Revary Page 5

  Pushing her hands deeper into the black watery ooze, crunching small animal bones, Clare pushed herself up. Her feet sunk in to the muck up to her ankles, but her once cloth boots had turned to real, tanned leather. Her leggings had changed to real material and her tunic and hood were now a stronger, thicker fabric. Checking her bow, she found the weight of the draw had changed and her arrows were sharp.

  “I would dream myself into a ranger,” she said quietly, afraid to disturb the surface of the swamp. “Low class, hardly any magic. Just like when I’m awake.”

  She’d read about dreams where people could control what they did and saw even though they were unconscious. She had stumbled upon a how-to for lucid dreaming on one of her late night jaunts across the strange side of the internet. She’d only half-heartedly attempted it. Touching her head, she realized she’d hit it on her fall into the ooze. That could have been a factor too this time around.

  The more she looked around the more she saw. Charred remains of log cabins stood around her to one side and used pyres smoldered in dilapidated heaps in various places. Some of these still had blackened skeletons tied to them. Farther out, there were the remains of a tall stone wall. The only thing not entirely destroyed was a many-turreted castle far off in the distance. Beyond all of this was a bleak mountain range outlined through the steamy fog.

  Pulling lightly on her leg, Clare managed to slip it out of the muck and take a step. The squelching sound from the action caused a crow to caw in a gargling screech in the distance. It was unlike any crow she’d heard before. She chanced a glance over her shoulder. Somehow she was not surprised to find the ravine wall replaced by the vast red expanse of the marsh.

  This is the part where I figure out how I got here, she thought.

  On those mountains in the distance, she believed there to be a caravan of beings making their way down. Near the top of the summits was a bright light that flashed then dissipated faster than she could make it out. It had somehow resembled a gate. She wondered if that was some image in her head of an exit from this dream. She was disgusted enough to want to wake up at any minute.

  Taking two more squelching steps, she heard someone call out to her.

  “Halt! You there! If you are not imprisoned by some invisible means, you need to leave before you’re taken captive by some fell beast. Get out of here while you’re free!”

  She looked in the direction of the alarmed voice and saw a man-sized cage hanging from a black tree. Inside was a prisoner with long hair and ratty clothes. He waved his hands at her again as if to shoo her away.

  “You cannot stay here. You must leave!”

  “Can I help you?” Clare hollered toward him.

  At her call, a rumbling crept over the mountain range and rolled across the sky. When the sound was just above her, something huge and angry growled in the distance. Her eyes widened with alarm and she pressed her lips tightly together, scanning the sky nervously.

  “I’ll get you out,” she said more quietly and sloshed over to the prisoner as quickly as she could.

  “You don’t understand. You have to leave,” he said. “If you’re walking free here, that means you are not a prisoner. Go!”

  Clare peered at the lock in the dim light. Instead of a keyhole, there were three turn dials with odd images on them. It was a combination.

  “I can figure this out,” she whispered and looked up at the prisoner hanging in his cage. “I’m a ranger,” she stammered a little when they locked eyes. “I know locks.” Just as the words left her mouth, she had a pretty good guess on how to crack the code.

  His clothes were navy blue and gold trimmed but covered in blood and mud. He also wore a small circlet around his head showing his rank as royalty. His fair face was speckled with grime and tear tracks.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. Somewhere in the mist, rocks tumbled down over what sounded like a dry cliff face. The growl rumbled nearer. “Are you a prince?”

  “How do you know that? There are no ranks among the souls in the Nether.”

  She wasn’t sure. “A guess or a feeling, maybe. And your clothes look kind of nice. Or like they were.”

  The rumble rolled again.

  “That is the guardian of the Nether Plane,” the prince whispered. “He finds wanderers and locks them away. All who are a threat to the great Umbra are put here to die. You cannot survive against the natives of this plane.”

  Clare smiled as a faint click sounded in the lock. “The great Umbra? Who’s that?”

