Chapter 65 Ghost Lands 2
Raina stared in horror at the black things moving towards them. One was engaged with Ahleena, all flying blades of liquid midnight, Ahleena herself a blur. Another was in blinding-fast battle with Ghost, it's piercingly brilliant blue eyes hissing with power-soaked rage. And another was stalking directly towards her, a nightmare so close in looks to the Flayers that still haunted her dreams that it froze her rigid with sick familiarity.
It was formed out of a blackness so pure that it defied the eyes, almost moving through space like an eraser, blocking what was behind it, as if by its very presence it was deleting reality. It was all razor-edged strips waving about, reminding her of the Torn. Looking like it was peeling pieces of itself off and weaving them into cutting edges, then seeking for other flesh to rend.
The only point of color on it was the fiery, crackling blue of its eyes. Eyes fixed on her with hatred so focused, so depthless, that she found herself stumbling back in shock. It didn't just hate her, it hated the very life within her.
Something warm and wet trickled down her back, accompanied by a deep throbbing in her muscles. The throbbing seemed to be sucking at her warmth, at her energy. She took one more step away from the advancing Rift Razor and then her legs collapsed, turning to rubber noodles in an instant. She blinked at the ground, on her hands and knees, feeling the deep ache in the small of her back beginning to ratchet upwards into a roaring inferno of agony.
Swirling bits of black dots were starting to sweep across her vision, adding to her confusion. But she was able to connect what had happened. Her back-flip hadn't been fast enough. That slightest brush of something across her back she had felt as she had rose into the air must have been one of the blades formed by one of these Rift Razors. Just the thought of being touched by something so foul, so perfectly wrong, made her stomach churn like a sour tornado.
She felt that warm wetness on her back trickling down her sides, knew it was her blood, and hung her head. Waiting for the inevitable killing strike. The Rift Razor was standing over her, it must be lifting its blades to slice her to ribbons any instant now. She held her breath, waiting. Nothing happened.
"Raina!" Ahleena screamed nearby, her voice punctuated by a great ripping sound, as if a tablecloth the size of a football field was being ripped in two. A moment later there was a second, similar sound, and Raina heard Ghost and Ahleena sprinting towards her.
"What is it doing? Why didn't it kill her?" Ahleena cried, panic riding her words like piece of sandpaper on steel.
Despite the paralyzing moment of waiting for death itself, Raina was warmed to hear that panic in Ahleena's voice. It reassured her Ahleena cared about her. It reassured her Ahleena was real, that she was alive, that she wasn't just the dead thing she presented to the world.
"I don't know. Help her, I'll hold it back." Ghost sounded as calm as ever, but there was still a sense of urgency behind his words.
Raina had collapsed fully onto her belly, and now as she heard Ahleena crouch next to her, she lifted her head to look around. The Rift Razor that had been stalking her, the one who had sliced her across the back, was standing just a few feet away. Ghost was in front of it, his blades held up and ready, meeting its power-ravaged stare with his own, strange, gray eyes.
They looked almost like two, nightmare statue images, both so still that Raina blinked, wondering if maybe she had passed out and was now seeing a dream world inside her own mind. Then she noticed the ever-so slight rise and fall of Ghosts chest and knew he was real, he was alive.
"Where are you cut?" Ahleena demanded, her hands deftly cutting Raina's shirt away and peeling it off before Raina had time to register what she was doing.
"My back." Raina whispered, too weak to add volume to her words.
She felt strangely cold and warm at the same time, an unnerving sensation that seemed too much like two extremes where no peace could be found.
Ahleena used Raina's shirt to quickly cut strips and fashion a bandage, tying it so tight around Raina's mid-section that she gasped and dropped into blackness for a few moments.
When she opened her eyes next, she was lying next to the fire. It's beautiful, flickering color storm and soothing heat made her want to drift back to sleep, but her senses told her there was danger right nearby. Right next to her, in fact. She groaned as she rolled up to look around, her heart hammering in her chest at the sensation of lethal danger hovering over her.
