Dream King by Elise Knight

13

Idozed fitfully, occasionally waking to the sound of the fire crackling and my body once again tied to the tree. Dream had gone back to work, flitting in and out of the doors along with his raven. It turned out the fire burned just as well without him paying close attention to it, and it was a welcome addition to the bleak nights I’d spent alone since coming here. Not because of the warmth. The forest was always temperate, but because of the color and life it brought to the otherwise lifeless forest. I could almost believe there were other people with me with the dancing shadows, and I wasn’t completely alone with a psycho.

Any hopes that Aethelu would come back for me evaporated pretty quickly. I closed my eyes again, trying to find a comfortable position against my restraints. My arms hurt like hell, bound as they were to the tree. If I’d thought Dream was going to show me more mercy after our little chat last night, I was sorely mistaken. Sorely being the operative word, because every part of my body hurt like a bitch. I stretched my legs out and tried to get some blood pumping in them. At the rate I was going, I was going to end up with bedsores from staying in one position for too long.

It didn’t need much thinking to know I was in a worse position than I had been the day before. At least then, I’d had a plan. A stupid, reckless one, but a plan nonetheless. Then I had the chance to get home. To go through the red door and leave all this behind. And I’d made the decision to stay, or at least, my indecision had made my decision. My head felt groggy with the lack of good sleep and the pain rearing its ugly head throughout my body. Ten feet away from me, Dream left one door, and the whole lot moved before he went through another. The sound of the doors moving—a quiet whoosh sound had become so familiar that I barely noticed it anymore. I only noticed when the quiet rhythm stopped. Not that it ever did for very long. I concentrated on the sound, whoosh, quiet, more quiet, whoosh, quiet...

“Get up!”

I woke up to find Dream pulling me to my feet, urgency in his voice and panic in his eyes. I’d never seen him panic about anything before, so to see it brought a shiver down my spine.

“What is it? “I asked, trying to get to my feet. The now-familiar tingles of the blood rushing to my extremities after being tied up began. Pain echoed through my body, stabbing me with thousands of pins and needles. My legs gave way beneath me.

“Come on. We don’t have time for questions.” Frustration over my frail human weakness had always been apparent with him, but never more so than it was now as he tried to keep me upright.

“I can’t. The blood has been restricted from my arms and legs because of your magical ropes. It will take a while for it to come back enough for me to walk.” I rubbed my legs, willing the pain away. “And it fucking hurts, thanks for asking.”

“I didn’t ask,” he responded, lifting me clear of the ground and hoisting me over his shoulder.

“What the fuck! Put me down.”

Without giving me an answer, surprise surprise, he took off through the trees, with me on his shoulder. My indignance was soon replaced with terror as the reason behind his actions became apparent. The forest was no longer silent. Something was chasing us, something that growled and screamed. More than one something. Lifting my head up, I peered into the darkness behind me. Trees flew past at a breakneck speed as the pair of us careened through the woods. Not that I could see where I was going. I only hoped Dream could. I still couldn’t see whatever it was that was making the bloodcurdling noises as everything was swallowed up in the darkness almost as soon as we’d passed it. Above and behind me, Raven cawed, splitting the night in two, and still, the terrifying sound followed us.

Part of me, the more insane part, obviously wanted to see what it was that was making Dream run so fast, but the more rational part of my mind wanted whatever it was to stop and go away.

“What are they?” I mustered. “Wolves?”

“Not wolves,” Dream huffed back. We’d been running, or at least, he’d been running for ages now. He must have been feeling it in his muscles, and yet his pace never slowed. “Beasts like wolves. You don’t get them in your human realm. There is nothing I can compare them to that you would understand.”

“Try me?” I spat back. If I was going to get eaten or mauled by some scary night creatures, I at least wanted to know what they were and what they were capable of.

“Nightwalkers.”

“Nightwalkers?” Images of zombies filled my mind. Mindless humans out for brains. Except in no TV show or zombie movie I’d ever watched, did zombies sound the way these things did. “What the fuck is a Nightwalker?”

