"Take your seats."

Dania's eyes narrowed at the hostility on the dream teacher's tone. Do all of these dream assholes hate students? she wondered as she took one of the packets the teacher had pointed out and slid into the seat next to the one Jake had taken. The bell shrilled overhead, and Dania used the ensuing rustle of papers to surreptitiously pull her deck, then dismissed the notification that Jake had done the same.

Her Tar Pit came up this time, along with her two Dire Wolf Trackers, and her Best Beta.

Not the best pull for stealth, she thought, grimacing as she hunched in over her paper, hoping to shield the cards from the teacher's view. She glanced up to check, only to see him sitting at the desk, staring fixedly at her.

Dania wet her lips and picked up her pencil, just as movement near the floor caught her eye. She glanced down to see a long, clawed hand appear from the shadows beneath the teacher's desk. She blinked rapidly, but the apparition didn't go away. Instead, it opened its darkly glowing eyes and flashed a razor-mouthed grin at her.

Hush. Guess he was serious about hanging out under the furniture.

For some reason she didn't want to name, the sight of the overland monster calmed Dania's nerves. She refocused on the paper in front of her, reading the question twice before another realization struck.

I know this! This is first-year nursing school physiology! That's awesome… but it's gonna suck for Jake…

She glanced over to see Jake busily writing, his brow pinched in concentration, but his half-smile confident as he worked.

"Eyes on your own paper!" the teacher growled, drawing Dania's eye. He still stared at her, malevolence radiating from him. As she watched, he seemed to swell, as if he were inhaling, or bowing up against a threat.

"Sorry," Dania whispered, and bent her head back down to the page.

So, I obviously have to take this test to solve this floor's puzzle. Or else fight the teacher and potentially all these other kids. Fuck. Okay, let's see what I remember.

As it turned out, she remembered quite a lot. Question after question pulled at knowledge she'd acquired in school, or used on the daily back at the ER. She answered them in short paragraphs, taking care to communicate as clearly as possible in language a layperson would understand… just in case.

Is it my grade? Do I have to score a certain percentage to unlock the secret achievement? She flipped the packet to page two and bent over the next set of questions. Because if so, they really didn't make this much of a challenge. It's like this test is specifically designed for me, from the stuff I already know—

Oh.

Of course. It's a dream. It can only pull from knowledge in my head, because this whole thing is happening in my head—

"Congratulations. You have unlocked the secret achievement All In Your Mind! You receive 100XP. You have leveled up! You are level 12!"

The teacher didn't notice the "everywhere and nowhere" voice, but Jake did, because he turned his head to the side and grinned at her.

"Did you figure it out?" he mouthed. "I just got it."

Dania nodded. "It's all in our—"

"NO TALKING!"

Another glance at the teacher showed Dania that he'd gotten even bigger. He looked like a bodybuilder who just couldn't stay off the juice. She ducked her head away from his angry stare and bent back to the paper.

A few moments later, Dania flipped the last page of the packet over, revealing a blank back page. She'd finished the test. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Jake doing the same. She lifted her head to glance around to see if she was supposed to turn the test in, but the bone-grating bell shrilled through the air again.

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"Pencils down! Papers up here. No talking!" The teacher rose to his feet, looming over the desk. Dania glanced down at the shadow underneath, but saw no further sign of Hush. She glanced at Jake, cycled her hand, and got to her feet as the students all around her did the same. They joined the line of students moving to the front of the room, laying their papers down on the stack at the edge of the teacher's desk, and then moving to the classroom door.

When it was her turn, Dania laid her test packet down, only to have the teacher grab her wrist. Her eyes snapped up to his face. Hatred glimmered in his eyes, and his lips stretched in a wide, savage grin.

"You were talking. No talking allowed," he said, his voice a deep growl. Dania swallowed hard and pulled, but he wouldn't let go of her wrist. She glanced back at Jake, her eyes flicking to his cards and back to him. He nodded and touched one. The shadow tendrils of his mantle began to flow over his form, and Dania turned back to the teacher.

