The Dream Sanctum: The Eternal World (9 page)

“Sure,” Kai agreed thankfully. “We’ll need to
be careful, looks like we’re about to run into a rainstorm.”

“That one looks fake to me, I think one of the
audience guys is trying to throw us off,” Resona observed. “Look, see? There in
the box, he’s really concentrating.”

“Good eye. That means the rain won’t actually
throw us off,” Kai replied approvingly. “Let’s get moving.”

They started running together, and though
Resona struggled to keep up at times, their movements were remarkably in sync.
Resona seemed to benefit from having a teammate, and Kai felt more comfortable
himself. They kept each other on course, warned each other of coming obstacles
and weather and pushed their speed to the limit. With every leap, Kai had to
avoid looking down – the skies below were cloudless and clear, reminding him at
every turn just how high off the ground he was.

As they went on, the course became emptier; at
least three dozen racers had fallen off the course by now. As a result the race
was becoming even more competitive. The remaining racers were now using their
own powers to try to distract each other, creating fake clouds of their own and
trying to corner those near them and make them fall.

The end of the course was still a distance away,
but it was now in sight. Kai squinted and saw Alastor far ahead of everyone
else, now taking his time leisurely hopping from cloud to cloud and back again
as he waited for the others to catch up. Surprisingly, not too far behind him
was Ella. She seemed to have caught on even faster than Kai had, and was making
a dedicated effort to catch up to her younger brother. She dodged two dreamers
attempting to pass in front of her and leaped over a third. If Kai hadn’t known
that this was her first competition, he would have thought she had been doing
this for years.

“Yeah, go Ella!” Resona cried. Ella turned
around and gave her a victorious fist pump – and in her moment of distraction,
instantly vanished through a fake cloud. Resona’s expression quickly turned to
horror as she realized what had just happened, but Kai pulled her along.

“That wasn’t your fault, she should have been
paying attention,” he laughed.

Out of nowhere the sky turned black and small
fireballs began raining from the sky. Resona shrieked and jumped out of the
way, and this time it was Kai’s turn to catch her before she fell.

“Are these real?” she gasped.

“I’m not going to test that out,” Kai replied.

Together they ducked and weaved through the
fire storm, and within a few moments the weather had changed again, back to
powerful winds that threatened to push everyone off course.

Kai turned around. There were only about ten
people left. Kai had expected more people to at least reach the finish line,
but he had to admit that simply not falling off was a challenge enough. Alastor
had crossed the finish line long ago, but there was still heavy competition for
the remaining spots. Kai and Resona quickened their pace as they came nearer to
the end, and the roars of the crowds became louder and louder.

With just a few clouds left to go, they
hurdled past one racer who had stopped hesitantly before a long jump. Kai
prepared to land and immediately move to the next cloud, but instead of landing
solidly, his feet touched nothing. The cloud he and Resona were just about to
land on had vanished completely.

Despite the fact that he was now falling
quickly towards the ground far below, his first thought was confusion.
It didn’t look fake to me
.

Before he could consider the thought too much,
he heard screams from above. At first he thought the screams came from Resona,
who was unable to fly and was no doubt terrified of the fall. But as he looked
up, he felt his stomach drop as he realized where the screams were coming from.

The sky was filled with thousands of people
who were now plummeting to the ground along with him. He realized with a rush
of cold dread that the entire cloud course had vanished, as well as most of the
spectator boxes. A distant rumbling sound met his ears, one that sounded
frighteningly familiar, and as he looked on, he saw a few smaller buildings
from the Sky Capital start to fall.

From his side, Resona clung to his arm
tightly, and he realized he had to do something. He twisted in the air to grab
her, then took control of his fall, switching to flight. He continued downward,
hoping to stay ahead of the falling people and buildings. The rumbling
continued and more buildings continued to drop, the clouds they were resting on
flickering and fading away. Those who could not fly out of the way continued to
fall and screamed in terror as the massive buildings above them followed them
towards the ground.

Kai attempted to change direction to move them
out of the falling buildings’ path, but a tremendous gust of wind pushed him
off course, tearing Resona from his arms. A massive black shape passed above
him, followed by a roar that seemed to echo across the entire sky. To Kai’s
amazement, Asmodiel soared above the falling dreamers, shielding them with its
body. The falling buildings shattered across its back, but the mighty dragon
didn’t seem to be hurt. It continued to circle, making sure none of the
dreamers were struck.