And then I didn’t need him to tell me. Two giant reptilian, horned wolves leapt out of the darkness, their teeth bared, drool dripping from their jowls. They were like nothing I’d ever seen before and nothing I ever wanted to see again. Two pairs of yellow eyes fixated on me as they inched ever closer.

“Faster!” I yelled pointlessly. We were already zooming through the forest at an incredible pace. A pace that no human would be able to manage. And yet, it wasn’t fast enough. On their four legs, both were faster than Dream, and neither had the added burden of carrying a human on their back.

Seconds raced by, and with each step they made, the gap closed further still.

“Can’t you use your magic?” I screamed out as the pair got dangerously close. Their heavy breathing, almost snorting, filled the night air, echoing through the trees.

I had no idea what magic Dream had beyond the conjuring of fire and ropes from thin air, but either would be useful in this situation. It seemed that running from them wasn’t working, and it was inevitable that we were going to end up as breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a midnight snack for these two.

Raven cawed in warning as the first one struck. It leapt, its two giant paws leaving the ground, its ferocious teeth bared and ready for action.

Dream turned on the spot. Momentum and the change in his direction sent me flying through the air backwards, over his head, as he was hit with the full weight of the vicious creature on top of him. I fell with a bump to the ground, the dead leaves cushioning my fall. Dream was completely under the giant beast, easily the size of a small horse. There was nothing I could do for him. I had no weapon or anything to fight it off. The first beast wasn’t my major problem. Now it had gotten a snack, the second was eager to have one too, and its beady eyes, the color of saffron fixed on me. Unlike the first that had lunged at Dream, this one had come to a stop just feet away from me. It looked like he liked to play with his food before devouring it whole without so much as a drink of water to wash it down.

Raven cawed again. I cast my glance upwards, taking my eyes from the beast for a second. The same second it decided that maybe it didn’t want to play with me after all, just eat me. But Raven wasn’t cawing in distress or warning. He was giving me a way out of this.

Just above my head was a sturdy branch from one of the nearby trees. I leapt up and swung my body up onto it, using muscles I hadn’t used since fifth-grade gymnastics class. The strain on my muscles hurt like hell, but it was nothing to the pain that having my body torn limb from limb would be The nightwalker pounced upward, dragging its claws down my legs, tattering my only pair of jeans and the skin beneath them. I stifled a yell and kicked out, landing my bare foot on its forehead.

“Fuck!” I yelled out as bone crunched on its reptilian-plated armor. There was no way I was going to win this fight. Blood dripped down my leg, adding insult to injury of the no doubt broken foot. The only way to survive was up. I hauled myself up to a higher branch, not putting any weight on my bad foot. From there, I could only watch as Dream was being mauled by the first Nightwalker. I could barely see him under the mass of the wolf-thing. He made no sound. No yelling or screaming, and I wondered if he was already dead. Raven settled on a branch next to me and cawed in my ear.

“What do you want me to do? Look at them. They’d eat me whole without chewing.”

Raven cawed again, making me feel fucking awful. For all the bullshit I’d had to put up with from Dream, I didn’t want to sit here and do nothing while he died an agonizing death just ten feet below me. I had to begrudgingly concede that the bastard had saved my life. He could have left me tied to the tree, but what was I supposed to do? Raven jumped up and down on its branch as if urging me to do something... anything.

“Ok.” Fucker! Why did I let a bloody bird talk me into doing its bidding? It wasn’t the first time. The only thing at my disposal were trees and leaves. Maybe if I‘d done survival training or watched Hunger Games all the way through, I’d have known how to fashion a weapon from a nearby broken branch. As it was, David had started feeling me up in the back row of the movie theater before Jennifer Lawrence had volunteered to be a tribute, and I’d missed the rest of the movie. I knew I should have read the books. Grabbing the broken branch, I pulled at it, twisting the wood until it creaked and snapped with my weight pulling at it.

The branch wasn’t that thick, and because of damage it had already sustained, broke off quite easily.

