The Dream Sanctum: The Eternal World (12 page)

“Sounds like the moorings are failing. Let’s
get a move on,” Alastor said. He and Ella flew up into the fog and out of
sight.

Kai and the others wasted no time. He hurried
through the city telling everyone he could meet that it was time to go. The
city guards had evidently gotten wind of the plan, and they rushed into
buildings and through the side streets to make sure everyone was alerted.

When Kai felt he had covered all the ground he
could, he returned to the city square. Crowds of people filed out of the gates
as Resona’s teams kept them calm and organized. Despite his persistent fear of
being crushed by the unstable airship, he couldn’t help but feel impressed once
again.

Resona, Echo, Kwin and Lindsay jogged over to
him a minute later, looking completely exhausted.

“We’ve covered every inch of the city and
almost everyone is out,” Resona explained. “Seems like we got lucky.”

Another groan came from above, this time
accompanied by snapping and creaking sounds. An instant later, Alastor appeared
at their side.

“Our little boat is sinking. I suggest we get
out of here pronto.”

“Agreed. Where’s Ella?” Kwin asked quickly.

“Still up there. I figured it was safer to
stay above the ship. I’m going to get her now.”

“Understood. Meet us near Carpenter’s garage
as soon as you can,” Kwin ordered. “Resona, take all your people and bring them
there as well. It’s a small shack on the north coast near Golden Capital, you
can’t miss it.”

With everyone on the same page, it was time to
evacuate. Kai looked up as the sounds of snapping wood and bending metal became
louder, and to his horror he saw the ominous silhouette of the massive ship
coming closer through the fog, scraping against the tower as it fell.

“Let’s move!” Kwin called, and everyone
quickly took flight, moving out of the way of the falling ship.

Just as they were safely outside the city
walls, the ship hit ground with a deafening crash. Every building within a
quarter mile was instantly flattened, and a cloud of debris and dust quickly
followed. The very walls of the city cracked and then fell, and the shockwave
from the impact all but destroyed hundreds of trees in the forest nearby. As
Kai looked on, an orange glow appeared in the wreckage and began to spread
quickly to nearby buildings.

“The Aqua Capital is going to burn to the ground.
Our dying world has a horrific sense of humor,” Kwin commented from Kai’s side.

The others watched in silence as the dust
billowed outward and fire caught everything it could reach. Soon half the city
was ablaze, and the fire began to spread to the nearby forest.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lindsay said quietly,
and they all turned and flew towards the coast as the sky burned behind them.

B
y the time everyone convened
at Carpenter’s hut, it was late into the morning. Many people had already
vanished, woken up by their alarms in the real world. Some returned later,
looking quite disgruntled, but many others did not return, forced to attend
obligations like work or errands or parenting.

Kai thought that this was probably just as
well. Everyone around him looked disheartened, tired and hopeless. Kwin and
Resona tried for a few minutes to keep things organized, but as more and more
people disappeared, they eventually gave up, deciding to continue in the
evening.

The day passed uneventfully, albeit slowly.
Though everyone in the house tried to focus on other things and avoid talking
about the Sanctum, it was clear that it was the only thing on anyone’s mind.
Kwin in particular seemed anxious to get back to bed, but did her best to
distract herself.

However, by the time the sun set that evening,
they were all too anxious to wait any longer. As soon as Lindsay started
yawning they all agreed it was time for bed, and they rushed off without delay.

Kai fully expected to have difficulty falling
asleep considering just how much they had all been sleeping lately, but it
wasn’t his rested state that kept him awake. His mind was filled with troubling
thoughts. One of his biggest fears was that the person they were looking for
simply wasn’t in the Sanctum anymore, and that he and everyone else involved in
their search were wasting their time. If they couldn’t find the seeker, they
would have no time to come up with anything else before it was too late. They
either succeeded here or everything would fail.

Finally, Kai was able to put his worrying
thoughts aside and fall asleep, arriving moments later on the beach. To his
surprise, the area was mostly clear. Only a few stragglers remained; some were
leaving the dream world for the night and others were just arriving. Resona and
Echo were nowhere to be seen. Kai assumed they hadn’t made it back into the
world yet.

He didn’t have to wait long for his friends to
show up. Lindsay appeared a few minutes later and quickly made her way over to
him.

“You know who I haven’t seen in a while?
Carpenter,” Lindsay said, looking over at the dark hut. “I kind of miss seeing
him around. I hope he’s okay.”

“I’m sure he and all his
employees
would be really helpful in our search,” Kai grinned,
remembering the man’s hundreds of sentient tools.

