Author Games: Path of the Guildpact

Task Four: Azorius-Simic

Newt-Ella Doe-Knott

Whether we remember it or not, all of us dream - but that's obvious, isn't it? Why am I wasting my time saying this type of thing? Well, reader, if you want to understand, then you need to factor your own presence into the equation. My stories are written in order to be read (in fact, according to one of your more famous literary critics, literature doesn't exist outside of the mind of the reader. Whether or not I agree with him is entirely irrelevant). And, in order to appeal to you, it's recommended by many experts in the field that I start with some kind of mass statement about which we can agree. Either that, dialogue, or a sudden emergence into the action of the piece, but I think you needed a little more background for this particular story.

Personally, I haven't remembered any of my dreams since I was exactly fifteen years, seven months, three weeks, and one-day old. Before then, they happened quite vividly. Usually, I'd find myself in the sea, surrounded by a bunch of creatures all as happy and free as I was, floating around without a care in the world. This is all fantasy of course - people, I've realized, are never free.

Why haven't I remembered a dream since then, you ask? Well, I'd tell you, but that'd be getting ahead of myself. Don't worry. I'll get there.

At first, the Simic Undercity looks like the second most frightening place I'd ever stepped foot into. Maybe the most frightening, actually, but all the stories I've heard have made me hype it up so much that I can't help but find it just a tad anticlimactic. Blood has dried on the walls, of course, and if I look around I can spot a few remaining limbs in the cold, rock-hard flooring. If I focused hard enough, I could almost hear the tortured screams of those who had lost their lives between these walls. But, when, as an over-imaginative twelve year-old with a warped imagination, I'd first heard of a "mermaid torture chamber", I'd pictured the strangest of atrocities: a room designed purely to extinguish fire-based creatures one drop of water at a time, and another which casually drained out water from its midst to torment any aquatic creature; a few spikes and nails hammered to a wall, with still-living creatures shrieking in agony; razor blades to cover the floor, disguised as grass, so that anyone daring to step off the path would immediately feel the most blistering of pains. (Yes, I know. I could have made a killing as a torture chamber designer. I'm not a fan of the practice, though. As it turns out, an overactive imagination does not a sociopath make.) If anything, this room looked more like the back of a particularly unsavoury restaurant than any room where inventors might hide atrocities too horrible to bear.

The creature doesn't look like much either. I could probably step on it, if I so wanted to. It stands barely longer than an ant, and no winder than a worm - in fact, I have to squint a few times even to see it. Wings flip out from under its shell and it flits a few feet into the air, floating around and staring at us.

"This is what the Simic squad couldn't conquer?" hisses Mikaela. She rolls her eyes. "I didn't realize merfolk had such low tolerance for squashing an insect."

"Well, actually," says Shark - he looks quite offended by this, although if I'm being honest, I'm almost as surprised to see he's still around as I am to see myself in the mix - "I think that's a Night-Terror."

"It's adorable!" screams a white-haired elf a few people down from me. I'm not quite sure what to make of him yet. He has a pet rabbit, which is cute. Its name is Fluffy: also cute. Its entire body is skeletal - not so cute. "Can I name him?"

"It's quite deadly." Shark smiles to himself and coughs back a laugh that reeks of fake superiority. The urge to punch him has started to boil in the bottom of my stomach, but it seems he might actually know a thing or two about this creature. Not yet, Newt. Maybe later. "My uncle's neighbour's second cousin invented it. Apparently, it feeds on fear. It'll crawl in a person's ear, stimulate their amygdala - that's the fear censor, by the way -" his eyes flicker towards me. I don't respond. Calm down "- and stimulates your first censor to cause a horrible nightmare. It was originally meant as a means of eliminating trauma, only all the patient's hearts stopped due to the shock and nobody was ever able to figure out if the trauma actually leaves. So they locked it up."