Chapter 003 - You Have No Authority Here

  Tori should have felt some level of guilt conjuring up such creatures against a mundane, but he had effortlessly ruined the narrative she was creating to get answers, he dismissed her authority and her clear but quiet superiority over him. She could accept he would recover in time, after he submits and answers her.

  But he wasn’t running, he was still standing there looking towards the silhouettes, he seemed almost amused. Tori couldn’t understand where his resolve was coming from to be able to stand there in their presence and not act, was it fear or stupidity, maybe madness?

  The dream was already breaking down around the creatures, like a dark aura absorbing the landscape into nothing. Tori knew they would continue until all that was left was them and the endless void, the near inescapable trap for any that failed to take action. Tori could always just leave, she was sure that he didn’t have that option.

  “Before we conclude this uncivilised business”, he spoke with his endless calm, “I should probably respond to your little display.”

  She watched as with a clap of his hands a gales erupted through the sands, particles blowing in all directions with him at the center, “I am Mark Shilling of Manchester.” his voice carried by the gale, far louder than her own previously, “I am the Leader of Chaotic Goals! I am the Forger of Fictional Futures!”

  His hand raised towards her, pointing through the Silhouettes, “You have no authority here! You, your constructs and your friend are not welcome!”, the sand seeming to briefly blow across a second hidden figure beside her, a figure she had failed to notice.

  A name, she finally had his name, but that was something she could have asked before, it wasn’t relevant, yet now she felt it was probably the most important thing to him, this person called Mark.

  The feeling that she was being watched made the disaster unfolding through the dreamscape so much worse, she briefly saw it, but it wasn’t of her design. This Mark had all but confirmed it wasn’t his, but who? There were so few other dreamers, and none that would hide from her... A distraction, that's all, one from his own failure to recognise the risks before him. The terrifying promise of the endless void, that failed to even make him take one step away...

  “You summoned your constructs to intimidate me? To have me submit to your grand design!”, he brushed his hands down the hoodie as the world warped around them. Tori felt the familiar lurch in the dreamscape, nothing unusual in itself, in fact it was a normal sensation she had guided many dreamers through many times in her career, but to him it was almost natural.

  Rapidly, yet fluidly it happened. The beach morphed to a dense and strangely familiar woodland, the salty air dispersing to the damp smell of moss and pine, the sounds of waves replaced with wind through leaves and the rustling of branches. The Moons were restored overhead, their cleansing light illuminating the darkness below the canopy.

  “I’ve lived with my nightmares, my failings, my broken dreams,” was all he said as the world kept shifting. Perhaps he was unaware, but this forest was of her life, she knew it well and the safety it provided. This was his mistake, everything here provided her with mental strength, the confidence to become unmovable.

  The void around the silhouettes continued to grow, slowly consuming all around them. They themselves unfazed by the rapid changes of the world around them... perceiving it as just a change in the meal. They just existed to eat, to absorb, to corrupt, and would continue to do so until there was nothing left.

  But through the confidence the new environment afforded her, she started to doubt. This Mark continued to stand there, looking through her monsters, barely even watching as they devoured his dream, and then him, leaving a broken core of a man. Was there no realisation of the level of danger he was facing?

  “I think, this is my dream,” the smile he now carried turned Tori’s blood cold, “and my rules.” This was always the case, she knew this, but a little misinformation when pushing your own will against another was just another tool to use to achieve the goals, not one to be challenged.

  The forest landscape had given Tori support, the familiar being an anchor for her mind to press forwards her control, he just had to accept for a moment she was in control. As her resolve grew, her grip on the staff shifting from physical support and to one of a tool of experts. It was that smile that didn't change, staring at her in that deeply unsettling way.

  The changes were occurring at a slow pace, but once noticed could not be ignored. Near silence was being filled with what could only be laughter. Not the laughter of children, this high pitched and sinister, dancing around her from the safety of the trees. If by design or coincidence, as the laughter rose in volume, the air around the dreamscape was dropping in temperature, as if the very heat was been leeched away by whatever it was.

