Dreams and Dreamers
By WhiteInfinity21
Disclaimer: I don't own the Labyrinth.
Prompt: Flight
The events of the night kept on repeating in a jumbled whirlwind in her mind as Sarah fled the Overseer's Fortress, the energy whips of her right hand above her head whipping the air carrying her and the heavy burden she was carrying quickly away in the darkness.
It had started simply enough. Sarah had successfully snuck past the outer wall and guards of the fortress and had penetrated the many layers and protections of the inner keep. At one point her nose picked up an oily, acrid odor she associated with the scent of the Overseer's pet sorcerers. She followed the scent till she reached a large stone room deep in the middle of the fortress.
Peeking in her heart had dropped at the sight of all ten of the overseer's sorcerers, chanting in a harsh, droning language that made Sarah's skin crawl. A large, complex, four-tiered magical circle took up the majority of the space in the room, the entire thing, lines, runes, symbols and all, glowing a sickly, pale green. Thirteen smoking torches were evenly spaced along the outer perimeter of the summoning circle. The sorcerers were standing behind those, their droning chanting reverberating off the stone walls of the chamber.
Unease crept up Sarah's spine as she watched the glow of the summoning circle flare up as the tempo of the chanting sped up. An ugly, dark fog starting forming in the middle of the circle.
One of the sorcerers, dressed in the most ornate, heavily decorated robes shouted out a series of commands and drew a line of blazing runes in the air with a ebony black wand. Red-hot sparks shot out of the runes as they sped to the center of the circle, igniting the symbols drawn on the floor even as the runes collided with the dark fog with a loud clap.
The fog which had merely been sluggishly swirling around now broiled up in billowing black clouds and a vague outline made of slightly blue light started to form in its depths. The figure inside let out a sharp cry and Sarah could tell that it was fighting back.
Something about this tugged slightly at the back of her mind with a faint familiarity, even though she was positive she had never experienced anything like this before. She could sense no aura of deceit or corruption from the figure materializing in the summoning circle like she could from the black sorcerers.
In that instant she knew that this was no demon and there was no way she could let it be enslaved by the Overseer's sorcerers. Sarah pulled a flash grenade off of her belt (spoils from her raid earlier that afternoon), pulled the pin and lobbed it at the lead sorcerer who was tracing more runes in the air to further bind the creature within the summoning circle.
The grenade landed a few feet away from the lead sorcerer. All he had time to do was to look down before it went off with a loud bang and a blinding flash. Instantly their concentration was shattered and the hold on the forces they were summoning vanished. Wild, uncontrolled magical energies lashed out wildly, striking several of the sorcerers, leaving charred bodies to fall to the ground with muffled thumps.
The flash grenade did exactly what she hoped it to do, totally disrupt the ceremony and hopefully disrupt the magical energies enough to stop the summoning from being completed.
She had to duck to avoid one of wild arcs of destructive magical energy that lashed out in the direction of the doorway.
Unfortunately it looked like the Overseer's sorcerers had completed enough of the ceremony to pull through the being they were trying to summon. But the wild, uncontrollable energies that they had summoned to bind the entity to their wills were lashing out randomly with great destruction. The whole situation had become unstable and since the energies had not discharged like she had hoped, she had to control it somehow before the energies did something disastrous like tear a hole in the fabric of reality.
So Sarah did what she always did when she got into such situations, she acted on instinct.
Sarah crouched and made a tight, quick roll that took her near the outer edge of the summoning circle. Her left hand whipped out, fingers briefly touching the sizzling edge and four acid green energy lines uncoiled from the intricate intertwining tattoos that stretched from wrist to elbow.
Two latched onto the biggest, most brightly gleaming symbols of outer two circles, effectively stabilizing and firmly anchoring them to her. The other two firmly knotted themselves to the keystone symbols of the two inner circles before clamping onto the writing figure still shrouded in the dark fog in the center of the circle, anchoring both the magic contained in the two inner circles and the creature within to herself.
She hardly knew what she was doing but she did it just in time since the entire conflagration went up in a brilliant green flash seconds later, the wildly raging magical energies vanishing abruptly.
Sarah rapidly blinked her eyes to regain her sight. She took in the collapsed figure in the center of the room, the unconscious or dead sorcerers scattered like rag dolls along the edges and made a rapid decision. She dashed over, slug the unmoving body over her shoulder and lumbered out of the chamber at a dead run.
