Cat Clarke and the Nightmare Hunters

Chapter 1

The smell of grease and cheese was thick in the air, nearly to the point where Cat was amazed that it couldn’t be seen like a fog, hovering around everyone’s heads. By this point, however, Cat was accustomed to it. She still hated it, and on days when she came in to work full it made her never want to eat pizza again, but it was manageable. She reached to her left with the metal tongs and pulled a pizza free from the massive oven, slid it onto the cutting board, cut it four times, then slid it into the open box at her right and closed it up. She looked up at the grease-speckled monitor at her station and saw that she had approximately three minutes before the second deluge of pizzas came. She sighed and pulled her phone from her pocket to check her messages. She had none. She slid her phone back into her black work pants and sighed again.
“Man, you are like a machine,” David said, coming up behind her and looking at the monitor. “Those are some great times.” He was a taller man, rotund, with short black hair and a short mustache and beard. He seemed genuinely pleased as he smiled at the monitor, then at Cat as he looked to her. She gave a faux smile in return and shrugged.
“I just, you know, get in the zone,” she said. It was basically true. She didn’t like the job, but it required practically no thinking at all to accomplish. After getting the basics down and learning what the acronyms on the monitor meant, it was all just rote muscle memory. She would just turn her brain off and cut pizzas until there were none coming out of the oven.
“That’s good!” David said, nodding his head. “Everybody should work like that. Just come in, get to it, and get it done.” Cat nodded, though she was inwardly baffled by how seriously her general manager seemed to take his job. She didn’t know his exact salary, but it wasn’t a tremendous amount more than her own. She guessed that he was hoping to be promoted soon, as that job would give him far more benefits than his current one did.
Either not knowing how or not wanting to commit to any actual conversation, David walked away, back to his tiny office at the far end of the store. Cat looked back at the oven, and saw the pizzas coming her way. She sighed for a third time, then flipped her brain off to work.
After five more hours, Cat was free. She told David that she was leaving, clocked out on the computer, then walked out the front door, undoing her apron as she did so. The sun had gone down about an hour before, so the outside was cool and refreshing, even though the store was right next to a major highway. Cat pulled off her work cap and stuffed the now bundled up apron into it. She ran thin fingers through her short blonde hair to make it stand up properly instead of being flattened on her head like an old school Chicago mobster. She felt the oiliness of it as she did and grimaced. She really wasn’t sure if she had the energy for a shower after the thirty minute drive back to her home, but she also knew that she would sleep better if she did.
“The trials of being alive,” she muttered to herself as she hopped into her car. As she turned the ignition, her phone buzzed loudly against her leg. She slid it out and saw that her friend, Jo, was calling her. She smiled a little, popped in her headphones, then answered.
“What up bish?” Jo asked in his almost Valley Girl-esque cadence.
“Just leaving work, what’s going on?” Cat replied, pulling out of the parking lot and onto the highway.
“You wanna go to the comic shop tomorrow?” Jo asked. Cat made a few mental calculations of her schedule for the next few days. Other than work, she had an online book club meeting the day after tomorrow, and her weekly D&D session the day after that.
“If we go in the morning,” she said. “Like leave my place around nine?” Jo audibly groaned.
“Nine in the morning?” he asked, drawing out nearly every word as if even the thought was causing him pain. “That’s so gross.” Cat scoffed, a toothy grin on her face.
“Most people wake up before that, you know,” she teased.
“Not in our generation!” he said. “We are so tired, emotionally and physically, as a generation. We are Gen Sleep.” Cat laughed a bit.
“True,” she said. “But we leave at nine, or I can’t do it.” Jo groaned louder.
“Fine,” he relented, as if the word had been pulled out of him. “The things I do for you, Cat, it’s unreal.”
“I know, you’re so selfless,” she said sarcastically.
“Oh!” Jo exclaimed. “Speaking of us being Gen Sleep, did you hear about that guy in Dalton?” Cat shook her head, then vaguely remembered that Jo couldn’t see her.
“No,” she said. “Another epiales attack?” she asked.
“Yes, girl, oh my god, the article about it was so wild,” Jo said. “This guy had been having bad dreams for weeks, about like the sun and heat and stuff or whatever-”
“-He’d been having bad dreams like that for weeks and didn’t do anything about it?” Cat asked incredulously.
“Well, you know, his friends said that he thought it was just a minor epiales, that he could just live with it instead of paying out the ass to have it taken care of,” he responded. Cat shuddered at the thought of living with the knowledge that a monster had colonized your brain.
“I couldn’t do that,” she said. “Minor or not, I’d want that thing evicted.” Jo laughed.
“Right? I feel the same way when I see a spider in the corner. Like, buddy, this is my house, get the hell out or get squashed,” he said. “Anyway, this dude had been having bad dreams for weeks, but just thought he could deal. Epiales are rarely fatal unless they’re big ones or whatever. But then he doesn’t show up for work one day. No call no show. So his friend comes by to check on him, and he finds him totally burnt to a crisp!” Cat’s hazel eyes widened.
“What?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yes! I know! Apparently, it was one of the big ones. It had softened him up for almost a month, then just got rid of him.” he said, excited at the gruesomeness of the story.
“Shit,” Cat said. The epiales had to have been in the upper echelons if it could affect the dreamer’s reality like that. Most epiales deaths looked like heart attacks or strokes, with some tell-tale signs that it was, in fact, an epiales. Cat had only ever read about decades old accounts of epiales powerful enough to do something like burn someone in their dream, and have it burn them in the waking world as well. The thought that a epiales that powerful had struck so close to home was unsettling.
“Yeah,” Jo said. “The police have their Epiales Division investigating it, but we'll see how that goes.” Cat blew a raspberry in response to this. The state police’s Epiales Division could take out epiales ahead of time fairly well, but their track record for finding them after the fact was negligible. The talk also reminded Cat of her crushed dreams of becoming an Epiales Hunter. She had studied furiously, only to discover that she would have to become a police officer first, then join the Epiales Division. The thought of becoming a cop turned her stomach. There were private Epiales Hunter organizations, of course, but they were far more difficult to join, especially for someone as consistently broke as Cat.
“They will never find that thing until it holes up in somebody else,” Cat said. “Maybe Sam will find it.” Jo choked out a harsh laugh.
“Yeah right,” he said. “Maybe if it was Opposite Day, and Sam wasn’t a lazy piece of shit.”
“Hey, come on,” Cat chided them, but not very seriously. “He’s not that bad.”
“He sucks so much, Cat. He only sucks more now that he’s an ED cop,” he said. Cat shrugged. Sam Skelton had been a friend of theirs all throughout High School, but had radically drifted away from their friend group senior year, before completely breaking contact after graduation. Cat missed him sometimes, but not enough to reach back out. Jo practically considered him their personal enemy now, so they were likely never going to reach out to him either.
“Yeah, well,” Cat said noncommittally. “Oh hey, lemme let you go, I’m nearly home.”
“Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jo said in a sing-song voice. “At nine, I guess!” Cat laughed, then disconnected. She turned onto the road that led to her house and glanced at herself in the rearview mirror. Her oily hair, standing up nearly the way she liked it now that it had been freed from the prison of the hat, glistened. She groaned. Now, she would have to take a shower before bed, or get up well before the eight-thirty she planned in order to get ready to leave with Jo. That was, honestly, probably for the best.
