Dream Born

Chapter 2

2

I was falling.

Fast.

Through a pastel-painted, swirling sky that looked like paint mixed with water; it was full of bubbles and gradients of blue, black, green, red, and vomit yellow. Stars peeked through.

I felt a pit forming in my stomach as I plummeted, but then remembered that I was in control.

I stopped in the middle of the sky.

Everything paused around me.

I looked around.

There was nothing.

Just swirling colors as far as the eye could see.

Typical Somnient dream.

You’d think that demons who spend all their time in the dream world would have…you know, interesting imaginations. But instead, all they dreamt about was colors—made me seriously question if they had any brains at all.

I’m a dream mage. I’ve seen lots of dreams. Nightmares. Hell, I’ve rescued people from death and mental derangement from the claws of Somnients.

But this was just boring.

I closed my eyes and sensed the abundance of dream ether around me. It pulsed and buzzed and hummed against my skin. The air was full with it—just what I needed.

I pulled upward, amassing a small amount of energy out of the air. I spread my hands in a crescent, creating a grassy plain ahead of me. Swaying tall grass and flowers sprang up all over the dreamscape. They were vivid, like the most vibrant vegetation you’ve ever seen in your life, ethereal and bright.

Creating dreamscapes was like a jam session. You had to put your whole body into it. You did a little of this with your hands, a little of that with your feet, inserted your imagination, and the world changed around you, like a painting drawing itself on a canvas.

With both hands, I threw more ether into the sky, creating a full moon. I pointed at the sky randomly with my fingers, washing away the nasty, vivid colors, replacing them with a navy sky.

Much better.

Hmm…

But it needed more.

More fear.

I blew into the sky, watched as my breath created thin foggy clouds that rose into the sky and shrouded the moon. Then I blew again and created thick fog that covered the flowers.

Nice touch.

I clapped. Once. Twice. Three times. Four times.

Then I could feel a strand of the ether at my fingertips. I pulled it and shook it like you’d shake an old, dusty rug. Then I kneaded it with my hands and pushed it out.

Suddenly, the air felt warm and hot. So hot it made me sweat.

Perfect dreamscape.

“Come on, boring brain,” I said, jamming my fist into the grass.

The grass was strangely lumpy. I was touching it but not really touching it. It was the tingly mass of ether, and I was reaching inside, searching, searching, searching…

And then I wrapped my fingers around a smooth surface.

A horn.

I strained as I pulled it up through the dirt.

The Somnient.

The sleeping Somnient.

Well, not really the Somnient. I was in his head. But in my hands rested its dreaming soul. And there’s a saying among dream mages that whoever holds one’s dreaming soul controls their destiny.

I pulled every inch of its sleeping soul into the grassy plain. Then I pulled ether around me and became invisible.

I snapped my fingers.

The beast awakened, and the dream began.

I twisted my hands a few times until a shining orb appeared in my hands. I rolled it across the grass like a skee-ball. It thumped and then turned into a large brown rabbit.

The thing was so cute, with blue eyes and floppy ears. It stood up on two hind legs, twitched its nose, and shook its fluffy tail.

The beast roared and chased after the rabbit.

I chuckled.

The rabbit dashed through the grass and the Somnient took off after it, swiping its claws every chance it got.

At least it was distracted.

It was always better to give the mind something to focus on before I destroyed it from the inside out.

I waved at the moon. Slowly, it began to turn orange, as if it were heating up.

“This place shall be purified,” I said, my voice echoing throughout the plain.

The Somnient stopped.

The rabbit stopped.

“You are sinspawn,” I said. “You have no right to exist in my world.”

The beast grunted, and then ran after the rabbit again.

I hovered into the air.

“May God grant you serenity upon your return to the underworld,” I said. “May one day you wake up and see the blessed goodness of the holy spirit.”

The Somnient tracked closer to the rabbit.

“May you be exterminated quickly,” I said.

The demon jumped.

The rabbit stopped and its eyes widened.

“Be gone!” I cried.

The moon fired a giant ray of fire into the beast, stopping it in mid-air. It screamed and screamed, filling the dreamscape with a high-pitched whine.

