Gemma held herself, trembling underneath her blankets. This nightmare wouldn't shake. She'd pinched herself, told herself it was a dream, but nothing worked. Every time she nearly convinced herself it would all disappear soon, there was another scream. A roar from a dragon, miles in the distance. She didn't know how much time had passed. A minute? An hour? Every second drilled by, but there was no proof of any time passing. She normally had such good judgment for time, but this nightmare….

"G-Gemma?" came the shaky voice of her mother. "Are you alright?" Gemma relaxed just a bit, and finally opened her blankets enough to see that her door opened a crack. The darkness from before relented, just a little, to show a perpetual twilight. The light from the street lights was gone completely, leaving only a hint of blue highlights for Gemma to discern what was happening.

"Mama?" When Gemma spoke, her mother opened the door completely and stepped inside. In the pale light, she could see the dark, curly hair that resembled her own, out of a headscarf, wild. Perhaps Gemma wasn't the only one that took to cowering in her covers when the screaming started.

"Are you alright?" Her mother crossed the threshold and collapsed onto Gemma's bed. Her warm arms caught her daughter and squeezed tightly, as if she would disappear. Gemma struggled against her, popping her head out to try to hold her as well.

"What was that? What's going on?"

"I don't know. Let's just stay here until morning, until we know it's safe, okay?" Gemma nodded against her mother's shoulder. She couldn't make out the shouting, what people said. When she did, it didn't make any sense--something about shape-shifting or transformations. So instead, she welcomed her mother under their blankets, and together they waited for sunrise.

Gemma managed to get a bit of sleep, but she couldn't tell how much. The light remained the same when she opened her eyes. Her mother's soft and rhythmic breathing almost pulled her back under the blankets to wait out the rest of the night, but the near silence made her pause. No more screams, no more roars.

She slipped out of bed silently and crept to the window, holding onto the sill as she peered onto the streets of Wildfort.

Perhaps she was still dreaming. How could she justify what she saw, if not? A thick sheet of clouds covered the sky, illuminated as if hiding a full moon and a partial sunrise. The homes and stores she lived along her entire life looked the same, but squished together more: the wood stressed, the stones cracked. There were more buildings here than before, new storefronts, additional storeys added to the different structures, uneven and off kilter. Trees and vines broke through the fences and walls as if reclaiming the wooden support beams; iridescent flowers bloomed on overgrown shrubs, and the people…were gone.

Now that Gemma stuck her head out of her window, she could hear whispers, subtle conversations. Crying, even. Annoyed grumbling from an incredibly hairy man in a fur cloak just below.

"Don't know where all these people came from all of a sudden," he mumbled to his cloaked companion. "Never heard of this place--The Silver Chain? What, is that some sort of popup shop?" She didn't mean to, but she scoffed. The hairy man looked up to see her leaning out into the cold, and she recoiled back into her room, stumbling, gasping. He wasn't just hairy, he was completely covered in hair all over. He wasn't even wearing a cloak, that was just him--and his face, twisted and wrinkled like a primate's.

"Wh-what was that--!" She gasped to hersel and held her throat in horror. Her mother grumbled on her bed, finally rising from the noise.

"What? Gemma?" she asked, groggily at first. But then she stared at Gemma, wide-eyed, back straight.

"What?" Why was her mother looking at her like that?

"You're--I thought it was the light before, but y-you're blue…and your eyes…." Blue? Gemma glanced at her hands. Yes, her skin looked a little blue, but it was still dark out. But when she did expose her skin to the little light there was, her mother was right: she looked as if someone left her out in the cold without a fire for days.

"I'm not that cold," she insisted weakly without any other excuse. But her eyes?

"Y-your teeth--!"

"My teeth?" Okay, this was too much. Gemma covered her mouth and dashed out of her room, spun around the corner into the washroom she shared with her mother. In a moment, she lit the candle by the mirror and held it up to her face. Her eyes, normally a brilliant green, now had no irises or pupils at all, and instead were a bloody, dark red. Her teeth, while not perfect or straight before, now protruded with a sharpness she didn't previously have.

"This is a dream," she said to herself breathlessly. That was the only explanation. Gemma sighed to herself, almost relieved. She'd had long nightmares in the past. She recognized, now, the demonic features she'd seen in paintings in the library. Partial humans with their bloodline tainted from demonic blood of some sort. Or was it a deal? Maybe a sin. She couldn't remember right now. But now that she recognized the elements, where she saw them before, what could have possibly inspired this nightmare, it brought a strange comfort to her.

"Gemma?" her mother called. Gemma set the candle down on the counter and opened the door to the washroom to see her mother, sighing.

"I'll wake up soon," she said, as if to soothe her. But her mom continued to stare at her as if she--well, she had a right to stare. Her mother shook her head gently, as if afraid. "It's okay, Mama. I'm not actually like this. It's a dream."

"M-my girl…my baby girl…."

