Chapter 42 — Power Failed Me

  I stood in an open field by a barn, the sun moments from setting. Stalks of growing wheat stretched away for miles around me over softly rolling hills. They swirled, revealing the movement of the wind, as if invisible fingers touched and brushed through their golden heads.

  The sun began to fall further behind the hills freeing shadows which grew towards me, the movements of the grain took on an ominous edge. The individual wheat stalks began to twitch in disharmony, as if multitudes of creatures were eating at their bases while the field fell into night, stalks began to drop one by one to the ground in twitching fits.

  Then I saw one of the creatures. It was a small mouse or rat. It climbed a nearby stalk using its body weight to drop the heads of grain to the ground where other rats below began to feed. Hundreds, then thousands of red beady reflective eyes became visible to me. As they neared, their attention turned from the grain…to me. The twitching wheat stopped as the multitude eyed a better meal.

  I gulped, spinning around to ensure none where already on their way towards my back, as the more venturous began to lead the horde. I ran, finding momentary shelter in a nearby barn. The door was open, but it was pitch black inside. The soft screeches and thumps of little bodies hopping behind in the dirt as they leap at my legs made me panic. I did not want to be chewed slowly to death by pests. I dove into the awaiting barn, shutting the large swinging door with a kick before I leapt up and latched it tightly closed. I stomped the nearest creatures who made it in and swatted those scrambling up my pants.

  Panting, I turned to face the darkness, stretching out a hand to avoid running into something that might impale me, I blindly tried to get further from the door. The wooden walls were made of slatted wood, and they wouldn’t hold out the vermin, not for long. I needed to do something to reinforce the walls. There was a lantern or some manner of light ahead, lit faintly, but it seemed more distant than it should have been for the small building. Regardless I made my way towards it, as I did I felt the dirt floor of the barn transition to a rough stone beneath my bare feet

  I realized the darkness around me concealed any other escape, I pressed up to a wall in the darkness and felt stone all around. I looked back behind me, but all I could see where vague shapes of stone and darkness, hadn’t I been in a barn? I needed light.

  I turned and found the light that had been ahead had changed while I looked away, or perhaps I hadn’t seen it clearly before and now I did? I could see it clearly. A pool of water sat ahead in the stone floor, illuminated by refracted light. Perhaps I could get out through that water. The light emanating from the water left mesmerizing patterns on the cave roof as I approached the stone lip to the pool. As I got closer, I saw the pool was deep and lit by light internally that I could not see the source of, as if the water itself was bioluminescent or there were industrial grade flood lights lighting the pool out of view. It served to give the water an uncomfortable brightness to my adjusting eyes and made every bubble, every impurity show. When my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw something deep in the water.

  Lana.

  She was as I had just seen her. Nearly naked, lacy black underwear with a matching black tank top undershirt which billowed about her in the water. She floated face down in the pool, her head turned to one side letting me know it was her. I could clearly make out the lines of her shoulder blades, the soft points of bone along her spine which were not covered, the arch of her back as it met her hips and legs, her hair spilled out dark black around her in the water.

  I yelled, reaching into the pool as my heart began to race but suddenly the opening was so small I couldn’t get more than my arm and shoulder into the water. I yelled, splashing, and swinging my arm to get her attention. Her body slowly spun, it took agonizing moments before she turned face up and I saw her eyes clearly.

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  Open and lifeless.

  I stepped back in horror and realized I was no longer in cave. The brightly lit pool of water I had just been looking into became the off white of linens adorning a hospital gurney. I looked around and found I was alone in a hospital room; the bright lights above were harsh, and I lifted an arm to shield my face.

  It was frigid in the building, my breath billowed out in a cloud.

  My feet stung and I looked down to see they were bare beneath the hospital gown I was wearing. The floor was as cold as ice. There was nothing soft or warm in the room beyond the gurney. Its sheets were tucked under the thin mattress tightly and well used leather restraints lay across the top, those were enough to stifle the urge to pull the blanket free for warmth. Nearby, carts with tops covered in syringes lay upon sterile steel trays, along with blades, scalpels, and knives among other metallic instruments I had no idea the use of. The array of carts blocked easy exit out of the room. I pushed one cart aside, then another and made it to the doorway.

  I knew what kind of place this was. I knew this wasn’t real, it was a dream. Despite that realization, I was already panicked.

  How had this happened? How had Lana been here? I’d been confused at first, as I often was in these miasmic night terrors of the Deamon. The changing rooms were always fueled with horror that grew worse and worse; it could be from no other source.

  I tried to wake up, but as always, felt trapped and unable to flee.

  The hallway outside lay in shadow, a single flickering light sat a hundred feet down the passage. Its reflected light all that let me see. I passed a dozen empty rooms to stand under the light. My hospital gown had seemed to shrink with each step, feeling far too small and constrictive.

  “There you are,” a soft feminine voice said. “We haven’t finished, you and I.”

  I turned and saw someone who looked like Lana, but the expression, the stance, the person inside, was wrong. They had black eyes which gleamed in the dim light like obsidian, having no sclera.

  “Get back!” I shouted, focusing my will, my power.

  Nothing happened. I couldn’t feel the familiar power of my core. I couldn’t feel the pull of energy into my body, into my control. I felt hallow, empty. I’d never felt that—even in a dream.

  I fell to my knees suddenly weak. It’s just a dream, I thought. But that didn’t change the emptiness I felt inside, an emptiness so foreign and wrong I had no comparison for it.

  “Oh, don’t you remember?” The creature said as it approached. It wore Lana’s skin but was not her. It wore a white lab coat, a surgical face mask hung loosely about its throat. It smiled almost the same way Lana did.

  “We took that pesky thing from you, that is what the surgery was for. You begged me to remove it.”

  I looked down and opened my robe to see my bare chest. A winding path of staples closed a scar that wended from one shoulder across my chest, then zig-zagged back and forth until it reached my other thigh. It was red with spots of black rot and infection, vibrant green and purple bruises highlighted areas next to puckered skin that looked ready to rupture.

  I looked up at the false Lana. She held a shiny palm-sized sphere in one hand, a core. It was sticky with blood, congealing on its surface and adhering to her blue surgical gloves.

  “A surprisingly small core for a wizard, but I guess we have to take what we can get.”

  I screamed and the Lana creature laughed.

  My voice grew hoarse, my limbs felt leaden, and I sat on the floor watching her, unable to move as my energy suddenly drained. She smiled, her jaw opening wider than it should, popping and cracking as bones dislocated until she could fit the core in her mouth and swallow it whole. Its size made her throat bulge out in a way a humans never could as the center of my power was consumed. The creature paused, pressing a hand against her mouth for a moment as if to stifle indigestion, then they winked. The not Lana reached up with long-nailed fingers and grabbed the skin of her forehead and began tearing it aside with each hand, like ripping a banana from its peel.

  Agonizing moments later, the daemon emerged. My core visibly glowed through the skin of her chest. She laughed as I swooned, my remaining strength siphoned off against my will. My body and power failed me.

  “You will be mine, wizard. I will consume you,” She glared daggers at me, her pitch-black eyes sucking in the light. “I will take everything you love,” She gestured to the floor where what was left of Lana lay. “I will make you suffer for what you have done to me, for what you have taken!”

  She stepped forward, grabbing my throat as she lovingly choked me to death.

  That was the first of many, many dreams.

  I was stuck, dying time after time until finally it ended.

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