Synopsis: What do our dreams tell us about ourselves? What can they reveal about our futures? Sometimes the truth is scary. Sometimes it is just to make us want for something better.
 

Accidental Magic
Chapter Twenty-Two: Deviations
 
By Allystra Krane
edited by Sephrena Miller

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Terri was curled up in the center depression of a large white furry lump. The only part of her that was visible was her head where she had chosen to lay her cheek into the soft mass. Her eyes were open partially while she was resting, the gentle smile on her face attesting to her general mood.

The mass began to move, revealing that it was actually a giant version of a white, short-haired house cat.

Its head lifted up and around so its nose was brushing into Terri's hair. She shivered from feeling it's breath against the back of her neck.

The cat opened its mouth and nibbled into the top of her head, first on one side, then the other. It finished by grooming her hair with its tongue.

With each lick, the color began to lighten, fading as though the cocoa tint was bleeding out through the end of each strand.

Terri was becoming a strawberry blond, but with white feline ears poking up through her hair where the cat had nibbled.

It began to uncurl and stand up, leaving Terri exposed for what had completely happened.

Her entire torso, legs and arms were covered in the same white fur as the cat, effectively camouflaging her against its body. She had a tail that lazily flicked itself about as she watched the large feline with a smile on her face.

"Mmm," Terri murmured. "Thanks, Mittens."

The cat nuzzled her again and uttered a mew so softly, Terri thought it could not have been made by an animal so large.

The cat flopped back down next to her and Terri fell back against its soft belly fur.

"So this is how you keep me sane huh?"

The cat did not reply, but it nuzzled her with its head again.

Terri held up her hands, which then instantly were covered in fur and reshaped themselves into a paw-like shape.

Terri giggled and leaned over to one side and fell onto her side and took up a loose fetal ball. She made a swiping, batting motion with her arms and a big paw covered over and drew her into the safety of the mass.

Terri made an attempt at a mewing but got it mixed with a yawn, so she wriggled in further and closed her eyes.

"You were so right," Terri mumbled. "Letting you into my dreams was worth it.

The quiet moment was broken by sound that Terri took for a distant gunshot. Her eyes opened wide and she sat back up.

The air around her started moving, churning and getting angry. There was almost a low whistling in the air, as if she was in a cave.

"Oh, looks like Show time Mittens!"

The cat faded away, leaving Terri still in her feline fur, but began to darken until it it was black and the fur itself faded until it was the smooth surface of the bodysuit attire Terri was used to. She also received a jacket and fingerless gloves as her hands returned to their normal shape.

She stood up, the boots having formed on her feet. She looked around and noticed a tiny pinpoint of light in the distance and she could feel herself drawn toward it.

She directed herself toward it and had the curious sensation of flying.

The light started getting brighter and she shielded her eyes as she was engulfed.
 

*          *          *
 
She was on examination table with her legs in the stirrups and she was wearing a flimsy gown and judging by the bulge on her chest, she was having a baby. Her right hand was pulling against the neutral fabric and ripping it apart, for whatever reason.

The walls were not the ivory, sterilized environment that that would indicate a hospital, but a room with kitchen cupboards and counter tops that Terri imagined she would find in a small-town clinic.

The lone woman in the room was acting like a nurse, preparing some chemical cocktail to be added to the drip that was already stuck into Terri's left stump of an arm. It was bandaged now, with fresh blood darkening the end.

A man, whom she assumed was the doctor, was dipping down underneath her gown to assess the progress while fluids, including blood, were starting to stain his flannel shirt.

The situation felt so real and intense that Terri wanted out. She didn't want to experience the pain again. The other nightmares had shook her up considerably and this one would do the same.

She fought against this vision to try and move, to not be the helpless observer: trapped in a body she couldn't control.

Terri pushed against her prison, harder than she ever had before. Straining against both the pain from the events going around her and her own actions to try and stop them, she could feel her head stretching, contorting. She held her eyes closed tightly.

Terri had the curious sensation of being pulled in two directions while being the one doing the pushing.

Her eyes opened and she was nude, her torso, head and arms sticking out of the head of this other version of herself, who continued to scream out about giving birth, despite having another body springing forth from her head which looked to be the more painful of the goings on. Terri curiously became aware that she was no longer experiencing the events while they continued around her.