“That’s actually exactly what he’s doing,”
Alastor said, appearing out of thin air next to them. “Resona’s managed to
recruit about fifty more people in the time we were gone, and he’s one of
them.”

“Does that girl ever wake up?” Lindsay asked
incredulously.

“She does. She just appears to have a real
knack for organizing people. From what I hear she keeps at it while she’s
awake, too, much like our short friend. Speaking of…”

Right on cue, Kwin appeared a few feet away.

“I apologize,” she said quickly as she came
over. “Resona gave me a call just as I was falling asleep. Apparently we’re
under orders to take this evening off. She claims to have everything under
control and wants us to relax a little. She was… quite insistent.”

“Thoughts?” Alastor asked.

“Ordinarily I would refuse, but given what
I’ve seen her accomplish recently I’m inclined to trust her. I can’t deny I’ve
been wanting to do something fun, and as she points out, we’ve been working at
this a longer time than she has. I say we take her up on her offer, at least
for a few hours.”

“Excellent,” Alastor said, rubbing his hands
together. “I know just what we can do, providing my ever-punctual sibling
manages to fall asleep.”

Ella arrived ten minutes later, glancing
warily around the beach.

“Thank goodness the beach is still in one
piece. What are we doing today?” she asked.

“I thought we could do a little more training while
we’re here,” Alastor suggested. “Resona has demanded we all take a little time
off, so we might as well have some fun! You game?”

“You bet!” Ella said.

Thunder rolled in the distance, and Kai
instinctively looked around to make sure nothing was falling apart, but this
time it appeared to be a normal storm. Lightning flashed far off over the ocean
in the direction of the Shuski islands and a cold breeze blew inland; the storm
would be here within a few hours. By then, Kai hoped to be back to work far from
here, searching for the mysterious keeper.

As seemed to be tradition by now, Lindsay
drifted off to watch Ella and Alastor, and Kwin stood by Kai’s side. Again,
neither spoke, but Kai was comfortable.

“All right, let’s lift some water,” Alastor
instructed. “Imagine you’re cutting a chunk out of the ocean and pulling it up
and out. Here, watch.”

Alastor raised his right arm, palm facing
upward, and slowly moved it upward. As he did, a large sphere of water rose up
from the waves and floated higher. With a gesture of his hand, the sphere
glided towards the shore and hovered in front of them.

“It’s surprisingly easy. The hardest part is
pulling the water apart, but once you’ve got it all out, you can do whatever
you want with it. You just have to be careful not to lose concentration. The
water is part of the world, after all, so if you stop paying attention it’ll
spring back to its normal self.”

Ella nodded eagerly, then focused on the water
in front of her. She slowly raised her arms, and as she did so, a small sphere
slowly started to rise out of the water – then promptly burst.

“Hey, that was close!” Alastor said
encouragingly. “Give it another shot.”

Kwin shifted uncomfortably as thunder rolled
once again, this time slightly closer.

“You doing okay?” Kai asked quietly.

“If you think I am afraid of the storm, you
are incorrect,” Kwin replied, not altogether convincingly. “At the moment I am
simply feeling… isolated. With all world communications down, the Sanctum feels
immense. I’ve never felt this way before. Not only do I feel alone, but this
throws a wrench into our operations. If our groups can’t communicate, we’re
almost completely ineffective.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got an idea,” Kai
said, and Kwin looked at him with interest. “Just station one person in a
certain location and have everyone keep searching. If anyone finds our guy,
they can take him there. The others might not know we’ve found him right away,
but finding the keeper is more important, right?”

Kwin smiled.

“Indeed it is. I’ll have to speak with Resona.
Knowing her, she’s already come up with something. But you see, this is why I
keep you around.”

They were interrupted by a cheer from Alastor.

“All right! That’s my sis!” he called. In
front of Ella, a massive wall of water was rising slowly along the entire
beach. It soon rose so high that it blocked their view of the dark clouds
beyond, and still it continued. Even Ella seemed shocked at her progress, and
Kai grinned. He remembered when he had been in training with Alastor and first started
to really tap into his imaginative potential.

But it wasn’t until Ella started to back up in
fright that he started to think that something was wrong.

“This isn’t me! I’m not doing this!” she
cried.

Alastor’s smile slowly faded as they all
turned to look back at the gargantuan wall of water looming silently over them.
Kai felt a sudden pressure on his arm and looked down to see Kwin holding on
tightly, fear in her eyes as she looked at the wave.

