Insomnia

34

"AAACH!" Minerva screamed. "AAAH!"

"Calm down," whispered Esme. "Please."

A cold castle hall. Walls of rough granite blocks. Torch shadows writhed along the floors. And that damned scratching sound. It echoed, bouncing from surface to surface, screaming into nothingness.

Esme lowered her mind deeper into the dream. Time was a tenth of standard here. Minerva had been asleep for three hours already so she'd spent more than a day in this Lovecraftian hell. Esme had only been here for twenty minutes and she wanted out.

Something shuffled in the carpet beneath their feet. Minerva screamed. She bolted from Esme's reach and continued sprinting. Esme cursed and followed close behind. They sprinted through twisting corridors and cobwebbed bedrooms. Minerva believed fully in this dream. Her faith in its reality was held tight by fear, rigid with horror.

As they ran, Esme looked back over her shoulder. From the murky gloom she could make out the barest shape of the thing. It had no legs, only a thousand twig like arms that screeched as they dragged the body across the floors. For a brief moment Esme saw its face, illuminated in the tepid torchlit orange. Pudgy purple lips hung in place of eyes on both sides of a thin snake-like nose. A low gurgle emerged from the twin mouths, complemented by a snapping, slurping sound that emerged from somewhere... else, on the body.

Minerva's fear drove the rhythm of the dream into a fevered pitch. That made it difficult for Esme to concentrate enough to conjure up anything that might make the nightmare more bearable - allow the girl to recover her senses.

Esme launched a skittish probe towards the creature, shivering as uncontrolled bestial hunger shot back from the other side. Esme held the link and pushed deeper, until she felt a trace of consciousness and pain crackled through her skull.

"Sit STiLL MAY," it whispered in her mother's voice. "I'm RIGHT HERE."

Esme lurched forward and collapsed in the hall. Minerva kept running. She felt a low rush of wind as the creature passed her and continued its hunt.

In that brief moment of contact, Esme confirmed several things. The Knightmare was piloting this creature. At the moment his only interest was Minerva - that was why he'd left her alone just now.

And this was the second damn time this monster tried to use a memory of her parents against her. Unacceptable.

For the first time since she'd arrived, Esme took a true unflinching hold of the dream. The hall grew brighter in her vision. She could see the creature's thin, emaciated back in the distance. The bare walls looked dull and unconvincing. Like a bad movie set.

She'd preserved the mental link between them, and shifted ahead, placing herself between it and Minerva. With her bare hands, Esme snapped one of its spindly arms. It shrieked and shuddered before quickly pushing away. Minerva didn't look back and kept running.

Esme felt a shiver run along the mental probe. The Knightmare was fighting back, but his attention was still mostly on Minerva. She needed to change that.

Esme grabbed a torch from the wall. She shifted once, twice, three times until she reached the monster again. She pressed the flames into its back and intensified the pressure of her Psionic attack. She felt its pain scream across the link as it defended itself in earnest.

Something dark and terrifying reached into her mind.

Her father gasping his last. She tried to reach him but there was something in the way. Glass?