“What the fuck is wrong with that dog?!” Private Downs yelped, leveling her spear at Burst.

Private Icy was already raising his hammer to engage, but a quick order from Private Quint stopped him.

“Wait!” he turned to me. “You recognize that dog? Is that a part of the forest’s influence?”

“Yes,” I said simply, my eyes had never left Burst’s.

I crouched down and Burst ran towards me, yelping happily. For a moment I thought it would turn into some monster and bite a chunk out of me, but no, Burst leapt into my arms and started licking me, leaving smudges of blood on my face.

Normally that would disgust and annoy me to no end, but this was my doggo. I scratched the back of his neck, right behind where his skull ended and Burst made the odd hooting sound that he always had whenever I scratched there.

I felt the slimy intestines and stomach press against my chest as Burst rubbed his cheek against mine.

It almost felt just like Burst had, soft fur and rough tongue, but there was no warmth and its skin had no give when I pressed down. Not only that there was not the natural smell that dogs had or the more putrid stink of the dogs insides.

As soon as I registered that I felt the Intent around me shift and a slight stink wafted off the dog. The flesh now dipped slightly when my fingers pressed against it.

I had known from the beginning that this wasn’t actually my dog, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t happy to see him again. I looked into the dog’s eyes and it barked, moving a few steps away then lying on its back to show me the diamond shaped cut on its stomach.

It was trying to let me investigate his organs like I had seven years ago. I remembered the three Champions that still stood around me, watching as a dog happily waited for me to sift through its guts. Shame and fear pulsed through me.

“No-”

In an instant Burst changed, his intestines turned to snakes and his happy face twisted unnaturally into anger. Ten more eyes grew out of his head and his fur began to shift into spiked horns. He got to his feet the snakes spilling out of his guts hissing and writhing on the ground.

Burst growled and it sounded like nails on a chalkboard. The dog leapt at me, and in an instant was slammed to the ground by Private Icy’s hammer, Private Downs followed up by stabbing Burst in the chest.

The moment the spear pierced the dogs flesh it dissolved into purplish white essence that was carried away and faded into the fog.

“What the fuck was that?” Private Downs said.

“Downs, control your thoughts, if we let our focus slip it will draw the Nightmares,” Private Quint ordered.

Downs stiffened, but moved back into formation only a moment later. From what I had heard from them a few nights ago if non Dreamers walked through the forest and let their mind wander then specters would lead the Nightmares that reside in the forest to them.

“Okay, we should continue,” Private Quint said.

None of them mentioned Burst or what it had to do with me. They knew to some degree that The Forest of Living Dreams would show us things that resonated with my “Dream,” so it must’ve been disturbing to see a cute dog with its stomach cut open and guts trailing behind it and relate that to me.

A tense silence surrounded us as I stood, the blood from Burst’s tongue and opened stomach had disappeared with the dog. We began to move again, but we had only taken a few steps when another two shadows formed.

Two Bursts appeared, one tilting its head and panting happily and the other one barking and running up to me, both had the same cut in the stomach that I had made all those years ago.

Tension bloomed from the group around me. If I rejected the dogs again then they would transform into those monsters again and attack.

“Don’t let your minds wander,” Private Quint stated again. “Let Monty deal with this, we will deal with any Nightmares.”

One of the Bursts pushed its head underneath my hand while the other rolled onto its back and proffered its cut out stomach for me to inspect.

I felt my breathing catch, and I pushed down the reaction to reject Burst. I needed to be honest with myself. Not to hide away.

The sight of a opened body, even my own dogs, was a puzzle that I ached to solve. A frontier I wished to explore. I rested my hand over the intestines of the dog, twisting them around to see the back and sliding my hand down the slick exterior.

The swollen bleeding bump was just like it had been seven years ago, pink, yellow, red, brown, black. A disgusting smell wafted out as the memory surfaced in my mind. There was no maliciousness in my thoughts. I did not kill the dog to investigate its insides, I investigated its insides because it had died.

And what was wrong with that? Autopsies were normal in the medical field, that was how you learned about diseases, or how wounds affected the body. It was a mystery that needed to be solved, so why shouldn’t someone like me, who had a deep fascination with that mystery, be the one to investigate and solve it.

