by Ramy Vance
The world she looked upon was Vardis’ home, but it was different than the vision of his world in his dream.
There were mountains of red mud. Lakes of it, as far as the eye could see. An entire world of clay.
Alex ran over to Roy and helped him sit up. His eyes were gray and glaucous. He murmured under his breath as Alex tried to get him to his feet, “Who are you?”
“It’s me, Alex.”
“I can’t see anything. I can’t see anything. I think I’m dying. Finally. This time it’s the real thing.”
Alex looked around. She had no idea what to do. Digging herself out of wherever the hell she had been was one thing. Getting Roy out was another problem altogether. “It isn’t real, Roy. None of this is real. That’s what you told me. It’s all in our heads. Or in Vardis’. But it isn’t real.”
Roy slumped to the side, knocking his cane over. “What is real? These aren’t my memories. I’ve never been blind. Been this old but never been this blind before.”
“Are you going to get up or just sit here moping?”
Roy rested his head on the clay behind him and chuckled. “You’re one to talk. I’m pretty sure you’ve been in the shit as long as I have. How the hell did you get out?“
Alex looked down at her bionic arm. “You pinch yourself when you’re dreaming.”
“What?”
Alex drew Roy’s gun from its holster, then took his hand and wrapped his fingers around the butt. “You pinch yourself when you’re dreaming.”
Roy looked at Alex, his eyes milky. “When you’re dreaming?”
Alex pressed the muzzle of the pistol to Roy’s leg. “Yeah. When you’re dreaming.”
Roy pulled the trigger.
The pistol blasted a hole the size of an apple. He screamed in pain and cupped the wound with his hand, trying to keep the blood from flowing.
As Roy swore under his breath, the cloudiness in his eyes started to fade. He continued to swear, finally taking a deep breath and grabbing his cane. “Would have thought you went to PsyOps after pulling a stunt like that.”
Roy tried to stand, and Alex gave him a hand. They both took some time to gaze upon the red world, its red suns hanging above them like a promise of hell. “So, this is what the bastard is capable of when he’s awake.”
“How bad was it for you?”
As Roy answered, his body got younger. “Pretty bad. Ain’t proud to say it, but I was lost in there for a while. In myself. Or him. I don’t know the difference. But he broke me. You?”
Alex watched the red suns above her. “Almost. But I wouldn’t be here if he had, would I?”
Roy reached into his pocket and pulled out two cigars. He handed one to Alex. “Don’t light it,” he said. “That one’s just herbs and crap, but it’ll help ground you. Kinda like pinching yourself over and over.”
Alex accepted the fake cigar and gnawed on it. The thing tasted like chocolate and rosemary. “Now what?”
“We break out of the attack. Vardis probably assumes we’re done, but he’s at a disadvantage. He’s been keeping up two worlds, or maybe even three. He’s stretched himself pretty thin. There’s no way he’ll know we’ve broken free. He’s too busy concentrating on keeping everything running smoothly. Now we take the fight to him.”
“How are we going to do that? We were hardly able to tell the difference between reality and this?”
Roy lit his cigar and shook his head. “Not true. We both knew it wasn’t real, if only on a subconscious level. Or at least you did.”
One of the clay mountains exploded into fire. The smoke rose to the sky, obscuring something that had been lurking there. She pointed at it and Roy followed her finger, jumping in fear when he got a glimpse of what was behind the smoke. “What the hell is that?”
Millions of eyes peered out from behind the smoke as lightning crackled through the clouds. “That’s what’s in the shard,” Alex explained. “They found a way to trap it thousands of years ago. This is what the kin are made out of—some kind of elder god.”
Roy was looking at his pistol. “I swear, there’s a new elder god every twenty years or so. This ain’t anything special. Just means something is old enough to remember before there was anything. But we need to go on the offensive. The longer we stay docile, the faster he’ll find us.”
Alex turned away from the eyes that were peering at her. “Fine. We take this to Vardis. I haven’t done PsyOps before. What do they tell you to do in situations like this?”
Roy kicked at the clay next to him. “They tell us to go deep. Deeper than the person attacking us would go, and I think we’ve already been that deep in ourselves. This could be what’s deep for Vardis. This place. Let’s take it deeper.”
Alex thought it was a good idea. The alien had delved into her deeps. Why not give him the same experience? “Okay, but hold on. I want to see if we can get reinforcements.”
She focused and brought her thoughts under control, strangling the wild ideas and concepts that were whirling in her head. After she had at least partially accomplished her goal, she reached out to Chine, but the most she was able to utter was a bestial cry for help.
What came back was something she had not experienced or expected: full and unadulterated rage from Chine. It was not directed at her, but at whoever had hurt her. I am coming, Dustling. I am coming.
Alex grabbed Roy and dragged him to a pool of mud that was a couple of yards away from them. “Chine is coming,” she said. “I don’t know when he’s going to get here, but we aren’t waiting. If we’re going to bring the fight to Vardis, then we are.”
The mud was shallow, hardly coming up to Alex’s knees. “We find him now, no matter what.”