  With a push of her senses, Tori reached out, her right hand glowing bright, the source of her magic visible through her glove, she tried to track the dancing shadows. And failed, maybe it was his mind, or an aspect of his dimensional condition, but her dream senses were failing to catch them, washing over as they laughed with each futile attempt.

  The choices were simple, dismiss them as simple child's tricks, distractions he was hoping would make her back down. His own weak attempt to save himself from the silhouette’s aura. Nothing she couldn’t handle, years of discipline, or training, of life confirmed this. But why did he still unnerve her.

  “Tormentor from Tethys! You have overstayed your welcome.” Mark spoke with cold sharp words, never raising his voice as he stared, forcing her to take a step back as his presence felt more threatening than even the silhouettes. But she had her answer, he wanted to end this, he thought he was winning, and she knew differently, she knew how it was going to end.

  Tori answered his insult by providing the silhouettes more of her strength, allowing their aura to swell and expand faster. Centering herself, she knew she was safe, she had the power here, her Heart of Dreams was proof of her authority and all the protection she needed.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  With the dismissal the changes continued, the sinister laughing reaching a peak, a chorus filled with promises of pain, of torment. That was until the first of the blood curdling screams. The choir was broken, the sinister laughs falling silent one by one. The silence of Death. Something new was there, something the shadows had failed find until it was too later, for now they were being hunted. And whatever it was was stubbornly as unseeable to her dream senses as they were, just now where there was torment, there was the intent to kill.

  As the laughing faded, the creatures falling, the ground itself changed almost unseen. Tress once covered in shadows now started to glaze with ice, creeping across the forest floor towards her Silhouettes, towards herself.

  It was then she noticed Silhouettes, they appeared to have taken notice of the changes, themselves crafted as static monuments of distorted dreams, were now shifting, appearing to gaze around themselves and into the screaming forest. Her understanding that their very existence should dispel any potential threat to them or her, but a glancing touch from her senses made her question that belief, she could feel danger unseen.

  Dreamwalking was safe, the teachings had always implied, her peers and those at the academy know this to be the simple truth. The risks were only to the dreamer should anything go wrong, a mental collapse just as damaging as any serious physical injury with just as complicated and delicate recovery. This Mark would be the one to deal with the aftermath of whatever was going on here, it would be his recovery and time lost, but her confidence in that truth was being tested.

  Once the final scream had faded, the forest entered an eerie silence, with less to focus on she attempted to push her dream senses further. She could feel something out there, it was primal and slippery to thought, not as a tool for fear. The feeling was that of a predator, pure driving instinct, focused, simple. These feeling didn’t belong within dreams, this was from the realms of nightmares, what must someone go through to know such and then be able to project it?

  The feeling felt more like a promise, an agreement between hunter and prey, and she didn't want to find out which side she was on, this needed to end now!

  Whatever happened fractured the dreamscape, her own memories leaked out around her, all in a violent and unstoppable breakdown, shards of distorted reality hung around her like glass. She collapsed with screams of agony, her own memories reflected in each shard, memories she had held back with the discipline and understand of years. Falling to her knees, holding her head as each memory flashed into view. Each shard more disturbing than the last, each scenes from a battle, from a slaughter, her home protected within mist being overrun by strange beasts, horrific mockeries of creatures, some products of only the strangest of fantasy. Lives ruined, lives lost, and blood, so much blood.

  Between glances she could see him notice, to recoil at her horror of her leaked memories, but not to the extent that was expected, he recognised the horrors, the actions taking place, but it was as if he was numb to the true scale of events.

  With intense concentration Tori focused and the shards vanished from view, her face a mix of raw anger through uncontrollable sobbing, pulling herself up using her staff she could see the blood everywhere, she tried to will it away, but this dreamscape wasn’t hers, and already stained red in all directions.

