This is the continuation of the story begun in All Comes Together Part One and continued in All Comes Together Part Two.
Isaac felt a touch on his shoulder.
He stirred himself from the dream. The strange visions that had crashed through him drained away, leaving an unpleasant after-taste. He put a hand to his forehead.
"Hon?" Missy asked, eye peering out from her pillow. "You all right?"
"Fine," Isaac said. "Had a nightmare I think. One of those disorienting ones that kinda leaves you feeling weird for a while."
"What was it about?"
"I don't know. A lot. You were there. So was Alena. A bunch of other people, too. I don't think I knew them. It was so strange. Stuff about other worlds. I ran a lot." Isaac groaned and sat up on the edge of the bed. "It was all very confusing."
"Well, hopefully it won't bother you today." Missy crawled to the other edge of the bed and revealed her face from under a sheet of dark tangled hair. "You go get cleaned up; I'll make some breakfast."
Isaac found clean clothes as Missy stretched and opened the curtains to let in drab sunlight.
In a minute Isaac looked at his reflection in the three angled mirrors in the bathroom. The shower ran, warming up. He was trying to go over what he'd have to do that day, but the dream he'd had kept intruding. There were people that he didn't know, yet they seemed so familiar, like they were parts of him.
He stood observing the stubble on his chin and then turned toward the shower. Strange movement from one of the mirrors caught his eye. Suddenly cold he looked back at it. His reflection returned his look, seeming to smirk.
After finishing in the shower he found Missy in the kitchen holding a cup of hot coffee for him. She only gave it to him after a kiss.
"Feel better?" She asked as the toaster popped. She grabbed the English muffin halves and dropped them on a plate.
"Mostly. Still just feel a bit . . . I don't know . . ."
"Separated?”
Isaac stood, holding the cup of coffee in one hand, tie undone around his neck. "Yes. Separated, and . . . like this world just isn't the way it should be." He looked out the window at the lawn, covered in cold light from the cloudless sky. "Like it's just a little bit different."
"Your imagination," Alena said, dropping an English muffin half with purple jam into his hand. "You should write stories. You're so creative."
"Yeah," Isaac responded, not listening. The world from his dream had possessed so much color -- the real world seemed drained in comparison.
"You need to get going, you don't want to be late tonight."
"Hmm?"
"Alena's coming over for supper, remember? You haven't seen her since you got out of the hospital."
Isaac said nothing, coffee paused at his lips.
"Boy, that dream really did a number on you, didn't it?" Missy asked. "Go on, go to work. Get your mind off it."
Atmospheric purple light filled the sky above the trees. There was no sun, but the purple haze around the world Casai had constructed lit the land. Hanna sat on a grass-covered hill next to a tall tree that spiraled up, branches twisting in helixes. She sat looking at the crowded purple sky; the planets hung clustered. The haze around their world seemed to be reaching toward the others.
Hanna heard a noise behind her and jumped, then settled when she saw it was Tetra.
"Keeping watch for us?" The magician said. He sat heavily. Hanna smoothed the fabric of her skirt. "See anything?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"That's good, I suppose, but I'm surprised."
"Why?"
"Well, Casai must know where we are. The fact that he inhabits Isaac's body shouldn't stop him from having the kind of omnipresent power he did before. I'm just surprised he doesn't send something to destroy us once and for all."
"Why would he?" Hanna asked. The gold sweatshirt that Isaac used to wear glinted; it was the only item that seemed to deny the purple tint of the air purchase. "He's already got his world. Soon he'll be able to take over those other planets too. What can stop him?"
"No need to be so despondent," Tetra said. "We're all upset that Isaac's gone. But we're still around, which means we might be able to do something to stop it. Come, we're going to discuss it now."
He led her back to the other four. Eela, still damaged from the fight with her brothers, sat against a tree. Zoolk stood next to her. Jol fiddled with his gun, trying to eke out a few more shots.
"I refuse to accept that Casai is invincible," Tetra said. "He needed Isaac's help to create all this, so he isn't all-powerful. He has to act through others."
"But now he has Isaac's power," Stasya said. "He can create anything he wants. Who knows what."
"Some world he's created so far," Jol said. He looked up at the canopy of leaves. "I've never seen leaves like this before."
"It doesn't matter what they look like," Tetra said. "He created them. He could create just about anything he wanted. I wonder if there are any things he cannot make."
"Isaac figured he could make life," Eela said. The blood-oil mixture that ran through her dripped to the ground. "I think he could. If anything, I am proof you don't even need Isaac's power."
"He made all those things," Zoolk said. "The women that Isaac knew, the cold ones, Eela's brothers. We saw more before we fled. He could create more if he wanted."
"Others made those things," Jol said. "Eela's . . . father . . . made her brothers. He didn't have to make your wolves. The lava monster that Hanna and I had to deal with before we came here was produced from some other sort of method. He didn't make any of them, he just took control."
"Those are just the ones we know," Stasya said. "He could have made any of the others."
"Perhaps," Tetra said, "but I would guess he didn't. You see, not only did he have to take control of his different forms -- Eela's brothers, the lava monster, Zoolk's pack -- after their construction, but he needed Isaac to utilize his hallucinations and break apart his world in order to take control of him. Only then could he make use of Isaac's ability to create a world he needed. And look!" Tetra pointed through the leaves to the other planets suspended above them. "Even now he has yet to remove from whatever existence this really is the places we once called home. He is not faultless, nor omnipotent. What he is, we might not know, but we know he can not simply do anything he wants."
"Did he win?" Hanna asked. "Did Casai do what he set out to do?"
Jol shifted. "No. We all knew he wanted to destroy everything. Every world. We heard him say that over and over, each of us, but he hasn't done that. He needs more time."
"Then we bring the fight to him," Zoolk said. "Distract him until we discover a way to beat him."
"Can we even do that?" Stasya responded. "Couldn't he just create something to get in our way, and make more monsters to stop us? He might not have been able to do it before, but now he has Isaac's power. Now he can do it."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, each thinking their separate thoughts. Hanna looked out over the purple field outside the grove of trees.
"I'm not going to give up," Zoolk said finally. "Why sit quietly and let death get me? I'll chase death down if I have to. Casai will feel my anger."
"My family . . . whatever it might have been, is gone." Eela, with one dead eye, looked at Zoolk. "I was once human. She's trapped behind some division in my brain. She tries to get out sometimes, and every time she does, I feel more human." She lifted the arm that had been stripped off her false skin, revealing the cables and wires that constituted her muscles and veins. "So to speak. I feel her now. The Eela that used to be. She wants to keep fighting. She cares. I care too."
"I have those I want to protect," Tetra said. "Friends and colleagues and family. I'll fight. It's the smart thing to do."
Jol nodded. "Me too. I'm not going to sit and watch millions of souls be extinguished."
"I don't really desire to go back to my world," Stasya interjected, "but there's plenty here I want to protect. My world and Isaac's were close enough anyway. I lost friends to Casai. I don't want to lose everything."
"Hanna?" Jol asked.
Hanna still sat looking out over the plain. "I don't like the color purple. I haven't ever." She sighed and looked at them. "Now everything's purple. Isaac's gone . . ." she paused. "Someone I cared for. I'm sad, and angry, and instead of being near a person I loved, the grass is covered in that purple." She stood up. "Sickening.
"I'll fight. I loved Isaac. I really did. I won't get to tell him that, but I can do what he wanted. He wanted Casai defeated; I'll defeat Casai."
Jol nodded. Stasya smiled. "I'm sure if I had a heart," Eela said, "It would be swelling."
Zoolk chuckled.
"Splendid," Tetra said. "Our next step is to figure out how to harm him."
"We destroy Isaac's body," Zoolk said. "Distasteful. But perhaps."
"Perhaps. Jol said that there was a metal that helped him stop one of Casai's forms," Tetra added.
"I don't see how we'll be able to find it. It was only from Hanna's and my planet. We aren't getting back there anytime soon," Jol said.
"Jol, look," Hanna said. "Something's coming near us."
"What?" Jol went to her and looked. Zoolk's pack, plus another creature they didn't recognize, was making trails through the field toward their trees. "She's right. They know we're here. Get moving!"
They picked themselves up and went through the trees to the other side, staying as quiet as they could. They went a few hundred feet away on a hill and crouched down, Zoolk nearly lying down. They saw and heard nothing.
Then, a howl. Zoolk rose and pointed away, his face hard. They heard the trees rustle.
Hanna got up and started to follow Jol, but tripped on a root. She fell hard on her shoulder and began to slide down the hill away from the others. No one noticed when she slipped into the shadow of a low bush, and they ran away from her, followed by Zoolk's pack. She lay motionless for a minute, then put her head up.
Twenty feet away from her was the other thing she'd seen with the pack. It had mottled gray flesh and bulging muscles in a rough humanoid shape. Its head was elongated, and had spikes lining the top. Its flat face wrinkled when she appeared, and the head whipped to stare at her. She turned and ran, gold sweatshirt fanning behind her through the trees as she heard frantic thrashing chasing her.
It was three in the afternoon. Isaac just had two more locations to check before he could head home. His taupe sedan rolled to a stop at a light. Clouds had come to cover the sun, making the day even grayer than it had seemed before. The dream was with him still. Little parts came through every once in a while. Something with spaghetti, small pieces of gold, and the library.
He wasn't feeling well. The dream or something else he didn't know; he just wanted to get home and relax. He thought about calling in sick tomorrow if it persisted.
He tried to think about work. The Closewater location hadn't had a good week, but the one in the Newton mall had done well enough to make up for it and the one in Marm. Piles of notes and bookkeeping supplies covered his backseat. His next destination, the Wesley store, was under competition from a larger bookstore across the street, and Isaac didn't look forward to seeing their numbers.
The light turned green and Isaac sped up, very aware of his desire to rest. He turned the corner.
Like sun rolling down the sidewalk, a wave of golden color flooded his eyes, bringing tears and forcing him to squeeze them shut. The brilliance subsided and he opened them, peering through watery gaps.
There was a woman in the road. Isaac hauled his steering wheel to the right onto the sidewalk, barely avoiding another pedestrian, who began yelling. Isaac craned his neck around to look at the woman. She stood still, and watched him, golden radiance obscuring her.
Hanna watched the creature as it looked at her from the ground. It had chased her until she could go no farther, trapped by a wall of almost solid trees. It rushed up to her and then darted around her, slamming into a tree. It lay on the ground panting and keeping its eyes on her, wary of her as she was of it.
She backed away, quietly putting one foot down after the other. It watched her but didn't move. She found a gap in the trees she could squeeze through and slipped in, finding tangles and bushes on the other side. She pushed forward, listening for any noise from the creature, but none came.
As quickly as she appeared the woman was gone. The world returned to the gray-soaked coloring it had been before she appeared. When she was there, Isaac remembered more colors than just gold flowing into the world that had seemed unreal all day. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine them.
A momentary image -- he thought from his dream -- came to him, of a circle of trees around him under a strange, eerie sky. He shook his head and the image disappeared. The pedestrian he'd almost hit whapped the front of his car with her purse and stormed past. Checking behind him, he backed into the lane and continued driving.
The pale sun had sunk and Isaac pulled into his driveway. He collected his papers and stuffed them into a bag, pulling it with him into the house. It smelled of meatballs and Caesar salad. Missy stood in the kitchen, humming something and mixing the salad while staring into a corner of the ceiling. When he stepped in she shot a glance at him; for a moment she looked strange, almost deconstructed.
"Hi hon," she said. "How was work?"
Isaac stood looking at her, throat dry, eyes still burning, knot in his shoulder hurting. He dropped his bag on the bench near the door and sat down next to it. Missy came over to him. "Isaac?"
"I . . ." He stopped. He kept thinking about the woman in the road. She'd come and gone in a literal flash, and she couldn't have been real.
Yet he knew, somehow, she was.
"I saw something weird today," he said. "I was driving from the Marm location to the one in Wesley, and I turned a corner, and . . . there was a woman standing in the middle of the road, right in front of me."
"What?"
"She was glowing, shining gold. It blinded me but I avoided her. I almost hit someone else. I turned around in my chair and looked at her again. She was looking at me, too. Then she was gone."
"What do you mean she was glowing?"
"I mean she was bright! It was like a star, or . . . an angel."
"Oh honey," Missy said, giggling. "There's no such thing as angels." She left him sitting on the bench and went back to the kitchen. Isaac pictured the woman's face, clear and flawless, white behind the golden aura around her.
He stood and marched up next to her, grabbing her arm. "What was it I saw, then?" He hissed in her face. She recoiled. "Nothing? A ghost?"
"Get your hands off me." She wrenched her arm out of his grasp. "I don't know what you saw, Isaac, but I know you shouldn't think about it. You're tired and the dream you had this morning affected you in a way you don't understand. Maybe you just got blinded by the sun and thought you saw a woman." She turned away from him and took the salad to the table, set with three places.
"I turned east," Isaac said. "The sun was behind me. I know I saw something there."
"Oh, who the hell knows, then?" Missy suddenly raged. "Stop talking about it! Get your head out of the clouds for once and help me get things ready, Alena's going to be here any minute!"
Her anger fueled his. "I saw something else, too!" She continued to bring dishes to the table. "Right after the woman disappeared. I saw a ring of trees around me. The sky was purple."
Missy, facing away from him at the table, halted. "Are you going to tell me that I didn't see anything then, either?" He asked. "Are you going to tell me I'm going crazy?"
"You're not going crazy," Missy said quietly. "You're just tired. You're hallucinating. Maybe you need to go back to the hospital."
Cold pressure clutched Isaac's chest and the world started to drain. He leaned against the counter in the kitchen, breathing heavily. I can't go back can't go back.
Missy appeared at his side. "Look at you. You can barely stand. Maybe they didn't catch what was really wrong with you before. Maybe you need to get tested again."
I can't go back! He raged soundlessly. I can't get tested again! I can't I can't go back!
He swallowed, trying to force air down into him. "M-maybe I am just tired. I need to get a glass of water."
