Ripped Apart: Quantum Twins – Adventures On Two Worlds (21 page)

For eight days Lellia and Mizena had repeatedly searched through Siahranah until Lellia called a halt as they were exhausted. All the crystal had revealed was an impenetrable, black, fog that slowly sapped the women’s energies the more they tried to see through it. When Wrenden had recovered, the four friends repeatedly tried to link through Óweppâ. Although there was no hint of any energy connection, each of the Twins’ sections retained their individual colours.

‘Good news and bad news,’ Mandara explained on one of the evenings when all had gathered together. ‘The strong colours in their segments on the Talisman confirm they twins are alive. The barrier shows that the opposition knows that. As there have been no more attacks over eight days, it appears that the opposition is content with a barrier. Barriers can by circumvented. I am certain that the lack of contact through Óweppâ tells us that the twins do not have the power to link. Which has to mean they are not mentally connected. And.’ Mandara’s shoulders sagged as he looked grim. ‘As their friends encountered neither opposition nor any barrier, that reinforces the fact that they must be fully involved in any plans to rescue the twins.’

Lellia and Shandur nodded, grim smiles on their faces.

‘I will look after them,’ Mizena said.

Lellia had also spent time with the Stroems, her overriding duty as Orchestrator being to restore calm and balance and maintain the essential smooth linkage with the other five Caverns: and Azura. Several days had passed before she had considered it safe for Mandara and Shandur to be able to work in the Cavern. Even then the Stroems had been unhappy.

‘It is as though they feel that by increasing safety precautions as all the parents demanded, we are blaming them for what happened when they were actually striving to rescue Qwelby from the NoWhenWhere,’ Lellia explained ‘The music of the Xzyling is difficult to decipher. The best interpretation I can provide is that at the end they Xzyled the equivalent of a drum roll, pitched well below the level of human hearing. That countered the whirlpool effect to hold Wrenden and Tamina up for long enough to allow the tachyon field to reach back in time and project the strengthened safety shield.’

‘But they didn’t support Qwelby,’ Wrenden complained.

‘He wasn’t there in the same space-time-consciousness as you and your sister,’ Lellia said. ‘As The Stroems’ purpose is to bridge the divide between Vertazia and Azura they feel bad that… in effect they let Qwelby slip from their grasp. That’s why they have been so unsettled and it’s been so long before the men could work in the Cavern.’

*

When all else had failed, the youngsters’ parents had honoured their agreement and the four were permitted to make one more visit to the StroemCavern. They were sitting with Lellia in the cosy room alongside the StroemLock as she was finishing her run-through of the procedure they had to follow.

‘Wrenden. You are so close to your fourteenth rebirthday and receiving your crystal, you must know your personal shade of colour, and probably what crystal will be yours?’

‘Lazabatanzii, I expect.’

Lellia nodded. It was what she saw in his aura. The green crystal vibrating to the elements of Air and Earth were the perfect compliment to Qwelby’s red Fire and Earth related Drakobata. She sighed. Tamina’s multicoloured Fire and Water related Bula’kabilii, Tullia’s purple Air and Water related Kanyisaya. Each with a rare twin power Crystal, firmly binding all four together through the elemental associations. Her fears for the safety and stability of Tamina and Wrenden increased.

‘Each of you is to imagine a thread of your principal shade of colour going forth from your centre. Weave all four into a strong cord. Hold in your minds the thought of each twin in turn, and that strong cord will search for them.’

‘Search for Qwelby first?’ Wrenden asked with a catch in his throat.

The others nodded their agreement. Through Lellia’s crystal, she and Mizena had found that Tullia was well. Everyone hoped to discover that Qwelby had survived his fall though the StroemWell.

She looked into each of their energy fields and saw their concern, caring and determination.

‘I have to warn you. You must keep your awareness on where you will be. On a gallery above the XzylStroem. From there you just watch the cord on its journey. Do NOT go into your threads and search yourselves. If you do that, the whole of your Kore energy will be pulled out of you into a place between dimensions. You will be in a realm of energy forms of the same level of vibration as your energy bodies. Meeting them would be as if you were in your normal bodies. It would be very real. So real you could be hurt, physically.’ She looked into each of their eyes. ‘Or worse. Do you understand?’

