I gazed through the door knob's keyhole, seeing two figures walk up the stairs. One wore, I blinked, one wore a red walking dress while the other a simple striped suit. Pressing my eye closer I felt the cool metal of the door knob against my sclera making me flinch back.

  Wait… why was I so short? Instead of the door knob being at waist height it was at eye level.

  Looking down I examined my hands.

  They were too soft- no they were gone- blurry- wrapped in stitches- oh right I was still seven of course they would still be soft.

  I grabbed the ice cold door knob and turned it, but it took a few spins before it finally clicked open.

  Inside was my old home- my home- I was seven. Everything was so big now, the steps seemed to be half my height each. To the left was the sitting room, the cream colored furniture distinctly dull, like stretched bloodless skin. To the right was a small dining room, several pairs of eyes gazing at me from the window and the plates were-

  I started in surprise, moving to the window to see a porcelain doll of- of Cystella. Her glass eyes were wide and unblinking, instead of our uniform she wore a pristine white dress, which was ruined by the bandages and bloodstains covering her body. The dolls' joints had wiggling worms trying to crawl out from the cracks.

  Oh good, it was just a doll, and the worms meant the soil was good.

  “Monty? Are you home from the office?” a feminine voice called. “Come up stairs, the doctors are not going to examine themselves.”

  “Yes mother,” I called out.

  It didn’t sound like my mother though, at least I thought it didn’t. It was hard to remember what my mothers voice sounded like in the years I’d been away- been at work in the office.

  What kind of office did I work- doctor- lawyer- construction- food- mail, right I worked at the postal office. I readjusted the mailbag on my shoulder as if to prove it so.

  Back in the entrance hall I finally noticed the grandfather clock, instead of where it normally stood in the sitting room. It loomed at the top of the staircase like an angry father waiting for their child to come up so they could be disciplined.

  I dropped my mail bag on the ground and, almost in a trance, I placed my foot on the first stair. As I did so a trickle of blood began to flow from a crack in the clock's wood. Another step, another stream of blood.

  Soon enough there was a steady river of blood pouring down the clock, it flowed down the steps in a series of waterfalls. The warm sticky liquid hit my bare feet, gumming up the area between my toes and matting down the little hairs on my leg.

  How many years would it-

  The blood eroded the stairs as if finally remembering the passage of time. The river of blood became more concentrated on the eroded crevices, which would have allowed me to step around them and keep my feet clear of blood.

  I didn’t avoid the blood. I let it wash over my legs as if it was a soothing shower, and it quickly filled up the lower level of the house like a tub.

  By the time I made it to the top of the stairs the blood was waist high.

  Oddly the grandfather clock was too tall. I was after all a grown adult working at the post office.

  I needed to stop the bleeding, so I reached for the knob to open the insides of the clock only for the hour to hit twelve. A latch opened on top of the clock that I didn’t remember and a- no, the dead bird was shoved out. Its head practically twisted upside down and wing sticking backwards with feathers poking out haphazardly like knife blades.

  The falcon tried to caw as birds stuck in clocks ought to do, but its broken windpipe made it a terrible choking wheeze of a noise. A wooden pole held the bird up, its feet nailed to the wood. The mechanism tried to jostle the last dregs of life from it so it could fulfill its duty.

  Only it was pushed back and forth so violently that its feet were ripped from the nails. It landed in the ocean of blood next to me, a crunch echoing out when it hit the water.

  I stared at the bird, watching it sink into the blood, the feathers from its broken wing the last to go.

  “Mother, we need a new bird for the clock,” I called out.

  There was no response, but I just shrugged it off. I had a clock to fix after all.

  I pulled open the door to the front of the clock.

  Inside was a dog. He had white fur with light brown splotches, and was small enough to fit on my lap. Of course though, it was dead, as it had been for a long time.

  The dog hung from a hook at the top of the cabinet, only it wasn’t rope tying the hook to the dog.

  A diamond shaped hole in the dog's abdomen let the organs out, and they were expertly tied around the dog’s legs and hook.

