CHAPTER FOUR - Only Dreaming
Leaving the rest of the
group behind in the sitting room, Claudia, Annie, and Mikel, followed by Sarta
with the Gibraltar rock, made their way down the hallway to what had been
Phoebe's room. The interior of the
house was still sound, and the upper floors still had their furnishings, even
if they were a little dusty from disuse. Removing a sandy tarp and settling herself on the bed that was still
made up as if Phoebe had just been away for the day, not a whole year, Annie
tried to make herself comfortable. Everyone
else took seats around the room, with Mikel sitting closest to the bed in a low
padded Victorian settee.
Claudia officiated while
Sarta dimmed the lights and lit meditative candles instead. "Annie, you must open yourself up to your
emotions. While it is true you never
knew Phoebe or her sisters, you still have a connection to them since you both
struggle for the same cause, and our need in this matter is great." She then
leaned in and stared fiercely into Annie's eyes. "You WILL be able to reach them with the help Mikel and the
Gibraltar rock, do you understand?"
Annie nodded, stretched
herself out on top of the floral coverlet, and closed her eyes. As she took deep relaxing breaths, she tried
to ignore the fact that the fate of the world rested in her ability to go to
sleep now, and remain aware of her dreams. She almost laughed out loud at the enormity of it! How was she, a girl who couldn't even yet
drive her parents car without grinding the gears possibly do something that
Claudia the High Priestess could not? But remembering the serious and determined face of the older woman who
stood over her, she thought better of it, and tried to relax, willing sleep to
come.
Claudia studied the young
face for a long while, hoping that she hadn't put her faith in the wrong
place. This girl was young, but Claudia
was a good judge of potential, and this girl had to be the right one for the
job. If she failed, all was lost. When Annie's breathing regulated into the
deep and even breaths of sleep, she nodded to Sarta to place the Gibraltar rock
in the young girl's hand. Turning to
Mikel she said, "You know what to do." Mikel returned her level gaze for a moment, and then focused his energy
on the sleeping young girl.
* * *
She was running through the
moonlit night, all of her senses heightened as she made her way through the
hulking headstones of the cemetery grounds. This was a recurring dream she had and she loved it! Humming an upbeat tune to herself, she
looked down and grinned at the wooden stake clutched in her hand. What good was lucid dreaming if she couldn't
manipulate it to have a little fun and play out the role of one of her favorite
TV shows? She was just coming up to the
vamp-nest she sensed was right around the corner, and her excitement level rose
to a fever pitch, her nerves straining taught in anticipation--then just like
that, everything changed.
Suddenly she was in the
middle of a field, blanketed white with soft snow. The flakes were still falling down from the gray sky above, and
she was down on the ground making snow angels in the drifts. All she felt was peaceful and contented, and
even a little cold, but still happy.
Then things changed again.
She was in school, but it didn't look like her high school. She had an overwhelming sense of anxiety and
looked around in confusion. She was
walking down the halls, and everyone was staring at her and pointing. She looked down at herself and realized with
horror that she-
Was snorkeling underwater
in the Caribbean Sea with bright colorful fish flashing all around her, feeling
utterly peaceful and warm.
Huh? This wasn't right, she said to herself as
she was whipped around to another setting. This time she was a movie star and there was a swooningly handsome man
leaning in for a deep and passionate kiss. She could feel herself responding, sensuously warming up to his
touch. Then it was a woman caressing
her--no wait, it was a man, but he looked different. Things were switching and jolting in front of her eyes.
Taking a deep breath she
tried to use a trick that she had learned early on, to center herself in a
personal bubble of solitude. But for
some reason it was harder to focus in on that personal space than it ever had
been before, and she struggled against the flashing images tugging at her from
all sides.
She was only able to
center in on herself by sensing a solid thread of stability that she had never
noticed before. Fastening onto this
curling tendril of strength like a life preserver, she was finally able to isolate
herself and she briefly wondered where the unrecognized support had come
from. Standing within her quiet bubble,
she still saw the riotous images swirling around her, each scenario changing
and morphing into another one until there was no end in sight. This was really odd; she had gotten caught
up in dreams before, when the dreams and emotions of her family and friends
intruded on her own. But it had never
been like this!
