by John Corwin
Once past the tracks, we crossed a road and headed down a street. The heavily worn asphalt was pockmarked with holes and laced with cracks. Bits and pieces of gray granite littered the surface, as if fallen from the back of a truck. We followed a curve in the road and suddenly stood in a huge clearing, free of fog. David and I hurriedly stepped back behind the curtain of gray, and poked our heads into the clear air.
A large gray fortress stretched before us on a landscape of dead grass and bare patches of red clay.
"A quarry," David said, pointing to a nearby sign which stated Bellwood Quarry—authorized personnel only beyond this point.
"Why is there no fog here?" I asked.
He shrugged. "No idea."
We examined the area from our hidden position, watching as the Gloomies wheeled their equipment inside. No fence guarded the perimeter, nor did there seem to be doors barring entry into the grim gray structure.
"This Serena must be a mad scientist," I said. "Because nobody in their right mind would willingly live in a place like this."
"This building doesn't exist in the mortal realm," he said.
"I've never been here," I said, "so I wouldn't know."
David ran his eyes up and down the length of the area. "I wonder if they dreamcasted it into existence, or built it."
I shivered. "I can't imagine how much concentration it would take to keep a building like this from melting away."
"I wasn't expecting anything like this." He rested his chin on a fist. "There's no way we could sneak in and steal the ripper."
"Is your clone still intact?"
His eyes narrowed. "I think so. I don't know if there's a limit to how far away it can go, but I'm not particularly worried about it."
"I wonder if we could use it to spy."
"It's essentially a puppet. If there's a way to have it transmit what it sees and hears, I don't know how to do it."
We watched the building for several minutes in silence. I didn't know what to do at this point. "Should we go back to the Grotto?" I asked.
"You heard those people. The arch operators shut down the Obsidian Arch for safety inspections." He folded his arms and stared into space. "It could be days before it resumes operations."
"We don't have many options at this point."
David seemed to mull it over. "Even if we steal a ripper, we'd have to hope they didn't notice it was gone. It's not like there's another Obsidian Arch to use it on."
The last thing I felt like doing was walking, but we had no choice. I extended my senses toward the fortress, hoping to get an idea about the number of people inside, but the structure lay too far away for me to reach.
An iron grip took me by the bicep. David grunted. Before I could look to see what had me, someone pushed me forward into the clear area. A humanoid creature without a face or other features on its pale white form held David in a similar fashion to me. He struggled, but the thing marched him forward without missing a beat. The one holding me pushed me along at a similar pace despite my attempts to resist.
"They're dreamcasted like Timothy's raptor," David said. He bared his teeth, but didn't resist the things herding us along.
I added in my optimistic two cents. "We're so screwed."
The guards took us inside the fortress and shoved us inside a holding cell along with the Arcane Jarvis and the others had captured earlier. The man was still unconscious.
"Guess we get the tour anyway," David said in a grim voice.
The windowless cell was constructed of smooth gray stone. I ran a hand along the surface and found it neither cool nor warm, much like the atmosphere of the Gloom. I sat down on the bare floor and looked at the door made of the same material as the cell walls. If the place had been dreamcasted, the creator hadn't used much imagination in the process. Then again, maybe simple construction made it easier to maintain.
After what seemed like an hour, the door swung open, and Jarvis appeared, flanked by two of the pale mannequin creatures. "Looks like you decided to join us after all," he said. "Clever trick with the replica, but you didn't hold its shape for long."
"Is this what you call hospitality?" David said, standing. "Or do you plan to show us to the guest rooms?"
Jarvis snorted. "Unless Serena has a use for you, ain't much chance of seeing the outside of this cell."
"Who is this Serena?" David asked.
"If you're lucky, you'll get to meet her." He took out a notepad. "Now, what are your names, and type?"
"I'm Bucky," my father said. "I like long walks in the park, and curling up next to a warm fire with a good book and a glass of wine. I guess my type would be hopeless romantic."
One of the mannequins stepped inside the cell and swatted a backhand at David. My father dodged back, narrowly avoiding the blow.
"What's the matter? Don't like romantics?"
"Shut your trap, or I'll have a sentinel break your jaw."
I shoved ahead of my father before he provoked Jarvis any further. "I'm Justin Slade. This is my father David. We were sent through an arch by the Exorcists."
Jarvis narrowed his small eyes then jotted the information down on his notepad. "So you're the two demon spawn that got away from Gavin and Stephan yesterday." He snorted. "Morons."
I decided not to pile on and changed the subject. "Did someone dreamcast this place?"
"How do you know about dreamcasting?"
"We overheard you talking about it," I said. "You're obviously the leader around here, so I assumed you'd know all there is to know." I figured stroking the man's ego couldn't hurt.
Jarvis nodded. "You're right I'm in charge and answer only to Serena. If you know what's good for you, you'll do as I say."
"I understand," I said. "Did you dreamcast this fortress? It's amazing."
A smug look came over his face. "No, but I designed it myself. The superstructure is constructed of granite brought in from the real world. Some parts of this place are dreamcasted while others are real." He patted the gray wall. "The trick is, only me and a few others know which parts are real, and which are dreamcasted."
