The Dream Sanctum: Beyond The End (6 page)

“Anyway, safe trip!” Carpenter continued, tossing the nail bag
nonchalantly over his shoulder. “You’ve got the best wishes of the entire
Sanctum behind you!”

“It is clear the Sanctum thinks highly of exploration, considering how many
people have gathered on the beach to watch us depart,” Kwin mused.

“What are you talking about, there aren’t any people on the – ohhh,”
Lindsay said as comprehension dawned on her face.

They all waved as the ship began to pull away from the dock under
Alastor’s expert hand. As soon as they were safely beyond the dock, Alastor
spun the wheel, causing the ship to change direction until the bow faced the
open ocean.

“Let’s see what we can do!” Alastor said happily, pushing down the lever
to release the sails.

The sails opened smoothly and instantly caught the breeze. The ship
gradually gained speed until it cut effortlessly through the small swells, and
the shoreline shrank quickly. Kai could see Carpenter standing on the dock,
still waving, and what looked like his entire tool set lining the beach,
jumping up and down or waving various mechanical parts in farewell.

“This is the life,” Alastor said, taking a seat before the controls.
“Just a relaxing trip at sea with a bunch of good friends. Or, in this case,
I’ll call you my mates.”

“Friends will do, thank you,” Kwin replied shortly. “Now, what is it
you’ve set up here?”

Kwin pointed at a small display Alastor had added to the control panel.
Alastor flipped a switch and the screen brightened. It looked to be another
replica of the map of the Sanctum, complete with the borders in the ocean and a
small, blinking white dot on the beach near the Golden Capital.

“This shows us where we are in relation to the borders,” Alastor
explained, and Kwin nodded in understanding. “With this we’ll know the exact
moment we cross, though I should say it’s just an estimate. The map’s borders
have a margin of error by about half a mile.”

“That’s neat!” Lindsay exclaimed. “We should have a party when we cross
the line. Then we’ll have gone farther than anyone else ever has! That’s got to
count for something, right?”

“Definitely,” Alastor replied. “And I won’t turn down a chance to party.”

They stood on the upper deck in silence for a while, watching the
shoreline fade until it was no longer visible on the horizon. At that point,
Lindsay stretched and started downstairs.

“I think I’m going to go check out the bedrooms now that we’re out in the
open,” she said cheerfully. “Who knows what sort of nifty things Carpenter put
down there?”

She jumped down the stairs and vanished behind the double glass doors.
Alastor looked amused, and had opened his mouth to make a comment when they
heard a terrified shriek from below.

“That didn’t sound good,” he said worriedly, and the others hurried down
the stairs and into the kitchen to see what was wrong. They found Lindsay
standing with her hand over her chest, panting slightly as she looked up at
them.

“It’s okay!” she gasped apologetically. “He just startled me, that’s all.
Why didn’t you tell me he was coming too?”

“Why who was coming? We never – oh good lord,” Kwin groaned, looking at
the other figure who stepped out from the control booth.

“Good day for a voyage!” Hercules stated pompously, puffing out his
chest. “Where are we going?”

S
ilence hung thick in the
air. Lindsay was still getting over her shock, while Kai was only beginning to
experience his. Hercules was the last person he had expected to see in the
Sanctum for quite a while, much less on their ship. Elvia had her face in her
palm, Alastor already looked irritated, and Kwin simply had an expression of
dumbfounded incredulity on her face.

“How… how did you get here?” Kwin asked suspiciously.

“Well you see, I saw this fine ship sitting in the water, and there was
no one in it! There was a house, but no one was in there either, so I knew I
had stumbled across a treasure! I left for a while, but when I came back here I
found my ship moving and came to investigate. You lot are wonderful people, but
I didn’t think you would steal my ship. This is treacherous I say!”

Lindsay laughed, but Hercules looked at her with a puzzled expression.

“Laughing at my misfortune, at your own evil deeds?”

Lindsay looked confused and tilted her head slightly. Kwin sighed.

“He’s serious. He actually thinks this is his ship.”

“Well I was first to find it when it was abandoned, you know!” Hercules
protested. “Finders keepers. You can’t just take other people’s things whenever
you want!”

“That is what you’d call an ironic statement,” Alastor muttered to Kai,
then turned to face Hercules. “Where do you think this ship came from? It was
built from my plans so the five of us could travel, and I have the papers to
prove it. Doesn’t it seem a little new to be abandoned?”

“Not at all! This is a dream world, you know,” Hercules replied without
missing a beat. “However, if you are all determined to use this ship I suppose
I can’t stop you. The only condition is that you call me ‘captain.’”

“Tell me,
captain
,” Kwin said
icily. “Can you swim?”

“Well, I did have those swimming lessons when I was seven,” Hercules said
proudly. “Why do you ask?”

