Blood for the Dancer

by Dallas Mullican

  When finally they exploded together, Kyra screamed with ecstasy and Dustan whispered her name into her ear over and over. They fell on the grass, panting. Kyra rolled onto her side, and placed her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair and stared up at the twin moon’s gazing down. If he could stay here, like this, forever, he would count it a wonderful life.

  31

  Behind the Veil

  Dustan and Kyra found the portal hidden where Hadraniel had said. At the road’s end, a silver lake spanned to the horizon. As he had instructed, they swam three hundred strokes toward the center, veered right, and swam another five hundred east. Dustan dove with Kyra following. Beneath the crystal clear water, the cave sat tucked into the lake floor, bordered by familiar monoliths.

  They surfaced inside a small cavern walled in smooth cerulean stones. Ripples reflected off the rock and cast radiant beams onto the ceiling. Where the light emanated from remained a mystery; darkness pervaded the confines with the exception of those thin shimmers. The portal wavered in the air upon a raised platform. Dustan climbed from the cool water and crept up the incline holding Kyra’s hand. After a brief glance back, they leapt into the gate.

  The Veil crackled and spun before them. Akin to the savannah tornado, the curtain rotated in a blinding arc. White streaked with ebony lightning, the barrier rose high, obscuring any sky, the far sides distant and out of sight. Dustan and Kyra gazed across a glass field where dark shapes swirled beneath its clear surface. A face, frozen in a horrifying grimace, butted against the glass, its mouth open in a scream. Dustan jumped in retreat, Kyra grasping his arm. They crept over the ghastly apparitions, inching toward the spinning shroud. A tangible force pushed hard, trying to turn them back.

  Dustan reached out, straining against the expulsion, and touched the whirling mass. His hand passed through, and he felt waves of energy shower his arm, pinpricks stabbing at the skin. He shoved hard with his shoulder and slid into the Veil like a blunt sword penetrating heavy armor. Kyra followed. A groan of pain escaped her lips as she experienced the crushing force. His bones cracked and bent at appalling angles. The pressure in his chest bulged his eyes from their sockets. He felt blood trickle from his nose and saw energy leak from Kyra’s ears. If they did not find the other side soon, the tremendous compression would pulverize their bodies to mush.

  Ahead, Dustan glimpsed a dark shape blemish the bright white cloak. He pitched forward with what little strength remained, tugging Kyra along in his wake. Blood poured in streams down his face and chest. His body contorted. The barrier’s density squeezed his skull in a vice. The spinning wall sucked thick plumes of energy from every orifice. He thrust his head toward the dark shape and all went black.

  When he regained consciousness, Kyra gasped near his ear. The Great Tree blotted out all else. Its encasing bubble shimmered in a continuum of radiant light and color. Symbols, intricate and labyrinthine, wove their way up the length of its onyx base and pulsed with an emerald glow. Limbs, like tendrils on a jellyfish, fanned out into space, touching every realm.

  “Beautiful is it not?”

  Dustan and Kyra’s heads shot toward the sound of the voice.

  “Fear not. No harm will befall you.”

  The creature possessed no mouth, nose, or ears, but had three eyes positioned on its face in a pyramid shape—one on top at the forehead, two beneath. It tapped a misshapen head with a short, chubby finger. Bobbing up and down on its fat belly, the creature waddled in a slow circle.

  “You’re speaking into our thoughts?” asked Dustan.

  His mind whirled. The effects of the Veil no longer hampered him, though the memory made him anxious, but the sight of the colossal tree, this strange creature, and the uncanny realm, brought on a nauseating vertigo. Constellations of stars twinkled beneath their feet. He felt like he stood on a green screen in one of those science shows. The Great Tree’s immense roots wiggled downward, disappearing lightyears away.

  “I am communicating.” The creature may have huffed, impossible to guess.

  Scaled in hard gray skin, rippled like a snake’s, it stood three feet tall. No visible legs propelled it, only two paddle feet as long as its body. The remnants of a stubby tail wiggled on its backside. It showed expression with those large triangular eyes.