She blinked at the Rift Razor standing next to her, standing over her motionless. Was it really there, just standing still like a statue like that?
"Do not move. You need to let your blood form clots, you need to save your energy." Ahleena said.
Raina looked over at her, seeing her seated cross-legged by the fire. As if there wasn't a Rift Razor standing not three feet away.
"Why isn't it attacking us?" Raina asked, wincing at the increased burning pain in her back from just her own voice.
"We don't know." Ahleena said, staring at the Rift Razor as if she could study out its secrets.
"We think it could be your powers affecting it on some, unknown level." Ghost said.
He was sitting nearby, also looking very calm and relaxed. "We wondered if you could tell why it isn't attacking. Maybe your empath powers would let you understand what it wants?"
Raina barely heard him, laying her head down and giving in to exhaustion. Her questions burned in her mind but they weren't enough to keep her from slipping back into unconsciousness.
When she next opened her eyes, confusion was all she knew. She was on a bed so huge that it could have comfortably held ten people. A four poster bed with a canopy overhead, ornate patterns woven into it with golden strands, glittering brightly against the unrelenting gray of everything else.
That lack of color anywhere, besides those interesting, glittering gold strands, struck down into those memories she could trust were true, and she remembered the Rift Razors. She remembered lying by the rainbow fire, the bandage around her waist soaked with her blood. She remembered lying her head down.
The soft, gray curtains hanging over the tall, arched window fluttered as a breeze pushed its way into the room, catching her eye. The window didn't have glass in it, but she could see heavy, wooden shutters in the room, pulled away from the window and flat against the walls on either side. The dark, nearly black bands on the wood tying the pieces together and to the hinges stirred another batch of memories.
The four poster bed and the wooden shutters with its decorative, black metal bands looked like an artist's rendering of the medieval castles she had seen. She glanced around the room, cataloging detail against this thought. Everywhere she looked she saw design and style from the medieval era.
"Am I in a castle, then?" She wondered in confusion.
The door to the bedroom swung open silently, moving smoothly on well-constructed hinges, as Ahleena came striding in.
"Good. You're awake." Ahleena stated.
Raina saw the familiar ice had returned to Ahleena's voice and eyes. That distance she hated. Had she really heard the concern, the near panic, in Ahleena's voice when she had been facing the Rift Razor?
"Barely. Where are we?" Raina croaked, shocked at the way her own voice felt unused. She began to suspect she had been unconscious for more than a couple days.
"Safe. Do you need anything? There is a pitcher of water on the stand next to your bed. I can pour you a glass, if you would like." Ahleena seemed very casual, very relaxed.
Raina wondered if it was forced or real. She felt like she didn't know Ahleena at all, and not just because her empath powers had never let her see or feel what was going on inside Ahleena's mind. Ahleena simply never shared anything about herself to anybody.
"Water. Yeah. So where is "safe", exactly?" She asked, her throat feeling like somebody had poured bucketful's of hot sand down it while she had been sleeping.
Ahleena poured her a glass of water and handed it to her, nodding in encouragement as Raina downed it all.
"You lost a lot of blood. You will need to drink two of these pitchers a day for the next week or so."
Raina handed her the glass when she was done and scowled at Ahleena, not liking the way she was ignoring her question.
"Not gonna tell me where "safe" is, huh?"
Ahleena shook her head. "No. Not now. You need to rest, and where we're at will take a while to explain."
Raina opened her mouth to argue, then shut it as her eyes drooped in sudden exhaustion.
"S'fine. I'll argue later." She mumbled, drifting to sleep the moment her eyes shut.
When Raina next opened her eyes she saw that the light that flooded the room was not sunlight. It wasn't the warm, welcoming, yellow glow Raina was used to. It was the strange, gray, half-light she had seen ever since she had been brought to this other world.
She sat up, feeling like a mouse in the middle of a field of cloth as she looked around the massive, four-poster canopy bed. Her back ached dully at the movement, but it wasn't unbearable. She glanced down as the cool air in the room brushed across her, discovering she was completely naked.
