Dragon Approved Complete Series Boxed Set (Books 1 - 13): A Middang3ard Series

by Ramy Vance

  She smashed into the wall and fell on her back, rolled over, and shook Roy back into consciousness. It was surprising that hitting a wall was enough to knock Roy out. Alex had seen him walk away from injuries that made the psychic attack look like a mosquito bite.

  That was what this was. Alex had put it together. Vardis did know that she’d been in his dream. The attack on her way to the military base had only been the first step, the physical aspect. Now the alien was coming for her mind.

  He must have drawn them into a psychic realm, or maybe he was projecting his own. Alex had no idea. She’d never been much into comic books. If Jim were here, he probably could have explained the whole thing.

  The three remaining versions of Vardis were floating toward Alex, their eyes glowing a piercing white, energy crackling from them.

  Alex helped Roy to his feet, the older man looking as if he were ready to pass out again. “You have to get it together, Roy! I need you in this fight. Last time, I hardly got out of here.”

  Roy looked at Alex, his face green like he was ready to vomit. Then he straightened up and aimed his pistol. “I’m assuming we’re in trouble or something wants to kill us.”

  Alex pointed at the approaching aliens. “Vardis. He wants to kill us.”

  Roy leaned over and threw up.

  Great, Alex thought.

  The three versions of Vardis laughed as they watched Roy retching. “I didn’t think the humans would be so easy to kill,” one of them said.

  Another turned to his doppelganger and smiled. “No, neither did—”

  A shot rang out and echoed in the lab. Roy fired two more times, not bothering to straighten up while still wiping the bile from his mouth.

  Two of the aliens stumbled backward, holding their chests. One sneered. “Foolish human. This is not the physical realm. You—”

  Roy coughed loudly and held up his hand, silencing the alien as he straightened up. “Hold on, hold on. Psychic realm and yeah, bullets don’t work, got to—”

  He fired three more shots and each hit an alien in the chest, tearing open a hole nearly the size of Alex’s head. They fell to their knees before bursting into white light.

  Roy leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath as Alex ran over to him. “How did you do that?” she asked. “That was amazing! I didn’t know you were a psychic.”

  The mech rider shook his head as he straightened up, looking as if he were finally acclimating to his new environment. “Not a psychic, but I’ve been doing drills with Myrddin for years. You know, in case someone tries to invade my mind or pull shit like this. Sorry, language, it’ll take a couple of minutes for me to be on top of my game, but I’ll be able to hold my own. Especially if all he’s going to be throwing at us are projections.”

  Alex was annoyed that Roy had a better handle on things than she did, even while he was sick to his stomach. She was also happy to have someone around who knew what the hell was going on. “What do you mean, projections?”

  Roy stumbled away from the wall and toward the piles of white ash on the ground, pointing at one with his pistol. “Those aren’t Vardis. This whole place—whatever we’re seeing, the whole plane—that’s Vardis. The most he’ll be able to do if he’s planning on keeping us here is send out projections of his subconscious. They’re only a fraction of his strength.”

  “How much do you know about this stuff?”

  Roy tried to hide his smug smile. “I’ve been fighting the Dark One for a lot longer than it looks like, and I’ve run across my fair share of psychics in the past. As they say, this isn’t my first rodeo. And since we already took care of the projections here, Vardis will probably change things up. Give us a new place to fight and hope we’ll be thrown off by it.”

  Alex thought back to Vardis’ dream. That was why the realm had kept jumping locations and time. It had been his mind attempting to get the advantage by confusing Alex with different scenarios. “So, what are we supposed to do?”

  Roy was walking around the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world. The disorientation of being in a psychic plane had apparently worn off. “I don’t know, look around? Unless you’ve been here before.”

  Alex walked over to the table in the middle of the lab and called Roy over. “In a dream. His dream. This was where I found out about the weapon.” She picked up the scroll and tossed it to Roy.

  Roy skimmed through the notes. “Hm, looks like Vardis was a bigshot scientist on his world, and old as hell. This whole project, using the shard for creating kin, was his idea.”

