Chapter Seven: Dharketh

She looked at him, wondering what he was talking about. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog of wonder that seemed determined to overwhelm her senses. When she felt that her head was slightly clearer, she looked closer at Jack. She didn't like what she saw. He was desperately afraid of-- what? Every time he looked down into the water, his hands tightened on the edge of the boat and he seemed to grow slightly more flushed with fear.
"What am I supposed to be seeing?" she asked as the fog about her mind seemed to dissipate further.
"The...the faces," he whispered. She frowned, never having seen him so frightened that he couldn't even make a flippant remark. If the fog had still enshrouded her thoughts, she may have dismissed him out of mind for the ridiculous statement. As it didn't, she looked down into the water curiously. The flowers were still there...but now, in her belief that Jack might be right, they seemed to waver.
She leaned back and rubbed her eyes, but it did no good, for the problem was not with her vision, but with the illusions in the water. Looking again, the flowers wavered still more and she saw them. Instead of leaning back, she stared at them. They looked as though they were sleeping. There were more of them than she could count. Fascinated and slightly horrified, she tried to look closer, her face nearly touching the water as she leaned forward to examine them.

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When she looked back again, he hoped that she saw what he had seen. When she leaned back to rub her eyes, hope flared within him. When she leaned back over, though, her face a mask of fascination, he began to doubt that she had seen them. He knew beyond a doubt that what he saw was the truth, but why Arianne was seeing illusion he could not tell.
Vaguely he wondered if it had anything to do with her dreams.
The menacing voice was quiet, and he had an impression of slight shock.

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She leaned back yet again, looking at Jack thoughtfully. Why had he seen the faces while she saw things of great beauty? She frowned, and as she did she realized that she no longer felt the wonder and awe that she had felt earlier in this dream.
If it even was a dream.
The thought came unbidden and her eyes widened with shock. This was no dream; it could not be a mere dream. And yet...it did not quite have a feeling of reality about it. Everything seemed so vibrant, so alive, much more so than everyday life felt. When she concentrated, she could even feel life in the stone walls about her.
She could feel the being that had chased her out of those dreams for the past week. Those dreams that she could now remember vividly.
The fog reached out as if to enfold her once more, and anger flared. She was being used for something that she didn't understand, and she hated it. How dare they use her like this? Her fury burned away the last vestiges of the numbing haze that had clouded her senses for so long.
When the presence of the thing that had chased away all of those voices thickened between her and Jack, she moved around it to take Jack's hand in hers again, lips pursed tightly in anger.

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Jack felt the "thickening" of the menace that appeared to be materializing right in front of him, and was glad of Arianne's presence beside him instead of at the opposite end of the boat. He had watched her face as her anger grew and knew that it boded much ill for whomever had incited it. He had seen the results of her fury, and knew that she was not to be trifled with.
Apparently, the voice that had spoken so wickedly to him did not know any better.
In spite of the gravity of the situation, he smiled wryly.

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If she hadn't been so angry, she would have looked to Jack and smiled as well when she felt the tension of fear go out of his body. It was enough that he was no longer afraid, however, and so she did not look at him, but instead kept her eyes on the darkening shape appearing before them.
When it finally became a completely material being, she barely held herself back from reaching out and landing a punch directly on the unseen face of the creature. All that could be seen of it was a black robe, the hood pulled low so nothing could be seen of its features.
Instead of feeling fear, her anger intensified, knowing this to be the thing that had so frightened her for so long. Then it spoke.
"So, you are a more valuable ally to her than we suspected," it said. Its voice was neither male nor female, and sounded like a grating whisper more than anything else. It appeared to be speaking to Jack, who simply nodded.
The thing turned to her. "You, also, are not as we expected. You should not have been able to see through the illusion," it said, its voice dripping with venom. "Even with the help of this scum."
She laughed, then, finding the situation absurdly funny though she was still furious with the creature standing before her. "You call him scum," she stated derisively, "And yet you do not even have courage enough to show your face. You find it appropriate to frighten harmless spirits, and then to chase me out of my own dreams like I had somehow trespassed into your territory."
"I should have killed you instead of allowing you to escape," it snarled.
"Then why didn't you?" she asked, brow arched in challenge, her tone hard as steel. The creature didn't answer, but through some power she did not realize she had, she saw the thing's thoughts and laughed aloud again. "You tried. You tried and you failed. What a disappointment you must be to the others that share your wretched existence."
It growled and started to dissipate, but she was not yet finished. She had seen something else in that brief glance through the creature's soul, and she used it now. "Dharketh," she whispered.

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The creature stopped as soon as she whispered what could only be its name. Jack stared at Arianne, seeing her in a new light--and light she was, he realized. It was no longer simply the blue glow that illuminated them, but a golden light seemed to emanate from her.
The creature growled again--though it sounded more a thing of desperation than anything else--and tried to leave again. She whispered the name twice more, and it screamed in frustration. The power of names, Jack understood. According to tales his mother and grandmother used to tell him, if you said the name of something three times it was bound to you until you died or it found a way to kill you. But it was only supposed to work with the oldest of creatures, such as faeries, the folk who had disappeared many years ago.
These tales had gotten many who believed them burned for witchcraft long ago, but still his grandmother had known them, had passed them on to his mother and himself when he was very young.
He used to believe them, but as he got older he passed them off as fairytales designed to frighten children.
Seeing what Arianne had now done, the memories of all of those stories came flooding back and he was more than a little frightened to be confronted with something so old that its true name held power. He almost recoiled from Arianne that she had power to see the true name of a creature such as this, but knew that if he let her go he would almost certainly be lost.
The creature screamed again, this time in pain as Arianne twisted her hold on it. Her eyes were practically sparking in her fury at being used, and he knew that if he didn't say something that she would likely torture the thing until it died.
The golden light grew more intense.

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Don't ask where this came from...well, you can I suppose, but I won't be able to produce a satisfactory answer.