someone had poured white fire into a container that was only vaguely man-shaped.

  Alec was brighter now too, but that was only the beginning of what I could see. Every single bit of our environment seemed to be made up of shining golden threads that were so fine even my new vision almost couldn't see them.

  It would have been impossible to trace it all back to its source by following one of the threads, but it turned out that I didn't need to find the source that way. Instead I merely followed the brightness of the light coming off of the threads. They got dimmer the further away from us they were, but they never truly went completely dark.

  I turned my head, surveying the furthest extent of the dreamscape we were trapped in. The miles of distance that it covered didn't serve as any kind of impediment to my sight, I could see it all. The pyramid was exactly as Alec had described, a hulking stone edifice in the exact center of the jungle.

  I saw the remaining shadows that were slowly closing in on our cave and felt a tremor of fear at facing six of them at once, but even terror wasn't capable of tearing my mind away from the vista before me.

  The black, glassy walls stretched around the jungle, unbroken just as Alec had guessed, except for the spot where we were standing. From the ground previously I hadn't been able to follow them up very far, but now the darkness concealed nothing from me and I traced their route up as they arched back over top of us and met miles above in a black dome.

  In every direction I looked but one, golden threads wove an impenetrable barrier. Alec had been right, there was no other way out. These bars were the key, but in more ways than just one. The threads all got brighter the closer they got to us, but it was the bars that were where the brightest threads were located.

  They were so bright that I couldn't see the misty landscape on the other side of them, but they weren't so bright that I couldn't see the glowing rope that ran from Alec to the bars. Even as I watched, Alec— nearly overcome by worry for me—shifted closer to the bars and the threads that made them up got even brighter as the rope between them and Alec swelled with yet more light.

  I brought my injured left arm up and watched as my free hand got closer to the bars. Tiny golden threads shimmered into existence, joining me to the bars with ribbons of light that flowed only in one direction.

  "You were the key all along. It really is devouring us, but you most of all. You should be dead already…"

  "Adri, what are you saying? Come away from there, I don't like what it's doing to you."

  I looked more closely at Alec and felt my vision sharpen yet again. There were other threads attached to him, threads that I could somehow feel weren't stopped by the walls that Dream Stealer had built around Alec.

  Light flowed along these as well, some in one direction, some in the other, but I got the feeling that the net effect was positive. It was the only explanation for why Alec was still alive after days of having his light pour out to sustain the very prison entrapping him.

  "You said that you found this cave on one of your first days here?"

  "Yes. Why?"

  "You didn't think that was odd? Dozens, maybe hundreds of miles' worth of wall and you came directly to the exit. It boggles the mind."

  "I…I could feel it pulling at me. No matter where I go inside of this place I can still feel it."

  I opened my mouth to explain what it was I could see, but instead a harsh, almost mocking laughter came out. There was an edge of hysteria to it that scared me, but I couldn't seem to stop. I'd seen stuff that the human mind wasn't equipped to deal with, and now I was paying the price.

  "Adri…"

  Whatever Alec was going to say was interrupted as the world around us shivered. There was no telling what Alec saw, but for me the rate at which the bars sucked light out of Alec increased noticeably and I could see the light being sucked from the threads by another creature of light that had materialized at the pyramid. That was enough to cut off my laughter.

  "Dream Stealer just arrived, Adri. We need to get you somewhere safe."

  "I know, I can see him. There isn't anywhere safe for me to go though. It's too late to get to your hiding spot."

  I tugged on the bars with my right hand, but it was pointless. I wasn't strong enough to bend metal—for that you'd need the muscles of a hybrid at the very least. I started to tell Alec to run and then I noticed the feather-light weight of my sword which was still leaning against my chest.

  "Alec, take my sword."

  "I don't know how to use it, Adri. It won't be enough for me to stop Dream Stealer."

  "No, not to use against Dream Stealer, to use against the bars. It's the obvious solution."

  Alec shook his head as he started back the direction we'd come, obviously intent on making sure that he wasn't going to have to worry about being pushed back into the bars during his fight with Dream Stealer.

  "I already tried that. I tore a small tree out of the ground when I first found the bars and tried to use it to knock a hole in the gate while staying back far enough that I wasn't being drained, but it didn't work."

  I grabbed my sword and ran after Alec, desperate to convince him before Dream Stealer arrived.

  "No, you don't understand. Anything from this place isn't going to work because it's all you and the bars are designed to stop you. Use my sword; it comes from somewhere else. Look, no threads."

