by Sanders, Dan
“I have you now, Chosen One.” Theni’s scream stabbed Emily through the dark. Raising the pendant the girl pushed a deadly blast of red power at Emily’s head. Because Lupi was hovering with Emily, Theni had misjudged Emily’s height, and missed the most important step required for a complete and successful deharmonisation, a firm grasp with both hands on the victim’s head.
Lupi screamed as some of the brutal force of the mind-attack missed Emily and poured into her. She dropped Emily into a heap and grabbed the searing pain in her head. Her wings drooped and she sank to the ground unconscious.
Theni grabbed the red stone hanging from her neck and cursed, “I missed her head, Master.”
A voice in her head tried to calm her in Thoughtspeak. “All is not lost, dear one. Grab her head and connect again. Quickly.”
Emily’s unconscious body had rolled limply onto its side. Holding the blood-red pendant in one hand Theni fumbled with Emily’s rabbit legs, flicked her long ears onto the floor and reached for her head. As the girl’s fingers wound around Emily’s muzzle, the pendant touched Emily’s white forehead. A blast of red light filled the room and Emily’s body jerked in a deathly spasm.
“I have her, Master,” said Theni in Thoughtspeak. Saliva ran down her drawn lips.
“Concentrate. We must do this as we have practised. Remember the particle structure I showed you. She is a rabbit.”
“Yes. Yes, a rabbit. I will, I will, I will.”
Keeping her hands locked around Emily’s face, the girl sat astride to strengthen her grip. Lupi woke and shook her head. The murderer was impervious to anything outside the task yearning at her appetite for life force.
Theni’s hungry mind took charge again and stabbed red tendrils of power into Emily. She found the door to Emily’s mind. Strange, she thought. A door made of twigs and leaves and sap. Why would a powerful rabbit have such a door? Using the technique she had used in her previous deharmonisations, she slammed open the door, and hungrily bolted into an open cavern of the victim’s mind. Theni was startled at what she found. She was gazing over a precipice into space between two worlds; a small, pulsing, white light hung suspended in the middle.
“Master. Her mind is powerful. So very powerful. You did not tell me. She is struggling, alive inside. The initial blast was meant to kill her before my work commences. It’s not as you showed me.”
The dark voice in Theni’s head spoke firmly. “Move out of the way. Let me see into her. Maintain the physical connection. Always maintain the connection.”
Keeping her fingers locked on Emily’s still muzzle, Theni let her master’s mind go through hers and into the rabbit. After a moment he quickly withdrew and said, “Her transformation is more complete than I thought. Proceed carefully. We don’t have much time. She has not connected with her final element yet. Proceed as planned.”
“Yes, Master.”
Theni remembered all she had been taught and began working the deharmonising schema into Emily’s mind. It was like healing the mind but in reverse. The healing Lore required healers to find the damaged part of the sick mind. Healers then injected and healed the suffering mental particles by drawing on their own power and that of the land. This form of mental healing had been performed by specialist healers for millennia. Theni cackled to herself. Her master had developed the deharmonising process that performed the opposite function; find the weak part of the mind and draw power from the blood-red pendant her master had given her, inject the power from the pendant into the mind and spread the weakness, like a virus, breaking down the healthy particles of the victim’s mind, essentially causing the mind to destroy itself and the host body. Theni loved to deharmonise. She had been chosen especially by her master from a young age to serve for the good of the land.
This one would be her greatest victory yet. The power from the Chosen One would make her as powerful as her master, maybe even more powerful. She wouldn’t need him anymore. Her ravenous appetite drove her into the abyss of the rabbit’s mind, searching for the light between the two worlds. She remembered the rabbit particles shown by her master. She was getting closer now… Closer to feeding… Yes…
Lupi reeled with horror at the sight before her. A mad girl with glowing red hands strangled Emily’s face. The only life Lupi could see was a single kick from Emily’s large foot.
“Help, please help us,” Lupi screamed over and over.