Cat pulled her car into her driveway, and parked underneath the awning next to her mother’s little red car. She pulled herself out, locked it out of habit, then walked around the house to the back door. As usual, it was unlocked. She walked inside, then locked it as well. She heard nothing in the house, save for the low hum of the fridge in the kitchen. Generally, her parents were both asleep by the time she got home, but occasionally her mom would still be awake watching something terrible on Netflix. She peeked into both the living room and kitchen, but saw no sign of them, so she walked through the dining room to the stairs.
Once upstairs, Cat peeled off her work shirt and pants and threw them in a laundry hamper, where they would inevitably infect the other dirty clothes there with their pizza stink. She tossed her bra and underwear in as well, then walked down the darkened hallway to the bathroom. As she walked to the shower, she stopped in front of the mirror and noticed a new, large red bump on her cheek. She touched it gingerly, though it was only a little sore. Cat desperately wanted to be done with acne forever. She didn’t mind the slight pooch of her stomach, nearly flat chest, or general pear shape of her body, but she hated acne and the few scars she had as a result of it being particularly awful in early high school. Her reflection bared its teeth at her, and aside from not being blindingly white, Cat was happy with her teeth. There was a constant, irrational fear of her teeth suddenly becoming rotten one day, or misaligned, that plagued her. She knew it was stupid, and impossible to happen over the course of a few hours, but she still checked them every time she thought about it in front of a mirror.
As the hot water sputtered out of the shower head and over Cat, she relaxed every muscle in her body and felt like collapsing to sleep right there. Instead, she cleaned herself, then went through the horrible ordeal of getting out of the shower and drying off. Briefly, she considered putting some months-old acne cream on her new face bump, but decided she was too tired to take fifteen seconds to do it. Cat turned on the television in her bedroom, turning the volume so low that it might as well have been muted. She crawled into bed and pulled the cool sheets and comforter over her. She smiled as she closed her eyes, thinking about hanging out with her best friend tomorrow once she woke up.
However, Catherine Clarke didn’t wake up the next morning. Or the morning after that. When the ED Division of the state police identified it as an epiales problem instead of a medical problem, they sent in two officers to Cat’s dreamscape to destroy the epiales and wake her up. Within twenty minutes, both officers’ chest cavities violently burst open, killing them. In an act of desperation, Jo Davis used Officer Sam Skelton’s connections to speak with a representative from a private organization of epiales Hunters. Jo, Cat’s parents, and even Sam threw their money together to pay for one of them to come out and save her. He arrived the next day to begin his work.

Chapter 2

The trek through the forest took longer than Wolf had thought it would. He should have known better, by this point, than to expect the Dreamlands to stay even reasonably consistent. Amber light filtered down through the foliage above, giving the appearance of coating the mossy floor in honey. Whip-poor-wills sang their songs, which was the only indication to non-natives that it was currently night. The bird songs were also indicative of something far more sinister, but Wolf put that thought out of his mind. He had survived after hearing them in the Dreamlands before, he would survive this time as well.
A soft squishing drifted out from beyond the thick trees, and Wolf slowed and squinted his blue eyes. His shoulders tensed and his right hand went to the hilt of the blade he carried on his hip. After a moment, a short, squat form came into view. Wolf relaxed, but didn’t remove his hand from his hilt. The thing resembled an enormous toad, though its body was a pale yellow and smooth all over. It wore a black suit and tie, fitted to its non-human proportions and walked on two large, flat feet that each ended in three bulbous toes. On its back, it carried a well-worn brown sack. When the thing caught sight of Wolf, its mouth widened into a smile, and it waved to him. Wolf didn’t wave back.
“How the hell do you always find me?” he asked, his voice thick with gravel.
“Oh, just luck, my dear friend, just luck,” The toad-thing replied with a voice that one would expect a toad to have.
“Bullshit,” Wolf said. “You’ve got a tracker or something on me.” The toad-thing upturned its flabby hands in a gesture of innocence.
“I would never, my friend, never,” it said, though its smile remained. Wolf sighed.
“Well, your ‘luck’ in finding me this time isn’t going to help you,” he said. “I don’t need anything a merchant might have.” The toad-thing held up one finger and cocked its head to the side.
“Ah, but, I believe you do,” it said. “Information. I have information vital to your mission today.” Wolf narrowed his eyes.
“How do you even know what my mission is?” he asked, an edge to his voice. The toad-thing sunk lower to the ground, in deference.
“Why else would a Nightmare Hunter be in the Dreamlands?” it asked. “You are hunting an epiales.” Wolf said nothing to this, but merely continued to stare with indifference bleeding into contempt. The toad-thing cleared its throat. “An epiales which has plagued a Miss Catherine Clarke,” it said, rolling the name out of its mouth as if it didn’t understand the words at all. Wolf perked up at this- imperceptibly he thought- though the look on the traveling merchant’s face indicated otherwise. Wolf grunted.
“Okay,” he conceded. “But what kind of information is this?” The toad-thing appeared so excited that Wolf thought it was going to dance.
“Excellent information, my dear friend,” it said. “The quickest route into Miss Catherine Clarke’s personal dreamscape, and the identity of the epiales plaguing her.” Wolf nodded once, and rubbed the salt and pepper stubble on his chin.
“That second part especially,” he said. “How did you find out the identity of the epiales?” The toad-thing closed its eyes in a self-satisfied expression.
“Ah, now, I cannot reveal my sources, my friend, or else, I couldn’t reasonably sell the information,” it said. Wolf pulled his blade free in an instant and held it up to what passed for the toad-thing’s throat just above its tie. The smile evaporated from it, and it put both arms up.
“If you are working with this creature, in any way at all, and profiting from it, I will end you and it,” Wolf threatened, his upper lip curled. The toad-thing trembled.
“N-no! No, friend! I would never work alongside an epiales!” It exclaimed. “I came by this information honestly! Er, well, not exactly honestly, but not by consorting with one of those demons!” Wolf held the blade for a moment longer, then sheathed it again. The toad-thing breathed out a heavy sigh of relief, putting one hand over its heart. Wolf reached into the pocket of his tan duster and pulled out two silver coins, both very old and worn.
“Two silver coins from lost Carcosa, for the two pieces of information,” he said. The toad-thing’s terror was seemingly forgotten as it saw the two coins. It rubbed its hands together and nodded, which looked more like a bow.
“This is acceptable, my dear friend, very much so,” it said, and extended one hand to receive the coins. Wolf dropped them, and the toad-thing snatched them away and shoved them into a pocket. It then looked up at him with a renewed supplicating smile. “There is a door to Miss Catherine Clarke in this very forest, where the moon’s shine hits the largest tree. To the back of you, in about two hours time,” it explained. Wolf felt slightly cheated by this, as the entrance was so close he was certain he would’ve simply found it himself. “The epiales is called The Sweetness. A nightmare of candy-coated decay and filth with a smell so saccharine it could rot the teeth out of your head if you get too close. Last heard it was a lower level demon, but, we know that things like to change in the Dreamlands, don’t we?”