I covered my ears and eyes. I willed the magic to intensify.

The sky began to melt. It grew even hotter.

The beast shrieked.

I screamed as I willed the magic to intensify even more.

“Be gone!” I screamed. “Be gone! Be gone!”

The demon exploded in a puff of fire, and its ashes drifted down across the field.

I landed in the grass, panting.

Above, fissures appeared in the moon and it cracked, crumbling in the sky.

The grass died and turned brown. The sky melted in slow-motion, bubbling up and turning into burning flakes that drifted down toward the grass.

The rabbit took one final look at me, twitched its nose, and faded out of existence.

It was time to go.

I closed my eyes and imagined myself disappearing from the dream, particle by particle.

As I focused, I heard someone call my name.

Sometimes the dream world magnified your thoughts upon you. Even as a mage, I had to be careful to avoid opening my own mind so much. I’m sensitive to dreamscapes, even though I can control them. Once, I got caught in a wave of negative energy, and long story short, I almost ended up trapped inside someone’s mind, having to navigate my way through a pop-up nightmare that came seemingly out of nowhere. I try to avoid that whenever possible. That’s why I focus on the task and get out.

I shook off the voice and concentrated on exiting.

Someone spoke again.

“Aisha.”

Someone was there.

I looked around the crumbling mindscape. There wasn’t much left. The starry sky was crumbling into nothing, and a gray void was swirling beneath me, the tell-tale sign of a dead soul.

“Aisha.”

That voice.

Deep and sonorous.

I knew it.

I knew it from the deepest corner of my heart. I knew it from a thousand memories.

Soft and familiar, I couldn’t help but smile as a rush of warmth blew through me.

But it couldn’t be.

This was just dream. It was just…

And sure enough, ahead of me in the center of the gray void, he was there.

L’Dante, my ex-fiancé.

He was surrounded by Somnients and sat upon a gold-plated throne. The demons sat at his feet and he brushed their heads. He wore his signature red and white football jersey that was always too long for him, and the bottom of the jersey swirled into a pool of blood and ashes that covered his legs.

His face was the same as it had been—just before he died—goatee, square-shaped face, acne on his cheeks. But his eyes were hollow, vacant wisps of smoke. And his teeth were yellow fangs.

“It’s been a long time,” he said, speaking with the voice of a thousand demons. Even though his voice was distorted, it rang true.

I couldn’t believe that my ex-fiancé was standing right below me. I couldn’t believe what he had become.

I looked away.

“Don’t look away,” he said.

“You’ve become a Somnient,” I said.

“You’ve forgotten who you are,” he said.

“Uhhh,” I said. “I think the bigger issue is what you’ve become.”

He grinned, breathing a thin wave of flame.

“Being trapped in the underworld will do this to you,” he said. “Especially when your fiancée doesn’t come to save you.”

That hurt.

Hard.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to save him.

It wasn’t even that I couldn’t save him.

We had worked together to seal the Somnients into the lower circles of Hell, reducing the demon population in our city by almost ninety percent. If I saved him…I would have unleashed the doors of Hell on the city.

But God, I missed him.

Not in this demon form, though.

“I’m asking you to stay out of my way,” L’Dante said. “You owe me this.”

I backed away.

“Stay out of your way so you can what?” I asked, taunting.

L’Dante grinned. Below him, in the void, a million blue nebula eyes glowed at me.

Yep. Exactly what I thought. My ex-fiancé wanted to unleash an army of Somnients upon the world of the living.

“Keep dreaming,” I said. “Literally.”

L’Dante generated a fireball in his hand and hurled it at me. But the fire dissipated against an invisible wall.

The magic seal was still intact.

He was so close, yet so far. The seal kept him safely in the bowels of Hell where he belonged.

But he wasn’t throwing the fireball to hurt me.

He was throwing it to prove a point.

“Aisha!” he cried.

But I turned and ignored him.

“Aisha, come back,” he cried. “Aisha, this ain’t the end.”

I morphed myself out of the dream, my body turning into particles that dissipated into the dreamscape.

Returning to reality never felt so comforting.