She saw fear flickering through their energy fields as they absorbed her message. Shimara & Pelnak were subdued. They held hands and nodded. Their energy fields combined and a thought reached her.
‘Pelnmara,’
it said
.

Strong energy flowed between brother and sister with reassurance going both ways. Tamina tried to hold back from smiling with surprise at her usually exasperating younger brother. Unsuccessfully, as she saw a corner of his mouth twitch.

As tears started at the corners of his eyes, Tamina took his hand in hers. He was still blaming himself for failing to rescue his BestFriend.

‘We’ll find him, Eeky,’ she tried to reassure him.

Getting up from her chair, Lellia led them to the preparation booth and then onto the gallery around the top of the XzylCavern. She turned to Control Panel at the side of the door and spoke nicely to it. A smaller, circular gallery appeared, jiggling about as it hovered right over the centre of the XzylStroem. As they watched, a series of walkways shimmered into view, leading from the gallery on which they were standing to join the central one. Everything was shifting, buckling, clicking, groaning and looking less substantial than on their previous visit.

‘We are standing on what we call the viewing gallery,’ Lellia explained. ‘The circular walkway you can see in the centre we call the interaction gallery. It always keeps itself directly above the energy centre of the XzylStroem. Since your last visit Mandara and Shandur have added emergency energy fields to all the barriers. Now there is no way you can slip through them.’

Once again the Stroems were very different. As the friends watched what had been one gently swirling whirlpool slowly reformed into five. A central one surrounded by four others, equally spaced and which not merely rotated but whirled around the side of the Well. All four seemingly going in both directions at once in a mad blur of colour that was nevertheless distinguishable: as long as the youngsters let the images bypass their surface thinking and slip into their deepminds.

‘Do you really want to try to MentaSynch with the twins?’
One last chance to back out. This is so dangerous, and they are so young.

Four nervous, bug-eyed, hedgehog heads nodded.

‘To do that you will have to walk out to the interaction gallery.’

Their helmets swivelled as they looked at each other, the absence of mental connection increasing their nervousness.

‘To maintain an energy balance, each one of you will need to walk along a separate path. When you get to the central gallery you will all hold hands.’

‘But that central gallery is much too large for four of us to be able to hold hands,’ objected Tamina.

‘Not when you are there,’ Lellia replied.

‘Ready?’ she asked. Four heads nodded slowly. ‘Shimara and Pelnak, go left and right, Tamina to the far side.’ She turned to Wrenden. ‘This one for you. As you don’t yet have a crystal, this way balances up the energies the best we can.’ She looked around all four. ‘When you walk along, do not try to hold on. Walk as though they were not moving. Remember: Imagination!’

She moved back to the control panel. ‘Take up your positions and wait for my signal.’

When the four had moved to the ends of the walkways, they heard her voice through the speakers in their helmets telling them to start walking.

Careful not to hold on and let their imaginations make them even more frightened, they slipped and staggered over the jiggling pathways and reached the interaction gallery safely. Surprise, surprise, it was small enough for them to reach out and hold hands.

Spending more time acting like twins than real twins did, Shimara and Pelnak could find it difficult to reach out and connect with other people. Tamina gentled their energies out of their loop. As she linked all four of them together she reminded them that this first search was for Qwelby.

Swaying to keep their balance, all the weaving movements added a hypnotic effect as they focussed their energies on manifesting their own coloured threads. With a sudden shweeesh! that threw them off balance and made them grip hands tightly, Tamina’s orange thread looped around and shot off down into the spiralling centre of the XzylStroem.

She struggled to rein it back and let the others catch up, reached out with her mind and coaxed the other threads to twine around hers, plaiting all four together. Relaxing her control, she watched as the rope spiralled around then plunged into the centre of the Stroems.