“Thank you for your help,” Wolf said, then nodded once. “I don’t want to see you again on this visit.” The toad-thing bowed low, then began to waddle off without another word. Wolf wondered about The Sweetness for a moment; these things generally didn’t grow much more powerfully in short amounts of time. It took years or even decades for a lower level epiales to jump up to mid level. The epiales that killed those cops had been far above mid level. Something was up, but he would be able to reason it out better once he was actually inside the affected dreamscape.
He turned around, taking the merchant’s instructions, and began to walk. Wolf assumed that the “largest tree” would be fairly obvious, as things described in such a way usually were in the Dreamlands. The whip-poor-wills song intensified for a moment before a handful scattered from the upper branches as he passed underneath them. The forest was quiet then, and the amber color from the sky deepened slowly, making it more closely resemble the nights of Earth. After roughly half an hour, a clearing came into view, and in its center stood a massive tree. It had been just as he’d thought; obvious.
The tree gave off an air of antiquity; like it was the first tree of this forest, and all the rest had grown out from it. The trunk was huge, at least five feet in diameter, and the tree itself extended so far above the regular canopy that Wolf couldn’t make it out. Large, sturdy branches covered in vibrant green leaves adorned its upper levels, with many twisting at their extremities into the branches of smaller trees nearby as if grasping them in reassurance.
Wolf sat on the moss in front of the tree, legs crossed, to wait for the opening to appear. He closed his eyes for a moment and let his shoulders briefly slump. It seemed that more and more often these missions made him tired from the word go. Ellen and Nancy’s faces flashed into his mind, and he opened his eyes again. He stood up and brushed off his denim jeans. There was no point in lamenting the fact that he was old and tired, not while he had a life to save.
A shaft of deep orange light shone down almost two hours on the dot against the trunk of the ancient tree. Inexplicably, it was oval-shaped, despite this being seemingly impossible because of the thick canopy overhead. Wolf checked the tether to his own personal dreamscape that he had around his waist. It looked like a red rope, half an inch thick and smooth like silk. He would need it to swiftly move back to his own mind and wake up himself, after he took care of the epiales problem. He then stepped right up to the oval-shaped orange glow and pressed his left wrist against it. As always, there was a not unpleasant tingling sensation that ran through his entire body and the world around him shifted, like a wet painting being doused with water. The world reformed around him an instant later.
The tree, and indeed the entire forest, was gone. Wolf found himself in the middle of a parking lot on Earth, with a multitude of cars speeding down the busy highway next to it. It was night, and a deluge of rain was coming down on top of him. Thunder crackled loudly at his arrival, and two bright flashes of lightning struck out in the distance. He turned to his left and saw a small pizza restaurant, a neon sign on the door proclaiming that they were open. Indeed, the lights in the place were clearly on. Wolf glanced around and saw nothing else to indicate life of any kind, except for the cars, which sped on without ever slowing or stopping. He looked back to the pizza place and headed in that direction.

Chapter 3

Cat cut the next pizza, but already knew that the two on the rack were burning, because no one else in the store was helping her, and David was cooking for some reason, and he was loading way too many at one time. She wanted to scream at him to slow down, that he should know better, but she held it in for fear of getting fired. She needed this job, no matter how busy and bad it got. She cut another pizza, this one with cotton candy toppings, it seemed gross but she didn’t have to eat them, just get them to the customers on time and-
-The cotton candy pizza had seemed fine a second ago when she had pulled it out of the oven, but now it, like the many in the middle of the oven which she couldn’t reach, was blackened to a crisp. It was inedible, she couldn’t give this to a customer. Strangely, the cotton candy topping was unburnt. Instead of boxing it up, Cat slid it off the cutting board straight into the trash, and looked at the monitor to check which order number it had been. It was gone. Panic seized her heart even as the anxiety there continued to grow. She called to David to ask which order the cotton candy pizza had been, but he didn’t answer her. He was listening to music while cooking, huge headphones covering his ears.
The front door dinged, letting her know that another customer had come to pick up their food, which was probably burnt and would need to be remade. The task in front of her was impossible, but she continued to pull the ruined pizzas out of the oven and cut them, as she didn’t know what else to do at the moment. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw a customer amble over the counter and stride towards her. She turned just in time to see him reach for her, and before she was able to pull away, his hand made contact with her arm.
A terrible feeling of vertigo filled Cat then. It was as if she had been lifted into the sky upside down, then placed back onto solid ground in an instant. She wobbled a bit, then pitched backward, but strong arms held onto her and propped her back up.
“It’s disorienting, at first, just hold on,” came a rough, gravely voice. She whirled her head in the voice’s direction, but felt as if she had spun in three rapid circles instead and nearly fell over again. Cat closed her eyes tightly, then breathed, her eyes feeling as though they were spinning in their sockets like loose marbles. “Good, just breathe, take your time,” the voice said. Finally, the feeling seemed to mostly pass, and Cat slowly opened her eyes. She was still at work, in front of the table, but there were no pizzas, and the oven seemed to be turned off. Cat turned to her left to see the man who had helped steady her.
He was an older man, late fifties or early sixties if she had to guess, and had very short gray hair. An old scar cut across the bridge of his flat nose, and there seemed to be a smaller one on his stubble-covered chin as well. He wore a black t-shirt and denim jeans, along with a tan duster. She also noticed what appeared to be an actual real life sword on his hip. She took a step away from him, and swiftly glanced around the store. It was empty.
“What?” she asked, mostly to herself, but also to the stranger with a sword.
“You’re in a dream,” he stated, “You’ve been attacked by an epiales, and I’m here to destroy it and wake you up.” Cat turned back to the man and furrowed her brow in confusion. This didn’t feel like a dream, at all. It felt completely real. She pinched herself on the arm, and it hurt. The man sighed through his nose a bit. “Yeah, that’s not- I’ve anchored you with my Dream Stone, so this is all going to seem very real to you. It technically is very real, I guess,” he said, muttering the last sentence. Cat shook her head. She knew vaguely of Dream Stones, just as everyone did. They were the things that allowed the ND police to physically enter the dreams of other people in order to stop epiales. 
“Then how can- okay, hold on-” Cat said, trying to gather her bearings and failing somewhat. “Can you prove this is a dream? And that you’re here to help me?” she asked. “I just want to make sure that this isn’t some wild, like, kidnapping or, I don’t know, terrorist att-” As Cat was still explaining herself to the stranger, he walked behind her where the empty pizza boxes were stacked, and placed his wrist against the grease-stained wall. He said something that Cat didn’t catch, then suddenly instead of the wall, there was a door. Cat’s mouth dropped open. The door had not grown into the wall, or suddenly in a puff of magic smoke. It was simply there, as if it always had been.
“Will that do?” the stranger asked, not unkindly. Cat cautiously walked closer to it.
“Uh, holy shit,” she said. “Yeah, um, yeah, that’ll work. This is a dream, oh my god, this-” Her hazel eyes widened and she looked up at the stranger. “What happened? Is it the epiales that burned that guy in Dalton?”