  “Wait, you can read that?”

  “Yeah, can’t you?”

  Roy handed the scroll back to Alex. She took a look and realized she could read the alien writing as easily as if it were braille. “When I was in his dream, I couldn’t read any of this. I studied it for a while too. What changed?”

  Roy was wandering around the room again. “He’s probably got more defenses up while he’s dreaming—basic PsyOps training—but his attention is split right now. There’s only so much you can concentrate on at a time.”

  The walls of the lab started to shake, then broke apart, allowing light to shine through the cracks. “Looks like we’re moving,” Roy muttered under his breath.

  Air shifted from cold and sterile to hot and fetid. Alex struggled to breathe. She felt like she was going to suffocate.

  Roy seemed to be in the same situation. His eyes were wild as he looked around, the walls tearing themselves down and the ground roiling.

  The room shattered into multiple versions of itself, some small, others larger, like a fun-house mirror. They slammed into each other as Alex and Roy floated through the darkness, which abruptly stopped, then congealed into a new reality.

  Alex and Roy stood in what looked like a jungle. It wasn’t similar to anything Alex had seen in her books at the Nest, though. This wasn’t Earth.

  Before the two of them was a group of human soldiers. They weren’t wearing Army fatigues. The colors were reminiscent of an elvish sigil Alex had seen at the Nest. “Where are we?”

  Roy was muttering under his breath, backing away from the small group of humans. “No,” he muttered.

  Alex turned away from the crowd of soldiers to Roy. “Where are we?”

  “One of the moons in the elvish cluster. Dorian.”

  “What are we doing here?”

  Roy’s eyes grew hard and cold as he swallowed and pulled out his cigar. He lit it, and his composure came back. “Vardis is playing mind games. Guess he has access to our memories as well as his. He’s stronger than I thought.”

  “This is your memory?”

  Roy pointed at the crowd of soldiers with his cigar. “Oh, yeah, this is mine. That’s me over there.” He headed for the soldiers, motioning for Alex to follow him.

  The soldiers were crouched around a dead body covered in a white shroud. Alex didn’t recognize Roy’s face in any of the soldiers, not even a younger Roy. “Which one are you?” she asked.

  Roy nodded at the body under the shroud. “Right there. Go ahead. They shouldn’t notice you if you do anything.”

  Alex wasn’t certain she could, but her hand was moving before she realized it, forced by curiosity. She pulled the shroud back.

  A younger Roy stared up at Alex, the side of his face blown off, his jaw hanging loose from his cheekbone. His skull was fractured, blood pooling into his dirty hair. “Oh, my God!” Alex leaned over and threw up, unable to keep her horror in her stomach.

  Roy knelt next to his dead body. He held the head up and looked into his own eyes. “Yeah, this one wasn’t fun.” He pulled out his pistol, and before Alex could say anything, shot the soldiers, causing them to burst into white smoke.

  Alex screamed and backed away from Roy. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

  Roy shook his head as he pressed the gun to the younger version of his head. “No, I’m not. He’s trying to mess with my head. Apparently, he thought this would be enough to rattle me.
He doesn’t know I know what’s going on, or he hasn’t gone through my memories enough to know this isn’t the first time I’ve seen my dead body. Ain’t gonna rattle me.”

  Roy pulled the trigger.

  The jungle started to pull apart at the edges as if an earthquake were shaking everything loose.

  Alex stared at Roy, looking from his dead face to his living one, which was much more disturbed than he was letting on. “What happened?”

  Roy holstered his gun and stood up, watching the jungle around him shrivel, the leaves of the trees falling down en masse, the roots tearing up the earth. “It’s not important, and it’s not a conversation to have sober. That means you still have another six years before you’re going to hear about it unless you get lucky and Vardis finds a useful memory.”

