Chapter 27: Sojourner, Pt 5
Your heart races as you run down the streets. Once again, countless dark purple crystals pierce through from beneath the ground and tear through the city all around you. You leap and dodge out of the way as broken glass and chunks of concrete fall all around you like rain. Time seems to slow down when they hit the asphalt, where they shatter and break into even smaller pieces.
Behind you is the shadow creature, slowly but steadily coming after you. Its translucent purple blade hovers along obediently at its side.
And gripping your hand fiercely in front of you is Kaja. The wind rushes around the both of you as sweat drips down your brows. You're both panting heavily, tired from constantly running.
Your chest heaves as you take in as much air as you can - your body feels tight everywhere, and your muscles are burning. You want to stop. No, you've wanted to stop a while ago. But you can't.
The only way is forward, because to slow or to stop or to stay is death.
Despite your fear, despite your anxiety, despite your pain, you smile. And you can't help it - you're deep in your recurring dream. You hated it the first dozen times it happened. Being a part of the dream truly gnawed on you. Then you grew to eventually accept that it simply wouldn't stop, despite the ache in your heart.
At some point, you began to cherish it.
Sure, it always results in death and loss, over and over. Watching Kaja die and leave you… it wrenches a part of your soul every single time. But the dreams also allow you more time with Kaja. You get to spend hours with her, again and again and again. Those are the moments you cherish greatly.
They might have been the worst two days of your life, but they've also been the absolute best. Nothing you've ever experienced has even come close.
It's a shame you had to ruin things. Maybe if you didn't try to end things with her, she wouldn't have been so eager to… disappear. If you instead fought for her to be by your side, she might still be around. And you wouldn't have to go on this trip.
Now you've come to a point where your dream is tiring. Yes, you love what time you can spend with her, yes you hate the heartache at the end. But most of all, you know it's all futile.
Kaja's dead, and these dreams only anchor your mind to the past. It's time to end them, somehow. Whatever it takes.
You shake the thoughts away, afraid to go any further. You instead return to your dream. Time in your dream has slowed to a crawl, or perhaps your perception has sped up. Either way, you've learned to float about in your own memories, through your dreams.
In this way, you can better appreciate the small, beautiful moments, or lament your most terrible ones.
A massive bolt of lightning breaks through your reverie and slams into the four-way intersection in front of you. Your ears ring from the deafening blast it creates, and you raise your arms up defensively out of pure instinct.
Chunks of asphalt are torn out the road as the lightning punches deep into it. A shock wave rushes out from the point of impact, which throws you to the ground with ease. Detritus and debris fly past, even as abandoned cars and such are pushed a meter or so.
Though the shock wave sweeps through you, its electrical energies seem to remain in you. It's not enough to harm you, but enough to jolt your entire system out of complacency.
The lightning bolt itself hasn't ended - it continues to smash into the ground, as though it's a never ending strike. Your eyes go wide at the sight. Nothing like this happened to your dreams, ever, and you're certain that this is the first time it has ever been interrupted.
The very sight of it leaves you in awe.
Kaja stands up as fast as she can, then beckons for you to keep running. She glances behind the both of you frantically, presumably towards the shadow creature, then grabs you by the shoulder and tugs you back onto your feet.
All the while, you're still enraptured by the lightning, unable to pull your full attention away from it. The bolt itself seems to pull you in hypnotically, as though it wants you to walk into it. A part of you shivers at the prospect.
A booming feline voice echoes all around you, as though it comes from the skies above. But you also hear it reverberate in your own head, as though it's bouncing around a vast, empty shell.
"Wake up, you idiot!" says the voice. "Wake the hell up right now!!"
You feel a sting on your cheek, which immediately breaks you out of your reverie. When your eyes refocus, Kaja is in front of you with both hands on your shoulders.
"Snap out of it!" she tells you. "Come on, run. Run!"
Kaja then grabs you by the hand and tugs you hard, causing you to somewhat reluctantly put one foot in front of the other. You stop after a second to hold your ground, which causes Kaja's face to get filled with surprise and fear and .
"What're you doing?" she says, frantically. "It's coming to get us! We need to go!"
"No, wait, Noir's in trouble," you reply, half in a haze. "Gotta stop this."
"Noir? What the hell are you talking about? Come on already! Let's get outta here!"