Instead of falling towards them, however, the
water stayed in place. It was now at least a quarter mile high, and so thick
that Kai could not see any light through it.

Before anyone could react, a Sanctum courier
appeared out of thin air in front of them.

“Everyone is to report to the gates of Golden
Capital immediately, on the orders of Lady Semyaza and Lord Dumar. Those who do
not appear before the gates will be banished from the Sanctum without
question.”

The courier flickered, then vanished.

“Semyaza,” Kwin hissed, appearing to have
regained her composure already. “She must have reached the limits of her
patience to pull a stunt like that.”

“What’s going on?” Lindsay asked fearfully.

“It would appear the angels are gathering
everyone in the Sanctum together,” Alastor said thoughtfully. “I have to admit,
that sounds a lot more effective than what we’re doing.”

“She’s even more delusional than I thought if
she expects us to come when she calls,” Kwin continued furiously. “I want
nothing less than to–”

Kai was suddenly hit by a familiar sensation. It
was almost exactly like the one he felt when he passed through the golden door.
His vision blurred and he swayed on his feet, feeling as though he might fall
over any second.

But then his vision cleared, and to his utter
amazement, he found himself standing outside the broken gates of Golden
Capital. As he looked around he noticed more people arriving every second.
Within a minute, at least two thousand people stood at the gates, most of them
looking completely confused.

His gaze landed on Semyaza, who was standing
next to Dumar by the gates. She looked exhausted, and was kneeling on the
ground as though trying to catch her breath.

“Is everyone here?” Kwin asked, taking charge.
The others nodded. “Good. Now, stay together. I don’t know what’s going on but
we can’t afford to be separated.”

She stopped as they heard a cry from behind
them, and they turned to see Resona pushing her way towards them through the
crowd.

“What’s happening?” she asked, sounding
frightened.

“Semyaza summoned everyone in the world here
by force,” Kwin explained calmly, though she looked livid. “It would appear she
has grown tired of waiting for her keeper to appear willingly.”

Semyaza stood up and surveyed the crowd before
her. Kai looked around again and saw more people than he ever had before. At
least ten thousand now stood before the city gates, muttering amongst
themselves and trying to catch a glimpse of the angels and their dragon. But
when Semyaza raised her hands for silence, the people fell quiet immediately.

“I regret the circumstances under which I have
summoned you all here, but desperate times call for desperate measures,” she
called, and her voice echoed clearly even to those standing in the very back.
“Your world is falling apart, and there is one among you who has the ability to
change that. However, he has failed to show himself as is required, and you are
suffering the consequences. He need only present himself so that the Dream
Sanctum may be restored! Keeper, present yourself.”

Everyone looked around, confused, trying to
spot this mysterious keeper. A minute passed, but as Kai and the others looked
expectantly at the front of the crowd, no one showed up.

“The keeper
must
show himself!” Semyaza demanded, louder this time.

Still, nothing happened. As Kai continued to scan
the crowd, hoping against hope that their target might appear, he couldn’t help
but notice that the great dragon had been staring at him the entire time. He
refused to meet its gaze, but he felt its stare on him like the heat of the
sun. He turned away and looked at his friends. Alastor had an expression of
polite interest on his face, while Ella and Lindsay looked too scared to speak,
and were trying very hard not to draw attention to themselves. Kwin appeared to
be deep in thought, not even paying attention to what was going on before them.

“Why won’t you let us in?” a voice called from
the crowd, and this was met by murmurs of agreement.

Semyaza sighed.

“I cannot let you in under the circumstances.
It is not safe.”

“We’re dreaming! Who cares about safety?”
another voice called.

“Only the keeper is allowed inside the city.
When he comes forth, you will get your city back,” Semyaza replied, looking
quite harassed.

Kwin muttered something to herself, then
looked up suddenly, her eyes wide. She pulled on Alastor’s arm, and he leaned
over slightly to listen.

“We need to get inside the city,” Kwin
whispered urgently.

“Why are–?”

“I will explain later, but it’s imperative
that we get into the city
right now
.”

Alastor looked taken aback, and Kai was
equally surprised at her tone. She had evidently had some kind of revelation,
and given their current predicament, that could only be a good thing. The only
problem was that Kwin’s request would not be easily fulfilled.

Nevertheless, Alastor strode off without
another word. Kai and the others quickly followed until they were at the head
of the crowd. Only Resona remained behind. Everyone’s voices quieted as Alastor
walked up to Semyaza and gave a polite bow.

“Say, would you mind making a special
exception for us? It’s really quite important that we get inside, just for a
moment.”