Missy nodded. "That's right. You do." She tilted her head. "I hear Alena's car." Isaac listened and heard it too. It rolled up the drive and came to a stop outside the garage, shutting off. It clanked as it died. "Get your water and calm down. You know how Alena likes to poke a wound."
Isaac was pouring water into a cup when the front door opened and Alena walked in. "Hey there hot stuff," she said to him. "Glad to see me?"
Isaac looked at her and envisioned the glowing woman again, a thing that cut through her form and came out as the truth behind her.
"I swear she's alive," Zoolk said, face pointed up, nostrils flaring. "I'd know."
"You seem pretty confident of that!" Jol said. The five of them had been looking for Hanna for hours, ever since they'd escaped from Zoolk's wolves via tricks from Zoolk's repertoire. He now assured them that he led them toward Hanna.
"Living with wolves for a year helps to hone the senses, boy," Zoolk growled. "I'd smell her blood if it was shed." He pointed through the endless trees. "She went that way."
They pulled back branches and forged ahead, going carefully to keep from making much noise. Any kind of creature could be beyond the next tree.
After a while, Zoolk sniffed the air with his nose stuck up. He let the pose linger, tongue mulling inside his mouth. "She's close." He led them to a small grove that held the girl.
"Hanna!" Jol said, running to her and bending down. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "You're all right?"
"I am." She stood. She looked at each of them. "I'm so glad you're all okay."
"Did Casai chase you? How did you get away?" Tetra asked. He wiped sweat off his face. "We thought perhaps the wolves-"
"No, not the wolves. Not anything we're familiar with," Hanna said. "A different monster. The wolves went past me. I thought I was safe until it appeared. It chased me into a little open area, and I thought I was dead."
She rubbed the cuff of the gold sweatshirt between her thumb and finger. "It was coming at me, ready to kill, and then it moved to the side and hit a tree. It fell to the ground, looking at me."
"Just . . . looking?" Jol asked. Hanna nodded.
"I think . . . I don't know for sure, but what I think happened was Isaac. He's still somewhere inside Casai."
"Your sweatshirt," Eela said. "Isaac told us he liked to wear it to make sure he wasn't in a hallucination. It gave him strength."
"That's what I thought too. The monster saw the sweatshirt, and Isaac was able to come out of Casai a little bit and take control, give me a chance to escape."
Tetra sat on a flat rock. "We must discuss this. Hanna's given us a weapon." The others looked at him. "The sweatshirt. It gives Isaac some kind of power to resist Casai. I suppose it can work as a sort of defense, or . . ."
"Or we use it to attack," Jol said. "We put the sweatshirt on Casai. It might give Isaac the strength to get control back."
"Jol shot Isaac," Zoolk said. "I saw the blood, and the hole. No man could survive that. Casai is the only thing in that body now."
"No," Eela said. "It's not that killing him didn't work, it's that he wasn't killed. The bullet did damage to Isaac, obviously -- it damaged his brain and may have knocked him unconscious, something that would have been followed quickly by death by mere moments had not Casai intervened. Isaac is alive and trapped inside the body that was once his. I agree with Tetra: if we can present the sweatshirt to Casai, Isaac may be able to get free."
"Thank you," Jol said. Eela nodded to herself.
"How, then?" Tetra asked. "Casai is king. He commands an army of supernatural creatures, all of which I assume are on the lookout for us. We don't even now where he is. And -- given that we can even find him -- he could just separate himself from us. We are still unsure that the sweatshirt will have an effect, and if that effect will be enough to undo all of this. What if it isn't?"
"I have enough charge for one more shot," Jol said, touching his holstered pistol with one finger. "I put another bullet between Casai's eyes and hope it does the job this time."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"I'll rip his head off," Eela said.
"You'll have to get in line," Zoolk said.
Hanna nodded. "It's agreed then. We're going after Casai."
"So, Isaac, how was work?" Missy asked.
Isaac looked up from his ignored salad. He caught Missy's eye and saw the thought that was there. He swallowed. "It was alright. The Closewater location isn't able to move anything other than bestsellers. Other than that it was just a basic day of driving from one place to the other. Thank goodness I only have to do that once a week."
"And then what?" Alena asked, grinning. "What do you do the rest of the week?"
Isaac shrugged. He tried to avoid looking at her. "Manage inventory, work out finances, meetings with publishers. I'm trying to find a new group to improve the website. The one I have right now is letting me down."
"And you won't stand for that."
He shook his head. He pushed the salad around on his plate. "Not in this day and age."
"You seem sort of out of it, Isaac," Alena said. "Something happen today?"
Isaac glanced at Missy before answering. "I had a dream last night that . . . well it affected me. I'm not sure how."
"I know what you mean," Alena said. "It just stays with you all day, right? Even though you take a shower and go to work and do whatever, but, like, it's still there!" She put her hands on either side of her head. "I've had those. You gotta shake them loose." She looked at Isaac. "Is that all?"
He looked at his plate. "Yeah. It was pretty wild."
"I bet it was," Alena said. "Do you want any help cleaning up, Miss?"
"Oh no, I can get it." Missy stood, gathering the plates. "Go on into the living room, Isaac. Take a load off. You've had a long day." She patted his shoulder, and he smiled up at her.
Sitting on the couch in the living room, with the sour sun coming in the window, Isaac watched Alena enter. The sun caught her yellow hair and lit it on fire. She smiled and sat next to him.
"So the dream you had . . . what was it about?"
Isaac crossed his arms and leaned back. "I don't know exactly. It was all just a big mess when I woke up, and it's stayed that way. It was . . . so full of color, and light. Like the seven pieces of the rainbow made form in my sleep."
Alena shifted. "That's quite poetic of you."
"I've been thinking about it all day. I remembered little bits as the day went on. You were there, and Missy. I remembered I was making spaghetti at one point, and I think I went to the library."
"And those sort of things got you all up in a daze?"
"There were other things, too. Monsters. Things attacked me. I was afraid during it. I had a feeling like the dream itself just came unraveled and I was left in my own head."
Alena closed her eyes and swung her head from side to side. "It's a shame, the way you've been affected. You need to get that dream out of your head. Remember what I said earlier?" She leaned in. "You need to shake them loose." She put her hand on his thigh.
Blood ran to his face and he glanced toward the door to the kitchen. "Missy-"
"I can guarantee that she won't interrupt us," Alena whispered. "Don't be so shy. I put my hand more places than that back when you were in the hospital. I remember you put your hand in a few places, too. Such nice places."
Isaac stood and backed away, leaving her leaning toward nothing on the couch. He panted, sparks of dream appearing in his eyes. Falling into black and reaching toward something bright and beautiful. He put his hand over his eyes, blocking out the world he was in.
"So now you're going bitch on me?" Alena said. He heard her step close. "You know me better than that, Isaac. I'm not just going to give up." She grabbed his neck and kissed him, sending her tongue into his mouth.
He spat her out and pushed her away roughly. Sick images attacked him, and he recognized them from his dream. The smell and taste of her brought them. She lay on the ground, not moving and looking up at the ceiling as her brows came together in slow anger.
When they met in the middle, she started talking. "I could make you're life unending agony, you know." She licked her lips. "You're living you're wonderful fantasies right now: married to the woman of your dreams, a successful businessman, your own home, and, if you ever get bored with your wife, her sister to fool around with. Any man would kill to get what you have. Ever since you got out of the hospital it's like you won the lottery. Do you want me to call Missy in here, and have her undress? You could have us both. Or just watch us together. Anything you wanted."
She rolled over and got to her knees, standing slowly. "But instead!" She shouted. "You want a world that no longer exists! You want a life full of misery and pain and death! You want your pieces of the rainbow made form!" She advanced on him. He backed up, pressing against the wall. She had become a raging beast.
She was in my dream, Isaac thought. She was a monster.
"We're very tired of this, Isaac!" He heard from the door. Missy stood with her arms crossed and eyes burning. "You can never be happy, can you? You always have to have something else. Me! Her! Anyone!" Missy spread her arms around the room. "This place could be filled with beautiful women and good food and all the treasures you can imagine, but you'll never be happy, will you?"
"What's going on?" Isaac said, trapped along the wall. "What are you talking about?" He thought of something. "This has to do what I saw today, doesn't it? The gold woman in the road!"
"You're too stupid to even figure it out!" Alena shouted. "Now stop reaching for the things you can't have!" Her voice lowered, and his stomach turned as she spoke. "Or you might just have to go back to the hospital."
No no! Can't go back there! I can't go back! He fell to his knees. The women surrounded him.
"That's right. You can't go back. Every time you go, there's a little less of you that comes back here," Alena said. She knelt down next to him. "We still need to get that dream out of there, and get you back to normal. He didn't want to go the easy way." She looked up at Missy. "I guess he wants the hard way."
Missy reached her hand out for Isaac.
"I found one," Eela said. "Look there. You can just see something on the edge of that hill. It's a big one."
"I see it," Jol said, squinting. "I'd bet hard gold that it's the lava monster Hanna and I dealt with."
"Will we do it? Are we ready?" Zoolk looked around. The others nodded. "Girl, you must be prepared to do what's necessary."
Hanna nodded. "I'm ready." She clutched the collar of the sweatshirt. "He's going to get an eyeful of this."
Eela kept her eyes on the beast. "It's coming closer. Now's a good time." She stepped out from behind the rock that hid them. "Stick to the plan."
She and Zoolk took off. Zoolk struggled to keep up with her easy stride. The other four followed with Hanna in the front. After ten minutes they met up with Zoolk and Eela again. It was the lava monster, standing still on the dark green slope of a hill, letting burning bits of itself roll down, turning the grass to smoldered kindling. Eela and Zoolk crept closer.
When close enough, Eela stood and raced up to it. It was looking away from her.
"MONSTER!" She roared, shocking the others with her volume. The lava monster turned and saw her and Zoolk standing on the hill. It produced a bubbling growl and jumped closer, looking to crush them.
They dove away to either side. "Now, girl!" Zoolk yelled. Their movements left the monster open to her, and she revealed herself, spreading her arms out.
She screamed at it. "Maybe you remember me?"
Missy's claws grazed his neck when the bright light appeared. Both of the women fell away, crying out. Isaac looked up and found the same angelic woman, all shades of the sun -- the real sun that put this world's star to shame.
A voice reached him from afar. Run!
He tore for the door, feeling the radiance fade behind him.
"It worked!" Tetra yelled as the lava monster moved away urgently. "Astounding! The sweatshirt's power must be more potent than we thought!"
"Don't get too excited," Stasya said. "We still have to follow it. Who knows if it's even going in the right direction."
Isaac reached the end of his block and kept running. He had no idea what he was running toward, but the woman had told him to run; he did. He glanced behind him again and saw Missy and Alena chasing him, running faster than he could ever hope.
What are they? Who was the woman? What am I?
These thoughts and more were in his head as he ran, feeling his meal turn to stone and weigh him down. He was coming up to a three-way intersection.
"Go to the left, Isaac!" One of the women chasing him yelled. "Go to the left, or we'll take you back to the hospital!"
Isaac halted and glanced behind him. The hospital wasn't enough anymore; he still felt the light from the woman. They didn't want him to go right. He started moving his feet again down that path, and saw a sudden change in the place around him. The full summer foliage died, turning their leaves to withered, skeletal fingers. The asphalt under him shifted to uneven cobbles between steps; he nearly toppled over. The sky went from weak blue to dark purple. The air was at one moment sweet and cool and the next rotten and humid, carrying decaying leaves and sweat.
"We'll make you go back, Isaac!" One of the women yelled, still chasing him. "You'll go back to the hospital and you'll stay there! You'll never come back out!"
The possibility of such a thing made Isaac falter. He looked over his shoulder.
The women had become monsters, one tall and thin and the other long and thick like a worm. His speed picked back up.
His eyes found the sky. He'd seen it a million times -- he thought -- but now a spire grew as he ran forward, holding dark shadows and cragged fortifications. Above it, purple fire spread in a writhing starburst. The sky got darker. The only light came from it.
"Come back Isaac!" A woman yelled. "You don't want to go that way!"
Isaac pushed himself.
"Can we be sure there's even a place that Casai has claimed?" Tetra asked. "This beast has been going for hours. What if we don't ever find Casai, and it's just running in fear, directionless?"
"I don't think that's the case, Tetra," Jol said, looking up.
The others followed his eyes. The sky had deepened from its unnatural purple to a spreading, inky, eminent shade that brought the light out of the world around them.
"If that isn't Casai, he's nowhere anymore." Jol nodded. "It's getting away."
They trailed after the monster in the worsening gloom. They found the ground turning to ash and sulfur, stepping down in giant's strides. They reached the edge of a bluff.
They saw Casai's abode, the silence between them an echo of the horror that was at the center depression in the land.
Isaac got closer to the mighty castle that had risen from the ground like a living crypt. Its dark points taught him of unholy majesty. He reached a cold iron fence with an open gate. He looked behind him and saw no trace of the things that Missy and Alena had become. He looked back up at the castle and felt his life fade away, leaving just him, in that moment, with a decision:
Tread across the cold graveyard between him and the castle, or turn away to an existence that he knew was nothing more than nightmares become fantasies.
"It can't be real," Hanna said. She had her face buried in Jol's back. "Nothing can be like that! It can't!"
"I . . . I . . . " Stasya looked away, falling to her knees and clutching her mouth. Her eyes bugged out. Zoolk knelt and put his hand on her shoulder, mouth sagging in horror. His face, so long a picture of anger and hate, was now nothing more than terror. Eela shut her working eye and breathed in and out quickly.
"The Eela from before is coming through," she said. "She can't bear to look."
"We're dead," Stasya whispered from the ground. "We're dead and we've just found Hell."
"It's just an image," Tetra said. "Casai created it a-as a defense." He couldn't look either. "It doesn't matter what lies between us and him, we have to cross it."
"If we have to look at that, we'll go mad," Jol said. He was pale. "How do we get past it?"
"I . . ." Eela took a moment to center herself. "I have ways to sense what's around me other than vision. They're built into my systems. We can all close our eyes, and I can lead the way." She stood facing away from Casai's home. "Hanna after me. Put your hand on my shoulder."