"I just need a second to think, alright…"
It pains you to tune out Kaja, but some part of you knows you have to. This is just the dream, and you can always come back to it any time. For now, you've gotta wake up. The problem is simply that you don't know how to.
All this time, not only has your dream ever stopped or been interrupted, but you haven't done anything to stop or interrupt it on purpose, either. Of course there've been times when you've wanted it to end prematurely, but found that you couldn't. Something else inside of you always holds you back.
A greater part of you never wants the dream to end. That part of you would rather give everything else up just for another moment with Kaja, no matter how unreal it is. After all, this dream is all you've got left of her now.
Strange how you wanted to end things, only to deeply regret it as much as you do now.
And of course, the dream itself has become more than tiresome. You feel it making you insane, every time it happens. You know it has to end. You know you've got to get rid of it. It's the only way forward.
To stay is to meet death, in more ways than one.
But how? No matter how fast your heart beats or how far it falls, the dream keeps on going, always. Your dream always runs uninterrupted all the way to the end, when you pass out from psionic exhaustion, when it turns into a nightmare, when Kaja dies.
Always.
Time slows down to a crawl again as you take hold of your innermost thoughts. You've got to figure out how to get out of this. You suppose you could let the dream end by itself, but then who knows what would happen in the meantime? Noir could get killed! And so could you.
Wake up already! Noir's voice reverberates around your head.
"I'm trying, alright!" you shout out. But you aren't sure if anyone hears you. Noir doesn't respond, not exactly
A cat-like wailing echoes all around, followed by a loud hissing. Then comes a yelp, and the lightning vanishes in a flash of light, just as suddenly as it had come. Whatever damage it had done to the landscape of your memory also disappears in its wake.
You tremble, not knowing exactly what happened, if Noir has been killed. And now that the lightning is gone, you can't use it to wake yourself. If you could even use it to wake yourself.
A soft curse escapes your lips, frustration at your inability to get out of here on your own fills you. But instead of lamenting and burying yourself like the past, you push the feeling aside. You've spent more than enough time feeling helpless and pathetic and useless. It's time to end that.
If you can't be with Kaja any longer, then you may as well be more like her. That's the only real way she can still be a part of your life.
Though you understand that this is the path you need to take, the Kaja in your dream tugs at your arm, even in stillness. Your resolve weakens the more you look at her, the more you indulge in the memory and the dream…
No! You have to get out of here!
You shake yourself free of her frozen grip and pull your hand away. Then you strike yourself as hard as you can, palm to cheek. But you feel nothing. Even when you try over and over, nothing changes and you feel little. Which makes sense - your actual, physical body is just laying there on the garage floor.
Dream Kaja reaches out in alarm, attempting to stop you from striking yourself. She pleads with you to stop, to go with her.
Because of that, a part of you starts to wander back towards Kaja, and you have to consciously pry yourself away. You force your thoughts to focus on the task at hand, and wake from your dream. This becomes harder and harder as the moments pass, and you feel your heart and mind getting torn in two.
Almost like parts of you want to splinter off to indulge in a past long since gone.
You put one foot in front of the other and break out into a run. If you can get away from here, then maybe you could shake yourself awake. Maybe you can become free of all of this. But even as you push your legs to go as fast as they can, the world crawls past, as though you're running in a river of mud.
Frustration wells up inside you as you look up into the buildings around you. You want to get up there, to jump off the roofs, to wake before you hit the ground. But you can barely move now, even though you were running just earlier.
Worse, when you finally get to a door you find that you can't even open it. It's shut tight and practically impassable. You try to force it open with all your might, but it doesn't even budge. When you try to get through a shattered window to get inside, find that you can't pass that either.
Of course it'd be an invisible wall - this is just a dream, just a memory. You never went into any of these buildings - you ran down the streets. You've no idea and no knowledge of what's in any of them. Makes sense you can't now do that. You can't veer too far from your own memories, no matter how much psionic energy you use up, or how imaginative you think you are.
A part of you looks back behind you, wanting to know how far you've gotten away from the memory of Kaja. It feels like you've gone down half a street, and fully expect her to be running towards you. But when you turn she's right next to you.