“The Sunshine,” the stranger said, then shook his head. “No, this one is supposedly called The Sweetness. Rot and candy, or something.” Cat remembered the cotton candy pizza from moments ago.
“You’re not a cop,” Cat said, noting his attire and general demeanor.
“No I am not,” he said. “I’m from the One Iron Society. My name is Wolf.” Cat smiled in disbelief and her eyes once again widened.
“Oh, my god, I’ve read about you guys! That’s so wild- wait,” she said, her excitement dying down slightly. “I cannot afford you guys, who’s paying for this?” Wolf smiled a little, amused at her excitement.
“Your parents and two of your friends, apparently,” he replied. Cat pursed her lips.
“Was one of the friends named Jo Davis?” she asked. Recognition lit up in Wolf’s eyes. He nodded.
“That was one of them, yeah,” he said.
“They’re never going to let me live this down,” she said. “It’s gonna be free rides and meals for the rest of our lives.” Cat shook her head. “Why didn’t they just call the cops?” The smile left Wolf’s face.
“They did,” he said simply. Cat blinked.
“...And?” she asked hesitantly.
“And, apparently, the epiales known as The Sweetness killed the two that entered your dreamscape,” he said. A pit formed in Cat’s stomach. “I’m guessing it did that before they ever even reached you, since you don’t remember them at all.” Cat searched her recent memories for a moment, but could only snatch bits and pieces of what she assumed had been a parade of stress dreams. There were flashes, quick and chaotic, of the smell of chocolate icing, the taste of raw sugar in the air, and a smile of black and yellow teeth.
“No…” she said slowly. “I don’t remember them. How long have I been asleep?”
“Three days,” he answered. Cat put a hand on her head.
“This is…a lot,” she said. Wolf looked sympathetic.
“I know, but it’s going to be okay. I’ll find this thing, kill it, and wake you up,” he said matter-of-factly. Cat was comforted a bit by his confidence, and the fact that she knew something of the One Iron Society’s reputation as the best private epiales hunters in North America.
“What can I do to help?” she asked. Wolf crossed his arms.
“Well,” he started, knitting his eyebrows together in an expression of concentration. “Usually, the ones this strong agitate their victims. Give them specific bad dreams, so that they can feed more fully off of the negative emotions. Once they go in for the kill, they just go for it. Most of them that have gotten this strong know it’s stupid to hang around too long after making themselves known.” He paused, his hand cupping his chin. His blue eyes flicked over to Cat. “Do you remember having any bad dreams leading up to this?” Cat shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I usually don’t remember my dreams anyway, but when I have bad ones I remember that they were bad when I wake up.” Wolf nodded, understanding.
“Right,” he said. “This thing is acting weird. It killed those cops before they got to you, but it hasn’t even tried to get near me yet.” Cat shrugged.
“Maybe it knows who you are and is scared?” she suggested, realizing that she was not going to be much help, if any. Wolf seemed to consider this, then shrugged.
“Well, let’s see,” he said, then looked around the empty pizza place. “I’m going to wake her up, but stay in here myself.” He then looked at Cat and extended a hand towards her. Unsure of how this was meant to work, she reached to grab his hand. As Cat did so, she saw something move in the dimness behind him. It appeared to be a gossamer thread of spider silk, gently floating down from the ceiling. As it approached Wolf, however, it thickened to the size of a rope and moved like a snake through water. It went to wrap itself around his neck, but Wolf had clearly been anticipating this. He drew his extended hand back as fast as a lightning strike, grabbed the rope, and yanked downward with his entire body.
A figure wreathed in smoke as if on fire fell from seemingly nowhere above them, hitting the floor hard between Cat and the epiales Hunter. Cat fell backwards with a yelp, and got a good look at the figure. It was vaguely humanoid, but with four arms and four legs giving it the appearance of an insect. Its pale skin was covered in patches of awful pink fluff, like bread covered in mold. Cat could discern nothing on the thing’s face except a large mouth filled with hideous, rotted teeth.
Cat scuttled backwards, wanting to put as much distance between herself and that thing as possible. As her back struck against a tower of empty pizza boxes, the epiales reared up on two of its legs and struck at Wolf with the upper two of its arms. Wolf side-stepped the attack as easily as if he were avoiding a waddling toddler coming at him. In a single motion, he sliced upwards with his blade, cutting off one of the creature’s hands and injuring the other. It let out an inhuman shriek, like a train suddenly slamming on its brakes, then leapt backwards. Defying any conventional laws of physics, the epiales leapt onto the ceiling.
“You will die here!” the monster hissed, its voice like a nail being dragged across a chalkboard. “I have ascended!” The creature then melted into the ceiling, leaving behind tiny patches of the pink fluff that covered its body. Cat wanted to stand up and run over to Wolf, but fear held her down like weights around her waist. She realized then that her entire body was shaking as if being rattled by a phantom cold.
“Ascended?” she heard Wolf ask himself quietly. He still stared at the patchy spot on the ceiling where the epiales had vanished. At last, he looked over to her. “Can you get up?” he asked. Cat exhaled a long breath, then used the frightened energy inside of her to leap up to her feet and power walk over to Wolf. He opened his mouth to say something else to her, but stopped short, and cocked his head. Cat was on the verge of asking him what was wrong, when she heard a small crackling noise. It sounded like someone balling up a piece of paper, and Cat glanced around trying to find the source of the noise. When her eyes passed by the spot on the ceiling, she saw that the patches had turned from pink to black. She squinted and saw that the now oil colored patches were expanding in size. The noise seemed to be emanating from this expansion. She looked up at Wolf, but his attention was already focused on it.
“Is that…cool?” she asked, then immediately clarified the question. “Like, is it normal? Or, is it- how worried do I need to be about it?” Suddenly the patches of pitch joined together and began to rapidly expand, viscous blobs dripping slowly to the ground. The noise became like the crackling of a raging fire.
“A little worried, now,” Wolf said, then grabbed her arm and pulled her towards the door that he had called into existence a bit earlier. He flung it open, a nearly blinding light shining out of it. Cat thought of The Sunshine, the epiales that had roasted a man to death in Dalton. She struggled for a moment against Wolf’s grip, but the epiales hunter didn’t seem to even notice. He went through the door with little hesitation, pulling Cat inside as well.

Chapter 4  

The light dissipated quickly, and Wolf took in his new surroundings. It appeared to be a large hallway, with drab carpet the color of old brick lining the floor. There were no windows, but the walls were adorned with large posters, as if it were a movie theater. These, however, appeared to be posters of books, not films. Wolf recognized a few titles, “Dracula” chief among them, but there were a handful that were either nonsense or just completely out of his wheelhouse. Down the way, past a poster for “The Cave of Camazotz” was an archway. From where he stood, it didn’t appear to lead into anything but inky blackness. He hoped that was simply the dreamscape not fully forming, and not more of the epiales’s oily pitch.
“What happened, back there?” asked the young woman from behind him. He turned, she still appeared shaken, though not quite as badly. That was good. Wolf hoped her adrenaline would carry her through, and that she would not collapse into a mess as so many others did.