She clutched the heavy, quilted blanket to her chest and studied the room, studied the limited view from the tall, arched window, trying to learn as much as she could about this place. Trying to build a picture in her mind of where she was. There wasn't much to see out of the window from her current positon, but the dull ache in her back and her nakedness prevented her from appeasing her curiosity and getting up to go look.
She could see the roofs of buildings, all of them arched in gently curving half domes, all of them covered in identical tiles that looked like they were made from clay. They were gray, of course, just like almost everything in this strange place, but she had begun to understand the complex tones to the gray, had begun to connect them to colors. These roof tiles would be a dusty, dark red back on earth, she guessed. Her view of those rooftops, how low they were and how little they looked, told her that her room was quite high.
The door to her room opened silently. Only the sudden shift of the soft curtains by the windows signaling the pressure change in the room alerting her somebody was coming in. She snatched the blanket up close to her chin in a panic, then relaxed slightly as she saw it was only Ahleena.
Ahleena strode across the room and stopped at the edge of the bed, her almond eyes as depthless as ever, her expression unreadable and her emotions simply undetectable to Raina's empathic power. Raina wondered if Ahleena even knew how much like a living puppet she looked when she was like this.
"How is your back?" Ahleena asked, her tone gratingly neutral.
"Fine. How is your heart?" Raina responded, keeping all inflection and all tone from her voice. Mimicking Ahleena.
Ahleena narrowed her eyes slightly but said nothing, seeming to be content to stand and study her for now. Raina looked away, uncomfortable with the direct, unwavering stare. She had never been comfortable with Ahleena looking at her like that. As if she was studying so much more than just her outward appearance. Raina felt like she was saying things silently, unknowingly, and Ahleena was simply listening to her, when she looked at her like this.
"You almost died. You lost so much blood that you were unconscious for five days. You don't know where you're at, or even if you're on Earth, and when you wake, the first thing you want to talk about is my heart?"
Raina looked at Ahleena, wondering if this meant Ahleena was actually going to talk with her for once. But it wasn't to be, she understood this the moment she met her eyes and saw the familiar ice within them.
"I see." Raina said, her voice laced with barbs. "Then I won't waste words on that with you. How about you tell me the long story about this place? The story said you would tell me when my strength was back."
Ahleena nodded slowly, as if she was accepting something to herself more than to Raina's request, and sat on the edge of the bed. Her gaze seemed to grow even more distant, and she held herself very still. Raina held herself equally still, suspecting that she was about to learn much from Ahleena in the next few minutes.
When Ahleena opened her mouth to speak, her voice was so quiet Raina found herself unconsciously leaning forward to better hear her.
"I was only a little girl when my powers first were noticed by others. I was six, or maybe seven years old. I played hide and seek with the other children in our village often. Hide and seek is very simple. Find the best hiding spot and become as invisible as possible, stay as still and silent as possible. Focus on it, imagine yourself a rock or a tree or a garbage can or whatever inanimate object you needed, in order to remain undetected. And I did this.
I found that the harder I concentrated on imagining I was perfectly still, perfectly silent, the less likely I was to be found. It was something I noticed the other children couldn't do. Not like me. I found that if I really focused, I could remain undetected even if the other children walked right by me, even if they literally almost tripped over me."
Ahleena paused, and Raina stayed quiet, afraid if she said anything or even dared move, she would break the moment and Ahleena would stop talking.
"Then, one evening, as a bigger group of us than normal were playing hide and seek, I focused deeper than I ever had. It was necessary if I was to remain undetected, if I wanted to win, as there were so many children searching for those of us in hiding. I had crouched down under a dense row of bushes, pressing myself up against the center of them, sticking my arms and legs and fingers out like branches and trunks of the bushes. It wasn't the best hiding spot, as anybody could simply bend down and look under the hedges and see me. So I concentrated harder than I ever had, having more time to get deeper into my concentration than ever before as there were so many of us playing hide and seek this time.