  Roy turned his attention to Alex, his eyes as focused and as determined as when he had pulled the trigger on himself. “He’s going to come after you too. That’s why this is all taking so long. He’s looking for ways to break us. Crack the mind and the body follows—oldest rule in the book. Wherever he takes us, remember that it’s not real. Whatever he shows you, it’s a lie, even if you think it’s happened before. He’ll distort it, and you won’t even realize it. Don’t trust anything but me.”

  Alex swallowed as she thought of the prospects. “You trust me too, right?”

  Roy smiled, and it was a sad sight. “Of course, I trust you. Now get ready.”

  Chapter Eight

  Alex and Roy woke up in a car.

  They were in the backseat, buckled up next to each other. There was a child sitting between them, strapped into a car seat.

  There were two people in the front seats, but Alex couldn’t see who they were. She had a strong feeling she knew the people in the front seats and she’d been in this car before, but she couldn’t remember when.

  Then the woman driving the car looked back as she made cooing sounds to the child in the car seat. It was Claire, Alex’s mom.

  Alex tried to catch her mother’s attention, but Claire was only focused on the baby. “Mom?” she asked quietly.

  Roy seemed to still be getting his bearings. He looked much less comfortable than when he was in his own memories but not nearly as bad as when the psychic attack had first started.

  Alex, on the other hand, was extremely disoriented at being in a scene she couldn’t remember. This had happened long ago, and she’d been only a child. It was like watching a surreal television show starring her parents. Further, the child in the car seat was not blind. She could see it in the way the child tracked her mother’s movements.

  George, who was sitting next to Claire, rapped on the dashboard with his knuckles and said, “Don’t forget, we have to go to the grocery store before we head home.”

  Claire turned back to the road, and the emotional climate in the car chilled. “You don’t have to remind me of every errand we have to run as soon as we get out of the house,” she barked.

  Alex jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice. She’d never heard Claire take that tone. It obviously frightened the child in the car seat as well. The child had tensed up when Claire spoke.

  The car was quiet for a second, then George exploded. The air in the car turned red. Alex couldn’t understand most of the words her father was saying, but she felt them deep in her chest, a sickening gripping around the inside of her throat, falling with the weight of a thousand hammers.

  It was getting hotter. Alex could feel sweat beading on her forehead. She wanted to leave, to get out of the car, to be anywhere but where she was at the moment. She tried to open the door, but it was child-locked from the inside.

  The child was uncomfortable as well. Alex could now see it wasn’t a baby. The kid was at least five, maybe even seven.

  Roy had the window down as far as it would go and was trying to catch his breath. “It’s not real, Alex.”

  In the front of the car, Claire faced George, her face contorting as fire leaped from her eyes. What came out of her mouth was as hot as dragon fire and ten times louder than George’s tirade had been.

  The words hung in the air as if they were blades repurposed for the guillotine. Some of the words did not remain stationary, though. They flew between Claire and George, slicing their faces.

  Blood streamed down her parents’ faces. It was pooling on their seats.

  Some of the blades flew into the back. Alex covered her head, trying to shield herself as the child cried and cried, blades occasionally nicking them. “Cover your damn face!” Alex shouted at the child.

  She covered her mouth. She had no idea why she had shouted at the kid. None of this was the kid’s fault. None of it. But she still contributed to the heat in the car, the stifling heat that was making her head swim.

  Roy had the right idea. Alex cracked her window and stuck her head out, breathing in the fresh, cool air. Outside, it was night. The stars shone above, and a cool breeze ran through the neighborhood.

  Something tugged her shirt. When she looked inside, it was the crying child. Remaining in the car was the last thing Alex wanted to do. There was the screaming of her parents and the wailing of the child, plus Roy’s pathetic whimpering. The car was hell.

  But the kid shouldn’t be crying. Alex knew that. On a deep level, she knew it was wrong that the child was upset, and if the adults in the front of the car wouldn’t deal with it, Alex would.

  Alex rolled her window down farther but sat back. She grabbed the child’s hand and tried to comfort her, but nothing came out of her mouth, just a stifled groan.