  “Who are you?” asked Dustan, once he regained equilibrium.

  “I once possessed a name, I’m sure. So long ago I do not recall it now.” It bobbed its head, appearing pleased or excited. Or perhaps disgruntled. Maybe none of the above.

  “You’re a guardian of some kind? Protecting the Tree?” Kyra, only now getting her bearings, still swayed and needed to lean on Dustan for support.

  “A companion. The Tree appears to hold some affection for me.” The creature pointed to the planet-sized tower. He rapped his gut. “Companion will do, if you please.”

  “Why do you sound like a London banker?” asked Dustan.

  “A dialect plucked at random from your thoughts. Better you should ask why you imagined this manner of speech.” Companion bobbed its head and blinked rapidly.

  “The Tree is your friend? How long have you been here?” Kyra, irritated by the distraction, stepped close to the creature.

  “Friend is not the right word.” He scratched his belly. “I can think of no term to define the relationship. As to the other, time is inadequate to measure the duration of my life here, even if I knew the date of my arrival. The span I do recall is longer than the existence of all but a few realms.”

  “Did the human realm, the spirit realm, exist?” Dustan tried not to look down. His eyes darted from Tree to Companion to Kyra, sensory overload weakening his legs to wet noodles.

  “Those are infants, still in the cradle. One, a hundred billion years, more or less, the other considerably older, but a fledgling nonetheless.” Companion rocked on its ample paunch and winked its eyes one after the other.

  “You can see the realms from here? See what’s happening in them?” Kyra stared at the creature.

  “In a fashion. The Tree allows me to see, though my vision is limited.”

  “The Tree shows you? Can it speak? Is this God?” Astonishment flooded Dustan’s mind. Could he be standing in the presence of the god his mother had worshipped? The hope of countless souls?

  “To such as you, it may very well seem so. However, it does not speak, hear, see, or feel. It possesses no mind to think, plan, or dictate the actions of others. Worship is meaningless. One would serve a rock just as well. It is neither good nor evil, holding no intentions or designs.”

  “What is it then?” Dustan stepped closer to the Tree, his head craned back, staring toward the distant heights.

  “It is the Great Tree.” Companion waddled away and rotated on its rounded butt.

  Dustan shook his head. “I don’t understand. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Does a river know why it flows? No, it simply does.”

  “And what is it the Great Tree does?” Kyra lacked the patience for Companion’s vague explanations.

  “The Tree creates.” Blink, bob.

  “The Tree is like a machine making what it was programmed to make?” asked Dustan.

  “If the machine always existed, and the programming always existed within it.” Companion wobbled around them, its eyes winking at nothing in particular. “Notice the spores? They create life, and not just any life—like life.” The creature quivered as something like a belch escaped from somewhere they couldn’t see, and didn’t want to.

  Dustan scrutinized the Great Tree, trying to understand what Companion was telling him. Dazzling sparks of light drifted from the translucent tendrils and floated out into space. Massive globs of a semi-solid substance dropped from pits in the tower base, fell, and disappeared amongst the stars.

  “Life derives from the spores. Worlds and realms from the fruit,” said Companion.

  Understanding needled at the back of Dustan’s mind, but seemed too fantastic to believe, or even contemplate.


  “Those flecks of light, they create beings and creatures?”

  “Precisely.” Bob, blink.

  “The giant drops create worlds and realms?

  Companion nodded its neckless head.

  Dustan rubbed his shoulder. “Like life? You mean when a spore goes to a realm it creates beings and creatures suited to that realm?”

  “Correct. If it enters the human realm—an animal, plant, or person is created.” The creature pointed to Dustan and to a portal opening above them.

  He gazed upward. People all over the earth work and played…lived. Companion wagged its hand toward Kyra and the spirit realm appeared. Two vast armies of red and white clashed on an icy field. Auras of the fallen spirits jetted out, the gray-white of angels and the pink-red of demons rocketed toward the Oblivion, human souls of blue landed in the In Between. But it did not end there. Auras beyond counting and of every color on the spectrum floated from the In Between and all the realms, save for the Void, and journeyed toward the Great Tree. They hovered close to its roots for an instant before they were sucked inside.

