The watchers took off, but I couldn't tear my eyes from Xin's. The moment I faltered, he would go for my throat, and alone I was fodder. All that kept me alive was his amusement with my suffering and two giant wolves that would merely stall the inevitable end.
"Boreas!" Faella called behind us, and the crash of bodies had even Xin turning as the watchers slipped and slid on a field of ice. Several dug claws into the sheen to right themselves but only long enough for Sven to bash them with his tail and send them flying.
"Such antics won't prevail for long," Xin dismissed the scene with a flip of his ponytail behind his shoulder. "The watchers are not living, and your friends will tire. Why not run like all the other cowards?"
Xin brought his glaive to eye level, balanced in his hands, and thrust forward. It cut across the wolf on the left, and he used his armored body to slam the other to the side before he spun the glaive and bought it down like a cleaver on the chipping block. I rolled to the side, but it did little as the blade hit the ground into a sweep that came after me.
An inch from my cheek, pastel blue divided me from my end, and stuffing exploded everywhere as the blade diced a stuffed animal in my place. My jaw hung open as a plush bunny the size of a gopher picked up its insides and put them back in its body only to have them fall out again. Xin looked on bewildered as the bunny held the hole in its side and swiped at the blade to knock it away. The attack was utterly ineffective, but the distraction bought enough time for talons to screech on the tile as the familiar hind legs of a lion landed at my feet.
"Violet," I whispered as she slid off her griffin with her bow ready and her braids whipping behind her.
"The only one running here is you, Xin." Kearo's voice rushed relief down my spine, and I lifted myself to find him standing beyond Lexington and Ray where they grappled with the watchers. "And you're no deity. What you failed to observe here, is that we have the advantage. I know your weakness."
"Oh pray tell, what is that?" Xin scoffed but remained watchful of the griffin as it circled.
"No matter what façade you wear, you're a decent man," Kearo said as he suspended himself with his wind. "And decent men don't kill children."
Xin's smug expression fell as the children of the valley filled the room behind Kearo, all of them side by side with their dreams. Unicorns stood next to Pegasi, stuffed bears the size of real bears smacked their hands together ready to fight, and above them, their dragons and pterodactyls flew with screeches of support.
"Let's beat up the big bad wolf." Kearo cackled as the kids charged, screams of delight and determination echoing as Xin backed away.
The moment Xin retreated, Kearo rushed him with his wind, and they tussled in the air. With a whirlwind, Kearo tore Xin's glaive away, and a bear swiped it before he could pick it up. It snapped it in half over the arm of the living tree that spread its roots to yank the watchers' legs out. Undeterred, Xin pulled a sword from his sheath, and Kearo went on the defensive as he slashed and hacked for his limbs.
Without the threat of Xin cutting me in two, I moved quickly to reclaim my crowbar where Lexington had left it, and I looked for a way to get it to Kearo. A bird of flames the size of an eagle soared above me, and I whistled to grab its attention. It landed with a tap of its claws on the tile and scooted closer as I waved my hand.
"Can you get this to him?" I asked, and it cooed as it took the crowbar in its beak and took off.
The phoenix circled Xin and Kearo as they exchanged dodged blows until it found an opening and dropped the bar into Kearo's waiting hand. With it, Kearo met Xin's sword with a clang that shook Xin's hold all the way to his shoulder. Xin dropped his sword with a grunt of pain but pulled two daggers from their side sheaths quick enough to deflect Kearo's next strike.
The griffin left my side to lead the children with Violet, and I was suddenly very alone in the middle of the chaos. The watchers had their hands full with Faella's magic and Sven corralling them with his size and flames while Lexington and Ray pushed them back. The children swarmed the rest, and as Kearo had predicted, the watchers wouldn't strike at them. That left Xin clashing with Kearo wherever they landed, and in my solitude, it occurred to me that the reality generator was unguarded.
I slid a foot back to see if anyone would notice, and when no one did, I made my way across the tile toward the giant machine that had lost its guards. All I had to do was slip the utensils I'd swiped from Xin's table into the same unfortunate gap in its protection that Mei had, but thought of her had me stalling my advance. In all of the fighting, I'd forgotten about her.
The table stood, but cups of tea had toppled and spilled their contents onto cookies that melted to mush. I took cautious steps when I didn't see Mei in her seat, touching the very edge of the plastic table, and my heart lurched as emotion ran over me like a semi hitting my spine. Fear. Mei was still here, and I knelt to find her huddled under the table with so little space that her head touched the underside even with her face tucked in her knees.
Everyone around us was fighting so desperately, yet it had happened so quickly. I had wanted to talk to Mei, but she'd sent Xin to get rid of me before I'd gotten to say much. Seeing her terrified and quivering alone clenched my heart, and I knelt so I could get low enough for her to see my face.
"Mei." My voice had her stiffening, and she sank her head into her neck as she turned toward me. "No one is going to hurt you. I'm sorry things got scary."
"I don't want to go away." Tears poured down her face, and my fingers trembled where they held the table. "I want to stay here with Daddy. Why can't I stay here with everyone?"
I had no answer.
The only reason was because I had chosen to destroy the generator to restore the original world. Like Xin had said, it wasn't right or wrong, just a choice, and seeing this scared child who would die the moment I broke the machine sank rocks into the pit of my stomach.
With my fear of the watchers, I had never tried to find a way where this could work for everyone. Not really. Perhaps if Mei wasn't against us, I could open the eyes of the people, like I had with that sick woman, separating the masses from what plagued them within. Everyone here was fighting for a way to free the minds of those they loved, but what if we could do that without destroying everything? If I could wake the people, perhaps this world could be a new place for all of us, one better than what it was.
