The Loop

Earlier

“They’re me, and they’re you,” I said, pushing out with my telepathy and telekinesis at the same time against the Christine-thing. The idea was to use the telepathy sparingly to momentarily block her access to her powers, making her unable to absorb my telekinetic shove. It had an effect, and she was pushed back some, but it would take many such pushes to get her away from Angie. And every time I took my eyes off her, she regained the ground she’d lost.

“I gathered that, thanks!” shouted Angie. “But how does that help us?” She was running around, desperately trying to avoid getting caught in the middle of the other three monsters. I couldn’t tell what Oneiros was doing exactly, not without sparing more of my focus, but I knew he was summoning something, subtly altering the Dreamworld to push back against the corruption and make conditions favorable for us.

“Well,” I said, as two massive suits of armor leaped over the outer wall of the hedge maze and started rushing toward the Christine-thing, “they’re more than just that. They’re also …”

It was too much to explain in words, especially while we were fighting, so I slipped back into telepathy, giving Angie a condensed play-by-play of our encounter with Pitch, how that had ended, how a bit of his mind and his power had ended up in my head, then hers, ending with Lincoln’s warning to me about my power. I punctuated the transmission with powerful images, moving pictures, sounds, feelings. I skipped a lot of dialogue, but I think she got the gist.

I knew it was a danger to use my telepathy on her—the wellbeing of the Christine-thing I wasn’t so worried about, so no worries there—but I reasoned that I’d already left a crumb of Pitch in Angie’s mind, and there couldn’t be that much risk in using my power on her now. Besides, it was the only way to get that much information across in a reasonable amount of time.

When I got to the part where Lincoln warned me against using my power, Angie gasped audibly. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but this is important.”

“Just get to the point. What’s the plan?”

I looped Oneiros in, showing him basically the same thing I’d shown my sister. Can your power help? I asked him.

I’ve never put dreams back in someone’s head, he thought. But I believe I can, yeah. She’ll have to get them close, though.

“You need to get them back in your head, Angie. Focus on those three for now. Oneiros will help you. I’ll— look out!” I shouted as a fireball rushed past my head, missing it by inches and heading straight for Angie. She moved a split second too late and ended up taking the brunt of the blast in the knee.

She went sprawling, rolling through the grass, but she got back up on her feet quickly, albeit with a noticeable limp. I didn’t have time to go check her wellbeing.

“Why the fuck would I want them back in my head?” she snarled through the pain. A trio of little metal birds were whizzing around her now, dive bombing the three lesser creatures when they tried to get close to her.

“Because they need to go somewhere for a little while, while we transfer them back to where they really belong. And they’ve changed too much since they were part of my mind to fit nicely back in there.”

It was mostly true. The reality was that once they were back in Angie’s head, I’d have to use my power on her in a deeper way, to try to separate out the constituent parts of these things and isolate the bits that came from Pitch from the rest of her mind, and I couldn't use my power like that on my own brain. Then we’d have to figure out where Pitch was being held, get Angie to him, and push the parts I’d taken from him back in.

It all seemed simple when I laid it out in my head, but I knew it would be anything but.

With the assistance of several of Oneiros's client's dream creations, as well as some that he was apparently pulling from his own mind on the fly to provide a distraction, I was finally managing to push the Christine-thing back. I forced her to commit energy to attacks that accomplished little, or to devote focus to things that didn't deserve it. I kept Angie's position relative to the action clear in my mind, and shouted instructions at her when I thought a stray attack was heading her way. But soon I wouldn't have to do that, because we'd be far enough away that she'd be temporarily safe from the Christine-thing.

It wasn't easy leaving her behind to deal with the other three without me, but I recognized that it was the best course of action. Still, having failed her so badly up to this point, I was determined not to screw up again.

Good luck, Ange, I thought. I didn't transmit the thought, keeping it only to myself.

The awful, violent internal monologue that had been plaguing me lately was still there, but I recognized it for what it was now, and that made it easier to ignore.

“Gah!” cried the Christine-thing as she struck down one clockwork bird only for two more to swoop in and obstruct her vision. “Fuck this awful place.” She shot a bolt of superheated air in a conical shape from her hand, hoping to catch both birds with it but only managing to hit one. In the meantime, three armored automatons had rushed forward in formation, blocking her sightlines and lines of attack while I pushed out with my power and moved her another six feet back.

