DTLaL Reloaded - Chapter 6-1

"DRAWN TO LIVE AND LOVE" RELOADED
(C) 2010 by Agetian (agetian.deviantart.com), all rights reserved.
All characters are copyright by their respective owners and are used
with permission.

================================================================================

CHAPTER 6 PART 1
THE TRANSCENDENT ONE

I soared in my sweet sleep for what seemed like hours, my soul filled with
dreams about May and about our future as a loving family, and I thought that
there would be no end to my happiness and joy... I flew through the clouds and
pierced them, making my way to the bright fiery sun, feeling the warmth and aura
of kindness emanating from it.

My dream went on and on, but suddenly I felt a strange change in it, a presence
of something that should not have been in there... something alien, something...
sinister... At first I did not realize what was happening, but all of a sudden
the image of the clouds, the sky, and the sun started to twist wildly, causing
me to feel a strong headache even though I knew I was sleeping. The paradise of
my and May's love was now somewhere far away, and I felt something... no,
someone trying to intrude my sleep, to interfere with it, to ruin my
happiness...

A series of indistinct, blurry images ran before my eyes and I couldn't
understand their sense - it looked like they were images of our forest and
something else, but I couldn't make anything definite out. The images slowed
down, and I realized that I was running through the forest... running away from
Toonsville, and... running away from something very scary and evil. The
dream was so vivid and lifelike that I was on the verge of believing that I was
not dreaming about it, I was there...

I ran and ran, breathing very heavily and not even looking where I was running,
intent on only one thing - making sure I didn't stumble carelessly on a stone or
a branch and fall down...

I was followed very closely by something my mind was unable to comprehend, an
entity of great power that I could not name, an entity neither living nor dead,
an entity bent on one and only intention - capturing me, or perhaps even killing
me... The loud threatening crackling sounds and the steady humming noise coming
from behind my back informed me that the adversary was not far behind, and I had
to keep the pace up and not stop even for a single second, not even to look back
to see how far my enemy was...

Through the dense trees in the distance I saw a clearing, a meadow, with large
buildings towering high above the trees... That was my only chance to save
myself, my only chance to......

The image blurred suddenly and spun away from sight, being replaced with a
different scene... I was standing in the middle of a large open space, a glade
much larger and wider than I ever saw anywhere in the Toonsville forest... There
was no sign of my pursuer anymore, no strange terrifying sounds behind me, and
the grass on the meadow was swaying softly in the slight fresh wind... I was
overwhelmed by the sense of loneliness - I was alone, all alone in this
meadow... Somehow I knew that no one, no one at all who I knew and loved,
was here with me... Perhaps there was even no one at all in this strange place,
and no one at all for miles and miles around...

I looked in front of me at the three tall buildings standing only a few hundred
yards from where I stood. Those buildings - skyscapers all of them, with at
least sixty or seventy floors, seemed terribly out of place, isolated in the
middle of a forest, yet they were standing there, it was a definite fact and I
could not deny it. I knew these buildings were real. No, this was more than
just a dream... This was real, all real... This place existed somewhere in the
forest, I just did not know where it was...

I walked closer to the buildings, looking at their gray monotonous walls, at
their shiny windows which reflected the sun rays... I wondered about who built
those buildings and why, and I couldn't help noticing how lonely they seemed,
at least as lonely as I felt at that moment... Could the buildings also
feel lonely sometimes?... If they could, those ones probably did all the time...

My sight went up the seemingly infinite surface of the skyscrapers, and I gave a
start as I realized just how incredibly tall they were, towering above a little
toon that I was... I feared the buildings and I admired them at the same time -
I was astonished and overawed by their grandeur, even though they did have a
rather monotonous look to them.

I noticed that the top floor of each skyscraper was different from all the other
floors - it was noticeably taller and it had only three rounded windows of
immense size, as opposed to rows of more than a dozen windows on all the other
floors... I wondered what was there, on the top floors, why were they so
different from the other floors, and then I also noticed that one of the
buildings was also a little different from the others - it had a wide blue roof
arching over the windows of the top floor, as if protecting them from the sun,
as if shading them...

Somehow I realized that it was that building with the blue roof that I
needed to go into, even though I had no idea why, but when I was about to pull
the handle of the door, the image spun away from me in my dream and was replaced
with yet another scene...

I was standing in a large and wide hall, there were no windows in it and the
sunlight seemed to never ever come inside the desolate place where I have found
myself. The hall was lit by rows of torches hanging on both its sides, and
it was standing in front of me, only a score feet away... The dark,
powerful, unfathomable entity who was chasing me through the forest earlier...
It floated slightly above the floor, surrounded by a faint shimmering gray aura
- a mere dark shadow which looked neither human nor toon but had some features
  of both... The aura was emanating feelings and emotions, but those
emotions were neither good nor evil... They were practically featureless,
characterless... It seemed like the creature in front of me did not and could
not feel anything positive or negative at all... The entity looked in the other
direction and floated with its back turned to me - I knew it, but I also knew
full well that it was aware of my presence...  It was waiting, waiting
for me to do or say something...

"What is this place?" I asked courageously, noticing how my voice echoed several
times as it traveled down the hall - this place... this place...
place...

Several seconds have passed which seemed like hours, but the floating shadowy
figure remained motionless and silent.

"Who are you?" I demanded in an even louder voice, tapping my foot on the
ground. "Are you The Dark One?"

The Dark One... Dark One... Dark One... - the hall echoed relentlessly,
as if mocking my feeble attempts at communicating with the strange entity in
front of me.

Several more seconds had passed, and I was not expecting an answer, but all of a
sudden the hall was filled with a horrifying loud thundering voice that seemed
to shift its pitch from low to high and then to low again in a very unearthly,
unnatural way: "Your kind has many names for me, Drawn One..."

I wasn't sure what the creature meant when it called me the Drawn One, but I
believed it made a mockery of how I called it the Dark One.

"The names hardly matter to me," it continued, its voice growing louder. "Yet I
know no sense of darkness and light. I am... The Transcendent
One".

The creature started to slowly turn towards me, and I locked my stare on it
intently, knowing that I was about to see the face of my unearthly interlocutor,
but all of a sudden I felt my head start to hurt wildly again, the image of the
hall and the creature becoming dim and blurry and then starting to whirl
crazily, becoming indistinct, and then the dream stopped abruptly, just as
abruptly as it started, and I opened my eyes, feeling how cold sweat covered my
forehead... A dream, it was just a dream... I told myself, feeling the
warmth of May's hands around my neck and the softness of her ear clasped to my
cheek... My beloved girl shifted a little bit and cuddled up closer to me,
opening her lovely eyes and yawning sweetly.

"Oh Aggie," she said, passing her hand lovingly through my hair several times,
caressing it in a very calm and soothing manner. "I love you so much... You're
the sweetest, most loving and caring toon boy who ever lived..."

"And I love you so very very much too, honey," I whispered in her ear, giving
her a warm kiss. "And I will never let anything and anyone separate us... I will
be with you forever and ever, in this life and in all lives after it..."

I remembered my dream again and I knew that I meant every single word that I
told May, and no darkness, no unfathomable power in the entire universe was
going to separate me and my love even for a moment...

...TO BE CONTINUED...