Frustration wells inside you at the contradictory emotions that flood you. You want to be right here, always. But you want to leave, too. And hopefully never come back. You're tired of feeling all these things whenever you get into this dream, this nightmare. You hate that it all tumbles down around you, suffocating you with all these conflicting thoughts and emotions.
All the happiness and the loss and the frustration and the disappointment, all of which turns into a bittersweet loneliness on waking. Your heart and mind can't take much more.
This all has to stop, one way or another.
You look ahead of you, past the four-way intersection, and into the street beyond that. There, the shadow of numerous crumbling buildings meld together to make one large one on the asphalt. Up above, they're suspended in the air in mid-fall, stalled by your will. And an idea takes hold.
You allow time to flow normally again, and allow your dream to come back to life. The world shakes as it ends, and Kaja grabs your hand yet again. She tugs at you one more time, worry plastered on her face.
You run with her this go around. But instead of letting her lead, you run ahead of her, and pull her with you. And instead of turning left at the intersection in front of you, you keep going forward.
"Wait!" Kaja objects, but you tune her out as much as you can.
Instead, you keep running down the street, towards the ever-growing shadows. You run as fast as you can, this time seemingly unhindered. Your heart beats madly in your chest as you glance up at the sky above you.
There, the detritus of countless buildings fall closer and closer.
You barely feel it when Kaja stops in her tracks. She attempts to hold a tight grip on your hand, but your fingers slip away from each other.
A second later, the falling chunk of building crashes all around you, crushing you completely. You feel shards of stone and metal smash down on your body, but only just. There's a sliver of a moment when you feel a terrible weight on your body.
Your heart beats one more time, heavily and loudly and deeply. It comes with an all-encompassing darkness that mutes out everything else around you.
Then, you wake.
Chapter 28: Sojourner, Pt 6
You awaken with a sharp gasp, having ejected yourself out of your own dream. Along with your alarm and surprise comes a sharp pain piercing through your head. No doubt, you've used some measure of psionic energy to force yourself to leave.
Not that you're too worried about that in the slightest - you clearly have more immediate things to worry about.
The Semi-Crazed woman is standing just outside the garage entrance, amidst an encroaching twilight. A twinge of fear immediately sweeps through you when you notice that her eyes look wild and vicious. Both her arms are splayed wide to her sides, fingers splayed and curved into talons. Her body is hunched somewhat, and possibly enlarged… You can't tell exactly.
In any case, you see and sense how much she's changed into something more animalistic, more feral, more predatory than before.
And something about how she moves bothers you. It almost seems like she's moving clumsily, like a half-broken animatronic. It takes you a second to realize that the body is being puppeteered.
You open up your Third Eye in search of something like the Conductor, but find something completely different. No-one is grasping her. There is no Conductor.
No, what you see is that her glowing gold Thread is now woven through her splinters, binding them all together, to her. The Threads holding her splinters together are taut like a spider's web, almost as though she has created a Network between her splinters.
Not only that, but each of her splinters are opened up all the way, their minds and voices at full blast. Their thoughts and emotions simply pour out into the ether wildly. But instead of dissipating into nothingness, they meld into each other. Each one directs their individual psionic energies into the ether, creating something far more potent and dangerous than any regular Crazed.
Her psionic energies lash outward with intense ferocity. You can feel her energies pulse in waves strong enough to push against you. Unlike before they aren't fighting with each other for dominance - they're working in tandem.
You shudder to think what they're capable of, as a whole. Then you realize you're about to find out whether you want to or not.
It's clear that the woman can't possibly be a Crazed. After all, her thoughts and emotions aren't chaotic ravings tumbling around and fighting each other. No, they're united in their deepest desire, their deepest need.
And that's of hunger.
You feel waves of it push against you, over and over. Each of her splinters practically exude it, though with a random smattering of other emotions mixed in. Anger, happiness, surprise, fear. What her individual splinters typically feel. But these seem muted and thin and fragile - you can hardly hear them past the deafening hunger.
Yep, definitely not a Crazed, you think. She's a Chimera.
In between you and her is Noir, who is as large as she can make herself. Her back is hunched, and her fur prickles outward, as an angry cat is wont to do. Her psionic energies are also flaring out as wide as she can, to look as threatening as she can.
As impressive as it is, the Chimera's energies far overwhelm hers. It overwhelms yours, too.