I wished I could focus on the telepathic aspect of my power blocking her mind from accessing her powers for more than a few seconds at a time, but she recognized the intrusion of my thoughts quickly and forced me out of her head. I didn't think the real Christine could do that, but then, the real Christine didn't contain bits of my own mind in the very fabric of her being. So I had to resort to the one-two punch of blocking her power and pushing her. Any more serious telekinetic attack, like crushing bones or squeezing whatever black organ she had in place of a heart, would require too much mental finesse. My attacks were crude and inelegant and progress was slow, but it was working.

Besides, my goal wasn't to destroy her—I wasn't even sure what would happen if I did—but to subdue her long enough for Angie and Oneiros to get her back where she'd come from.

Every once in a while, the ground shifted beneath my feet, as if something large was moving underneath it. I assumed it was another of Oneiros's creations that he was holding back in case of emergency.

I hoped that's what it was.

I was disappointed to see the thing that resembled my father still on his feet and moving around, trying to flank and attack Angie after I'd crushed his ribs, but evidently these things didn't register pain exactly like real people. That, or they didn't rely on their bones like we do.

I jumped into the air, briefly using my power to keep myself suspended and fly a short distance to avoid a column of blue fire shot my way, and the Christine-thing cried out in frustration again. There was something almost comical about its over-the-top reactions, like it was some dastardly villain pulled straight out of a children's cartoon from many decades ago. And in a way, maybe it was. Angie and I had grown up on those sorts of cartoons. Some of its menace, some of its sheer wrongness and incredible malice, went out of it when it acted that way.

Some, but certainly not all.

Come on, Adam, I found it thinking the next time I dove into its mind. Help me, join me. I know you're repulsed by me in here, but on the outside I could look like anything. I could look like the real Christine. I could be the real Christine. You could have me.

Oh, shut the fuck up, I thought, attacking with more vigor and intensity then ever before.

I'm not sure what made me angrier, that this thing had the audacity to think I'd help it over my sister, or that it thought I could ever mistake it for the real Christine.

All I knew was that I was quite angry.

Now

The three of us stood in a line—Oneiros's giant red dog now stood off to the side without a rider, pacing and growling. The Christine-thing approached slowly, her face dreadful and full of hate but somehow still calm. Even now, she was confident in her ability to destroy us and escape. Which brought an interesting question to mind.

“How does she think she'll get out of here, even with us out of the way?” I asked Oneiros quietly.

“Ordinarily, either I have to use my power to eject someone out of the Dreamworld, or they have to fall asleep here to wake up in reality. I'm not sure these things can sleep, so I suppose she'd need me to get out.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “That, or …”

“Or she thinks if she killed you, the Dreamworld would be destroyed and we'd all get spit out.”

“When she shot you with a lightning bolt earlier,” interjected Angie, “it didn't kill you, it just pushed you out of this place.”

“I pushed myself out. I saw it coming and woke myself up in time. If it had hit me, who knows?”

“Which means she'd have to attack you in a way you couldn't see coming,” I said, starting to understand why she still looked so confident as something rumbled under our feet.

“Did you guys actually stick around the hole in reality long enough to confirm that there were only four creatures that came out?” I asked, but I already knew the answer.

I pushed the three of us apart with my telekinesis just as something broke through the ground in our midst. Between my power, and the force of its emergence, we were each flung back at least twenty feet. I used my power to keep myself oriented in the air to land on my feet. Angie rolled a few yards and came to rest on her belly. Oneiros got the worst of it, landing near a tree made of gold and rolling hard into the solid trunk.

I shook myself off and wiped some dirt out of my eyes and waited for the dust to settle enough to see what had emerged. Through the particulate that hung in the air, all I could tell was that it was something huge.

I heard Angie first gasp, then scream. She had a better vantage on the thing than I did. At her scream, the thing shifted its bulk toward her, and as the area cleared I saw what we were dealing with: a worm, easily fifty feet long and ten feet across, white and slimy. At the end facing toward Angie was a face, a round mouth full of shifting teeth.

It was her face.

I should have realized earlier that it didn’t make sense for all of her regrets and guilt and disappointments to become personified just in her dead friend, our parents, me. It had been presumptuous and arrogant to assume that I was responsible for that much of her state of mind.

The one person she was disappointed in above all others was herself. And now we had to contend with that.

The thing started its lumbering journey toward Angie, picking up speed as it dragged itself across the ground. It lifted its awful head with those swirling teeth as if preparing to strike. Angie, for her part, stood stock still, paralyzed with fear.