Alex dropped to her knees and started digging into the mud, splashing it up as she crawled deeper and deeper into the wet red earth. She let out a psychic blast that carved into the ground as she pulled out her scythe, then she began cutting into the earth, ripping away mud and flinging it to the side as she continued to blast it.
Roy followed suit, dropping to his knees and digging with his hands, trying to get to whatever Alex was burrowing toward.
The two of them were going to get to Vardis no matter what.
Chapter Ten
The two dug into the earth, Alex feeling the wet clay on her hands. She was reminded of when she and her parents had spent hours in their garden, digging up weeds to tend plants her parents thought were worthwhile.
“Here we are.”
Alex pulled back, uncertain of what she was retreating from.
Neither she nor Roy was in the red clay world anymore. This was a new place, blood and bone born from a life Alex could not understand.
The bones cried out for vengeance. They cried out for absolution.
For what, Alex could not know.
Roy was beside her, covered in the red gunk just as she was, trying to make sense of what they were experiencing. “This is his mind. Whatever he remembers.”
Alex had not stopped excavating. “It doesn’t matter. We’re getting to the bottom of it.”
Roy stepped back, watching Alex work. He pulled a cigar from his pocket and started chomping on it, muttering under his breath before flinging himself to the mud once more and digging as best as he could. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ll get to the bottom of it all.”
Alex lost herself to the digging, to flinging mud and clay over her shoulders, tossing it aside, trying to find what was buried beneath all of the red earth.
Lo and behold, in the tiny bits of clay were creatures, small worms with faces. Their eyes seemed to peer into Alex’s, asking questions that could not be answered or even given words. They leered, and Alex managed to return their gazes.
Worms forced themselves out of the ground. Massive things, their bodies nearly the size of a human’s, pushed themselves out of the clay, writhing, their invisible mouths grasping for what could not be seen.
Up above, the heavens were covered in red clouds, lightn
ing flashing, the red bleeding into the sky. Eyes opened all around her, watching, scheming, and understanding. “Don’t look at the eyes,” Alex shouted. “You can’t look at the eyes.”
Both of them, as if she had understood her own warnings, looked away from the sky of many winking eyes. They ignored it and dug deeper, their hands and nails filled with what could not be ignored.
Then there was thunder, a voice calling out. It was reminiscent of ancient days and voices that had come before words existed, a time when all that could be communicated was the raw feeling of existence.
Roy pulled back from it, trying to hide as well as he could.
Alex did not try to hide. She did not try to fight, merely accepted that there was hardly any control in this place, only what she took.
Chine! Chine, where are you?
In the millions of twinkling eyes above, Alex watched Vardis’ face take shape. He looked down upon the two humans, smirking as his voice thundered throughout the psychic plane. It reminded Alex of when she had been in the comet, listening to the voice of the Dark One.
They were one and the same, Vardis and the Dark One.
Alex focused on reaching out to her dragon. Please, you have to hear me. Please. I need you.
The sky ripped itself apart, lightning streaking and thunder booming.
And then there was silence. No answer came. Chine’s voice could not be heard.
Alex understood.
Chine was not coming. He couldn’t hear her, and as long as she thought she needed him to save her from what she was experiencing, that was going to be her existence. She would always need someone to save her.
But she hadn’t needed Roy. She hadn’t needed the rest of Boundless. She hadn’t needed Chine. None of them could help her make sense of what existed in her mind, and as long as she kept calling for them, she was never going to get anywhere.
Alex focused her intention on her hand. She felt energy welling around it, her knuckles swelling with power. Then she leaped into the air and drove her hand into the red earth as she landed, shattering it.
The world around her broke apart, the pieces trying to cling to each other but unable to hold on as the power of Alex’s psychic blast reverberated throughout the dreamscape.
Alex let loose a scream of rage and pain, her body bursting into flame as she plowed through the earth, the draconic fluid in her igniting, surging through her, and bolstering her powers, sending her telepathic reach farther than she could ever have imagined.
The world around her started to dissolve, Vardis’ screams echoing.
Suddenly, her dragon’s head burst through the dream, looking as if he had just come tumbling through a wall. Alex, Child of Dust!
Alex ran up to him and threw her arms around his neck. I’m here. Oh, thank God, you’re here!
Chine unleashed a torrent of ether fire.
Alex felt it burning in her as well, the flames on her body changing from yellow to black, mimicking the ones coming from her dragon.
Alex and Roy drew as close to Chine as they could while he burned everything near him.
The earth Alex had been burrowing into collapsed and the three of them dropped into a cavern.
Chine blew out a small burst of flame, enough to illuminate the cave. There was hardly anything in it, only darkness.
As the ground continued to break apart, Alex and Roy fell into a chasm with Chine. The dragon let loose a torrent of ether flames, and Alex’s body was covered in the same.
Telekinetic blasts radiated from the dragonrider as the three dropped into the clay world of Vardis’ ancestors.
Alex hit the ground hard, then struggled to her feet, clutching the aching wounds she had received in the last battle with Vardis. “Where are you? Show yourself!”
The earth shook, the walls trembling and quivering as something like a face forced its way through the red clay. It was Vardis, his jeweled forehead quivering as is his beady black eyes peered at Alex. “Show myself? Perhaps you should show yourself.”
