Ascension (14 page)

Swish
.

Chapter Twelve

~A Twisted Land~

Laura opened her eyes, and found herself in a barren world.  She looked down at herself.  Her body had formed again.  A dull ache echoed from her heel, where the shadow had cut her.  Gabrielle’s healing had removed the pain completely before she entered the
torrial
, but now it was back, though not quite as bad as before.  She wondered if it meant her body in the human world was succumbing to the poison.  If so, it meant time was not on her side.  She had to hurry.

She looked around.  She was standing in a gray, dusty valley situated before an enormous mountain.  The mountain’s peak reached high past the clouds above.  It was the only thing that stood out in an otherwise flat land.  The shadow it made extended far into the distance, and Laura could not see where it ended.

The earth around her was harsh and bare.  There was not a single sign of life anywhere.  Nothing green grew here, and no living beings would call this place home.  It was eerily devoid of life.  Even in the desert, she had seen cacti and other resilient plants grow.  Here, there was nothing but rock.

Laura looked at the mountain.  There, solidified rivers of lava ran down its side, long since crusted over in an unforgiving black.  The mountain had erupted once, very long ago, and since that time the earth had not recovered. 

LAURA
.

Laura jerked around.  She heard the voice in her head.  Gabrielle was speaking to her.  But, how?  Could he reach her when she was inside the dreams of an elder?

LAURA.
  It sounded like Gabrielle was shouting, straining to be heard over a great distance. 
LAURA, YOU HAVE ARRIVED IN THE DREAM
. 
HEED MY WORDS, FOR THEY MAY SAVE YOUR LIFE. 
His voice echoed strangely, creating an uncomfortable dissonance in her head. 
EVERYTHING YOU SEE IS FALSE.  NOTHING CAN BE TRUSTED.  REMEMBER THAT, AND YOU WILL BE SAFE.  SAFE…

His voice trailed off, dying away to silence.  Laura was sure that speaking to her here took a lot out of him.  She fingered the figurines inside her pocket.  Everything that she saw was false?  She was not sure what that meant.  But she did not have to think twice about the other thing Gabrielle said.  She wouldn’t trust anything here if her life depended on it.

She looked around again.  The land was eerily quiet.  Not only was there no life here, other than her, but there was also no movement.  She could not feel the wind on her face, nor the sun’s warmth on her skin.  The whole thing was like being in a sealed vacuum.  It just didn’t feel right.

Now that she was here, though, what was she to do?  Find the elder whose dream this was, of course, but
how
?  She had no idea where she was, or where he would be.  When the
torrial
brought her into his dream, it transported him here as well.  Of course he would know somebody was coming.  Even so, it was only her and him in this barren land.  And, thanks to the
torrial
, she had the upper hand.  She set out to search.

The only landmark visible was the mountain.  Surely, if the
torrial
brought her to this exact location, there was reason for it.  It was painfully obvious the mountain was where she needed to go.  She turned toward it, and ran.

She ran over the hard earth as fast as her
Vassiz
-enhanced speed would take her.  Every time her left heel struck the ground, a dull wave of pain shot up through her leg.  She ignored it.  Now was not the time for self-pity.  Now was the time for action, and haste.  Every second that ticked away was a second lost.

She ran toward the mountain at full speed, but it did not seem to get any closer.  In fact, the distance to it appeared to stretch out before her, lengthening the harder she ran.  She picked up speed, going faster, and the mountain moved even farther away.  She stopped.  What she was doing was like a dog trying to catch its own tail.  She could not get to the mountain this way.

But how, then?  And, why was the mountain behaving that way?  She was the one who was supposed to have control over the world, not be subject to its whims.  Running would get her nowhere.  Maybe it was like back in the ethereal matrix – physically moving disturbed the balance holding everything in place.  She had to take advantage of the properties of the dream, now, not fight against them.  She closed her eyes, and willed the mountain to move closer to her.

She opened them.  The mountain was in the same place, far in the distance, mocking her. Why didn’t it working?  Before, in the dream realm, all she had to do was
will
something to happen and it did.  But this was not the pure dream realm that she knew; rather, it was some elemental piece of it that existed within an elder’s mind.  Perhaps that made it behave differently.

Well, if she could not move the mountain closer, perhaps she could prevent it from moving further away.  She focused her eyes onto it, and seared the image in her mind.  She took a step forward.  The mountain did not move.  She took another step.  Again, the mountain did not move away.  She took a series of steps, unable to run because of the focus required to keep the mountain in place.  Thankfully, the landmark did not move away. 

She relaxed a little, easing her focus, and instantly the mountain propelled itself farther.  She growled irritably.  Was the balance here so precarious she could not lose focus, even for an instant, to get to the mountain?

Suddenly she remembered the three
torrial
in her pocket.  Alexander had said they afforded the user better control over this place.  Control was what she needed. 

She reached in and pulled the figurines out.  She looked at them.  She did not know how to use them, how to activate any of them.  Perhaps simply holding them was enough?  She tried, but could not see the blue light that was characteristic of
torrial
.   There was something else that triggered them.

She examined the three figurines.  All were depictions of females dancing.  But there was something more to them.  The way the arms and legs extended on all of them, it looked as if the three were made to be linked.  Laura squatted to the ground and laid them out.  She picked up two, and brought them together so the arms touched.  Immediately, they clicked into place, as if there were tiny but strong magnets within the extremities.  The two figurines made up two-thirds of a circle.  Laura took the third
torrial
and linked it to the others.  It also clicked into place.  And as soon as that happened, an unearthly blue aura appeared around the shape.