She put her hand out, feeling for the support she knew was there. Brushing against it, she stepped forward, sensing the swaying bridge. Under it, she sensed nothing at all -- even though she knew what she'd seen.
"Hold tight to one another," she said. "We have to make it across. All of us." Murmurs of agreement came from behind her. Hanna's hand clenched on her shoulder.
Jol yelped. "I thought I felt something."
"I feel things too," Zoolk, at the back, said. "They touch and dart away. Ignore them."
"They aren't what we're here for, remember." Tetra held on tight to Hanna's other hand. "We're here to beat Casai."
Stasya kept her eyes squeezed shut and was speaking to herself in low Russian, Jol and Zoolk before and behind her.
"We're halfway," Eela said. Her brain collected the data from her body and created a graphical version of vision: a simple, wood plank bridge over yawning darkness.
Every once in a while, something else would appear in the gap. She ignored it, but the woman she had once been thrashed against her electronic bonds. Eela could almost feel her breaking free.
As she walked, leading the rest of them, she detected something else ahead, in the center.
"More problems," she said behind her. "I think it's Missy and Alena."
"What?" Tetra asked. "How can you be sure?"
"There are two of them, and they are about the size of the women. Once we get to the other side of the bridge they'll be close to us. You may have to fight them to get in."
"How can we do that with our eyes shut?" Hanna asked.
"Not us. You."
"Me?!" Hanna paused. "Oh."
"Don't worry," Eela said. "I'll be able to help."
Unseen, Hanna nodded.
Isaac picked his way through the dusty ground and broken headstones that surrounded the castle. He could have sworn he'd been this way a hundred times, but now there was a cemetery and castle, and a dead forest and black sky.
Missy and Alena hadn't reappeared. He wondered what that meant. Did even they not dare enter the castle?
Leaves crunched as he walked. The wind whistled off crosses and crumbling marble angels. The larger stones looked cold and spiteful at his continued life, as if he was to blame for denying their existence. The castle grew as he walked to it, silent and unknown.
Eela and the others stepped off the bridge, keeping their eyes shut.
"Look, sister. The poor babies can't bear to look," one of the women said.
"They're weak," the other replied.
Hanna stepped forward carefully, led by Eela. "Not entirely," she said. Spreading her arms, she showed the gold sweatshirt she wore.
She felt nothing. She heard no sudden flurry of motion from in front of her.
"It doesn't work that way, girl," one of the women said. "You got lucky before . . . but now your dear Isaac is in Casai's clutches."
"You might as well," the other said, "throw yourself into the pit."
The idea of it made Hanna shiver. "Not so eager to get in now, are you? I'll tell you a secret, Hanna." One of the voices got closer. "The thing you have just crossed is Casai's inner form. You are inside him."
"Don't listen," Eela said in Hanna's ear. "I can still help. They don't have the strength that my brothers do. It'll be easy to get them out of the way."
Hanna heard prolonged sounds of fibers twisting and groaning, like the deck of a ship on a storm. Eela gasped. "Tell her what you see now, mechanical one," a warped and distorted voice said. "Tell them what we are now."
The door creaked open almost on its own accord with only the barest touch. Isaac tried to look through the darkness inside, but saw nothing. He looked behind him, at the still cemetery, and the strangely normal world beyond. He took a quick breath and stepped inside.
He expected the door to close behind him, but still it was startling.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the area he was in. There was no one else around, and the small windows high above let in only darkness. His steps echoed loudly off the black stone. In a few more minutes he could see clearer.
He was in no more than a large chamber that took up the entire interior. No stairs, or doors, could be seen. He thought that it was nothing more than an empty castle, until he looked down. His eyes had been drawn up by the castle's great height, but saw that there was something in the floor. A wide hole that had cold, spiraling stone steps. The light lessened even more, turning into an impenetrable, almost solid blackness.
He looked around, trying to find anything else. He couldn't see any other form -- nothing moved in the castle's open emptiness. It was him alone, and the pit that led below.
He tried the door, not expecting it to open and guessing correctly. All that was left were the stairs.
The first step went under him.
"They changed," Eela whispered. "They've grown. Their dimensions have changed."
"Can you beat them?" Hanna asked.
Eela didn't respond. The only reason Hanna knew she was still there was Hanna's hand on her shoulder. "I will."
"Big words from such a small creature," one of the women said.
"I'm letting you go, Hanna," Eela said. "Be sure not to look." Hanna felt the shoulder under her hand slide away.
"I still know where you are," Eela said to the women. "Just because I have my eyes closed doesn't mean I'm blind."
"It doesn't matter if you're blind or not," one of the women said. "We're going to tear you limb from limb."
"My sister's right," the other woman said. "It's just you against us."
"There's quite a lot of me," Eela said, then pushed off.
She shot at the first monster, which had a tall, arched body and thin limbs. She blocked an attack from her left and barreled into the woman, sending it down. Eela jumped to the other, which had stretched out to become a long creature with many legs. Eela landed on its head, stomping down with all the power her mechanical legs gave her. She fell into the creature's face, punching her entire body backward.
Eela fell to the ground, feeling a sticky substance on her skin. She tried to wipe it off but was struck from the side by the thin one. Eela rolled, keeping her momentum as she rose and dashed in a circle around the thin one, faster than it could turn. She hit it from behind, knocking it forward, nearly over the cliff.
Eela was near to reaching her and throwing her off to certain destruction when a tentacle wrapped itself around her ankle, bringing her down. It dragged her backwards, toward the fat one. The tentacle lifted her off the ground, and Eela had to separate her hair to sense through it. She was lifted up in front of the fat one's face, now bulbous ridges and sagged lines.
She was thrown, spinning around and caught by the thin one. The thin one slammed her on the ground with her head hanging off the cliff over the essence of Casai.
She felt it sucking her in.
"See." The thin one's fingers wrenched open the eyelid on her working eye.
Eela reached in and ripped out the eyeball, but it was too late. She'd seen it up close.
The woman placed inside her, hidden behind an electronic barrier in her memory, convulsed. She was dying. Eela felt her fading away, blown dry by what was in the pit. As the thin one lifted her up and let her fall to the ground, she went still.
He'd been walking for hours, and was beginning to get dizzy. The stones along the wall were the same, never changing in their formation. He could see nothing below him, and nothing above. Even if there was light to be seen above, it would have been less than a pin's point.
Where am I headed? He asked. This can't be Earth. I'm somewhere else, now. Missy and Alena said something like that. He stopped and sat, resting his legs. Always spiraling down, but to where?
After a few minutes he got up and started running down the steps, careful not to trip. The staircase flowed by, repeating the same step ad nauseum.
"Eela?" Hanna shouted. "Eela, are you all right?"
"She's not all right, little girl," one of the women said. The voice was too close, and Hanna stepped back. She ran into Tetra. "She's gone now. She got a faceful of Casai, and it was too much for the tiny human inside her. All weak creations die when they see what Casai really is."
"She . . . she's dead?"
"Dead, destroyed, whatever it is that happens to a thing like her." Something touched Hanna's chin. "You're next."
A person! Isaac thought, almost disbelieving. But it was: there was someone standing on one of the steps, seeming just as confused as he was. It was a women with auburn hair, and green eyes.
"Who are you?" Isaac asked. The woman looked at him like she didn't know he was there. She seemed familiar. "What are you doing here?"
"I . . ." She trailed off. She looked at her hands and turned them over. "Who are you? Where am I?"
"I'm Isaac," he said. "You're in a castle. I've been trying to find the bottom of these steps for hours."
"Castle?" The woman looked up. "Oh, I see."
"You do?"
She looked down. "The bottom isn't far. You've only got a little bit more to go. Compared to going back up, at least."
Isaac looked down and saw only darkness. "How can you tell? It's too dark to see."
She shrugged. "I can see it." She looked around. "Your name's Isaac?" Isaac nodded. "I know that name. I knew someone with that name once. I loved him very much."
"Do you know how you got here?" Isaac asked. She shook her head. "Do you remember anything?"
"The last thing I remember is being very sick. I think I was dying." Gently, she touched her bright green eyes. "Hmm. How strange. This place-"
"Green," Isaac said. "Look at me again."
The woman stopped talking and looked at him, confused. Her eyes. So bright. Like . . .
"Part of a rainbow," Isaac muttered. "Your name is Eela."
"It is," she said. "How did you know that? And why didn't I know?"
"You were in my dream."
"Oh? Maybe I'm dreaming now."
The question took Isaac back. He thought about his day. Getting over the strange images from his sleep, seeing the gold woman, dealing with Missy and Alena and the things they turned into, now the castle. It couldn't be her dream; it was his.
"I suppose you could be."
"Well then," Eela said, smiling. "All I have to do is
Wake up."
She wasn't perceiving light, and yet could see. She was lying on hard ground, surrounded by sounds. She lifted a hand to find her eyes. One was there, the other was a cavity in her face.
She'd been dreaming about a young man somewhere. He told her what to do. How long have I been asleep?
She sensed her surroundings. She was on a large, circular piece of land. Some sort of structure was in the center. There were a few other forms with her. There was a bridge that connected the piece she was on to the mainland. Under the bridge-
She suddenly looked around. She felt as if she'd been knocked unconscious for a single moment. She rubbed her head, and felt odd beads in her hair. She picked at one but couldn't pull it out. She still didn't know where she was, so she walked over to where the others were. There were five humans -- one of them was quite big -- and two strange animals.
She realized they were in battle. The two creatures were making short work of the humans. She started running.
Her speed amazed her. She hadn't been that fast before, had she?
Had there been a before?
She pushed one of the creatures, knocking it over. It was large and bulbous. It released a surprised sound, and the other one, taller, and with rail-thin limbs, looked at her.
"What?" It said. Its voice was oddly snake-like. "How are you alive?" It swung an arm at her, and she blasted backward out of the way, again surprised by her power.
"I don't even know where I am!" She yelled. "Who are you? How can I still see?"
"It doesn't matter!" The monster attacked again, and she moved away. She felt strange snapping sensations in her joints and muscles. She moved them, and they cracked with sound.
In her sight, the monster advanced.
She bent and shot forward, hitting the monster in the chest. They went tumbling backward, near the edge of the cliff. It didn't seem like there was anything beyond. She grabbed part of the monster's body, wondering just how strong she was.
With an easy motion, she lifted it over her head and dropped it over the cliff. A high scream cut through the air and made her back away. It sounded like a woman being split in half.
She turned around just in time to see the other monster charging her. She shifted out of the way, so fast she almost lost the monster in her strange sight. Before it could change direction, she grabbed it and hauled it over the edge to follow the other monster. A similar scream, this one deeper and bubbling, came up to great her.
She looked around. All that was left were the five humans. They seemed confused and scared, and it didn't look like they knew what was going on. She walked up to them.
"Are you all right?" She asked. "I took care of those two things."
The lead human, a small woman, gasped. "Eela?"
She no longer had eyes, but memories can see forever.
Her life was there and she watched it. She loved the great city and the tall towers. She met a man named Isaac, a brilliant scientist whose genius was matched only by his shyness. She grew close to him; they loved each other. She became sick. Ships flew in the air and power could surge without wires, but her sickness could not be cured. All but the scientist accepted it.
He kept her alive, in suspension. Those memories were nothing but a wash of color. She woke up in a body with steel skin and glowing green eyes, and saw her beloved Isaac an old man. Her brothers, imperfect creations, watched her climb off the table.
She was happy.
The humans came, and killed Isaac, and trapped her and her brothers, and then it was hundreds of years later, and she chased her brothers as they swarmed over the city, killing them and learning of Casai the Destroyer. She escaped from her immortal brothers, met Zoolk, and Isaac, and all the others, and now she was in the center of Casai's own world with Isaac gone.
"It's me," Eela said to Hanna. "It's all of me. I remember everything."
"Even when you were human? How?"
"I can't say." She didn't try to remember what had been over the cliff. She knew it was something she couldn't see again. "I'm lucky, I guess."
"And the women?" Jol asked. "They're gone?"
"I threw them over the edge. I doubt they'll be back."
Jol nodded. "Now what?"
"Now . . ." Eela turned to the structure that was in the center. "Now we enter the castle."
He could see the bottom. He was almost there. He would finally find out what this was all about, where he was, what he was.
He thought about the woman that he'd met. Her words confused him. He always assumed that he was in his world, his life, and if he was dreaming it was his dream. The woman had disappeared instantly after they talked about dreams. Could he follow her? Wake up and be free?
He tried, but nothing happened. He kept walking. Of course he can't make himself wake up from his own dream, any more than he could go into someone else's.
It took him almost an hour to get to the bottom. He found a round room with a door on one side. He looked for anything else, and pulled it open.
"I think that you can open your eyes now," Eela said, after they had entered the castle. "There aren't any windows."
"I'll open mine first," Stasya said. "Just to make sure."
She fluttered one eye open, then opened both. She took a look around the interior. "It's all right."
"Thank goodness," Jol said. "My eyes were beginning to get stuck closed."
"I didn't think that all this darkness could seem bright," Hanna said, squinting. "Is Casai here?"
"No, but I can guess where he is," Eela said, pointing up. A spiral staircase, made of dark iron and beginning on the ground, spun up into the distant ceiling, where it disappeared into a hole.
"Finally! An end to all this!" Zoolk said. He reached the stairs first, and started to climb. The others followed.
"Are you all right, Eela?" Jol asked. "It sounded like you took quite the pounding."
"I had to rip out my working eye," Eela said. The two of them were at the back. "Or I would have gone mad. Somehow, the only thing that happened was the human consciousness that powered me breaking free. I'm the real Eela again."
"You weren't before?"
"No. It's difficult to explain. I don't know all the answers. Perhaps if we have time later, I'll be able to figure it out. But for now . . ."
"Of course." Jol peered up the circling staircase. "Right now we have other things to worry about."
"The sweatshirt didn't work against the two women," Hanna was saying to Tetra. "Will it work against Casai?"
"We have to hope," Tetra responded, puffing. "Perhaps the women existed independently from the consciousnesses that Casai controls -- or perhaps is a part of. As much as I would like to conduct tests and experiments, we have no such time. We'll simply have to rely on the data we already have, and hope that the women are a sort of outlier."