  “Burst,” I whispered.

  The dog's head twisted violently, bones snapping and it looked at me with dead milky eyes, and barked at a deafening volume.

  I sat up from my bed looking for the grandfather clock so I could get Burst out. Only… reality came back to me. I groaned, rubbing the gunk from my eyes and trying to separate what my dream told me was real and what actually was real.

  Taking my journal off the nightstand I began to write what I remembered. It was easier now than when I first started more than a month ago, but little pieces still began to slip away.

  The final tidbits were difficult to write, only the knowledge that no one was supposed to peruse another’s dream journal gave me the relief to finish.

  —

  Professor Pure made sure that his afternoon classes were spent outside rather than inside. While I could understand the reasons, his lessons revolved around survivalism, it made taking notes rather bothersome.

  “Dreamers are more resilient than normal people, however we still need basic sustenance and are still prone to the same pitfalls,” Professor Pure said to the class. “During the rebellion the Sun States food supply was constantly harassed by Shrimp Airships dropping dead bodies on farmland, spreading disease and plague, and when they invaded the Charred Continent soldiers were ill prepared to survive in the foreign environment. That does not even begin to mention the vast dangers of the lower Layers. There are fruits that smell so irresistible it will lull you into a trance, only for its poison to melt your insides, turning them into nutrient rich jelly for its seeds. There are bugs that once they bite you can continuously drain your blood from a hundred miles away.”

  Despite the chill wind numbing our noses and rustling the grass the field was silent following Professor Pure’s macabre words.

  I wondered if you could buy that fruit, and a bug could only drain so much blood at a time, I could keep it in a glass jar. Using the moment of silent reprieve I pushed down the paper of my notebook and scratched in the information about the bug along with a simple sketch of what I thought it would look like.

  “How big is the bug?” Brax called.

  A surge of annoyance rose up as Brickwell spoke. While I have not gotten beaten down by him since, I had been unable to follow Professor Liraca’s advice on avoiding him, as he went out of his way to be in mine.

  “On average the Bloodletter Mosquito is twenty-four to thirty centimeters in length,” Professor Pure said, displaying the size with his hands.

  Maybe not in a jar then, I added that in that tidbit next to my sketch.

  “Today however we will not be dealing with anything so definite as Nightmares and death; You all need to learn how to survive even in the most tame of wilds first. Instead you will go into the forest and complete two tasks. One will test your knowledge and the other your adaptability. Firstly I want you to identify every plant that you can, including their potential uses; food, poison, crafting, it doesn't matter. Along with the plants I want you to keep an eye out for animal tracks, sources of water, shelter and take note of them. Secondly you will be looking for these tokens.”

  From his vest pocket Professor Pure pulled out a simple green coin made of wood.

  “I have placed several within the boundary of today's lesson, which can be seen by red flags tied to the trees. While unlikely, it is still possible to come across a dangerous Nightmare if you stray too far.”

  “I want you all back here by green phase, and if I have to end up looking for any of you I will make you scrub pots for a month.”

  Note, Professor Pure does not like to be inconvenienced.

  I stood, frowning at my journal and the lackluster handwriting courtesy of the wind. Pocketing it I began toward the treeline.

  “Monty!” a familiar voice called.

  “Hello there Elina,” I said to the girl as she bounded over to me.

  “Hello as well. Want to head out together?” she asked.

  “Can we?”

  “It's not as though the professor has forbidden us from doing so. Look at the others.”

  Indeed, most other students had broken up into groups of three or four, and Professor Pure did nothing more than stare blankly forward.

  “Okay, should-”

  I barely began my sentence before Elina began yelling toward a lone figure who had almost disappeared into the shadowed canopy of the trees.

  “Cystella! Would you care to join us?”

  The other girl turned, her apathetic stare the only answer we needed.

  “No,” she said, voice as cool as a corpse.

  “Are you sure? I’m sure trekking alone through the forest would be terribly boring.”

