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Within Dreams—Chapter 15
Tai was still lying on the bed, still staring blankly at the ceiling of the room. He wasn't sleeping. He was just lying on the hard bed, totally motionless save for the steady rise and fall of his chest as he inhaled and exhaled.
He didn't wonder or care how long he'd been in the room. He didn't care about anything anymore. His friends and sister were gone and they weren't coming back. And in this world, they were the only link to reality he'd had. The only people he'd known in this world. And now he would never see them again. Not in this dream or in reality ever again.
The thought sent a flood of emotions through his mind—yet they were far away. It almost felt as though his feelings were not his own, they were that foreign to him.
He was still staring at the ceiling when it happened: the faintest buzzing noise sounded. From far away, he heard the sound of glass breaking explosively with a loud popping sound accompanying it. A second later, he heard it again, louder this time.
Vaguely, he wondered what it was, but the curiosity was feeble and gave way to a sense of inevitability. Whatever it could be, it didn't matter to him. Why should it? If it was something that could hurt him, he didn't care. Pain would only speed his journey to rejoin his friends and sister anyway. He welcomed pain. If it was something to free him from slavery, he didn't give a flying flip. It wasn't like he knew this world and without any of his friends, freedom here would be a fate worse than death. He figured it would be safer and better here, in Malign's castle.
The buzzing, shattering, popping sound was close now. He heard it again, in the room right beside his. He noticed that the popping and buzzing both sounded familiar…like electricity humming.
And then the light bulb in his room buzzed loudly. The next thing he knew, the glass that contained the light shattered. The filament inside broke and rained sparks along with the broken glass down onto the hard floor. And then it was dark. Totally pitch black. Not even the faintest pinprick of light filtered into the room.
What's going
on? He wondered. But the indifferent part of him soon won
over and he didn't care. And from far
away in the castle, he heard a terrified scream of pain resonate through the
halls, sending a chill to his very bones.
~*~
"Stupid, insolent fool!"
"I'm sorry M-malign! I d-didn't know!"
Nocuous was kneeling before his master, shaking in utter and absolute terror. Malign's eyes glimmered with rage.
"Didn't know? You didn't KNOW!? That is the most pathetic excuse I have EVER heard! Didn't know!"
"I j-just thought that you would w-want me to!"
"Want you to what? Interfere with one of my experiments? Deliberately stray from my specific orders? I think not."
Nocuous was becoming desperate. He knew what a mistake would cost him and knew it was a price he didn't want to pay.
"B-but it seemed like a g-g-good idea!" Nocuous stammered.
"A good
idea? You call going against my orders
a good idea? The orders were simple. Any idiot could have understood them! I specifically told you to harm only the missing boy. And then only if he was still awake by the time you found him. Never did I say to harm one of the other
children that are already sleeping! Then again, I suppose you aren't just any idiot. You're the granddaddy of all idiots!"
"You're right. I'm an idiot," Nocuous agreed, hoping
agreeing would appease Malign.
Malign shook his head and said: "and you agree with me. That is the height of
stupidity. Well, you know that I can't
afford to have morons like you on my side, Nocuous. And I believe you know what that means, don't you?"
"Please, master, please not
that! I'll do anything! Anything!"
"Oh, I see you do know what it means! How
delightful. Your pleas fall on deaf
ears." With those words, Malign cupped
his hands and formed a small ball of green light. It was profoundly beautiful and it entranced Nocuous with its
beauty, even when he knew it meant his death. Then, Malign casually tossed the ball of light at Nocuous. It raced across the room and smashed into
the huge, muscular man with so much force it knocked him off his feet and sent
him flying across the room at a lethal speed. With a sickening crack, he hit his head against the wall and slid to the
floor, eyes closed never to open again.
Malign turned to two of his servants that
had been milling about and shouted: "you there! Clean up this mess!" He
motioned to Nocuous' body with a disdainful flick of his wrist.
That was when the buzzing
noise sounded. Even though candles
provided most of the light in his chamber, Malign had a few electric lights for
the sake of better lighting. The light
bulbs were what were buzzing. Then all
the glass on the bulbs suddenly burst apart, raining glass down from the
ceiling along with sparks from the severed filament. The room was now lit only by candlelight. Malign knew something was up and he intended
to figure out what it was.
~*~
"We are so dead!" Rea
moaned. "I'm guessing we've got about
three minutes before Malign orders his troops to search everywhere. Maybe less."
"But there's got to be
somewhere we can hide," Izzy reasoned.
"Where?" Joe
demanded. "In a tree? I'll bet anything his soldiers don't miss
anything!"
Sora suggested: "Rea, can't
you just teleport us away?"
"No! I would have done it already if I could!"
Rea wailed. "It's hard for me to do
that even once a day just by myself. I'd never be able to get all of us away. No, worse, it could end up with just half of us in some other
dimension."
"Half of us?" Mimi
repeated. "You mean like, four of us
here and four of us there?"
"No. Half
of us."
Kari gulped nervously and
said: "you've got to try."
"I can't do it! If I try the results are going to be
catastrophic!"
TK gasped and pointed to the
horizon: "look!" he cried.
His seven companions scanned
the area where the sky met the earth and sighed in despair. A steady wave of soldiers was coming toward
them.
"Rea, you've got to
chance it," Joe stated.
"Maybe not," Matt
interjected. "Rea, you told me anything
was possible in this world. So that
means there's got to be a way to avoid being seen!"
Izzy nodded and said: "that
is a very intriguing point, Matt. In
theory, all we've got to do is discover the correct place."
"We are running out of
time!" Sora argued.
"But there's got to be
a safer and easier way!" Matt answered.
"Well, I don't think
we're going to have the time to find it!" Joe shouted.
Izzy grinned and cried:
"prodigious! I think I might have found
what we're looking for!" He was looking
at the tree that had camouflaged a motion sensor. Black smoke was still drifting lazily in the air from the ruined
motion sensor. A narrow hole near the
base of the tree showed that the tree was hollow—and that it would be the
perfect hiding place.
"Quick, everyone get
in!" Rea shouted.
The hole was narrow and
small, but it seemed large enough to accommodate any of the former Digidestined
or Rea. Kari crawled through the hole
easily and TK followed her. Next came
Sora and Mimi, though they had a little harder time getting through, as they
were larger than TK or Kari.
"Hurry," Rea
hissed. The soldiers were less than a
quarter mile away. A distance that
would take them a very short amount of time to travel.
Izzy crawled through the
opening. Joe followed, almost getting
stuck, but managing to squeeze through the opening.
"Go, Matt," Rea
muttered.
Matt shook his head and
answered: "you go first."
"No! Quit being silly and get in! I'll go after you. I don't want you to risk getting caught."
"You're more important
than I am," Matt argued. "If they lose
you they won't have a guide. Now go."
Rea sighed and quickly
squeezed through the opening. And now
it was only Matt left outside. Quickly,
he stuck his head through the hole, then his shoulders. He felt in front of him for the ground and
was met with nothing to support himself. It surprised him and he slid, dangling haphazardly with his legs still
sticking out of the hole. He kicked
wildly, trying to pull back out enough to at least hold onto the edge with his
hands, but in one horrible instant, he slipped and plunged into darkness….