With renewed resolve she finished pulling herself out of the other's head and fell to the floor with all the grace of a belly-flop.

As she hopped up to her feet, she was fully clothed again. Looking around, no one had seemed to notice her erupting and spilling out of the skull of the pregnant woman on the bed.

"Hmm," she said out loud. "I feel like Athena. Wonder what Cindy's dad will say about this?"

The events were still unfolding, so Terri took a moment to look at what she could only guess was herself in the face. The scene was now bereft of any sound, lending a further eeriness to it all in Terri's opinion.

"This is wayyy too realistic and creepy to be just a dream. You look like the person that I have been seeing through."

She stared at her for several moments before adding, "You're me..."

Terri tried to grab her other self but she was now too busy silently screaming to notice being shook.

Terri then attempted to stop the nurse, but said woman shattered into nothingness as Terri clumsily collided into her.

"Weird freaky dream, nice to meet you," Terri said, now getting angry. She struck out wildly at these denizens of nightmare and each one would shatter and recollect themselves as if they had never even realized they had been attacked.

Terri was getting angrier and she finally screamed out in frustrated anguish, bringing her fists up to her shoulders, ready to attack anything that came close.

She was surprised as her scream acted like a shock wave, completely shattering the entire scene around her in an ever-increasing sphere, leaving only the unending blackness once again.

"What are you doing here?" came the raspy voice behind Terri.

She turned to see that the shock wave had not gotten rid of everything. There was her wretched doppleganger, with a rapidly deflating belly, staring back her.

Terri stared long and hard at this grotesque form before her. Her left hand was severed off as had been in her nightmare, leaving a bandaged stump. A severe case of jaundice was evident upon the skin, leaving her tinted almost green and Terri swore she saw signs of necrosis on one leg.

"What am I doing here?" Terri snapped back. "What the hell happened to You? Are you really me?"

"How did you get here?" the other asked again, this time also betraying a hint of anger.

"Stop concerning yourself with the now," Terri shouted back, while stomping toward this outsider. "You know what? I may be wrong here, but if your ugly ass is any indication, then somewhere along the way, my life became a full on, fucking waste. What the HELL happened?"

"No, you can't know the future!" the other exclaimed.

"WHY NOT?!" Terri shouted back.

The other was stepping backward, keeping some distance from Terri. Her face was straining to remain emotionless.

Terri analyzed the antics and behavior of the doppleganger. A predatory grin now crossed her face.

"You're scared of me!" Terri said. "You can't get away from me and I'm stronger than you!"

"I am not!" the other snapped back.

"LIAR!" Terri screamed, lunging at her doppleganger.

Both of Terri's fists slammed hard into the other's chest, sending her backpedaling. Wild punches then knocked her to the ground.

Terri saw a fist come for her own face but it bounced off and she did not feel any sensation of pain.

Terri renewed her assault, burying her fist deep into the flesh under the ribcage.

The fight had now all but disappeared from her opponent, who was lying on the ground wheezing while Terri sat on top of her.

Terri put a hand around the other's neck, squeezing it until the other coughed out the words:

"Knowing the future changes the future."

"Wrong thing to say!" Terri seethed back. "That means grandma might have something to do with you. That means she will do this to me. I wanna know HOW DAMMIT!

whether it was her lack of air or attitude, the other did not reply.

"Why are you defending your mistakes?" Terri asked, frustrated by her own stubbornness coming back to haunt her.

There was no answer, so Terri tightened her grip about the throat.

"Answer me!" Terri demanded.

"I cannot," was the reply.

"What is so important?" Terri asked again. "ANSWER ME!"
 

*          *          *
 
Terri's eyes opened up. She sat up from the pile of straw she had fallen asleep in.

After Augustine had wiped the minds of Kristi's friends, she then contributed a lot of mana towards cleaning up the park.

Augustine had utilized her own crews for the cleanup, since they were already in the know about Terri being a Vortex. By the time the local council had arrived, Augustine was ready with a cover story that conveniently left out vortex and Nethizar's reemergence.

Sharing all that mana had left her weak and tired, so Kristi and Cathryn had jumped her about the world a few more times before choosing a weathered old barn in the middle of dark, humid countryside.

