They clambered back up the steps and sat in the living room to explain the situation to Mrs. Jennings. She seemed appropriately unsettled by the fact that whatever had been bothering her was coming from within her house instead of the woods out back. But she stroked Atticus and nodded through their explanation without interruption.
“We don’t really understand these dungeons yet,” Jeremy told her. “We’ve only seen one, and when it was cleared, the inside vanished, but the portal remained. The assumption is that it would re-build itself.”
Mrs. Jennings nodded. “So, it might be in my basement permanently.”
“Maybe,” Jeremy said. “You said your kids are far away. Would you be able to go stay with them, though?”
“They live in California.” Mrs. Jennings smiled sadly. “They would love it if I could make it out there, but with the way things are now…” She shook her head. “If I have to, there are some friends I can stay with.”
“Okay. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Jeremy assured her. He turned to Zanie. “Let’s get to it, then.”
“Oh no, wait.” Mrs. Jennings shifted to sit up, Atticus spilling out of her lap without complaint. “You should eat some breakfast first. I’ve got some eggs, and Alice from down the street brought around some groceries yesterday, so I have bread again and some peppers and tomatoes. How about some omelets and toast.”
Caleb, who’d been sulking a little, perhaps embarrassed or upset at himself for being too nervous to go into the dungeon, perked up at the promise of food. They gathered around the kitchen table again. Caleb was tasked with dicing up the pepper and tomatoes, which he accomplished by crossing his arms and furrowing his brow at the knife. It lifted itself into the air and began chopping, a little clumsily like someone learning to cook rather than an experienced chef. But it worked, nonetheless. Zanie made another pot of coffee while Mrs. Jennings whipped up the eggs. She made impeccable omelets, as it turned out.
“This is really good, thank you,” Jeremy told her as he buttered a piece of his toast. “You make a mean omelet.”
“Oh, it’s nothing.” Mrs. Jennings flapped her hand. “Just years of practice.”
“Getting a compliment from him is like getting a Michelin star,” Caleb informed Mrs. Jennings. She looked at him, and then her eyes dropped to the spoon, lazily turning itself in circles to stir the sugar into his coffee. Her eyes flicked back up to Caleb’s face, a little wider than before. She hadn’t said anything about the knife chopping the vegetables by itself, but she obviously was a little shocked by it. Caleb didn’t seem to notice, continuing his train of thought. “His mom is a chef.”
“Used to be a chef.”
“That’s why he hates cooking.”
Jeremy rolled his eyes.
They finished their food, and Caleb stood at the sink to do the dishes while Zanie and Jeremy waved goodbye and assured Mrs. Jennings they would be careful. The nice, light atmosphere over breakfast had broken whatever creepy impression Jeremy had gotten from the house. Knowing that it was a dungeon inside causing the issue also helped, but they still hadn’t actually met the creature they were dealing with yet.
He and Zanie both checked their M4s, made sure they were carrying their dragon scale knives and regular knives, did one last test to make sure the flashlight Mrs. Jennings gave them worked, and went over the healing spells quickly before Jeremy tucked them into the inside pocket of his jacket. Then, they stood in front of the dungeon entrance.
“It’s low-level,” Jeremy said. “I don’t know what that means, but we’ve been practicing, and we’ve got this. If anything comes at us too fast to handle, I’ll throw up a barrier, and we can get our bearings. Okay?”
“Okay.” Zanie nodded. She had a grin on her face. For her, this was like climbing to the top of the wildest roller coaster in the amusement park or something. Jeremy was glad she was having a good time. He rolled his shoulders and stepped into the entrance.
Just like last time, stepping through the entrance gave him a feeling of sustained static that never really went away when he reached the other side like it was waiting for him to touch a doorknob and shock himself. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the space beyond the entrance because it was far darker than the other dungeon. And he wasn’t sure what he expected based on a single experience, but it was not this.
He and Zanie stood in a field that stretched a few hundred feet in all directions and then stopped in the same way the corridors had in the first dungeon. Beyond those edges and stretching above them was nothing but blank space. Beneath their feet was a swath of tall grasses standing perfectly still since there was no breeze.
