Kerry Schafer - Wakeworld

“We will pay for it.”

“Let that be on us.”

The throng murmured, repeating “Let it be on us,” until the words swelled and became a chant. Two of the stronger men came forward and bowed to Vivian. “If you will permit, we will carry you.”

“I would be grateful.”

The two of them made a chair of their arms and lifted her. She placed her hands on their shoulders for balance as they strode out across the dry, dusty plain.

It was a strange and ghastly procession. As they walked, the undead parted to allow them to pass, bowing as they did so. So many different injuries marked them, all beyond any hope of healing. Vivian looked over her shoulder for Poe and saw that her grandfather had picked him up and was carrying him. The crowd closed behind him and followed, most of them bleeding, many of them lame.

Uneasy at first, Vivian became increasingly grateful for the lift as her human conveyance walked on and on. She could never have walked so far, and with the time to rest she felt strength gradually returning. How long the journey continued she had no idea. There was no day or night in this place, only the same dull, red light from the unchanging sky. Perhaps time did not even pass. She dozed and waked and dozed again.

A terrible thirst was on her, parching her throat, turning her tongue to sandpaper, and still they marched across the unchanging plain. Same dull sky above, same flat dusty earth beneath their feet, same halting, shuffling walk.

Then, at last, rock formations rose in the distance. These grew upward into cliffs and in one of the faces of stone she saw at last an opening. Light—real, white light—spilled through it. A draft of living air brushed against her skin.

The company came to a halt and her bearers lowered her to the ground. This time her legs held her, steady enough. Hope stirred, sluggish and feeble but alive, as she breathed in the sweetness of fresh air and fixed her eyes on the light.

“We can go no farther,” her grandfather said. “Do not fear what you are, child, or what you shall become.” He laid his hand over her heart. “This remains ever the same.”

Vivian only nodded, and did not speak. He was smaller than she, wizened and shrunken and so very old. But his eyes were the color of summer sky and his smile dazzled her, as unexpected as sun breaking through the clouds.

Garnering all of her small strength she turned from him and set off toward the promise of the light, Poe waddling solemn at her side.

Behind her, weighing heavy with their gray hope, the undead waited for her to free them.

Aidan rode the wind currents above the black mountain, allowing herself a moment of fierce joy. In her belly the Warrior’s seed had quickened into life, a white-hot flame that grew beyond the speed of any purely human child. Not long, only a few months, and she would bear a son.

It hadn’t been a part of the plan, but it was better this way. Her son was of the blood; he would grow to be a dragon slayer who would follow her bidding. She would hide him away as her mother had once hidden her, and when the time was right he would kill the King and help her rule the others.

Which meant she had no need of the Warrior, who had shoved her away in disgust as though she were some slimy scrap of refuse. Rage filled her at the thought. She hadn’t killed him at the time, believing she might still have need of him. But that was before she knew that she would bear a child. There was time to make him suffer, some special pain for him before he died. In the meantime, she ruled all of the dragons of the Between, and they would launch forays wherever she sent them. They were only pawns in this game, little more than primitive beasts after all of the years of inbreeding and the absence from the golden river. Their minds were full of nothing but hunting and flight. Docile and stupid, they flocked to her will like chickens in a farmyard. Most of them must die, of course, but once she had dethroned the King and taken her rightful place as Queen of the Dragons, those stronger and smarter would be allowed to live as slaves.

As for the giants, they too had fallen since the day they set the Black Gates in place and made the Key. Look at them—thousands upon thousands strong, just standing there on the plain before the Gates. Waiting. From this height they looked like rock formations, and would be about as effective. The sort of magic needed to create a containment like the Black Gates and the Key had been lost, long ago.

With the exception of Jehenna, the sorcerers—sorcieri, Allel had called them—had kept to themselves for so long that even Aidan had no idea what they were up to. Whatever it was, they were unlikely to interfere. Which meant there was nobody and nothing left to ruin her plan of destruction.

It had been so easy to kill the Guardian; she too had grown stupid and complacent over the years. Without the Guardian the dreamspheres would die, were already reverting to raw dream matter. People in the place called Wakeworld would die as their dreams winked out of existence. Any who survived would be unable to find a dream to enter. There would be chaos and insanity and war and the fools would destroy each other.

This was the deep desire of Aidan’s heart—that all things would end. If anything was left alive outside the Forever, her reign could never truly be secure. And she deserved to reign supreme for all time because of what had been done to her mother. And to her.

All things were in place and accounted for. Only one thing rankled. Surmise had proved to be beyond her reach. Not really a Dreamworld, not really Between, and not subject to the rules of either. Her only hope was that since it was woven from the fabric of the Dreamworld, perhaps it too would fade out of existence.

There was nothing she could think to do about it, and so she chose to dismiss it from her mind. It was time, now, to put her plan in motion.

Spiraling lazily down through the air, she alighted in front of the Gates. Huge they were, even to her in dragon form. When she shifted so as to manage the Key, they seemed to grow taller and blacker. She felt small and vulnerable in her human skin, frightened all at once.

A new emotion, fear. A thing she hadn’t felt since the time almost beyond conscious memory when she and her mother had fled from one place to another to stay in hiding from her father. No shelter for her anywhere in the world, then. She was not fully human or dragon, nor was she of the Dreamworld. Nobody wanted her, everybody feared her. But she had grown past that, learned to shift and blend and bide her time.

Fear would not stop her now, even though a sense of wrongness filled her with foreboding. Up close, the Gates gave off a subtle vibration that was at odds with her body. It pulled her heartbeat off its regular rhythm, made it impossible to draw a full breath. Her bones felt like they were being jarred apart.

Her hands shook too hard to hold the Key. It dropped to the ground and she bent to pick it up once, twice, three times.

She glanced at the giants. They could stop her now, if they chose. It would only take a moment for them to reach her. In dragon form she could easily elude them, but in dragon form she couldn’t open the Gates. Her plan had been based on speed and had already failed.

The giants didn’t move, but what they did was worse. They began to laugh, a sound that rattled across the plain like thunder, echoing off the impenetrable barrier in front of her. Louder and louder. As if they’d known all along that she was going to fail and had come to bear witness.

Aidan tried once more to navigate the Key, but the vibration this time dropped her to her knees. Involuntarily and without her will her body shifted back into her dragon form, and she unleashed a scream of rage that shook the Gates and stopped the laughter from the first ranks of giants. Tough as their hides were, they were not impervious to dragon fire and she felt it building, ready to flame.