  “I believe he is king of this land. Legend says he lives in his castle under the ground here in a place even deeper than the Nether Plane. During the day, he sleeps in a great cage made of flesh and bones and sends his shadow hounds to watch for earthlings from the other world. But we have not seen one of them in decades.” His eyes scanned the horizon skillfully. “My mother, the queen, lost hope of seeing an earthling. As did I. We hoped for a moment that the Umbra’s sudden awakening meant one had come to us at last.” He didn’t sound convinced though.

  The last dial clicked. She had figured it out!

  “Earthlings?” Clare asked. “This is not Earth? Like where humans are from?” She laughed a little despite the situation. “I’m dreaming of a world with no earthlings.”

  This why she played Sun Age: to get away from Earth. Maybe she’d finally achieved lucid dreaming. It had just taken a blow to the head. She was determined to make this adventure worth it, especially if she never woke up.

  She held up her hands to help the prince down, seeing he had an injured leg.

  “I must find a weapon,” the prince said at once. “I will not be helpless now I am free.”

  Clare looked around. There were corpses and weapons everywhere. “Pick one,” she smirked. “I don’t think they need them.”

  But the prince was pickier than she had thought. They strode among the corpses for some time as he scrutinized the weapons.

  “Aren’t we in danger or something? Should we maybe hurry up a bit?” she asked.

  “As long as you are silent, we have nothing to fear. The servants of Umbra need not know I am free of my cage.”

  Trying to breathe and slosh through the muck more quietly, she picked up a long, curved sword. “What about this one?”

  “Under elf sword.” He had a look of disgust on his face. “I dare not use such a weapon.”

  “Right.”

  They moved stealthily toward the mountain range as they searched for a weapon not eaten away by the corruption or of a race the prince didn’t note as evil.

  “What is this place?”

  “This place is Zane’barren,” he said of the marsh in which they stood. “This is the land under my world. The Nether Plane and Zane’barren is the realm of the under elves and other foul creatures of this plane. That dying sun you see is the heart of my world. I am human, but I am not an earthling.”

  “A human prince?” she asked. In her head, she made an image of him sitting in a golden throne, clean, commanding. “Fair, just, noble, and all that?” she asked.

  He nodded as they struggled through the grime. “I like to think so. I was heir to my throne. My mother would have it otherwise.”

  Interested, Clare asked, “Why?”

  The prince shrugged hopelessly. “She says there is no point in leading a hopeless people against an enemy we cannot see. Once, I rallied an army to find the source of the illness infecting our land. I loved my kingdom enough to leave it and seek out a battle for our survival. I thought it was the kingly thing to do. So many died. It was a fruitless attack.”

  Clare waited, but he didn’t go on. “I know what you mean about hoping against all the odds. Where I’m from, I’m a little lost too. Maybe you just need to find something to hope for?”

  After that, she spotted a golden hilt with a blue gem jutting out of the grime. With silent glee, she hopped to it through the more solid ground. She expected it to be impossibly heavy, but it wasn’t. As she pulled it out, she found it wa
s on a belt with another smaller sword.

  “Hey,” she called to him. “Here you go. This looks just like you.”

  Happy to see the light in his eyes as he beheld the human sword, she tried not to eye him too much as he belted it on. He looked every part the prince now, aside from the grime and the shadowed eyes.

  “Tell me about these earthlings,” she prompted. “You said there were legends and your mother knew of one? What are we supposed to do?”

  “If you are an earthling,” he said and she was a little stung by his doubtful insinuation, “then you would have come here to aid us in our fight. My mother said there was one here once who met with the Golden Son who lives in the Celestial Plane—far above this one for sure—and he tried to save us.”

  “And failed?”

  “He must have. Umbra is still here. Now some hope and pray for another to come.”

  “But not you.”

  He eyed her up and down, frowning. He opened his mouth to ask her a question, but the screaming, feral roar of a huge cat-like creature cut him off. The thing soared through the air as if it had wings and dove directly at the prince. He spun around and unsheathed the short sword from his side and the longer broadsword from his back all in one smooth motion that Clare couldn’t help but notice.

