Nightmares and Daydreams: Chapter 30

“The rift reopened only a few hours ago. How did you know?” Malachi blinked from Rhysa to me and back again.

“Rhysa had a dream that Gigi would be returning very soon. We decided that this was the most likely point.”

“It appears so. Will more of you be arriving?”

Not long after Rhysa and I found Malachi, Kris and Rain, Atsila and Leena, and Ivy, Ender, and Aethel showed up as well. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more joined.”

Not a moment later a very queasy Navia appeared via spell magic. “How do you people do this all the time?” she muttered, grabbed a beer, and chugged.

“I’ll go help her. We’ve chatted about this before,” Rhysa whispered before kissing my cheek.

I watched her leave until Tymothy appeared with his parents. “It’s good to have you here.”

“Don’t look so surprised.” Lou stared me down. “Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I can’t be reasonable.”

“You’ve always been the most reasonable person I know.” And the most tolerant. I really hoped Destiny took it easy on her after this.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Draygus Wren.”

Even Rever came along with Shoshanna. He shook my hand. “We figure whatever the news is, it’s best if we all hear it at the same time so we can act quickly.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

The Guardsman was trained for battle and had been protecting the House of Gatlin most of his life. So I wasn’t surprised when he started peppering me with questions. “So they’re a faction.”

“Best I can tell.”

“And Ryddyck is different there?”

“According to Rhysa he makes sense. No more twitching. Has wings.” Angel or demon, though, I had no idea.

“Wings, huh? Interesting. We never really trained for that.”

That worried me as well. “Hopefully my brainiac sister asks a lot of questions.”

Rever laughed. “Oh you know she is. They might even regret coming to get her.”

“It’s expanding!” one of the Gatlin monitors yelled out. “We can’t hold it!”

Where was Rhysa? I panicked more that she wasn’t by my side than I did about the damn rift. I found her and Navia as quick as I could before joining everyone around the growing rift. “Will you need to help make an opening again?”

“No. I don’t think so. I got this feeling that it was more for Ryddyck than Gigi. She has this phenomenal ability to move between realities. She just didn’t know how to do it before.”

The air sizzled and crackled with electricity, and then like we were in a movie, lights flashed and an electric butterfly began to flap its wings. One moment it seemed tiny, the next enormous, and then back to tiny again.

Then Gigi appeared in her usual fully samhain form. Rhysa rushed forward with a coat and draped it over Gigi’s naked shoulders. Behind them the Gatlin Guardians shrank the rift back. Rain joined them and in a flash it was closed again.

“How did you know I’d be here?” Gigi blinked at us in confusion. “How long was I gone?”

“A little over four months.” She let me kiss her forehead and give her a hug.

“I dreamt of you,” Rhysa said. “With these minotaur-looking guys and Ryddyck with wings.”

“When they first brought me in,” she murmured and nodded. “So you know I have news.”

“That’s what we’re all here for, little sister. How bad is it?” I braced for the worst.

“The Convergence is beginning,” she whispered, then her eyes rounded in panic. “And if we don’t stop them from tethering to our world, we’ll lose it all.”

Fuck.

“They’re staging invasion forces here, here, and here. Oh, and here. And here.” Gigi pointed to places all over the globe. “Sorry. I have a lot to remember. They come with powerful sorcerers who will use a kind of dark magic to bind elements of their world with ours.”

“What do you mean by dark magic?” Navia pushed closer.

“Their version of magic is different.” Gigi said, shrugging the coat around her. “It’s…well everything is different. I should start with that. There’s no unconsciousness. They don’t sleep, they don’t dream, and they don’t have thoughts that can only be heard in their own minds. There’s no instinct. But they do have this binding… I don’t know…force? They are tied to their world and the world to them. It all flows together. There are no gray areas. It’s all black or white. It is or it isn’t. They need the resources from our world. That’s the fact. That’s all they care about. As the worlds converge, they’ll use this binding force to tie our worlds together permanently. When the cosmic tides shift, instead of pulling their world away from ours again, it will stay tethered. They may phase in and out, but they will never leave.”

“How do we stop them from using this magic?” I rolled my shoulders to try and keep them from tensing, but it was a losing battle.

Gigi’s eyes flew to Rhysa and locked. “Our first line of defense is Marhysa and the banshees. They exist between the realities. It’s something these beings can’t fight or control well. It’s why they’ve spread their attacks across the globe. The next line of defense is the Heads of House. The swords and armor are of both realities, but more than that, they are designed to fight that dark magic.”

Nine Houses and five points to defend. The odds seemed to be in our favor, but I somehow doubted that was the reality.

“What other information did Ryddyck give you?” How should we divide and conquer? A few of those locations were in desolate locations. We needed to move anyone who couldn’t shift on their own to one of these locations and save the most powerful shifters as a second wave since they could quickly move to any of these locations.

“They see humans like we see ants. Numerous and annoying, but not a threat. They won’t hesitate to stomp on them or destroy them as needed. They see us like wolves in the forest. A threat. Dangerous. Something to be eliminated so they can enjoy our world and our resources at their leisure. To be clear, this is a war being fought between worlds. The Plane is the closest thing we will get to an ally. In the last war the Plane was the difference between winning and losing. We need to rely on it if we’re going to survive.”

“I’ve never ignored the Plane before and I’m not about to start now,” Rain grumbled.

“There’s one more thing,” Gigi said, her voice becoming very small. “They can’t exist in our world and we can’t exist in theirs. But once the worlds merge, the old rules dissolve and new rules will be written when we separate. Anyone in the wrong place at the wrong time will be trapped in the other world.”

The hair on my arm rose up. “How is it possible to be trapped on their side? I don’t understand.” I got that the Convergence would make our realities exist in the same place and time, but how was it possible to be in “their” world or “ours” if it was all the same?

Gigi’s chin wobbled just a little. “You’ll understand soon enough.”

Rhysa pressed into my side and I wrapped my arm around her, only to realize she was trembling. Somehow she knew what Gigi meant.

And it wasn’t good.