Brilliantly coloured energy Xyled along each of the threads, the counterpart to their own colours. With a shock like diving from the highest springboard into a swimming pool, Tamina felt herself pulled headfirst along her thread, and knew the same was happening to the others. Despite promising not to, they had gone out of their bodies. For the first time in their lives each was in their InForming Matrix. They knew the theory, but it was still confusing to find that it seemed to be no different to normal life.

Tamina felt the fear flickering out from the others, calmed her own, absorbed theirs, felt it churning in her stomach.
Please, stay there. Don’t let it get into my thoughts,
she asked the Multiverse, as they plunged into a swirling torrent of colours.

She felt like a rocket shooting into space. Clutching onto her legs, Pelnak and Shimara were the big boosters. With his arms wrapped around her waist, she felt as though Wrenden was riding her as if they were in a HoloWrapper Kiddy Kartoon.

A thick, grey mist appeared in front of them. Buried deep within were tiny flecks of red and green. As they headed into the mist, Tamina extended her arms and dropped her head between them, carving through the mist like a diver piercing the water.

Small specks appeared in the distance. As they rapidly grew larger they could be seen to be birds. As birds were used on Vertazia to carry private messages, they all felt joy at such a welcome sight of a message from Qwelby.

Their hopes were shattered as a ghostly face half appeared, wreathed in the mist. Lines of energy could be seen flowing from its mouth and eyes as if it was controlling the birds like animated puppets. The birds dived down and landed on Wrenden’s back. Gripping with their claws and flapping their wings, they tried to pull him away. Others landed on Shimara and Pelnak striking with their beaks, seeking to loosen their hold on brother and sister.

‘Grip my legs,’
Wrenden thought to Pelnmara. Even as he remembered that his mind could not reach out past the helmet, he felt the not-twins move so that each had one arm wrapped tightly around one of his calves holding each tightly against his sister’s legs.
Out-of-Body. Thoughts work!

Releasing his grip on his sister, Wrenden rose to his knees and battered at the birds attacking the not-twins. In turn, they used their free arms to strike at the birds on his back. One after the other the birds were pulled free and thrown into the mist, squawking with anger. But there was no respite.

Their claws remained, ran down Wrenden’s back and tried to burrow beneath the not-twins arms. Wrenden was bending this way and that, ripping them away as fast as he could. Cries of pain resounding through all four helmets as each claw was torn away from the youngsters’ increasingly blood-streaked arms and legs.

Wrenden was struggling with two that were almost hidden out of sight under Shimara’s arm. Twisting around to his left and feeling Pelnak’s grip on his right leg slacken, he got both hands onto the birds and heaved with all his might, wincing at Shimara’s scream as he pulled them away. His mind stored away the impression that tiny points of green and red light clustered around her bleeding arm.

Finally, they were through the flock. Wrenden heard sighs of relief mingling with his own as he dropped down to lie along his sister’s back, shaking with fatigue and anxiety. It seemed to him as though tiny waves of green and red colour ran along his back and legs, easing the pain from the many cuts.

Their rest was short-lived. With thrumming wings, yellow spotted, brown beasts dived on them. Again Wrenden rose up, flailing his arms at the new attackers. Shooting long tongues at his arms, they looked like grotesque caricatures of flying chameleons.

As the friends sped through the attacking flock, the fine, saw-toothed surfaces of the tongues slashed his arms. His lovely coffee colour was slowly turning red from the blood that was flowing from the myriad tiny cuts. A beast landed on his left wrist and wrapped its tongue around his forearm. He swung that arm at another approaching chameleon. The two beasts smashed together and pain seared through him as the tongue was wrenched from its grip. He ducked as another attacker sped towards his face. It cannoned off his shoulder and spun off into the distance.

He felt the not-twins tightening their grips. He knew that if he was torn from his perch he was lost. And if their grip on brother and sister was broken, none of them would ever return to Vertazia. What had started out as an exciting adventure had become a very real fight for their lives.

Turning to his right as he heard Pelnak’s cry of pain, he saw him tear a beast away from where it had just landed on his left arm, its claws tearing at his flesh, blood spraying into the grey mist. Blood with green streaks? His mind asked.