"Remember," Stasya said in front of them, "that we still have options if it doesn't work. Several here want no end of harm on Casai." She looked ahead of her, at Zoolk's pounding frame. "Somehow I don't think he's afraid," she said quietly.
"What was that, Stasya?" Tetra asked.
"Nothing."
Fifteen minutes passed before Zoolk got to the end of the staircase, and the others trailed in after him, with Tetra at the back. When they stopped climbing, he placed his hands on his knees and sputtered. He was helped up by Eela, and they went to the others. They stood before a door.
"Is he there?" Hanna asked. "Is Casai on the other side?"
"We must assume," Stasya said. "Is everyone ready?"
Tetra took a few deep breaths and nodded along with the rest of them. Stasya went to the door. Thought about what was about to happen, and pushed it.
"Isaac."
He stood at one end of the room, and watched the person at the other.
At first he thought he was looking at a mirror. The other person was him, dressed the same and looking the same, but smiling. "So you've found me."
"It looks like I've found myself."
"That too, perhaps," the other Isaac said. "Only we know for certain."
"Who are you?"
"You already know! I'm you!"
"You aren't me." He knew that for certain, but was not sure why. The person standing across from him in the simply-adorned room could not have been him any more than Missy and Alena had been.
"No I'm not. I'm Casai."
The name meant something to Isaac.
"Perhaps you've been able to remember me already. I'm sure you will soon. You're stronger than I thought, Isaac. I suppose I shouldn't have doubted that the person with such a power was so strong-willed. You fought me, just like the others."
"What others? When did I fight you?"
"In your dreams."
It all came back to him then, all the memories that had been locked behind Casai will. Isaac didn't know if it was what Casai had said, or if it would have happened by itself, but he knew it. The story was back. He became more than he had been.
"You haven't beaten me," Isaac said. "Not yet. It's clear I still have a chance."
"No, not yet. But the girls' empty threats weren't empty. I will bring you back to the hospital where it all started. You remember now. It was all fake, just like this is."
"Different kinds of fake," Isaac retorted. "That was me seeing something that wasn't there. This is me seeing something that only I can see, but it's very real. I'm real, and you're real, and they're all real, all of them. Hanna and Tetra and everybody. We made them real, and I think they're still fighting you."
"They're trying," Casai said.
"Don't move!" Jol shouted, pointing his pistol at Casai as they burst through the door. "Zoolk, Eela, get on either side of him!" They were already there. "Hanna!"
The girl ran ahead of him, letting the sweatshirt shine.
"They're failing."
"They won't fail. I know they won't." Isaac's heart pounded. "They'll keep trying until you have to kill them. They'll find a way!"
"There is no way. I have full control of your body and mind," Casai waved a hand. "Except this little fragment that stands before me, of course. I can create anything. I have made life. What can they do?"
"I'll fight you!" Isaac shouted. "I'll free myself!"
"You trust yourself that much?" Casai asked, surprised. "You would. Then: try."
"Silly girl," Casai said as Hanna was thrown against the far wall. "Your piece of cloth is nothing to me." Jol fired his pistol, the final charge, and it bounced off Casai's head. "Nor your bullets. Or your constructs, or your strength." Eela and Zoolk were slammed against the wall, pinned by an invisible force. "You two?" He asked Tetra and Stasya. "Anything you want to try? I'll let you. Really! Anything you want!"
JUST TRY TO HURT ME!
Tetra, Jol, and Stasya collapsed, struck down by Casai's mental power.
"Stop!" Hanna yelled.
"Or what?!" Casai yelled. Hanna hung against the wall like a torture victim, with her arms out. A heaviness pressed against her entire body. "What will you do if I don't stop? Attack me again? Try to cover me with a sweatshirt? Shoot at me with weak guns or try to remove my head?" He threw back his head and the castle rang with laughter. "You can do nothing! I'm the only thing that has any power anymore! I'm the only thing that will ever have any power! All I have to do is rid myself of you!"
Isaac rushed him, screaming. They collided and went rolling across the stone floor. He ended up pined under Casai, watching his own face turn red and pop with veins. He was able to shove Casai off, and got up quickly, feeling unprotected. They circled each other.
Casai put his hand out, and a sword grew out of the ground. Isaac backpedaled away from the weapon as Casai advanced. He ran up against a wall and watched the blade get closer.
He did not believe his face could portray such malice until he saw it. He imagined a sword of his own to fend off Casai's attacks, and then he had it in his hand. He swung first, making Casai back away. They exchanged blows, sharp silver glances from their weapons. Casai had no special skill in this world, just Isaac's own imagination. They switched weapons, materializing spears or guns or barriers, fighting for ten minutes until Isaac got close enough to strike his doppelganger on the forehead with a staff.
Casai fell backward, dropping his weapon, a large sword. He dabbed at the blood that welled out of the cut and looked up at Isaac as he sat on the floor. "I hate you for that."
She felt the power holding her weaken, and shifted her arms to try and break free. Casai was staring into a corner and had been for several minutes. Stasya, Jol, and Tetra still couldn't rise, but Zoolk and Eela were making gains. Hanna tried to wriggle out of the sweatshirt.
"You aren't going anywhere," Casai rumbled. "I just have to deal with a little stowaway first."
Isaac! Hanna struggled faster.
Casai got to his feet and rolled his neck, eyes straining open. Creatures started to take form around him. Eela's four brothers smiled cruelly, Zoolk's pack stepped out of the shadows, and the blue skeletal figures of Stasya's former friends spread a chill through the room.
"Can you fight us all?" Casai asked.
Behind Isaac, six figures rose. Zoolk, towering over them all, had a red ring of anger around him. Jolyon of the Flame was surrounded by an orange glow like his namesake. Hanna shone like the sun, just as Isaac had seen her before. The green from Eela's nodes and eyes cooled the hotter colors before her, and transitioned to Stasya's ice blue. Tetra had a soft, happy pink around him, and Isaac found a dark purple taking form around his body. The color that they had all come to know as the presence of Casai covered him and made him the last piece of them.
"I think we can."
Casai's face had gone from simple distraction to pounding single-mindedness. He snarled soundlessly, gripping his hands at his sides. Hanna fought the power that held her, thrashing against it and feeling it subside by the second. It slipped, and she nearly fell to the ground; a bit of it caught her before she escaped. One foot scraped against the ground.
Stasya and Tetra held the cold two at bay, beating them away with unnatural strength. Jol and Eela took on Eela's brothers. Eela didn't seem different, but Jol's burning sword was new; it carved the mechanical men to bits. Zoolk and Hanna battled Zoolk's pack. The Zoolk that needed his pack safe was gone; all that remained was the angry beast inside him. Hanna danced and dove like a fish, with speed and agility that amazed Isaac.
"You aren't the only one that has friends on your side," Isaac said.
"We're the same, you see?" Casai responded. He motioned with his sword. "I create an army, you create one."
"My army fights because they want to, not because I made them."
"Well see." Casai darted forward, jabbing. Isaac knocked it away with his staff and attacked back, chest burning. The battle raged around them as they went back and forth, both drained. Casai had sweat on his face and clothes; Isaac imagined he had the same. Their equal bodies could gain no upper hand.
"Isaac!" Hanna yelled. "Isaac, you can do it! beat him!" Her toe struggled to get purchase on the ground as the last pinion of Casai's power kept her still. "Just try a little bit longer; I'm almost free!"
The colored glow around Isaac and the other six grew, making the room kaleidoscopic. Isaac charged, feeling energy flow from him in a crashing explosion. He beat Casai back, knocking the sword out of his hand and hitting him on the chest and head. Casai stumbled back, blood spilling from more cuts and rage jetting away in an almost physical force. He grew a pistol from the air and took aim.
The blue-wrapped Stasya stepped up and knocked it out, sending it skittering across the ground. Zoolk appeared and delivered a powerful punch to Casai's stomach. Jol came from behind and skewered him with his burning sword. The point quivered beyond Casai's stomach.
Isaac dropped his staff and ran to him. He grabbed Casai's face -- his face -- with a hand.
"I've won," he said. He felt lightning run into his arm and he almost collapsed.
"Not yet."
Hanna and the others felt the power holding them lift fully. Hanna dropped to the ground and looked up at Casai. The body was standing, hunched, a twisted mockery of emotion on its face. She got to her feet and pulled off the sweatshirt, running toward Casai's silent form. She wrapped it around his body like a cape.
Light filled the room. The electricity that had kept Isaac rooted disappeared, and brilliance cut through Casai like an x-ray. Both of their constructs were blown away. The castle dungeon's walls melted. Nothing was beyond. "I have," Isaac said. "I beat you here, and they beat you outside."
"It will take more than a touch to break me!"
Isaac took Casai's head in both hands, focusing intently. The light filled his eyes but nothing else happened. "You see? It doesn't matter what you do!"
Casai's body convulsed. Hanna hung on. "Isaac! I know you're in there! I know you can get out! We're here for you!"
"You hear her voice," Casai said. "But it doesn't matter. Soon I will grow used to her touch. What can you do to stop me?"
"Her touch?" Isaac repeated. "Hanna's touch?"
Casai didn't respond.
"It wasn't ever the sweatshirt, was it? It was Hanna." Isaac stepped away. Casai stood rooted where he was. "I thought it was the sweatshirt giving me power, but it was her. And the others! All I have to do is wake up Eela said. She could wake herself up from a dream that wasn't hers! What if it isn't mine either? I have to wake up!"
Something else hit him. "No . . . it doesn't matter if I wake up. If this isn't my dream, it doesn't matter what I do. The dreamer is the one who matters." He closed his eyes. A chill passed over his body. "I've been given a power, and you took it. I didn't give myself the power, and neither did you." He looked at Casai. "I understand what's really important now. I'm not. You aren't. I don't know what is, but it isn't me."
He went back to Casai, fists straining. "I give myself up."
"Hanna, get away from him!" Jol shouted. Casai's body was being blown from inside by dark purple light. Hanna stayed put, with her arms wrapped around the body that had been Isaac's once. She knew he was winning.
His vision flickered. He saw two versions of himself: the Isaac and the Casai. He saw one of the bodies disappearing; he couldn't tell which. Another vision was added. Hanna's face, large, was before him. "Hanna!" He cried out. "I've almost got it! It wasn't the sweatshirt at all, it was you! You gave me the power to stop him! Please Hanna, I'm almost there!"
Hanna heard the words as if far away. She let the sweatshirt drop to the ground and put her arms around Isaac, squeezing him tight. The castle shook. The ground under them began to shift and the walls cracked. The sky outside was lit by gold lines.
They felt their love for each other, and Casai was pushed away.
The purple energy from Isaac's body blew out of him in a moment, all tremendous hate and potential gone like the sudden light from a burst of lightning, giving vision for an uncountable moment of time. Isaac saw Casai escape and flee, to die or stay hidden forever.
Jol and Stasya, Eela and Zoolk, and Tetra, looked at the two forms on the ground. After the great formless explosion they'd fallen. The castle shook but the motion was dying.
Stasya went to them. Hanna put her head up, and then Isaac -- not Casai -- followed. Stasya smiled and waved the others over.
"You did it," Hanna said. "You're back." A tear dropped. "I can't believe it." She sniffed and buried her face in Isaac's chest.
"Stand, children!" Tetra shouted, jubilant. "He's gone! Isaac, the purple mist still nears our planets!"
"Oh? Oh," Isaac said. He closed his eyes. Outside, the planets that had been watching the purple coloring of space get closer saw it snap away. "Dealt with."
"Casai?" Stasya asked. "He's gone?"
"Gone. I have my power back, plus what he could do. I'm going to reverse his creations and bring back my world. We really got him."
A year passed. Isaac, Hanna, and Jol waited on a grassy hill in the center of a park. The world had been returned to its previous state, as it once was. Isaac kept the portals open, allowing travel between the worlds, their existence kept a secret. Four others walked toward them. Zoolk was trimmed, though his black beard and hair were still present. Tetra was still just as round, and waved at those on the hill as he got closer. Stasya walked with her hair in a ponytail, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt for the warm summer, different from the cold antarctic where she spent most of her time. Eela, posing as a blind woman, walked easily with her cane, to complete the illusion, in one hand.
They hugged and greeted one another as friends, though Zoolk received only handshakes.
"Hanna introduced me to her father and he started getting me ready to rule Tern," Isaac said. "Once I was ready, I married Hanna and took governorship from him. Jol is our adviser."
"Must be quite the change!" Tetra said.
"It is. I wasn't used to it at first, but I have my friends. I'm a ruler, nothing more." Isaac looked at Stasya. "Found anything?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. I won't stop looking. Even if the Tor do show up, I want to be the first to know." She smiled up at the sun. "Right now it's the dead of winter down there. Not a fun place to be. Tetra?" She asked.
"I've continued my study of the portals with no avail. I assume soon I will moved to a different project. Hades and Rose and Violet are doing quite well, I see them off and on. Speaking of which . . ." He eyed Hanna. "How long until Tern hears the patter of little feet?" He grinned, and Hanna laughed, waving the question off. "And you, our big friend? How fares rebuilding?"
"It has gone well," Zoolk said. "The animals returned to nature once Casai was gone. There was much destruction and death. At first I didn't want to help them, but I found my pack and they . . . I suppose they made me help. They are my friends. I have them with me, but I'm no wild man anymore."
Isaac nodded. He looked at Eela. Sunglasses covered her one intact eye. She had a wide-brimmed hat and brown coat. Isaac had never seen her without one after Casai was gone. "I split my time between this world and my own. I've found a few humans that had been hiding from my brothers, and helped them start the city again. Communication is still cut off from other settlements. I come here to purchase food and clothing and medical supplies. To this world I am just a little blind woman who can, somehow, still see." She smiled, and tapped Hanna's shoulder with her cane. "Maybe someday I will rebuild my eyes and see your smiling faces for real, instead of this graphically-built wire frame. It's tiring, but I suppose it works."
They started talking about the things that had happened for each of them during the past year, and Isaac looked up at the bright yellow sun, reveling in the color and the warmth.
