Well, maybe I won’t pray.
Maybe I will.
I still don’t know how I feel about that whole thing.
The hound dog weaves into the mist. I decide to call him Larry. He looks like a Larry.
Squat houses with clay, half-circle shingles emerge from the mist like silent ships in a sea of stone. I pass by them, eyes constantly scanning, kris dagger drawn in case Larry needs another sniff. My emotions lap at the surface, tempting anger. Tempting fear. I’m careful not to push them too far down. If I need to create something in a pinch, I want the emotions accessible. I’m half tempted to form that saber-toothed tiger again—if I could guarantee it would walk by my side and not eat me.
I don’t bother with supplies like food, though I’m sure it’s possible to create them. I won’t starve, no matter how far I travel to the edge of the Nightmare.
Every dreamscape has edges. I know it in theory from my classes. But Nole knew even more. What I’d give to have him at my side. He’d see so much beyond what I can. His mind analyzed at a level college professors envied.
I make it through a few sections of homes but see no one. Not even light in windows. I hear plenty. Every particularly dark shadow I pass greets me with a crackling sound or even a growl, like some small beast hides in its depths.
The longer I walk, the more I find myself searching for light—any light. A candle or a star or anything. It’s a gray midnight journey, and I feel it like a weight. I’d originally thought the light in the coliseum to be dim and unsatisfying, but compared to this darkness, it is as bright as a firework burst.
I follow Larry for hours, as he weaves and walks left and right, through an alley, back the way we came, forward, and all manner of directions. If I’d walked a straight shot, it likely would have taken less than an hour to get to where we are.
Maybe he can’t find Stranna because she’s dead already.
I groan. “God. Please, no.”
The hound dog stops abruptly and raises his snout, ears lifting. Alert. Something’s there. I stop, too, and listen. I think I catch footsteps, but then there’s silence. Larry doesn’t give chase, doesn’t howl. Wouldn’t he bay or something if we’d arrived where Stranna was?
We stand like this for a minute, then he sniffs again and turns right, nose to the stones. Then right again. He whines. We’re going in circles. He’s lost either the scent or the trail.
But we have to be close. I risk calling out gently. “Stranna?”
Now that we’re standing still, the gloom becomes palpable. A low hiss, like a burst steam pipe, fills the silence. I turn toward it, but another hiss joins from a different direction. Larry whines. In less than a minute, there are so many hisses it’s impossible to tell which direction they come from.
I scan the streets but see only shadows and darkness. Then the shadows move, slither across the stone toward my feet.
The hissing grows louder.
They aren’t shadows. It’s nightmist. Nightbeasts.
Snakes.
Hundreds of snakes cover the ground, a moving writhing carpet from every angle. I grip my kris dagger. Larry snaps at a cobra. I try channeling what emotions remain in me into a second weapon—maybe an Indiana Jones whip or something—but then the cobra lunges toward Larry. I lose my focus but not my instincts. I slice off its head before the strike.
The other snakes slide over the carcass of their dead companion.
Larry dances backward, barking and snapping. A rattler latches onto his shoulder. I kick at three snakes coming toward my feet, one of which is a python as thick as my bicep. If ever I hated the useless show of Roman sandals, it’s now.
I swipe and kick and try to channel my emotions into another nightmist creation, but I can’t pause long enough. Can’t focus.
More snakes latch on to Larry. I yell, as though that can scare them off. Larry growls and spins, chasing them with his teeth, but no matter where we run or how we fight, the snakes multiply in our path.
One bites my calf, and fire spreads up my leg. I rip the snake off. Another slides around my ankle shaking a rattling tail. Snakes fully cover Larry’s body by this point, and he’s gone from fighting to whimpering.
“Get off him!” I shout, kicking at the snakes, but four of them have already bitten me and hold on, fangs in place. I sprint away from the madness, but they’re everywhere. Filling the streets, dropping from the air, climbing the walls. Can regular snakes slither up walls?
I glance back. Larry is a lump of writhing snake bodies. Unmoving. The snakes feast. I send him a mental promise to create him again with a full tail and solid body as recompense for his death.
The other snakes give chase, gaining on me. Grabbing my feet, calves, sandals. I kick at them, but fangs pierce my ankle bone and muscles. I hack with the kris dagger. This can’t be how I go. The snakes didn’t get Indy, and they won’t get me.
Then one twists around my neck and tightens with a hearty squeeze. My air is cut off immediately. I stab at it with the dagger, careful not to slice my own skin. It doesn’t relent.
These aren’t like real snakes. They’ll squeeze and bite until they die. They don’t care about self-preservation because they’re made of fear and darkness.
Something passes over me like an inverted shadow—lighter than my surroundings. I glance up wildly, half expecting to see a chopper with a spotlight.
A tiny spark starts in the sky and drops through the air. The snakes pause. The light lands among them.
A single lit match. Or something close to it. Like a grain of fire.
The snakes scatter, but the fire catches—on what, I don’t know. It spreads like a beast itself, consuming the snakes. I cringe and hold my ground, allowing the heat of the fire to kill the snakes on my body. It’s hot—burning, even—but not eating my flesh the way it eats up the snakes.
Is this the same type of fire from the coliseum?
When the hissing finally stops and the slithering comes to an end, I’m left standing amid the carcasses of a thousand blackened serpents. I can’t bring myself to look at Larry’s dead body.
A gust of wind blows from a side alley. Then footsteps. Then . . . she’s here. Right in front of me.
Stranna.
“Sorry about your dog.” She looks at me the same way one might look at a shower drain clogged with hair. “Now we’re even. Okay?” She spins away.