  Dustan’s head spun to Companion. If the creature had a mouth, it might be smiling judging by the glint in the eyes. Dustan stared at it, attempting to formulate the questions assaulting his mind.

  “The angels and demons go to the Void when they die. Unaligned humans go to the In Between, but die again and go to the Void. What about all the others?”

  Companion blinked. “Partially correct, mostly not. The war created the Void. All the violence worked in collusion with too much power and tore a rent in the spirit dimension. The Void is tied to the spirit realm—to the angels and demons who created it. Human unaligned go to the In Between after their physical deaths, but after any unaligned there dies…” The creature pointed upward. “They return to the Great Tree.”

  “Reincarnation?” Kyra had kept silent and listened, but now she came forward and stared down at the creature.

  “After a fashion.” Companion rocked its round body and bobbed its head.

  Kyra turned to Dustan. “Does it mean what I think it means?”

  “Every spirit, soul, and creature not aligned with the angels or demons will at some point return to the Tree. They leave again as spores and become a new life somewhere.” Dustan’s voice, barely a whisper, toned with all the awe he might have felt for a god.

  “Someone or something must have made it,” said Dustan, admiring the majesty of the structure.

  “An eternal, infinite cycle. Worlds which cease to exist, exist again. Every life, great and small, returns. It is a new existence, however, no memory follows to the next form.” The creature wiggled its stubby fingers. “Well…perhaps a trace.” It blinked and bobbed. “The Tree did not begin. It has always existed. Everything has always existed. An eternal cycle.”

  Dustan wished he possessed Geras’s intellect. He followed much of it, but his mind still whirled.

  Companion clutched his arm with meaty fingers. “You must know, or you would not have come here. The war is coming. To all the realms. If either side stumbles onto this garden and finds the Great Tree…Hell will no longer simply be a metaphor.”

  Dustan nodded. “We know. I promise we will try.”

  The creature dipped its head. “If you fail, everything ends. Creation itself may be jeopardized.”

  “Thanks for the encouragement.” Kyra made no attempt to hide the bite in her voice.

  “My apologies, I mean no offense. I have lived long past usefulness. The Tree, however, continues to desire my company it seems. I cannot leave.” It gave several quick blinks. “I wish you good fortune. Better?” Companion waved its hand and a portal opened a few feet away.

  Kyra leapt through first. Dustan stepped to the gate, but Companion caught him by the tail of his jacket.

  “A token. I fear you may need it.” It placed something oval and warm into Dustan’s hand.

  Dustan looked down at a spore much smaller than those flitting from the Great Tree’s branches, which glowed bright yellow. He frowned and peered at the creature. “What…”

  Companion held up a hand. “Call it a premonition. Take it. You will know its significance if the time comes.”

  Dustan pivoted back to the gate and jumped through.

  32

  City of Embers

  At first glance, and second, the Unknown appeared a vast wasteland. Brown, dry lakes, crisscrossed in wide deep cracks, spanned barren flatlands surrounded by rolling dunes of red sand. Two massive suns glowered down, scorching the world. The heat felt oppressive in seconds. Sweat beaded then poured down Dustan’s face, his clothes clinging to his body. This realm held traces of energy, but its scarcity would necessitate frequent stops to recharge with the heat draining their reserves. He needed less energy if compensated with food, of which this realm seemed sorely lacking. Kyra did not require food, but needed more energy. No portals shimmered within sight. They could hope they found one, but nothing guaranteed where a jump might land them.

  “Christ, it’s hot,” said Dustan.

  They spent hours trudging up a dune the size of a small mountain, the dense, ankle-high sand as tiring as if they slogged through thigh-deep snow.

  “I think you mentioned it before…once or a million times.” Sarcasm darkened her voice. Kyra seemed to be having as much fun as Dustan.