Isaac felt a touch on his shoulder.
He stirred himself from the dream. The strange visions that had crashed through him drained away, leaving an unpleasant after-taste. He put a hand to his forehead.
"Hon?" Missy asked, eye peering out from her pillow. "You all right?"
"Fine," Isaac said. "Had a nightmare I think. One of those disorienting ones that kinda leaves you feeling weird for a while."
"What was it about?"
"I don't know. A lot. You were there. So was Alena. A bunch of other people, too. I don't think I knew them. It was so strange. Stuff about other worlds. I ran a lot." Isaac groaned and sat up on the edge of the bed. "It was all very confusing."
"Well, hopefully it won't bother you today." Missy crawled to the other edge of the bed and revealed her face from under a sheet of dark tangled hair. "You go get cleaned up; I'll make some breakfast."
Isaac found clean clothes as Missy stretched and opened the curtains to let in drab sunlight.
In a minute Isaac looked at his reflection in the three angled mirrors in the bathroom. The shower ran, warming up. He was trying to go over what he'd have to do that day, but the dream he'd had kept intruding. There were people that he didn't know, yet they seemed so familiar, like they were parts of him.
He stood observing the stubble on his chin and then turned toward the shower. Strange movement from one of the mirrors caught his eye. Suddenly cold he looked back at it. His reflection returned his look, seeming to smirk.
After finishing in the shower he found Missy in the kitchen holding a cup of hot coffee for him. She only gave it to him after a kiss.
"Feel better?" She asked as the toaster popped. She grabbed the English muffin halves and dropped them on a plate.
"Mostly. Still just feel a bit . . . I don't know . . ."
"Separated?”
Isaac stood, holding the cup of coffee in one hand, tie undone around his neck. "Yes. Separated, and . . . like this world just isn't the way it should be." He looked out the window at the lawn, covered in cold light from the cloudless sky. "Like it's just a little bit different."
"Your imagination," Alena said, dropping an English muffin half with purple jam into his hand. "You should write stories. You're so creative."
"Yeah," Isaac responded, not listening. The world from his dream had possessed so much color -- the real world seemed drained in comparison.
"You need to get going, you don't want to be late tonight."
"Hmm?"
"Alena's coming over for supper, remember? You haven't seen her since you got out of the hospital."
Isaac said nothing, coffee paused at his lips.
"Boy, that dream really did a number on you, didn't it?" Missy asked. "Go on, go to work. Get your mind off it."
Atmospheric purple light filled the sky above the trees. There was no sun, but the purple haze around the world Casai had constructed lit the land. Hanna sat on a grass-covered hill next to a tall tree that spiraled up, branches twisting in helixes. She sat looking at the crowded purple sky; the planets hung clustered. The haze around their world seemed to be reaching toward the others.
Hanna heard a noise behind her and jumped, then settled when she saw it was Tetra.
"Keeping watch for us?" The magician said. He sat heavily. Hanna smoothed the fabric of her skirt. "See anything?"
She shook her head. "Nothing."
"That's good, I suppose, but I'm surprised."
"Why?"
"Well, Casai must know where we are. The fact that he inhabits Isaac's body shouldn't stop him from having the kind of omnipresent power he did before. I'm just surprised he doesn't send something to destroy us once and for all."
"Why would he?" Hanna asked. The gold sweatshirt that Isaac used to wear glinted; it was the only item that seemed to deny the purple tint of the air purchase. "He's already got his world. Soon he'll be able to take over those other planets too. What can stop him?"
"No need to be so despondent," Tetra said. "We're all upset that Isaac's gone. But we're still around, which means we might be able to do something to stop it. Come, we're going to discuss it now."
He led her back to the other four. Eela, still damaged from the fight with her brothers, sat against a tree. Zoolk stood next to her. Jol fiddled with his gun, trying to eke out a few more shots.
"I refuse to accept that Casai is invincible," Tetra said. "He needed Isaac's help to create all this, so he isn't all-powerful. He has to act through others."
"But now he has Isaac's power," Stasya said. "He can create anything he wants. Who knows what."
"Some world he's created so far," Jol said. He looked up at the canopy of leaves. "I've never seen leaves like this before."
"It doesn't matter what they look like," Tetra said. "He created them. He could create just about anything he wanted. I wonder if there are any things he cannot make."
"Isaac figured he could make life," Eela said. The blood-oil mixture that ran through her dripped to the ground. "I think he could. If anything, I am proof you don't even need Isaac's power."
"He made all those things," Zoolk said. "The women that Isaac knew, the cold ones, Eela's brothers. We saw more before we fled. He could create more if he wanted."
"Others made those things," Jol said. "Eela's . . . father . . . made her brothers. He didn't have to make your wolves. The lava monster that Hanna and I had to deal with before we came here was produced from some other sort of method. He didn't make any of them, he just took control."
"Those are just the ones we know," Stasya said. "He could have made any of the others."
"Perhaps," Tetra said, "but I would guess he didn't. You see, not only did he have to take control of his different forms -- Eela's brothers, the lava monster, Zoolk's pack -- after their construction, but he needed Isaac to utilize his hallucinations and break apart his world in order to take control of him. Only then could he make use of Isaac's ability to create a world he needed. And look!" Tetra pointed through the leaves to the other planets suspended above them. "Even now he has yet to remove from whatever existence this really is the places we once called home. He is not faultless, nor omnipotent. What he is, we might not know, but we know he can not simply do anything he wants."
"Did he win?" Hanna asked. "Did Casai do what he set out to do?"
Jol shifted. "No. We all knew he wanted to destroy everything. Every world. We heard him say that over and over, each of us, but he hasn't done that. He needs more time."
"Then we bring the fight to him," Zoolk said. "Distract him until we discover a way to beat him."
"Can we even do that?" Stasya responded. "Couldn't he just create something to get in our way, and make more monsters to stop us? He might not have been able to do it before, but now he has Isaac's power. Now he can do it."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, each thinking their separate thoughts. Hanna looked out over the purple field outside the grove of trees.
"I'm not going to give up," Zoolk said finally. "Why sit quietly and let death get me? I'll chase death down if I have to. Casai will feel my anger."
"My family . . . whatever it might have been, is gone." Eela, with one dead eye, looked at Zoolk. "I was once human. She's trapped behind some division in my brain. She tries to get out sometimes, and every time she does, I feel more human." She lifted the arm that had been stripped off her false skin, revealing the cables and wires that constituted her muscles and veins. "So to speak. I feel her now. The Eela that used to be. She wants to keep fighting. She cares. I care too."
"I have those I want to protect," Tetra said. "Friends and colleagues and family. I'll fight. It's the smart thing to do."
Jol nodded. "Me too. I'm not going to sit and watch millions of souls be extinguished."
"I don't really desire to go back to my world," Stasya interjected, "but there's plenty here I want to protect. My world and Isaac's were close enough anyway. I lost friends to Casai. I don't want to lose everything."
"Hanna?" Jol asked.
Hanna still sat looking out over the plain. "I don't like the color purple. I haven't ever." She sighed and looked at them. "Now everything's purple. Isaac's gone . . ." she paused. "Someone I cared for. I'm sad, and angry, and instead of being near a person I loved, the grass is covered in that purple." She stood up. "Sickening.
"I'll fight. I loved Isaac. I really did. I won't get to tell him that, but I can do what he wanted. He wanted Casai defeated; I'll defeat Casai."
Jol nodded. Stasya smiled. "I'm sure if I had a heart," Eela said, "It would be swelling."
Zoolk chuckled.
"Splendid," Tetra said. "Our next step is to figure out how to harm him."
"We destroy Isaac's body," Zoolk said. "Distasteful. But perhaps."
"Perhaps. Jol said that there was a metal that helped him stop one of Casai's forms," Tetra added.
"I don't see how we'll be able to find it. It was only from Hanna's and my planet. We aren't getting back there anytime soon," Jol said.
"Jol, look," Hanna said. "Something's coming near us."
"What?" Jol went to her and looked. Zoolk's pack, plus another creature they didn't recognize, was making trails through the field toward their trees. "She's right. They know we're here. Get moving!"
They picked themselves up and went through the trees to the other side, staying as quiet as they could. They went a few hundred feet away on a hill and crouched down, Zoolk nearly lying down. They saw and heard nothing.
Then, a howl. Zoolk rose and pointed away, his face hard. They heard the trees rustle.
Hanna got up and started to follow Jol, but tripped on a root. She fell hard on her shoulder and began to slide down the hill away from the others. No one noticed when she slipped into the shadow of a low bush, and they ran away from her, followed by Zoolk's pack. She lay motionless for a minute, then put her head up.
Twenty feet away from her was the other thing she'd seen with the pack. It had mottled gray flesh and bulging muscles in a rough humanoid shape. Its head was elongated, and had spikes lining the top. Its flat face wrinkled when she appeared, and the head whipped to stare at her. She turned and ran, gold sweatshirt fanning behind her through the trees as she heard frantic thrashing chasing her.
It was three in the afternoon. Isaac just had two more locations to check before he could head home. His taupe sedan rolled to a stop at a light. Clouds had come to cover the sun, making the day even grayer than it had seemed before. The dream was with him still. Little parts came through every once in a while. Something with spaghetti, small pieces of gold, and the library.
He wasn't feeling well. The dream or something else he didn't know; he just wanted to get home and relax. He thought about calling in sick tomorrow if it persisted.
He tried to think about work. The Closewater location hadn't had a good week, but the one in the Newton mall had done well enough to make up for it and the one in Marm. Piles of notes and bookkeeping supplies covered his backseat. His next destination, the Wesley store, was under competition from a larger bookstore across the street, and Isaac didn't look forward to seeing their numbers.
The light turned green and Isaac sped up, very aware of his desire to rest. He turned the corner.
Like sun rolling down the sidewalk, a wave of golden color flooded his eyes, bringing tears and forcing him to squeeze them shut. The brilliance subsided and he opened them, peering through watery gaps.
There was a woman in the road. Isaac hauled his steering wheel to the right onto the sidewalk, barely avoiding another pedestrian, who began yelling. Isaac craned his neck around to look at the woman. She stood still, and watched him, golden radiance obscuring her.
Hanna watched the creature as it looked at her from the ground. It had chased her until she could go no farther, trapped by a wall of almost solid trees. It rushed up to her and then darted around her, slamming into a tree. It lay on the ground panting and keeping its eyes on her, wary of her as she was of it.
She backed away, quietly putting one foot down after the other. It watched her but didn't move. She found a gap in the trees she could squeeze through and slipped in, finding tangles and bushes on the other side. She pushed forward, listening for any noise from the creature, but none came.
As quickly as she appeared the woman was gone. The world returned to the gray-soaked coloring it had been before she appeared. When she was there, Isaac remembered more colors than just gold flowing into the world that had seemed unreal all day. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine them.
A momentary image -- he thought from his dream -- came to him, of a circle of trees around him under a strange, eerie sky. He shook his head and the image disappeared. The pedestrian he'd almost hit whapped the front of his car with her purse and stormed past. Checking behind him, he backed into the lane and continued driving.
The pale sun had sunk and Isaac pulled into his driveway. He collected his papers and stuffed them into a bag, pulling it with him into the house. It smelled of meatballs and Caesar salad. Missy stood in the kitchen, humming something and mixing the salad while staring into a corner of the ceiling. When he stepped in she shot a glance at him; for a moment she looked strange, almost deconstructed.
"Hi hon," she said. "How was work?"
Isaac stood looking at her, throat dry, eyes still burning, knot in his shoulder hurting. He dropped his bag on the bench near the door and sat down next to it. Missy came over to him. "Isaac?"
"I . . ." He stopped. He kept thinking about the woman in the road. She'd come and gone in a literal flash, and she couldn't have been real.
Yet he knew, somehow, she was.
"I saw something weird today," he said. "I was driving from the Marm location to the one in Wesley, and I turned a corner, and . . . there was a woman standing in the middle of the road, right in front of me."
"What?"
"She was glowing, shining gold. It blinded me but I avoided her. I almost hit someone else. I turned around in my chair and looked at her again. She was looking at me, too. Then she was gone."
"What do you mean she was glowing?"
"I mean she was bright! It was like a star, or . . . an angel."
"Oh honey," Missy said, giggling. "There's no such thing as angels." She left him sitting on the bench and went back to the kitchen. Isaac pictured the woman's face, clear and flawless, white behind the golden aura around her.
He stood and marched up next to her, grabbing her arm. "What was it I saw, then?" He hissed in her face. She recoiled. "Nothing? A ghost?"
"Get your hands off me." She wrenched her arm out of his grasp. "I don't know what you saw, Isaac, but I know you shouldn't think about it. You're tired and the dream you had this morning affected you in a way you don't understand. Maybe you just got blinded by the sun and thought you saw a woman." She turned away from him and took the salad to the table, set with three places.
"I turned east," Isaac said. "The sun was behind me. I know I saw something there."
"Oh, who the hell knows, then?" Missy suddenly raged. "Stop talking about it! Get your head out of the clouds for once and help me get things ready, Alena's going to be here any minute!"
Her anger fueled his. "I saw something else, too!" She continued to bring dishes to the table. "Right after the woman disappeared. I saw a ring of trees around me. The sky was purple."
Missy, facing away from him at the table, halted. "Are you going to tell me that I didn't see anything then, either?" He asked. "Are you going to tell me I'm going crazy?"
"You're not going crazy," Missy said quietly. "You're just tired. You're hallucinating. Maybe you need to go back to the hospital."
Cold pressure clutched Isaac's chest and the world started to drain. He leaned against the counter in the kitchen, breathing heavily. I can't go back can't go back.
Missy appeared at his side. "Look at you. You can barely stand. Maybe they didn't catch what was really wrong with you before. Maybe you need to get tested again."
I can't go back! He raged soundlessly. I can't get tested again! I can't I can't go back!
He swallowed, trying to force air down into him. "M-maybe I am just tired. I need to get a glass of water."
Missy nodded. "That's right. You do." She tilted her head. "I hear Alena's car." Isaac listened and heard it too. It rolled up the drive and came to a stop outside the garage, shutting off. It clanked as it died. "Get your water and calm down. You know how Alena likes to poke a wound."