Slowly her personal sphere
strengthened and as the images were pushed back and drowned out, she began to
remember why she was there. Claudia…Mikel…The Charmed Ones-Phoebe! She was supposed to contact Phoebe in the dreamworld! It was the Gibraltar rock that had brought
her to this place, the dream dimension where all dreams came together as one.
Looking around her at the swirling vortex outside her shield, a sinking feeling
formed in the pit of her stomach. How
was she ever going to be able to locate 3 souls wading through this morass of
dreamtime imaginings?
She almost hunkered down
into herself in dread and frustration; she was just a teenaged girl who had
barely a clue as to how her power worked in the first place! She was mostly able to handle her own
dreams, because dreams were pure emotion, and since they were her emotions, she
generally knew what to do with them. But to handle the emotions of the entire sleeping populace? The thought was almost unbearable.
Still, something prevented
her from crying out in total despair. Some force was buoying her beyond her own insecurities, and she somehow
had the sense that she *could* do this after all. 'Think of the Charmed Ones', she told herself, 'Think of their
bravery to accept their fate and defend innocents from the forces of evil. Innocents who would never know who their
benefactors were, or even that they had ever been in danger in the first
place. Think of their courage to lay it
all down, and willingly enter this place rather than put the world in jeopardy. Think of how the world will suffer if you
don't do what you can to save them.'
With those thoughts
ringing in her head, she squared her shoulders and began striding through the
chaotic plane, her sphere of protection traveling with her. Talking aloud now, she kept up a steady
stream of self-encouragement. "Ok Annie,
reach out, try to feel for Phoebe's emotions. You're an Empath dammit, you can do this!" She scanned the dream manifestations before her, looking for
something, anything.
"They would be near each
other, the three sisters. Somehow their
energy would want to keep together in this mess, I just know it. So feel for three distinct energies grouped
together…" She strode along, and peered into dream after dream, grateful for
Mikel on the other side, holding her together. If it weren't for him, she was sure she would go flying off into one of
the dreams herself and never make it back out.
Suddenly she flinched,
'Was that…?' Looking closer, making her
way between the dreams of two women in a sword-fighting contest, and a man
holding a baby in his arms while he sang, she saw it again. Yes, three distinct forces of energy,
grouped together, she had found them! There was a strong sense of purpose and a feeling of duty around each of
the three auras that floated off in the distance. They looked similar to her own isolation sphere, but two of the
three pulsed a little bit more faintly than the remaining one. The auras were apart from the dreams, yet
they bobbed and rode the tides of the dreams as if existing as a part of them
too.
"Phoebe!" She called out, willing her thoughts and the
urgency of her emotions toward one of the spheres with all her might. "Phoebe Halliwell!" As she got closer, the strongest sphere
seemed to coalesce into a faint representation of the youngest sister. The others had a strong sense of being
around them too, but it appeared that Phoebe was the most in touch with her
psychic side, enabling her to immediately sense and understand Annie.
"Who are you? You're not a part of any dream." Phoebe's voice came through loud and
clear. This momentarily surprised
Annie, for some reason she had thought that her voice would sound faint and
ghostly, but that spunk that she had been told epitomized Phoebe came through
loud and clear.
"I, I'm Annie." Faltering,
she didn't know what to say next. "I've
come to get you out, I guess."
Raising an eyebrow, Phoebe
stared at her hard. "Sorry, but that's
not possible. We are bound here
now." She stopped to look around her in
frustration. "When we became the
Charmed Ones, we promised to protect the innocent, and unfortunately, this
time, this was the only way to do it."
"But Phoebe, things out
there are even worse with you gone! Though no one will admit it, the city is on the brink of disaster! People have been disappearing right and
left, martial law is descending, and it's all because demons have taken
governmental control. We think the only
reason things haven't self-destructed yet is because these demons are selfish
enough to want to keep it all for themselves for a while. Meanwhile, the people are afraid to leave
their houses after dark for fear that they'll be one of the ones who have
simply come back insane." If she could
have grabbed onto Phoebe and shaken her, she would have, because the woman was
looking at her as if she had just sprouted two extra heads.
