Chapter 2: The Unseen
Maria could feel the sweat trickling down her neck, her body starting to twitch in discomfort under the desert sun. She cleared her mind focusing on summoning her vision. Her mind opened on command and like every other time she'd attempted to summon all the visions came barrelling towards her. As if she'd unlocked the floodgates to an infinity of foresight, the visions would swarm around her and she would catch these faint glimpses that when she tried to reach for would vanish into wisps of smoke. "Find a singular entity to focus your mind on," she heard Isabelle's voice breaking through her dreamscape. Of course, her sister had hitched a ride into her dreamscape using her own psychic abilities. She felt her mind clear focusing on a singular voice, and the fog of visions started breaking apart as everything faded around her.
Maria followed the sound of the voice guiding her into her vision, stepping through a veil that felt like gliding through water. Suddenly Maria's feet touched solid ground, opening her eyes she realised she was still standing in the middle of the desert. No longer able to feel Isabelle's presence,
she'd never made it past the dreamscape before, usually, she couldn't withstand the force of all the visions penetrating her mind. Shielding her face as the sand blew around her, she realised that the dreary landscape felt familiar, she centred herself again focusing her mind letting the vision guide her. Her vision led her to a pile of stones, confused as she bent down to inspect the rubble. Suddenly horror struck her so deep in her being that she felt her vision falter slightly. How could she not recognize this place? She'd only visited this place every day for the past six months. She was standing at the gateway that Max and Dallas had vanished into, only now it had become a pile of rocks. "No…no, no, no," Maria said running back to where the alien console lay a few feet away only to find that it too had fallen apart. All that remained were the console's crystals Maria crouched down, unable to quell the panic rising inside her.
Suddenly the crystals glowed brightly, their rays breaking through the debris, "begin the descent on Planet Terra." The low gravelly voice spoke from the glowing crystals, the same voice that Maria followed in the dreamscape. Maria lifted her hand, her fingers lightly grazing the crystals, a blinding light exploded from the crystals unleashing a chorus of blood-curdling screams. Maria clasped her hands over her ears to drown out the noise, but for a brief moment, she heard a familiar voice. "We have to warn our family. Hopefully, Liz got our distress signal," it was Max's voice. "There's no time to wait for them, we have to get to the Aquardiids NOW" Dalla's voice called out over the chaos. "Wait Dallas I'm here…I'm here what's happening?" Maria screamed, feeling herself falling out of the vision, desperately grasping onto the vision as everything faded around her.
Maria's eyes snapped open, her feet planted firmly on the ground. "Hey, where'd you go? I couldn't follow you into that weird veil thing…trust a sister to lock you out of her psychic vision," Isabelle said, standing in front of Maria in her typical workout gear. Maria couldn't move her body felt cold and numb, "hey are you alright? What happened?" Isabelle said, looking over her sister's stiff demeanour with worry in her eyes.
"Max and Dallas are in trouble we have to get to the gateway…now!"
