Black Light
by Derek Burrow

Gabryal ran for his life.  The pain of the claw marks seared across his chest like hot irons, and his breath came in ragged spurts, each of which set his chest afire with pain.  But he couldn't stop running, couldn't let the Beast catch him.  He had been lucky; it had come at the camp in the night, while he was out gathering water.  It had taken Adam first, ripped right through the Speaker, for Adam was one of the rare men and women who could speak with spirits and summon their power, mystic robes, torn into him with all the power of Nightmares behind it.  Adam had died quickly, but Marylin and Dagas hadn't been so lucky.

Their screams were what had alerted him to the Beast's presence, and he had felt Dagas's mind voice, fractured from pain telling him to get out of there.  And so he had ran.  But the Beast had caught him as he had tripped over a root in the dark, had ripped open his chest before he could stun it with a bolt of mental power.  And while it had reeled back, Gabryal had ran faster and further, but now his body stung from a hundred tiny cuts, and he was almost to tired to go on.  And that's when he broke into the clearing and saw the single lantern hung above the door of the Pre-Cataclysm bunker.

  *   *   *

Janice was sitting on the doorstep of the bunker, slowly mixing herbs together in a bowl, when the battered young man stumbled into the clearing.  He was dressed in simple black boots, gray pants, a ripped and tattered gray cloak, and a black shirt with a huge bloody gash across the front.  As he fell panting to the ground in front of her, he managed to gasp, "Inside...danger...demon!"  And then he was out of it.

Never being one to leave a man to die on her doorstep, Janice hauled the young man into the bunker and locked the door with the huge metal bolt.  The door was made of some sort of light, Pre-Cataclysm metal that hadn't broken or rusted for as long as she could remember, she hoped that it would hold against whatever was after him.  She dragged him over to a battered bed and lay him down on it, cutting away his shirt with a small knife and inspecting the wound before smearing a herbal concoction from a jar on it.

  *   *   *

Gabryal swam in and out of consciousness, sitting between the waking world and the spirit world of Mists, the realms of neutrality that separated Dreams and Nightmares.  He knew his surroundings, at least in the Mists he could look back on himself.  He knew he was in a small bunker, knew he was lying on the bed in a delirious state.  But he couldn't make it all the way back to his body.  Not quite yet.

But finally a strong smashing sound roused him and he fought his way back into the waking world just as the lights in the bunker flickered off and then on again.

  *   *   *

The Beast hit the door, raising a great clang from it.  It did it again, and again, and backed off with a great stomping and roaring.  Janice sighed and eased herself up from where she had fallen in surprise.  She saw that the young man was slowly waking up, knew that the minor magics she had imbued in the herbs had worked at least partially.

"Wha...what's goin' on?" the man slurred, trying to get into a sitting position, but only succeeding in falling back and hissing at the pain it caused him.   "Arbitrator's Bane, does this ever hurt!  Who are you?" he asked, this time slowly becoming a bit more coherent.  Janice walked over to him and sat down at the edge of the bed.

"Whatever was chasing you...it hit the door pretty hard, but I think it'll hold," she said, a bit afraid.  He was swearing by the Arbitrators, the very powers of Neutrality and the Mists themselves.  Swearing by powerful spirits was a dangerous business in the world nowadays, you never know when you might invoke one by accident.

The man winced again as he crawled back on the bed, but managed to prop himself up against the wall so that he was looking at her.  In this light Janice could see the creases in his face, the small scars that were around the sides of his face and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth.  He looked easily 10 or 15 years older than he probably was, but then again a hard life could do that to a person.  Janice herself looked older than she was.  "Who are you?" she asked. Her curiosity, normally reserved for new knowledge of the forest, was sparked by him.

"I...just call me Gabryal.  It'll have to do.  Forgive me, but I'm not very trusting of strangers.  Even ones that just saved my life." Gabryal said, looking around.

"I understand.  I'm Janice, by the way.  And what in the name of God is that thing?" she asked, standing and beginning to pace.  She had lived here in this bunker since the man who had taken care of her after her parents had died left.  She had never been so terrified as now, it was all she could do to keep from shaking.  But she had been trained, at least a little, in the Druidic arts by that old man all those years ago.  She knew about making herbal potions to heal and she knew some of the mental exercises to keep her mind on track.  And she was running through them in her head now, remembering old ballads, trying to go, at least mentally, to a place that she felt was safer.  The lights flickered again, the little generator that powered them was running out of water.  Janice had filled it that morning and wasn't sure exactly how long it would hold for.

"The lights won't hold for long," observed Gabryal.  His mind was slowly clearing, he could feel the fuzz going away, but he realized that he couldn't use his power yet.  For he was a Walker, a person who could walk in the minds of others, and his connection the Mists gave him abilities that allowed him to keep the peace between good and evil.  Right now he was thinking that the thing was after him, maybe if he walked right into it's claws it would leave Janice alone.  But he knew it wasn't true.  The Beast was bred of Nightmares and lived for carnage.  It would slaughter everyone it met until it's purpose was complete, and probably a few people afterwards just for good measure.  But he knew also that once the light went out, Janice's fear levels would shoot through the roof, she would begin living a nightmare, and that itself would give the Beast outside the link it needed to get in and kill them both.

