The forest floor swelled like a pimple being squeezed. With a deep squelching, a grub the size of a city bus broke through the crust of snow, fallen leaves, and tangled, broken wood. Its grey-white skin gleamed wetly in the moonlight as it rose up above them. Like a snake, it opened its mouth, a tongue the size of a boa constrictor snapping out, tasting the air, pulling the eyeless monstrosity around to face—

"Dani!" Jake yelled, snapping her out of her horrified freeze state.

"Mantle up!" she screamed back, and threw out her own Tar Pit card as a barrier between herself and the…thing.

The thick, oily scent of burning tar joined the crisp bite of snow in the air, and a roughly circular pit appeared on the forest floor. It bubbled slowly, its surface gleaming with dark iridescence in the moonlight. Mounds of skeletal remains formed a kind of raised bank around it. The hideous creature flinched back as its tongue flicked the surface of the pool, popping one of the slowly rising bubbles and causing a tiny spray of tar to hit it in the… face…?

I don't even know what to call it, she thought. But the moment she did that, the creature's stats appeared in the air in front of her.

#

Overwhelming Dread

Shadow / Psychic [Dream, Shadowling]

Overland Monster

Health: 100

Attack: 5

Defense: 9

Magical Attack: 8[Psychic*]

Magical Defense: 7

Special: Dream Eater: Every hit from this creature to a deckbearer, mortal, or sentient card that does at least 5 actual damage will steal a fear from the user. They will lose the fear, but the creature gains 1 to all its non-health stats from each hit. If the creature is not destroyed within a week of stealing a fear, a deckbearer will lose 1 level.

Special: Fear Feeder: If this creature has stolen a fear, and it strikes the same target, it may return the fear voluntarily—empowered. The target loses a round of action for every 3 damage taken as they are overwhelmed by their own magnified fears.

Special: Puke Burrower: Once every 5 minutes (but starting when combat does) puke out six Dread Burrower tokens.

Special: Dream Card: If this creature is slain, it will drop an uncommon card 55% of the time, and a rare one 40% of the time, and a legendary 5% of the time. If that card drops, 50% of the time it will be a [Dream] card.

“A greater nightmare monster, one that can multiply till it destroys a realm. In this case, we most definitely need to fear, fear itself.”—Machairi, son of Nyx.

Black tendrils began to cloud Dania's vision, creeping in from her periphery. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged.

"No… youuu willl not." Hush's voice cut through the encroaching darkness like a blade, clearing her vision just in time to let Dania see the Burrower convulse in a sickening ripple, and vomit six slender, smaller versions of itself onto the ground in front of the Tar Pit. Two of the creatures immediately slithered into the Tar Pit, causing the oily black surface to bubble and pop faster. Their thrashing cut through the crust atop the surface of the liquid tar, increasing the noxious petroleum scent and releasing a tendril of heat that made some of the iced-over tree branches start to drip.

"Concentrate on the big one," Dania shouted. "Just avoid the little ones, they don't seem to be too smart—"

Mistake. She'd taken her eyes off the big one, and its whipping tongue lashed out and caught her in the chest, knocking her backwards off her feet. It had been too long since her basic martial arts training, and she fell badly, jarring her back and newly healed arm. Her head whipped back and a piercing pain stabbed into the back of her skull while bright spots of light erupted in her vision.

"Fuck," Dania muttered, reaching back to feel the extent of the damage. Her fingers came away bloody, but her vision was solid, not doubled in her view, so she probably didn't have a concussion. She doubted herself for a split second when a shadowy figure stepped in front of her, but she realized it was only Hush, interposing himself between her and the Overwhelming Dread monster.

"Dani! Are you all right?" Jake slid to his knees beside her, snow and dirt spraying up into her face. She pushed herself up onto her elbows as she saw Machairi make one of his acrobatic leaps up to the top of the monster, his knives flashing.