Isaac was pouring water into a cup when the front door opened and Alena walked in. "Hey there hot stuff," she said to him. "Glad to see me?"
Isaac looked at her and envisioned the glowing woman again, a thing that cut through her form and came out as the truth behind her.
"I swear she's alive," Zoolk said, face pointed up, nostrils flaring. "I'd know."
"You seem pretty confident of that!" Jol said. The five of them had been looking for Hanna for hours, ever since they'd escaped from Zoolk's wolves via tricks from Zoolk's repertoire. He now assured them that he led them toward Hanna.
"Living with wolves for a year helps to hone the senses, boy," Zoolk growled. "I'd smell her blood if it was shed." He pointed through the endless trees. "She went that way."
They pulled back branches and forged ahead, going carefully to keep from making much noise. Any kind of creature could be beyond the next tree.
After a while, Zoolk sniffed the air with his nose stuck up. He let the pose linger, tongue mulling inside his mouth. "She's close." He led them to a small grove that held the girl.
"Hanna!" Jol said, running to her and bending down. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "You're all right?"
"I am." She stood. She looked at each of them. "I'm so glad you're all okay."
"Did Casai chase you? How did you get away?" Tetra asked. He wiped sweat off his face. "We thought perhaps the wolves-"
"No, not the wolves. Not anything we're familiar with," Hanna said. "A different monster. The wolves went past me. I thought I was safe until it appeared. It chased me into a little open area, and I thought I was dead."
She rubbed the cuff of the gold sweatshirt between her thumb and finger. "It was coming at me, ready to kill, and then it moved to the side and hit a tree. It fell to the ground, looking at me."
"Just . . . looking?" Jol asked. Hanna nodded.
"I think . . . I don't know for sure, but what I think happened was Isaac. He's still somewhere inside Casai."
"Your sweatshirt," Eela said. "Isaac told us he liked to wear it to make sure he wasn't in a hallucination. It gave him strength."
"That's what I thought too. The monster saw the sweatshirt, and Isaac was able to come out of Casai a little bit and take control, give me a chance to escape."
Tetra sat on a flat rock. "We must discuss this. Hanna's given us a weapon." The others looked at him. "The sweatshirt. It gives Isaac some kind of power to resist Casai. I suppose it can work as a sort of defense, or . . ."
"Or we use it to attack," Jol said. "We put the sweatshirt on Casai. It might give Isaac the strength to get control back."
"Jol shot Isaac," Zoolk said. "I saw the blood, and the hole. No man could survive that. Casai is the only thing in that body now."
"No," Eela said. "It's not that killing him didn't work, it's that he wasn't killed. The bullet did damage to Isaac, obviously -- it damaged his brain and may have knocked him unconscious, something that would have been followed quickly by death by mere moments had not Casai intervened. Isaac is alive and trapped inside the body that was once his. I agree with Tetra: if we can present the sweatshirt to Casai, Isaac may be able to get free."
"Thank you," Jol said. Eela nodded to herself.
"How, then?" Tetra asked. "Casai is king. He commands an army of supernatural creatures, all of which I assume are on the lookout for us. We don't even now where he is. And -- given that we can even find him -- he could just separate himself from us. We are still unsure that the sweatshirt will have an effect, and if that effect will be enough to undo all of this. What if it isn't?"
"I have enough charge for one more shot," Jol said, touching his holstered pistol with one finger. "I put another bullet between Casai's eyes and hope it does the job this time."
"And if that doesn't work?"
"I'll rip his head off," Eela said.
"You'll have to get in line," Zoolk said.
Hanna nodded. "It's agreed then. We're going after Casai."
"So, Isaac, how was work?" Missy asked.
Isaac looked up from his ignored salad. He caught Missy's eye and saw the thought that was there. He swallowed. "It was alright. The Closewater location isn't able to move anything other than bestsellers. Other than that it was just a basic day of driving from one place to the other. Thank goodness I only have to do that once a week."
"And then what?" Alena asked, grinning. "What do you do the rest of the week?"
Isaac shrugged. He tried to avoid looking at her. "Manage inventory, work out finances, meetings with publishers. I'm trying to find a new group to improve the website. The one I have right now is letting me down."
"And you won't stand for that."
He shook his head. He pushed the salad around on his plate. "Not in this day and age."
"You seem sort of out of it, Isaac," Alena said. "Something happen today?"
Isaac glanced at Missy before answering. "I had a dream last night that . . . well it affected me. I'm not sure how."
"I know what you mean," Alena said. "It just stays with you all day, right? Even though you take a shower and go to work and do whatever, but, like, it's still there!" She put her hands on either side of her head. "I've had those. You gotta shake them loose." She looked at Isaac. "Is that all?"
He looked at his plate. "Yeah. It was pretty wild."
"I bet it was," Alena said. "Do you want any help cleaning up, Miss?"
"Oh no, I can get it." Missy stood, gathering the plates. "Go on into the living room, Isaac. Take a load off. You've had a long day." She patted his shoulder, and he smiled up at her.
Sitting on the couch in the living room, with the sour sun coming in the window, Isaac watched Alena enter. The sun caught her yellow hair and lit it on fire. She smiled and sat next to him.
"So the dream you had . . . what was it about?"
Isaac crossed his arms and leaned back. "I don't know exactly. It was all just a big mess when I woke up, and it's stayed that way. It was . . . so full of color, and light. Like the seven pieces of the rainbow made form in my sleep."
Alena shifted. "That's quite poetic of you."
"I've been thinking about it all day. I remembered little bits as the day went on. You were there, and Missy. I remembered I was making spaghetti at one point, and I think I went to the library."
"And those sort of things got you all up in a daze?"
"There were other things, too. Monsters. Things attacked me. I was afraid during it. I had a feeling like the dream itself just came unraveled and I was left in my own head."
Alena closed her eyes and swung her head from side to side. "It's a shame, the way you've been affected. You need to get that dream out of your head. Remember what I said earlier?" She leaned in. "You need to shake them loose." She put her hand on his thigh.
Blood ran to his face and he glanced toward the door to the kitchen. "Missy-"
"I can guarantee that she won't interrupt us," Alena whispered. "Don't be so shy. I put my hand more places than that back when you were in the hospital. I remember you put your hand in a few places, too. Such nice places."
Isaac stood and backed away, leaving her leaning toward nothing on the couch. He panted, sparks of dream appearing in his eyes. Falling into black and reaching toward something bright and beautiful. He put his hand over his eyes, blocking out the world he was in.
"So now you're going bitch on me?" Alena said. He heard her step close. "You know me better than that, Isaac. I'm not just going to give up." She grabbed his neck and kissed him, sending her tongue into his mouth.
He spat her out and pushed her away roughly. Sick images attacked him, and he recognized them from his dream. The smell and taste of her brought them. She lay on the ground, not moving and looking up at the ceiling as her brows came together in slow anger.
When they met in the middle, she started talking. "I could make you're life unending agony, you know." She licked her lips. "You're living you're wonderful fantasies right now: married to the woman of your dreams, a successful businessman, your own home, and, if you ever get bored with your wife, her sister to fool around with. Any man would kill to get what you have. Ever since you got out of the hospital it's like you won the lottery. Do you want me to call Missy in here, and have her undress? You could have us both. Or just watch us together. Anything you wanted."
She rolled over and got to her knees, standing slowly. "But instead!" She shouted. "You want a world that no longer exists! You want a life full of misery and pain and death! You want your pieces of the rainbow made form!" She advanced on him. He backed up, pressing against the wall. She had become a raging beast.
She was in my dream, Isaac thought. She was a monster.
"We're very tired of this, Isaac!" He heard from the door. Missy stood with her arms crossed and eyes burning. "You can never be happy, can you? You always have to have something else. Me! Her! Anyone!" Missy spread her arms around the room. "This place could be filled with beautiful women and good food and all the treasures you can imagine, but you'll never be happy, will you?"
"What's going on?" Isaac said, trapped along the wall. "What are you talking about?" He thought of something. "This has to do what I saw today, doesn't it? The gold woman in the road!"
"You're too stupid to even figure it out!" Alena shouted. "Now stop reaching for the things you can't have!" Her voice lowered, and his stomach turned as she spoke. "Or you might just have to go back to the hospital."
No no! Can't go back there! I can't go back! He fell to his knees. The women surrounded him.
"That's right. You can't go back. Every time you go, there's a little less of you that comes back here," Alena said. She knelt down next to him. "We still need to get that dream out of there, and get you back to normal. He didn't want to go the easy way." She looked up at Missy. "I guess he wants the hard way."
Missy reached her hand out for Isaac.
"I found one," Eela said. "Look there. You can just see something on the edge of that hill. It's a big one."
"I see it," Jol said, squinting. "I'd bet hard gold that it's the lava monster Hanna and I dealt with."
"Will we do it? Are we ready?" Zoolk looked around. The others nodded. "Girl, you must be prepared to do what's necessary."
Hanna nodded. "I'm ready." She clutched the collar of the sweatshirt. "He's going to get an eyeful of this."
Eela kept her eyes on the beast. "It's coming closer. Now's a good time." She stepped out from behind the rock that hid them. "Stick to the plan."
She and Zoolk took off. Zoolk struggled to keep up with her easy stride. The other four followed with Hanna in the front. After ten minutes they met up with Zoolk and Eela again. It was the lava monster, standing still on the dark green slope of a hill, letting burning bits of itself roll down, turning the grass to smoldered kindling. Eela and Zoolk crept closer.
When close enough, Eela stood and raced up to it. It was looking away from her.
"MONSTER!" She roared, shocking the others with her volume. The lava monster turned and saw her and Zoolk standing on the hill. It produced a bubbling growl and jumped closer, looking to crush them.
They dove away to either side. "Now, girl!" Zoolk yelled. Their movements left the monster open to her, and she revealed herself, spreading her arms out.
She screamed at it. "Maybe you remember me?"
Missy's claws grazed his neck when the bright light appeared. Both of the women fell away, crying out. Isaac looked up and found the same angelic woman, all shades of the sun -- the real sun that put this world's star to shame.
A voice reached him from afar. Run!
He tore for the door, feeling the radiance fade behind him.
"It worked!" Tetra yelled as the lava monster moved away urgently. "Astounding! The sweatshirt's power must be more potent than we thought!"
"Don't get too excited," Stasya said. "We still have to follow it. Who knows if it's even going in the right direction."
Isaac reached the end of his block and kept running. He had no idea what he was running toward, but the woman had told him to run; he did. He glanced behind him again and saw Missy and Alena chasing him, running faster than he could ever hope.
What are they? Who was the woman? What am I?
These thoughts and more were in his head as he ran, feeling his meal turn to stone and weigh him down. He was coming up to a three-way intersection.
"Go to the left, Isaac!" One of the women chasing him yelled. "Go to the left, or we'll take you back to the hospital!"
Isaac halted and glanced behind him. The hospital wasn't enough anymore; he still felt the light from the woman. They didn't want him to go right. He started moving his feet again down that path, and saw a sudden change in the place around him. The full summer foliage died, turning their leaves to withered, skeletal fingers. The asphalt under him shifted to uneven cobbles between steps; he nearly toppled over. The sky went from weak blue to dark purple. The air was at one moment sweet and cool and the next rotten and humid, carrying decaying leaves and sweat.
"We'll make you go back, Isaac!" One of the women yelled, still chasing him. "You'll go back to the hospital and you'll stay there! You'll never come back out!"
The possibility of such a thing made Isaac falter. He looked over his shoulder.
The women had become monsters, one tall and thin and the other long and thick like a worm. His speed picked back up.
His eyes found the sky. He'd seen it a million times -- he thought -- but now a spire grew as he ran forward, holding dark shadows and cragged fortifications. Above it, purple fire spread in a writhing starburst. The sky got darker. The only light came from it.
"Come back Isaac!" A woman yelled. "You don't want to go that way!"
Isaac pushed himself.
"Can we be sure there's even a place that Casai has claimed?" Tetra asked. "This beast has been going for hours. What if we don't ever find Casai, and it's just running in fear, directionless?"
"I don't think that's the case, Tetra," Jol said, looking up.
The others followed his eyes. The sky had deepened from its unnatural purple to a spreading, inky, eminent shade that brought the light out of the world around them.
"If that isn't Casai, he's nowhere anymore." Jol nodded. "It's getting away."
They trailed after the monster in the worsening gloom. They found the ground turning to ash and sulfur, stepping down in giant's strides. They reached the edge of a bluff.
They saw Casai's abode, the silence between them an echo of the horror that was at the center depression in the land.
Isaac got closer to the mighty castle that had risen from the ground like a living crypt. Its dark points taught him of unholy majesty. He reached a cold iron fence with an open gate. He looked behind him and saw no trace of the things that Missy and Alena had become. He looked back up at the castle and felt his life fade away, leaving just him, in that moment, with a decision:
Tread across the cold graveyard between him and the castle, or turn away to an existence that he knew was nothing more than nightmares become fantasies.
"It can't be real," Hanna said. She had her face buried in Jol's back. "Nothing can be like that! It can't!"
"I . . . I . . . " Stasya looked away, falling to her knees and clutching her mouth. Her eyes bugged out. Zoolk knelt and put his hand on her shoulder, mouth sagging in horror. His face, so long a picture of anger and hate, was now nothing more than terror. Eela shut her working eye and breathed in and out quickly.
"The Eela from before is coming through," she said. "She can't bear to look."
"We're dead," Stasya whispered from the ground. "We're dead and we've just found Hell."
"It's just an image," Tetra said. "Casai created it a-as a defense." He couldn't look either. "It doesn't matter what lies between us and him, we have to cross it."
"If we have to look at that, we'll go mad," Jol said. He was pale. "How do we get past it?"
"I . . ." Eela took a moment to center herself. "I have ways to sense what's around me other than vision. They're built into my systems. We can all close our eyes, and I can lead the way." She stood facing away from Casai's home. "Hanna after me. Put your hand on my shoulder."
