The girl sat peacefully on a pillow. A flood of sunlight shone on the book propped against her knees, flipping pages every so often. Each crinkle of the paper sounded exceedingly real, a much needed escape from the unreal nature of my recent encounter.

As soon as I'd stirred, Keeper looked away from her book, placing a feather in the page before folding it shut. Something was covering her left eye, though I only caught a glimpse of it as she stood. At the opposite end of the tidy circular room, she slipped an envelope between two fingers and finally faced me.

A white patch covered her left eye, above and below it: the ends of a deep red gash. Her hood wasn't up either, presumably because the wool would agitate her wound.

"Was that from—"

Keeper waved the envelope for me to stop talking, and then flicked her fingers. The letter floated up into the air and swirled around before perfectly bumping into my chest. Keeper only stood with her arms crossed, tapping her foot.

Inside, the letter read: First, fate hath taken my eye, not you. Blame is a pitiful thing. Second, I dare not speak for a handful of nights, Eater is meticulous. Even the sound of my voice in your head fills me with fear. Third, we must awaken your Nature now, amongst other things. Please follow me.

I couldn't help but question whether the girl impatiently tapping her foot had actually written these words, but she only let her head fall into a judgmental tilt when my eyes glanced up from the note. It's probably best to follow along for now.

I tucked the writing into one of my pouches and Keeper raised an eyebrow. It felt odd to talk knowing she wouldn't answer. "Paper comes in handy at the strangest of times." And all my gear is missing, I'd like something to fill my belts.

She shrugged, supposedly in agreement, and moved to the center of the room. She grabbed hold of the handles to the massive pair of shears in the middle of the room. Then, she pulled them from the ground without even a hint of effort. The tip of the blades dragged along behind her on the way to the front door. I blinked for a moment in disbelief.

"Uhm, so, you mentioned my Nature. What is that?" I regretted the words immediately after they had left my mouth. I felt like a kid again, asking my mentor the wrong questions.

Keeper gave off an exasperated grunt. Her free hand gestured into the air and then came to her lips, where she slapped her palm over her mouth, then stared at me.

"Right. Yes or no questions?" I asked.

She kept eye contact for a moment before nodding dismissively. Then, she patted her hip twice as if calling a dog. Is that supposed to mean 'Follow me?'

The heavy front door lurched open and the painfully bright sky blinded me until my eyes forced themselves to adapt. A long path flowed from the steps and sunk deep into a forest of vibrant green leaves. I was sure there had to be trees behind the foliage but the bright blades hid any indication of a trunk. Even with this stunning scene, things remained slightly unnerving: no bird's morning song chirped out from the trees, only faint rustling in the wind.

Adding to that effect, I noticed Keeper's lack of a strong shadow, and once I'd looked down, mine was quite the same. There was only a faint darkening where we stood, similar to what you might expect at midday. But when I squinted to look up, the sky carried no sun. Instead, the light beamed in uniformly from a faintly blue sheen overhead.

Keeper tugged at the sleeve of my cloak, and that's when I realized I was still wearing it, even though I'd tossed the thing in Goldwater's room. I shuddered off a chill and followed down the path.

After a silent trek of several hours, the forest had lost its dense quality. The faintly green trunks of trees had revealed themselves, and the path that was once a tunnel had now opened into a space wide enough for a horse to gallop. Keeper stopped and motioned to a wall of green. I hadn't noticed it until she'd pointed the thing out, but behind her lay the crumbling remains of long since overgrown ruins.

They'd been built with plain-rock bricks, as opposed to Keeper's home which seemed to be constructed primarily from wood and a hardened liquid stone. I checked around the wall and found the rest of the ruins sprawling into a maze of rooms and corridors, all brought down to ankle height. Shrubbery and vines covered every surface, keeping the structure well-hidden.

"What are we—" I stopped myself with an embarrassed smile. "Is this where we do the awakening?" I asked.

Keeper gave a quirk of her lip and nodded proudly. She scanned around the area and then pointed with the tip of her shears, somehow able to hold the chunk of metal with her arm fully extended. At the other end of the ruins was a tiny dark circle that stood out amongst the greenery.

I strained my eyes to get a better look, but it continued to resemble a missing patch of reality. I glanced at Keeper and she made an over-expressive biting and swallowing motion, then pointed to the circle again.

"You want me to eat it?" I asked in bewilderment. "Chew, swallow, and ingest?"

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The girl nodded her head with such enthusiasm as to almost fall over.

Only slightly concerned, I made my way towards the circle. I had expected it to be fairly large, about the size of my head, given the distance. However, once I'd gotten there, it measured no larger than an apple. I turned back to spot Keeper watching me from a distance, at the other side of the ruins. I wasn't sure if that meant there was no chance of danger or if she knew the range this thing could kill her from.

The sphere lay in a bundle of fresh grass, only moving slightly. At first, I thought it was swaying like the trees. It most definitely was not. The thing swelled and shrunk at the same rhythm as my breathing. Is it alive?

