𝐈𝐧 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 (English)

Chapter 12

He was in what he thought might have been a bunker. It was a long, angular, square corridor chiselled out from rock, but the walls were too smooth to be a mineshaft. It was more akin to one of those levels in a videogame where you were running through a sewer but the level designers had saved money on the design, so there was no water, no sewage, and dark shadows everywhere to hide the low-quality textures.

There was no one around him for a change. No dreamer. Jaune had to wonder if this wasn't his dream, and whether he could dream at all now. Maybe his body was dreaming right as he slept but he never experienced them because he was off hopping around someone else's.

"Hello?" shouted Jaune. "Helloooo?"

His voice echoed back at him from the depths of the tunnels, and around intersections and corners. He moved ahead, shoes clicking on stone and eyes roving the many right-angle turns and intersections. Maybe he'd been wrong to call this a sewer when it was clearly a labyrinth. Immediately, his mind started referring to the texts he'd been given from Oobleck along with his own reading. A maze might imply feelings of stress and confusion, of the dreamer not being able to make a difficult decision in real life and that being reflected in the maze in their dreams. It could also imply helplessness, or a lack of direction in life.

Or a crippling phobia of mazes.

Not all dreams had to be subtle.

Jaune tensed at the sound of running feet down a tunnel to the left. His own imagination brought up all the different horror scenarios that could come from following "mysterious sounds" in a place like this, but it was a dream and he had his ability to change things if they got bad. Plus, it wasn't like anything could stick to him. He could be killed a hundred times over and wake up fine. With a muttered reminder that the fear was all in his head, Jaune ducked into the tunnel and followed the sound of hurried footsteps. They grew louder, and soon he heard panting as well. Human breathing, ragged and hoarse and afraid. It was probably cruel of him to feel some relief at that.

"Hello?" called Jaune. "Can you hear me?"

The breathing cut off with a startled gasp, and then the footsteps turned and came closer. Jaune watched as a man – or a teenager, but at least it wasn't a child like his last few dreams – came sprinting around the corner of an intersection ahead. It was too dark to make out much other than that he had a light shade of hair coated with shadow. He was in a pair of grey jeans and a dark blue jumper.

"Run!" shouted the man, almost tripping as he raced toward Jaune. "It's coming!"

"What is-" A black, inky shadow splashed out the tunnel the man had come from, sloshing across the floor and up the opposite wall like a wave of black ink. It moved slower than water, slow enough for the guy to have run away from it, and inky black hands kept reaching out from the mass to grip the floor and pull it along. "-oh. From that."

A horror dream where someone was being chased by a monster. Jaune wasn't sure if he should be relieved at so mundane a nightmare, or disappointed. There wasn't much chance for either as the guy reached him, grabbed his shoulder, yanked him around so he was facing the other way and shouted, "Run!"

Good advice.

Jaune pushed his legs to sprint next to the man, and since "fatigue" was a concept that didn't exist for anyone but the one dreaming, he was able to keep up easily. The mass was forever behind them and nipping at their heels, and that remained the same even when Jaune glanced back and expended a little aura to will a solid wall between them and the monster. It just phased through it without losing any momentum.

Fear of pursuit, fear of being caught, not being able to escape pressure. Jaune rattled off psychological theory as the two of them took a left, then a right, then another right. The thing never once fell back, nor did it gain on them. Wanting to escape from real-world responsibilities instead of facing them? Maybe? It's obvious this thing isn't losing or gaining on us so it must represent something he knows he can't run away from.