"That's impossible. We made this pact and agreed to come here
because we were told we had to for the good of mankind. It was all set up by the Powers That Be." Phoebe's eyes narrowed as she continued her
train of thought. "Although it has been
nothing like we were told it would be, and I keep getting these strange
premonitions even here…And now you're telling me that the city is falling
apart?"
Annie nodded fervently,
and sighed with relief, Phoebe finally understood her.
"Hold on a sec, 'kay? Don't go anywhere" Phoebe then called out to
the 2 other spheres floating about 10 feet away from her. Seeming to be half caught up in two dreams,
the first about a little boy boarding a NASA space shuttle as the youngest American
astronaut, and another that was mostly just shapes and threatening images that
seemed to be chasing down a terrified older man. "Piper? Prue? I think we've got a problem here." The Prue and Piper spheres made their way
closer, and now Annie could make them out even if they were a bit hazy. Phoebe quickly explained what Annie had told
her, and Prue turned to eye the young teen skeptically.
"How did you get here, why
aren't you just another dream? And how
do we know you're not just a trick?" Prue's crystal eyes cut into her waiting for her to respond, and Annie
gulped, understanding now what she had heard about the iciness of the eldest
sister. Piper's soft brown eyes looked
on at her expectantly too.
"Well, I'm Annie, I'm an
Empath. Or at least, I'm trying to be. I'm still learning, since I only just got my powers a couple of years
ago." Realizing she was babbling, Annie
took another breath and tried to start again. "The Witches Alliance discovered what had happened to you, and we found
the Gibraltar rock so that I could come and communicate with Phoebe." At the mention of the need for a Witches
Alliance, the three sisters glanced at each other in surprise. "I'm in the old Halliwell manor right now,
actually sleeping in your bed Phoebe, uh, I hope you don't mind, but its not
like you've been sleeping in it for like a year or anything-"
Piper cut her off then,
"What do you mean a year? We just made
the pact and were sent here yesterday." Stopping, she considered. "Or was
it the day before? I'm supposed to be
good at this time thing…" she muttered.
Annie cut back in, "No,
no, you've been gone for nearly a year. Then about 8 months ago, that's when all the terrible things started to
happen. Claudia saw what was going on,
and after months of searching she was able to gather people together for the
Witches Alliance-" She stopped abruptly as Prue cut her off again.
"Wait a minute? Claudia?
Is that Claudia Bentley?" Prue demanded. At Annie's nod she went on. "I
remember her. Her family has always
been close friends of our family, and we used to see her all the time when we
were little, but then she went away. I
never thought anything of it at the time, but when we got our powers, I
realized that she had been a friend of Grams' and figured that since Grams
never mentioned her that a warlock must have gotten her." The three sisters worriedly exchanged
glances again, ignoring a large pirate ship floating by above their heads.
Annie shook her head
fervently, "No she is still alive, and it is because of her that we gathered
together and figured out how to find you. Something is seriously wrong with the world, and if you guys are here
instead of there, you must have been tricked!"
Phoebe pounded her hand
against her fist, as there was nothing else solid to pound it against. "I knew I didn't like that Etremius guy and
his angel posse!" Phoebe bit her lip in
irritation and went on, "I went along
with it because he had such convincing things to say, and well, you know, they
all had the whole 'Powers-That-Be-White-Flowing-Robe" thing going on."
"He did make believable
arguments." Piper murmured as she wrung her hands. "But I knew I felt a little
strange when he said the White Lighters couldn't be a part of this because he
and his so called "Council" were above them." She touched her hand to her head, "But somehow I just let it slide, why
would I do that?!"
Prue's eyes narrowed as
she considered. "They must have been
imposters that used some sort of coercion spell on us. Enough of what they said was true to make us
believe them, and the rest they handled with a little mind control." Her eyes flashed and her jaw settled into a
determined line. "We've got to break
their incantation and return to reality to set everything right again."
"Oh, and I was just
starting to get used to the dreams where greasy old guys bagged beautiful young
women." Phoebe quipped.
