𝓑𝓸𝓾𝓷𝓭 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓭𝓮𝓿𝓲𝓵 | 𝙎.𝙎𝙩𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙨𝙠𝙞 ¹

016.

16. Anchors

Stiles is asleep in his room, squirming restlessly with a nightmare. He whimpers and repeats, "No no no, don't let them in."

Bars of light start to shine across his face, and he wakes up suddenly trapped inside a locker. It's difficult to tell if he thinks he's lying down or standing up. He beats the door open and stumbles out into the boys locker room at school.

As he wanders the halls, he's drawn to an open classroom. The nemeton is growing through the floor of the room, and the light outside cartwheels. Stiles slowly reaches for the nemeton, and as his hand gets close, tendrils of wood snake out and wrap around his arm.

He gasps awake.

"You okay?" Corvina asks, in bed next to him. He looks down at his arm and then sighs.

"I was just dreaming Celeste dont worry."He says it was weird, like a dream within a dream. He grasps her hand for comfort as she rubs his shoulder, and then he realizes that something is wrong.

"Wait a second, what are you doing here?When did you come here Corvina?" Before she can say anything, the door to his room opens on its own, and Stiles is pulled to investigate it.

Corvina asks him not to go, but he says he's just going to close the door. She tries to stop him from getting out of bed to close it, but he insists. He worries about someone coming in.

Corvina's pleas get more desperate as he grabs the door knob and pulls the door open. He walks through and out into the woods with the nemeton. Stadium lights turn on, illuminating everything, and a high wind blows.

"This is just a dream," Stiles tells himself. "Wake up, Stiles. Wake up!" He clutches his head and pulls at his hair.

Stiles wakes up Corvina who was sleeping peacefully next to him.

"Stiles? What's wrong?" She says rubbing her eyes.

"I really dont know Celeste, something wierd is happening... I will tell you I swear but i need to figure it out for myself firstly." He says and kisses her forehead and heads for the bathroom leaving Corvina alone and confused.

They head for school and meet Scott on the entrance.Scott and Stiles are talking at school. Stiles tells Scott that he couldn't wake up and it was beyond terrifying. "You ever hear of sleep paraylsis?" He explains that this happens during REM sleep because your body is basically paralyzed (muscle atonia) so you don't start running for real because you're running in the dream. But sometimes your mind can wake up before your body does, so you're aware that your body is paralyzed. "And that's the terrifying part," Scott concludes. Stiles agrees that it turns dreams into nightmares.

Stiles asks Scott" Is it because of the sacrifice?"

They get to class, and Stiles turns to Corvina, "You want to know what scares me the most? I'm not ever sure this is real."

Stiles bolts upright in bed screaming. Corvina feels a heavy burden on her body as if she was being suffocated as she wakes up next to Stiles and hugs him tightly assuring him.
"You're okay Stiles, You're okay. Breathe, breathe." Corvina whispers her hands cupping his face.

Corvina pulls Stiles into her arms and holds him while he screams. "Hey, hey, hey, it's okay, you're okay,"she says, as Stiles clutches at her arms, crying.

......

Lydia leads the other three into the school. "Well, well, look who's no longer the crazy one," she says, clearly enjoying being on the other side of the terrifying visions for once. Allison complains that they're not crazy, but Lydia snarks and disagrees.

"We did die and come back to life. That's gotta have some side effects, right?" Scott says. The bell rings, and they all head to class. Stiles tells Lydia to stop enjoying this so much.

They leave for History class. There's a new history teacher, Ken Yukimura. He says his family moved to town three weeks ago and mentions his daughter Kira.
He says she's never mentioned anyone from school or brought home a friend. Kira sighs and slams her head down on the desk. When her father points her out, she looks around at everyone with an embarrassed smile. Scott gives her a lingering look and a small grin. The are learning American History at the turn of the 20th century.

Corvina knows that he is a supernatural being but cant say anything, because of her father's stupid rule.

After the lesson Corvina follows Stiles scared to leave him alone. Stiles goes to his locker and tries to open it.
"Maybe we just need a little more time to get back to normal." Scott suggests
"Try not to forget that we hit the reset button on a supernatural beacon for supernatural creatures. I think there's a pretty good chance that things are never going back to normal." Stiles struggles with the combination lock. All the numbers have turned into alchemical symbols.

Stiles tells the pack that this isn't just in their heads. "I'm not just having nightmares. I'm having these dreams where I have to literally scream myself awake. And sometimes I'm not even sure if I'm ever actually waking up." Scott asks what he means. Stiles explains that in a dream you can't read, and he's been having trouble reading more and more the last few days. Corvina asks if it's happening right now, and Stiles looks at the blackboard. It's covered in gibberish.

While Allison and Lydia were out practising with the bow and arrow, Corvina and Stiles went to the sheriff station.

Stiles goes to meet his dad at the sheriff's station. He has flowers for his mother's grave and complains that the last time they left her flowers someone stole them the same day. His dad tells him that it's not the flowers, it's the gesture. Stiles sees his father's case files spread all over the place and asks what he's up to.

The Sheriff explains that he's going through all the old files looking for any he might be able to solve now. Stiles reads a file about a bipedal lizard report, and his dad tells him to toss it on the kanima pile.

The sheriff is looking at a murder file, specifically a body whose head was slashed and made unrecognizable. The sheriff was about to toss it to the kanima pile but Corvina stopped him.

"No. Thats a normal case, no supernatural being, just someone slashing someones face.", She says calmly and the sheriff looks at her suprised, still not used to the fact that Corvina is the daughter if the devil.

The Sheriff says there are at least a hundred cases where he can ask himself "If I knew then what I know now..." Stiles isn't sure this is a healthy thing to do. His father says there's one case in particular that's been plaguing him. Eight years ago when he was elected sheriff of the county, his first official duty was to tell a man that not only had his wife and two kids died in a car accident, but that as best they could tell the body of his 9-year-old daughter had been dragged from the wreck by coyotes. They hadn't found the car until three days after the crash. The two bodies that were still in the car were covered in bites and slashes.

Stiles concludes that the bites and claw marks now make him think werewolf attack. But he points out that coyotes could actually be the culprits. The Sheriff agrees, except the accident occurred on a full moon, which makes it suspicious.

Corvina thinks about it, and also finds it suspicious. Stiles then asks where all the case files are going, and the Sheriff tells him that Rafael McCall has asked for them all because he's trying to impeach him.