  The silhouettes were creatures without substance, yet one of them had been reduced to large chunks of void, they didn’t even have blood, and still it was everywhere. Red stains in all directions from where the dismembered creature had been standing just moments prior. That was her trigger, Tori’s mind cascading into a brief mental collapse, a sight very different, but too similar to what happened years ago, a powerless child forced to watch the mindless butchery of innocents.

  “BASTARD”, she screamed, her rage seizing control, the soft blue glow of her hand and staff shifting in turn with her emotions to a dark angry purple. Anger could be a tool, it was how hers not to control, but to direct. That direction was Mark, the overwhelming need to crush him, to hurt him like they hurt her so long ago.

  Trees started to crack under the mental force pouring from Tori, winds turning to a gale, the moons, both moons illuminating her target, blessing her conviction. The monster at the center of the madness, the cause of her pain and humiliation, this Mark. And for her strength, all the untamed pressure, he didn’t move. The trees were holding, the wind flowed around him, and his face had become a mirror of anger somehow the equal of her own.

  For Tori, Mark had become the monster, the creature that went bump in the night, taking her to a place she long since left and refused to return. For Mark, she was something vile, insidious, hiding behind a veneer of self superiority, but a predator hiding in in plain sight, targeting and assaulting the helpless in disturbing ways.

  The dream continued as their anger met, the environment continuing its development unnoticed, ice continuing to spread across the forest floor, slow creeping across everything, the air turning crisp as all but her gale fell silent. Below that however was a growl, one to be felt before being heard, its the depth trembling through bone.

  Everything was over in the few seconds that followed, through her rage Tori had instinctively sped up her perspective time of the dreamscape, even then she only just managed to register the chain of events, and the understanding it was already over. The creature in the shadows, his childish trick of sound and fears, was now standing before her.

  She could only watch the nightmare avatar of his creation, an oversized blue and white cat, a snow leopard. The instability of the dreamscape allowing it to be grossly oversized for what it probably was. Its cold blue eyes seeming to chill her to the core as they stared into her own. The rest continued in slow motion, her acceptance that it was already too late.

  From that moment Tori felt her rage subsiding, replaced with a reluctant peace, the leopard was a creature of true beauty, fur of grey and white, its rosetta pattern holding a dazzling blue, the creature held no malice, just instinct.

  Its large and heavy paw was already moving towards her side, claws of perfect white extended, outside a dream such a thing would be lethal, here less so. She could end this now, break the connection and leave the dreamscape, but something stopped her, the fascination of this beast as it held her attention.

  There was more to it than that, this fascination was based on a familiarity, the beast was known to her, but where? And what was the connection to Mark, why was it here, why had he chosen this to be his avatar of nightmares? Maybe another moment would give her something…

  Tori had never felt such pain, the connection ending as the leopard’s swing made contact. She could feel the claws slicing through her robes, leathers under them, feeling her skin giving way to bone, the breaking sensation of ribs. Pain in dreams couldn’t transmit to the waking world, yet she was in agony, her final stretched moment prolonging every sensation as she woke screaming.

  Her body rocked back in the chair violently, the connection broken, reality returning. Instinctively she grabbed at her ribs, the point where she had been sliced into, the phantom pain flooding through her while thankful finding no actual injury. She looked over to the helpless figure in the cot, he apparently stirring awake from her screams, her mind was a mess, clouded with pain she should be feeling, and knowledge of what he had done, but how?

  Somewhere in the background she could hear the fast movement of steps, probably in alarm from her undignified scream, then for a moment her eyes locked with the still waking man, a moment of pure understanding consumed her as she saw the monster.

  The only item to hand was a large book, one she had been reading earlier, and now it was a tool, the anger, the fear, the horror consuming her as she screamed again. The book becoming a blunt instrument, and with her inhuman strength struck him across the face and back into unconsciousness.