“We fed you some of our chicken just before you started to get sick. I had slid it off the plate because I wasn’t hungry anymore and my parents relented and let you eat it. Thinking back that was probably it, you must’ve eaten a bone and it cut up your intestines,” I said quietly to the Burst’s.

“Of course that is not a guarantee, but I wouldn’t be able to tell anymore after seven years.”

The Burst who’s guts I was sifting through barked happily as if agreeing with me. I smiled softly, this image of a opened up Burst wasn’t disgusting to me, it was sad, but that was only because it was the dog that I had loved.

“You always were such a good boy,” I said.

Both Burst’s barked happily and got back to their feet looking forward on the pathway as if they were going to lead the way.

I nodded to the three Champions around me, but I had no idea what expressions they had due to their helmets, and we continued on our way.

—

Cystella stood near the edge of the forest, the purple mist swirled around invitingly. It wanted her to come in, to play with her mind and conjure memories that she would rather leave alone. Her three Champions shuffled awkwardly around her. They had only exchanged the lowest amount of polite greetings during their journey and every time she turned her head or moved an arm, or even just glanced in their direction the three Champions would grip their weapons tighter.

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It was annoying, this was why she had never wanted to join the Academy to begin with, but her sponsor had told her this was the best way for her to achieve her goals and he had saved her life so she would trust him that much.

“You can go,” she said to the three Champions.

“S-sorry?” their leader stuttered, she was a tall Empyrean woman who looked too uncomfortable leading the members of the Forged Order.

“I am not going inside there,” she said simply.

“But what about your assignment?” the leader asked.

“I won’t get kicked out if I don’t complete it.”

“We were order-”

“Professor Alyci, if it is okay for the Champions to proceed without me then shoot right here,” Cystella said, pointing straight down at her feet.

A silence permeated the area for a few seconds then a beam of light streaked from far up the mountain and hit right between Cystella’s feet.

It only took a few more blunt words for the three Champions to make their way into the forest alone. They would be able to deal with any Nightmares in a place like The Forest of Living Dreams as long as they kept their focus.

The forest was suppose to help with understanding and accepting yourself, but Cystella had spent the first few years of her life having her mind messed with she wasn’t going to willfully go into a place that did it again.

Walking a few steps she stopped in front of a tree and a black haze came off her hand for only a moment. She lightly pressed her fingers to the bark of the tree and a web of complex Stygoscript wrapped around the outside of the tree.

The Stygoscript took control of the tree and it bowed over so that a branch lay at waist height for Cystella. Turning she sat on the branch and let the tree slowly go back to its natural state. She’d wait up there until her team came back. Maybe she should take a nap. Nah, she had some ideas she wanted to work out.

Cystella took out her notebook and began to sketch.

—

Line Sergeant Brightstrike watched his niece help the cowering form of a small child from a wreckage of stone and wood. It was all an illusion, which he, the Champions assigned to Heidi and Heidi herself knew, but Heidi helped the child anyways.

It had been for that very reason that his sister and her husband had adopted the girl in the first place. She had rushed right into a burning building to help people try and escape at nine years old. His sister had seen it from across the street and had fallen in love with the young orphaned girl.

A part of him didn’t like the fact that she had become a Dreamer. Dreamers in his opinion were an inherently selfish lot. Only ever caring for their own issues, or imagining the world as they want it to be instead of seeing the world as it is.

The illusion child stood with a crowd of other fake people that Heidi had saved on her journey through the forest. She smiled to the child, who had been crying, and left her with an adult in the crowd.

“Is this field exercise even useful to you Heidi?” he asked his niece.

She shrugged as she moved back up to walk on the path.

“It’s good training for real life situations I guess, but if you mean does it help me with learning about myself then not really. I’ve known what my Dream is for a long time.”

“And what is that Lady Brightstrike?” one of the privates asked Heidi.

She turned and gave the boy a dazzling smile, it was the same one that she had given her adoptive mother in the hospital after she had rushed into the burning building.

“To be someone that is there for others when they need it.”

—

Marollo walked through a maze, the Champions that followed him had gotten increasingly annoyed at the delays in their travel, but Marollo loved them. Each obstacle had a puzzle that he needed to solve in order to continue. Most were math equations, but some were logic based while others were based on history or mechanics.

The three Champions were of little help, but Marollo didn’t want their help to begin with, that would take away the fun of finding out the answer himself.

