Ascension (18 page)

The rumbling grew stronger, until the entire earth shook with the tremors.  Laura had to fight to stay on her feet.  Small fragments of stone rained down all around her, breaking free from the unstable rocks.  Cracks started to run across the ground, small at first, but they quickly grew to fissures as large as her wrist.  For the briefest flash of a moment, she felt the elder again. 
There
.

Her eyes darted in his direction.  He had moved, had come closer to her, and circled around to a new spot.  Did he become visible to her so he could sense where
she
was?  That was the only explanation for the momentary lapse.  The shielding, however he did it, must work both ways.  And he was making sure she followed.

An especially strong tremor caught her feet and she could no longer keep her balance.  She fell to the side, catching herself on one of those rocks.  Her eyes, however, did not leave direction the elder was.

As abruptly as it started, the rumbling stopped.  The low noise cut off, and everything was still.  Laura looked around with wide eyes.  In the aftermath of that, her beating heart seemed to drum so loud that anybody in a ten-mile radius would hear.  The small rocks and dust that had been upended in the shaking slowly settled to the ground.  Everything was quiet.

Laura pushed herself off the rock suspiciously.  Something was going on.  Somethi—

Her thoughts were cut off as the ground a hundred feet away erupted in a massive shower of rock and earth.  For a second, Laura thought a bomb had gone off.  But then she saw what really caused it.

Bursting out of the ground was a snake of unbelievable proportions.  Its head could have easily have been the size of a small house.  Large, dark eyes were framed by scaly skin, creating the appearance of eyebrows where there were none.  A tongue slithered in and out of its enormous mouth.  The rest of its body – at least, however much of it was above ground – was colored in vicious slashes of red and yellow.  Laura had never seen such a beast before.

Time seemed to slow for Laura as the snake looked around, searching the ground.  Then its eyes found her, and it whipped forward.

Laura barely had enough time to think before she found herself running for her life.  Thank god she could move quickly.  The snake came right after her, barreling over the ground and through the rocks as if they weren’t even there.  Every single one of the odd-shaped boulders was smashed to bits, leaving only mayhem and devastation in their wake.  Laura ran hard, not daring to glance back more than every few seconds.  The snake was right on her, and each time she looked, seemed to be getting closer.  The ground shook with the immense weight of the beast, and the air was filled with sounds of destruction.  Nothing stood in the way of the snake’s enormous body.

Laura knew even she could not fight off something like that.  The snake was a monster.  She tried the
torrial
, willing the snake to disappear, to dissipate, to light on fire, to shrivel up and die, but none of those things worked.  She could
feel
the strain of the dream realm as it accommodated the nightmarish creature.  She knew, because the
torrial
was not working, that the elder was control the snake.  Much as he was in control when he held her in his cabin with those invisible bonds.  The
torrial
did not seem to give her control over things that
somebody else
had created in this world.

The snake chased after her, and Laura ran for her life.  She did not want to think what would happen if the snake managed to catch up to her.

She was fast, yes, but the snake was even faster.  It was a monstrosity, and Laura was sure it was only moving forward at a leisurely pace.  She was its prey, and the beast was enjoying the hunt.  Whenever it so choose, it would increase its speed and catch her easily. 

Laura glanced back again.  Right when she did, the snake whipped its tongue out and flogged it side to side.  The tongue darted toward her, going for her foot.  Laura jumped up at the last possible moment, and the snake missed.  She had an unpleasant flashback to fighting the daemon, to the way it used its own tongue to catch her.  Laura landed and sped forward, with as much speed as she could muster, fleeing for dear life.

Chapter Fifteen

~A Shining Cord~

The chase continued for the better part of an hour.  Laura ran and ran, unwavering in direction or speed.  The snake continued just behind her, always a hair’s breadth from catching her but never close enough.  That, at least, was a relief – she could not believe that the snake would chase her for so long if it could have already gotten her.

But Laura was tiring.  She could feel the dull ache in her foot from the injury she sustained in the human world.  She knew she could not run forever.  But what else was there to do?  She did not have the power or the size to face the monstrosity behind her. 

The strain she felt on the dream realm also grew.  The snake was not a natural formation, and the elder must be drawing enormous amounts of power to keep it present.  Creatures like this could be accommodated for short bursts of time, like when they were formed in somebody’s regular nightmare, but an existence for an length like this was difficult for this world to sustain.

Laura had an abrupt, dangerous thought.  Could the snake be an illusion, much like the giant forest had been earlier?  But that idea was quickly wiped away as the sound of yet more rocks shattering boomed from behind her.  No illusion could destroy its environment that way.

Laura dared to glance back.  And, to her surprise, found the snake a tiny bit farther away than she remembered.  Was the beast also tiring?  Was the strain of keeping it here starting to wear on the elder?  For a moment, she caught the beast’s eyes in hers.  They showed only one thing.  Hatred. 

Laura turned and continued to run forward.  If she didn’t think of something fast, she would be a goner.  But what could she do?

She had to know where the elder was.  That way, instead of running in a random direction, she could at least head toward him.  Perhaps that way the snake could turn on its master, if it saw that she was not the only prey here.  It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all she had. 

But how could she do that?  The elder had camouflaged the connection, making it invisible to both him and her.  Yet she knew that in the dream realm, there was always a small possibility…

She felt the connection to him in her mind, imagining it as it should be.  Then, drawing on the power of the
torrial
still in her hand, she willed it to appear.  To her immense surprise, it did.  Apparently the elder was just as shocked as she was, because she felt a flash of a astonishment along the connection.  She held the connection in place, utilizing the control of the
torrial
, for just the few moments it took her to locate the elder.  And she felt another sense of shock as she realized he was right behind her, elevated as if he were somehow
riding
the snake.