Hearing the sound of more thrumming, Wrenden turned to the front and saw a cluster of beasts diving from his left. He punched one in the face, sending it crashing into two more behind it. Then that group was gone, whisked past by the speed of the friends’ headlong dive down through the mist.

A last remaining group swooped in from his right. He ducked to his left as they flew past, their claws missing him by centimetres. The grin was wiped from his face as tongues whipped out and two wrapped around his forearm, digging into his flesh.

As the beasts fell behind, he was jerked to his right and felt the not-twins straining to keep hold of him. He watched in disbelief as the chameleons folded their wings and wound their tongues in, pulling themselves ever closer, claws on their front legs preparing to grip him. He could not bear the thought of any more pain. His whole body was on fire from all the torn flesh and cuts.

In spite of himself, he screamed loudly as they sunk their claws into his forearm. He was almost fainting with the pain. Desperate to tear them from his arm, yet more frightened of falling from his sister’s body, he bent forward and sought to grip his sister with his left hand.

Tamina felt herself flooded with his fear and the panic rising within Pelnak and Shimara.

‘Hold on tight!’
Tamina thoughtsent.
‘Pelnmara, focus on getting us through. I’ll help Eeky.’

She twisted her supple, dancer’s body around and back and felt her brother’s hand grasp her left shoulder. Yes, she could just reach. Gritting her teeth, with her hand held open she slashed her right arm at the nearest chameleon and felt her nails rip across its body. Black blood sprayed out and fell, sizzling onto her brother’s arm. Again she slashed, a nail broke; she felt the biting pain as black blood splashed onto her own arm.

Again and again Tamina slashed, feeling more nails break. It was not working, the beasts’ skins were too thick and the cuts too shallow.

Her last blow had made the chameleon nearest to her struggle to maintain its hold. It flapped its wings and was plucked away by the wind tunnel effect of the four friend’s passage through the mist. It had not left its claws behind. Instead, it reached out with them and gripped its companion. The shock of the collision tore that beast from its perch on Wrenden’s arm.

Time seemed to stand still.

The tongues of both beasts were still wrapped around Wrenden’s arm. As they reached their full extent a massive jerk was felt by all four friends. His terrified scream resounded through all their helmets as his left hand slipped from his sister’s shoulder and his left leg was pulled out of Shimara’s grip. He was about to plunge into the mist. Death faced him.

He was an annoying little squirt of a brother, forever playing her up. But he was HER brother. Tamina raised her arm up high above her head and with a viciousness she didn’t know she possessed, swung it as fast as possible toward the tongues, felt her hand judder as she struck, cried out with the shock and pain as more nails broke, gasped with surprise as the severed tongues fell away and she heard Wrenden’s screams of pain above her own as the spurting black blood sprayed them both.

Waves of green and red light run along his arm. The energy signature was clear. It was Qwelby reaching out to him, to them all, sending his healing love. Mentally, Wrenden tried to follow back the lines of energy and was met by soft, swirling white, making him think of snow. He was sucked in as if being taken to meet his elderest. The whiteness disappeared, leaving him with no clues as to where Qwelby might be.

As he tried to penetrate it, his mind started to freeze. Reluctantly, he pulled his awareness back to where he was and crashed down onto his sister’s back and wrapped his left arm around her waist. He rested his badly bleeding arm on her back, watching the soft red and green energy soothing it.

‘Qwelby. Where are you?’
he thoughtsent. His vision was filled with the same swirling white wall.

Tamina eased her aching joints and let her feeling of success flow through to the others. She half smiled to herself. When they were much younger, her irrepressible brother had named them the “Fearless Four.” At that age Tullia and Qwelby were inseparable, and always referred to as “The Twins.” She and the not-twins had accepted the name. It gave them their own group identity as a way of finding the energy to balance that of the twins.
Perhaps we should resurrect the name. We certainly are earning it!

At last the mist cleared and they found themselves plunging through a spiral made of millions of bright points of light. Stars! A whole galaxy swept past them and the harsh cold of inter-stellar space bit into them.