"I'm sorry," she said, bracing her feet. His grin grew wider for a second and he opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Dania twisted her wrist and elbow, breaking his grip the way she'd been taught in her jiu jitsu classes. She backed up, running into a couple of students who cursed and shoved her back toward the desk. But it didn't matter; she was free, and it was time to go.

She touched her Scimitar Cat card, and the snarling feline spawned in front of her, causing more screams and shouts of protest. Her mantle still hadn't come up, so she'd work the confusion for all it was worth.

"Get to the door, Jake, run!" she shouted, looking around for him. He was already moving, throwing out a Shadowling to add to the mayhem and confusion. She turned to follow him as her Scimitar Cat leapt onto the wooden teacher's desk, taking a swipe at the hulking figure as he surged to his feet.

"NO TALKING!" the teacher bellowed, bringing one huge ham fist down atop the Scimitar Cat's yowling head. The cat crumpled under the blow, collapsing heavily to the desk before dissolving into tawny light and flowing back into Dania's deck.

Dania flinched and lunged for the door, grabbing Jake's outstretched hand and letting him pull her through, out into the crowded hallway.

"The outer doors are unlocked," Jake said, pointing. Dania turned, and sure enough, she glimpsed daylight through the press of bodies between them and the end of the hallway.

"Youuu ssssolvvved the fllllooorrrr," Hush said, his voice startlingly close behind Dania's ear. "Nowww youuu mussst sssuccessssfullllyy lllleavvve."

"Right." Dania breathed the word as the various students in the hallway turned, individually and in small groups, to glare at them. Malevolence rose up from the crowd in an almost palpable wave, and the heavy footsteps behind her indicated that the Mr. "No Talking" wasn't done with them either.

"Jussst keeep movving," Hush said. "Drrrive forwarrrd. I willll keeeeep the teacherrrr offfff youuuu."

He reached out his taloned hand and dragged one claw lightly across Dania's cheekbone, sending an icy shiver rocketing through her body. She ignored the sensation and flipped her hand again, then donned her mantle as they started moving forward.

Someone shoulder-checked her hard enough that she half-spun sideways, a snarl rolling from her lips before she could stop it.

"Dani," Jake murmured next to her. "Just keep moving forward. I don't think the students can hurt us much."

"No," Dania growled. "But they can slow us down and lock us in. You're still mantled, right?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Good. If you can do the shadow thing on yourself, do it. My next play might sting a little bit."

She felt, more than saw, Jake glance over at her, but he touched one of the cards in front of himself and instantly faded into an insubstantial specter. Dania grinned and played her Polar Sanctuary card.

Frost spread from her feet, racing across the floor and up the locker-lined walls to arc overhead along the ceiling. True ice followed as the temperature in the hallway plunged to somewhere below zero. Dania exhaled a warm cloud of mist as the first fat snowflakes began to fall.

One of the kids in front of her slipped, going down hard on the ice. Dania glanced at him, noticing his blue-tinged lips and iced-over hair. Tentatively, she took a step forward. Then another.

No problem, she thought. Feels just like walking on a hallway should. The ice isn't bothering me at all.

"Moving, Jake," she said, remembering that he could hear her, even if she could no longer see the faded suggestion of him. The snow fell faster, flurries flying in all directions as the air in the hallway eddied with the increasingly frantic movements of the students. With every step Dania took the visibility dropped, until she squinted against the blizzard and fought to focus on the open door at the end of the corridor.

Another student lunged toward her, but she knocked him easily aside with her clawed hand. She threw a Dire Wolf Tracker out, willing it to clear the path in front of her. It lunged ahead, snapping jaws the size of her head at the slipping, shivering students. Interestingly, the ice didn't seem to bother it any more than it bothered Dania.

She walked faster, moving with more confidence toward the door. Occasionally another student lunged at her, but either her Dire Wolf—or more commonly, the ice—eliminated the threat. Within seconds, Dania reached the outer door. She depressed the metal bar and stepped outside.

"You have reached the waking point for this floor. Do you wish to wake, or continue on your journey into the Shadow of the Mind?"

"Do you want to go on?" Dania asked, half-hoping he'd say no. Jake looked up at her as his mantle faded, his face de-aging as his smile grew. He nodded.

"We'll continue," Dania said, a growl rumbling in her tone.

They fell.