Laura picked up the newly-formed circle.  Its circumference was no larger than the palm of her hand, and the figurines blended seamlessly into one another.  The aura it gave off shone with the light she was expecting. 

She turned her attention back to the mountain before her.  The jagged shape of the huge slab of rock reminded her somewhat of an upside down fang.  She hadn’t notice it before, but there was a certain curve to the side of the mountain unlike any she had ever seen.  The mountains that surrounded her old Washington home were all hard slopes and angles.  This one, however, had that peculiar curve.  She wondered why that was, and if it meant anything.

It didn’t matter now.  She had to reach that mountain, and fast. Time was ticking away.  Feeding off the power emitted by the
torrial
, she cemented the image of the mountain in her mind.  Then she imagined it staying in place, rooted to the ground that was linked to her.  If the mountain moved, so would the earth she stood on.  It would not be able to outrun her this time.

She took a few steps forward, and the mountain did not move away.  That was to be expected – she had managed as much without the help of the
torrial
.  The trickier bit was what came next.  If she walked the entire way to the mountain, it might take her hours; if she ran, she would be there in mere minutes.  But she could not focus on the mountain staying in place if she ran. 

Slowly, tentatively, she relaxed her focus.  She felt the power flowing outward from the
torrial
, enhancing whatever she did.  Bit by bit, she eased her concentration.  And took a few steps toward the mountain.  At the first hint of the giant slab of rock beginning to slip away, she stopped and refocused at the previous level. 

She focused less and less, walking toward the mountain, until the impression of it in her mind was almost an afterthought.  Without the
torrial,
even a single lapse in her concentration would send the mountain jetting away.  But with it, it seemed, she had exponentially more control.  She barely even had to think about the mountain to keep it there.

She started to run. The concentration level required for her to keep the mountain still was miniscule.  So much so that she did not even need to find the lower limit anymore.  She could run toward it with the level she was currently at.

She picked up speed, feeling the
torrial
feeding her control from the palm of her hand.  The mountain did not move away.  She ran faster, skimming over the dark and desolate rocks of the plain.  Not even boulders stood here, in the barren land surrounding the mountain.  It was just dark, parched stone.  Laura ran over it all, racing toward the mountain’s bottom.

As she got closer, the sheer size of the mountain began to dawn on her.  For one, it was much farther than she expected, which meant that it was much taller than she thought.  It looked like the part that extended past the clouds would be at least as tall as the part leading from the earth to the clouds.  And for another, she was becoming less sure of how she was going to scale that rock. 

From far away, she had assumed she would be able to simply climb up.  The angle of the slope was steep, yes, but not so steep as to give her no way up.  As she was getting closer, she began to realize that the mountain was not made of angular slopes.  Instead, it was a fortress of solid, vertical slabs of stone.  Each one of them was as wide as a football field and at least three times as tall.  There was no way she would be able to get up that.

She ran even faster.  The only way she could think of was to follow the solidified rivers of lava up.  Except that, she could now see, the lava had not cut through any of the enormous slabs of stone.  Instead, it had pooled to the edge and then fell right off, vertically like a waterfall.  She hoped the tuff would be porous enough for her to scale.

Finally, she arrived at the bottom of the mountain.  The
torrial
allowed her to reach it, and she silently thanked Logan and the others for giving her the three figurines.  They had been right about her lack of experience – she doubted any of them would have had problems keeping the mountain in place. 

She stopped, and looked around.  The enormous slabs of rock jutted out right from the ground.  They connected to each other in such a way that there was no break in the façade, no space between them Laura could use to climb the mountain.

She glanced up.  The peak of the mountain wasn’t even visible from where she stood.  It extended to a dizzying height in the sky.  White wisps of cloud swirled around the mountain, giving the impression of an eddy.  The sun that shone overhead provided neither warmth nor life.

Absently, she wondered why Gray had not followed her here, or even if he would.  Then she shook her head.  She couldn’t waste time wishing for things that didn’t exist.

Laura considered her options.  She could try to scale each one of the rock slabs individually, providing the overflowed volcanic rock gave her enough grip to climb.  But doing so would take entirely too long, especially when she did not know how high the mountain extended above her.

She knew she could not jump nearly high enough, either.  Then, abruptly, she remembered something Logan had done the first time that he brought her to the dream realm.  When they were sitting on the hood of his car, with her still unaware they were even
in
the dream realm, he had pushed himself off and… floated… through the air.  Laura hadn’t had much experience in the dream realm since then.  How had he done that again?  He said the trick was not to make yourself gravitate, but rather to
push
the entire rest of the world down.

Laura traced her fingers over the
torrial
in her hand.  With that, she had been able to keep the mountain in place.  Surely it would be enough for her to do what she needed?  Logan had only managed to lift himself a few feet off the ground.  She would need much more than that.

She backed away from the mountain.  At the very least, she would have a running start.  After she had given herself enough distance, she gripped the
torrial
tightly.  It would be the only way she could get to the mountain’s top.

She sprinted toward the mountain, and leapt.  At the same time, she focused all her energy on pushing the world around her down, through the
torrial
.