Tamina was drained. Her strength gone. She was the oldest of the four and Tullia’s elderest. They were her responsibility. As the cold reached deep inside her and she felt the last vestiges of her energy draining away, she knew they would not succeed. Despair reached out for her. Here, between dimensions, there was no protective helmet. Its insidious message was overwhelming her, paralysing her hopes. She thought of all the times she had spent with Tullia, and with Qwelby. Their strength was their twinness. She needed that.
‘Help me!’
she thoughtcried.

That was wrong. Tears sprang into her eyes.
It’s me that must help them!

‘I’m here, Sis,’ a quiet voice came into her head.

‘And us,’ Pelnmara added.

Mmh.
She felt too weak even to speak. Soft waves of green and red light wrapped around the black Despair. Hope broke through.

A point of light appeared straight ahead. It grew in size, became a soft, beige colour radiating blessed warmth. She shot forward.

Something hard struck her stomach. Her attention was pulled back to the gallery. Together with the not-twins whose hands she was holding, she had pitched forward into the barrier. Fear gave her the energy to scream: ‘Stand firm!’

Bracing her feet against the railings she tried to lean backwards, felt herself being pulled over them. Panic took her. If their bodies were to follow them into the XzylStroem, then all was truly lost. Not only their lives. The twins would never return home.

She was in two places at once. Although her attention was back on the gallery, she knew her Self was still hovering over that beige patch. Here on the balcony wearing helmets, her mind could not reach the others. She was trying to pull Shimara and Pelnak towards her. If her brother sought balance by pulling them towards him, then she would topple over the balcony.

It wasn’t a question of letting go their hands to save herself, she knew she would snap out of her body and would be sucked into that beige patch.

Death awaited her.

Fighting with her last scrap of energy, her stomach pressed hard against the top railing, she felt her brother’s energy flowing into her, not much, not enough.

‘If anyone can do it, you can, Sis
.
’

She lifted one leg up and put her knee against the top railing, steadied herself and saw Shimara and Pelnak copy her.

Safe!

Later, she was to confide to Lellia that it was her brother’s faith in her that had given her the last drop of strength she needed to pull back and steady them all.

Peace!

All effort ceased as a tiny patch of lilac illumined the beige.

Tullia!

With all thought of the gallery left far behind, they descended as if lowered by Gravity Repulsors until they were hovering above a now large and strong sphere of purple.

Tullia was alive and well!

Little beads of pink and green energy flowed from them down towards the sphere. Purple petals opened and waved to them. A soft sigh rose up and a gentle smile appeared, hovering over the petals.

In the centre of the petals a series of images unfolded. Sun shining on a red desert. Dark-skinned men and women, morphing between being almost naked with some carrying spears and bows, and being fully clothed as if in the winter. Brightly coloured, rocky mountains under a hot sun. A round, thatched building that was set on a wide open, completely flat, grey-white expanse with a beautiful, large, tan-coloured cat loping along. In spite of the setting, the energy that came from the large hut clearly indicated it to be a cute little corner shop.

The scene quivered, blurred, cleared.

It was night-time. Brightly attired people were sitting around a large fire with nearly naked, dark-skinned men dancing. There was chanting and clapping. The flames reached high up as if they were the arms of many exotic dancers and bathed the friends in a warm embrace. Tamina almost groaned with envy at the sublime movement of bodies without joints, flames that truly were Salamanders, her own special symbol.

She was pulled down by the arms of the flame-people and invited to dance. She became one of them, a flame-wrapped Salamander. High above them, the moon cast its light across the whole scene. Swirling around in the midst of the fire it seemed to Tamina as though the flaming arms of the Salamanders reached up above her, pulled the moon down and enfolded its silver beauty. Tears fell from her eyes as an unbelievably magical moment flowed through her, making her at one with the fire and the moon.

‘Sis, Sis, please…’

Flaming Xzarze, Eeky. Not now!

The vision clouded over and disappeared, leaving only blackness. A terrible sense of loss filled her.