She put her hand out, feeling for the support she knew was there. Brushing against it, she stepped forward, sensing the swaying bridge. Under it, she sensed nothing at all -- even though she knew what she'd seen.
"Hold tight to one another," she said. "We have to make it across. All of us." Murmurs of agreement came from behind her. Hanna's hand clenched on her shoulder.
Jol yelped. "I thought I felt something."
"I feel things too," Zoolk, at the back, said. "They touch and dart away. Ignore them."
"They aren't what we're here for, remember." Tetra held on tight to Hanna's other hand. "We're here to beat Casai."
Stasya kept her eyes squeezed shut and was speaking to herself in low Russian, Jol and Zoolk before and behind her.
"We're halfway," Eela said. Her brain collected the data from her body and created a graphical version of vision: a simple, wood plank bridge over yawning darkness.
Every once in a while, something else would appear in the gap. She ignored it, but the woman she had once been thrashed against her electronic bonds. Eela could almost feel her breaking free.
As she walked, leading the rest of them, she detected something else ahead, in the center.
"More problems," she said behind her. "I think it's Missy and Alena."
"What?" Tetra asked. "How can you be sure?"
"There are two of them, and they are about the size of the women. Once we get to the other side of the bridge they'll be close to us. You may have to fight them to get in."
"How can we do that with our eyes shut?" Hanna asked.
"Not us. You."
"Me?!" Hanna paused. "Oh."
"Don't worry," Eela said. "I'll be able to help."
Unseen, Hanna nodded.
Isaac picked his way through the dusty ground and broken headstones that surrounded the castle. He could have sworn he'd been this way a hundred times, but now there was a cemetery and castle, and a dead forest and black sky.
Missy and Alena hadn't reappeared. He wondered what that meant. Did even they not dare enter the castle?
Leaves crunched as he walked. The wind whistled off crosses and crumbling marble angels. The larger stones looked cold and spiteful at his continued life, as if he was to blame for denying their existence. The castle grew as he walked to it, silent and unknown.
Eela and the others stepped off the bridge, keeping their eyes shut.
"Look, sister. The poor babies can't bear to look," one of the women said.
"They're weak," the other replied.
Hanna stepped forward carefully, led by Eela. "Not entirely," she said. Spreading her arms, she showed the gold sweatshirt she wore.
She felt nothing. She heard no sudden flurry of motion from in front of her.
"It doesn't work that way, girl," one of the women said. "You got lucky before . . . but now your dear Isaac is in Casai's clutches."
"You might as well," the other said, "throw yourself into the pit."
The idea of it made Hanna shiver. "Not so eager to get in now, are you? I'll tell you a secret, Hanna." One of the voices got closer. "The thing you have just crossed is Casai's inner form. You are inside him."
"Don't listen," Eela said in Hanna's ear. "I can still help. They don't have the strength that my brothers do. It'll be easy to get them out of the way."
Hanna heard prolonged sounds of fibers twisting and groaning, like the deck of a ship on a storm. Eela gasped. "Tell her what you see now, mechanical one," a warped and distorted voice said. "Tell them what we are now."
The door creaked open almost on its own accord with only the barest touch. Isaac tried to look through the darkness inside, but saw nothing. He looked behind him, at the still cemetery, and the strangely normal world beyond. He took a quick breath and stepped inside.
He expected the door to close behind him, but still it was startling.
His eyes slowly adjusted to the area he was in. There was no one else around, and the small windows high above let in only darkness. His steps echoed loudly off the black stone. In a few more minutes he could see clearer.
He was in no more than a large chamber that took up the entire interior. No stairs, or doors, could be seen. He thought that it was nothing more than an empty castle, until he looked down. His eyes had been drawn up by the castle's great height, but saw that there was something in the floor. A wide hole that had cold, spiraling stone steps. The light lessened even more, turning into an impenetrable, almost solid blackness.
He looked around, trying to find anything else. He couldn't see any other form -- nothing moved in the castle's open emptiness. It was him alone, and the pit that led below.
He tried the door, not expecting it to open and guessing correctly. All that was left were the stairs.
The first step went under him.
"They changed," Eela whispered. "They've grown. Their dimensions have changed."
"Can you beat them?" Hanna asked.
Eela didn't respond. The only reason Hanna knew she was still there was Hanna's hand on her shoulder. "I will."
"Big words from such a small creature," one of the women said.
"I'm letting you go, Hanna," Eela said. "Be sure not to look." Hanna felt the shoulder under her hand slide away.
"I still know where you are," Eela said to the women. "Just because I have my eyes closed doesn't mean I'm blind."
"It doesn't matter if you're blind or not," one of the women said. "We're going to tear you limb from limb."
"My sister's right," the other woman said. "It's just you against us."
"There's quite a lot of me," Eela said, then pushed off.
She shot at the first monster, which had a tall, arched body and thin limbs. She blocked an attack from her left and barreled into the woman, sending it down. Eela jumped to the other, which had stretched out to become a long creature with many legs. Eela landed on its head, stomping down with all the power her mechanical legs gave her. She fell into the creature's face, punching her entire body backward.
Eela fell to the ground, feeling a sticky substance on her skin. She tried to wipe it off but was struck from the side by the thin one. Eela rolled, keeping her momentum as she rose and dashed in a circle around the thin one, faster than it could turn. She hit it from behind, knocking it forward, nearly over the cliff.
Eela was near to reaching her and throwing her off to certain destruction when a tentacle wrapped itself around her ankle, bringing her down. It dragged her backwards, toward the fat one. The tentacle lifted her off the ground, and Eela had to separate her hair to sense through it. She was lifted up in front of the fat one's face, now bulbous ridges and sagged lines.
She was thrown, spinning around and caught by the thin one. The thin one slammed her on the ground with her head hanging off the cliff over the essence of Casai.
She felt it sucking her in.
"See." The thin one's fingers wrenched open the eyelid on her working eye.
Eela reached in and ripped out the eyeball, but it was too late. She'd seen it up close.
The woman placed inside her, hidden behind an electronic barrier in her memory, convulsed. She was dying. Eela felt her fading away, blown dry by what was in the pit. As the thin one lifted her up and let her fall to the ground, she went still.
He'd been walking for hours, and was beginning to get dizzy. The stones along the wall were the same, never changing in their formation. He could see nothing below him, and nothing above. Even if there was light to be seen above, it would have been less than a pin's point.
Where am I headed? He asked. This can't be Earth. I'm somewhere else, now. Missy and Alena said something like that. He stopped and sat, resting his legs. Always spiraling down, but to where?
After a few minutes he got up and started running down the steps, careful not to trip. The staircase flowed by, repeating the same step ad nauseum.
"Eela?" Hanna shouted. "Eela, are you all right?"
"She's not all right, little girl," one of the women said. The voice was too close, and Hanna stepped back. She ran into Tetra. "She's gone now. She got a faceful of Casai, and it was too much for the tiny human inside her. All weak creations die when they see what Casai really is."
"She . . . she's dead?"
"Dead, destroyed, whatever it is that happens to a thing like her." Something touched Hanna's chin. "You're next."
A person! Isaac thought, almost disbelieving. But it was: there was someone standing on one of the steps, seeming just as confused as he was. It was a women with auburn hair, and green eyes.
"Who are you?" Isaac asked. The woman looked at him like she didn't know he was there. She seemed familiar. "What are you doing here?"
"I . . ." She trailed off. She looked at her hands and turned them over. "Who are you? Where am I?"
"I'm Isaac," he said. "You're in a castle. I've been trying to find the bottom of these steps for hours."
"Castle?" The woman looked up. "Oh, I see."
"You do?"
She looked down. "The bottom isn't far. You've only got a little bit more to go. Compared to going back up, at least."
Isaac looked down and saw only darkness. "How can you tell? It's too dark to see."
She shrugged. "I can see it." She looked around. "Your name's Isaac?" Isaac nodded. "I know that name. I knew someone with that name once. I loved him very much."
"Do you know how you got here?" Isaac asked. She shook her head. "Do you remember anything?"
"The last thing I remember is being very sick. I think I was dying." Gently, she touched her bright green eyes. "Hmm. How strange. This place-"
"Green," Isaac said. "Look at me again."
The woman stopped talking and looked at him, confused. Her eyes. So bright. Like . . .
"Part of a rainbow," Isaac muttered. "Your name is Eela."
"It is," she said. "How did you know that? And why didn't I know?"
"You were in my dream."
"Oh? Maybe I'm dreaming now."
The question took Isaac back. He thought about his day. Getting over the strange images from his sleep, seeing the gold woman, dealing with Missy and Alena and the things they turned into, now the castle. It couldn't be her dream; it was his.
"I suppose you could be."
"Well then," Eela said, smiling. "All I have to do is
Wake up."
She wasn't perceiving light, and yet could see. She was lying on hard ground, surrounded by sounds. She lifted a hand to find her eyes. One was there, the other was a cavity in her face.
She'd been dreaming about a young man somewhere. He told her what to do. How long have I been asleep?
She sensed her surroundings. She was on a large, circular piece of land. Some sort of structure was in the center. There were a few other forms with her. There was a bridge that connected the piece she was on to the mainland. Under the bridge-
She suddenly looked around. She felt as if she'd been knocked unconscious for a single moment. She rubbed her head, and felt odd beads in her hair. She picked at one but couldn't pull it out. She still didn't know where she was, so she walked over to where the others were. There were five humans -- one of them was quite big -- and two strange animals.
She realized they were in battle. The two creatures were making short work of the humans. She started running.
Her speed amazed her. She hadn't been that fast before, had she?
Had there been a before?
She pushed one of the creatures, knocking it over. It was large and bulbous. It released a surprised sound, and the other one, taller, and with rail-thin limbs, looked at her.
"What?" It said. Its voice was oddly snake-like. "How are you alive?" It swung an arm at her, and she blasted backward out of the way, again surprised by her power.
"I don't even know where I am!" She yelled. "Who are you? How can I still see?"
"It doesn't matter!" The monster attacked again, and she moved away. She felt strange snapping sensations in her joints and muscles. She moved them, and they cracked with sound.
In her sight, the monster advanced.
She bent and shot forward, hitting the monster in the chest. They went tumbling backward, near the edge of the cliff. It didn't seem like there was anything beyond. She grabbed part of the monster's body, wondering just how strong she was.
With an easy motion, she lifted it over her head and dropped it over the cliff. A high scream cut through the air and made her back away. It sounded like a woman being split in half.
She turned around just in time to see the other monster charging her. She shifted out of the way, so fast she almost lost the monster in her strange sight. Before it could change direction, she grabbed it and hauled it over the edge to follow the other monster. A similar scream, this one deeper and bubbling, came up to great her.
She looked around. All that was left were the five humans. They seemed confused and scared, and it didn't look like they knew what was going on. She walked up to them.
"Are you all right?" She asked. "I took care of those two things."
The lead human, a small woman, gasped. "Eela?"
She no longer had eyes, but memories can see forever.
Her life was there and she watched it. She loved the great city and the tall towers. She met a man named Isaac, a brilliant scientist whose genius was matched only by his shyness. She grew close to him; they loved each other. She became sick. Ships flew in the air and power could surge without wires, but her sickness could not be cured. All but the scientist accepted it.
He kept her alive, in suspension. Those memories were nothing but a wash of color. She woke up in a body with steel skin and glowing green eyes, and saw her beloved Isaac an old man. Her brothers, imperfect creations, watched her climb off the table.
She was happy.
The humans came, and killed Isaac, and trapped her and her brothers, and then it was hundreds of years later, and she chased her brothers as they swarmed over the city, killing them and learning of Casai the Destroyer. She escaped from her immortal brothers, met Zoolk, and Isaac, and all the others, and now she was in the center of Casai's own world with Isaac gone.
"It's me," Eela said to Hanna. "It's all of me. I remember everything."
"Even when you were human? How?"
"I can't say." She didn't try to remember what had been over the cliff. She knew it was something she couldn't see again. "I'm lucky, I guess."
"And the women?" Jol asked. "They're gone?"
"I threw them over the edge. I doubt they'll be back."
Jol nodded. "Now what?"
"Now . . ." Eela turned to the structure that was in the center. "Now we enter the castle."
He could see the bottom. He was almost there. He would finally find out what this was all about, where he was, what he was.
He thought about the woman that he'd met. Her words confused him. He always assumed that he was in his world, his life, and if he was dreaming it was his dream. The woman had disappeared instantly after they talked about dreams. Could he follow her? Wake up and be free?
He tried, but nothing happened. He kept walking. Of course he can't make himself wake up from his own dream, any more than he could go into someone else's.
It took him almost an hour to get to the bottom. He found a round room with a door on one side. He looked for anything else, and pulled it open.
"I think that you can open your eyes now," Eela said, after they had entered the castle. "There aren't any windows."
"I'll open mine first," Stasya said. "Just to make sure."
She fluttered one eye open, then opened both. She took a look around the interior. "It's all right."
"Thank goodness," Jol said. "My eyes were beginning to get stuck closed."
"I didn't think that all this darkness could seem bright," Hanna said, squinting. "Is Casai here?"
"No, but I can guess where he is," Eela said, pointing up. A spiral staircase, made of dark iron and beginning on the ground, spun up into the distant ceiling, where it disappeared into a hole.
"Finally! An end to all this!" Zoolk said. He reached the stairs first, and started to climb. The others followed.
"Are you all right, Eela?" Jol asked. "It sounded like you took quite the pounding."
"I had to rip out my working eye," Eela said. The two of them were at the back. "Or I would have gone mad. Somehow, the only thing that happened was the human consciousness that powered me breaking free. I'm the real Eela again."
"You weren't before?"
"No. It's difficult to explain. I don't know all the answers. Perhaps if we have time later, I'll be able to figure it out. But for now . . ."
"Of course." Jol peered up the circling staircase. "Right now we have other things to worry about."
"The sweatshirt didn't work against the two women," Hanna was saying to Tetra. "Will it work against Casai?"
"We have to hope," Tetra responded, puffing. "Perhaps the women existed independently from the consciousnesses that Casai controls -- or perhaps is a part of. As much as I would like to conduct tests and experiments, we have no such time. We'll simply have to rely on the data we already have, and hope that the women are a sort of outlier."
