Cat reached out with her senses. She could feel them. Every single one of them. And what’s more she could also sense Sirius and Kass. They were spread out more than she’d hoped. Each person in a different direction and already far apart. It was hard to stay still in the dreamworld. Space didn’t exactly work normally here though. Wolf was closest so she went for him first.

Wolf was running for his life. He wasn’t sure what was chasing him through this darkened, tangled forest, but he knew it meant him harm. And for whatever reason he found himself unable to transform.

He longed to run on all fours. It would grant him escape from whatever was out there. He knew it would, and yet, try as he might he couldn’t do it. He felt like he’d lost a part of himself.

Voices from the past ambushed his thoughts. Pack members telling him he wasn’t a real wolf. ‘Spend much more time with the witches and you’ll be just like like them,’ an elderly werewolf had told him.

Wolf ran. The thorns and branches of the bushes tore at his skin until he was covered in blood. Yet on he ran. The forest never ended. The undergrowth constantly threatened to trip him, snagging and grabbing at the hair on his legs. He growled back at nature but it stayed silent and unyielding.

Suddenly he stopped. What was he running from? His thoughts all caught up to him in one go. Wait a minute. This wasn’t real. There had been a house? When had he left the house? He thought back to the blue powder that Coal, Indi, and Zeph had snorted. Oh that was right. Now he knew. This was the dreamworld.

He spotted a muddy forest road just through the trees so he clambered the last few metres through tangling vines and pointy branches, and out onto the road where he stood free from attack by any nearby tree. He was no longer afraid of the thing chasing him. There was no thing, just his imagination. At least for now. He knew what lurked in the dreamworld but he also knew that if this was the doing of a dreamweaver, as Cat had suspected, then the other creatures of this world would not be so foolish to come quite so close. Not this side anyway. How close was he to one though, he was not sure. Regardless, fear was a dangerous feeling to have in this place.

He looked left down the road and then right. He could feel the mud beneath his bare feet, squishing between his toes. He did not venture consciously into the dreamworld often, if ever. But when he did he never failed to be amazed at how real it felt. The fact that he’d managed to pull himself up to this level of consciousness, when it wasn’t his magic that had pulled him in, was somewhat remarkable but then it wasn’t the normal way one got pulled into a dream. Control was his then he supposed, for the time being at least.

He wondered which way to go, if he should be going anywhere at all. Cat would come for them, he was sure of that. He didn’t think he could pull himself awake or if he could, he wasn’t sure how to do it. Would it help to try and find the others? Could he even do that? Maybe the best thing would be to try and find Cat herself.

He looked both ways down the road again. What was probably best, he finally decided, was to stay put. And so he sat himself down in the road, bare-butt naked, and waited.

Above him the sky darkened. Grey clouds moved fast. He looked up, but he stayed put.

In front of him the trees shook. The wind blew harder. Still he did not move. Even when the rain came and large cold droplets hit his shoulders, back, and neck, he growled but he did not move.

A roar sounded from somewhere off down the road. Wolf had a sense that this was the thing that had been chasing him. He ignored the feeling as best he could. This was a dream. He must remember that. The more you believed them, the more they could hurt you. He stayed sitting, staring stubbornly in the direction of the sound, as it slowly came closer and closer. Then the rain stopped.

A large form, dark and fur-covered sidled into view. Eight times the size of a regular ape and of a similar shape, with tusks designed for tearing. It reminded Wolf of a monster in a movie he and Amanda had watched as teenagers. A silly horror. He remembered Amanda’s laughter as she’d playfully thrown a handful of popcorn at the screen, mocking the absurdity of the movie. He let the good memories bolster his resolve.

He sat, naked, and cross-legged, on a patch of short muddy grass, situated between the two tyre-track gullies, and he stared the beast down.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

It bellowed a loud a ferocious roar and slammed it’s front fists into the ground. The ground shook. Wolf could feel the air move in response to the beast’s war cry.

The beast ran toward him, covering the ground swiftly in several strides.

Wolf stayed his ground. This was his dream.

The beast approached, showing no sign of slowing down. A look of rage engulfed it’s face, if such a beast could be said to have an expression. It’s eyes were tiny and set far too close together. It’s dark, almost blue-tinged fur stuck out all over as if it had a structural integrity all of it’s own. As if someone had glued it’s fur on but the glue had turned everything solid.

