Reformation

Part 1: https://steemit.com/writing/@bardbarian/living-the-dream
Part 2: https://steemit.com/writing/@bardbarian/of-diners-and-dives
Part 3: https://steemit.com/writing/@bardbarian/seeing-through-the-dream
Part 4: https://steemit.com/writing/@bardbarian/the-king-and-the-exile

Part 5
Sara hung in the air, apparently kept up by Creed’s outstretched hand. She dangled quite ignominiously as the rain continued to fall from the smog clouds down on the tyrant’s time stalled city.

Creed laughed. “Your father taught you nothing.”

Sara fought with everything she had.

“You learned nothing when you left here.”

Sara gasped. Finally. Focus.

“Academy of Urdun, war on Prime, and now? You are nothing.” Creed released his clenched fist.

And Sara flew.

Creed shifted away, and braced. “What is this?”

“There are more ways than one to fight,” Sara’s eyes burned blue “and I have learned something of all of them. You want to play mind games? Not with my head.”

“Enough!” Creed thrust out his hands and yellow lightning sprang from the city below through his body and arced to Sara.

With blue light burning through her red hair she flowed through an ancient form, a kata that perhaps once held meaning but now was taught to first-year martial arts students. The lightning was nothing, vanishing as she moved through where it had been. Creed summoned a horde of bats sickly yellow shrieking towards Sara as she moved closer. They faded to nothing. She came closer. Creed roared in desperation and a dragon long and golden gorged yellow flame that Sara ignored as it was not there. Finally with nothing left Creed struck at the woman with a closed fist. Sara shifted, Creed fell, she placed her knee in his throat and-

“No! Wait!”

Sara looked up. Daniel was there with them in the storm. He held out her father’s book. His book. The book. She knew that book. “Where did you get that?” Sara discarded Creed and strode through the air towards Daniel. “Who are you?”

“Sara, it’s me! Your father sent me.”

Sara saw things differently now. She could see the family resemblance to Creed. But more than that she saw her friend from a lifetime ago. Seeing him she remembered. Vengeance met hope. “Daniel? Is it really you?”

“Yes, it is me. And I need to take the dream away from him before he dies.”

“He is your father.”

“Yes. And more importantly, he has weaved a dream that needs to be carefully dismantled, not shattered.”

“Or else the people..”

“Everyone will die, or worse.”

Daniel stood on the air and still seemed like the only real thing Sara had seen on this world. “Why should I trust you? How can I possibly know that you are not another trick?”

“Because you have the vision of what this world was. I need that vision in order to set it right. Your father, he sent me out into nature to learn the dream, but he kept you here so you could see the city as it was before my father twisted it entirely. And then he sent you away, so that you would know this was not the way things had to be.”

Sara looked at Creed, who was still unconscious, floating helplessly in his own illusion. “He said I was to inherit the dream. Take it over. He wants us to try just that.”

“I know.” Daniel caught Sara’s eyes again.. “But you and I will be no-one’s prisoners.”

“Fine. do what you must.”

Daniel closed the book and placed it somewhere beneath his coat. He took Sara’s hand, and placed the other on his father’s forehead. Creed opened his eyes and locked gazes with his son the Dreamwalker.

“Son.”

“Father.”

“You have Lee’s half of the book.”

“He gave it to me, now I have the whole thing.”

“Then you know why he and I built this world.”

“I know.”

“You know the dream takes us all, and I had to serve it. The yellow king...”

“You gave this world over to something you thought you could control.”

“And now you will take this world and continue, you and her.”

“I do not-will not serve the same master as you.”

“You think me a monster with no remorse.”

“I know you have paid, and will pay, for everything you did.”

“I did it, for you, for her.”

“We did not want it. Not like this.”

“You have no choice now son.”

“You may have forced our hand, but we are the masters now.” Daniel began to strain, and Sara clenched his hand tight focusing her vision of what the world had been, and should be. “This dream will be reformed.”

In an instant that lasted a thousand years the city caught a glimpse of sun through the smog. Sara and Daniel were on the ground, Creed had faded away and was gone. They were in front of the world port: the line of erstwhile escapees marveled at the woman with the blue fire in her hair and the man with golden eyes.

“We have more work to do.”

“There will be some chaos as we re-establish the courts. The watchers have to go.”

“The economy is going to take a hit without forced overtime.”

“Lione. Lione will not be pleased.”

“Revolutionaries will revolt against whoever rules.”

“We must guard against the same fate our fathers’ suffered.”

“The lord of dreams will come for what is owed it.”

“By then, we can only hope, this world will be dreaming no more.”

end.

Thank you for reading, criticism welcome.

-Matthew