Suddenly Annie began to
sense a deep and driving emotion coming at her in force. It wasn't coming from the sisters standing
in front of her, and it wasn't coming from any of the myriad of dreams
surrounding them. But it was coming
closer. Then she realized--it was
Hate. Hate so strong, that she felt
filthy just by the touch of it in her mind, and she wondered how she wasn't
knocked over by it as it advanced. "Uh,
guys?" The sisters looked at her,
having almost forgotten she was there. "So this Etremius guy, he's bad huh? Well, I think he's coming!" Phoebe's eyes widened as she too picked up on the feeling.
"Ooohh, Oooh, Ooooh!" She
squealed, "Yeah, bad guy coming! Big Time!" Just then a man burst through a dream of a tightrope walker performing
to the thunderous applause of an audience. The dream instantly evaporated as he stepped through it, and when it
coalesced again behind him, the trapeze artist had fallen from his line,
sprawled out on the floor 30 feet below, leg bent at an impossible angle.
Behind Etremius, six other
robed figures followed, leaving similar tales of tragedy in their dream
wake. There was no way to know what
happened to the real life dreamers of those dreams. The "Council" formed a threatening phalanx behind Etremius, and
as one, their glowing white robes darkened to a roiling black as they
approached. Chained behind the last
Council member, one of the faces peeking out from a darkened robe was that of
Jared's, the watcher of the Halliwell Manor. His eyes looked more than a little frightened and sickened at what he
had managed to get himself into. He
stiffened in terror as he was prodded and pulled along by the last Council
member, desperately looking for a way out, but it was too late for him. When he saw that there was no way to break
the chain that bound him, he closed his eyes tightly and whimpered in dread. In sharp contrast to Jared's cowering face,
Etremius's eyes glowed fiercely orange as he advanced, and his kindly face
transformed into a horrifying mask of rage.
Prue raised a hand to
throw them back with all her might, and though his men faltered a step or two,
Etremius shook it off and kept on coming. He shouted out warningly, half in a mocking singsong, half in the purest
rage, his voice going up in venom with each syllable. "HAL - LI - WELLS!" The winds whipped up, and all of the dreams
around them suddenly turned ugly. The
nightmares battered at them now, trying to encroach upon the protective spheres
of the women, plucking and pricking at the shields that had held them safe up
until now.
"Piper, freeze 'em!"
Phoebe barked. Piper raised her arms,
and Etremius and his vanguard blanched for a moment, but only slowed down in
speed, as if they were moving through molasses. Then even that shattered as they broke through and were coming
towards them even more quickly. Annie
surely was frozen though, too afraid to even scream. Piper added her squeak to Phoebe's wail and even Prue quailed as
they drew near.
"Ok, it looks like our
powers are diminished in this dream dimension." Prue yelled. "But
Etremius got us here with a simple translocation spell. He didn't even need any special talismans or
potions, just our willingness to come." She spat that last bit out with disgust. "So all we should need to do is recite the same words, but
substitute our own plane of existence for the destination. Do you remember the incantation?" The remaining two sisters nodded in
agreement, and Annie held her breath as she witnessed the Charmed Ones in
action.
Bracing themselves against
the maelstrom being whipped up around them, the three sisters took each other's
hands and Prue, Piper, then Phoebe each recited a rhyming couplet.
"We choose this action
for the greater good,
An agreement made, as
three sisters stood."
"A promise to live and
breathe and stay,
Until we wake on our
dying day."
"Our ties are here, but
this bond erase,
"Set us now in our own
home space."
They finished breaking the
spell just as Etremius let fly a huge barrage of red hot bolts of energy like a
hundred arrows let loose to rain down upon them. Annie screamed in utter terror, but as soon as Phoebe uttered the
last word, Etremius doubled over in pain and his arrows dropped dead from the
air. The rest of the front line
simultaneously collapsed in pain as they howled in agony.
As the demons fell, the
swirling images around them all shuddered and slowed, finally coming to a dead stop
and silence. Then they began moving
again, but this time in reverse, swirling and spinning faster and faster, the
colors blurring together, scooping up Etremius and his demonic companions one
by one until the dreams were actually pulling back from the women, and
disappearing away into the darkness. In
a moment, every dreamscape was gone and the witches stood there alone in
darkness and silence for a blink of an eye. Then, they too were gone.