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At least I wasn’t alone.
Baz sucked in a breath as the wall of gray towered over us. His grip on my hand tightened almost painfully, and he shut his eyes. I kept my gaze on him, instead of the wall of nothing. He finally opened his eyes and smiled down at me.
I wanted to grab for the shadows, to escape what I knew was coming, but this was our only chance to rescue the others. So I stood there, waiting for oblivion.
The weirdly quiet storm crashed into us. I expected the same absolute silence as last time, but black smoke swirled around me, wrapping tendrils around my stomach and yanking.
Instead of getting caught up in the midst of the storm, I found myself suspended in shadow. Alone.
“Fuck!” I struggled to free myself. “Baz!”
No reply.
This time, instead of having dissolved into shadow like I did when traveling that way, it was more as if my entire body had been yanked into the realm whole, but parts of me shifted in and out of shadow, much like Nic did when he wasn’t concentrating on keeping his body in one shape.
I was still restrained, but I wasn’t immobilized like last time. Thick cords of shadow stuff bound my arms to my sides and my legs together. They had to be holding me upright, too, or I likely would have fallen in my struggles.
I could see, now that my eyes adjusted, but there wasn’t much to look at, just shades of black, gray, and brown. I had no idea where the light source was.
“Hello? Let me out!” I twisted against the unyielding bonds. “We’re trying to save Dream! Let me out!”
“Truly?” a voice hissed. A darker blackness swirled in front of me before solidifying into a mass of shadow with glowing red points where eyes might be on a human. They flickered, perhaps the shadow creature’s version of a blink? “To us it looked like you choose to doom Dream and all the connected realms.” The displeasure in its voice was biting.
“We have to get the others out. It was the only thing we could think of.”
“We shall see.” His voice sounded like old rotted leaves sliding underfoot as I walked in the forest, a little slippery, but a little crunchy.
Before I could protest, the creature dissolved into wisps, and I sensed I was alone. Where was Baz? Had they grabbed him too, or was I the only one left?
Well, I’d escaped once before. Surely I could do it again.
With that thought in mind, I considered my options. I wasn’t going to overpower my bonds physically, so maybe I could control them, instead.
I shut my eyes and focused inward. The bonds I shared with Dio and Nic were there, giving me a glimmer of hope that we weren’t too late. The weaker link I had with Baz was also there, but it gave me no clues as to how close he was. I wish I shared a similar bond with Geraint so I could know for certain he was still alive. Maybe if we all got out of this, we could find a way.
I frowned. I had to change my way of thinking, or we were already defeated. I felt like we’d lost and that made it harder to try. Keeping my thoughts positive was my only hope. I would see my guys again. We would save the Unconscious realm. We would put that bitch Effie in her place and restore Dream. There was no other option.
With that in mind, I focused on my fledgling abilities to control shadow energy and slowly pushed my awareness into the world around me.
Before I could get very far, the shadow creature returned.
“The mortal would give much to possess you,” it hissed, hovering in front of me like a phantom in the night, its red eyes trained on me, it’s edges spiky where hands might be and otherwise smooth.
“What?”
“Watch. Do not speak.”
When I opened my mouth to protest, shadow sealed over it, cutting me off.
“Do not speak.”
I couldn’t tell if we moved, or if a wall thinned, or if I was simply being shown some kind of projection, but where once there had been blackness, now there was only a thin fog. Effie stood on the other side, arms crossed, hands tucked into her armpits as if she were cold. She stood tall, however, and though now and again her eyes darted around at all the swirling beings that clustered around her, she projected confidence. I recognized her uncertainty, and couldn’t blame her. The shadow realm was even more unnerving than Nightmare.
“Where has she gone to? Surely you can see into all the realms? Shadows are everywhere,” she was saying.
“We can,” one of the creatures agreed with a voice a snake might have if it could talk, words slurred, hissing the ends.
“Then where is she!”
