Revelation (Seeds of Humanity: The Cobalt Heresy) (49 page)

But the Iron Butcher was just too fast, and even when Gaeld occasionally managed to land a direct hit there was no appreciable damage to his target that I could see.

I risked a glance at Pryzius, who hadn’t contributed at all to this point and saw that he was deep in meditation of some kind which clearly involved his staff. Both he and it were enveloped in a strange, grey aura that seemed to drain the ambient light. He was obviously casting some kind of spell, but I had no way of knowing what it was.

I really didn’t want to use any more magic than was absolutely necessary, but seeing the Iron Butcher’s steed charge toward Gaeld I decided it was necessary.

Once again I used the disc-shaped key to summon the spell into my mind’s eye, and once again it obeyed. Almost before I had visualized the entire structure comprising the spell itself, I poured energy out of myself in an effort to fire the weapon even quicker this time. I hoped to intercept the warhorse before it reached Gaeld, whose back was still turned to it.

Rushing the spell turned out to be a bad idea.

The spell exploded in front of me as a chain reaction went off within it’s phantasmal form too fast for me to see, and the blast sent a shockwave outward in all directions. The force of the explosion threw me from my feet and into the second deck of the stern castle where I collapsed on the deck of the small, raised walkway we had just come out onto from the dining hall.

Surprisingly, I didn’t lose consciousness this time but I was sure that my head had been cut judging from the pain that pulsed throughout my skull. Thankfully my wits were still with me, so the damage would have to wait for a proper appraisal until later.

It was the second time I had misused the device, and the result had been the same as the first. I cursed myself as I grabbed the rail, dragging myself back to my feet.

Gaeld had actually diverted some of his own attention toward the fiendish horse, and it appeared that my supposition was correct: the horse was far more easily damaged than the Iron Butcher was—a conclusion which Gaeld had apparently also reached.

So he slashed at its legs as he ran full-circle around it, and just when it appeared that the creature was going to line up a devastating kick on him, he leapt onto its back and stabbed down into its neck with both of his enchanted blades. There was a terrible sound of screeching iron as those blades plunged all the way to the hilt in the creature’s armored form.

The horse struggled and bucked, but the vicious warrior wasn’t about to let his dominant position go to waste. He wrenched his swords with his entire body, and even from almost a hundred feet away I could see his knotted muscles trembling as they bulged from the strain.

Then, with a final herculean twist of his torso, Gaeld tore the horse’s head clean off—taking more than half of its neck with it. The same deep, rich blue energy blasted out of the death wound in front of the Sundered warrior, this time taking a smoky form before dissipating almost instantly after leaving the creature’s body. The horse’s head also disintegrated in a flash of blue light, followed by a pile of ash collapsing to the deck underneath where it had last been.

Gaeld rolled off the creature’s spasming corpse a few seconds before it disintegrated in the same fashion as its head, leaving only the Butcher with which he would now contend. But the effort had clearly taken its toll on Gaeld, and for the first time I saw the incredible warrior falter as he stumbled to his knees instead of instantly rushing his quarry.

By then the Iron Butcher had turned its back on Gaeld, as though it somehow knew the Sundered Champion was no longer a threat. The iron juggernaut squared itself to me and paused, seeming to relish my rising fear before charging directly at me. The measure of terror I felt in that moment was—and is—one I had hoped to never re-experience. There was nothing standing between myself and the murderous engine of destruction, and I knew I had only one option left to me.

Before I could gather my wits to begin casting the spell I thought had the best chance of finishing this fight, a tendril of dark, pulsating energy extended from the area to my right. That tendril encircled the Iron Butcher’s charging body and stopped it dead in its tracks.

I looked over and saw Pryzius holding his staff, the tip of which was the point of origin for the dark, grey beam.

His face was contorted as he visibly struggled to control the spell. “Jezran,” he growled through clenched teeth, “finish it! I cannot hold it for long!”

