Guardians Book One - Magic Rising

Chapter Twelve

Lady and Pes had moved with inhuman speed, but even as she jogged down the line, hopping between the power lines and navigating in the darkness solely by the distant flashes and the sparks of the cables, Kath could feel the air moving sluggishly, time slowing down around her, somehow. Those last few feet she had to push the air aside, fighting for every breath.

And as if she'd burst a bubble, she stumbled into Gloucester Road station, the air a sharp contrast, fresh and clear, the station light as day, the dual platforms and incongruous deco art friezes all so very normal and...

"You idiot! Close your eyes!" Lady's voice screamed, but Kath was slow, too slow, and the sudden blast of wind slammed her against the platform, stinging tears from her eyes. The earth dropped sickening away under her.

Something wet hit her arm.

"Freaky Lady! Lady's a weirdo freak!" They were the voices of little children, and she — no, not Kath — she wasn't in the station but a playground, watching from above and at the same time, inside, the mind of a tiny Lady, her face unscarred but her eyes still too bright for her pale face, running on stubby, clumsy legs, chewing the inside of her cheeks to stop tears as they threw clumps of grass at her. Immediate as a slap, she could feel that stupid primal upset of childhood.

"You can't play with us! Don't speak to the freak!"

She — Kath — Lady — whoever - couldn't even feel the tears on her cheek now but she knew they were there, stinging like acid, a badge of her shame.

"She was a black belt. It was your first competition fight. It's OK to lose sometimes, anyway. No-one can win everything." A tall, kind-faced brown belted Senpai, patient, pitying, while the other students sniggered at her frozen shock at the back of the class. The other black belts just stared past her, as if she wasn't there. At the front of this no-place — a sports hall somewhere, Kath had seen enough herself to recognise the painted lines for netball on the tiled floor — a gruff Sensei waved them back to training. 

This is...a dream, Kath thought. A memory. Something - the world doesn't skip about like this...and that's Lady, still...this is her mind.

"What's her problem? Why the hissy fit?" sniffed a girl wearing a red belt, turning away. Kath/Lady squeezed her eyes shut.

"You've only been training a couple of years," the Senpai said, trying to be kind. "It doesn't matter! Sensei saw you tried your best. Your form was excellent. Have you been practicing at home?" 

'He doesn't understand. If that had been an agent of the Dark, I'd be dead, I'd be ruined...the world would be in danger...every night I practice. Every moment I can. I can't lose'...and Lady hadn't spoken the words aloud but in the world of the dream, Kath could hear every word.

The images melted and for a second Kath was back. She stumbled backwards, her face pale, screaming at the psychic attack as much as the physical, moving as if the world was in slow-motion; ahead of her she could see Lady roaring, her sword raised, distracting the blobby mass of the Guardian from using its magic against them; she could see Pes with his hands and staff raised, the offshoot clouds of darkness shrivelling when he aimed at them. Lady spun round, and caught Kath's gaze; her face was desperate and drawn, and there was something raw and old in her vivid eyes told Kath she knew full well what she'd seen was a real dream, a real memory that haunted her. She stepped forward to help, but Lady shook her head, her hair flying. 

"Close your mind!" she screamed. "Fight it - ignore it! Don't let it in..." But the world in Kath's mind's eye had blurred again.  

She wasn't in the Tube; no, she was in a war-zone. Her long brown hair streamed behind her in the wind - Kath whimpered; they were one and the same again. The sky was black and empty, the landscape desolate of anything but sand, as far as the eye could see, smeared with ugly rusty stains and the rising bumps of things white and rounded...gravelly stones? The bitter smell of blood was everywhere, and now she could see that she wasn't standing on gravel but bones; the crunching beneath her feet were tiny fingerbones, joints, kneecaps, the bones of the world. A half-rotted skull rolled across her feet, and as the blank eyes turned up to her own, her hands clamped over her mouth as she recognised the eyeballs in the sockets as being green as her own eyes — her father's eyes, his teeth pulled back in a scream. She stumbled back, retching, to trip over a mass of long black hair, an arm protruding from the torn sleeve of a greatcoat: as her tear-filled eyes searched wildly for the face, she found Pestilence staring blindly up at her, and behind his skeleton, her mother's face; Kath's own; her office mates'; her lecturers; her Sensei; everyone she had ever known and all the people of the world she had not, each one dead, each skull, each half-decayed face twisted with terror and pain. She was alone in the world with the legions of dead, because the Darkness had won; the Dread Lord would be coming for her next. 