  The broadsword went up into the beast’s side and the prince used its own momentum to flip it over his head and kick it off his blade. Clare ducked as it flew over her, nocking an arrow to her new bowstring. She was glad to find even though the weight had changed, she could still draw it with ease. She rose, aimed, and put an arrow through the creature’s eye socket. It shrieked and reeled, giving them just enough time to turn and start to run.

  With each dashing step, more slime splashed onto Clare’s face and bones cracked under foot. Her heart ached instantly as her mind realized she was nowhere familiar and this was not cosplaying. Tears filled her eyes and mingled with the black water on her face, but she ran. She couldn’t allow the fear to weaken her. Especially not now.

  “Can we reach the mountains?” Clare panted. They seemed closer than they were before in the mist. Now the great peaks were visible and she could even see a path zigzagging up the side and over the top.

  “If we run,” the prince called between breaths. “But every bit of the Nether is inhabited.”

  A few steps more and a new enemy presented itself. From the dark waters rose the corpses of burned and hacked people. The ones with eyes still in their sockets fixated on them and began to pursue in a loping gallop.

  “Undead!” the prince called. “Shoot your way through them!”

  Fluidly, Clare pulled out arrow after arrow, firing quickly to make a path for them. It was harder to aim while running than she had ever imagined while playing her games. But in this world, she was somehow a great shot. She hit two before they collided with the ranks of the dead. The prince used huge swipes of his broadsword to carve a space for them to pass through and kept running.

  With the dead behind them as well as the creature, Clare wanted to run faster, but her legs were failing and her lungs were burning. She realized there was something like sulfur in the air.

  A shadow passed over them revealing hungry wyverns hunting from above.

  “We can’t make it!” Clare gasped. She stopped in her paces and fired up at the small flyers, hitting one to her great satisfaction. It reeled and fell into the marsh, flailing frantically as it sank. Looking down, she saw the longer she stood, the deeper she sank as well.

  “Don’t stop!” the prince cried, taking her hand.

  They were running again. One of the undead soldiers made a mighty leap and landed on the prince’s shoulders. With its gruesome detached jaws, it sunk its teeth deep into the side of his neck.

  Stopping and bracing herself, Clare swung at the corpse, dislodging it with a mighty punch. They only stumbled on for a few more yards before the prince collapsed. The skin around the bite was turning a putrid grey. His eyes were streaming and he had grown cold quickly. Clare tried to pull him up, but now they were both sinking into the marsh.

  With the creature and the undead closing in, Clare wondered—wished—she could do something. Imagining this was a magical world she did not want to die in, she called out.

  “Someone help us!” She never expected something would actually happen.

  A horn blasted through the mist and the heavy thumping of a dozen enchanted hooves answered her. Out of the darkness came a herd of armed female centaurs. One in the lead, that clutched the ram’s horn, galloped up to her. She was outfitted in armor with a large sword strapped to her side.

  “On our pilgrimage to the Nether, we have heard your cry,” the centaur said. “Quickly, mount!”

  To Clare’s surprise, the prince halted. “I will not mount a centaur. They are base creatures!”

  Clare reached up and took her hand, hoisting herself up onto the strong horseback of the centaur. “Don’t be such a pansy! Do it to save yourself,” she screamed back.

  Another centaur raced by and took the prince’s hand, jerking him up against his will. They galloped away faster and were safe on the solid ground of the mountain path in only a few moments.

  Clare threw a glance back and saw the corpses sink back into the mire and the cat creature turn back into the mist when the centaurs pulled too far ahead of it.

  “They can’t go out of that?” Clare asked, scared they’d leap out at any moment.

  “The fell creatures cannot leave the ground of Zane’barren,” the centaur said comfortingly. “But the journey up the mountain is just as dangerous. The spider lizards of Mauth reside there as well as the mountain elves. Any creature who lives so near the base is dangerous. We centaurs only make this pilgrimage on rare occasions to make the studies of the Nether beings.”

