That night, the nightmares shook her cocoon with extreme force. Over and over, she dreamed through the same haunting scenario. A flood of bones swirled around the onyx bowl. Allory always found herself swimming in the middle of that flow, fighting for her life, struggling and floundering and drowning. Partial skeletons, broken bone fragments and grinning skulls swirled around her in a powerful whirlpool. Trapped, Allory found she had neither strength to pull herself out nor any chance to fly or swim free. When she went under it was as if she lacked for air, but the sensation was deeper and more terrifying, as if not only her body drowned, but the very sap of her Faerie soul.

Whenever she surfaced, the little Faeling screamed until she was hoarse, but no help came, not even the faintest flicker of light. Blackened jawbones raised a clatter of laughter around her, like a murder of crows celebrating the impending demise of a victim.

Seven shadows awaited her soul.

The pitiless beings gathered to observe her unending thrashing, the rising and falling of her head, the increasingly weak screams. Peripherally, she realised these could very well be the Ascended Septuani or those original vampiaric spirits Yaarah had assured her could not exist – yet, neither did her soul locket, as best she could tell. The spirits waited with the aeons-deep patience, with a foul, bestial ravenousness beyond anything in her experience.

A deep urge to give in to the relentless torture swelled within her own spirit. Cloying. Despairing. Devastating.

I am the boneyard girl. I surrender my melody – no!

Allory jerked awake, so gripped by fear, so crushed and devastated on every level, that she could no longer breathe. Her heart threatened to punch out through her throat. Was that the point? Surrender … did that have greater consequences than she could imagine?

“Easy, Allory Fae, mrrr-hrrrt,” Yaarah soothed. “Take a deep breath. We’re here for you.”

Once when she woke, it was Sabline wiping her brow with a cool, damp cloth.

Allory wanted to scream, but she could not. A terrible compression gripped her chest, unending. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets.

The darkness came for her once more, and with it, the nightmare stirred anew, the boneyard flooding around a tiny Faeling, disoriented and terrified, so far from home and cocoon … she tried to flee, but the age-darkened bones sucked her down once more.

Deeper into the nightmare.

Ever deeper …

* * * *

“It was an attack, nrrr-frrr?” Yaarah asked.

The Fae washed herself again beneath a trickle of water, a little apart from the others. Their hollow-eyed appearance this fine morn had been instructive. Humiliating. Even Ashueli managed to look jaded, unusually for the Elven beauty. Another night of keeping everyone awake, just like her childhood. Her throat felt as if she had been gargling a mouthful of Sabline’s talons for hours.

Allory soaped her body all over. Please get clean. Feel clean. Picking up a handful of rust-red grit, she rubbed her skin, hard. Again. Again. She could not get clean enough. Again!

This taint would not leave her flesh. It sucked at her soul …

Never.

Eventually, the Golden Purrmaine stretched out his paw and drew her out of the three-foot-tall waterfall. “Allory, it’s enough. You’ll rub your skin raw.”

“It isn’t. Nothing’s enough for this, Yaarah.” She beat at his paw with her tiny blue fists. “I can never be enough!”

The moment those words left her mouth, she wilted. There. That was the truth – or the lie – which her appointed hero had just been trying to talk her out of the previous evening. His lesson had released something in her, something important, she realised. Maybe that was the reason for this episode. She longed for nothing more than to break free, but her old debility had responded at once. Renewed in dance. Ravaged by unending nightmares, the better to ravage whatever courage she had been trying to infuse into her life’s sap.

Payback.

Shivering, far too dry of heart now to even shed a tear, Allory allowed herself to be comforted in the Felidragon’s warm paw. His hot, desiccated breath stirred her hair like a breeze straight out of the badlands. She knew he meant well, but she could have killed for a hint of coolness. For relief from this hollow ache, from her soul’s being quarried out into echoing hollowness.

“Mrrr?”

“Yaarah, you’re right,” she said at last. “Maybe it was an attack. More subtle than before. Maybe it … maybe they knew the moment I started to use the ariavanae?”

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Aye. That’s why they tried to snuff me out.

“You said, ‘they,’ srrr-prrrt?”

“The … the unh … the gnuuuh … sap’s sakes, this is ridiculous!” She thumped her breastbone. “Can’t get the words – suggids – freaking stop it!”

That was the weirdest sensation. If she did not know better, Allory would have said her heart had just swelled to twice its size, twisted up into an unbearable knot and then subsided again. Something definitely did not feel right in there. Given the intensity of these attacks, it would not surprise her if the terror could not literally stop her heart – in fact, the more surprising fact was that she kept surviving. She had always survived. No matter how many times they tortured the runt, she had always survived.

Odd.

He said, “In the night, frrr-trrr, you called them spirits. Were you referring to the vampiari?”

Eyes streaming with water not originating in the waterfall, Allory nodded.

He nodded slowly. “Our Pixie friends shared this ancient belief. To my mind, this means you must have dreamed of the Ascended Septuani – judging by your reaction, you believe they are still alive? Well, alive inasmuch as their kind – please, don’t try to speak. You’ll only hurt yourself, by all appearances. Just nod or shake the cute antennae. Aye, good. And how many were they?”