  “Not as terrible as having to listen to you splutter,” Cystella bit out.

  Without another word the Skulker disappeared into the shadowed forest.

  “I don’t splutter,” Elina… spluttered.

  “The little monster must not be taking the news of her kinsmen well,” Brickwell said from behind us.

  In the past two weeks his group had grown, a round-faced girl and a tall lanky boy joining Brax Brickwell and Russel Delbrook. I noticed that those that began to flock to him were actually somewhat similar to myself, unsociable and low-key, however Brax had enough spine for a dozen more, giving them a good presence.

  I opened my mouth, only to close it with an audible clack. Seeing my reluctance to talk with him made a smirk spread on Brax’s face.

  Elina had no such inhibitions despite her normally hostile attitude toward the large boy.

  “What about the Skulkers?”

  “Their raiding season started recently but there has not been a single sighting of one. We’re betting that they’ve finally been done in by disease or the winter chill.”

  “That is unlikely to be the case,” I said. “This winter was not particularly cold, and diseases would not eradicate an entire race when they live in separate tribes and do not intermingle when it is winter time.”

  “Know a lot about diseases do you, Duster? It is your people's specialty after all.”

  I wanted to cough in his face, but not even my annoyance at Brax gave me the temerity to do so.

  “One would think you hold some fascination with Empyreans seeing as you bring them up so much,” Elina said. “Soon you’ll be talking of jade smooth skin and dark limpid eyes.”

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  Brax’s face contorted in disgust.

  “You seem to speak from experience Moda, you and Gao gonna have some dusty blooded babies? Maybe we should sterilize him.”

  “How dare you-”

  “If you wish to bicker, do it as you go about your task,” Professor Pure called out, stopping Elina’s retort.

  Brax gave Elina and I a mocking wave before turning and leading his groupies away.

  Elina raised her arms, but didn’t shout with Professor Pure still in range, instead turning to me.

  “Are you not angry?!” she hissed.

  “No, not particularly.”

  It wasn’t anything new, though no one had stated it that outright to me before.

  —

  “How do you spell that again?” Elina called from below me as I climbed the tree.

  “C U R R… A N… T,” I huffed, pulling myself up the final branch.

  Nestled within a recess was a green token, I tossed it on the ground before descending.

  “Wonderful! That’s our sixth one,” Elina said.

  I ignored her, frowning at the beads of blood that formed on my scraped hands.

  “I would rather not do that again,” I said finally, cleaning my hands off with my handkerchief.

  “Would you rather I do it then? Showing my underclothes to a boy for a token doesn’t seem to be a fair trade,” Elina said, swishing her skirt back and forth. “Why the professor did not tell us to wear more appropriate attire is beyond me.”

  “Mayhaps it was to show us how improper improper attire can be in these environments,” I replied, eliciting a giggle from Elina. “Do you think I should mention white pine blister rust?”

  “I have no idea what that is,” Elina said, bending over to touch the blood red berries. “Should we grab some?”

  “No, I do not know for sure if that is a Currant Plant, and I would rather not risk diarrhea on a guess, educated or not.”

  “Hmm… you know, we’re probably going about this wrong,” Elina said, straightening back up and not so discreetly wiping her hands on her skirt.

  “How so?”

  “Well, we keep climbing trees and such but we waste a lot of time doing so. If Professor Pure is trying to teach us how to survive in the wilderness would it not make sense for us to cover more ground rather than check every nook and cranny of the woods.”

  “Why would he place a token in the tree then?”

  Elina shrugged.

  “To be realistic? There would be birds nests in trees after all. Think about it, wolves don’t hunt bird nests because it takes too much effort to get to them.”

  The idea of leaving behind possible tokens, even if it was more efficient, was grating.

  In the end though, Elina was correct. We found several more tokens by continuing to move rather than stop at every possibility. There were also many more plants to note down, sadly my knowledge on flora was lacking.

  Still I drew pictures of each one to research at a later date. Plants in many ways were much more useful than animals.