From there things became a blur as she dodged the Overseer's guards and hired mercenaries, killing when necessary with quick, efficient lashes from her energy lines on her right hand, while trying to find her way out of the fortress' warren of hallways and passages to reach the open night air.
The first window she spotted she broke with a single lash of one of her energy whips and dived out of, falling over fifty feet before her helicoptering energy whips were able to stabilize her and her heavy burden. Then she was off into the night, her green energy whips propelling her through the biting cold air, the occasional bullet whizzing by coming from the few guards and mercenaries that were taking up a distant pursuit.
Sarah, grinned feraly; the Overseer's goons had tried to catch her everytime she made a raid on one of the supply caravans from the slave factories and failed spectacularly each time. Her energy whips were more than just a weapon and means of flight, they were made out of pure magical energy and could be used for spellcasting of all sorts including drawing magic runes and circles faster than the human hand could ever manage.
It was hours till dawn but Sarah still had a long way to go before she could reach a concealed area that she could use to activate the spell that would return her to the hideout she and Toby had shared these past ten years. It was due to the sheer impossibility of anyone not keyed to the place being to locate or enter it that had allowed Sarah to get away with her raids for so long and not be caught by the Overseer's forces. If they couldn't find her hideout, they couldn't find her, and Sarah had made dead certain that neither magical nor technological means could locate their refuge when she made it.
Finally she spotted a grove of trees that would safely conceal her while she activated the spell that would open the portal to her hideout. Arms groaning in exhaustion she quickly sank to the ground and entered the small, but thick grove of trees. It was all Sarah could do not to dump the heavy figure she had been carrying all this time onto the ground.
Sarah raised her left arm to activate the energy lines to create the magic circle that would open the portal leading to her hideout. When they failed to activate she could only stare in bafflement at the glowing green magical circles on her wrist. What the Hell had she done when she sunk her energy whips into the destabilized summoning circle?
Sarah shook her head harshly, she didn't have time for this. Raising her right arm she activated the energy whips from their dormant state of intricate, looping tattoos and quickly sketched the three-tiered magic circle with large, powerful symbols stretching form the outer edge to the inner one. With four separate "magic markers" to use, the circle was finished in a manner of seconds, leaving the complete glowing green spell hanging in the air in front of her.
Letting out a weary groan, she hooked her arms beneath the shoulders of the still unconscious figure and dragged them both through the glowing spell circle. The moment both of them were through, the portal snapped shut and the spell circle simply vanished.
Another useful thing about her energy whips; the magic circles they drew winked out of existence the moment they were done with, leaving no traces, neither mundane or magical, behind for someone to track. Unless she carved a spell into a more stable medium like stone or wood her spells and castings were based on pure energy and were short and finite in existence.
"Geeze Sis you look a mess," Toby pointed out as she staggered into the small, sparsely furnished living area, still dragging her burden, "Hey! You brought someone with you!"
"Thanks Squirt, love you too," Sarah grumbled as she let go of her burden which slumped to the floor.
"What happened tonight?" Toby asked excitedly.
"Lets just say that things didn't go exactly according to plan," Sarah wryly replied gesturing to the face-down figure at her feet.
"With you things never go according to plan Sis," Toby snorted, "you're a scatterbrain who always flies by the seat of her pants."
"And you're a rude little brat who doesn't respect your elders," Sarah shot back, "you should have been in bed hours ago Squirt, it way past both of our bedtimes and I'm about ready to fall asleep where I stand."
"What about this person you dragged in?" Toby asked as Sarah shooed him off to a small alcove carved into the rock wall.
"I'll deal with that in the morning, now scoot," Sarah firmly replied.
As she tumbled onto the old, dusty mattress she had scavenged from an abandoned house not long after the Overseer and his invading forces had overwhelmed the entire northeastern part of the country from Maine to Michigan and down to Tennessee, she had a sinking feeling that morning would come much sooner than she wanted.
If nothing else she dreaded having another mouth to feed.
Whew! This turned out much longer than I had anticipated. Oh well, next time look forward to the conclusion of the three-parter started with Hunger and continued in Lush.
No guesses when the next installment of this storyline will come.
Please leave a contribution in the little box on your way out, proceeds go to feed the plot bunnies.