  Alec didn't seem to have heard me. He'd already started walling the external world out, leaving himself just enough awareness to be able to fight while burying as much of his core identity as possible down where Dream Stealer would have a hard time getting at it once the torture commenced.

  I could see Dream Stealer headed our way. He was moving faster than any living thing should
have been able to move and I knew that we had only seconds left. I dropped my sword and wrapped both arms around Alec's arm in an effort to stop him.

  "Trust me, Alec, please trust me. This is the solution!"

  Something got through to him. I couldn't tell whether it was the sound of my voice, the feel of my bodyweight hanging from his arm, or the clear bell-like note that rang out as my sword hit the rock under our feet, but something made him stop and look at me.

  "You're sure?"

  "Yes, but hurry. Dream Stealer is almost here."

  Alec turned and scooped up my sword with one smooth motion. I wanted to yell at him to run faster, but I knew he was hurrying as fast as he could already—it was only my altered time sense that made it seem otherwise.

  I followed after him, but whatever I'd done to myself to make me able to see and think as fast as Alec wasn't enough to actually let me match his speed. I looked towards the bars as he got nearly to within striking range, and neither his body nor the stone blocking my line of sight was sufficient to stop me from seeing the golden pillars that he needed to destroy.

  The rope running from Alec to the bars tied into their middle and then from there the light fed out of the tops and bottoms of the bars to the rest of the nightmare world around us.

  "Cut free the middle third of each bar. Hurry!"

  My sword was like a living flame in Alec's hand, and now that it was further away from me I could see the silvery thread that ran from me to the weapon. Alec lifted my sword in both hands and then lashed out with it.

  The impact of my weapon against the metal bars was an event that happened on multiple levels, some of which I was only vaguely aware of. It sounded like someone had struck a huge bronze bell, but I barely noticed because of the way the world around us seemed to quiver.

  I looked back at Dream Stealer and saw him stumble and fall to one knee, in the split second before the white line of my sword flickered. It was like someone reached into my gut and started pulling my insides out. My headache reached new levels at the same time that strength started pouring out of me.

  There was a split second there where I could have severed my link to the sword. The temptation was almost overwhelming, but I forced myself to feed more strength into it instead. Without the sword we weren't going to be able to get out and I was willing to pay any price to free Alec.

  The light flowing down the thread towards my sword grew to the point where I could see it even when I looked away, but this time when Alec slashed through the bar it cut much more cleanly and didn't flicker in time with the blow.

  The second blow had cut one of the bars entirely free and I rejoiced as all of the threads around us got a little darker. Alec gasped as the bar hit the stone floor and disappeared. His glow was brighter now and he stood taller as he cut through the top of the second bar. More importantly the destruction of the first bar seemed to have slowed Dream Stealer's progress. He was running more furiously now than he had been before, but whatever advantage he'd enjoyed when he'd arrived seemed to be gone—he wasn't any faster than a normal hybrid.

  Another blow with the sword and the second bar dropped away. I thought my head might split in two, but I managed to keep from crying out until Alec made the first cut on the third bar. Each of the blows had taken something out of me, and now that Alec was regaining some of his strength he wasn't resting as long between blows.

  My scream brought Alec around. "Adri!"

  "Keep going, cut a big enough hole for you to get through."

  He took me at my word and sheared through the bottom of the third bar. I tasted blood and realized that I'd bitten down on my tongue in an effort to keep from screaming. I hadn't succeeded and Alec ran over to me.

  "Adri, you're bleeding!"

  Alec had somehow shifted forms without me noticing. I tried to tell him that I was fine, that the blood was nothing, that my tongue would be okay, but there was too much blood hitting the stone floor for it to be just coming from my mouth. Alec's fingers on my cheek came away wet.

  My eyes were bleeding, but that was just a symptom. I could feel my soul starting to tear free of my body as the stress of keeping my sword from shattering pushed me beyond the limits of anything my ability had ever been meant to do.

  "He's almost here. One more bar, Alec. Cut through one more and then you can shift to human form and get us both out."

  "Not if it's going to kill you."

  Alec dropped my sword to the rock next to me and then shifted back to his hybrid form. A few seconds previously he couldn't have gotten close enough to attack the bars with his claws—he had barely been able to get close enough to hit them with my sword—but with each destroyed bar the amount of light being drained away from him had decreased to the point now where he had no problems walking right up to the grate blocking our escape.