“Because the moment I get the chance, I’ll see to it that you’re thrown
overboard.”

“Mutiny!” cried Hercules, pointing a finger at her. He turned to Alastor
and gave him a very serious look. “You, first mate. Take her to the brig!”

“I’m leaving,” Alastor replied simply, then turned promptly toward the
deck, Elvia trailing close behind. Kai immediately followed, and Lindsay ran
after him, not wanting to be left alone with him.

“This is going to be a very long trip,” Alastor sighed.

“Can’t we just get him off the ship somehow?” Lindsay asked, looking
almost desperate.

“Nope. You’ve spent time around him, you know how he is. He won’t go away
no matter what you do. It’s like trying to reason with a brick wall, and you’ll
be able to move him just as much. Maybe we’ll get an opportunity to lose him at
some point. At least if we do that he won’t be able to come after us.”

“His only strength is determination,” Elvia said, and Kai realized that
it was the first time she had spoken to anyone besides Lindsay during the
journey. “We may be able to use his lack of mental prowess to our advantage.”

“I just hate the idea that we’ve been taken hostage by someone like
Hercules when there’s five of us here,” Kai said quietly, though he smiled all
the same. “Two of the most talented dreamers in the Sanctum are on this ship,
three if you count Elvia, yet that and all the imaginative powers we have can’t
get this one guy off our ship.”

“Well, we’ll see how long that lasts,” Alastor replied shortly. “We might
get lucky. Right now Kwin is alone with him in there, though I’m not sure who I
feel sorrier for.”

A few moments later, Kwin came out to meet them. She kept her expression
tame as usual, though Kai knew her too well to think that everything was fine.

“Well, he’s sticking with us for a while,” she said. “At some point we
may be able to get rid of him, but for now I suggest we simply ignore him. That
and we should probably find a way to lock up the ship’s controls when we aren’t
here.”

The others groaned. Kai didn’t know what waited for them beyond the
borders, but he suddenly wished that it would come much faster.

Three eventless nights later, the group sat comfortably in the kitchen.
Having decided to fall asleep early and get a move on – partly to spend more
time traveling, but mostly to get some time to themselves without Hercules –
they had appeared back on the ship before the Sanctum’s sun had risen.

The kitchen was comfortably lit, and they sat around the long table.
Every so often one of them would go over to the small control booth to check
what was going on outside, but as it was too dark to see far beyond the ship,
nothing appeared on the camera displays.

This came as neither a surprise nor a disappointment. They fully expected
not to see anything worthy of attention for quite a while. The only landmarks
on the map between them and the border appeared to be small islands or other things
that were simply part of the world itself, and nothing special at that.

“What do you suppose is out here?” Lindsay asked suddenly. When Kwin
looked up curiously, she added, “I mean, what do you think lives out here in
the ocean? There must be some ocean life, right?”

“I am not actually very knowledgeable about what lives out here. It never
entered my studies. However, I would assume that because every part of the
Sanctum was created with such intricate detail that there is sure to be at
least something out here,” Kwin replied, looking interested herself.

“Got that right,” Alastor said, walking back from the booth. “There are
plenty of things out here that put Earth creatures to shame – at least in terms
of size.”

“Size?” Lindsay asked. “Are they a lot bigger here, whatever they are?”

“Oh yeah. You have no idea,” Alastor replied, smiling encouragingly.
“Don’t worry. People have been sailing these waters for ages, and there aren’t
any dangerous creatures out here that I know of.”

“That you know of,” Kwin repeated with a sly grin. “Of course, we’ll be
going further than anyone has ever gone before. Who knows? Maybe the border was
created to show people where to stop to avoid the dangers beyond.”

“Dangers?” Lindsay inquired in a hushed voice, focusing intently on
Kwin’s every word.

“Yes. I heard rumors that the border was created to stop sailors from
venturing too far out into the ocean. It is said that no ship that ever crosses
that point ever returns. We can only guess as to what horrific creatures, if
they can even be called that, rest beneath the waves of the unknown.”

“Oh will you knock it off already?” Alastor sighed, gently smacking her
shoulder as Lindsay began to look worried. “Scare the poor kid to death before
we even get anywhere why don’t you?”

“I would be more successful if you didn’t insist on jumping in every time
I tried,” Kwin retorted. “However, one part of what I said was true. We are not
technically the first to cross the border; others have tried, but none have ever
returned. I doubt they met any danger, but they are probably still out there
somewhere.”

“What do you mean?” Kai asked, feeling a chill down his spine.

“Quite simply that if you get lost, you are out of luck,” Kwin answered
absently, twirling her hair around her fingers as she looked out the windows at
the dark sky. “This is a dream world, but as you know, you always enter the
world from where you woke up last. If you get lost out in this massive ocean,
no matter how many times you wake up, you will always return to the same place.
If you get lost, the
only
way to make
it back is to find the way yourself. Many do not think about this before
starting a voyage. There are no teleporters out at sea.”

