Chapter 2 – World's End

Note – The DreamWeaver would like to extend sincerest appreciation to thegmefreek for their kindness in beta reading this dream. The DreamWeaver is grateful.


"What… the fuck… is that…?" Aurelia heard the ragged sound of Nick's voice near her shoulder but she couldn't find it in herself to tear her eyes away.

As the Lovecraftian horror slowly descended from the clouds, long tentacles reaching through the puffs of black smoke with languid, lithe motions, panic sounded. The screams of the terrified mingled with the groans of the injured and the slaps of running feet. Costumed and uncostumed convention goers alike began to run like frightened deer, scrambling in every which way to get somewhere other than here. A loud noise sounded from the creature, a deep bugling horn that reverberated in Aurelia's skull as it echoed off the chaos and destruction around them.

The pressure of the weight of their combined bodies atop her eased as Nick rolled to the side to cover his ears with his hands, groaning slightly. As they were in a relative corner, some place most of the panicking convention goers didn't want to be, they were being left untrampled by the stampeding civilians. Aiden drew himself off her, hauling his legs underneath him until he was upright in a crouch next to his sister. Aurelia rolled onto her stomach and was getting herself into a kneeling position when she froze as a sudden memory rolled into her mind.

Tentacles. Sky. Ship. Sovereign. REAPERS!

"Aiden! Aiden, do you remember three years ago? When that geth ship attacked the Citadel?" Aurelia suddenly chimed as Nick climbed to his feet next to her.

"Yeah, it was all over the extra-net." The older boy came back.

"Commander Shepard said it was Reapers." Nick added thoughtfully.

Her point already made, she slammed her hand forward with an index finger extended at the creature. "What the hell does that look like?"

The two boys are silent for a moment as they followed the line of her arm to the point of her finger to the Old God as it eased down from the sky to hover against the clouds. And then, their jaws dropped open which Aurelia took for realization.

"Oh god… it's the end of the world…"

)(

Fear was rising swiftly in Nick's throat as he stared at the blackening sky, filled with horrors beyond his wildest nightmares, and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Next to him, he could see the same emotions broiling through the siblings as he took in their paled features and ever wider growing emerald eyes. This… This wasn't happening… This wasn't supposed to happen… Parliament decried Shepard's accusations of Reapers, stating it was an isolated incident related to the geth. The Galactic Council had decreed that there were no such thing as Reapers, that Sovereign had been a geth ship used by the former Spectre, Saren.

"Guess the Council was wrong…" he heard Aiden mutter darkly across from him as they watched the sky fill with red light. Police cruisers were taking to the skies, racing to stop the incoming ships from further destruction of their homes and the oily black machines were firing back. Nick's jaw tightened as he watched the sky battle open with several cruises abruptly bursting into flames and traveling back in the opposite direction as they crashed.

"Come on," Aurelia's voice called him back out of the clouds. "We've watched enough apocalypse vids to know that if we had no warning, they've probably taken out all the communications satellites. Chances of us calling Mom and Dad are slim. We need to head home to link up with them."

"Yeah, plus we don't want to stay in one place too long. Second rule of zombie survival games, always keep moving." Aiden agreed and Nick was suddenly grateful that he was spending the day the world ended with two video game nerds. If anyone had gone through this scenario enough times in their head, it would be these two. They probably had contingency plans coming out of their ears, seeing as how they owned and could quote every single survival and apocalypse vid ever made for the last three centuries. It's good to have geeks on your side.

He moved with the siblings toward their bags that had been left carelessly in the corner while they were taking pictures, but movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention and he turned abruptly. Fire was raining down from the sky around the monstrosities backed against the clouds and he stopped to marvel at it. He wondered, for the briefest of moments, if it was debris from destroyed satellites or if there was really a space battle going on above them.

And then a flaming ball flashed onto the ground in front of him and the moment was completely and utterly destroyed.

The flames vanished within seconds of touchdown, revealing a standing humanoid form! Nick stumbled back with a cry that alerted Aiden and Aura as the red cleared from his vision and left the pale, washed out frame of an unclothed human. The siblings jolted upright as the thing turned toward him and they all gasped.

The center of mass on the creature looked as though it had been ripped out and replaced a network of glowing blue tubes. For a split second, he was reminded of a very old comic book character that had a similar glowing blue circle set into his chest… But then the memory was gone as the creature opened its mouth to reveal blackened teeth and released an unearthly moan that sent the hairs on the back of his neck into immediate attention. Oh. No. No. Fuck. Zombies. From space. Space zombies. Fuck, no. Fuck this. No fucking way.

"This… can't be real…" Aiden breathed before a flash of ebony black hair caught both of their attention and they were startled out of their reverie as Aurelia suddenly dropped into a sprint.