  At that noise, Claire and George turned and screamed at the child, shrill screeches that tore through Alex’s eardrums. She and the child covered their ears, trying to block the sound.

  “Why don’t you just shut up?”

  Claire and George were silent now, their jaws hanging open, nearly touching their chests. Their eyes were hollow, and the muscles of their faces were as slack as loose rope.

  Alex didn’t know who had given the command, but she was glad someone had because it was finally silent.

  There were two bright lights outside the window on the left. Alex only halfway noticed since she was so relieved the noise had stopped, but then metal crunched and the world went topsy-turvy. She noticed glass hanging above her head as the car tumbled through the air.

  It hit the ground once and continued to roll, finally stopping on its side and spinning.

  Alex coughed up blood as she tried to unbuckle her seatbelt. Roy was also trying to get out of his restraints. He had a gash across his forehead and was coughing up blood.

  The blood from the front seat was now pooling in the back. Alex saw it dripping down the walls of the car. She had to get out or she was going to drown, but she was trapped. She was going to die in this car, choking on the blood of her parents.

  “It’s not real,” Roy muttered. “You’re not a child. You’re a dragonrider.”

  At those words, Alex let out a mighty telekinetic blast that tore the door off the car, then reached down to help Roy get out. She’d noticed the child wasn’t in the car anymore. “Where is she?” Alex shouted.

  Roy grabbed Alex by the shoulder and tried to pull her away from the wreck. “We need to get out of here. You don’t need to see this.”

  Alex pushed Roy’s hand away and followed a trail of glass and blood to wailing.

  The child was cradled in Claire’s and George’s arms, its face covered in glass, blood pouring from its eyes as it thrashed and cried.

  George was trying to calm the child, whispering, “It’s okay, Alex. It’s going to be okay,” as Claire stood and started pacing, chewing on her fingernails.

  Alex touched the sides of her face, the scars in her skin that her parents had always told her were from a cat scratch. “I wasn’t born blind?”

  Roy stormed over to Alex and stood between her and the vision of her parents. “It’s not real! Vardis is messing with your head!”

  A psychic blast ripped out from Alex
, sending Roy back a few steps. “What do you mean, it’s not real! Your vision happened! You said so yourself. Just because this isn’t real, it doesn’t mean this didn’t happen!”

  Alex turned back to her parents, rage seething out of her in flashes of telekinesis. They’re the reason I spent my entire life in the dark. Because of their selfish fighting.

  Claire looked up at Alex’s approach, but there was something off in her face. It didn’t quite look human. The forehead was huge, bulging out, and her body was unusually muscled. It was enough to stop Alex in her tracks. “Mom?” she asked.

  Claire stretched out her arms toward Alex as if begging for a hug, then her jaw fell open as her head lolled back, a sound coming from her mouth like that of a mewling cat and a dying goat. The inhuman sound conveyed no meaning, only dread.

  When Alex looked at George and the younger version of herself, she saw the same thing. George and the child were whining too, the combined sounds like a war siren going off.

  The child flopped onto the concrete, lifting herself up by her arms, blood pooling under her eyes as she shook violently. “They hated you, Alex! That’s why they fought. They never wanted you. You took everything from them. They were happy before you.”

  Two bones shot out of the child’s feet, bending backward as the child pushed herself up with her chubby arms. She was foaming at the mouth and making uneven motions toward Alex like a cat that had had stilts forced onto its paws. “When you came, they lost everything, and then you went and lost your eyes. Do you know what their lives were like, caring for their pathetic, blind freak of a daughter?”

  Alex lashed the creature with a psychic blast, but it did nothing. “You’re a liar!”

  The child’s head tilted to the side as her face melted down to the skull. Vardis’ skull. “Me? Lie? Never!”

  The baby Vardis stood on its bony legs as flesh and blood oozed over them, the chubby arms of the child stretching as Vardis’ head burst out of the child’s shoulder. The creature leaned on its front arms in the fashion of a gorilla, pus and blood oozing from the wounds in its face.