Natasha had taken the alleyway loads of times before without ever having a problem, but it was different tonight. It was a point of habit that she took long walks in the dark to clear her head, but normally she had a friend with her to share the misery. Tonight, she was alone. She’d walked this route so many times that she hadn’t a care for safety, and lost herself in daydreams as she listened to her boots clop along the pavement.
The wind was brisk. She tugged her coat tighter and then cupped her hands to blow on them for warmth. It was then she saw something out of the corner of her eye, a thin tendril slightly bigger than a hair’s strand reflecting the light off the streetlamp like a spider’s web. Didn’t spiders die in the winter? The tendril was barely visible, but it reached around the corner of the next building, and on a whim, Natasha wondered where it went. She didn’t have anything better to do than investigate, so she followed the thin tendril of light around the bend.
She didn’t know it then, but that was her mistake.
Around the corner, the tendril stretched from one building to the next, forming a knot with itself that hung over the alleyway. It glistened there under moonlight and streetlight, a translucent quality making it a marvel. At its center was an orb of light.
Natasha came closer. Thinking that this just begged to be untangled, she reached out her hand to the knot, whose threads were now about as thick as her fingers. That’s when it appeared.
It was colossal, a good nine feet to Natasha’s petite five foot frame, and it roared.
She squealed and scrambled backward, tripping over herself to get out of its range, but it caught her. Its clutches molded around her arm, painfully squeezing, and she screamed.
That’s when the other one appeared. It was different than the first, shorter and human-shaped, and the first thing it did was slash at the first, freeing Natasha from the first’s grasp.
Natasha clumsily regained her footing and spun around to see a woman no older than her but with a majestic quality to the way she stood squaring off at the monster. The woman had absurdly long blonde hair and carried a sword. An actual sword, like she’d walked off some battlefield. It was out of place in this alleyway after dark, but welcome to Natasha if the woman intended to help.
“What is that thing?” asked Natasha.
“A loose dream,” said the woman, who hadn’t turned around. She had a calm voice. Her stance was that of a warrior. “One I’ve been summoned to defeat. I am Akki, Slayer of Nightmares, and I thank you for alerting this to my attention.”
“Uh, yeah no proble—”
The thing launched an attack. It lurched at both of them, its body morphing into something out of a nightmare. That, or some horror-themed video game. It had claws and fangs and glowing red eyes, the whole deal, and it was fast.
Quick, but Akki was quicker. She moved toward the thing instead of away, and managed to parry its blow. The impact against her sword made an unworldly bellow, and the source of the sound seemed to be the sword itself, not the thing she was fighting. And she could fight.
She ducked and weaved and parried and stabbed, and the thing could gain no ground. It roared in ire and diverted its attention to Natasha, probably in the hopes she was an easier target. And the dreaded thing was that she was. Natasha had no martial training, and aside from lone walks, very little in her workout regimen. She was easy to catch, especially compared to Akki, who moved like lightning. But it was a good thing Akki moved like lightning, because it saved Natasha’s ass.
The thing growled and lurched, and again Akki got in the way. With a swish of her sword, she sliced off the thing’s limb. The thing retreated back toward the glowing orb of light in the… the… tetherknots was the word that came to Natasha’s mind even though she’d never heard that phrase before in her life. The knots of translucent strings and strands was what it referred to, not the orb of light, and Natasha gained awareness of this immediately and randomly, as if the proper terminology was waiting just for the right moment to announce itself in her mind. But why? Maybe because she’d touched it.
That thought had come pretty randomly too.
The thing’s arm, the one that Akki dismembered, lie splattered and red on the pavement. Akki chased the thing as it backed off, thrusting her sword with precise movements, stab step, stab step stab, until the glow of the orb was blocked entirely by the thing’s bulky body.
“Are you unharmed?” asked Akki.
“Y-yes.”
“Then I shall deal with this elsewhere.” Akki switched her stance, pivoting her sword, and with one final thrust she forced the thing into the orb of light within the tetherknots. The tethers themselves moved aside for the maneuver, and Natasha thought to herself—again, without intending to—that the tethers must’ve moved because of something Akki did, as if they obeyed her. But that couldn’t be right. But it felt right. But who could control the dreamweaves? Wait, dreamweaves? What the hell was a dreamweave?
Somehow, looking at the tetherknots, the definition seemed self-explanatory. A synonym. Or no, a subset.
Natasha wondered where she’d learned all this, because she certainly wasn’t awake when it happened. And even that came as random but correct knowledge. She’d learned in her dreams. The issue was that she never remembered them.
Was her dream one of the ones in that weave? Oh no, but she was awake. That’s not how it worked.
Anyway, the important thing was getting rid of the monster. The loose dream, as Akki had called it. There was a broken bottle also lying on the ground in the alleyway, and Natasha crouched to pick it up. Any weapon was better than none, she was sure, but she also didn’t want to get in the way, so she held the bottle in both hands in front of her and stayed there, watching Akki work.
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Stab, swish, stab, swish, stab—Akki was a master, that much was clear in the fluidity of her movement, the grace with which she held and directed the blade. The monster had bulk, but Akki had skill, skill that seemed to have been formed by eons of practice despite her physical appearance looking no more than twenty-five years of age.
The monster roared again and ducked and pounced, but Akki was always ready with a counterattack. Soon she re-corralled the thing at sword-point right up to the light, where half of its body disappeared as if being swallowed by some portal beyond the tethers.
Or one that the tethers formed, Natasha’s brain corrected. Again, with no preamble.
Natasha held the bottle. That was all she could do.
“Thank you for the assistance,” said Akki without turning around, though Natasha couldn’t think of anything she’d done but scream and stand awkwardly as Akki saved her.