He wrung the wood of the staff he was carrying, well it wasn’t a staff, it actually looked more like a spear, standing taller than he was with a pointed metal tip. However if studied more closely people would notice that the end looked exactly like the nip to a pen.

Marollo hummed as he finished the equation in front of him, the trees shifting away to show the next part of the path. A sun dial waited for them, and beside it was a hunched wolf-like creature that walked on two legs and seemed to be shedding a unreasonable amount of fur.

Marollo looked behind him at the Champions with a raised eyebrow.

“I believe that is a Nightmare, would you three like assistance in dispatching it or will you be able to take care of it yourselves?”

“Thank Solas, I was getting so bored,” one of the Champions said, hefting their hammer. “We got this.”

—

Vit walked down a perfectly straight path, his three Champions following closely behind. Everything from the trees to the grass was laid out in symmetrical patterns. Every once in a while there would be some bush or leaves that would dirty the place up, but Vit quickly took care of it.

There had even been a roaming Nightmare. Vit had to stop himself from rushing in himself to take care of the monster, it was leaving dirty tracks everywhere. The Champions had been able to take care of it easily enough, so Vit was content with standing to the side.

His stride was perfect, the rough ground not able to hinder his perfect posture. He had tailored his uniform to fit him perfectly and there was not a speck of dirt or grim on his body. He was half Solarian half Empyrean so he had dark black hair with golden yellow eyes. If he was honest he would rather have typical grey eyes. He was not suppose to draw attention and his eyes were a distraction for his Lord and Lady.

He might have not been born a Dreamer like his Lord and Lady wished, but he had worked from the moment he was born to be the best he could be in all regards, able to accomplish any task set forth.

For his Lord and Lady he must be perfect in all regards.

—

Melanie strolled through The Forest of Living Dreams alone. Her Champions were fine of course, but she didn’t want to spend too much time with their up-tight shiny asses. They got along just fine, but Melanie bristled at how strictly they followed all the rules.

Yeah the forest was suppose to help her find her true self and all that, but she thought that was boring. Forcing her to understand herself meant that there was one less interesting thing to find out about herself. She had asked the Champions if they would want to just go hunt Nightmares, that sounded fun, but they had said they were tasked with first and foremost bringing her to the center of the forest unharmed.

So she slipped away to go find the Nightmares herself. The forest itself seemed to be aiding her in her escape, sending out echoes of her voice to mislead the Champions and half formed shadows dashing in random directions.

She heard shouts from behind, the Champions must’ve found her trail. Good, because there was a large shadow coalescing in front of her that looked awfully a lot like a floating head with blood dripping down its face.

Technically she was a Dreamer, but she had not been able to actually craft her own Wit yet. So she pulled out a Sun Stone pistol from where she had hidden it and shot the Nightmare in the head. A flash of light from the muzzle and a sizzling beam of light later and the Nightmare was rolling on the ground howling in pain.

It was a lot more sturdy than she had expected. She fired a second shot.

—

In another part of the forest three Champions carried the small form of a fourteen year old boy. They were sure to be as delicate as possible with the boy as they exited the forest. The boy, Lincon, had screamed as forms of what looked to be his own parents had appeared around him and hugged him lovingly.

The Champions had been confused and tried to help, but the boy had screamed, a purple light wafting off him suddenly and viciously. Then, in just a few seconds the boys entire body including his clothing had turned to stone.

He had rejected his Dream, and his Dreamscape had tried to change itself in accordance, but failed.

—

Ravik stepped up to the tree in the center of The Forest of Living Dreams. Purple light pulsed up its roots, through the trunk and ended on the leaves of the tree, each one sending off their own ripples of light.

The two Zero’s as well as the four Mid Numbers stood around him, tools ready. The Bronze Isles had known about The Forest of Living Dreams for decades, but destroying the tree or stealing it would be an act of violence not only on the Dreamers of the country, but on the country as a whole.

However Ravik had come upon knowledge on a type of Nightmare that created similar effects with its abilities as The Forest of Living Dreams did. Tree type Nightmares did exist yes, but Ravik didn’t think that this forest was created by one such Nightmare.

Ravik took a deep breath in and pictured the words he was going to say, sounding them out carefully in his mind first.

“Start digging. Focus on a single spot and be sure not to damage the roots.”