You quickly hop up from your bedroll and run up next to Noir. At the same time, you open up a Network with her, and open up your psionic reserves. That comes with a heavy squeezing sensation surrounding your head.
The vice-like grip dulls once the Network begins in earnest, but never goes away.
Your hand immediately reaches for your pistol, but you feel nothing but the fabric of your pants - you haven't equipped it. You take it off whenever you sleep. You chide yourself for not having it on anyway.
But then again, what would a mere bullet do to something like this?
"What do you want?" you scream at the Chimera.
She doesn't respond. Instead, her face contorts slightly in what looks like mild annoyance, but then grows to something more… focused. Her energies whip and lash all around as well, but instead of randomly out in whatever direction, they're aimed at you.
They lash at the psionic energy around you with such strength that you can feel every strike. Worse, they seem to nip at you in an attempt to tear some of it away for themselves.
Clearly the Chimera wishes to feed. On you.
About time you woke up! Noir shouts out telepathically, the annoyance clear in her tone of thought.
"Yeah, well, I was trapped in there, alright?" you reply, defensively. "Didn't think it'd be that hard to do!."
Well now we know.
"Now we know."
What do we do about that?
"That, I don't know. But before we do anything else…"
You reach out with your psionic energies of Connection and invite Noir into your Network. She quickly confirms and connects, allowing both your energies to fill the same pool. They gather up between you, a shared resource either of you could channel.
Even better, you sense your own abilities increase and heighten a noticeable, albeit temporarily. The same goes for Noir - her own abilities increase thanks to the Network. But even combined, your Network's total energy is perhaps just over half as potent as the Chimera's.
Alright well, you figure it out, fast. I'll try to keep her off us.
You sense Noir pour energy into her Temperance and her ESP, strengthening her body significantly as well as heightening her senses as far as she can go.
She then darts forward in the blink of an eye and slashes at the Chimera's legs with her razor-sharp claws. They tear into her shin with ease and scratch the bone beneath. Dark red blood flows out almost paradoxically.
The Chimera shrieks out of pain, then hops back a few meters defensively. You sense she does so more out of instinct rather than fear. She circles Noir, who swipes again threateningly even though her quarry is well out of range.
It's enough of a threat that the Chimera takes a half-step back anyway, though she regains her ground a few moments later.
You see her splinters shift and swap places with each other, which causes the shape and flow of her psionic energies to shift significantly. It appears she positions and angles them in certain ways, as though to strengthen certain powers.
Or, more accurately, she's rerouting the energies of certain splinters into others.
She then flings a pure Telekinetic wave at Noir, who dodges out of the way just before the wave smashes into the concrete. It's powerful enough to crack and splinter the ground at the point of impact.
Not that you have much time to admire or fear the damage - the Chimera almost immediately flings one at you, horizontally.
If not for your foresight, you might have taken it full-force in the chest. You see a flash of it moments before it happens, enough for you to quickly duck down and roll forward. You sense the wave's energies flash by above you and smash into the garage wall inside.
The sensation makes your heart skip.
At the same time, twinges of frustration leap out of the Chimera. She flings out two more Telekinetic waves at the two of you, which the both of you run and dodge and leap and scamper out of the way as best you can.
You feel the waves streak past each and every time, close enough to cause your fingers to tingle and your palms to sweat.
An idea hits you, and you run into the storefront to take immediate shelter. Seeing as how the Chimera has preserved the shopfront itself, you figure she wouldn't dare harm it. You literally duck down behind one of the shelves and peer out from the top of it to watch her reaction, to see if your hunch is right.
Outside, she rears back as though to swipe at you with another Telekinetic Wave, but doesn't carry through with it. You feel her hold on to the energies, ready to unleash it at any given moment.
She never does, and you can feel her frustration and anger rise more and more. They pierce through the hunger here and there, which causes her energies to fluctuate to some degree. Not enough to weaken her, of course.
Instead she slams her stored up Telekinetic energy down into the concrete next to her, which breaks off small chunks and flings them in every direction. At the same time, she vents some of that frustration.
You exhale with relief, at knowing that you made the right call. Then continuing on your hunch, you immediately decide to provoke her and shake the shelves violently, which causes the empty wrappers on them to topple and fall out.
The Chimera goes wide-eyed at seeing what you're doing, then screams into the air. You can feel her anger and frustration spike through her hunger.