She buzzed around the girl thinking of ways to get her off Emily. She repeatedly dived and tried to grab the killer’s sandy hair, but kept bouncing off the blood-red glow that shielded the girl. Lupi was hysterical. Using air-power in a confined space could kill them all. After what happened last time with Oni… but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. Nobody had heard her screams. Lupi whispered in her ancient Agramond tongue. She bent her will to the air around her, but she had to be careful or she could blast Emily into the wall and crush her. The thought of doubt made her stumble. She breathed and remembered her training–the training of all Aggies: ‘Control with confidence’.
With her chest aching an idea came to her. Lupi cupped her hands and felt the air particles come alive to her will. A small whirling wind gathered momentum in her hands. Rather than push the pressured air, she tried something she had heard about in Agramond legend. She pulled and twisted at the air until it became a large hammer. It worked. Holding the windy handle she swung with her might at the pulsing red body kneeling over Emily.
“Take that, you stoner,” Lupi yelled with gritted teeth.
The hammerhead of air struck the pigtailed monster with latent tornado power, crunching her into the wall. The room rocked and pieces of the ceiling dropped on the floor.
The shaken girl was invincible under the influence of the blood-red pendant. She shook her sandy head and with deranged eyes screamed a bloodcurdling wail at Lupi. Theni ran at Lupi. Lupi was still shocked that she managed to wield such rare Air Lore. Theni’s hands stretched towards Lupi. And just as her fingers touched Lupi’s neck, an unseen force grabbed Theni mid-air and dragged her like a rag doll back towards Emily.
“The rabbit is your target,” Thoughtshouted Torek. The chastened girl refocused her attention on Emily.
With renewed confidence Lupi spoke to the air and pushed a gust of wind along the floor at Emily, pushing her away from Theni’s grasp. Emily had slammed against the wall next to the door. Lupi wasn’t sure if she was still breathing. The enraged girl dived towards Emily again but this time Lupi created a wind stream in the shape of a spring that bounced off the wall behind Emily, creating a gushing barrier between Theni and her long-eared victim. Lupi knew it would only be temporary; soon the murderous girl would force her way back onto the unconscious rabbit. It took all of Lupi’s strength to keep the wind tunnel at its peak.
Just then Kato bounded into the room. Her catlike roar stopped Theni in her tracks, her wild eyes hysterical in her attempts to reach the prone Emily.
Theni focussed her will and threw red bolts of energy at Lupi to stop the wind barrier between her and the rabbit. One of the bolts hit Lupi on the shoulder and she screamed and released the barrier. The room went quiet. Before Kato could move, Theni picked Emily up by the scruff of her neck.
“Move, and I’ll tear her head off.” With her stone-powered strength Theni bolted from the room.
Kato leaned over Lupi. “Are you hurt?”
“Go. Just get her.”
In a single bound, Kato left the room in the chase to rescue Emily.
Theni’s intimate knowledge of Storven put her at an advantage. When Kato arrived in the hallway Theni had already slipped behind a secret passage. In a furry blur Kato raced through the warren of stony passages until she reached the main hall.
She roared to the Governess and the Professor, “Emily is in grave danger. Theni has abducted her. Where could she be?”
“What, impossible…”
“Don’t argue,” Kato roared even louder, shaking crystal lights from the ceiling. “Where co
uld she be?”
“Ahhh… ahhh… try the Reven stronghold,” said the Governess, panicking. “Nobody dares enter there.”
Kato’s lightning strides quickly put her inside the Reven enclave. Blackness engulfed the GiantTiger. The Reven had retreated back into the mountainside after their audience with Emily. Kato’s mammoth head swung from side to side, wild with anger for her charge. Focussing her will Kato turned the orange circles on her back into fiery spinning lights. Faster and faster they spun until Kato’s body exploded into a beacon of light that reflected off the crystal. And in the streams of orange light that spun across the rocky Reven enclave Kato saw a cloak crouched over a lifeless white form. Her paws pounded the dusty floor and stopped when she reached Emily.
“Stop right there, or she will die,” screeched Theni.
“You will release her or die.” Kato’s roar shook the mountains and rang off the crystal flora.