  The suns had not moved from their posts overhead. Either the days here ran long or the suns did not set at all. If the latter, Dustan and Kyra might drop dead in a few more hours. No shelter appeared on the desolate landscape, not a tumbleweed or scrawny tree. The slender trails made by snakes zigzagged across the sand. Evidence of creatures inhabiting the desert remained scarce except for large indentions in the dunes that might indicate burrows. They stayed well away, deciding to stick to the flats unless forced out of a canyon.

  Dustan found breathing difficult, the suns closing a tight fist around his lungs and squeezing. Inhaling with any depth burned down his throat and set his chest ablaze. He tried to take short slow breaths, but the method winded him faster and drew more energy. Kyra looked pale, her gait narrow and labored. She spoke rarely, their conversations little more than brief complaints and unintelligible grunts. With her jacket crudely tied over her head, she staggered and stumbled, but kept pushing forward.

  They wandered the waste, keeping the suns on their left as Hadraniel had instructed, and came to the edge of a dry lake and topped another dune. This one made a circle along the edges and fed down to a depression at its center. Kyra took the left edge and plodded on with Dustan in her wake. Just as she was ready to descend the downside, her boot slid in the sand and she tumbled into the bowl. Dustan shouted and chased after her. Her tumble skidded to a halt halfway to the concave bottom. She glanced up and offered a grim smile. Dustan lay on his belly, an arm extended to her. Kyra planted a foot in the dune’s bank and pushed toward him. As she clasped his wrist, the sand below them erupted.

  A creature with broad vicious pinchers scurried up the dune’s wall. It possessed a long flat body with rows of tiny legs on its underside, propelling it forward, and as swiftly backward. A segmented tail bearing a stinger longer than Dustan’s leg swayed in chaotic rhythm. He heaved Kyra toward him, fearing he might yank her arm from the socket. Still, it was preferable to those pinchers sinking into her body or an injection of gods knew what kind of venom. The creature, which Dustan thought of as a scorpion worm, scuttled up the slope, gaining on them. He pulled Kyra to the top edge, and they tumbled down the back side of a dune surrounding the pit. The scorpion worm perched on the rim, a terrible hiss issuing from behind knife-like mandibles that sliced at the air. It flicked the stinger and a stream of concentrated venom shot out. Dustan pressed Kyra to him and rolled, the caustic toxin hitting the sand less than a foot away. Acrid smoke rose with a sizzle. Dustan pushed to his feet and tugged Kyra up. They ran, the scorpion worm’s hisses chasing after them.

  After a glance back to make certain only the creature’s a
ngry hiss had followed and not the monster itself, they collapsed, wheezing. A desperate rattle emanated from Kyra’s throat. Dustan knelt close, attempting to shield her from the suns. Her face had turned white, eyes shot through with black streaks. He did not know if some of the venom got into her system, or if energy deprivation affected her. Either way, he had no idea how to help her. He laid her on her back and shook her shoulders.

  “Kyra. Don’t you dare die on me.” He listened to her heart, the pulsing of her core. Faint, barely audible.

  Dustan inhaled deeply, taking in all the blistering hot air he could hold. He held it long enough for it to cool a little inside his body. With a hand behind her head, he lifted her mouth to his and blew the breath into her. Three times he tried, until his lungs gave out and burned to his spine. Kyra lay still, the rise of her chest imperceptible.

  “Please. Please don’t do this to me. I need you. I love you.” So parched of liquid, tears would not come, but Dustan cried all the same.

  A cough. Dustan’s head shot up. Kyra gagged, her head bobbing off the sand. He turned her onto her side and massaged her back. Scanning the area, he spotted a structure of some kind on the distant horizon. Such a long way. Still, the only choice, he had to get her to shelter. Somewhere safe. Kyra had passed out, but her breathing seemed stronger. Dustan lifted her limp body over his shoulder and staggered across the desert.

  He carried her without cessation for a full day. Possibly more, but with the never-setting suns blazing down, day stood perpetual in this realm. His arms and legs throbbed. Sweat had dried across his body long ago leaving his skin scaly and rough. Vision blurred in the heat, making everything shimmer close and then dance away. He thought the shape must lie over the next dune, but he had thought the same for three dunes now.