“The epiales collapsed that part of the dream,” he answered. “It forced us into another part of your subconscious, another dreamscape.” Wolf also knew that only high level epiales should be able to do that, but he didn’t mention that to the young woman. It was odd. The demon’s fighting prowess indicated a lower level epiales, or lower mid at most. However, the ability to phase in and out of her dreamscape, and then collapse it entirely, shouldn’t have been possible for one so weak. Hell, it shouldn’t have even been able to speak. The thing shouting that it had ascended played over again in Wolf’s mind. This was a mystery for the higher-ups. He just needed to kill the thing and save the girl.
Catherine slowly moved past Wolf, and looked up at one of the posters nearest them in something close to wonder. The title was “Hellsing” and the majority of the poster was the intense face of a cartoon man with a cross in his mouth. Wolf knew the old doctor in Dracula was named Van Helsing, and wondered if the two were connected. It would make sense for all of the posters to have some thematic thread beyond just being books that Catherine enjoyed.
“These posters mean something to you?” Wolf asked. Catherine looked at the other posters on the walls quickly.
“They’re all vampire books I read when I was in middle school,” she responded, then apologetically pointed a thumb at the “Hellsing” poster. “Or manga, apparently.”
Vampires. Wolf furrowed his brow. Had the epiales pushed them into this part of the dreamscape on purpose?
“You afraid of vampires, Catherine?” he asked. She shook her head.
“No,” she said. “I just find them, like, the most fascinating of the old classic monsters, you know? Oh, and you can just call me Cat.” Wolf nodded once, then looked down the hall at the archway again. It was still utterly dark, like the night sky in between the stars. If vampires were not one of Cat’s fears, then it was possible this part of the dreamscape was random, and the epiales had no idea where they had escaped to. It would be able to find them quickly, however.
“Cat, I need to take some of your blood,” Wolf announced, drawing a perplexed and frightened expression from the young woman. “It’s for a spell to cloak us from the epiales.” Cat didn’t appear much less frightened after this explanation, but she did walk right up next to Wolf. He pulled his blade free and sliced open a small cut on the back of his left hand, then turned the blade to Cat, who hesitantly put up her own hand to be cut. She was shaking.
“How does this even work?” she asked, trying to steady her voice. “I mean, we’re not physically here, right? This is just a dream, so this isn’t even our real blood.” Wolf made the small cut on her hand quickly and with surgical precision. She winced.
“I’m not the guy to ask about that,” he replied, sheathing his sword. “I don’t know how most of the technical stuff works, I just know that it does work.” He ran a rough finger over Cat’s cut, then mixed it with his own. He bent down, his joints popping audibly, and began to draw the proper symbols on the carpet. After he had finished, he placed his wrist against the center of the bloody symbols. They vanished in a haze of light rainbow colors, like the way gasoline looked spilled on asphalt. Wolf stood up again.
“So, now the epiales can’t find us in here?” Cat asked.
“It can find us, but it’ll just have to get lucky,” he explained. “It’ll have to comb through your dreamscapes until it physically sees us.” Cat nodded, and looked to the floor where the blood symbols had been.
“So, you can do magic?” she asked. “I’m sorry if I’m asking too many questions, I’m trying to keep my mind off of the fact that I’m in my own dream and being stalked by a demon.” Wolf gave her the ghost of a smile.
“No, you’re fine,” he said. He meant it, too. He was rather impressed by Cat’s demeanor so far, and the questions that she had raised had been important to get a handle on her current situation. It’s what he would have done. “I can do magic if I have the right symbols, the right words, if I’m in either a dreamscape or the Dreamlands, and if I have this.” He held up his wrist for her to see. Embedded within the skin, just beneath his large hand, was a gemstone about an inch long and half an inch wide. It was completely smooth, and was a reddish gold in color.
“Your Dream Stone,” she said, and Wolf nodded, pleased that she had put that together.
“Without this, a human cannot enter another human’s dreamscape either. And it makes getting into the Dreamlands a lot easier, too.” Wolf explained, putting his arm down. Cat nodded enthusiastically.
“Yeah, I’ve read articles about Dream Stones, the Dreamlands, and epiales and stuff. I got really into all of that stuff for a while, but…” she said, then trailed off and shrugged. Wolf raised a single eyebrow in a questioning expression. Cat shrugged again. “It seemed like the only legitimate way to get into any of that was to become a cop. Which was never going to happen.” Wolf understood that, and let her know.
“Cops aren’t what they’re supposed to be,” he said. “They don’t protect people. Not the fault of the cops, but the fault of the system.” Cat’s face seemed to brighten.
“Yes!” she said. “Yes, exactly.” Wolf sighed.
“I was a cop once,” he explained. “A lifetime ago.”
“Oh?” Cat asked, a shade of worry passing over face. It was something Wolf had become very accustomed to seeing.
“Like I said, a lifetime ago,” he reiterated. “I don’t take offense.” Cat relaxed, but only a little. Wolf looked over at the blackened archway once again. The best course of action would be to repeat what he had done earlier; lure the epiales to him. As it seemed to have powers it shouldn’t, he would have to kill it in a single blow, if possible. He would need more space than the hallway they were currently in, but it was a risk to move into another part of Cat’s dreamscape blindly. If the epiales was already there, it would be able to launch a surprise attack on them, and it would likely go for Cat first. “Okay,” he said to both himself and Cat. “I will wake you up, then wait for the thing to come to me, and then kill it.” Cat nodded, but appeared unsure.
“So you’ll still be in my dream while I’m awake? What if it doesn’t come to you?” she asked.
“It will,” Wolf said confidently. “It can’t hide in here forever without feeding off of you, and to feed off of you, it needs you asleep and having bad dreams. It’s only two options would be to come kill me and put you back into a dream coma, or leave you entirely to find another host. Either way, you’ll be free of it.”
“And, like, you’re sure you can- I don’t want to sound like I’m saying I don’t think you can kill it, but I’m going to be losing it with anxiety once I wake up until you do,” she said, the words spilling out her mouth like a waterfall. Wolf knelt down in front of her.
“Time works differently in dreamscapes, I’ll be awake right after you, even if I’m in here for several hours more from my perspective,” he explained, then placed his wrist against her forehead.
“Okay,” she breathed. “Thank you,” Wolf gave a small smile again at the pleasantry, then began to recite the spell to forcibly wake her up. As he finished, he felt the familiar pulse of power in his wrist from the Dream Stone and then- nothing. Wolf blinked. Cat blinked. Had he gotten so old and his mind so feeble that he had said the spell incorrectly? No, he knew that wasn’t the case. He had felt the power from it. He slowly removed his wrist from Cat’s forehead. He could only think of one explanation, but it didn’t make sense.
“I’m guessing I should be worried, based on your face and the fact that I’m not awake yet, right?” Cat asked in a joking manner, but the fear in her voice underneath was clear. Wolf stood up.
“Something- The epiales, I assume- has bound you inside your own dreamscape,” Wolf said slowly.
“They can do that?” Cat asked.
“No,” he replied. “I’ve only ever fought one epiales that was able to do something like that, and it was one of the highest tiers recorded in the last fifty years.” Cat began to drum her fingers against her thighs.
“Okay, I think I’m panicking a little. Leading into a lot,” she said.