“Wow.” Zanie craned her neck to look around. “This is not how you described it.”
“This is pretty different.”
There were no torches here, just the blue glow from the swirling entrance casting its light across the ground. They pulled their flashlights out and shone them around. The beams splashed across the grass but, when pointed up, disappeared off into the nothingness.
“Do you see anything here?” Zanie took a few steps forward and spun in a circle, the grass rustling against her legs and underfoot.
Jeremy shook his head. He followed her, and they began to wade through the grass, lights flashing and tamped-down trails in the still stalks left behind them. It was also totally and completely quiet. Jeremy tried to remember if there had been sounds in the other dungeon besides their echoing voices - if the torches had crackled like normal fire - but he could not.
“What if it’s only created one creature, and it's already left to go out into the house?” Zanie proposed. “You said it was a low-level dungeon, right?”
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“Maybe.” Jeremy kept his eyes on the ground, trying as much as possible not to look around at the blank space surrounding them. It gave him the same creeping feeling of unease that it had in the other dungeon. It felt wrong to look out and know that the piece of land he stood on was the only thing here. It was not even space like they had above them on Earth, where stars filled the skies, and he knew there was an entire universe out there. Here’ he had no clue what would even happen if he fell off the edge.
So, he stayed a reasonable distance from the edge and kept sweeping through the meadow to look for something. And then he spotted a flash of red as he stepped on a clump of grass to knock it down and out of his path. He did a double-take and then realized that the red peeked out among several of the bases of grass stems.
Cautiously, he reached out with the barrel of his M4 and pushed aside some of the grass to get a better look. There at his feet was a nest of some kind. It was constructed from woven stems of grass and held two black eggs. They were true black, like the blank space above them, and Jeremy would not have been able to notice them if not for the dark red overlays.
“Over here,” he called to Zanie. She waded her way over and pointed her flashlight down. Not even its beam of light seemed to illuminate the eggs.
“How did you even see those?” She asked. “I’m staring right at them, and I can hardly see them.”
“The overlays.”
“Oh, right. How powerful are they?”
“Not powerful at all. They’re obviously eggs, so very young, and the dungeon itself is not powerful, so…”
They kept staring for a little while. Zanie eased her M4 toward them and nudged one. It toppled to the side, but nothing happened. Jeremy frowned around at their surroundings, wondering if there was a mama creature somewhere that they were missing. It seemed odd to find two abandoned eggs. Although, if it was the dungeon spawning creatures, then he supposed it was some type of mother to them. He closed his eyes and shook his head at the strangeness.
“What are we going to do?” Zanie asked. “We don’t even know what they are.”
“Presumably the same thing plaguing Mrs. Jennings, which means nothing good,” Jeremy said. “Have you ever heard about nightmares, as in the mythological creature?”
“Sure, there’s a bunch of different kinds.” Zanie shifted her weight to one hip and propped her hand on it. “Incubi and stuff, right?”
“They’re a version, kinda, I guess.” Jeremy was working off a very shallow knowledge from a late-night Wikipedia rabbit hole here, so he didn’t have the best knowledge. “Hey, does your phone work in here?”
Zanie slipped it out of her pocket and turned it on. The blue light made her wince, eyes narrowing and nose crinkling up. “No service.”
“Not surprising.” Jeremy looked back at the eggs. “From what I remember, there are also creatures that just sit on people’s chests while they sleep, and then the sleeping person has a nightmare.”
“Mrs. Jennings kept complaining about the tightness and dread in her chest,” Zanie remembered. “Is that what you think these are?”
“Maybe.”
Jeremy’s musing was cut off when one of the eggs suddenly shifted. They fell silent and tense. It wobbled a few more times.
“It’s hatching,” Zanie whispered excitedly.
Jeremy aimed his M4 at it. Then they stood there watching the egg wobble for what had to be at least ten minutes. Eventually, Jeremy relaxed his stance.
“This is taking forever,” Zanie complained. “I’m going to see if I can find some more.”