With one less thing to worry about, Kai
quickly located Resona and caught her again. She hugged him desperately as they
continued their descent, and he touched down near Lake Sythis where they had
started that morning. He hoped his friends would think similarly and meet him
there. Resona stood up unsteadily, unable to take her eyes off of what was
happening above them.

Sure enough, Kwin and Lindsay soon landed
nearby, followed by Alastor and Ella. Lindsay looked frantic and immediately
hugged Kai tightly.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?”
Resona asked fearfully, and Kwin shook her head. Kwin looked distressed
herself, but her voice was steady as she took control of the situation.

“Everyone stay calm. We’re all here and okay.
Let’s take a deep breath and figure out what to do next.”

“If I may make a suggestion, let’s start by
getting out of here so we aren’t struck by a falling city during our
deliberations,” Alastor said helpfully. Kwin threw him a withering look, but
agreed.

“Let’s head to the Deepfalls Cathedral. It’s
close and it should be safe,” Kwin replied. “We’ll all go together. Resona,
I’ll take you.”

As they prepared to take off, there came a
deep moaning sound from high above them. They all looked up and saw that the
largest cloud, the one holding up most of Sky Capital’s biggest buildings, had
just vanished. The massive stone buildings were too large even for Asmodiel to block
and the dragon retreated, letting out another deafening roar of caution to
everyone recovering from their fall below. There were more screams as people
attempted to flee, and hundreds of people vanished as they woke up to escape
being crushed.

“Let’s move!” Kwin shouted above the
screaming, and they took off quickly.

This time Kai took Lindsay’s hand in his as
they flew. He could do little else to try to comfort her, but he could see that
it helped her all the same.

They arrived ten minutes later at the
cathedral, a large old building resting in the middle of a river just at the
edge of a waterfall. A wide bridge that spanned the length of the river sat
directly over the falls, and the cooling mist was soothing and calming. They
landed on the bridge in front of the doors to the cathedral to find that they
were alone. Not many people came to the cathedral, and Kai was thankful. He
didn’t want to deal with frantic crowds right now.

Lindsay hadn’t spoken for the entire flight.
Kai realized he hadn’t actually heard her speak since she had left the starting
line before the race some time ago. Now that they were safe he noticed she
appeared calmer, but there was something else about her that he couldn’t
decipher right away. She looked
tired
,
he decided. He couldn’t blame her. They were being dragged through one disaster
after another, and she looked like she was starting to become numb to it all.

“I’m afraid I cannot stay long, but you should
be able to move on safely from here,” Kwin explained, though Kai guessed this
was mainly for Resona’s benefit. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes,” Resona answered. “I think I’m going to
wake up now, I’ve had enough excitement for one night and I’m already asleep.”

“We’re all very familiar with that feeling.
You hang out with us and it’ll be pretty common,” Alastor said with a smile.
“Anyway, if you need any of us, we’ll probably be coming back here. Otherwise
you can always send us post, providing that hasn’t vanished either.”

The group shared hugs, then disappeared.

Moments later, Kai got up from his bed and
started to head out into the hall, intent on confronting Kwin about this latest
catastrophe. Before he could reach the door, however, Kwin herself walked in.

“May I join you?” she asked blearily, and Kai
nodded. She shut the door behind her and sat on Kai’s bed, rubbing her eyes.
“What a disaster. When I told Alastor we didn’t want buildings raining down on
our heads, I was being facetious.”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that,”
Kai said, and Kwin looked up as though she already knew what he was going to
say.

“Like I’ve told you before, I don’t want–”

“I know, you don’t want to talk about it.
You’ve been saying that for days now, but that’s not good enough anymore. Two
of the capital cities are gone and we barely escaped both times. My best friend
is scared to death, and you know something, so you need to tell me what’s going
on right now.”

“It’s not that simple,” Kwin replied
forcefully. “I don’t have all the answers either, and it doesn’t help that you
and Alastor keep bothering me about it. Frankly I’m a little affronted at your
lack of respect for my boundaries.”

“Don’t try to turn this on me,” Kai said
irritably. “We’ve been giving you space for days now, but the world is falling
apart and you’re the only one who knows anything. Even if you don’t know
everything, sharing what little you do have would be a great start. Right now
we’re all just guessing, but this all started when Semyaza and the others
showed up and I’m betting those two things are connected.”