“Just stay calm,” he said. “This thing’s powers may be way above its level, but its fighting skills aren’t. I can kill it.” This seemed to do very little to assuage Cat’s worries, which Wolf understood. He decided to take a different track. He pointed to the blackened archway at the end of the hall. “Where do you think a hall of book posters from your Middle School years would lead?” he asked. She shook her head, still drumming her fingers and now biting her top lip. “It may be important, just tell me best guess?”
“Um,” she took a breath, in and out. “Barrel Books, probably. Or, my dream version of Barrel Books.” He raised an eyebrow. “You know,” she started, and immediately stopped the drumming of her fingers. “That old bookstore chain, it went out of business like six years ago or something. I still have dreams about it, sometimes.” Wolf nodded. He knew the store, but wanted Cat to talk more about it to keep her mind off of the encroaching panic.
“Let’s visit Barrel Books, then,” he said, and extended his hand to her. She took it gently, and the two walked into the pitch black archway together.

Chapter 5

Emerging into the next dreamscape had been the opposite of the emerging into the hallway for Cat. Whereas the hall had brought her in with a blinding flash of light, this part of her dreamscape was like walking through a door and into space. Except without the light of the stars. For a second, her heart tightened as she feared this void would simply be it, but it soon dissolved around her into a very familiar place.
It was an expansive, well lit area with a high ceiling. Shelves of books lined every wall, as well as a few shelves sticking out from the walls with both sides filled with books. As with the previous two areas, this place was completely devoid of life except for Cat, and Wolf beside her. There was an unnatural sort of quiet in the place as well, one that she hadn’t noticed in the hallway or the pizza place, but realized it had been the same in those places as well. Wolf released her hand.
“Stay close,” he said, drawing his blade. Cat had no intention of being anywhere but close to him. They walked slowly, carefully watching their surroundings for anything even slightly out of place. So far it looked perfectly normal, inasmuch as a dream version of a bookstore from her youth could anyway.
Cat glanced at the books on the shelves, as they walked by them, and recognized a handful of titles as those matching the posters in the hallway. They all seemed to be special editions of some kind, however. A leatherbound copy of Dracula sat alone atop one of the shelves, almost as if it were enshrined there. It had deep red lettering on the cover, and the pages on the side of the closed book formed a picture of an ancient castle with bats flying around it. Cat felt the urge to go and grab the book, to flip through it, and even to check the price. She didn’t, of course, as the book wasn’t even real. It was merely her idealized version of a copy of Dracula, a perfect-for-her version of the epistolary novel that had captured her teenage imagination when she had only been thirteen years old.
Copies of various Hellsing volumes were clear on the shelves as well, and these versions didn’t exist in reality either. Cat remembered being a pimply-faced seventh grader in an oversized black hoodie, reading through Hellsing on lunch period, trying to keep the pages hidden from anyone who might pass by and see them. She remembered that it had felt as if she were reading something terribly forbidden; in a way she had been. Anime and manga had not been the things that cool or popular kids read, and the violent and sexual content of Hellsing was not something either of her parents would have let her read had they known. She had also developed a violent crush on the character Integra Hellsing, and had felt that if someone happened to see her looking at Integra they would somehow know of this embarrassing crush on a cartoon.
Middle school, by and large, had been a pretty terrible time for Cat. She had blocked out most of her sixth grade year, and much of the memories of seventh grade were of the books that she had escaped into. Seventh grade had also been the year that she had met Jo Davis, her best friend, and so there were many happy memories there as well. Jo had been just as troubled and confused as Cat, if not more so, but the two had bonded immediately over their weirder and geekier interests, the manga Hellsing being one of them.
On the next shelf, in the shadow of several oversized volumes, Cat saw a worn paperback of “The Cave of Camazotz”. She had also read this one at age thirteen, as she had become desperate to find more vampire books. It was a pulp horror novel from the nineteen-eighties, and overall not very good. However, the vampire itself, and the novel’s description of it and the things it did, had actually frightened Cat in a way that no other vampire story had. She had become so frightened of it that she had eventually put the paperback in her closet instead of on her bookshelf.
A cold drip of water struck Cat on the back of her hand. She stopped moving at once, inspected it, then glanced upwards to see where it had come from. Above her, growing out of the white ceiling, was a thick stalactite. She looked ahead, and not only saw that Wolf had stopped as well, but that the stalactites on the ceiling increased in number. The fluorescent lights seemed to give out at some point down the way, though there still seemed to be a soft glow of light from something.
“Is this from one of those books?” Wolf asked, still looking ahead, his gravelly voice tense.
“I…Maybe?” Cat said, genuinely uncertain. “It just looks like a cave tried to load inside Barrel Books.” Cat then realized that it could be from one of the books. “Oh, wait, this might be The Cave. Like, the titular one from The Cave of Camazotz. I was just thinking about it, is that why it’s sort of here?”
“Strong memories can influence the dreamscape even when you're anchored,” he said, sounding a little more at ease. He began to walk forward again, and Cat followed. As they moved, the bookstore gradually gave way to more of the cave. There were pieces of wet, slick stone jutting out of some of the shelves at first, but soon it appeared exactly the opposite, like there were pieces of book shelves randomly poking out from the cave walls. The area gradually widened as well, so much so that after a few minutes Cat could no longer clearly see the edges of either side of the cave. There was light, like the orange glow of a torch, but it seemed to be coming from nowhere in particular.
A shrill screech from far away caused Cat’s heart to skip a beat, and she and Wolf stopped dead in their tracks. Wolf held his blade ready by his side, and Cat sidled up closer to him. She looked around, but could only see the dimmest forms of stalactites and slick cave walls off in the distance. Nothing but the steady drip of water to the ground seemed to move.
Talons like razor blades bit into Cat’s shoulders, and at the same moment that she yelped in pain she was violently pulled backwards and into the air. Wolf whirled around, and Cat could see the initial shock on his face morph into determination. He opened his mouth to yell something to her, but an ear-splitting and somewhat melodic shriek rang out from the thing that gripped her. She heard the beating of gigantic wings, and felt the rush of the cool cave air as the thing picked up speed. Though logically the direction should have taken them back into the bookstore, they instead went through a wide tunnel in the cave.
Cat didn’t dare try to shake herself loose, as she could feel the thing’s claws inside her flesh, and was terrified of eviscerating herself in the process of escape. The creature turned a corner sharply, then plunged downward in near freefall. Cat felt her stomach leap up into her chest, before a harsh jolt of pain shot through her shoulders again as the creature beat its wings to right itself. Cat was thrown backwards, the thing finally releasing her from its grip, and hit the rock hard. Her shoulders pulsed in white hot agony, and her back and tailbone ached.
In front of her, her captor alighted on a large stalagmite. It was not what Cat had expected, and she gasped in surprised terror. The creature appeared to be an enormous gray bat, nearly ten feet tall even while hunched over. The monster’s face was an awful mix of a vampire bat and a human being. It perfectly hit the uncanny valley with its large, human-like brown eyes, the general shape of its face, and the way its mouth curled up into a cruel smile.