"Lady..." Kath whispered, her own eyes damp with horror — the flat dead eyes of her own corpse embossing on her thoughts - but another voice was inside her mind.

It's what you dream, even now. These are the memories of your heart, your shames and that which you cannot forget, and the futures you fear will come true! The Guardian's voice was hideous, pitched too high and shrill. 

"Not what I dream," Kath mumbled, and the cold stone of the platform faded back against her senses. A gun...she had a weapon, she had something...something to fight back against what the Guardian was tearing from her companion's mind and throwing at her. Close my mind, what does she mean?

She grabbed for the gun on the cold metal of the tracks, but her mind was full again; she wasn't herself.

She was looking down at Pes, this time.

"It made me think of you...I thought you would like it." A flush of horrible embarrassment, why would Lady want to know a thing like him now she'd begun to see the world and all its beauty and freedom? She was leaving for London today. But Lady was reaching her fingers out for his hand, for the flower he was holding out to her, and the heat tightening his chest was spreading to his face as she, flower-fair, eyes as deep as oceans, turned her gaze up to him and smiled. It was that smile he wanted to see, her happiness - not the beauty of her face but the beauty inside that shone out. She'd grown, they both had, spent years running and playing in the mud and gorse on Dartmoor, best friends always, playing every game imaginable — spaceships, soldiers, horses — laughed and skipped; anything to make her smile when her power hurt her, when she smiled less and less. She had never feared or hated him for his face and his powers, the way even other Guardians had. And now she had to begin a new path, but he wouldn't let her be alone...

Kath squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force the unwanted dream from her head, push away Pes' memories. The world started to blur back into her vision, but too late; a tendril of the formless mass was heading right at her.

This time the attack was more vicious; Kath felt her body slam back against the tracks, crumpling her like a ragdoll. Years of crashing around in rugby and football helped her break the fall enough and she rolled over, panting, Pes' secondhand feelings washing out of her mind.

"Get out of here! Run!" Lady was screaming again — Kath tore her eyes open to see her on the platform, tiny against the swarming, boiling mass of twilight nothingness bearing down upon her. It was formless, but coalescing into something. Under its feet the tiles of the platform cracked and rolled back, and Lady skidded over the crumbling platform as she blocked and hacked back at it.

"It feeds on our dreams," Pestilence was there, now, next to her, hauling her up and pulling her back towards the tunnel leading out of the station. "And throws them back at us. It's trying to disorientate us...Shame us." He flushed, but carried on, "But...keep your mind blank. Shield it...like Lady said, don't let it in. You know it's not real...not happening now."

"Yours, I only got yours..." Kath babbled. Lady was alone now and the creature was becoming more solid even as she harried its tendrils with her blade, whirling kicks at the encroaching form as it swarmed forward, slashing, beating back every thrust it made at her and countering; thick dark sludge spurted from the wounds Lady was making, but it didn't slow down. "Why's it not getting in my mind?"

Give me her power! I need to feed! With her life, with her connection to the very soul of the earth, I can live. I need neither Light nor Darkness; all shall become mine. I shall make your world a land of dreams! Kath screamed, clutching her head; the voice of the Guardian was an echoing shriek inside her mind, but she could feel the dreams of her companions receding, leaving her alone in her head.

"It might not know you're right here; it can't see you in the shadows. It doesn't seem to have tried to get into your head...and it isn't whole enough yet to focus its attacks on just one of us. That's why...we're all seeing the dreams. Stay down," Pes whispered, and darted forward to support Lady. The movement made the mass turn — yes, it was taking shape now, something equine and glistening, all teeth and lather and foam and faces staring out from the sheen of its flanks — and it saw her. Kath pressed her spine into the edge of the tunnel, but it was too late; it sprang forward, clearing the platforms in a jump, and Kath found herself staring into the mad rolling eyes of the Night Mare.