“Couldn’t they fly back?” Lindsay asked quietly.

“Only if they knew how. Even if you can fly, and even if you have a
strong sense of direction, there’s no guarantee you could find your way back to
land. The entire land mass of the Dream Sanctum is nothing more than a small
island compared to the size of the ocean.”

The group fell quiet. What had started as a light-hearted conversation
had now become quite heavy and almost frightening. Kai knew that they were
well-prepared, but the idea of being lost forever out in an endless ocean in
your dreams, unable to escape, was not an idea that comforted him.

“None of you need to worry though!” Alastor said cheerfully, reading the
anxious expressions on their faces. “We’ve got a number of tools. We’ve got our
map, we’ve got the overlay that shows us where we are, Kwin here knows how to
read the stars, and let’s face is, we’re a bit brighter than most dreamers. I’m
assuming that most of the people who went out to explore were like our dear
captain, confident to the point of exploding but with hardly enough brains to
steer their ships in the right direction.”

Lindsay looked immensely relieved, and despite the fact that Kai already
knew all of that, it helped to hear someone else say it out loud.

“Wait, you can read stars, Kwin?” Lindsay asked.

“Yes. Not as well as I would like, but enough to help us find our way if
we are in need. It is a shame that more people do not care to learn it. Many
who are lost could find their way simply by entering the Sanctum during the
night and following the sky back home.”

“You’re hardly an average person though,” Kai laughed. “What might be
second nature to you would be confusing to just about everyone else.”

“Like who?”

“Like me,” Kai grinned. “I tried taking Astrology classes, but they just
confused me. The world is confusing enough by itself, and we’re just a speck in
the universe.”

“Oh, that reminds me! Are the stars in the Sanctum the same as the ones
we see from Earth?” Lindsay asked.

“No. There are no similarities as far as I’ve been able to tell, and I’ve
studied both universes extensively. I will say that the Sanctum’s stars are
more beautiful than our own, but that is subjective, of course.”

Kai tuned out as the conversation continued. Thinking about the stars had
gotten him thinking about just how far the world extended. What if there was more
to the Sanctum than just what was on the map everyone knew? They were already
going to explore across the ocean, but what if there was even more out there in
the stars? The possibilities seemed endless. He wondered if there were other
people on the other planets out there, and if the Sanctum’s connection
stretched farther than just to those on Earth.

“Ah, there’s some light,” Kwin said eventually, glancing up at the
windows. A pink tinge had begun to color the sky. As they sailed on, it
gradually grew brighter and brighter until the new sunlight shone directly into
the cabin.

“I’m going to darken the windows so we don’t blind ourselves,” Alastor
said. He got up from the table and flipped one of the switches by the door, and
the windows around the room instantly darkened.

Now that the waters around them were visible, everyone got up from the
table and headed outside. A cool breeze met them, and the ocean was smooth and
clear. Kai walked to the upper deck to get a better view, and Alastor followed
to check the ship’s instruments. It was soon pleasantly bright and warm
outside, and though Kai had never actually been sailing before, Kai thought he
could get used to it.

“There is a distinct lack of Hercules on this ship that I find immensely
comforting,” Kwin commented lazily, and the others laughed.

“It looks like we’re right on track and everything just looks dandy,”
Alastor announced. “No storms, no obstacles, nothing.”

“I actually must disagree,” Kwin said from his side. “There is an island
not far from us. It also appears to be gaining on us.”

“It… what? Oh!” Alastor exclaimed as he looked around. The others
followed his gaze, and Lindsay gasped.

“It’s going to hit us!”

“No, it probably just wants to see what we are first,” Alastor replied
easily.

Kai didn’t know what to think. What he saw on the horizon was clearly an
island, and a large one at that. However, it was also clearly moving – and
coming straight toward them. Tall trees swayed in the breeze, and Kai could see
flocks of birds circling it as it got closer.

“We’re in luck!” Alastor declared happily. “Remember the creatures I
mentioned? You’re about to see one of them.”

Kai looked closer, scanning the trees and rocks for any signs of life,
but apart from the birds and what appeared to be a few deer-like creatures
roaming the island’s shore, he couldn’t see any cause for the island itself to
move.

“No, look down,” Alastor chuckled. It took a few moments for Kai to
understand, but when he did, his mouth nearly dropped open.

The island was a massive whale. Below the water he could see the
creature’s body, its eyes as large as a car, its fins three times the length of
their ship. It moving steadily through the water as though it weighed nothing.

“Oh! Look!” Lindsay cried, pointing somewhere behind the whale. From
beneath the waves, a smaller whale appeared with a burst of water as it took a
breath.