How he had been able to stop the thing at all was a question I thought very much needed answering, but that would have to come later. I closed my eyes and was taken aback by what I saw in my mind’s eye.

It was my Dream Casting spells—the same ones I had used to kill Mistress Tyreva from the Middle Wall of Coldetz Castle. But I hadn’t consciously summoned them into my mind, which raised an obvious alarm but I didn’t have time to question it just then. For all I knew, Pryzius might not be able to hold the rampaging monster for more than a few seconds, so I flooded the spells with the energy they needed and executed them simultaneously.

Chapter XXXII: An Imaginary Revelation

I was in the dreamscape. I knew I was in the dreamscape because I was holding the same weapon I had brought when entering Mistress Tyreva’s dream world: a double-barreled, twelve gauge shotgun hot-loaded with a pair of Teflon-tipped, depleted uranium, slugs.

Belief was actually more important in the dream world than reality, so having a weapon I really
believed
was going to be effective regardless of circumstances was essential—no matter how infeasible that weapon might actually be in the real world. If I had truly believed that a metal teacup was the most devastating weapon available to me, then manifesting it would have allowed me to channel the same deadly energy into my target as imagining a neutron bomb.

I was standing in a doorway of some kind. In front of me was the inside of a house that seemed familiar. I dismissed the sense of familiarity as being a reflection of the dreamer’s own experiences, which I knew I could feel as a result of my proximity to the dreamer’s consciousness.

But I also knew that some of the things in the dream world could end up being projections of my own psyche, so keeping focus on my objective was critical since the blending of two consciousnesses had all the makings of a slippery slope. One could end up lost in another person’s dream world, which I had been told wouldn’t be so very different from dying.

The doorjamb caught my attention, and when I looked closer I saw that it was made up entirely of small clocks with those little bells on top of them, sort of like not-quite-antique, wind-up, alarm clocks. The idea of a doorjamb being made up of clocks didn’t make sense, but then many things don’t make sense in a person’s dream world.

In unison, each alarm clock formed a mouth and began to scream like banshees. The noise was horrific, and it was all I could do to keep from losing concentration on the spell keeping me anchored in the dreamscape.

As quickly as they had begun their unified wailing, they stopped. When I chanced to look at them closer, their mouths had disappeared and they resembled nothing more than ordinary, old-style, wind-up alarm clocks.

Just as suddenly as the clocks had begun their wailing, there was a terrifying noise from inside the small house and I almost dropped my gun in a mixture of surprise and terror. I tightened my grip on the weapon and looked up at a sight which shook me to the core.

There were hundreds—no, there were
thousands
of monsters inside the small house, and they were all coming for me! There were serpents with arms, wolves with tusks, boars with lion’s claws and even some combinations of body parts which I knew consciously were anatomically impossible, but which still terrified me.

“Aaron!” they all screamed. “Aaron! Aaron! Aaron!” over and over, and I knew I had to get out of that house. To my horror, each of the monsters had a vaguely human appearance and I thought I even recognized some of their faces…and that sense of recognition stirred anger deep within me. I only had two slugs with me, and there were more of these things every second; there was no way I could take all of them!

I stumbled backward, tripping over the lip of the doorway and landing flat on my back, giving myself whiplash in the process.

The world began to spin, threatening to dislodge me with nothing more than simple inertia—which was physically impossible, of course, but I have to mention once again that belief is more important than reality in a dreamscape. I concentrated hard and was able to maintain my grip on my place in the dream world, and the spinning eventually slowed until the ground was once again still.

I opened my eyes and found that I was looking up at the sky. For a moment I heard nothing but the gentle breeze rushing through the short grass surrounding me, and then I noticed something out of place in my field of vision but I couldn’t quite identify what it was.

I rolled over and saw that it wasn’t grass that the breeze was rushing through: it was flowers, and a whole field of them! The flowers were of every size, shape, and color. I couldn’t help but admire the apparently infinite field of them, which had been arranged into perfect rows that were sorted by colors until they formed a seemingly endless rainbow whose alternating colors repeated infinitely.