It was the country of Scotland this time; the barn long abandoned. Kristi had scrounged up some straw and Terri had passed out.

Terri's eyes darted back and forth looking over the room.

"You having another nightmare?" Kristi asked, looking at Terri from the the other side of the barn, where she was keeping watch.

"Where's Cathryn?" Terri asked, ignoring the question.

"Up here," Cathryn responded. "I'm looking out from the loft door."

"Don't bother, they are on their way here now," Terri commented, with sarcasm.

"What?" Kristi exclaimed as she jumped to her feet. "Are you sure?"

"I'm positive," Terri said. "I uh, left some moat alarms along the way. They are tracking us."

"We'll fight them off," Cathryn said. "I can draw some golems..."

"NO!" Terri snapped back. "You two are in danger just being here. I can't let you get hurt."

"Well, we can't do just sit here and do nothing!" Kristi exclaimed.

"Trap the hell outta this place then," Terri answered with anxiety, pointing around the room. "Just do it and get the hell out!"

"But what about you?" Kristi asked as she turned back toward Terri, only to find that she was gone.
 

*          *          *
 
The sounds of feet touching down into the grass, when their last footfalls had been thousands of miles away, echoed softly in the night air.

Twelve men and women, full of hatred and spite, moved toward the barn slowly.

"Hold up," Nethizar said as he touched down behind them. "We might be walking into a trap."

"Oh, very likely," Said Terri from behind Nethizar, causing him to spin around quickly.

Terri was standing there, with her arms crossed. "Took you clowns long enough," she said, as she appeared to look under her nails for dirt.

"So, you know who I am this time," Nethizar smirked.

"As soon as someone pointed you out, yes"

"You must be well shielded to stand there with such impertainence," Nethizar said. "I have a quick-teleport ready in case you attempt to attack me directly."

"Nice to know," Terri said. "but I'm here to talk."

"You aren't trying to buy time so your cohorts can get away, are you?"

"They should already be gone by now," Terri replied. "If they are still in there, I'll be sorely pissed."

"Let me be the judge," Nethizar said as he motioned for his smaller right flank to go into the barn.

They spent a minute circling the structure, watching for anyone in the windows, before two of them charged in through opposite doors.

Terri could hear some yelling when the building exploded with a massive fiery ball whose heat and and the compression wave she felt despite as far away as she was.

She mentally ticked four four more off the sheet in her head, before noticing the fifth struggling through the grass while on fire and screeching, so she marked off them too.

"I was hoping that they would listen to me and get lost," Terri announced with a smirk. "Guess they left a housewarming gift."

"Cheeky little bitch, aren't you?"

"You're one to talk," Terri said, never losing the smirk. "Don't forget that you need me, you rotting mummy. Not the other way around."

"I worry that your head is trapped somehow," Nethizar said. "Why else would you be so cocky?"

"I want to join you of my own free will," Terri said, a look of frustration replacing her smirk.

"You assholes managed to follow me all over the freaking globe. That wasn't an easy feat either. You have the resources and drive to pursue me to the ends of the earth. I figured why fight it, lets just be friends."

"Do you know how many lives you have cost me during this pursuit?" Nethizar asked.

"I didn't think you'd actually care about your minions," Terri admitted.

"You thought wrong," he snapped back at her. "The rest of you need to go and recover the bodies and bury them. I'll talk with the vortex here."

The rest of the group begrudgingly walked toward the barn and their fallen comrades.

"Your friends were already gone from there, weren't they?"

"You assume they were my friends," Terri said as she stared at him for a moment. "Two weeks ago the user community wanted nothing to do with me. The vortex was sealed away. I was as bad as a mundane and now I'm being kept secret so that I won't be a kind of curiosity? I demand a better life than that!"

"I can give you that," Nethizar said, a cruel smile forming across his lips. "But I'm not sure that you'll understand what it will mean to you."

"That the rest of the 'Good users' will stand up to us and we'll have to beat them down and likely kill them," Terri deadpanned, "before doing the same to every government on this planet. Then maintaining our position by brutality and random tortures. A fairly Orwellian future to be sure."

"But do you actually think you can do that?"