She looked back.  The snake had regained the distance it had earlier lost.  But if the elder was back there, it meant she should be able to see him – if she got high enough.  She ran forward, angling toward a slanted rock.  In two steps she bound onto it and leapt off, lifting herself into the air.  She knew the move would let the snake get closer, but she had to do it.  While in the air, she turned backwards and looked down.  Her jump had elevated herself above the snake, and she could see the entire twisting body all the way to its tail.  And, sure enough, about halfway along the snake’s body, she found the elder.  He was straddled on in an unusual harness and appeared to be, somehow, controlling the snake.  Both his eyes were closed, but his hands worked before him as if handling reins.  For the briefest glimmer of a moment, Laura saw three shining, iridescent cords connecting into the elder’s back.  Each one of them extended far into the distance, so that Laura could not see their source.  But only one of the cords continued on, through the elder, linking his chest to the snake’s head.  That cord was what his hands were manipulating.

Laura landed with a grunt and ran onward.  What had she just seen?  What were those cords?  She didn’t know, but she would bet that they had something to do with how the elder was controlling the snake.  An idea formed in her head.  It was dangerous, and if she gambled and lost she would pay with her life.  But if she did not even try, her life would be forfeit anyway.  That made up her mind.

She needed something sharp.  She scanned the ground in front of her, and found it littered only with those peculiar rocks.  There was nothing there that could help her. 

The
torrial
!  Perhaps it could help her form what she needed.  After all, the elder managed to form the enormous snake.  A simple knife or sharp blade should not be particularly difficult.  She should even be able to do it without the
torrial
’s help.

Just to be safe, however, she drew on the figurine
torrial
to create what she needed.  The first object to appear in her mind was the large knife the pickpocket had threatened her and Logan with.  Without any further thought, the knife appeared in her hand.  It was larger now, however, and its blade was razor sharp. 

She looked at it for a moment.  The circular figurine
torrial
had attached to it for some reason, forming the top of the hilt.  Laura did not know why, but that gave her confidence in what she had to do.  The
torrial
attaching itself to the blade was surely a sign of good fortune.  Stranger things have happened here before.

She kept running.  She did not need to turn back to know the snake was on her tail – the terrible sounds it made as it crashed through the earth told her as much.  She wished she had had the foresight to run toward the mountain when the snake first came after her.  That way, at least, she could have had some sort of terrain advantage against the beast.  Cursing her lack of forward thinking, she continued on.

Even with weapon in hand, her plan was crude at best.  She was hoping that she could sever the shining cord that linked the elder to the snake.  To cut it with the knife she held.  But that meant she had to elevate herself above the level of the beast.  And if she so much as stopped to turn once more, the snake would be right on her, crushing her under its immense weight.

No, Laura needed to do something else.  No matter how quick and agile she might be, she could not just turn and leap above the snake.  She had too much momentum carrying her the other way. 

She worked her mind desperately.  The ache in her foot was growing stronger, and she knew she could not keep running forever.  She did not have the endurance for it.  Unless she did something
now
, the snake behind her would catch up, and the elder would have beaten her.

Suddenly she got an idea.  The whole time the snake had been chasing her, she had run in more or less a straight path.  But the body of the beast was long.  What if she curved in a semi-circle, angling herself backwards so that she would meet the body of the snake?  If the circle was tight enough, and the snake wound itself to follow her, she would have the opportunity to use her forward momentum to jump over its body.  But she could not veer off too sharply, because then the creature could just snap its head to one side and catch her in its jaws.  And she only had one chance to do it.  If she missed, or the blade didn’t cut the cord, or something else went wrong, she would be a goner as soon as she landed.

It was her one chance.  Her only opportunity.  It was life or death, and Laura wasn’t ready to face her end just yet.  She veered left.

She glanced over her shoulder just in time to notice the snake’s huge head snapping in her direction.  She parried out of the way to avoid it.  A brief sense of relief washed over her when she realized she was still alive.  She had misestimated the snake’s dexterity – it was more agile than she thought.  The near miss only added to the adrenaline pumping through her body.  Her heart was beating so loudly that she thought it might rip through her chest. 

She put her head down and picked up speed, continuing to curve the same way.  The snake was right behind her, but already, she could see a part of its slithering body in her peripherals.  She ran and ran, going as fast as her feet would take her, until she saw the enormous scaly bulk of the snake directly in front of her.

But her curve had not been tight enough.  The elder was closer to the snake’s head than where she was headed.

In a split-second, Laura made the decision to curl in even tighter.  It meant she would have absolutely no escape if she failed.  But the only way to sever the cord was if she were in front of the elder.  If she went for one of the three that stretched behind the elder, she would have no way of guaranteeing she got the right one.  And if she missed, the snake would still be alive to take her in the aftermath.

She went in closer.  The snake snapped at her viciously, but again Laura sidestepped the attack.  She picked up speed, angling herself toward the portion of the snake’s body in front of the elder.  She could see him from where she was, sitting atop that saddle with both eyes closed, his hands continuing to manipulate the now-invisible cord.  He was controlling the snake, and Laura would bet anything that he saw though the snake’s eyes.  The hatred that shone in those eyes could belong to nobody else.