The breeze picked up, creating all kinds of soothing sounds as it rustled through the field and I decided to get to my feet. I turned three hundred sixty degrees and was confused when I didn’t see the house I had just been inside, but I reminded myself that this wasn’t reality. Just because something had been there a moment earlier didn’t mean it needed to
continue
being there.

The wind gusted, and it was almost as though it was speaking to me in hushed whispers just beyond my ability to decipher. I strained to hear the words it was speaking, but while I failed to make them out it was still a soothing sound. Even though I couldn’t make out any specific words, somehow I knew that it was speaking to me, and
only
to me. It was a more comforting sound than I had heard in years, and I was sorely tempted to give in to it.

Then I realized what was wrong with the sky: it was purple!
Why on Earth would the sky be purple?
I wondered as a cloud came into view. Watching the cloud drift above was strange, because even though I knew it was impossible, the cloud wasn’t the part that moved to bring itself into my view; it was the
sky
that flew across so rapidly that it brought the cloud with it!

I laughed out loud, because I hadn’t initially realized that the cloud was formed into the shape of a musical note. Another one came into view, followed by another, and another until they formed what I assumed was some kind of actual song. It had been too long since I’d read sheet music, so I wasn’t able to identify the melody just from looking at the note-shaped clouds. But I was nearly overcome with a longing for the dreams that only come with deep sleep.

I felt the overwhelming need to discover the melody of the song, so I reached up to touch the cloud and was rewarded with a sound which I heard through my fingertips, reminding me of my bedtime rituals as a small child when my mom would tuck me in.

Then I realized the cloud wasn’t a cloud at all; it was made of cotton candy! I grabbed the note-shaped lump of stringy sugar in my hand and brought it to my lips, remembering all those days spent at the county fair as a kid.

I thankfully had a flash of clarity and dropped the cotton candy.
This isn’t real!
I reminded myself,
Focus!
I was losing myself in this dream world, which was strange since I’d never experienced anything like this before. I had always known when I was experiencing someone else’s feelings or memories when in their dreamscape, but this time it was proving far, far more difficult to maintain focus.

Then the clouds above me burst in unison and it began to rain. And the rain wasn’t made of cotton candy; instead it was real, honest raindrops which were incredibly cold as they splashed against my skin.

Those raindrops struck the ground, causing overly large, irregular splashes with each impact. In fact, some of the splashes seemed to create temporary images when combined with the refracted sunlight passing through them and the closer I looked, the clearer those images became.

There were people, animals, and even buildings springing into brief, incredibly-detailed life with each drop of the ever-increasing cascade of falling water splashing on the ground. As more raindrops fell from above, those images moved like they were pictures in an old-style flip book—or puppets on a stage—which played out scenes that made absolutely no sense to me, but I intuitively understood that they had a kind of insane logic to them.

There was a milkmaid feeding a hive of bees, but the ‘food’ she was supplying was old shoes. There was a blacksmith pounding away on a piece of paper, which turned to ash as he used his tongs to pick it up and appraise its quality like a real blacksmith might consider a horseshoe. A writer sat at his writing desk, frustration evident in his body language as he carefully dipped his pen in the inkpot before turning that very inkpot over on the open pages of the book in which he had been writing, causing the book to become a multitude of butterflies which scattered on the wind. On and on the scenes came, until I looked up and saw there were so many clouds that I couldn’t even see the purple sky any longer.

The rain was coming down in an absolute torrent, and I watched as the flowers seemed to wilt under the force of the water. I bent down to touch a gigantic, two-foot wide daisy next to where I was standing and it unexpectedly came apart at my touch. My hand recoiled instinctively at the odd texture of the rapidly disintegrating flower, and I looked at my fingertips to try to understand why the flower had been destroyed.

My fingers were smudged with what looked to be white paint. I smeared the paint around and saw a small piece of something thin and soggy underneath the paint.