  I watched Elina mumble curses to herself as she pulled a thorny vine away from her skirt, small tears in the fabric intermingled with smears of dirt.

  I didn’t know why the girl decided to pair up with me. From what I could tell she was a rather social and pretty young woman. My working hypothesis was that she enjoyed arguing with Brax, and by sticking with me she got the most opportunities to do so because the boy was incapable of acting like a decent member of society. Maybe she even had a crush on Brax I thought with a shudder.

  Looking up at the sun I noticed the slight greenish tinge to its light. I checked my watch and confirmed the late hour before turning to the red haired girl still picking at her clothing.

  “We should head back,” I said to Elina.

  “Yes lets, I’ve grown far too frustrated at these clothes.”

  Using the mountains of The Heights and the skyscrapers of Zuva as a guide I led us back toward the school. Fortunately there were such easily recognizable landmarks nearby, Eichlin was all foggy rain and identical mountains, so we made it to the edge of the forest rather quickly. Unfortunately we were not the only group to be heading back.

  “Ah, thank His Light we found some others,” Brax said with a grin.

  His Light must hate me and it would be getting no thanks.

  Brax’s small group was similarly covered in leaves, dirt and scratches, but the lanky boy held an armful of tokens and had a grin spread on his face.

  “We had some issues identifying the plantlife, would you be ever so kind as to let us see your notes?” He asked rather pleasantly.

  Unpleasant people could always be pleasant if they wanted something.

  Saying no would do me no favors, in fact it would only worsen my future interactions with him. The smart thing to do would be to agree.

  “No,” I said, stuffing the small notebook into my vest pocket.

  It barely fit next to my personal journal, making the pocket bulge obviously.

  Elina choked back a laugh, which made Brax’s face turn red.

  Before I could react he had one hand gripping the collar of my jacket and the other groping around the inside of my vest.

  Revulsion and rage at the forced contact filled me. The other boy just could not keep his hands to himself. I tried to push him away, hand on his face, but Brax was far stronger than I and it only agitated him more. He shook me back and forth as I struggled, like a frustrated parent shaking a perpetually crying child.

  Eventually I felt the tightness of my pocket lessen and Brax shoved me away, making me stumble onto the ground.

  I tried to get up but the tall lanky boy pushed me back down with a foot.

  Immediately a red haired blur crushed him into the ground next to me. I tried to get to my feet as Elina exchanged blows with the boy. Before I could, someone yanked me by the collar. Turning my body face Russel I opened my mouth, only for the round-faced girl to punch me in it.

  It was then that I realized I was in a fight.

  In remembrance of a few weeks ago Russel began to kick me all over and the round-faced girl straddled my waist in a rather unladylike fashion and continued to try and rearrange my face.

  Chivalry quickly died in my heart and I grabbed the girl by the shoulder and yanked her down, forcing her to take a kick to the head by Russel.

  Quickly getting to my feet I gave the girl a kick to the ribs, and nearly got brought to the ground for a third time, or was it forth? By Russel, but the boy weighed even less than I did so I was able to shove him away.

  I then searched for Brax, expecting the largest of them to either be barreling toward me or going after Elina.

  However he was just standing a few feet away, flipping through- flipping through my personal journal, not the one I was taking notes about plants with. A mixture of disgust and horror marred his expression.

  “No!” I snarled with savage panic.

  This time I was the one to leap at someone, and Brax only had a moment to be surprised until he was the one taken to the ground.

  “So this is what you’re into, freak?!” Brax said recovering quickly. He held my notebook away from my reach with one arm while punching me wherever he could reach with the other.

  I grunted at each blow, but still struggled to grab at my notebook.

  “You’ve been killing cats and dissecting them huh? How many kids' pets have you buried in your back yard?” Brax taunted, waving the notebook. “I- Oh! I bet you had fun with that bird I threw in your room huh?”

  His laughter was cruel, echoing over the sounds of my heart beating and Elina’s own scuffle.