"Remember," Stasya said in front of them, "that we still have options if it doesn't work. Several here want no end of harm on Casai." She looked ahead of her, at Zoolk's pounding frame. "Somehow I don't think he's afraid," she said quietly.
"What was that, Stasya?" Tetra asked.
"Nothing."
Fifteen minutes passed before Zoolk got to the end of the staircase, and the others trailed in after him, with Tetra at the back. When they stopped climbing, he placed his hands on his knees and sputtered. He was helped up by Eela, and they went to the others. They stood before a door.
"Is he there?" Hanna asked. "Is Casai on the other side?"
"We must assume," Stasya said. "Is everyone ready?"
Tetra took a few deep breaths and nodded along with the rest of them. Stasya went to the door. Thought about what was about to happen, and pushed it.
"Isaac."
He stood at one end of the room, and watched the person at the other.
At first he thought he was looking at a mirror. The other person was him, dressed the same and looking the same, but smiling. "So you've found me."
"It looks like I've found myself."
"That too, perhaps," the other Isaac said. "Only we know for certain."
"Who are you?"
"You already know! I'm you!"
"You aren't me." He knew that for certain, but was not sure why. The person standing across from him in the simply-adorned room could not have been him any more than Missy and Alena had been.
"No I'm not. I'm Casai."
The name meant something to Isaac.
"Perhaps you've been able to remember me already. I'm sure you will soon. You're stronger than I thought, Isaac. I suppose I shouldn't have doubted that the person with such a power was so strong-willed. You fought me, just like the others."
"What others? When did I fight you?"
"In your dreams."
It all came back to him then, all the memories that had been locked behind Casai will. Isaac didn't know if it was what Casai had said, or if it would have happened by itself, but he knew it. The story was back. He became more than he had been.
"You haven't beaten me," Isaac said. "Not yet. It's clear I still have a chance."
"No, not yet. But the girls' empty threats weren't empty. I will bring you back to the hospital where it all started. You remember now. It was all fake, just like this is."
"Different kinds of fake," Isaac retorted. "That was me seeing something that wasn't there. This is me seeing something that only I can see, but it's very real. I'm real, and you're real, and they're all real, all of them. Hanna and Tetra and everybody. We made them real, and I think they're still fighting you."
"They're trying," Casai said.
"Don't move!" Jol shouted, pointing his pistol at Casai as they burst through the door. "Zoolk, Eela, get on either side of him!" They were already there. "Hanna!"
The girl ran ahead of him, letting the sweatshirt shine.
"They're failing."
"They won't fail. I know they won't." Isaac's heart pounded. "They'll keep trying until you have to kill them. They'll find a way!"
"There is no way. I have full control of your body and mind," Casai waved a hand. "Except this little fragment that stands before me, of course. I can create anything. I have made life. What can they do?"
"I'll fight you!" Isaac shouted. "I'll free myself!"
"You trust yourself that much?" Casai asked, surprised. "You would. Then: try."
"Silly girl," Casai said as Hanna was thrown against the far wall. "Your piece of cloth is nothing to me." Jol fired his pistol, the final charge, and it bounced off Casai's head. "Nor your bullets. Or your constructs, or your strength." Eela and Zoolk were slammed against the wall, pinned by an invisible force. "You two?" He asked Tetra and Stasya. "Anything you want to try? I'll let you. Really! Anything you want!"
JUST TRY TO HURT ME!
Tetra, Jol, and Stasya collapsed, struck down by Casai's mental power.
"Stop!" Hanna yelled.
"Or what?!" Casai yelled. Hanna hung against the wall like a torture victim, with her arms out. A heaviness pressed against her entire body. "What will you do if I don't stop? Attack me again? Try to cover me with a sweatshirt? Shoot at me with weak guns or try to remove my head?" He threw back his head and the castle rang with laughter. "You can do nothing! I'm the only thing that has any power anymore! I'm the only thing that will ever have any power! All I have to do is rid myself of you!"
Isaac rushed him, screaming. They collided and went rolling across the stone floor. He ended up pined under Casai, watching his own face turn red and pop with veins. He was able to shove Casai off, and got up quickly, feeling unprotected. They circled each other.
Casai put his hand out, and a sword grew out of the ground. Isaac backpedaled away from the weapon as Casai advanced. He ran up against a wall and watched the blade get closer.
He did not believe his face could portray such malice until he saw it. He imagined a sword of his own to fend off Casai's attacks, and then he had it in his hand. He swung first, making Casai back away. They exchanged blows, sharp silver glances from their weapons. Casai had no special skill in this world, just Isaac's own imagination. They switched weapons, materializing spears or guns or barriers, fighting for ten minutes until Isaac got close enough to strike his doppelganger on the forehead with a staff.
Casai fell backward, dropping his weapon, a large sword. He dabbed at the blood that welled out of the cut and looked up at Isaac as he sat on the floor. "I hate you for that."
She felt the power holding her weaken, and shifted her arms to try and break free. Casai was staring into a corner and had been for several minutes. Stasya, Jol, and Tetra still couldn't rise, but Zoolk and Eela were making gains. Hanna tried to wriggle out of the sweatshirt.
"You aren't going anywhere," Casai rumbled. "I just have to deal with a little stowaway first."
Isaac! Hanna struggled faster.
Casai got to his feet and rolled his neck, eyes straining open. Creatures started to take form around him. Eela's four brothers smiled cruelly, Zoolk's pack stepped out of the shadows, and the blue skeletal figures of Stasya's former friends spread a chill through the room.
"Can you fight us all?" Casai asked.
Behind Isaac, six figures rose. Zoolk, towering over them all, had a red ring of anger around him. Jolyon of the Flame was surrounded by an orange glow like his namesake. Hanna shone like the sun, just as Isaac had seen her before. The green from Eela's nodes and eyes cooled the hotter colors before her, and transitioned to Stasya's ice blue. Tetra had a soft, happy pink around him, and Isaac found a dark purple taking form around his body. The color that they had all come to know as the presence of Casai covered him and made him the last piece of them.
"I think we can."
Casai's face had gone from simple distraction to pounding single-mindedness. He snarled soundlessly, gripping his hands at his sides. Hanna fought the power that held her, thrashing against it and feeling it subside by the second. It slipped, and she nearly fell to the ground; a bit of it caught her before she escaped. One foot scraped against the ground.
Stasya and Tetra held the cold two at bay, beating them away with unnatural strength. Jol and Eela took on Eela's brothers. Eela didn't seem different, but Jol's burning sword was new; it carved the mechanical men to bits. Zoolk and Hanna battled Zoolk's pack. The Zoolk that needed his pack safe was gone; all that remained was the angry beast inside him. Hanna danced and dove like a fish, with speed and agility that amazed Isaac.
"You aren't the only one that has friends on your side," Isaac said.
"We're the same, you see?" Casai responded. He motioned with his sword. "I create an army, you create one."
"My army fights because they want to, not because I made them."
"Well see." Casai darted forward, jabbing. Isaac knocked it away with his staff and attacked back, chest burning. The battle raged around them as they went back and forth, both drained. Casai had sweat on his face and clothes; Isaac imagined he had the same. Their equal bodies could gain no upper hand.
"Isaac!" Hanna yelled. "Isaac, you can do it! beat him!" Her toe struggled to get purchase on the ground as the last pinion of Casai's power kept her still. "Just try a little bit longer; I'm almost free!"
The colored glow around Isaac and the other six grew, making the room kaleidoscopic. Isaac charged, feeling energy flow from him in a crashing explosion. He beat Casai back, knocking the sword out of his hand and hitting him on the chest and head. Casai stumbled back, blood spilling from more cuts and rage jetting away in an almost physical force. He grew a pistol from the air and took aim.
The blue-wrapped Stasya stepped up and knocked it out, sending it skittering across the ground. Zoolk appeared and delivered a powerful punch to Casai's stomach. Jol came from behind and skewered him with his burning sword. The point quivered beyond Casai's stomach.
Isaac dropped his staff and ran to him. He grabbed Casai's face -- his face -- with a hand.
"I've won," he said. He felt lightning run into his arm and he almost collapsed.
"Not yet."
Hanna and the others felt the power holding them lift fully. Hanna dropped to the ground and looked up at Casai. The body was standing, hunched, a twisted mockery of emotion on its face. She got to her feet and pulled off the sweatshirt, running toward Casai's silent form. She wrapped it around his body like a cape.
Light filled the room. The electricity that had kept Isaac rooted disappeared, and brilliance cut through Casai like an x-ray. Both of their constructs were blown away. The castle dungeon's walls melted. Nothing was beyond. "I have," Isaac said. "I beat you here, and they beat you outside."
"It will take more than a touch to break me!"
Isaac took Casai's head in both hands, focusing intently. The light filled his eyes but nothing else happened. "You see? It doesn't matter what you do!"
Casai's body convulsed. Hanna hung on. "Isaac! I know you're in there! I know you can get out! We're here for you!"
"You hear her voice," Casai said. "But it doesn't matter. Soon I will grow used to her touch. What can you do to stop me?"
"Her touch?" Isaac repeated. "Hanna's touch?"
Casai didn't respond.
"It wasn't ever the sweatshirt, was it? It was Hanna." Isaac stepped away. Casai stood rooted where he was. "I thought it was the sweatshirt giving me power, but it was her. And the others! All I have to do is wake up Eela said. She could wake herself up from a dream that wasn't hers! What if it isn't mine either? I have to wake up!"
Something else hit him. "No . . . it doesn't matter if I wake up. If this isn't my dream, it doesn't matter what I do. The dreamer is the one who matters." He closed his eyes. A chill passed over his body. "I've been given a power, and you took it. I didn't give myself the power, and neither did you." He looked at Casai. "I understand what's really important now. I'm not. You aren't. I don't know what is, but it isn't me."
He went back to Casai, fists straining. "I give myself up."
"Hanna, get away from him!" Jol shouted. Casai's body was being blown from inside by dark purple light. Hanna stayed put, with her arms wrapped around the body that had been Isaac's once. She knew he was winning.
His vision flickered. He saw two versions of himself: the Isaac and the Casai. He saw one of the bodies disappearing; he couldn't tell which. Another vision was added. Hanna's face, large, was before him. "Hanna!" He cried out. "I've almost got it! It wasn't the sweatshirt at all, it was you! You gave me the power to stop him! Please Hanna, I'm almost there!"
Hanna heard the words as if far away. She let the sweatshirt drop to the ground and put her arms around Isaac, squeezing him tight. The castle shook. The ground under them began to shift and the walls cracked. The sky outside was lit by gold lines.
They felt their love for each other, and Casai was pushed away.
The purple energy from Isaac's body blew out of him in a moment, all tremendous hate and potential gone like the sudden light from a burst of lightning, giving vision for an uncountable moment of time. Isaac saw Casai escape and flee, to die or stay hidden forever.
Jol and Stasya, Eela and Zoolk, and Tetra, looked at the two forms on the ground. After the great formless explosion they'd fallen. The castle shook but the motion was dying.
Stasya went to them. Hanna put her head up, and then Isaac -- not Casai -- followed. Stasya smiled and waved the others over.
"You did it," Hanna said. "You're back." A tear dropped. "I can't believe it." She sniffed and buried her face in Isaac's chest.
"Stand, children!" Tetra shouted, jubilant. "He's gone! Isaac, the purple mist still nears our planets!"
"Oh? Oh," Isaac said. He closed his eyes. Outside, the planets that had been watching the purple coloring of space get closer saw it snap away. "Dealt with."
"Casai?" Stasya asked. "He's gone?"
"Gone. I have my power back, plus what he could do. I'm going to reverse his creations and bring back my world. We really got him."
A year passed. Isaac, Hanna, and Jol waited on a grassy hill in the center of a park. The world had been returned to its previous state, as it once was. Isaac kept the portals open, allowing travel between the worlds, their existence kept a secret. Four others walked toward them. Zoolk was trimmed, though his black beard and hair were still present. Tetra was still just as round, and waved at those on the hill as he got closer. Stasya walked with her hair in a ponytail, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt for the warm summer, different from the cold antarctic where she spent most of her time. Eela, posing as a blind woman, walked easily with her cane, to complete the illusion, in one hand.
They hugged and greeted one another as friends, though Zoolk received only handshakes.
"Hanna introduced me to her father and he started getting me ready to rule Tern," Isaac said. "Once I was ready, I married Hanna and took governorship from him. Jol is our adviser."
"Must be quite the change!" Tetra said.
"It is. I wasn't used to it at first, but I have my friends. I'm a ruler, nothing more." Isaac looked at Stasya. "Found anything?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. I won't stop looking. Even if the Tor do show up, I want to be the first to know." She smiled up at the sun. "Right now it's the dead of winter down there. Not a fun place to be. Tetra?" She asked.
"I've continued my study of the portals with no avail. I assume soon I will moved to a different project. Hades and Rose and Violet are doing quite well, I see them off and on. Speaking of which . . ." He eyed Hanna. "How long until Tern hears the patter of little feet?" He grinned, and Hanna laughed, waving the question off. "And you, our big friend? How fares rebuilding?"
"It has gone well," Zoolk said. "The animals returned to nature once Casai was gone. There was much destruction and death. At first I didn't want to help them, but I found my pack and they . . . I suppose they made me help. They are my friends. I have them with me, but I'm no wild man anymore."
Isaac nodded. He looked at Eela. Sunglasses covered her one intact eye. She had a wide-brimmed hat and brown coat. Isaac had never seen her without one after Casai was gone. "I split my time between this world and my own. I've found a few humans that had been hiding from my brothers, and helped them start the city again. Communication is still cut off from other settlements. I come here to purchase food and clothing and medical supplies. To this world I am just a little blind woman who can, somehow, still see." She smiled, and tapped Hanna's shoulder with her cane. "Maybe someday I will rebuild my eyes and see your smiling faces for real, instead of this graphically-built wire frame. It's tiring, but I suppose it works."
They started talking about the things that had happened for each of them during the past year, and Isaac looked up at the bright yellow sun, reveling in the color and the warmth.