I was about to push her out of the way again with my power when something hit me from the side and sent me sprawling. I looked over in time to see another worm, much smaller but still at least twice my size, as it lunged at me again. I rolled out of the way and looked toward the hole in the ground, where at least two or three dozen of these smaller worms had emerged in the wake of the large one. More were pulling their way free even as I watched.

The large one—the one with the horrible mockery of Angie’s face at its head—was moments from falling upon her, and I was quickly becoming distracted by keeping the ones around me at bay.

Do something, Ange, I thought desperately to myself. Move! I directed this latter thought at her, but still she remained in place, merely leaning back as if that would save her.

The horrible thing lunged its head forward and I had just enough time to launch myself in the air, knowing I’d be too late to intercept it, knowing that she was about to die, when I heard her scream and saw another cloud of dust blow up around where she’d been.

No no no no no no no, I thought. My power failed me and I crashed to the earth. I had no coherent thoughts, nothing I could latch onto. The smaller worms were approaching me, surrounding me again and I was almost content to let them. What was the point? Why would I still fight?

I’m sorry, Ange.

I looked up again, intending to say my last goodbye, and I saw what this new dust cloud had been hiding: the giant worm was on its side, writhing and struggling as the giant dog, Oneiros once more astride its back, tore at it with sharpened claws and tried to get its massive jaw around the thing’s neck—or the area that would have been its neck if it weren’t a worm.

It wasn’t her scream, I realized. It only sounded like her voice.

As the relief rushed through me, I felt a surge of energy, and used it to fling three of the worms closest to me through the air. They crashed into solid metal tree trunks and folded, leaking some viscous, nightmare fluid from tears that opened in their segmented bodies. They writhed and twitched for a few moments and then were still.

Ten or so yards away, the Christine-thing, ever grinning that caustic grin, started running toward me. I pushed out with both my powers and she stopped for a few seconds, but another worm rushed my left side, breaking my concentration. They could move surprisingly quickly for things confined to squirming and wriggling.

I tossed the worm away, and in the time it took to do so, the Christine-thing was almost upon me. She could have used her power at a distance to kill me with fire or lightning or blind me with some incredible burst of light, but there was a sort of unhinged violence in her eyes and I realized she wanted to kill me with her bare hands.

Rather than give her the chance, I went on the defensive, throwing myself into the air and throwing large clumps or dirt from around the hole where the worms had emerged into the air in front of her. They broke apart into spectacular clouds of dust and bought me some time to retreat while she was blinded.

At least, they would have if she'd been fighting like a normal person. Instead, she kicked off from the ground, obviously supplementing her jump with a massive burst of kinetic energy, and flung herself forty feet in the air. She was several yards above the debris that should have been hiding me from her sight, and moving forward at the same time. I flew backwards, but it was a near thing as she came within a yard of me in the air, her arms extended as if to embrace me.

I used my powers in tandem again to arrest her movement, causing her to plummet to the ground. This is it, I thought. If I can just block her access to her power long enough for her to hit the ground, it'll break her legs at the very least.

The main worm, the one that had been momentarily knocked off its course of taking out Angie by the dog, chose that moment to strike upwards toward me. Its massive jaw appeared to unhinge as its undulating mouth full of rotating, razor sharp fangs came within range of my legs.

The worm’s head was knocked off course by the flying Sphinx, who'd finally come to her senses after the Christine-thing had knocked her aside minutes ago, but too late; my concentration had been broken just before the Christine-thing had hit the ground, and I heard a sort of triumphant growl from below me as she hit the ground and her power absorbed the energy of the impact.

I continued my ascent, intent on getting high enough that neither the great worm or the Christine-thing’s power-augmented jumps could reach me.

I circled the battlefield, staying just low enough that those below were still at the edge of my powers’ ranges.

Angie was being circled by several of the smaller worms, while Oneiros charged in with what looked like a six foot long sword made of glowing crystal.

He lobbed the head off of one of the worms, but another swung the front half of its body in a wide arc, tossing him and my sister into the air.

The Christine-thing started moving toward them. My problem was that, while I was safe at this distance, my powers weren't nearly as effective as they were closer in. I kept pushing against the Christine-thing with both powers, but weak as they were, I was barely slowing her down. I could sense her grim satisfaction as she didn't even try to kick me out of her mind, confident that I didn't have the strength to cut off her access to her power for long.

