Lucid (14 page)

As soon as I reached the top, I had no time to plan. Leona's form changed as I vaulted the side of the banister. Her hair grew wild like a mane around her face. Her red nails extended into curved claws, and her mouth held thick fangs like sabers. Her eyes grew wider, and the irises were bright yellow. Her pupils reduced to slits
.

My stomach turned cold, but I had enough sense to move as Leona attacked me. It seemed she was done having conversations
.

“You have done
enough to my resort!” Leona snarled as she slashed her claws, her hair flying wildly
.

“Go, Devon, go!” Kyle shouted as I rolled around and shot magic. Leona stayed away from my attacks, as if she were afraid of my powers.

“What's the matter?” I asked bravely, feeding off of my own power. “Sad the tables turned, Leona? You're not the hot shot here now!”

“Uh, Devon,” Kyle was trying to get my attention. Leona slashed again at me, and I moved away just in time. I shot lightning at her and she stepped back
.

“Thanks, Kyle
.
” I turned to my brother. “I owe you one.”

“You owe me your life,” Kyle commented. “But I'd get me out of this chair if I were you.”

“Yeah, we gotta go.” I shot some lightning at the chains. They melted like butter.

“Not just that
.
” Kyle massaged his wrists
.

“What else?” I heard laughter. I looked up and saw Leona advancing, no longer fearing my magic.

“You're out of your magic juice.” Kyle created a mirror with his returned dream powers. Sure enough, the light around me flickered for a bit before returning to a ball of light next to my shoulder. I saw my eyes growing fearful in my reflection, like I was turning back into a useless, fifteen
-
year-old boy
.

“Now we will see who is most powerful!” Leona sounded triumphant. “This is
my domain!” She pounced on us
.

Thankfully, Kyle still had all of his powers. He created a large shield that deflected Leona's attack.

“I'll handle her; you get Tiff!” Kyle called to me. “Those Nightmare dudes are also getti
ng really angry, but some force field of Leona's is keeping them out. I don't think it'll hold forev
er, though, so we should move!”

“How do you know all of this?” I asked Kyle before running to Tiff.

“I'll explain later!” Kyle had now created an
ax to swing at Leona. “Just wake up Tiff!”

I ran over to Tiff who had been standing next to Leona's chair this entire time. She looked even grimmer up close. Her lifeless eyes made her look more like a doll than a human. Aside from her shallow breathing you wouldn't think she was a living person.

“Come on, Tiff
.
” I concentrated like I did for Melissa. “You need to wake up!” I touched her arm. Nothing happened. I tried shaking her shoulders, but her eyes remained lifeless
.

“Would you like a strawberry smoothie, sir?” s
he asked blandly as if she were a recording
.

“No, Tiff!” I shook her again
.

I looked up and saw Kyle was putting up a good fight with Leona, but she was stronger than he'd anticipated. Kyle and Leona were both creating weapons to throw at each other. Twice Kyle had to deflect Leona's weapons away from Tiff and me. I had to hurry.

“TIFF! Wake up!” I shook her a little more violently. I almost wanted to slap her awake, but knowing my luck Tiff would remember it and brutally punish me the next day. “We need you!”

Still nothing. Tiff's eyes remained blan
k as she stared ahead. The only light on her eyes now was the reflection from my ball of light
.

That was it!

I touched the light on my shoulder. This time it didn't move away from me, so I could pick it up. It felt like an extremely warm and very fluffy ball of cotton candy. I pushed the ball to Tiff. Almost immediately it sunk into her chest and disappeared. Tiff's eyes fully opened.

“Devon
?
” She looked startled for a minute. Then she did something unexpected; she threw herself into my arms. “Devon
, thank God!”

I felt stunned; Tiff was
never this affectionate. I awkwardly patted her back until she regained her composure
.

“I thought I was going to be here forever,” Tiff said. “It was the worst nightmare… I-I was stuck as a slave cocktail waitress.” She looked down at her short, p
astel pink outfit. “Oh, gross!”

I started to laugh at her disgust. Then I realized something was happening. Tiff
's entire body started to fade!

“Tiff!” I tried grabbing her shoulder, but my arm passed through it. “What's happening?”

“I think I'm waking up!” Tiff looked just as scared as I felt. “Devon, I don't wanna leave you here! You saved me!”

“I got Mitch and Kyle,” I assured her. “We're gonna clear all this mess up. We'll bring the others home!”

“I'll do all I can to help from the outside
,
” Tiff promised me. “And I'll practice lucid dreaming!”

“You stay there
,
” I told her. “I'll wake up soon.”

Tiff tried to say something else but she vanished. I somehow knew she wouldn't be able to return to this world. That made me feel a little better.

“A little help, Devon!” Kyle called me back to the situation. He was having a rough time fighting Leona. The woman roared furiously as she threw spike after spike at my brother. Kyle did a good job deflecting most, but one snagged his shoulder. He knelt in pain but held his shield aloft.

“What should we do?” I ran behind his shield and assessed his shoulder. The wound was small but deep. It had to be very painful
.

“We gotta jump down to the arena
,
” Kyle said, panting with exhaustion and pain. “The path below us leads to gardens and then to forests. Something lives in the forest that keeps Leona out. I think if we get there we'll be safe. I can create transportation.” He grunted as Leona threw more spikes at the shield, which began cracking slightly
.

“
W
hen?” I asked.

“Now
.
” Kyle grabbed hold of my collar and toppled us both over the balcony. Leona continued shooting spikes at us, but we somehow managed to avoid all of them by holding the shield above our heads. Before we landed, Kyle created a large mattress. We bounced off harmlessly and landed on the sand. Mitch stumbled over; he didn't leave like I told him to, even though he was still losing blood
.