“Camazotz,” Cat breathed, even the act of whispering sending new spikes of pain through her body. It was the vampire from the book, exactly as Cat had always imagined it, glowering over her. The monster tilted its head in recognition of its name being spoken, but did nothing else. Cat didn’t understand, exactly, how this had happened and assumed that the epiales had conjured up this fear to separate her from Wolf. At that thought, she looked around her, but she and the vampire were completely alone.
In the novel, Camazotz had taken people into its cave and stored them away, still alive, to feed on periodically. It was the description of the giant beast casually eating parts of people while they still lived that had so terrified Cat as a teenager. It terrified her more now, face to face with the actual creature.
The sound of something hitting the cave floor in the distance echoed off of the walls, and Camazotz twisted its head around to peer into the darkness behind it.
“Cat!” came Wolf’s throaty yell. “It’s not the epiales, it’s your own mind! You can make it go away before it hurts you! It’s just you!” Camazotz let out another ear-splitting, melodic shriek, then beat its wings furiously. Cat closed her eyes against the vicious wind whipped up like tiny tornadoes by the beast. She thought about what Wolf had just said, then attempted to do as he had instructed.
“Go away,” she said out loud to the thing, and the wind died down. “Go away!” she yelled, then opened her eyes again. To her horror, the massive bat-thing still sat perched upon the stalagmite. She saw the individual gray hairs on its head, and a string of saliva dripping from the two fangs in its open mouth. The thing was real. Her mind couldn’t accept the fact that it was her own subconscious, or a bad dream. There were simply too many details apparent to her.
There was only a slight hiss, a noise like a viper readying to strike, before the blade lodged itself into Camazotz’ back. The force of the impact from the perfect throw had been enough to not only skewer that giant vampire, but also send it flying from its perch against the cave wall to Cat’s right. She yelled and leapt away from the thing as it howled in pain and struggled to pick itself up.
Wolf was there in an instant, and firmly planted his boot on the creature’s back before pulling out the blade like Excalibur from the stone. Camazotz shrieked again as he did this, and twisted its body around to attack Wolf. At the same instant, the epiales hunter swung his blade in an arc downward, decapitating the monster. It let out a strangled sigh as it began to dissolve, first into a mess of bones, then into dust. Wolf breathed hard, and sheathed his blade, before turning his blue eyes to Cat.
“I-I’m sorry,” she sputtered. He shook his head.
“No reason to be sorry,” he said between heavy breaths. “It’s harder to make things go away when you’re anchored. Everything looks and feels like it does when you’re awake. Don’t worry about it.” Despite this, Cat still felt guilty. Wolf made his way over to her, and she attempted to stand, only to sit right back down again as even that movement caused her mutilated shoulders to flare up in pain again. Wolf looked down at her wounds as if considering what to do about them.
“I can walk,” Cat said, still feeling the guilt from accidentally nearly killing herself with a bat monster. “I can make it, just tell me what we need to do next.” Wolf again showed off that weary smile.
“Thankfully,” he said, bending down. “I have some magic for this.” He placed his wrist with the red-gold stone above her right shoulder, closed his eyes, and muttered words that Cat didn’t catch. He did the same for her left shoulder. After only a moment, she felt intense relief wash over, like finally lying down on a cool mattress after running a mile. She nearly pitched forward, but stopped herself. She tested her arms by moving them around. The pain was gone as if it had never been there. The wounds, too, were gone, though her shirt remained punctured. She stood up.
“That was incredible,” she said, in genuine awe. She looked up at him. “You can heal people, just like that, with a Dream Stone?” Wolf cocked his head slightly and looked as close to embarrassed as Cat could imagine him.
“Not quite,” he admitted. “If something from The Dreamlands- like the epiales- did that, it would take more than Dream Stone magic to heal it. But, it was just you, and we’re in your own dreamscape.”
“Oh,” Cat said, understanding that just as Camazotz had been entirely her creation, the wounds had been as well. She touched her shoulder. “Could Camazotz have killed me?” she asked.
“It could have, yes,” Wolf answered simply. “It’s the same way most epiales can kill people. Essentially tricking your brain into giving yourself a heart attack.” Cat nodded, but felt worse for this knowledge. Now she had to fear both the epiales, and her own mind. She swallowed hard.
“What do we do now?” she asked, wanting to take her mind off of this terrible new fact.
“Materializing a monster will have alerted the epiales to this region of your dreamscape. It can’t sense us directly, but it shouldn’t be long before it finds us here,” he said, then looked around. “I’d rather not fight it in a dark cave though,” he muttered, then walked over to the cave wall and traced a large rectangle with his wrist before saying a familiar incantation. A door, just like the one in Cat’s pizza place, appeared out of nowhere. “Maybe we’ll have a better advantage wherever this leads us.” Cat nodded, and walked over to grab his rough hand. They walked through the door together once again.

Chapter 6

Wolf had only become more impressed by this young woman after the fight with the bat monster. She had lost control of her fear and manifested it in the first place, but she had remained remarkably calm afterwards, and had seemed determined to press on once it was destroyed. He recalled people, both young and old, completely losing their composure after he had anchored them, their dreamscapes filling up with manifestations that helped the epiales he had been there to kill. In particular, he remembered a young man who had refused to believe that he had been there to help him, and had actively fought against him the entire time. Compared to most people he helped, Cat was practically a professional.
Wolf looked around at their new surroundings. The two of them were standing in the middle of a large lobby, with three different doors to the left, right and front of them, as well as two large glass doors behind them that led out into an expansive parking lot. The ceiling seemed ludicrously high in the lobby, and the walls were all made of oversized brick which had been painted white. Cat groaned.
“This is my high school,” she said. “Or, a confusing dream version of it. My dreams here are usually that I can’t find my next class and I’m always really late.” Wolf nodded in understanding. Cat looked up at the very high ceiling. “I dreamed I was a bird here once, and flew up there and lived there for a while.” she said, almost wistfully, as if she missed that dream life as a bird. Wolf looked back to the glass doors leading outside. It looked as if it were the middle of the day outside, with no clouds in the sky. The parking lot was huge and flat, and seemed to Wolf to be the perfect place to lure the epiales to finish this.
“Come on,” he told Cat, then headed for the doors. They passed through them and into the lot and were immediately hit by a wave of heat. It rose up in waves from the far ends of the lot, giving the impression that the place had begun to melt.
“I always remember it being hot out here,” Cat said, apologetically. “I guess because I don’t care about the cold, but I hate the heat. Being a teen that refused to take off her hoodie really made it stick in my mind, I guess.” The phantom sounds of a school bus braking and opening its pneumatic door filled the empty space near Wolf and Cat, though there was no bus actually there. The invisible bus drove off noisily, leaving behind the thick smell of exhaust fumes.
It all called to Wolf’s mind the only time he had ever picked his daughter up from school. She had been in the second grade, and she had gotten in trouble. For exactly what, he couldn’t remember. He could remember the heat, though, and the buses stacked up beside each other as he had angrily crossed the lot to retrieve her in the office. He had been buzzed off of too many beers, and her fear of him had registered only dimly at the time. He remembered it much more clearly now, as well as the concerned faces of the principal and receptionist as he had yelled at his daughter before he had even been told what she had done wrong.
