Reyuura has a minion!

Glaurung the Draconook

Darkness in the soul

Evil in the head,
in the heart,
in the soul.

Knowing the song I will sing
Till the darkness comes to sleep
Come to me, I will tell
'Bout the secret of the sun
It's in you, not in me
But it does not mean a thing to you

The sun is in your eyes
The sun is in your ears
I hope you see the sun
Someday in the darkness

The sun is in your eyes
The sun is in your ears
But you can't see the sun
Ever in the darkness
It does not much matter to me

The Dream Catcher

She kept a log of every dream she had, every night. She never knew that one of them may come true...

The vast stretches of Nightmare World are treacherous to even the most experienced dream catcher. The dim light of a candle cannot distinguish an unbroken stretch of inky ground from the many caverns that stretch into an abyss of endless falling. Surely you have had a dream in which you could fly, only to have your wings clipped. As you plummet back to earth, your screams awaken you to the familiar warmth of a room decorated with cute posters and frilly bedsheets. Not so in this world of shadow. Wings make no difference in a cavern of pure terror in which the unfortunate captive is doomed to an eternal fall.

Reyuura does not remember how she arrived in this world. Her task never varies as she travels from one pod of nightmares to the next, recording every one in the Dream Journal that never leaves her side. Her mad scribblings are an obsession, one she cannot explain to herself. She knows that somehow, this is the secret to escape this endless valley of hell. Somewhere out there is a world where joy is still possible. She does not know what it looks like. She cannot describe a place she has no memory of, yet she has never questioned its existence. Sometimes she catches flickers of light and motion too vivid for a nightmare, the closest thing she has to pleasant dreams of her own. She clings to these though they fade quickly away. She reads each entry as she completes it, desperate for a clue that will help her to make sense of her senseless wandering.

New sights are dangerous but irresistible which is why she is drawn to a circle of black candles, their tips glowing with dull blue flames. They may give off a poisonous fog invisible in the constant mist that swirls at her feet or they may mark the territory of some beast with seven rows of teeth. A fight for her life would be a welcome distraction. She has not seen another creature in weeks, not since she frightened a group of transparent worms feeding on the carcass of some unfortunate green rodent.

She had a family once. This is the only detail of her former life that remains with her, a carnivorous worm in her brain that crawls at the edge of her thoughts and occasionally bites. She does not know who they were or what they did. She has forgotten their faces. They were real, though, and they loved her.

She roars to the starless black expanse above, unable to contain the fury at whatever force placed her here. No snarling creature dashes forward to test her strength and the familiar white fog of a waiting nightmare is nowhere in sight. She seats herself within the ring of candles, flipping the journal open to a random page. It is one she has never seen, and though the words sound familiar, the handwriting is not the scratchy lines she is accustomed to writing with. This dream is clearer than the usual smudges of memory she is forced to view. Nothing has ever felt so real. She does not realize the haze gathering at the edges of her vision as a true and unbroken memory from her past escapes the confines of the page to surface in a new kind of gloom.

* * * * *

My father was a hero to me long before I understood his calling. Dream catchers rarely live to thirty anymore, with the Blackstone Guild always on the lookout for a young man or woman who exhibits signs of the Gift of Dreams. Of course, we have no way of knowing they are truly dead. One does not leave the fortress of Blackstone once they pass beneath the skull-topped gates.

My dreams have always been very detailed, but I never thought they were anything special. This one feels different somehow. It started in a mundane enough setting. Father was seated at a table in the Oceanside Library, dressed in his usual black cloak. The books stacked before him were bound in leather, none of them less than three hundred years old. He turned each leaf with care and still they crackled in protest. My stack was less impressive, though I felt near to bursting with pride that he would trust me with any task so important.

He's the only person I've ever been able to truly be myself with. I despised the other children of the village growing up and I resented my mother's attempts to turn me into a lady. I suppose I should have mourned her with wailing and tears when she died. I never truly understood my father's deep love for her. He still wears the pale pink jewel he gave her for a wedding present though he had it cut to fit his ring of iron. The jewel glints in the light of a dying lamp as he frowns and sets the volume he is holding aside.