She scoured the entire place, inch by inch, over the next twenty minutes while Jeremy crouched beside the nest and kept an eye on it. They hadn’t brought any food, so if this went on for too long, they would probably go back for lunch and return later to see if it was still hatching. Although Jeremy did not want to miss any part of this.
Like magic, or in one hell of a coincidence, as soon as Zanie had combed over the entire meadow and returned to Jeremy’s side, a crack appeared in the side of the egg. Zanie clapped her hands together and crouched beside Jeremy.
“Here we go!” she exclaimed.
“It’s a monster,” Jeremy said. “Its older sibling is out there terrorizing and suffocating Mrs. Jennings every night. And you sound like some fluffy little duckling is about to waddle out.”
She smacked him on the shoulder. “It’s exciting. If you’re worried about it, smash the egg before it hatches.”
Jeremy wasn’t worried about it. He was also curious, and it was just funny to see Zanie so hyped up about the egg hatching. But he had to admit it was pretty cool since nobody else had probably ever seen one of the creatures hatch. At least not in their lifetime.
“Do you think myths like the nightmare come from creatures before magic was sealed away?” Zanie asked after a few more minutes, her arms wrapped around her folded legs, cheek resting on her knee. “Or do you think not all creatures got sealed away, and some of them were actually around for a while until they were all killed or died out?”
“Dunno.” Jeremy shrugged. Zanie shot him a baleful glare, unhappy at his terrible conversational skills. But he was more focused on the fact that the crack had just gotten a lot larger. “Look.”
Just as Zanie lifted her head to rest her chin on her knees and watch, the egg cracked apart completely. Little pieces of the shell shattered, while two halves fell apart to reveal a cat.
“Huh,” Zanie said.
The cat was in the process of retracting its claws, presumably because it had used them to claw its way out of the egg. Its fur was completely black, just like the outside of the egg had been, which meant that they could see the outline of its figure well, but there was no definition of its fur or limbs. It just looked like a silhouette. And unlike things that typically hatch out of eggs or are born in any way, it was completely dry without any eggy fluids on it.
“That’s not what I expected,” Zanie said.
“Jesus.” Jeremy wasn’t sure what to do now. He should have just stomped on the eggs before the creature crawled out, looking like a much darker and more magical version of Atticus. Its overlay looked the same as it had when it was in the egg. Then it noticed them and looked up.
All resemblance to Atticus vanished when it met Jeremy’s eyes. While its appearance did not change, the creature suddenly appeared much more sinister. Jeremy’s breath caught in his throat, and his lungs squeezed. A sharp pain lanced through his chest. His hands began to feel numb. No matter how hard he tried to breathe around the overwhelming tide of terror, he could not.
So, before the shock - or whatever it was physically doing to him - made his hands go numb completely, he lifted the M4 and shot it right in the head. Its body flew back in a black splat across the grass. Then he could breathe again, the air nearly painful as it whooshed back into his chest.
Beside him, Zanie heaved in huge lungful after lungful of air like she’d also been drowning in terror. Even though the cat only had one set of eyes, and from Jeremy’s perspective, they had been locked onto him, she had apparently had the same experience. And it made enough of an impression that she crawled forward, still rubbing her chest and gulping air desperately through her open mouth, to smash the butt of her M4 into the other egg.
It shattered into pieces, the embryo inside still and unmoving. Jeremy shot it, as well.
“If that’s anything like what Mrs. Jennings has been feeling at night, no wonder she’s so freaked.” Zanie gasped. Jeremy took a shaky breath and let it out slowly. Zanie coughed. “I mean, that felt like actually dying.”
“Well, the nightmare creatures did usually end up killing the people they targeted in the myths, a lot of the time,” Jeremy said. He rubbed his chest and looked around. “There should be a scroll or something if those were the only creatures in here.”
“What’s this?” Zanie prodded a piece of the eggshell out of the way so they could see better into the center of the nest, where a small crystal lay among the tight braids of grass. It was transparent, like glass, and about the same size as the tip of Jeremy’s pointer finger. He reached out and picked it up.
A tremor rippled through the ground beneath them.