"Yeah, kid," she said. "I'm fine…" But she trailed off as she looked at his face. Something was off. Jake was fine, he'd put on his mantle, so he looked older…but that wasn't it. It wasn't him that was different exactly…

It was her.

Her fear was gone.

She swallowed hard and pushed herself up to her feet, staring at Jake's face, willing the heart-clenching instinct to protect him to manifest. Waiting for the sudden urge to shove him behind her and stand in the way as Hush currently did for her.

Nothing.

"Fuck. It stole my fear," she whispered. "When it hit me…which really hurt. We've got to kill it, Jake. We can't let it take my fear and survive."

"On it," Jake said, reaching out to help her stand. With a flick of her wrist, Dania threw out her second-largest creature, The Giant Ground Sloth. Next to her, Jake shouted a warning and played a card Dania hadn't seen before.

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A small figure hooded in shadow leapt out of Jake's deck and flashed over to where the giant grub Dread monster emerged from the ground. While Machairi drove his glowing back knives over and over again into the Overwhelming Dread's slime-coated head and the Giant Ground Sloth let out a roar and swung its tree-trunk-like clawed arms at its face, the Shadow-Tainted Goblin raked his own blackly glowing claws into the thing's back.

It let out a rending scream that reverberated through the trees.

"Use your Deathhh attackssss!" Hush said, as he decapitated one of the remaining smaller Burrowers with a single swipe of his claws, he moved in that eerie stutter-stop motion—like something out of a horror movie—and intercepted another one before it could wrap its slithering tongue around the Ground Sloth's leg.

Dania gritted her teeth. She only had one power left, so she swiped her deck and threw out a single Scimitar Cat. If nothing else, it could attack and kill the smaller burrowers, as Hush had just finished doing with a third one.

Jake swiped his deck too, and then let out a triumphant "yesss!". Horror soaked through Dania as she looked up to see him dismissing his mantle as he stabbed one finger at one of his newly drawn cards.

"Jake! What the fuck are you—"

The card spiraled to the ground in a vortex of bone-white light. The moment it touched, a phantom rose up from the snow and leaves and disturbed forest loam. It looked vaguely human, roughly female, with shadowy wisps of hair and glowing, bone-white pits for eyes. It opened its mouth—

Pain impacted Dania, blurring her vision and piercing through her brain as a sound exploded from the phantom like a missile aimed directly at the Overwhelming Dread. It flinched and reared up, tongue lashing as if it would strike out at all of them simultaneously—

And then it paused, teetering like a half-chainsawed tree before crashing to the earth, smashing the Sloth beneath its bulk and splashing hot, bubbling tar up into the lower branches of the surrounding pines.

The one remaining smaller Burrower winked out, killed by Dania's Scimitar Cat just before the Cat itself winked into a swirl of tan light that spiraled back into Dania's aching chest.

For a moment, silence reigned.

"You have killed the Overwhelming Dread and its Dread Burrowers. You receive 200 experience points. You are now level seven."

"Holy shit." Though she whispered those first words, Dania's volume built with every subsequent one. "How was that… holy shit! Is that what this dungeon is going to be like, because fuck me, we are not prepared!"

"Thattt wasss an aurrrraa monsssterrr. The firrrssst levelsss of the dungeonnn willl not be sssso difffficult," Hush said.

"And we survived," Jake said. Dania rounded on him.

"Yeah, barely! What the fuck were you doing dismissing your mantle?"

"Hush said to use Death attacks. I have one—you saw it—and it's a good one, but I didn't have the power to play it unless I let the mantle go." Jake hunched up his shoulders, but he scowled at her. "It was strategy, Dani. That thing would have taken a million points of damage and kept puking out the little nasty ones. I wasn't going to let it hurt you again!"

Dania sucked in a deep breath and closed her eyes. With a thought, she dismissed all of her cards back to her deck and breathed in the scent of the snow and dirt.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, you're right. I'm sorry. It's just… I'm trying, Jake, I really am. But you gotta know how hard it is to see you do anything that puts you at risk."