I kneeled to get a better look, occasionally checking to see if Keeper was wildly waving her arms for me to stop, but she never did. Close up, it became apparent that the thing was more than just a circle of darkness. Inside its body were thousands of tiny specs. Stars in the night sky. The outline of it held a multicolored radiance, somewhat similar to the one surrounding The Dream Eater last night.

I grabbed the small blob, and its shape gently conformed to the fit of my hand. It was heavy for its size, like a chunk of precious metal, and warm to the touch. My rising unease forced me into action and for some reason, the image of that innkeeper from Goldwater's room resurfaced in my mind. I took a decisive bite from the thing and fully prepared to take another, when instead, I found it clinging to my mouth.

My words muffled through the gelatinous texture of the blob and soon I could feel it creeping across my face. I spun wildly to Keeper, trying to cry for help, but the sound barely reached my ears. The girl stood in the same spot, if anything she'd backed farther way, urgently making large chewing motions with her arms.

Can't you tell I'm trying? Chew already! If only this thing would stop wriggling so mu—I can't breathe. The slime spread out thin across my features, covering both my nostrils. I could feel the warm muck slowly making its way further up my nose. The urge to sneeze suddenly rattled my core.

I gripped at the thing and worked to pull it off, but it was stuck. A violent sneeze suddenly blew out from my nose, forcing the blob into a balloon for a brief moment, before it snapped back onto my skin with enough force to knock me off balance. I fell to the lush ground and rolled onto my stomach, desperately dragging my face along the grass to pry the slime away. Nothing worked. Am I going to die? Again? Like this?

A reflexive draw of my lungs brought the slime further in through my nose. The desire to breathe began to overpower my entire body, and I folded into a crumpled mess. My hands frantically clawing at the muck, my mouth biting nothing. I'm light-headed. I need to breathe air—need air for life. Need. Air. Air. Food. Hungry. I am so hungry for air. Let me eat the air. Breathe the air, I don't care anymore. Allow me to eat and feed and hunger and devour and MURDER. KILL. I WILL KILL THE VERY AIR YOU BREATHE, DO YOU HEAR ME? What? What am I saying? I need to breathe, I need to. Did Keeper want me to die like this? Suffocate? Please. I'm hungry. I'm scared. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm—

No… The realization came at once. I am not afraid. I am Fear. The words echoed in my delirious mind, painting my situation with a sort of clarity devoid of logic or reason. I had spoken the truth, and that was all that mattered.

A splitting pain cut along the length of my body, from the corner of my mouth down to my stomach. A burst of energy exploded within me, sending shockwaves in every direction. And then, I felt my body open up. Quite literally.

A new mouth was born from the pain. If I hadn't looked down to see the inside of my new, bloody, lower jaw, I'd have never believed it happened. Then, a deafening boom rang out. My stomach had clapped shut; the blob suffocating me a moment ago had been eaten alive.

I gasped a heavy breath, longer than any other I'd taken before. In that moment, it felt as if my lungs held an infinitely massive chamber inside me. I coughed and spit, my hands running against the line where my body split open, checking for an injury, but it didn't hurt in the slightest. My clothes weren't even torn. What godless wonder have I just witnessed?

My eyes darted to where Keeper should've been, but instead, I could only see the face of a cliff. When I craned my neck up, the cliff revealed itself to be a crater, one that I was sitting at the center of. Keeper stood above me, at its edge, waving cheerfully.

She promptly stabbed the sheer section of the crater with her scissors and used the handle as a ledge to step down. She slid the rest of the way. Her grin said more than any words she could have spoken. That went exactly as you planned, didn't it?

In one hand, she held up a branch with a bundle of wild berries, and then she bit at the air again. After waving away my concerned expression she tossed it up high. Without trying, a word stuck out in my brain right as I went to bite at the branch. Consume. My entire body morphed into an enormous, nearly human-shaped, blob of darkness. This time, the jaws from my stomach didn't awkwardly snap open and shut, instead, my entire upper body bloated into the general shape of a beast's maw and engulfed the branch.

My upper-section reformed into my body mid-air, and I tumbled to the ground, landing right on my tailbone. With a disgruntled groan, I rubbed my back and winced. "What in the gods have I become?"

Keeper shrugged innocently, tapping at the corner of her mouth. Then, her face lit up as if remembering something, and she twisted around to dig it out of a back pocket. I didn't recall seeing any back pockets on her outfit. Another letter emerged from nowhere, and she flicked it into the air.

The paper gracefully floated down, landing on the top of my head.

It read: Apologies, I expected fear to be a requirement for awakening. Effective immediately, you will train to defeat The First of The Nine Nightmares. A word of warning, it will kill you if you are not ready.

For a second time, I read the note. The frown grew on my face. Training?

"There seems to be some manner of misunderstanding," I said. "My intention was never to defeat these Nightmares." I stood to meet the girl's eye. "My intention is to find a way back to my own world. Effective immediately."