It could be a gift instead of a failing of love.
"Let's find a way forward together instead of fighting." I ducked my head under the table to extend a hand to Mei, and a blade immediately pressed to my throat. My heart stopped, and I moved only my eyes to find Xin standing with half his glaive a sliver from opening my throat.
If he was here though, that meant no one was stopping Kearo.
Brown hair flashed beyond Xin, and Kearo landed on top of the reality generator with a thunk that turned the heads of every watcher and dream in the room, along with Xin's. With my crowbar in his hand, Kearo knelt over the opening in the top of the machine, and my heart stuttered.
"Kearo, wait!" I yelled, standing to draw attention to myself, and Xin allowed me to push his blade away when he saw that I wasn't a danger. "We don't have to destroy it. We can find another way."
"Heidi," Kearo's shoulders sank with a frown that folded his expression into one of pain that I'd never seen him display. "I'm sorry."
Kearo wedged the crowbar deep into the gap in the machine's protective casing, and screeching metal drowned out my cry of anguish. Gears clunked like a tin can rolling in the turbines, and the fans ground to a halt as black smoke billowed from every orifice on the machine.
Bolts shot out to bounce along the tile, clacking and rolling to my feet just as they had when I'd first peeled back the illusion of this word, and sparks spread like dandelion spores freed from their stalk. The flames erupted in a warning far too late to protect me from the explosion that sent a shockwave of power out through everyone gathered. It threw me to my knees as the machine ruptured and sent shards of itself flying out, but Kearo darted to my side and threw up a shield of wind to divert my imminent death.
Yells sounded in the distance, and I picked myself up as the world disintegrated behind us. From the outside in, pieces of the dream world flickered like dying pixels on a damaged screen, and shards of sky fell like broken mirrors to crash into the tiles. The wind shifted, and it wasn't because of Kearo. The explosion of power out was pulling back in, dragging the smoke along the ground and destroying everything in its wake.
Sven was the first it hit since he'd dragged as many watchers as far from us as he could, and he abandoned his scales to take the form of a man and buy his last few seconds. He turned to Ray, but he was too far to reach, and Sven roared as the reality generator's power washed over him and took him apart piece by piece. Skin and scales flaked off like shredded paper to leave nothing but silver ash as the gentle dragon melted from existence.
I didn't want to watch but I couldn't tear myself away as the wall of destruction fell upon Lexington. No matter how fast he was as a vampire, he was powerless to escape this end, and he used his last moments to hold Faella close and kiss her cheek in an intimate display that filled my eyes with tears as he fell to pieces in her arms.
It was Faella's scream as he disappeared that hurt most. Not the hopeless look in Lexington's crimson eyes as his soul ceased to exist, nor the clutching of his fingers as he refused to let her go until he fell apart. It was the cries of someone innocent, a soul still pure enough to dream up men like Lexington, and one that had never second-guessed their adventure as anything but the right thing.
I thought it would be over in seconds, but the power slowed the closer it got to the machine like it was ramping up for an implosion to do away with everything. In the scant time I had left, I spun around and shoved Kearo with every bit of my agony. He stumbled back, touched his chest where I'd pushed him, and lifted his dim blue eyes to me.
"Why! We could have found another way!" I screamed, my eyes flinching on Xin as he held Mei crying in his arms. "You didn't have to..." My anger lost power as tears filled my eyes, and Kearo took steps to close the space between us. I backed away, but he grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward.
"This world isn't real, Heidi," Kearo rasped, clenching his teeth so hard that I could hear them grind against each other. "So what if you could draw it out? Nothing here matters. Mei won't age. Neither will Faella or any of these children. Their lives stopped the moment that thing was turned on. It's. Not. Real." Kearo grabbed my shoulders to shake me lightly, and I kicked him in the shin to get his hands off me.
"It was for Sven! For Lexington, Xin, and his daughter. You don't care because we get to go home, back to a world where we can breathe and laugh and live. This is nothing but death for them now."
"They knew what they were doing, Heidi," Kearo said, his shoulders sinking as he covered half his face with a hand.
I was about to yell at him again when a stream of tears flooded down his face. Kearo's eyes left mine to look at the fast approaching end as children sank into the wall of power, and I stepped away from it toward Kearo even though it wouldn't buy me much time.
"This world could have never been real, Heidi," Kearo whispered, and I raised my hand in frustration only to drag it down his shirt before I slammed my weak fist on his chest. "You don't belong here." Kearo closed the last step between us and warmth caressed my cheeks as he cradled my face with his fingers. "It's time to wake from the dream, Heidi."
Moisture dripped on my face like rain, the tears filling Kearo's vivid blue eyes lightening them to the hue of the sky above, but I lost them as he crushed me to his chest with both arms. Kearo held me so tightly that I struggled to breathe, and as the world behind started to flutter past me in scraps of useless paper, his lips touched my ear.
"Look up at the stars for me." Kearo's body quaked against mine as the power of the generator flew past.
Piece by piece, the world crumbled, and bit by bit, Kearo's hold loosened until I was flat on my feet and left staring at a man whose arms had been reduced to flecks of skin and bone that blew away on the very wind that he'd commanded. Even the tears he'd shed dried from my skin as he fluttered away like butterflies carrying the last of my dreams, and his final words whispered into the air
"I'm still real."
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Word Count: 2462