"I'll bet you came up with the sentinels too," I said, looking the one in the cell up and down. "They scare the hell out of me."
"All mine," he replied, looking even more pleased with himself. "Not only are they physically perfect, but the built-in fear factor adds a psychological edge."
"Absolutely." I looked at the sentinel with fear in my eyes.
He crossed his arms and bared his teeth. "I run a tight ship here, just the way Serena likes it."
"You certainly caught us fast," I said.
"Look, I didn't mean any disrespect," David said, expression contrite. "It's good to find a man who knows how to survive in the Gloom."
Jarvis relaxed perceptibly. "We ain't got much use for demon spawn, but then again, neither do the Exorcists." He burst into rough laughter. "We could always use more help with manual labor. If you behave yourselves, I'll make sure Serena don't work you too hard."
Apparently, Jarvis didn't realize Daelissa had sent us through. The angel had mentioned Serena at the time, so perhaps she was the only one who knew what horrors lay in store for us here.
Jarvis continued to brag about how important he was before assuring us he was the only hope we had for living a comfortable life. "We'll make good use of you. How nasty the work is will depend on how well you obey me." Jarvis looked at the sentinel. It turned and left the cell. "And if you really piss me off, I can always throw you in the pit." The door slid shut with a dull thud.
David held a finger to his mouth. I extended my senses and detected Jarvis just outside the door, probably eavesdropping to hear if we were making escape plans.
"That's what a leader looks like," David said with a wink. "We need to make sure we do everything he says, because he's the one who can keep us safe."
"He seems really smart too," I said. "Can you imagine how much military knowledge it takes to build a place like this?"
Jarv
is's mood switched from suspicious to pleased. I couldn't usually read men as well as women, but the man had a huge ego, and we'd just stoked it into a furnace. His presence faded. My father and I exchanged knowing looks.
"Good job, son. You have a bright future as a master manipulator."
I rolled my eyes. "Hardly my life's ambition." I regarded the door for a moment. "How do you think he opens the door? There's a handle, but no lock."
"I was wondering the same thing." He examined it. "It's either dreamcasted, or uses some kind of facial recognition spell."
I leaned against the wall and looked at the cell. "I keep thinking back to my Elyssa clone."
"My company not good enough?" David smiled.
I shook my head. "It's not that. I'm talking about how I controlled her simply by thinking about it."
"I'm following."
"What would happen if I'd made my clone of Elyssa fight Timothy's raptor? Dreamcasted beings seem impossibly strong, so which one would win?"
"Interesting question," David said, tapping a finger to his chin. "When you stop actively controlling a unit, it'll just stand there and eventually deconstruct. When we attacked Timothy, he lost control of the raptor. It seems to take a certain amount of willpower to create and control."
"So, if two dreamcasted beings fought, it would essentially be a contest of wills?"
"Yeah, I think so." He paused. "Your will would have to overpower the other person's."
"If these walls are dreamcasted, I could conceivably imagine a hole in one if I could overpower the will of the person maintaining it."
David shrugged. "Possibly. The problem is we don't know what's real and what's not."
"I just wonder if attempts to imagine a hole in a dreamcasted wall would alert the person who created it."
"It might." He ran a hand along the smooth wall. "Maybe we should see how this plays out before we attempt anything like that. Plus, we don't know how many of those sentinels would come running. We might be able to overpower one person's will, but not a team of them."
"Do you really think there's a team of people manifesting those sentinels?"
He mulled it for a moment. "I can't see any other way, unless they have some very gifted individuals."
"If only I could go into a dream state more easily." I felt the bottle of painkillers in my pocket. "Popping more pills isn't going to cut it."
"You're already capable of meditating if you know how to spawn to demon form or summon hellhounds at will," he said. "Reaching inside yourself and drawing out the inner demon takes a great deal of concentration."
"If you say so," I replied. "Maybe you could give me a few tips."
"I'd be happy to," he said. "Doesn't look like there's much else to do at the moment." He regarded me. "Vallaena said you learned quickly. She even admitted you beat her in a fight."
"She admitted that to you?" I said. "I find it hard to imagine someone with that much pride could admit defeat."
"Let's just say she's so proud of her accomplishments at teaching you, it overwhelmed her usual sense of self-importance." David chuckled. "I haven't seen that happen very often." He sat down, and patted the floor across from him.
I mimicked his cross-legged position. "Do I have to hum and close my eyes?"
"Nah," he said, batting the air with a hand. "But entering a lucid trance is a bit different than reaching for your inner demon. You have to enter a waking dream."
"Like hallucinating?" I said.
"Exactly."
"Get me some heroin and I'll be good to go."
His expression turned serious. "Let's keep the quips to a minimum, or you won't learn anything."
The look on his face sobered me. Time to live the dream.
Our lives could depend on it.
Chapter 19
"I want you to reach for your inner demon," David said.
I closed my eyes and reached inside. The barrier between me and the other half of my soul was still there, like a glass prison.
"I know you can't reach the demon, but I want you to maintain this concentration for a moment," David's disembodied voice said from outside the void.
