Dreaming of Demons (Dream x oc)

[63] Follow the Eye

Dream sat nearly motionless, all except his rapidly bouncing knee under the table. His elbow was propped up on the wooden surface, his knuckles pressed against his lips as he stared in deep thought at the wall across the room. He had barely spoken a word while Karl, George, and I had been brainstorming ways we could get rid of Nightmare.

Sapnap was almost fully healed only a day after his injury. A couple of healing pots had sealed up the wound in his side and back and only left him a bit sore. Now he was searching through his fridge, moving a bit stiffly, but well enough the incident could have been waved off as nothing more than a minor cut.

We weren't going to forget what happened though. Things could have been much worse, and we all knew it. Nightmare was clearly playing with us, inching us closer to death. Such a thought spurred our brainstorming. It was all we could think about now.

"I mean, what if we tried other rituals?" George asked, folding his arms as he leaned back in his chair.

I shook my head. "There are no relevant rituals we could try. And I don't want to risk making things even worse than before. We can't be sure things will work out the way they are said to."

He shrugged. "I dunno. I think it's still worth a shot. If we can't kill him with our weapons, a ritual sounds like a better idea."

"It does, but...there has to be a better way. Like I said, we can't trust the rituals."

George fell silent with a little grumble and Karl stayed quiet as well, looking bored but still putting on a concentrated expression. We hadn't gotten very far with our ideas.

I looked at Dream, though it appeared he hadn't noticed my turn of attention. "What do you think, Dream?"

He blinked, his unfocused gaze falling on me. "Hm?"

"What are you thinking about?"

He sighed, laying his hand down on the table as he lifted the other to run through his messy blonde hair. Shifting, he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms, his leg still bouncing.

"I remembered something, I think," he responded.

I raised a brow.

He leaned forward on the table again, looking at me. "You saw his axe, right? It had an Ender eye on it. And...I don't know why, but...it brought back some sort of memory."

"Okay, then spit it out," George said.

Dream's brows only twitched inward as he spoke again. "I remember seeing an End portal."

"You found an End portal?" Karl asked, leaning forward in his own chair.

"Wait, what?" Sapnap joined us at the table, half of a ham sandwich in hand. "When did you find an End portal?"

We all watched Dream with curiosity, waiting for him to answer. I had heard about the End, but no one really knew how to get there. Descriptions of it could rarely be found in books, and that was only if people managed to get there in the first place. Apparently, an Ender eye was the key to finding a portal, but then...that was it. There were no instructions on how to use it. And what good was a key without knowing how to use it?

Dream shook his head. "I don't even know how or if I really did find it. I just remember seeing a portal. Y'know, with all the Ender eyes." He gestured with his hands, trying to show us what he saw in his mind's eye.

"But how could you remember something like that if you didn't actually find it?" Karl asked.

Dream shrugged. "I don't know. That's just what I was thinking about."