Below me, the largest worm kept its eyes on me, moving its bulk around to keep its head underneath me at all times. It had dispatched the Sphinx and Oneiros's dog, who both lay on their sides. The dog's chest rose and fell rapidly, and blood pooled beneath it. The Sphinx emitted a low, constant howl, and I could feel within its body that its left hind leg, several ribs, and both wings were shattered.

The Christine-thing stopped within a hundred feet of my sister, who was lying prone, probably unconscious, with Oneiros kneeling in front of her, arms out as if to shield her. His crystal sword lay twenty feet away. The last of the smaller worms had been dispatched, and I saw more shards of the crystal stuff sticking out of them in places, wounds from which more of that sticky ichor leaked.

He'd put up a good fight, but all his animated dream creations now lay dead or dying, his weapons were cast aside, and nothing more stood between him and death.

The Christine-thing took a tentative step forward, as if she expected him to have another trick up his sleeve. She took another step. I dove, and the great worm snapped at me, nearly taking an arm off. I pushed against it, but its bulk was too great for me to move it much. I only pushed its mouth off course enough that its jaw snapped down on air instead of flesh. The thing heaved out a breath of rancid hot air as it moved back and down, and that was enough to push me back up into the air, and give it ample time to position itself to counter another attempted attack.

The Christine-thing took another step forward. Oneiros clapped his hands together in front of him, and pillars of stone started shooting up from the ground between the Christine-thing and himself. He should have used the distraction to get up and run, carrying my sister, or dragging her along, or … But I could see he didn't have the strength left in him. The use of his power took energy and concentration, same as mine, and he didn't have much of that left. Only enough to buy a few precious seconds, to cling to life for a few moments more.

The rules of this place were confusing. It was both real and not. I hadn't thought it possible to get tired in a dream, and yet here I was. It shouldn't be possible to die in a dream, and yet I had no doubt that we could.

I tried to dive again and the great worm actually succeeded in grazing its teeth along the right side of my body, from armpit to knee, gouging a deep gash. The pain of it stole my breath and sent my thoughts askew. I only barely managed to keep myself in the air, watching with a mixture of revulsion and distant fascination at the blood that was pouring from me and striking the earth below with audible wet thumps.

That can't all have been inside me, I thought, feeling almost giddy. It was strangely comical just how much of it there was.

My thoughts were getting hazier, and the scene beneath me seemed less and less important, like a stage play that I was only half-interested in. I realized I'd rather be sleeping and I started drifting lazily toward the ground.

The worm doesn't care about me anymore, I thought. It can tell I'm just sleepy.

I watched as a strange, monstrous woman knocked aside pillars of stone like they were nothing. On the other side of those stones, a man and a girl were on the ground. The man sat upright and was staring at me, mouthing or shouting words I couldn't hear or understand. The girl on the ground behind him stirred.

Angie, I thought. I know her.

ANGIE, the thought cut through my stupor like a crack of thunder through a still night. My vision cleared and all the sound in the world came rushing back. I looked beneath me to see my blood reversing course through the air, flowing back into my body. My torn skin was being stitched back together by fine strands of what looked like gold. I looked and saw filaments of the stuff pulling themselves free of the nearest tree and moving through the air toward me.

I guess he did have another trick up his sleeve, I thought.

Some part of my mind had been active enough to slow my fall through the air, and I engaged my power now to reorient myself and land on my feet. The great worm noticed now that I wasn't going to be an easy meal, lying on the ground and bleeding out into the dirt. It twisted its great mass around and prepared to strike, or perhaps to crush me beneath it.

I lunged to the side and dodged its first strike. The noise attracted the Christine-thing’s attention, and she picked up her pace toward Oneiros, toward Angie, no longer playing games. I grabbed several of the crystal protrusions from the dead worms with my power, seeing that they were shaped like knives.

I twisted through the air as the thing struck again, letting it get within a few inches of taking another bite out of me and launching several of the crystal knives at the massive bulbous eyes that were so like my sister's. It roared in agony and reared its head back as black blood, thick as motor oil and rancid as sewage left long in the sun, fell in a rain around me. While it was writhing and jabbing its head around randomly, cold, blind hatred and revenge on its mind, I flew in closer to where my sister was just now getting to her feet.