Just as it reaches its peak, you launch your own attack.
Since there's no-one out here except you and Noir and this Chimera, you decide to go all-out with a Surge. It is, in your opinion, the best psionic power you've got, even if you haven't gotten to practice it very much.
You shape it as much as you can towards the Chimera, then pour as much of your fear and anger into it, as much as you can possibly muster up. Since you're in a Network, Noir's fear and anger goes along with yours, feeding into the whole.
The psionic Surge slams up against the Chimera's own anger and amplifies it significantly. It's enough to cause an all-out interruption in its hunger, to push it aside and drown it out. Enough to cause the splinters to get pushed and stretched outward. The Chimera's Thread thins and dulls slightly as the splinters spread further and further from each other.
You give it one good push in an attempt to snap that Thread and set those splinters free. But all that happens is that the Thread stretches thin as its golden glow dulls slightly.
Once your Surge passes through, the splinters shiver and vibrate as they slowly return back to their places. The Thread restores its glow and strength as well as it draws back into the proper lengths. Then you watch as they swell slightly, as the Chimera attempts to reinforce its Network.
You and Noir curse at the same time, having failed your attack. Though you're unsure if you hurt the Chimera, she still takes a step back. Her body takes on a more defensive posture and begins to circle around you.
Can you see her Threads? you ask Noir directly through the Network.
No, she replies. Why?
We're gonna need to cut 'em.
I can't do that, Noir protests. Can't cut the metaphysical.
Not with physical claws, sure.
The Chimera stops circling, then chuckles as it stares right at you. The sound echoes all around you, enveloping you, which causes the hairs on your neck to stand on end.
The splinters behind her shift places yet again, causing another influx of powerful psionic energies - one you're much more familiar with.
Then you see her next attack come through a sliver of Foresight. But there's nothing you can do about it. You can't dodge or run or hide from it. Instead, you throw up your Telepathic shielding and pour as much power as you can into the whole Network. You do your absolute best to keep you and Noir safe from what's about to happen.
You're able to manifest the shield in time, just as the Chimera's own Surge sweeps over you.
Her Surge comes with a truly deep hunger, one that crashes right into your defenses and wears it away into nothing. That allows the rest of the wave to sweep through you, and fills you with most of the hunger that the Chimera itself is suffering.
You feel your stomach become cavernous and empty and heavy all at the same time. It seems to suck you in painfully, as though it is literally eating you from the inside out. That pain is accompanied by a dreadful weakness, one that fills you completely and causes you to stumble helplessly to your knees.
Wh-what the hell is this? cries Noir.
You sense that she's feeling the same crippling pain and hunger, then watch her literally fall over on her side helplessly. You want to pick her up and bring her back in here with you, but you don't have the strength to stand up. You don't even have any kind of answer for her.
You feel too weak to even think, much less act.
In your desperation, you pull yourself back up on your feet and attempt to climb your way up on the shelf right in front of you. You struggle to do so, even as the Chimera's Surge finally ends. Its effects seem to linger, causing you to continually feel truly weakened.
Even though you attempt to use your Temperance to put yourself back together, the effects are minimal at best. You are well and truly cooked.
Just as the hunger inside you begins to lift, you sense the Chimera shift its energies. You mentally attempt to gather yourself another Telepathic shield, but bumble at your weak attempts. Meanwhile, her psionic energies build up around her, concentrating into a fine point, ready to lash outward with another powerful Surge.
You fear another one will completely wipe you out.
But then, she… she twists that energy upside down, and in a certain way. It's Surge, but not Surge at the same time. And in changing the psionic energies, the Surge seemingly sweeps out from behind you, causing you to stumble forward, towards the Chimera. The pull is forceful enough that the shelving you're hanging onto topples over as a result, with you on top of it.
The wind gets knocked out of you and world blurs as a result. It takes ages for everything to spin back into place, for the fog to fade. As you come back up, you become more and more aware of the Chimera attempting to tug at you.
Well, not you exactly, but your psionic energy. You can feel her attempting to pull it in towards her, to rip it off your body and take it for her own. You feel Telekinetic jaws clamp down around your psionic energies in an attempt to strip you of it.
The Chimera has somehow turned its Surge into a Devour, with you as her next meal.
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