And as I concentrated, my eyes open and roving but the rest of me as still and basically opposite of what I really was, I saw the color in everything beginning to fade. It was disconcerting, making me lose my focus, making the normal colors of the world come flooding back before my eyes."
Raina blinked at that. So this strange grayness was something that had been around for years? "Gray just like this place?"
Ahleena nodded. "Yes. And seeing that lack of color, seeing that strange echo of reality, had made me very curious, as only a 6 year old can be. I focused again, this time really throwing myself into it, really imagining I was not a little girl but actually a part of the hedge I was hiding under. And once again the colors of everything seemed to fade before my eyes.
I stayed focused, watching all color leach away. Then, at that moment, a friend of mine bent down and stuck his head into the opening of the hedge I was hiding under. He looked directly at me, our faces not even one meter apart, and his gaze kept moving. He showed no expression, no recognition of having seen me. I was in awe. How could this be?
I could read the pattern of his searching and knew he would scan past me again as he looked into the shadows, double checking that nobody was hiding deep in the bushes. So I waited until he was looking right at me, then I waved. I lifted my hand and smiled at him and waved. And his eyes never changed, he looked right through me, right past me, not seeing me. Not noticing me, even though I was moving, even though I was waving my hand less than one meter away from his face."
Raina leaned forward, ignoring the throbbing in her back this caused, finding herself intensely interested in Ahleena's story.
"He didn't even notice your hand waving right in front of his face?"
Ahleena shook her head. "No. He backed out and walked away, leaving me in stunned silence."
Raina nodded, understanding how exciting that must have been to a six year old girl.
"I climbed out from under the row of bushes and stood up straight, in the evening light, for anybody to easily notice me. The group of my friends who were searching for the hiding group was walking nearby. They also looked right past me, right through me. I waved at them, too. They simply did not see me. Then it really hit me, the strangeness of the gray light, the lack of all color.
I felt like I was somehow halfway in a different place, looking back into the real world. I felt like this was why nobody could see me. I felt terribly ill at this thought, wondering what this strange place was. I stopped trying to see the bushes and my friends and the buildings nearby, and looked around. I really looked. I let my eyes open to whatever they could see, not trying to look for any particular familiar thing, but letting my gaze search out what it could in this different place.
And I saw...I saw another world. I saw I was standing next to a row of hedges still, on the outskirts of a village still. But the hedges were totally different than the ones I had just been hiding under. Their leaves had nasty looking spikes on all their outer edges, and even their top and bottom spaces had a few of the curved, wickedly sharp points on them. And the village....
The village was now made entirely out of mud huts. Simple, small, round buildings with clay roof tiles. They were very similar to each other. I stared in stupefied confusion and wonder, not at all understanding how I had gotten here, or where "here" really was. Then I saw the people. They were dressed in strange clothes, in ways I had never seen. There were people of all ages and stations in life, moving about their daily business as normal as you can imagine.
Except almost all of them carried at least one knife at their waist, with some of the younger men carrying swords across their backs and multiple knives strapped about their body. One of the younger men walking near the outskirts of the village, walking near me, glanced over towards me and his eyes widened as he met my gaze.
This one could definitely see me! His eyes were a stormy gray color, unlike anything I had ever seen, and they seemed to have power to hold me frozen still as he came over to me.
He introduced himself as Ghost. He shook my hand and asked how long I had been Shadow Walking. I liked the way this sharp-eyed adult paid such close attention to me, introducing himself so seriously and asking me a curious, but very gravely delivered question. So I told him I didn't know what Shadow Walking was, but that this was the first time I had ever been here.
I still remember the way his gray eyes flashed at that. I had thought it something I had imagined, some trick of the unnatural gray light that seemed to halfheartedly water down onto everything. I was to learn later that I had not imagined it."
Raina heard the cutting blades of old misery, painted by the cruel brush of hatred, in Ahleena's words as she recalled meeting Ghost. And she could relate, understanding a little how and why Ahleena would hate him so deeply.