CHAPTER SIX--One Night's Horrors

Tobias grinned almost insanely at his dæmon, whose eyes flickered in the dim light. Tobias rifled briefly through his bag, taking only his switchblade. But as he rifled through his bag, he noticed something else that he hadn't seen in a very long time, buried beneath everything else, crumpled and disheveled.

He picked it up, staring at it intently. It was a photograph, taken long ago, of a girl. Aero bounced around his feet, saying, "Toby, what're you waiting for? Come on, let's go!"

Tobias murmured, "Hold on a sec." He remembered who that was, even though he hadn't thought about her in ages. His old childhood friend Iris, who had gone to school with him and was the same age. They had been good friends before their capture, but even inside Dunestone they remained best friends, talking constantly in one another's minds. But when Tobias was around eleven, she had been hauled off for execution, and he had never heard her name spoken since.

He remembered how long he grieved about her death, and found that the only way he could stop the pain was to make himself never think about it, and so he never did. He had stayed with her in her mind until she got out of reach with him . . . just as he had with his sister, who had been executed only a few months before.

He shook away the thoughts of sadness that rose within him again, and turned to the problem of the window which hovered in the air. Aero was still talking as he crawled through the hole in space, slipping his knife into his pajama pocket.

Aerotsierma followed him through, asking all the while, "Tobias? What just happened? How did you do that? Is that your gift? Making a hole through the worlds?"

Her human shrugged, murmuring, "I dunno, Aero . . . I just wanted it to happen, more than anything . . . and I guess that somehow, it did." Tobias emerged into the chilly darkness, his dæmon poised and ready behind him, sniffing the air for any scent of danger, or for that matter, life of any sort. As her human looked around at the scenery cautiously, Aerotsierma whispered, "Tobias, I smell something very faint . . . and very strange . . ."

Tobias didn't respond immediately, but glanced around in the darkness. It was very cold, and he was merely in his pajamas, and it was mostly too dark for him to see well. He shivered in the frigid wind and said, "I have no idea what world we've busted into . . . it's not like I actually chose or anything . . . it just happened."

His dæmon paused at the sound of a very faint rustling, but concluded that it was merely the wind. "I know, Toby . . . there's supposed to be thousands upon thousands of worlds . . . we could be in any random one."

Tobias gazed up, hoping to find a familiar view of the night sky star pattern, but instead found only the opaque darkness of nighttime clouds. So he began to hike up to the top of the hill, keeping his eyes out for any sign of life, avoiding the patches of snow.

Suddenly the breath was torn from him in a sudden gasp as a large dark figure hit him hard. Aero growled, but then squeaked in confusion, as the figure (which was human) had no dæmon.

Tobias disentangled himself from the human and stood up quickly, demanding, "Hey! Watch where you're going! Who are you, anyway?"

Tobias's assailant stood up, panting heavily, leaning in close enough so that Tobias could see his face by the dim light. It was a man with long hair and a heavy beard, dressed mostly in black, with a primitive-looking weapon clutched in one hand. Tobias quickly searched his mind before he had a chance to respond. His name was Hoomar, and he was running, quite panicked, from some sort of . . . monster?

Then he spoke, still panting, quickly and highly distraught in a very foreign language that Tobias didn't recognize. Tobias shook his head briefly, and instead went through his mind more in depth. The monster terrorized his people quite often, and was huge, white, bristly, with large teeth . . . from the looks of his thoughts and memories, Tobias concluded that this world had no, or little, technology of any sort. They seemed to live almost primitively, in a village of thatched houses. They were a peaceful bunch, of farming and agriculture, but the monster came often to the village and killed many before it left.

Upon closer notice, Tobias could see that the man's clothing were actually skins that seemed to be dyed black. But the fact that he had no dæmon was what sent the young boy's mind reeling . . . how could anyone survive without a dæmon?

But Tobias quickly searched his mind for this answer, and concluded something strange: the man felt no loss at not having a dæmon, in fact, he did seem to really have a dæmon, it was just . . . inside of him?