She held up seven fingers.

“I see. Seven, or a sevenfold spirit as some of the Chameleon Fae legends suggest? Excuse the scholarly-style fuss. You know me …”

He questioned her with deftness and skill, establishing the link first between these nightmares and those of her youth, the prescription of amsinthe nectar for her vicious migraines, and more latterly, the interactions she believed she had entered into with the ariayaenvul soul locket. For the first time, Allory found herself able to share the content of those dreams from as far back as she remembered. Hesitantly at first, she elaborated on the boneyard visions and read for him some of the pertinent poems, ending with the odd Fae out – the alleged harpist’s interjection.

His eyebrows twitched.

Aye. One almighty piece of wish fulfilment. Her momentary assurance evaporated as she realised what a charming display of feebleness she had just admitted to.

Maybe this magical musician came furnished with muscles like Harzune. Musician muscles. And aye, of course he hailed from a magical kingdom in faraway Spheris which was devoted to worship of all things Allory Fae. Every waking hour, the master musician composed his masterpieces for her alone. Right.

Sickening how pathetic she could be. How needy.

Suggids, that voice! Shut it!

Afterward, Yaarah said, “I could never have imagined what burdens you carry, Allory Fae. I am honoured, trrr-frrr, that you choose to share such private thoughts and memories with me.”

“You’re my friend.”

“Aye, and honoured to be,” he purred, giving her a paw-hug. More Fae than Dragon to be sure, but she appreciated the gesture more than she could articulate. She hoped her eyes said more than her disobedient throat. “As we learned last night, the notion of you making your own melody or dancing your own dance is, and I cannot stress this point strongly enough, I believe, a crucial tool in how you respond to this heavy, heavy fate. These nightmares are at some level a natural response. After breakthrough comes the psyche’s denial and negation, a reaction to the disruption of the status quo. The greater the stronghold of self which is broken, the stronger the backlash. However, this issue of the Ascended Septuani and their connection to the ariayaenvul is a matter requiring solemn consideration; undoubtedly a matter of deep, esoteric and secret Faerie lore. I must contemplate this at length, but meantime, be assured that I am here for you and I would do anything in my power to help.”

She smiled wanly at him. “Thank you, Yaarah. You are a true friend.”

“A friend who advises but one thing. Keep on dancing.”

“Dancing? Right.”

“The truest expressions of the soul, mrrr-prrrt, hold the greatest power of all.”

“Ha.” Daintily, she dance-stepped up to his shoulder and, on a whim, somersaulted onto his back. “Just before you came up with that gem, this tiny unbeliever had the temerity to think you’d be glibly expounding upon the extraordinary power of her sparkle.”

“Indeed!” He declaimed excitedly, “I give you the sparkle, the whole sparkle and nothing but the sparkle, to help you all sparkle!”

“Er …”

Not the least awkward joke, but he’s trying … my sweet Furball.

“Hereby we propose to unleash upon an unsuspecting world the untold power of sparkle, spreading wildfires of mesmeric sparkliness across the entire surface of Spheris!” he intoned. “Indeed, all shall be made new, fresh and sparkly! How’s that?”

She rubbed her quivering antennae. “Ominous …”

“Or this one? Behold the formidable, the indisputable, the undeniable, the irrefutable, the uncontainable azure sparkle, without a doubt the greatest secret in the Universe!”

“Eep! Er, Yaarah?”

“Hrrr-prrrt?”

“Just a teensy bit close to the bone.” She illustrated with her fingers.

“Sorry. Aaaa … sparkle-choo!” he pretended to sneeze. “Fur and fangs, I fear I must have swallowed a thesaurus.”

Laughter gurgled in her throat. “Is now when I tell you, my friend, that you are a walking thesaurus?”

“All the rage with the Dragonesses,” he agreed, brushing through the foliage clogging a narrow cleft toward the larger dell where they had left their companions. “I am also immodest enough to stroke my own tail on the subject. Consider yourself cheered up.”

“So I am,” she admitted, much to her surprise.

Perhaps not so much. Did not friendship live and breathe a magic all of its own?

As he strutted into their campsite, full of bleary-eyed Fae, Sabline took in the scholar Felidragon’s sparky attitude and developed a droll grin bracketed by her elongated fangs. A slight hitch in his stride betrayed Yaarah’s inward reaction to her interest, but to his credit, he did not miss a beat.

Gazing about him with fiery eye, he snarled, “What are we waiting for, warriors? The day grows no younger! Up and away!”

Everyone stared at him.

“GNARRRR-NOOOWW!”

Ooh. Fairly shook the dell with his draconic rage, there, and very nearly shook her off his back too.

Opposite, Sabline cooed, “Mrrr-frrr, I like.”

Allory had to giggle. There went the male ego. Ker-sparkle-poof!

Hulking onto her paws, the Sabrefang glanced at Harzune, who punched Varzune on the shoulder, who straightened up with a groan and an audible popping of his knee joints, pasted an enthusiastic expression onto his face and said to Yaarah:

“Ready when you are, Princess.”

Ash reached out and swatted him fondly over the earhole.

Time to brave the meeting place of the giants of the animal kingdom, as well as the real Giants.