Now what?From where I was, ten feet up in the tree, the leafy end of the branch could reach the Nightwalkers, but I wasn’t strong enough to deliver a blow to either of them. The best I would manage if I tried was to tickle them with the leaves at the end.

“I don’t know what to do!” I screamed at Raven, who was frantically jumping up and down on my shoulder, willing me to do something. I could have done with that polyglot thing Aethelu had talked about, and maybe I’d understand a bloody word Raven said. As it was, All I heard was his cawing, though I understood very well the urgency in it.

“Fuck this!” I shouted, hurling the thicker end of the branch downward with all my might. It fell, landing directly on beast number’s two’s head. The sound it made echoed through the forest. A clang-like wood on bone, which is essentially what it was. The strange horned exoskeleton of the creature protected it from too much damage, even from a huge branch dropping on its head. It had startled it, though, and that was my chance. My one chance to do something. Something ridiculously stupid. Something that, if I’d put any thought into it, I would most surely have not done. But I didn’t have time for thought, only action. I launched myself from the safety of my branch and landed squarely on the back of the monster with a thump. The wind was knocked out of me by the force with which I fell and the hardness of the beast’s body. It was like falling on an armor-plated rhino or a tank. Except this tank had two soft spots. His eyes were the only place of vulnerableness on the whole thing, and this was where I aimed. A thumb in each eye, pushing until I used enough force, for each one to pop with a splatter in my hand. Bile filled my throat as the beast yelled a blood-curdling yelp and tried to buck me off. It was now blind and in pain, which meant, for a change, I held the advantage. The branch I’d thrown earlier had come to a standstill propped against the nearby tree trunk. While the beast was roaring, with one hand, I snapped one of the smaller end branches from it. It was thin, reedy almost, and inflexible, but when I shoved it as hard as I could, broken end first into the eye socket, I’d already burst; it did what I meant it to do. The creature howled as I jammed the stick, this time with both hands, as far as I could into its brain. The roaring became silent, and the creature fell to the ground with a boom, taking me with it. I yelled an agonized scream as the full weight of it landed on my already, torn to shreds leg, trapping it beneath him. I pushed against its lifeless body, trying to get it away from me so I could once again jump up to the safety of the tree. Too late, though, as the first nightwalker had momentarily forgotten the prey it was playing with after the loud boom and turned its sights on me.

My breath quickened as terror filled my lungs, leaving me unable to do anything but stare at its angry face. I was in no position to kill this one as I had its brother. I was pinned to the ground, a sitting duck. All I could see of Dream was the bottom of one leg sticking out from under the monster. He wasn’t moving, and there was no way to see if there was any blood. Adrenaline completely took over, corrupting my mind to think I was capable of more than I was. I was going to die one way or another, so I might as well go down in a blaze of glory, inflicting as much damage as I could rather than lie back and take it. Fear vanished, leaving me in the moment. Just me and the beast that was three times bigger and infinitely stronger. Staring into death didn’t bother me as much as I’d ever thought it would. There were no flashbacks to happier times, no swift memories of things I’d done or regret for things I hadn’t yet accomplished. It was just me and the creature, its jagged teeth bared and ready to rip my body in two. In a swift movement, I leaned over and pulled Dream’s boot off. The knife he used to whittle fell to the ground. I snatched it as the beast lunged. With as much strength as I could muster, I rammed the blade deep into the soft flesh at the front of its neck. Its eyes went wide as I twisted the blade for maximum damage into the only part of it I could see with no boned armor. This one fell soundlessly without a screech like its brother had. As it fell onto me, the blade was pushed further into its neck, ensuring its swift death. The forest was once again silent save for Raven cawing somewhere above me and the heaviness of my breathing. The heavy weight of my actions was only outweighed by the weight of one nightwalker crushing my leg and the head of the other pinning me to the ground. Its blood was surprisingly cold as it gathered on my belly, pooling on my shirt, and then when it was saturated, dripping down my sides to the forest floor beneath me

The last thing I saw before I passed out was Raven flying down from his branch and settling by the side of my head.