Wolf did not budge. This was his dream, damn it. And nothing was going to hurt him here.

The beast skidded to a halt right before it struck Wolf. It bellowed at him. But Wolf was not afraid. He felt like he’d stared the beast down and won. Then it struck him. Hard.

The beast raised it’s head and swiped with its tusks.

One tusk caught Wolf in the leg and he went flying. He hit the steep bank on the other side of the track with a hard thud. Whelp, that had hurt. So much for this being his dream.

He scrambled to his feet fast and dodged out of the way as another tusk came flying towards him. He ran beneath the beast like his life depended on it. He tried to shift into wolf form again but nothing.

He growled at the air, then skidded sharply to the side, to avoid being crushed by the beast’s rear feet. He started off down the road, away from the beast, in the direction it had come from. Then he darted quickly off the road. He’d have better luck avoiding this thing in the thick undergrowth.

But as Wolf ran, dodging branches, and leaping dead logs, he heard the sound of the beast not far behind him. It was ripping trees out of the way, crushing logs and foliage, and it did not sound like it was being slowed down by any of it very much at all.

Wolf risked a glance back and then ran smack right into someone.

“Oof!” He fell back dazed, butt hitting soft moss. He blinked. Directly in his eye line stood a pair of dark boots. They were low-heeled and feminine shaped. A couple of buckles tightened them at the ankle. He raised his eyes up. All the way up until he found a familiar face staring down at him.

“Miss me?” Cat remarked.

As she asked it, the forest around them disappeared and the sound of the creature thrashing through the woods changed into nothing.

Cat looked down at Wolf. He was a mess. He was covered in mud and twigs. There were scratches all over him, and on his thigh was a deep gash that was leaking blood. By the looks of it, it was a good thing she’d found him when she did. She hoped the others weren’t in worse condition.

“Jackos, what happened to you?” she asked as she nodded at his wound. In her mind she imagined a bandage. That would work for the dreamworld but Cat knew enough to know that he probably also had that wound on his sleeping body now too. She hoped Coal was paying attention and wouldn’t let him bleed to death out there.

Wolf looked down at his leg with a measure of surprise as if he had only just noticed the injury. “Ah, shit.” he mumbled and looked around as if looking for something to wrap it with.

Cat handed him the bandage.

“Thanks. You think that got my other body too?”

“Almost certainly,” Cat replied. She wasn’t one to sugarcoat anything.

“Better get moving then huh. You find the others?”

Cat hesitated. She had two options here now. She could pull Wolf out and then go find the others or she could drag him along with her. She wasn’t sure how easy it was going to be to pull him out and it would eat into the precious time she had to find the others. She could see them now though. Amanda and Sirius were together. Well that was something at least. Maybe she didn’t need to worry about them so much. They were closer to Zephyr than she was. And Kass, she could only barely just sense Kass. They were all getting further away.

The dreamweaver was moving them. She was sure of that, herding them somewhere. It’s why Sirius and Kass had moved. The dreamworld allowed for teleportation in some sense but it was so dangerous that it was normally only used for items that needed to be smuggled somewhere, and only by very skilled dreamwalkers. A dreamweaver could shift a body though, pull it closer to feed off the energy it provided, for as long as the body could last without food and water. That time was extended by dramweaver though.

Sometimes witches paid dreamwalkers to give them good dreams. Sometimes people got addicted. Sometimes they didn’t want to leave. They’d buy a powder called sandman’s kiss. They’d take it, and their dreams would last longer.

Eventually a dreamweaver would find them and latch on. It gave them sustenance of a sort, kept their bodies alive longer than they normally could survive without food and water, but not forever. In return it fed off their dreams in symbiotic trade, while they slowly wasted away, unable to escape on their own. Not even a dreamwalker could necessarily always escape the clutches once close enough to a dreamweaver. The good ones weren’t so bothered by them but was Cat good enough? She’d never been close enough to find out. She was no first rate dreamwalker that was for sure.

“Don’t sell Coal you soul for a heal, but fuck you need to do something to stop that blood flow,” she told Wolf.

“I don’t think he has any healing on him or he would have used it on himself no?” Wolf replied.

“Well...”

“Just find Amanda,” Wolf told her.

Cat gave a nod. Then she focused on sending Wolf back.