“So, we wait?” Cat asked, bringing him back to the present. He cleared his throat, clearing the memory from his head as well.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s still looking for us, so it will get here eventually, and I’ll see it when it enters this part of the dreamscape. As I said, its choices are now either do that, or abandon your mind. If it’s smart, it’ll just leave.” Wolf grabbed the hilt of his blade and gripped it tightly. “I hope it isn’t smart.”
After only a few minutes standing in the sweltering heat, Cat sighed loudly and turned on her heel to face Wolf.
“How long have you been doing this?” she asked, chewing on her bottom lip.
“Thirty years,” he replied. Her eyebrows shot up.
“So, were you like one of the first members of The One Iron Society?” she asked.
“I was second generation,” he said. “The society was founded around forty-four years ago, but didn’t go public until a bit after I joined.”
“That’s cool,” Cat said, “how did you-” She was interrupted by a noise like a thunder crack. The asphalt around them had split open all at once, as if a massive hammer had smashed into it. Wolf pulled his sword free just as the smell of bubblegum infiltrated his nostrils, and whirled around. The Sweetness was there, as he had expected, leaping out from nowhere to attack him. It caught his blade instead, slicing its pale stomach open. It hissed and fell back, scuttling away on its multiple hands and feet, smoke rising from it. Wolf cursed himself for not waiting a second longer; if he had he would have cut the thing in half and killed it then and there. He couldn’t let it get away again. He pressed the attack without hesitation, running towards the monster.
He stabbed at the thing, but it side-stepped it, so he immediately swept the blade towards it, taking another slice out of its chest. It hissed again, showing off its rotten teeth.
“I am ascended!” it howled, slamming two of its hands against the cracked asphalt. This caused it to shatter further, but Wolf kept his footing and leapt at the epiales, cleaving off two arms on the right side at the shoulder. It gasped in shock and agony and fell on its back, writhing around like a giant roach.
“What does that mean?” Wolf asked between grit teeth. “How are you doing these things? Where did you get this power?” The Sweetness began to convulse violently, its mouth wide open, the smell of confectionaries so strong Wolf gagged. It dug its remaining limbs into the asphalt, as if trying to stop itself from shaking around too much. Wolf felt his center of gravity shift, and instinctively moved, believing the pavement was moving underneath him. In a sense, it was. The entire world moved, the ground slowly moving from horizontal to vertical.
“The new age approaches,” The Sweetness said, its convulsing slowing. “When we have all ascended we will no longer be mere parasites and you our hosts. We will be predators, and you our prey.”
“Uh, Wolf!” Cat yelled behind him, panicked for good reason as the ground continued to become a wall.
“Go to the school, get up against a wall!” he called to her. Answers about this demon’s abilities would have to come elsewhere. Wolf leapt towards the epiales once more, and brought his sword down on its head. The epiales, its appendages still sunk deep into the pavement, prevented it from moving away quickly enough. The blade went through the creature as if it were made of sand barely being held together. Its head split completely in half, then dissolved into a noxious cloud of black and pink dust, the smoke that had been wreathed around its body vanishing in an instant.
Despite, however, the epiales’s death, the landscape continued to shift. Wolf raced down towards Cat, who was now standing unsteadily on the school’s wall, right next to the glass doors. As he reached her, the parking lot reached a ninety degree angle, then stopped. Cat glanced behind her and saw the sky, then grabbed hold of Wolf’s duster to steady herself.
“Oh man, this is weird,” she said. Wolf breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Yes,” he agreed. “But it’s over. The Sweetness is dead.” Cat smiled up at him, appreciatively.
“So now I can wake up?” she asked, hopeful. “And probably not sleep again for days?” Wolf gave her a grin, and nodded. Then, on a whim, he held out his hand. Unsure at first, Cat took it, and they shook.
“Thanks for being one of the best I’ve ever helped,” he said, and was inwardly delighted when Cat’s eyes lit up.
“Oh, well, thanks, I mean, even with the whole giant bat vampire thing?” she asked. He nodded.
“Even with that, yeah,” he said.
“Well, if you wanna put in a good word for me at the society,” she started, then gave a little laugh and trailed off.
“I could do better than that,” he said. “I could get you into our training program, if you’re serious.” Cat’s smile melted off of her face, and her mouth hung open.
“I mean, I, yeah. Yes. I would love that, that would be a dream, I mean, this is-” As she started to ramble more, Wolf held up his left hand.
“We’ll talk about it more once we’re awake,” he said. Cat nodded. Wolf bent down and put his Dream Stone against her forehead, then recited the spell to wake her up. As with last time, he felt the power thrum through him and his wrist. Also, as with last time, nothing happened. Cat’s expression became fearful and confused, mirroring his own, he was sure.
“What happened?” she asked, her voice low.
“I don’t understand,” he said, looking at the stone in his wrist. “The epiales is dead. The binding spell should’ve been broken.”
“The Sweetness didn’t cast the binding spell,” came a distorted baritone. Wolf and Cat looked up to see a figure in a white hooded robe walking down the vertical parking lot towards them. “I did.” Within the white hood, Wolf could see a metallic black mask covering the figure’s entire face. On the mask were two digitized eyes, merely four pixelated lines each forming rectangles. As the figure spoke again, a mouth of sorts appeared on the mask. Like the eyes, it was represented as several white digital lines, vaguely matching the rhythm of the figure’s speech. “I wish I could say it’s good to see you, Wolf.”
“Who are you?” Wolf asked, his sword ahead of him in a defensive position, his free hand touching Cat’s shoulder. The figure was no epiales, Wolf was certain of that. However, that meant that this was either a human with a Dream Stone and knowledge of powerful magic, or a powerful creature from the Dreamlands. Wolf didn’t like either of those options. “Why are you in this girl’s dreamscape?” The figure cocked their head slightly, and regarded Cat.
“The girl?” they asked, their voice like TV static come to life. “She is in the wrong place at the wrong time. I tried to lure you out with The Sunshine, but the host wouldn’t go for help.” The figure shrugged. “The One Iron Society is quite expensive, after all.”
“If you just want me,” Wolf said, his mind racing to come up with a plan that at the very least ensured Cat’s survival. “Then release the binding spell, let the girl wake up, and you and I can go to the Dreamlands to talk.” The figure stopped moving towards them and reached an arm into its voluminous robe. Wolf tensed and flared his nostrils.
“Unfortunately, I don’t need to talk with you,” they said, a hint of sadness in the distortion. “I am here to kill you.” They pulled a sword free and leapt down onto Wolf with explosive force. He blocked the initial strike easily, but the power behind it fractured the wall he and Cat stood on, and a piece of it broke off completely. Cat lost her footing entirely and yelped as she fell into the newly formed hole. Wolf vainly reached for her, but the robed figure pressed their attack harder, and it was all Wolf could do to keep himself from being cut in half.
“Just stay strong, Cat!” he called after her. “I’ll come for you!” The figure jumped back to reposition themselves, landing to Wolf’s left on the glass doors. Somehow they didn’t shatter. The figure’s sword stance mirrored Wolf’s own now, and before he could decide what to make of this, the figure struck out at him once more.