This puzzled Tobias, but there was no time for that. The man was jumping up and down, shouting something in a fearful voice, pointing down the hill. He grabbed Tobias's arm and ran.

Tobias pulled away and ran himself, side by side to the primitive man. He chanced a look over his shoulder, and a horrifying sight ensued. A gigantic beast had appeared over the summit of the hill, huge and white and shaggy, like an overgrown polar bear gone horribly wrong. It had scaly hands and feet with vicious, serrated claws on all toes. Its tail was also scaly, like a huge, colossal lizard or dinosaur.

But the scariest part of all had to be the teeth: longer than Tobias's arm, serrated, sabers. The beast flattened its large, catlike ears flat against its head and roared, narrowing its red-rimmed eyes in an almost sentient expression of anger.

Tobias, noticing this, searched its mind even as he ran in panic, discovering that the sentience was not there, only the primordial instincts of a killing-crazed beast.

Soon the madly running pair encountered two other skin-clad club-wavers, who shouted guttural cries and hurled spears at the beast. One was snatched out of midair by the behemoth, who snapped in clean in half with its saber teeth, and the other hit home, burying itself in the snowy white flank.

The beast roared a mind-shaking bellow, and tore the spear out with its teeth. Apparently unhurt in the least little bit, the beast turned on the two men and charged.

So the four of them together ran, but Tobias could feel the beast advancing quite quickly, until finally the four runners ground to a halt, panting, as they reached the edge of the forest. The club-equipped man, Hoomar, bellowed at the beast and tried to scare it away, but Tobias could've sworn that the monster was grinning as it advanced upon its meal slowly. It flicked out its massively long scaly tail, whipping the club out of the man's hand and sending it spinning away.

Tobias's mind was going insane. Was he going to die? His power of reading minds was useless now, and he knew there was nothing he could do. Whimpering, Aerotsierma leapt into his arms, pressing her small quaking body against his chest.

The beast made one last mighty leap, opening its colossal jaws wide, and descended upon one of the men that had thrown the spears.

He only had time to scream once before his cries were engulfed in the jaws of the beast. It took his head first, and he was still screaming when the jaws contracted, sending streams of blood cascading down his animal-skin clad body. He was still screaming, struggling terribly, his comrades at a complete loss, weaponless and unable to do anything. Tobias thought of his pocketed switchblade, but knew that if he tried to use it he'd be eaten as well.

So as he was pressed up against a rather large tree, he was forced to stand and witness the horrors before him as the great white beast devoured the man. Blood sprayed all around, coating Tobias and his newfound comrades. Soon the man's struggling stopped, and his body became limp as it dangled, torso down, from the beast's mouth. Then the beast raised its head, allowing the body to slide backwards all the way into its mouth. It chomped steadily, hot organs dripping from its jowls, its entire white face stained a deep red.

Finally it crunched into bone, causing shards of it to ricochet off of the tree trunks that they stood around. When at last there was no more left, Tobias found himself far too petrified to move a muscle, a scream bubbling in his throat but unable to get past his lips. When the creature belched and a shattered skull came up, Tobias felt bile rising in his throat instead, which did manage to get all the way up.

He retched, and at that moment a thought so obvious that it made his head whirl entered his mind, and he focused all his energy and Forthsight power to open a window back into his own world.

The dark sky opened up before him, and he could see trees and a dirt road before him. He grabbed the nearest man and shoved him through, using his mind to tell the other to follow.

Once on the other side, he sealed up the hole quickly with his mind. He was exhausted from the effort, and lay gasping in the dirt road, regaining his breath and composure. Aero curled at his side, panting.

When Tobias regained himself, he led the two men back near the inn, then opened another hole into their world, led them through, then sealed it up. He was utterly, utterly exhausted, and feeling quite sick from his close encounter with death and his witness of it. He trudged wearily up to his room in the inn, sealed up the window, and collapsed, defeated, into his bed. Aerotsierma yawned and curled up next to him. Forgetting the night's gruesome events, the two drifted off into a blessedly dreamless sleep.

Chapter Seven --->

Return to Fanfic/Fanart Home

Return Home