“She is mine. She has been promised to me by Master. Her mind is already gone. I must finish my feed. Finish… Feed…”
Nobody noticed a blue crystal form standing motionless in the shadows at the edge of the enclave. The Governess and Professor Sashiel came running and puffing next to Kato’s bared teeth.
The Governess pleaded with her daughter. “Theni, what manner of evil is this? You cannot.”
Theni spat in the green dust. Her crazed red eyes pierced the darkness around her. “You weak woman. My destiny is great. I will rule with my master. I must feed on the Chosen One. Feed.”
The Professor rose to his full height, holding his glowing staff high into the night. “In the name of Eostra, you will stop this madness. You know not your mind. It is not too late.”
Theni stood and held her blood-red amulet high into the night. “I have the Zora Stone. I submit to Torek and the supreme Elemental, Gorgos. Eostra is doomed. As we speak armies rush to Havendel to eradicate all that she is.”
With a swoop of the pendant Theni turned and buried her hands into Emily’s face, howling vicious cries of death into the night.
Emily had never been more scared. She hopped aimlessly in a red night sky. She saw a small red sun pulsing in the distance. Her head hurt. It felt as if somebody had split between her ears and was rummaging around with a CBlade, chopping at her very mind. She cried and rubbed her eyes with her paws. Nobody was here. She cried out for Magas, for Lupi, for Rupurt, for Kato. Who could hear her? Maybe she was on Earth again. The last thing she remembered was two evil eyes, red eyes of hatred and hunger. Her body had slipped away. She was a mind walking, looking for a body. Was she a bird or a rabbit, or both? Yes, she was both.
In the distance she heard a tiger roaring. Was it Kato? Could she hear her call? She cried out, but her voice was numb. She sat in the blood-red sky between her two homes, her two worlds, and cried out to Eostra. “Mother Earth, divine feminine, I cannot do this. I ask, no, I plead, to your tender mercies to take this bitter burden from me. For I’m nothing but a little bird with ears and paws.”
She heard a voice in the distance, calling to her. “Eama, the Twin Worlds need you. You must face the demon. You have the power. You are more than your past, more than your present. You are in the land and the land is in you. Remember what you have learned and reach for that power, the power of you.”
Emily recognised the voice. “Eostra?”
“Remember who you are…Remember who you are…”
Emily tried to remember. She remembered she was the symbol of hope and rebirth of the Twin Worlds. Her power came from the land. She remembered the Reven. They said she had connected to the land. The red sun in the distance bobbed slowly towards her. It transformed into a black cloud tinged with green. It rushed across the distance from the skyline. She could not move out of its raging path. No cloud moves that fast, she thought. And then it stopped before her. The cloud dissolved, and a green cloak floated toward her. The face was hidden under the hood. This time she knew who it was.
“Torek. You’re the demon,” she said.
“You have failed, Chosen One.”
“Failed, why?” Emily scratched where her whiskers would have been. Why was she calm?
A snigger came from the hood. “You are too naive to know. You are mine now. I have won.”
“I am alive?”
“At my discretion,” he spat. “I want to show you something to haunt you in your final moments. Eostra can see it in the final image of your essence as you rejoin with the land.”
The cloak raised its arm and Emily’s vision changed. Her mind travelled over thousands of leagues and into a desolate wasteland. She recognised it. It was Alendi, the un-dead nation. Torek dragged her closer until she saw a young blond boy in a dark cell. He hung by his hands over boiling lava. Blood dripped from the deep cuts down the boy’s naked body. Emily’s heart raced. She knew that boy. His head rose and pleaded to Emily for help. His eye sockets were empty. His cracked lips called out to her for help. It was Daimon.
Emily screamed. The faceless cloak hovering above her cackled. She had failed. Torek had won. The Earth and Annwyn would be lost. She was glad her papa Bijou and Noogie were not here to witness her failure.
“I am glad you have accepted your fate.” Torek’s soft screeching bit into her. “Eostra was wrong to place her faith in a simple rabbit.”
Eostra, she thought, she gave me the power. She said my connection and courage are giant among the living. Giant…
Anger that she had never before felt rose in her mind. She remembered what she’d said to the Reven. “With all my might…”
She remembered she was a bird and a rabbit, two animals from two worlds. And she realised her past made her special; it helped her be who she was now. She was one with past and present, of earth, fire and water, and now, air.