The strange thing was that Natasha wanted to fight. That wasn’t a reaction to this circumstance that she ever could’ve predicted, and it left her wondering who she really was deep down. She’d never self-identified as a fighter in the slightest, so where was that impulse coming from now? People are different in their dreams.
But she was awake. She was awake!
“Am I awake?” asked Natasha.
“Yes,” said Akki between sword swings. “You are.”
“Then how—”
“This one escaped the Dreamscape.”
At the mention of the term Dreamscape, Natasha’s memories flooded back to her in flashes. Her meeting a similar nightmare in her dreams, her standing up to it instead of fleeing, her victory being congratulated by Akki, who at some point had arrived and introduced herself as Slayer of Nightmares.
“You’d make a good slayer,” Akki had said in that dream.
Then, another flash: a nightmare overpowering Natasha, her screaming as it tore into her own dreamscape, the hot pain of spiritual flesh being marred. That must’ve been when it escaped. It must’ve clawed its way out of my dreamscape somehow. But how?
“Dreams are malleable,” Akki had said back then. That explained how the nightmare now had little in the way of solid form, but it didn’t explain how to beat it.
Then again, it seemed Akki had that covered.
Her sword, something about her sword. Natasha’s memory failed to serve her this time, but she knew in her core that the sword could cut anything down to the astral. That’s how it could cut the dreams. Wait, she was remembering something, yes. A dragon. She remembered the sword was also a dragon. That’s why it bellowed as Akki fought. Battle cries. In the Dreamscape, it could take a draconic form. Natasha wondered if there were limits outside the Dreamscape that prevented the revelation of its true form, and the answer came to her automatically: yes and no. You can see it if you have the Sight.
Natasha didn’t have the Sight. Or maybe she did, because when she squinted at it just the right way, she could imagine a dragon flying the path of the blade, wings swiftly beating with every strike, parry, and blow.
“We shall meet again,” said Akki over her shoulder, and then she was gone through the light at the center of the dreamweave.
Natasha put down the bottle.
She didn’t know whether to walk home or jump into the light herself, but the urge to untangle the tetherknots became unbearable, and so she encroached on the light with a healthy dose of caution. At her touch, the weave of tethers parted, and a tug at the back of her neck distracted her from the task. It was a subtle yanking sensation, barely there. She thought nothing of it and concentrated on unravelling the tethers. Once again, the sensation came, and Natasha discovered that one of the tethers in this knot was hers. It attached to her at the base of her neck. The place all tethers do.
She stopped messing with it and walked home.
That night, she dreamt of Akki, and she remembered. She remembered the first fright, remembered the arrival of Akki, remembered helping her fight back. She also remembered the kindness Akki showed, the graceful mastery of her maneuvers, the tenderness with which she asked, “Are you unharmed?”
“I-I’m fine, thanks.”
But this time it was different. The Akki who showed up in Natasha’s dreams wasn’t the Akki she knew from previous encounters. This one was cold, hard, furious. This one attacked Natasha outright before the dream’s atmosphere had even sunk in, and this Akki was ruthless.
“Why!” Natasha screamed, dodged, and screamed again. “You were so nice before! What did I do?”
“Silence.” Akki launched another attack Natasha’s way, an upward slash of her sword, and Natasha barely got away in time.
The blade ripped open the front of her shirt but no further. Even so, it was enough to kick Natasha’s adrenaline into high gear. She started moving faster, and because she remembered previous encounters, she remembered how to fight. She countered with a kick that didn’t connect, and then bounced backward to regain her footing.
Akki was too fast. She rushed Natasha before Natasha could fully recover her balance, and the only thing that saved Natasha was the sudden block of Akki’s blade by another sword. An identical sword, black-bladed and roaring. At the hilt of that sword was another Akki’s hand, and with the flick of a wrist, the parried blade was sent reeling backward. Akki stepped between Natasha and the other Akki, and it was at that point Natasha noticed the differences between them.
The other Akki had a hunched way of standing, a scowl, and duller eyes. Its posture was all threat and barely any of the athletic finesse that the real Akki had in the way she stood. With the real Akki there, there was no confusing which was which, especially with the metallic gleam of the real Akki’s eyes.
“Apologies for tardiness,” said Akki—the real one. “Are you unharmed?”
“Why is it you?” asked Natasha.
“A shifter,” said Akki. “Bits and pieces of forgotten dreams. That’s all it can do, pretend.”
The other Akki snarled. A snarl didn’t fit on the real Akki’s face. She was too refined for such an ugly expression. Then the fake rushed forward with a flurry of sword swings, and Akki blocked them all, countering with quick sidesteps and lunges, using her whole body as if her blade was an extension of her arm. It was like dance in the way she moved, precise and fluid. Her sword struck true into the fake three times, one in the shoulder, one in the stomach, and one slash across the fake’s right arm.
The fake dropped its sword.
Akki swiftly pinned the fake underneath herself, Akki’s black blade tip at its throat. That was it. The fight was over. Yet still the thing struggled, writhing to find a position of advantage, but Akki gave no option to wriggle away.
“This ends here.” Akki delivered the finishing blow, a stab straight through the fake’s neck. Then with no preamble, she got up and sheathed her sword. Then she bowed at the fake’s body as if it had been a practice match.
Natasha didn’t understand that kind of gesture, given the circumstances. It wasn’t as if the fake could reply.
Akki turned to face Natasha and bowed again. “It’s over. I’ve slayed your nightmare. Pleasant dreams.”
“Wait.”
Akki waited.
“Thank you,” said Natasha. “But I don’t really understand what happened. How’d it get out of the dreamworld before?”
“Ah, the same way I enter other people’s dreams. Through the tetherknots.”
Natasha cupped a hand at the back of her own neck in thought, and by the time she was finished pondering what Akki meant, Akki was gone, and so was the dream.