Chapter 50
The Nightmares pour down the slope toward the crew like a black avalanche, snow spraying upward around them.
drawing weapons.
Rougeina Swaps toward the front of the stampede, aiming for a rock.
She lands somewhere else entirely: a narrow hallway lined with mirrors, her own face in every one of them slowly fading, far from the others. The ridge, the crew and the snow are gone.
Her reflection smiles at her a half-second late.
Vigolas swings green lightning at the stampede. The lightning comes out as snow: harmless, glittering, falling upward.
hands up, panicking.
shaking snow out of his fist.
Drekk swings his axe into the first Nightmare: solid hit. It works. He grins.
on the axe haft. They're going transparent, fading like breath on glass.
grabbing his shoulder, shaking him.
eyes squeezed shut, gasping.
His hands go solid again.
The Nightmares hit them.
Smurjan walks the Sightline through the front rank, one palm strike per Nightmare, precise and fast, but there are hundreds, and each one he drops rises again behind him.
Bakasura erupts from his shadow and bites a Nightmare in half. It tastes like a scream, and he spits it out, gagging. "…Worst… thing… I've… ever… eaten…"
Trollmage has waited for nothing and can cast nothing. He hits a Nightmare with his Codex, hard. It doesn't help.
Drekk swings, solid now, roaring, "DECK! DOG! DECK! DOG!"
The crew is pushed back to the edge of a frozen cliff. Below them, the river of black ice cracks with old voices. Nowhere left to go.
back to the cliff, snow-lightning fizzling in his fists.
A small, clear ding, like a bell on a shop door.
A light comes down the ridge: one small warm lantern, swinging, carried by a figure walking calmly through the Nightmares, which part around her like water around a stone.
VAKA. A girl of fifteen in an oversized nightshirt and big snow boots, a moth-eaten scarf wrapped three times around her neck, hair in two messy braids. She carries a battered iron lantern on a pole, its flame a steady, gentle gold. She looks exhausted, and amused.
VAKA · the Lantern · K-II MARKED · Scalelist #402,118 · status: ASLEEP (8 yrs)
raising the lantern.
She touches the lantern to Drekk's forehead. Light blooms in his eyes, gold, warm. He gasps.
looking at his hands, solid and steady. He looks up at the stampede with new eyes. Then, slowly, he imagines: his axe grows, until it's the size of a ship's mast.
Vaka lights them one by one: Trollmage, Smurjan, Vigolas. Each one's eyes catch the gold.
lit, looking at his fists. He thinks hard. The snow on his knuckles crackles and turns green: lightning again. Weaker than in the waking world, but his.
Over the ridge behind Vaka, carrying lanterns of every shape and size, come the Lucid: dozens of dreamers from every corner of the realms, in nightclothes, night-caps, an old man in a bathrobe with a rolling pin, a soldier in long johns with a sabre, twin children on a sled, a troll in a nightgown swinging a bedpost. Every one of them has golden light in their eyes.
They hit the Nightmare stampede from the flank, lanterns blazing. Where the light falls, the Nightmares lose their shapes, flickering back into shadow.
At the front, Drekk swings an axe the size of a mast in a great arc, roaring. Vigolas rides behind the swing, green lightning on both fists. Smurjan walks the Sightline through the gap they open.
The stampede breaks and scatters up the ridge into the upward snow. The Lucid cheer, sleepily. The troll in the nightgown yawns hugely.
lowering her lantern and leaning on its pole, suddenly very tired.
horrified.
shrugging, smiling a little.
looking at this tired kid with her lantern. He doesn't joke.
third eye on the horizon.
pointing with the lantern.
under the vast sleeping golden flank of the sky-dog. Far away, a horse of shadow gallops across the sky, hooves striking sparks of frost from the clouds, toward a single lit cabin standing alone in the snow.
watching it.