  “Elves,” she breathed. “No way.”

  Her surroundings would not let her ignore the reality of where she was. Her throat constricted while her heartbeat slammed against her chest until she became nearly unconscious from lack of breath.

  She had only experienced a panic attack once in her life and this one definitely topped the previous. She woke to a proper campsite and a group of female centaurs around her were whispering. There were tall white tents pitched and odd telescopes with basins of colorful liquid pointed up at the red sky. Around a large fire were more centaurs cooking tangy smelly food and pouring tea into tankards. Beside her was the only remotely normal thing: the prince. He was sitting upright and watching her. Clare raised her eyebrows.

  “Hi,” she groaned, sitting up too. “I don’t normally pass out like that.”

  The prince smiled kindly. “Nor I,” he said pointing to the bandage around his neck. “Fortunately, we both woke to inform each other we don’t do that.”

  Clare allowed herself a small smile at his attempts to calm her. She was taken in by his sweetness. “Yeah,” she agreed.

  “And I have you to thank for that,” he said. “Am I wrong?”

  The centaurs had stopped talking and were watching her now.

  “No,” Clare laughed nervously. “They saved us.” She pointed to the centaurs.

  The leader shook her head. “We cannot take that credit. You called us. We all felt it. A ranger like yourself is connected by nature and the gods, as are we. Speaking to nature and her caregivers is natural for your profession. These are gifts of the rangers.”

  All of the centaurs nodded. The prince looked her in the eye again.

  “You asked if I was human,” he said. “You spoke of Earth.”

  Clare had to think a moment. If Earth was a foreign word to these people, either she had fallen hitting her head and died in that ravine or was still dreaming. This had to be an illusion because no one could dress up like a centaur. No one she had met any way. But part of her had already accepted this new reality and hoped it was a dream rather than an afterlife.

  “I’m from Earth,” she chanced cautiously. “I really am,” she added for the prince’s b
enefit. “Please don’t tell me you’re totally evil and want to kill earthlings.”

  “That,” said the centaur, “is what we saved you from. And you need not justify yourself to us, Clare. We are stargazers and know what you say is the truth. We believe in you. You left the mist of that hell cage. Not a simple task.”

  “Especially from Zane’barren,” the prince added. “Once you are in that place, it is said only an earthling can get you out. It is a cursed place. I had resigned my mind to my fate of eternal death. You saved me. But…” He didn’t finish his thought, but he didn’t have to. Clare knew he doubted her.

  “B-but,” she stammered. She couldn’t wrap her head around what she was trying to say. She wanted to know how she had appeared there. “I didn’t use a portal. I didn’t do magic or anything.” She realized too late that these phrases may be foreign as well to the group before her. “I’m dreaming, I guess. I don’t know how to rationalize my presence here to you.”

  “I have heard that magic in your world is different,” the centaur said. “Whatever you were doing was magic. You brought yourself here.”

  Clare thought back. She had been looking for Lance. She had yearned to see him in his Barbarian costume. But, no, at the time, she was looking over the ruined area of the woods where she had built her first tent and called to order the first meeting of Sun Age. A small smile crept across her face.

  “See? You know,” the prince said. He was smiling too. “Whatever you did was magic.”

  “I was just remembering,” Clare sighed. “And wishing. See, things are not so good back in my world. Everything I loved is changing and falling apart. New things are happening that I am not ready for. School is different, I have a job, and don’t even get me started on how I view the issues of my world. But this dream,” she lifted an arrow from her quiver, “I could get used to solving problems with the sharp end of an arrow!”

  She was about to apologize for her foreign babble, but all eyes were sympathetic to her. Some of the centaurs lowered their heads in understanding.

  “We feel that with you, Clare,” the centaur said. “It is why you are here. The stars spoke of such a thing. We have read the stars and know there is hope.”