  Someone tried to pull me off of Brax but I snapped my elbow back, eliciting a muffled groan.

  I moved my gaze from the notebook still just out of reach to the boy beneath me. Brax’s eyes were alight with sadistic glee.

  So I shoved my hand at his face, but instead just pushing, it was an invasive attack. My fingers squirmed into his orifices like parasitic worms delivering their eggs. Brax screamed, muffled by my third and fourth digits scratching his palette and taking a hold of his gums. My middle finger was halfway up his nose and I felt the warm sticky blood pooling around the finger. But it was my pointer finger that really set him off. It dug into his eyelid; pulling and stretching it like a rubber band.

  My other hand tried to get ahold of my notebook, but Brax flailed about, eventually tossing the book aside. Leaping off the boy I scrambled for the notebook, bringing it close to my chest right as something shoved me into the dirt.

  The familiar knuckles of Brax cracked against my face and I curled into myself like a frightened armadillo. Fighting was as exhausting as it was confusing. Why were we fighting again? How many times was I knocked to the ground? Was Elina still beating that lanky boy and no one was stopping her? What constituted winning the fight?

  I heard Brax yelp, and I had a sense of deja vu, looking up expecting to see Brax on his rear and Elina bouncing a rock in her hand.

  Instead I saw… hands. A dozen of them, made of bandages that shined with burning yellow light.

  Two pairs held back Brax who looked dazed, fighting against the mystic constraints as one red eye leaked pink tears.

  “Oi! Let go!” Elina called out.

  She was trying to fight her way out of the hand's grasp to attack the round-faced girl, who held a clump of red hair in her hands.

  A pair of hands took me by the armpits as though I was a stone heavy toddler and brought me to my feet before patting the dirt and grime from my clothing like a parent would a child. I tried stepping back but on hand gently rested on my back, and something about it calmed me.

  So I stood, fascinated by what had to be a Dreamer’s Intent ability, that was until the hand tried to comfort me by ruffling my hair. I swatted it aside, causing it to retreat slightly, giving me an apologetic gesture before straightening my clothing.

  Were these real bandages? But what kind of bandages were yellow? They could be summoned by a Dreamer, but in that case were they really a bunch of threads woven together or were they a fake meant to look like bandages? I could definitely see holes so I was leaning toward real bandages.

  “Lady… Brightstrike,” Brax huffed, his fingers tracing the corners of his injured eye, “Thank you for the assistance.”

  I finally took notice of my surroundings. Everyone else in the scuffle had turned to the side, looking at Heidi Brightstrike. Covering both of the Noble girl’s arms were golden metallic gauntlets that shined even brighter than the Sun Stone Coat of Arms pinned to her outer coat.

  “My pleasure, but from the looks of it you were not one of the ones in need of assistance,” Heidi replied in a polite but cool voice.

  Behind Heidi I could see Professor Pure as well as some of the other students looking at us just beyond the treeline. The students whispered and laughed, some seeming to reenact moments in the fight to latecomers.

  “My lady I-”

  Heidi raised a halting finger and Brax fell silent.

  Well at least he had the common sense not to argue with nobility.

  Heidi’s eyes roved over each of us, and for a moment I thought she was thinking of some punishment to give out, despite that being the professor’s job, but I then realized she was communicating with the hands in some way. They gestured to Heidi in some sign language only she knew and she nodded.

  “Good, now I know asking you all to get along is foolish seeing as you were rolling around in the dirt beating one another, but could you at least try and stay away from one another?” Brightstrike said, moving from one person to the next and looking them over personally, as she did so the gauntlets on her arms and the pairs of floating hands faded away like cotton candy in water.

  “Of course my Lady,” Brax replied.

  Brightstrike gave him a long look before giving me a glance that spoke of her confidence in his words.

  “You can come to me any time if you need anything,” she said to me with a soft smile.

  “You wouldn’t be saying that if you’d seen what was in his journal,” Brax defended.

  Heidi Brightstrike gave Brax a raised eyebrow before turning back to me and holding out a hand.