“Figure that out all on your own, did you?
Well, goodness, what do you even need me for?” Kwin snapped, then quickly
lowered her voice. “Wait, I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight. I’m just… this is
very… it’s hard to explain. Part of the reason I haven’t wanted to offer any
details is because I feel like if I tell you what I know then it will all come
true. I’ve been denying it in my mind ever since I saw them arrive, hoping that
the problem would just go away, but it hasn’t, and I… I’m starting to get
scared.”

“Talk to me,” Kai pressed gently. “We’ve been
friends this long, and I’m assuming you came in here because you needed the
company. You know we work better when we’re all on the same page, and I want to
help you. If you’re scared, that’s what I’m here for – to help. So talk to me.”

Kwin nodded and sighed. For a minute she did
not speak, but Kai didn’t press her. He could tell by the look on her face that
she was struggling to do just that.

“Semyaza, Dumar and Asmodiel are not dreamers
like you and I,” Kwin explained slowly. “They are of the world itself. They are
essentially angels – messengers and representatives of the Creators themselves.
They visit rarely, but when they do it is because the world is in turmoil. They
come to fix whatever ails the world and then vanish to wherever they have lived
for the past few thousand years.”

“Well that’s good, isn’t it?” Kai asked. “They
aren’t here to mess up the world, they’re here to fix it.”

“Yes. Though I may despise Semyaza, their
intentions are virtuous. But here’s where the problem lies. They are looking
for something specific, something they need to fix the world, and they have not
found it. They are looking for a person, someone who apparently looks very much
like you, but they have not been able to find them.”

“Another angel?” Kai suggested, but Kwin shook
her head.

“I will explain that momentarily, but it is a
serious problem. The Dream Sanctum is self-destructing, Kai. If they don’t find
who they’re looking for, and soon, our world will cease to exist.”

B
efore they went any further,
Kwin decided it was time for everyone to know. With the others already awake,
it was simply a matter of getting everyone into the same room. At the prospect of
learning what was finally going on, no one need to be told twice – they piled
into the entertainment room and sat attentively around Kwin, waiting for an
explanation.

“Before I begin, I would like to apologize for
how long it took me to come forward on this matter,” she said. “It was
inappropriate to keep you in the dark. I will explain as much as I can, but I
regret any emotional distress I may have caused you.”

“Don’t worry about it, we trust you,” Alastor
said reassuringly. “We knew you’d speak up eventually. Anyway, we’re just glad
to finally get an answer to this Kwinspiracy.”

Kwin raised an eyebrow.

“Alastor, this is hardly the time.”

“It’s always the time! Plus, I spent a whole
two days coming up with that.”

Kwin rolled her eyes, but couldn’t hide her
smile. Then she cleared her throat.

“I would assume that most of you have already
drawn the connection between the dragon and its two riders with the sudden
disastrous events in the Sanctum.” Everyone nodded. “They are related, but the
newcomers did not
cause
the
disasters. Rather, they are here to try to fix them. They are otherwise
unrelated.”

“Okay, but who are they? How can you fix a
dream world?” Ella asked.

“They are messengers from the Creators and
part of the actual dream world itself, and I assume they are imbued with the
powers necessary to take those kinds of actions.” She raised her hands as
questions immediately filled the air. “We will have time for all of that later,
though I can’t guarantee I can answer everything.”

“How do you know this when no one else seems
to?” Lindsay inquired.

“I read,” Kwin answered simply, “which is
something very few people in the Sanctum seem to do. Then again, when your
dreams give you super powers, I should hardly be surprised. There may be others
who know what I know, but there are so many people in the world it would be
hard to tell. But there is documentation on everything I am about to tell you,
which is also why there are holes in my knowledge.

“Anyway, every few decades, these three show
up when the world starts to experience the flickers that we saw. When they
arrive, they take one dreamer with them and vanish again. That dreamer is never
seen again, but the flickers stop. What the dreamer has to do with anything,
where they go or why they are never seen again is beyond me, much less why the
flickers occur every few decades on a consistent basis. What I do know is that
the angels always show up at the start, then quickly vanish again. What’s
different this time is that they haven’t found what they’re looking for.”

“Or who they’re looking for, right?” Lindsay
said timidly. “I mean, if they always take a person away, then they must be
looking for someone.”