Gabryal knew that in the state he was in right now it wouldn't even be a fair fight between him and the Beast.  It would be a slaughter.  He was injured and couldn't use his powers, but he could feel them slowly returning.  All that generator had to do was hold out for another hour and they would be all right.

"So," said Gabryal, trying to make small talk to take Janice's mind off their current problems, "How did you get here?"

Janice was a bit taken aback by his question.  It hardly mattered at a time like this, but, at the same time, she felt that he deserved an answer.  "My parents died when I was young.  I was raised by an old man, a Druid actually.  He taught me all about the forests and how to trap stuff and make herbal potions and ointments.  He found this bunker for me just before he died and showed me how to work the," at this point her voice had taken on a sad edge and she struggled to pronounce the seemingly mystical word correctly, "Hi-Dro-Jinn Generator."  she said, causing Gabryal to chuckle a little.  "What?" she asked, slightly hurt, having no clue which part of her story she was laughing at.

"Hydrogen, it's a gas." he said.  Part of the training as any sort of profession dedicated to the Mists involved learning Pre-Cataclysmic history.  So he had learned about Hydrogen generators, machines that created electricity out of water, as well as about the ancient attack by religious fanatics upon a place of great atomic power that caused the explosion that turned California into the Blight Zone and gave the Lords of Night, the masters of the Nightmare realms,the opening they needed to release themselves and their get upon the world.

"Whatever.  Do you want to me to tell this or not?" she asked, angrily.  And in her anger, she temporarily forgot her fear.

"No no, go on." Gabryal said, groaning in pain as he pushed himself into a better position on the wall.  The magic in the herbs was helping heal his wounds, but it was a slow process and his chest still ached terribly.

So Janice told him about how she occasionally traded with travelers for goods and services to her, how she went out daily to get water from a small stream to give her enough to drink and power the generator.  By the end of her story, after Gabryal had had her elaborate some more on her past, his head was feeling a bit better, but his powers still weren't fully back.  During that time the lights had flickered more and it had taken more effort each time to keep Janice from remembering her fears and multiplying them ten fold.  The Beast would occasionally roar outside, or bang on the walls.  This also took effort to keep Janice's mind on track.  So Gabryal told her his story.

"I was born in a small village to two devout church going parents.  When I was young I began to exhibit certain...talents.  I could tell when people were lying, I never lost in games of chance, and I was always able to tell the guilty party in an argument.  Of course, as you know, the Church looks very dimly on Walkers and so when my priest finally identified me as one when I was 16, I had to run for it.  And run I did, with the words from my own parents cursing me that the Devil should take my soul.

I would have died that first week had I not been Found.  In my sleep, I was surrounded by mists and It came to me.  It was only a gray robe, the face obscured, and the hands the same.  And it simply directed me.  And when I woke up I was at the front gate of an enclave of disciples of the Mists.  I was trained in the ways of the Mist Walker and I left them to seek to bring order and justice back to the world." he explained, then going into how he had met up with his previous group, and went right up to before they died.  "And that brought me here," he ended.  By this time, the lights were dimming and Janice's fear was returning.  Gabryal didn't think he could distract her for much longer, but his head was clear now.

And that was when the Beast came out of the shadows.  Janice fell to the floor, her fear overwhelming her as the Beast came out of the wall, right at Gabryal.  It's appearance was mind numbing, it was like a man, only 8 feet tall with claws and tentacles and more mouths than any living thing should have.  And it came right at Gabryal, but in the telling of his story he had felt himself become buoyed by his faith in the Mists.  Order must be restored.  Chaos must be destroyed.  And it had given him the power he needed now.  His wounds no longer hurt, his faith propelled him now.  He rose off of the bed, hovering an inch off the ground as he looked at the Beast with a look of intense judgment on his face.  The Beast stopped and stared at him for a second, and then it charged him.

In the moment before it hit him, Gabryal opened his mouth and let out a single, crystal clear word, "NO!"  And in that moment time seemed to freeze.  Light radiated from Gabryal's mouth, eyes, hands, his entire body.  The Beast was black against the glow, and then, suddenly, it screamed.  It's roar ripped through the air like a knife in the gut.  Then, without any warning, it exploded into bits of shadow, which dissipated as soon as they hit the ground.

Lying where the Beast had stood, was the dead body of a young man, no more than 15.  A Speaker, but one who had become so absorbed in his own Nightmares that he had become the Beast that in his dreams he had sought to escape.

Gabryal fell to the ground like a puppet who's strings had suddenly been cut by a destructive child.  As he hit the ground the pain in his chest flared and he feel into darkness again.  When he awoke he say Janice kneeling over him and managed to rasp, "It's...going to be...all right," before he lapsed into darkness again.

THE END