  “Can I see?” she asked simply.

  Despite her being a noble and having access to powers I could only dream of, I felt no coercion from her request, so I held out my notebook to her.

  Almost immediately I realized what I had done and wished nothing more than to wrench it back out of her hands. However, Brightstrike was already flipping through the pages, her face unreadable.

  She got to a specific page and surprise flared in her features. I knew which page she was on, I had spent countless hours using that journal and could identify the scuffed and bent page even standing opposite her.

  Anticipation prickled across my skin. I knew what would come next, the dread and horror on her face would match my own. Still I watched, almost hopeful for it. I needed validation that I was different. That I was meant to be alone.

  Instead her face lit up, she turned the notebook to me as if she were showing off a trophy.

  “Wow you’re a really good artist! Is your Dream to be one? But based on your artwork I would assume a doctor or some Nightmare researcher.”

  I didn’t particularly care about my artistic skill, it was an inevitability caused by my interests, so creating masterpieces or being world renown for my inked work never crossed my mind. Blood flooded into my cheeks, and must have clogged my windpipe as well because I could not muster a response.

  Not getting the reaction she wanted Heidi pushed the notebook further into my face. Of course I knew what was on the page.

  It was a drawing of me, only it was not some portrait study, instead my body was stretched out and bare of clothing. Something that was not appropriate to show to the fairer sex, but the rest of the drawing distracted from the immodesty of it. The flesh of my chest was flayed away like a feudal torture victim, and what should have been normal human organs were… different. It was subtle and may have gone completely unnoticed to a casual observer if not for the labels.

  Vampire Heart, Troll Liver, Death Worm Intestines and more. Really it was rather childish, as I learned more about how the human body functioned the more I realized that just changing one organ for another was not enough. Hormones, dietary needs, compatibility with other body parts, size, even a different texture could cause irritation and inflammation of the surrounding tissue.

  But still when I saw the old drawing of mine I could not help but imagine the possibilities.

  “Nightmare researcher would be more accurate,” I said, face still burning with embarrassment.

  Lady Brightstrike could see my state and handed me back my journal. As she did so I noticed that her hands were not the soft and dainty ones I would expect from a noblewoman. Instead they were scarred and calloused. Her knuckles were dotted with white drops as though she spent her free time punching stones and a long jagged scar stretched from between her third and fourth fingers and wrapped around her wrist.

  Fascinating, had the cut been so deep as to tear her pinky's tendon? She was a noble so she would have gotten top of the line medical care.

  “Yeah, my hands are pretty banged up, I can’t even straighten my pinky all the way anymore,” Heidi said, wiggling the digit stiffly.

  So maybe top of the line medical care was not so good after all. After several moments of staring at her hand I realized that it was probably not the most polite thing to be doing.

  Based on the sheepish look on Heidi’s face, she knew it too.

  “Thank you for letting me see your journal, and again if you need anything you, all of you can come to me. Good day,” she said including everyone, even Brax, in her statement before heading back to Professor Pure.

  Brax left after her, not even sparing me a glance. Right, as though he was suddenly above rolling in the dirt with me over a notebook.

  “You know,” Elina said walking next to me. “I really don’t like him.”

  “Me-”

  “Can I see your journal?” she continued, staring down at the notebook in question as though it would suddenly flip open for her.

  “No.”

  “I just helped fight off four people with you,” she pointed out.

  “Yes you did. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome… So can I see it?”

  “No.”

  After class I went to my room, my body aching and my mind relishing the thought of a nice shower.

  However the moment I opened the door I stiffened. My sanctuary had been defiled once again. It took me a few moments to think of why I thought that.

  It was my bed, the ever so slightly crumpled comforter, and how the chair to my desk was at an angle.

  However when I scanned the room for said intruder I found nothing except cut wood where the person had used some tool to unlock my window.

  I set my supplies on my desk ready to search for anything missing when I immediately spotted it.

  My watch, my custom Sun Stone powered watch was missing.