“There are plenty of people in the Sanctum,
they can have their pick of anyone,” Ella answered.

“Unless they were looking for someone
specific,” Lindsay countered. “Remember? Semyaza kept going on about someone
who looks like Kai. They must need to find a specific person.”

“That is an appropriate assumption,” Kwin
replied approvingly. “How they choose the person they want is unknown, but it
does appear as though it’s not a random process. I also know that whoever is
selected is called the keeper, for whatever reason.”

“So basically the world starts going nuts a
few times a century, then angels appear out of nowhere to kidnap someone for
eternity before vanishing again and the world is saved?” Alastor said
thoughtfully. “Honestly that sounds pretty reasonable to me.”

“Ooh! Maybe the kidnapped people serve as duct
tape to fix the cracks in the Sanctum!” Ella posited excitedly.

“Or they’re used to feed an even more powerful
being who gets really hungry when he wakes up from hibernation and requires a
human sacrifi–”

“Children,
please
,”
Kwin interrupted wearily, and Alastor and Ella turned back to face her, trying
and failing to hide their grins. “Your strange brand of optimism is refreshing,
but often slightly unsettling. Now, you’ll notice that what I’ve just told you
doesn’t help very much. The biggest reason that I didn’t want to inform you all
about this is because I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about it myself. There
is an unfortunate fact we must consider in all this: if Semyaza and the others
do not find the keeper they’re looking for, and quickly, the world will fall
into ruin and perhaps even disappear forever.”

A heavy silence fell over the room. Despite
the current state of the world, it didn’t seem like that was a possibility the
others had considered. Kai realized he hadn’t thought of it either before Kwin
brought it up. He had always sort of assumed that the Sanctum would always be
there no matter what crises happened. With a jolt, he realized that these facts
presented a troubling possibility. If the only way the world could be saved was
if the angels found the keeper, there was nothing anyone else could do.

“So… it sounds like the answer to this problem
is pretty simple, I guess,” Lindsay said quietly. Everyone looked at her, and
she seemed suddenly uncertain under their stares, but she continued anyway.
“Well, we have to find the keeper, don’t we?”

After a short pause, during which Lindsay
looked like she was about to take back what she had just said, Alastor spoke
up.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” he said
confidently. “We don’t have much to go off of except that this keeper looks so
much like Kai they keep bothering him by mistake.”

“What if it
is
Kai?” Ella asked suddenly, and all eyes turned to Kai.

“No, hold on, they said it wasn’t me,
remember?” Kai said quickly. “They said I was too young. And anyway, wouldn’t the
keeper know who he was? I’m assuming the angels just don’t make that kind of
big decision without telling the person who they are.”

“Sadly, Kai is correct,” Kwin affirmed. “From
what I’m able to tell, a keeper is chosen up to ten years in advance. This
makes me think there is definitely some method to the way they choose a keeper,
but nevertheless, if Kai were the keeper he would know about it. It would seem
that the person they decided would be keeper is eluding them, perhaps
purposefully, now that they have come for him.”

Ella looked disappointed, and Kai felt the
same way.
At least if I was the keeper
there’d be a way to save the world. Back to square one.

“At the very least, if they are so certain in
what their keeper looks like, it makes our own search considerably easier, and
I am completely confident that we can do a better job,” Kwin remarked. “Semyaza
refuses to explain to anyone what is going on and spends most of her time
following me around, so she’s accomplishing little. But Lindsay is right; we
need to find the keeper, and we’re going to do just that.”

“Semyaza is going to hate you even more for
this,” Alastor laughed.

“She’s welcome to hate me all she likes, I
genuinely could not care less if I tried,” Kwin said dismissively. “She has a
responsibility to this world and she is failing miserably. All of us together
have saved our world before, we will do it again, and she will not get in our
way. I will make sure of that.”

“How much time do you think we have?” Kai
asked. Judging by the expression on Kwin’s face, that was the factor she hadn’t
considered.

 
“Based
on what I’ve read and the current acceleration of the severity of disasters, I
would estimate… a week at most,” Kwin said finally.

No one said anything, but it was clear that
this news had put a dampener on whatever hope they might have felt from Kwin’s
determination.

“So we have one week to search the entire
world for one person. We don’t know if they’re even around, and we only have a
general idea as to what they look like,” Alastor mused. “Well, we’ve been up
against worse odds. It’s been a while since I took a good jaunt around the
world, anyway.”