  Alec's claws stretched out to full extension and then he hit the next bar in sequence with a titanic amount of force. Whatever his claws were made of was sufficiently hard and strong for the task and the top of the bar was sliced away, but Alec staggered as though he'd been punched in the stomach.

  Contact with the bar, even just once, had sucked a tremendous amount of light from Alec. He staggered away from the grate, desperately trying to catch his breath, but Dream Stealer was close enough now that Alec could hear him crashing through the underbrush. We were out of time.

  Alec turned back towards the grate and slashed at the bottom of the last bar we needed removed in order to escape. I grabbed my sword up off of the stone floor and used it as a crutch to get myself back to a standing position as I yelled for him to stop, but he was already in motion by the time the words left my mouth.

  Alec's claws cut through the bar, which shattered as it hit the ground, and then his body shimmered and he was back in his human form and falling towards the metal spikes left at the bottom of the grate after he'd cut the bars away. I felt something tear inside of me as Alec was impaled through the stomach by two of the bars.

  The sight of the shards of metal sticking out of his back was almost enough to make me vomit, but I steeled myself as I reached his side and picked him up by his waist. I wasn't even close to being strong enough to lift all of Alec's bodyweight—especially with my left arm not working correctly—but Alec hadn't lost consciousness and did what he could to help lift up his midsection.

  "You need to go, Adri. There isn't any time."

  "I'm not leaving you, Alec. You're dying, I have to get you back to the real world—maybe Dom can heal you this time."

  "I can't die here, I'll just lie there until my body heals enough for me to move again. It's happened a dozen times already."

  I pulled upwards as hard as I could and his body finally came free of the metal spikes. I pushed him the rest of the way through the grate and then picked up my sword as I heard footsteps behind me. The thing that came around the corner was only slightly bigger than a hybrid, but other than that and the fact that he was full of light instead of darkness, it was the same creature I'd been running from in my nightmare the morning of the ambush.

  I was meeting Dream Stealer for the second time and I was already wounded and tired.

  "You should have done what he said, Adri. You're lower down my list, but I will be coming for you eventually. You needn't be so eager to remain in my care."

  "I'm going to kill you."

  "You hardly seem in any condition to be making threats, child. You can't even open your eyes. How are you going to beat me without the use of your sight?"

  My crazy laugh was back. It was the same borderline hysterical cackle as from before, but this time I welcomed it.

  "I don't need these eyes to be able to see you. I can see you better this way—I can see everything better this way. I can see the way that you've been stealing Alec's light. You're weaker now that you don't have as many bars funneling his strength toward you."

  I'd clearly caught him off guard, but it only took him a second to regain his equilibrium. "Fancy tricks won't sa
ve you here, Adri. This is my domain. I've been hunting here for longer than your parents have been alive."

  "I'm not scared of you, Dream Stealer. I'm coming for you in the real world. You can beat me here, but it's only a matter of time before I find you and when that happens even people who don't like me are going to fall in line to make sure that they get a chance to put you down. How many people have you ruined over the centuries? How many packs have you forced to bend their knees to you? All of those people, all of their friends and families are going to be gunning for you."

  "I've touched more lives than you can imagine, but that's irrelevant because you're never leaving here. You're not like Alec, you're like me. You're here more strongly than a casual dreamer—it gives you the power to change things you shouldn't be able to change, but it means you can be hurt, means you can be killed."

  I hefted my sword and smiled. "Thanks, it's nice to know ending you here will save me having to hunt down your body to make sure that you're really gone."

  He looked at the six-foot-long jet of living flame that was my sword with a trace of uneasiness and then shook himself and smiled. "You're just a human."

  His attack was fast—much faster than Alec had been moving, but enough of my altered time sense still remained for me to see him coming. Even so, having something that big lunging toward me was too intimidating for me to charge forward and meet him.

  I hopped backwards, easily clearing the spikes that were still wet with Alec's blood, and stabbed him in the stomach with the point of my blade a split second before he hit the grate with so much force that the entire mountain above us shook.

  I was feeling quite pleased with myself until I stopped falling backwards. For a second I couldn't figure out what had happened. I'd made it safely through the grate and the opening I'd used was much too small for him to fit through in his current form.

  I was safe and the fact that I'd managed to wound him in the process was just an added bonus. If he tried to come through the grate I would have no problem taking his head off before he could get through and have space to move around again.