Everything is where it should be and yet this is not the familiar library where children gather to hear the bard's silly songs and scholars scribble notes with ink spattering their fingers. Everything is cast into shadows. The branches of candles to either side of my father's seat cast just enough light to turn the familiar shapes into sinister shadow creatures stalking at the edge of sight, eyes gleaming in excitement as they await the end of the sticks of wax. Though I am seventeen, my father would never allow me to be awake at this hour in the waking world.

The distant noise is subtle, the whisper of cloth on stone. Suddenly my father looks me in the eye. "You have the gift, girl. They will bind you if you give them the chance. I have done my best to shield you but you are nearly a woman now and even I cannot fool their sensors forever. Your skill will be greater than mine." I wanted to deny the defeat in his voice. My father is fearless and proud, incapable of any weakness. "They will take great interest in me because they believe I am the one they seek. You have my cunning and full-trained knights cannot match your skill with a knife. Use them."

The pounding of footsteps grows louder. He shoves me behind a bookcase stuffed with thick volumes of crop reports so thick with dust that the tiny footprints of a mouse are clearly distinguished from those of a fly that even now is buzzing in the distance. I sneak a look at the figures hooded in black cloaks that hide their features. The cloaks are so similar to the one my father wears that I very nearly lose control of the cry that tries to rise to my lips.

"He's one of them, all right. My indicator is about ready to break." The speaker was holding a strange device shaped like a half-moon that glowed a brilliant white.

"I've never seen a reading this strong." This man was shorter, his voice very nasal. "Say, didn't he have a kid? Wonder where he's hiding her."

My father's face was stone. He did not even flinch when the third man tapped him on the head gently with the hilt of his dagger. "No need to waste our time in this rathole, gents. He'll tell us all we want to know soon enough."

I keep my mouth shut as they lead him away though I cannot stop the flow of my tears. They drip down, wetting the dusty tomes below me. I have never been so angry. I feel I could rip apart their fancy fortress stone by stone, set the innards on fire, and devour every living creature that tried to harm my father. More than anything, I wanted to shed my fragile human body and take the wings of a dragon!

A gentle thud calls me back to the present but the library is gone. My father's bed is empty and cold, his saddle bags still sitting where he left them when he got us a room at this cheap inn. I must have knocked the journal to the floor in my sleep. It looks vaguely like the one my father has always kept but his had a red leather cover and this one is black. I know he is most likely seeing to our breakfast but he has always taken such an interest in my dreams that I cannot resist writing this one down.

I can hear a sort of buzzing in the background. When I find that fly, I will kill it. But the fly was in the library and there is a foot of snow outside. Flies are a summer nuisance.

What is happening to me? I must be awake, yet in the real world hands do not sprout shadows that writhe like flames. I am a flame, my body distorting into a new shape, a fierce shape, the form of a dragon. No! This cannot be real. This is all part of the dream, right? I do not know. My world is falling to darkness, I cannot find the light of the candle my father lit.

* * * * *

It all came back to her now. The inky shape that rose from the mysterious book to surround her. The pain of transformation as her shoulders sprouted wings and her bones lightened. The transportation spell that had thrown her into Nightmare World in a rush of screaming wind.

She also remembers the voice, so ominous and full of despair that she had thrown her new clawed hands over her sensitive ears. The sound was in her mind, cursing her and tasking her with an impossible task, all for the sake of an ill-made wish.

"You are the dragon you sought to become! Now you must pay the price of high magic with the skills of your father's line. I task you to record ten thousand nightmares in the pages of the Dream Journal. They will be yours and those of every creature that dreams. Do this, and your father's life may yet be spared."

Yes, she remembered that voice quite well. It was the voice of the fourth man, the one who had not spoken in the library but was there all the same. He was the observer, the impartial keeper of time who watched the dream catchers fall into the hands of Blackstone and did nothing. She hated him more than every cloaked man intent on the destruction of her family, but he had the power to enter any realm. He was the only one who could help her now. She held up the journal as an offering. She roared once again when she received no reply. She wanted to burn the book to ashes as a misty white fog made its approach but she could not. Her task was not complete, and it was time to resign herself to this latest nightmare offering.

Story by Pureflower

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Story by Pureflower
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