“Then it’s settled,” Kwin announced. “We’re
going to find our keeper.”

The rest of the day passed lazily. Kwin
retreated to the study, and Kai decided to let her have some alone time for a
while. He called his mother to let her know that everything was fine and that
he was having fun, then handed the phone off to Lindsay so she could do the
same. When she was done, Alastor took over and called Ella, who was sitting at
a table five feet away, to also reassure her that everything was okay.

Despite Alastor’s attempts to cheer them up,
Kai wasn’t feeling it. He suspected that much of what he was feeling was
actually worry for the others, Kwin and Lindsay primarily. Alastor and Ella had
been incredibly close since her return, but Kwin and Lindsay didn’t have that
type of relationship. To her credit, Kwin was being supportive and as helpful
to Lindsay as she could be, but when it came to having someone of her own to
talk to lately, she only had Kai.

With that in mind, Kai decided to pay her a
visit. As he walked into the study, he was surprised to find Lindsay where as
well. The girls sat among stacks of books and looked like they were in the
middle of a deep discussion. Before Kai could walk out again, worried that he
might be interrupting, Kwin beckoned at him to come over.

“Nice to see you,” she said warmly, inviting
him to sit down with them. “Lindsay and I have just been doing some research.
Are you aware of how brilliant your best friend is? I’m starting to realize I
should have included her in our discussions much earlier.”

“What are you talking about?” Kai asked as he
found a place to sit between the books. It definitely wasn’t casual reading; they
dealt with theories of personality, dream theory, sociology, communication,
memory, consciousness and various disorders. There were also folders upon
folders of academic papers and scientific journals.

“We were just talking about memory,” Lindsay
exclaimed. “The parts of the brain responsible for memories, why we forget
things…”

“All fascinating material,” Kwin continued.
“We’ve been looking at the different lobes and hemispheres in our brains and
how they operate. It is intriguing information, not simply because it helps us
understand ourselves, but because it may eventually help us find answers for
memory loss and addiction.”

“It’s really cool. There’s the frontal lobe,
parietal, occipital and… the temporal lobe!” Lindsay said proudly.

“How did this all come up?” Kai asked,
impressed.

“Lindsay came to visit when I was in the
middle of studying the effects of addiction,” Kwin explained. “Alastor and I
have come up with multiple theories regarding how people might suffer addiction
to the Sanctum. In order to explore these theories further I need to understand
how addiction works. I once conducted my own study within the Sanctum where I
spoke with one hundred dreamers, and I’m inclined to believe that behavioral
addiction is a very real problem.”

“Well, it is a pretty fun place to go. I can
see why people might get addicted to going there,” Kai said.

“Indeed. It is not a destructive behavior in
itself, because no matter what you do, you are only sleeping. I found that
newer dreamers were more likely to spend more time in the Sanctum, but that was
unsurprising. It’s a honeymoon effect of sorts, one that I know both you and
Lindsay experienced.”

“That doesn’t count as addiction though, does
it?” Kai asked. “I mean, we had only just found it and we really wanted to see
what we could do.”

“Correct. It’s only natural to want to spend a
lot of time exploring something new. But problems arise when this addiction
starts to affect real-world behavior. Some of the people I spoke with were so
intent on staying in the Sanctum as long as possible that they missed work and
avoided other responsibilities. Some of them lost their jobs and relationships
due to the severity of their addictions. In even more serious cases, some
people attempted to drug themselves to sleep whenever possible. Getting too
much sleep can have negative effects on your health to begin with, but abusing
sleep aids can be extremely harmful.”

“That sounds… awful. Can we do anything about
this? Maybe find a way to help people who might have that problem?” Kai said
slowly.

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. The more
I understand about how the problem works, the more I might be able to come up
with some sort of solution. At the very least I hope to be able to alleviate
the effects. What I would like to do eventually is perhaps set up some sort of
support group in the Sanctum itself, but I don’t feel comfortable doing so yet
with my limited knowledge.”

She turned to a stack of papers covered in sticky
notes and began flipping through them. They looked like they had been
referenced many times; the edges of the papers were creased and worn, and a few
papers were held together with strips of clear tape.

“What else have you been looking at?” Lindsay asked
inquisitively. “I’d love to learn more about all this stuff with you – I mean,
if that’s okay with you.”