“Fine!” Leona called from above. “If you wish to endure pain, I can provide it. Nightmares, my brethren, attack these human intruders!”

She lifted the force field and we were suddenly surrounded by tens of thousands of Nightmares
.

“Here!” Kyle closed his eyes for a moment. Suddenly, a huge rocket appeared
.

“A rocket
?
” I looked at Kyle skeptically. “We're gonna explode!”

“I panicked!” Kyle shouted back. “But do you wanna stay around here with
them?” The Nightmares in the first row were nearing spear-throwing distance
.

“No,” Mitch spoke first as he approached Kyle's cre
ation. “Let's ride the rocket.”

I'm sure some of you reading this would think that riding a rocket would make an awesome roller coaster ride. Well, this is not your regular
amusement park ride
. If it weren't for special dream world physics
, and if Kyle hadn't done some quick thinking to create grooves and handles to keep us on, we would've been long dead before any Nightmares reached us.

However, feeling like my skin was going to fly off my body, my eyeballs were going to dry up in my head, and trying to avoid puking at the same time wasn't that much better. We zoomed out of the coliseum tunnel and zipped past the garden. The forest rushed to meet us, and I felt branches whip my face like razors. The only good parts were that we left Leona and the Nightmares far behind, and the ride ended sooner than expected
.

No, it didn't explode, but I think my brother felt sicker than I did on the rocket. When Kyle gets frustrated or uncomfortable with things, he just gets rid of them. Out of sight, out of mind is his motto. So, without warning, the rocket vanished beneath us, and we skidded on our butts for a mile. If it weren't a dream world, we would've burned to a crisp. Since it
was a dream world, we only bumped off of the ground, tumbled into a valley, and passed out
.

Vivax and Sophia

I woke up sometime later with a terrible headache. Eventually, I sat up and allowed my eyes to adjust slowly to the light. After blinking a few times, I saw that it was sunset. This sort of confused me; I didn't think the dream world had regular days. How long had I been asleep, then? I half-expected to wake up in my own bed after passing out in the dream world. I looked around and saw Mitch and Kyle were both still knocked out, lying around me. I guess they weren't going to wake up at home, either
.

After the headache subsided a little, I managed to get to my feet. My right arm, where Serpentine scratched me, felt pretty bad, but the rest of me seemed okay
. My bare feet felt cool on the soft grass
.

I looked around at the valley. It was near the base of the mountains and surrounded by pastel-colored trees. I realized how different it looked compared to Leona's resort. The colors of her resort were so bright, her architecture rigid. Here, things moved in a more graceful way and everything was colored much softer. I suppose the same can be said about the real world — man-made scenes are always harsher to the eye than nature
.

The air was very still, but I didn't feel like I was in danger. The silence wasn't tense, it just
existed. I felt like I did when I stepped off of Leona's spaceship and into the barren darkness. Only this time there were objects and light. It was as if the forest and mountains beyond Leona and the Nightmare's territory belonged to another type of dream, a more
natural and somehow older dream
.

“You are admiring my valley, I see.”

I jumped about a mile as I heard someone speak behind me. Stumbling back against a tree
, and hurting my arm in the process
, I turned around half-expecting Serpentine to show up. Instead, I was looking at a young woman around Mitch and Kyle's age.

The newcomer was a little taller than me, had tanned skin, and long, auburn hair. She was dressed in strange clothes that reminded me both of business attire and tribal outfits. Her top was a collared, button-down, sleeveless tunic that was artfully ripped around her short, brown leather skirt. She wore matching knee-high combat boots. Several golden bracelets, so close together that they resembled gauntlets, covered her biceps. A golden headband arched around her head like a Grecian warrior, and she had what looked like a dark green, designer scarf around her neck. A sheath of arrows and a bow were slung across her chest. I couldn't decide if she was late for a business meeting or dressed for battle
.

“Hello, Devon
.
” S
he smiled at my bewilderment. The Dreamer was very pretty. She didn't seem to be wearing any makeup but had a natural glow about her face. Her eyes stood out the most, however. They were light grey and shone in the light of the fading sun, causing her pupils to look like two pinpricks of light.

“You!” I now recognized her as the Dreamer who appeared to me and gave me magic powers. “You showed up in the coliseum!”

“And I saved you and your friends
.
” T
he Dreamer placed her hands on her hips and tossed back her hair. She raised one eyebrow as she regarded me. “I think you owe me thanks.”

“Oh” I was taken aback by her quick retort. “Yeah, I mean… thanks.”

“Of course, you are the one who had the powers to begin with
,” t
he Dreamer mused, not listening to my gratitude. “But I guess you will learn about that soon. Let me introduce myself. I am Vivax, t
hough most people call me Viv.”

“Um, hey, Viv.” I felt strange calling the elusive Dreamer by her nickname. “Listen…
do you know how my friends and I can wake up?”

Viv looked at me with a mixture of surprise and pity
.

“You cannot wake up yet
,
” s
he said softly. I knew her grey eyes saw how tired I was
, and eager to return home, to tell my mom I was okay
, and to check on Tiff. “We have been waiting for you and your companions for quite some time. Y
ou also used your lifeline out of here on your friend.”

“What?” I instinctively looked to my shoulder. My ball of light hadn't reappeared yet. “When will it return?”

“That depends on if you master it.” Viv shrugged, turning away from me. “Come, we must wake your friends. There is much to explain and little time to do so.”