"Aura!" Nick found himself crying out as the dark haired girl charged forward, straight at the thing! His call for her name didn't seem to check the girl's steps as she raced toward it, red skirt flying behind her like a flag. And then, a flash of white and blonde caught his attention and he realized what Aura's ultimate goal was. Standing not more than five feet in front of the zombie was the waist-high form of a small girl. No more than three or four years of age, she was paralyzed with fear at the sight of the creature in front of her and tears of terror were rolling down her cheeks.

"Down!" His body reacted before his mind got a chance to catch up, his voice echoing of its own accord in the chaos of the room. His arms rocked backwards in a massive scooping motion as he took the mental plunge into the depths of his calm center. He released the strangle hold of control he had over his innate abilities and came back up, blue eyes filled with the glow of energy as he threw his hands forward. Though before they were empty, now they were filled with blue energy that crackled and hummed as it crawled up his arms and shot from his hands. The creation of the mass effect field was swift and honed into a single purpose as he fired it at the monster.

Aura, never one to miss a cue, had canted both her legs forward at his exclamation, dropping onto her hip with her ankle cocked just right that she executed a perfect homeplate slide the last eight feet to the small child. He saw her twisting her body as she skidded to a halt level with the child, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the slick floors as she wrapped her arm around the girl's waist. The mass effect field blasted right over the tops of their heads, blasting the creature backwards as Aura scrambled onto her feet with the child in her arm.

"Go!" she shouted as she came upright and she and the child started to run back toward them. The biotic male's powers crackled and hissed over his arms as he tore his gaze from Aura's face just as more fireballs flared up on the street beyond him. Oh hell…

"No! Stop! Don't go that way!" Aiden was suddenly shouting, waving his arms as he caught sight of a group of people that were racing directly at the monsters that were appearing in the street all around them. Several of them slowed their panicked run at the sound of his voice, but others were charging straight into danger as a bigger fireball impacted on the ground so hard that it rolled under Nick's feet. He found himself swearing quietly as he grabbed the little girl from Aura and tuned his biotics up to flatten his hands against an invisible wall before the energy solidified into a crackling blue barrier.

"Go stop them, I've got her." He told her and watched her eyes change abruptly. They had held a terrified gleam on unshed tears until he spoke and she looked up at him for a moment. When she turned away to race toward the sheeple racing directly into their doom, they were filled with a determination he knew all too well from her video game days. Fear wasn't about to stop her now as her left hand came up to touch the wrist bracelet of her omni-tool.

)(

A blissful numbness filled Aura as she turned away from Nick, her gamer's instincts kicking in to calm her jittering nerves just before she took on an epic boss battle. The adrenaline of the fight raced through her veins like a searing flame and burned away all traces of anxiety and fear as her feet kicked up. This was just a game, a wild game, and soon she'd beat the boss and reality would resume around her. She just had to stay focused and she would make it through this section and they'd score an awesome cutscene. She just had to stay calm.

She tagged Aiden's shoulder as she ran past him, aiming for the fleeing civilians as more of those zombies turned toward them. "Come on! We have to stop them!"

Aiden's gamer drive must have kicked on too, his mind refusing to accept that this was real, because he didn't hesitate to follow his sister's lead. The siblings took off across the lobby, feet crunching broken glass and legs leaping nimbly over chunks of broken debris that had scattered across the marble floors when the building across came down. The zombies were moaning their horrific zombie sound and people were screaming, their race for freedom suddenly being met with opposition as they recoiled at the sight of the creatures.

Aiden diverted for the head of the crowd, racing to head them off from getting any closer to the Reaper zombies while Aura's course stayed clear on. A zombie's arms were reaching toward a girl who had been at the head of the group and she was on a collision course with him… it… Aura's feet carried her straight and true at the creature, her world narrowing to the view of the zombie as everything else dropped away into nothing.

Suddenly, she swung her arm backwards. The omni-tool flashed as its holographic interface pulled itself together along the length of her arm to her elbow. The orange glow shuddered and twisted as a program cued to that specific movement suddenly kicked to life and the omni-tool made an abrupt reform. Aura's booted foot planted on the firm surface of a fallen hunk of debris, her leg muscles bunching before she launched a precision leap into the air as a blade formed over the top of her omni-tool. For a second, the world slowed and she hung in the air with effortless ease, it was something out of a vid!

And then the world reeled back into action and she slammed the blade straight into the eye socket of the zombie with her full weight coming down into its body. There was a terrifying moment where it looked like her inertia was going to carry her head over heels into the ground, but her feet seemed to find sure footing as the creature crumbled to the ground below her. The blade retracted back into the interface of the omni-tool and her focus widened again.

"… Back to the barrier, hurry!" Aiden's voice was yelling as he was herding the group off to the right from the way they just came, back towards Nick and the little girl.

"OR! Behind you!" That momentary battle was won but the fight, it seemed, was far from over.


The DreamWeaver hopes that this part of a dream has pleased you, dear Reader, and, if it has, perhaps you will honor the DreamWeaver with a review.

May your dreams guide you on the pathway to the joys of tomorrow.