Without thinking Emily pictured the rock from the Reven enclave. She pictured the trees from the Treebith-Nod in Springton Forest. She pictured the water from the Orena River and now she pictured the power of the wind. She reached out to them with all her will. And they responded. She felt the ancient power from deep within the worlds course through her veins. It ran into her footpads, into her haunches and into her paws. Her eyes were aflame. The deadly red light, the invader of her dreams and her life, rose in indignant fury. But the power in Emily’s world grew, the world of her mind. It was a power that rose like the curling of a restless ocean wave. She grew in the red sky, larger and larger until Torek was like a hooded doll before her. It vaguely struck her that he could not harm her if she took back control. It was her mind, and she was the Elemental, the goddess of her own mind. He raised his staff to strike the Chosen One down, but Emily was ready; she smiled. And with a flick of her will, she reached out and cast him aside like a bothersome moth, and he evaporated like a hand through the morning fog.
But they were not alone in Emily’s darkened mind. Theni watched on with horror at her master’s failure. Emily suddenly turned her mind’s-eye and faced her young attacker.
Theni saw the Chosen One, with her ocean eyes wild with anger, drift across the space of her mind towards her. Theni panicked as she realised it was she who would be deharmonised if the rabbit caught her. It was her mind that was the focus of the deadly Lore and not Torek’s. Only she could be harmed in the physical world. And she knew why Gorgos and Torek had wanted her all along for this mission.
With her hand smothering the Zora Stone Theni ripped her mind from the Chosen One. She opened her eyes and opened her thin lips and released a bloodcurdling scream that echoed off the mountains. Theni grabbed her own face in agony and then jumped on Emily in a desperate attempt to do what her master was not able to accomplish. She lifted the stone high in the air. If she could not control her mind she would destroy the Chosen One’s puny body.
“They were Emily’s screams,” Rupurt called out.
“She’s alive,” Kato growled.
Professor Sashiel cried out to Kato, “They are separate. I will shield Emily. Use your fire.”
Kato lowered her head in agreement. The Professor pointed his staff at the white furry bundle in the dark. A lilac light wafted through the night and surrounded Emily in an eerie glow.
Kato’s orange circles vibrated faster, swirling incandescently against the night. Like fluid fire she bounded close to Theni who had stumbled away from Emily. Theni raised her arms in defence, turning the Zora stone on Kato. The last of the Giant Tigers stood with her paws wide, opened her gigantic mouth and spewed forth blue-red flames which engulfed the glowing red girl, just missing Emily’s still body.
Theni’s screams filled the night sky like drifting fireflies. As Kato’s flame died, the red glow from the Zora Stone died, and the charred remains of Theni lay sizzling in the green grass.
Zane had not moved from his indifferent position in the shadows.
They surrounded Emily. Professor Sashiel closed his eyes and laid his hand on Emily and ran his hand over her muzzle and ears. He looked up at the worried faces and said, “She is alive.”
The Governess wailed over her daughter’s remains. Rupurt wailed over Emily’s shallow breaths.
Kato’s honeyed voice had returned. “Get Emily inside.”
Emily’s body rolled over and her ocean eyes looked at Rupurt. She whispered with her husky voice, “Daimon… He’s dead.”
Chapter 43
Kato, last of the Fire-Tigers
GREYDELL BARRONS, ANNWYN
Absentmindedly, Emily tapped on the window, and stared at the desert. Rolling hills of dark sand—not like the white sands of Earth—stretched as far as she could see. Hot winds whisked currents of creamy dust, sometimes blacking out the sun.
She opened her window for a while but the hot winds dried her mouth, her whiskers became stiff, and even her eyes itched from the powdery sand suspended in the desert air.
The bleak vastness of the Greydell Barrons summed up how she was feeling. Ever since her dream-battle with Torek she had been distant from her friends, ignoring them, snapping at them, and even yelling at them for no reason. Only one thought ran through her mind: Daimon, my protector, is dead; the boy from Earth is dead.