"That's why we need this dungeon," Jake said. "The more levels I have, the harder it is to hurt me."

"I know." Dania opened her eyes and smiled at him, rolling her shoulders back and touching the tender back of her skull again briefly. As far as she could tell, the cut there was superficial—just a scrape, really. All of the vision effects had disappeared along with the monster, and she felt steady enough. "Let's go and do the first floor," she said. "Then we can decide if we want to keep going, or if we need to come back another time."

"Okay," Jake said. "But we should look at our levels first, decide if we want to do anything. And get whatever cards the monsters dropped."

"Right, good call. I'm level seven now, you?"

"Same."

"Are you changing anything?"

Jake pursed his lips and then shook his head. "No," he said. "I'm going to wait for one more level and decide what I want to do. What about you?"

"Good idea," she said. "I'll do the same."

Jake gave her a knowing look, but Dania just shrugged. She couldn't help that strategy wasn't her strong suit. She thought the kid might say something about it, but in the end he just shook his head and walked over to where Machairi stood next to a card lying on the ground. He bent and picked it up, and then read it out loud.

#

Tempting Dream

Rare Tier-1 Shadow/Psychic [Dream, Meta] Persistent

2 Shadow Power or Psychic Power

The deckbearer may no longer bring forth creatures, but every creature on the field gains a temptation token each round. If, at the start of any round an opposing creature has more temptation tokens than its power cost, it switches sides to the deckbearer. This card's length of play is half the base length of play of the deckbearer.

“Having a dream can be good, but do not lose sight of reality chasing after fiction.”

"What about the little ones?" Dania asked. "Did they drop cards, too?"

"Noooo," Hush responded. "They werrre parrrt of theeeirrr parrrent."

"Cool," Dania said. "I'm starting to feel like someone is playing this game against us. An unlucky encounter with an aura-generated overland monster who pukes out baby monsters and we get one lousy card out of the deal? Before we can even set foot in the dungeon? There better be some good shit in there."

"To be fair—"

"To be faaaairrr," Dania muttered, then shrugged at Jake and gave him a tiny grin.

"To be fair," he continued with a smile. "A rare card like this isn't exactly a lousy card, and I think it could have some interesting synergistic effects with my deck. And even if we hate it, a rare card like this can easily go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. But yeah, I'm still with you. Let's hope there's more good shit in there."

Dania looked from Jake, to Machairi with his feral psychotic grin, to Hush with his feral psychotic grin, and back to the kid she loved more than anything.

"Well," she said. "What the hell? I guess there's only one way to find out."

Dania turned to eye the yawning hollow beneath the deadfall. It wasn't easy to tell in the darkness, but a silvery mist emanated from the inky space.

It's almost like it's breathing, Dania thought. And if that's not the creepiest, least helpful thing I could be thinking right now, I don't know what is. I sound like Machairi.

"The dungeon breathes," Machairi said, reaching out a hand to touch the quickly dissipating mist. "Do you suppose it is eager to face our blades?"

"It's an inanimate object," Dania said, ignoring the tiny voice in the back of her mind that asked Is it, though? She looked over at Jake.

"Ready?" she asked. He nodded, eyes wide but determined. With a deep breath, she cycled her cards and stepped toward the opening.

"Shadows of the Mind is a level one to fifty group and individual dungeon. Within, you may find cards of type Psychic and Shadow, with a focus on the Dream sub-type. Once you enter, you may not exit again unless at a designated waking point. Do you wish to enter at this time?"

With every word, the mist puffed, as if the dungeon itself were speaking, trying to dispel Dania's earlier assertion. That fact, and the subsequent annoyance it caused, distracted her for just a fraction of a second too long.

Wait. If we go in, we can't get out until we get to a "waking point"? What if we don't get to one? Are we trapped in there—

"Yes," Jake said, and the mist intensified, swirling around them, pulling them down and in, until dizziness washed over Dania, and she fell…