I put the full weight of my powers into stopping the Christine-thing, and managed to halt her progress. She looked back at me, still smiling her infuriatingly confident smile. I allowed a tiny bit of my focus to shift, to feel the space around me, and I knew the great worm was making its plodding journey toward me, evidently navigating by scent.

A stalemate, she thought. If you let your focus slip to deal with The Wyrm, I kill your sister. If you keep your focus, The Wyrm kills you.

Please, I thought. Let her go. I'll help you get out. We can all get out.

A bluff? she thought. And not a very good one.

Was I bluffing? In that moment, I honestly didn't know what I was capable of doing to save my sister. But I was buying time.

While the Christine-thing kept her gaze on me, I slid a crystal knife along the ground toward Angie, and I sent a single, solitary thought her way: open your hand.

I could split my attention. I didn't need to use my telekinesis and my telepathy on a single target at the same time. I released the hold I had on the Christine-thing’s body, and pulled my thoughts into a tight bundle, focused only on the part of her brain that connected her to her power, maintaining a foothold while giving her the impression that I'd departed entirely. She didn't hesitate in her movement toward Oneiros and my sister.

In the same instant, I spun, grabbing the crystal sword out of the air with my hand as I launched it toward myself with my power. I jumped into the air toward the great worm.

Oneiros's dog had gained his feet and I slipped him a simple yet urgent telepathic impetus: save your master.

The dog, even injured, was fast, and he reached Oneiros moments before he would have been swatted aside like a bug. The Christine-thing paid no mind as she stepped around the dog, who carried Oneiros away in his mouth. She was evidently confident that she'd be able to kill him after she killed my sister. She wanted out, yes, but in that moment she wanted to hurt me even more. She continued on to Angie, who stood her ground with the knife held behind her back.

I spun a few times in the air, then threw the sword with an extra telekinetic force added for speed and stability. It flew fast and true as it struck the roof of the worm's mouth and emerged out the back of its head, glistening with black blood and brains. The thing crashed to the ground finally, writhing still but with no more power to act.

I threw the full weight of my telepathy back into the Christine-thing’s mind just as she had gathered a ball of white fire in her hand. She stopped, looked down at her hand dumbly as the fire flicked out of existence, and then collapsed as a knife came to rest in her neck.

If I released my telepathic hold on her now, she'd probably still die, but no doubt she'd kill my sister first out of spite, and the other things would be released from her mind again, with no vessel to put them in to carry them back to Pitch.

But if we waited much longer, the Christine-thing would die anyway, and I knew I had to gather all the errant pieces of Pitch to put back, and she was one of the most important.

Oneiros had brought his dog to a stop, fixing the animal's wounds with his power as he went, he whirled around now to face Angie and stuck his arms out toward her.

Now, I thought. Do it, Ange.

She hesitated, obviously not too certain about taking this thing that she hated back inside herself.

You don't have to carry it forever, I thought. And you don't have to do it alone. Not anymore.

She dropped to her knees, tears shining in her eyes and on her cheeks. “I'm so sorry, Sarah,” she whispered, as their foreheads met.

There was a flash of light, a clap of thunder, and the thing was gone.

“Is that it?” she asked. “Is it over?”

“One more,” said Oneiros, pointing. We all followed his gaze and found ourselves staring at the still twitching body of the great worm.

“Quickly,” I said, “before it expires.”

She rushed over to the thing that wore the grotesque mockery of her own face. Without any of the hesitation she'd shown before, she shoved her forehead against its, and then it, too, was gone.

“No hesitation on that one?” I asked.

“That one's mostly my own guilt,” she said, “And I'll be carrying it with me no matter what —”

“But not —” I started to interject.

“— but not alone. I know.” She smiled at me for the first time in what felt like years.

“Now let's get the hell out of here,” I said, looking at Oneiros, who was kneeling over the fallen body of the Sphinx.

“Can you fix her?” I asked.

“I could, but it might be better to let her rest. I think maybe I'll leave this part of the Dreamworld alone, move my operation somewhere else. Maybe the West Coast.”

“Are you ready?” I asked him, more gently.

“Just give me one more minute,” he said, and I saw that he was crying.

“You did good, kid,” I said to my sister, who had come over and now stood at my side. She bumped into me and gave me a side hug and laughed a small, shaky laugh.

“But it isn't over yet, is it?”

“I'm afraid that was only phase one,” I said.

We stood a moment in silence, looking over the devastation that we'd caused to this place, and hoping against everything that the next part of the plan would be a little less awful.