Holding the emptiness wasn't hard. When I'd learned to summon hellhounds, I'd had to reach through the window of my soul to the demon plane and draw through lesser spirits which could be conjured in the real world as the huge demon dogs, though my first attempt had been outright embarrassing. Instead of a monster hound, I'd spawned a pipsqueak the size of a Chihuahua. Rather than banish him back to the demon plane, I'd kept the little guy as a pet and named him Cutsauce. Realizing my thoughts were running on wild tangents, I quashed them and settled back into the darkness.
"Pretend you are weightless, floating in water. You are numb to all outside stimulus."
The Gloom's neutral temperature made that easier than normal. The darkness drew me deeper and deeper into blank infinity.
My eyes flicked open. I stood on a precipice between two rivers. The rivers bubbled and churned like lava. One was blinding white, the other dark ultraviolet. The sliver of land I stood on was gray.
"Oh, crap. Not this again." This was obviously a different twist on the visions I'd had earlier. But the dreamlike quality was absent. This felt real. Maybe because I'm in a lucid trance. I took a breath and steeled myself as the weight of the looming decision pressed down on me. If previous visions were any indication, the choice I made here could determine the fate of the world.
No pressure.
I wondered if this was the universe prodding me to take matters in hand, or if some part of my consciousness knew my efforts to stop Daelissa had hit a standstill unless I claimed one side over the others.
Consider all possibilities.
In the past, Daelissa and Nightliss had been present in these visions. Now they were absent, and everything was boiled down to the two essentials—the Brilliance, or the Murk. As a Brightling, Daelissa represented the former. Nightliss, as a Darkling, represented the latter. If I was choosing on personalities alone, Nightliss's side won hands down. But the vision of the park flashed past in my mind, and I felt a deep certainty choosing either of those sides wasn't the right path.
Haven't I already chosen?
Foreseeance Forty-Three Eleven had supposedly been fulfilled when Ivy and I hadn't tried to kill each other. Was this still part of that prophecy, or something completely different?
Think, Justin, think!
I regarded the two rivers for several minutes and suddenly realized there was a third choice. Between the darkness and the light stood the gray. A Seraphim I'd aptly nicknamed Mr. Gray occupied that space. I'd only met him once, and even then briefly. Supposedly, he was manipulating events to prevent either side from winning because he wanted to maintain the status quo.
I hesitated to call him a neutral third party since his golems had tried to take me out of the picture on several occasions. Even with his position as the Switzerland of the Overworld, I wondered if choosing the gray was really a choice at all. Pressure built in my chest, demanding I do something to make known my affiliation.
Pushing back the desire to get this over with quickly, I stretched my back and looked at the roiling gray sky close overhead. I hadn't noticed it before since I'd been so intent on jumping in the correct river. As I stared at the sky, I realized it bubbled and frothed just like the light and dark rivers, except it was flowing in the opposite direction.
The third side.
I thought back to the vision of the park and remembered the gray statue of myself. All had been in order, and nothing ever changed. It sounded just as bad as the other alternatives. Did the gray represent balance, or something else?
Should I choose gray, dark, or light? I wondered why the other colors of the rainbow didn't have a say in this. Or was color just a meaningless detail? I looked at the horizon in front of me. A vortex of white and ultraviolet swirled upward from their respective rivers into the gray. Behind me, I saw a large gray vortex spinning down and splitting i
nto white and dark.
One big endless cycle.
White and black came from gray. They combined again to form gray.
Does color matter or is this simply how my mind interprets it?
If aether really came from the dreams, nightmares, and thoughts of people in the real world, supers and noms alike, it meant negative and positive thoughts created the very source of magic. Our hopes, dreams, and fears formed those thoughts. I sucked in a breath as something of an epiphany hit me. I had things reversed. Dreams were a byproduct of our emotions and thoughts. Those all came from our souls. Dreams weren't the source of aether. Magical energy originated in our souls.
"Holy socks," I said, unable to come up with a proper Shelton expression.
I lacked a psychology degree and wasn't a religious expert, but my theory just felt right to me. Even if I was right, the knowledge didn't bring me any closer to making a decision. I had to make a choice.
I stared at the molten ultraviolet energy. Nightliss had always been there for me. She was a good person, and I loved her as a friend. On the other hand, my mother was a Brightling. Since rescuing her from the Conroys, I'd gotten to know her and learned a lot about her past. She'd made some poor decisions over the centuries, but she definitely wasn't an evil person. Daelissa, on the other hand, was crazy and evil. My mind returned to Mr. Gray. He seemed amoral to the point that he would do anything to maintain the balance no matter if it required murder or mayhem.
I didn't know any evil Darklings, but Nightliss had told me about plenty of her kind who'd joined forces with the Brightlings. Maybe that didn't make them evil, but it certainly didn't make them good.
I shouted in frustration and threw up my hands.
How could I make a decision when all sides seem to have their faults? In light of my wonderful vision of that awful park, none of them seemed the way to go.
Mr. Gray once told me the two primal forces in the universe were the Brilliance, destruction, and the Murk, creation. But if his theory of a middle place held true, it also meant there was a primal anti-force—stasis.