A telepathic blast hit Alex, trying to bring up all of Vardis’ renditions of her past, but she knew better now. She knew that none of this was real.
Alex wiped away Vardis’ onslaught with a simple gesture. “I’m done with you,” she shouted. “All of this. I’m done with all of it.”
Vardis’ head trembled, his skin boiling as he screamed in rage. “The Dark One must be defeated!”
Alex screamed back as Chine flew up behind her, blasting ether flames to consume the visage of Vardis before them.
Vardis squealed as his skin melted, as did the clay surrounding his body, pooling in a red lake that looked like blood. The alien’s face bubbled up to the top of it.
Alex and Chine walked down to the small lake, Roy right behind them. The three looked at the miserable, melting face of Vardis. “End it, Chine,” Alex ordered.
Chine scorched the lake and everything around it.
Alex and Roy were caught up in the flames and consumed by them.
Alex snapped awake in her bed in the medbay. She looked around, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. “Roy, are you here?”
Roy coughed and rolled over. He was lying on the floor, trying to grab his cigar. “Yeah, I’m here. I’m here.”
Alex let out a sigh of relief. “I can’t believe we got through that. Jesus Christ.”
The lights in the room flickered on and off, then went out.
The walls shook, and the air got hotter.
Alex looked up.
Vardis stood in the doorway, his eyes burning with a dark light as he stepped into the medbay. “This is just the beginning, Alex,” he growled.
What is the power of Vardis’ weapon and once unleashed, can it be stopped? Read the epic conclusion of the Dragon Rider series!
Author Notes Ramy Vance
May 28, 2020
My Dungeon Master hates me… Seriously. I must be the most difficult player ever.
I’m playing a dual class Barbarian/Sorcerer – with a twist. The backstory for my character is this:
He was one of the great barbarians of the Mountain Goliaths. They raided a village doing their thing: Killing, stealing, pillaging… when a great sorcerer came onto the scene and with a wave of his hand, killed half the barbarian raiders.
My guy – who takes on the name of his last great deed … another reason why my DM hates me – was spared for reasons the barbarian doesn’t really understand. Then he was trained to become a sorcerer himself. But given his intelligence is a 10 and his Wisdom is an 11, he’s a terrible sorcerer. He pretty much can cast Jump and Light … and that’s it.
Anywhooo … he was released with the instructions that he must “Raise someone worthy to heights unimagined.”
The Multi-Named Barbarian took this to heart and went forth where he met the adventuring party that my character is a part of now.
On their first adventure, the party is clearing out a bunch of goblins from a cave. One goblin in particular – Gibbles – catches Multi-Named’s attention. The barbarian/sorcerer sees potential in the creature.
He sees a KING!
So for the rest of that session, I spent Charisma roll after Charisma roll (including wasting all my inspirations and advantages) to befriend the goblin.
Now I’m out to ‘civilize’ him … a lofty task, indeed, because my character has anger issues. (After all, he’s a barbarian at heart.)
Multi-Named protects Gibbles, buys him clothes, stands up for him when some wayward villager sneers at him …
Multi-Named will only go on an adventure if he feels it will further Gibbles’ destiny. (My character has refused to do things set out by the DM, as well as committed to ridiculous fights in the name of the goblin.)
And this is my oath (or rather, Multi-Named’s oath): By the time this adventure is over, Gibbles will be a king.
Or Multi-Named will die trying.
Sigh… like I said, my DM hates me.
Gibbles: Before …
and (soon to be) after pics …
PS – Do you think I can convince Michael to play DnD with me?
Author Notes Michael Anderle
May 28, 2020.
So Ramy asked in his author notes the question of whether or not you, our fair reader, thought I might play Dungeons and Dragons with him.
The short answer is perhaps and maybe.
The longer answer is I would like to watch recordings of Ramy playing Dungeons and Dragons before I commit fully. It has been decades, I believe, since I have played the game. I am sure I would become the point of focus to find out just how bad could we can screw up Michael if he’s playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons with us.
Not really too sure I care to do this. It’s like being asked to be the one sitting on that little chair and getting dumped into a vat of ice-cold water. Everyone supports the fact that it’s for charity. I’m pretty good with just putting up $200 and calling us square.
I’ve never been good at making a fool of myself. I can do that all on my lonesome without making a concerted effort to accomplish it. Sometimes, I wonder what would happen if I tried to be foolish. Probably I would fail, yet by not trying, I make it seem easy.
I can imagine that if I were being paid based on the amount of laughter, I might become a rich man indeed.
However, his question brings up questions of my own. I have watched a few YouTube series, and maybe a few television series, where the characters on the shows played Dungeons and Dragons. Yet, I don’t know of any of them that have made me wish to watch the second show.
Is it that I’m just not a fan? Or is it that no one has successfully captured the joy and the freedom of playing a role-playing game? Is there perhaps an opportunity to create an online training course for actors on how to act while playing Dungeons and Dragons? Is there something that brings the joy that one feels when reading about Dungeons and Dragons events in someone’s life?