"Ask one of your 'Friends' to come over and donate their lives to the cause and I'll show you," Terri said.

"That won't be necessary," Nethizar said. "Take my hand and we'll go back to my place."

"Eww grandpa, I'm not THAT into you," exclaimed Terri as she poked her tongue out at him.

She took his outstretched hand and they disappeared.
 

*          *          *
 
This is where we'll be setting up shop," Nethizar said. "I'd recommend staying inside. This is a bad neighborhood after all."

"Yeah, there might be bloodthirsty murderers about," Terri said with a grin that caused the rest of the group to cringe. They had survived the carnage caused by her golem earlier that day and were giving her a wide birth.

"I have someone you should meet," Nethizar said as he showed Terri into his private room. "You remind me of her."

"Oh, I can see what you mean," Terri commented as she saw Lexi standing in a corner.

Lexi looked up, looking surprised to see Terri.

Nethizar looked back and forth between them. "Do you know each other?"

"Of course," Terri replied without a moment's hesitation, "She's my daughter."

Nethizar appeared to get angry. "Your daughter?" he snapped. "You've been playing me for a fool this entire time!"

Terri could see a forsaken look in Lexi's eyes, but she had little time to think about path she now took. "Isn't it obvious? Yah mummy? She's been playing both of us!"

Lexi waved her arms and spells, the likes of which neither Terri or Nethizar had ever seen, sent strangely angular, geometric tendrils across every surface of the room and the old man found himself defending himself against his own furniture as it reshaped itself together into constructs that began to attack him.

Terri put an arm on his shoulder, strengthening his mana and, in turn, his shield spell.

The monsters were quickly dispatched, but Lexi had used the distraction to disappear.

"What do you think you're trying to prove?" accused Nethizar as he stared at Terri.

"I have nothing to prove, but I would think you were smarter than that!"

"Me?" He angrily retorted. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"It's simple," Terri replied. "Here, let me lay it out for you."

"She's a four-year-old with a brain bigger than a supercomputer and chip on her shoulder. She has power more than any mundane but all the common sense of someone her age. A deadly combination to be sure. I just can't believe that you have been entertaining advice from a four-year-old!"

"So," Nethizar mused. "She was using me to get you, so she could get even with you?"

"I thought I had been keeping her in check," Terri lied with a shrug. "Guess she was the one manipulating me."

"You seem unconcerned that your own child has machinations for world domination," Nethizar said calmly now.

"Well, she always has been a cheeky little bitch, just like her mom, though I haven't really thought of her as my own until recently."

"Interesting, so you think she will try to stop us?"

"Not directly," Terri admitted. "She needs the user community about as much as you do. We'll not have to deal with her until after we put them down."

"Then we have much preparation ahead of us,"

"Indeed," replied Terri.
 

*          *          *
 
Terri sat in a chair facing the small group of eight people. She had the most unnerving sense of déjá -vu, but this time Allyssa would not be there to take the pain away.

Nethizar spoke the incantation first and Terri lurched and buckled in the chair for a moment before sitting up.

"That kind of turned me on," Terri said as she lazily raised her head. "Hit me again!"

She realized that the spell they were casting on her wasn't nearly as potent as the ones used by the council and her new friends. They were barely going to make her sweat.

The laugh that erupted from her mouth as the second person tagged her sent chills across most of the room. It could best described as a deranged howl, for she was both inspiring fear and mocking them all in a single shot.

Another spell went off quickly, almost as a signal of defiance and Terri kept laughing, brushing off the sting with ease.

"NEXT!" Terri snapped out, the twisted smile on her face stopping one in mid-chant.

One by one, they managed to continue, leaving only one, nervous girl. Terri estimated her age as just barely older than her. She wondered how this despot could have possibly recruited this timid creature. "Some charisma," she thought to herself.

Just as the last sink hit, she was hit with a migraine headache that felt like her head was being wrenched off her neck and used as a basketball.

After a few moments the intense pain that even she could not shuck seemed to subside and her eyes opened to find she was in a dark room.

Candles marked points on a drawn out symbol on the floor consisting of lines extending outward from twelve points on the outside of three rings emblazoned with characters that she couldn't identify.

In the center of this symbol, sat Lexi.

"We need to talk."

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To Be Continued...