"Mom, it's okay," she started again. She waved her hands, as if to calm her. "I'm not actually one of those…whatever. Those devil-things." She gasped in recognition.

"Y-you do look like those…devil children. The ones in the painting in the library." Now, her mother approached, and gently touched her cheek. The horror slowly started to fade from her eyes. "The one that described the nine hells." Beside pictures of terrifying imps and berbalangs and beholders. Gemma shivered, but shook her head.

"Just a dream," she said.

"Why won't I wake up?" The distress from before worked its way back onto her mother's face. The woman took her hand back suddenly, as if Gemma would bite it, and crossed her arms tightly over her chest.

"This is my dream." She turned back to the mirror to get a good look at herself. "I can prove it. In dreams, you can change how things are, right? Just by focusing on them?" And to prove a point, she looked herself hard in the eye, stared into those disgusting red things, and willed them to be like they were. And just like that, the redness shrunk in on itself, darkened to a pupil, and her regular, green irises burst around like they should have.

"See?" When she said this, her mother smiled.

"This is a weird dream…. Let me try." And although it wasn't her dream, her mother, too, looked in the mirror. From her intense gaze, her skin prickled, pore by pore, into a light blue, like how Gemma's was currently. "Oh!" Now she smiled while her daughter shrugged. "That's neat."

"I mean--" Gemma shrugged. "I mean, it's my dream. I can change you, too." But when she stared at her mother's skin and tried to return it to that pinkish brown from before, it didn't work. She did notice, however, that her own eyes shifted back to that hellish red. Only now they wouldn't return to green, no matter how hard she stared. And worse still, her mother played with more ways to change the way she, herself, looked; her hair was straight now, she was taller than her daughter by a few inches.

The panic from before started to seep back in, her heart skipping a beat. Gemma stammered, "I--I should be able to--" But her mother kept changing herself, changing her hair to red, shrinking herself to be shorter. No matter what Gemma focused on to try and change, or stop changing, nothing worked like it did in her old dreams. Shaking, she shouted, "Stop it!" Her dream mother paused, brows raised in the type of surprise that meant she'd be in trouble later.

"Dream or not, you are not to speak to me that way," she said sternly. "But I see it's upsetting you, so I'll stop. I'll turn it off."

"Turn it off…." As Gemma repeated these words, her mother shrank to her usual height, and her skin began to lighten--but it didn't stop until it reached an impossible, stark white. Her hair retracted into her skull until nothing but her white skin remained, her eyes blanched until they, too, didn't have any irises or pupils. Even though there was no color to her skin, Gemma could tell her mother would have looked sickly green if she could.

"You--you look like you're made of porcelain," said Gemma in a whisper. "Just wearing your smock…." Like a statue in a store selling clothes.

"No…. No, I don't like that. I'm sorry, but I have to--I have to put it back on." Her mother shook her head, releasing the dark curls from her scalp, returning her skin tone to the dark peach from before. When her eyes returned to the same green Gemma longed to have, the two stared at one another, disturbed. After a moment passed, Gemma stared at the floor, willing herself, repeating it over and over again in her head, to wake up.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"What if…," started her mother, her voice distant, "what this isn't a dream? What if I don't wake up?" Hearing her mother speak like that made Gemma flush with frustration.

"I need to get out--I need air," she said, reaching forward to shove past. She didn't even put on her shoes, just darted down the stairs, out the front door of the shop.

"Oi!" She nearly hit the cloaked figure from before with the door. When she looked up to apologize, her words stuck in her throat. Protruding from his bottom lip were yellowed tusks. Tusks.

"Eh, it's that tiefling trash from earlier," said the primate. Gemma stumbled backward, into the doorway, as she stared at the two creatures in front of her. "Hey, how long's your shop here? Just the summer?"

"W-what?"

"Maybe Common's not her first language," said the man with the tusks. "You speak any Orcish? That's the only other one I know." The primate looked to his friend, and from his furrowed brows, Gemma could see he was annoyed.

"And if she didn't speak Common, what makes you think she'd understand you asking if she speaks Orcish in Common?"

"This isn't real," Gemma whispered to herself. She raised a hand to her forehead, feeling for a fever, and found that she very well might have had one. Perhaps she was ill, and these were hallucinations. "This isn't real--wake up!"

"Ah, another one of those," said the green-skinned man.

"D'you think the town got cursed?" Cursed?

"Why aren't we affected, then?"

"I don't know. Just a guess."

"I don't do magic, I don't know how all that works." Magic!

"Stop it!" Gemma cried again, this time using both her hands to press at her face.

"Hey, little tiefling," started the primate in a gentle tone.

She didn't look up from her palms, just started to slide down the door frame to sit on the dirt. "I'm not--I'm not one of those things!" She hated to be this rude, but she couldn't stop her eyes from burning, or her heart from pounding, or feeling like everything in general was very wrong.

"Woah, sorry--I guess--yeah, I guess you don't have any horns for some rea--oh!" She didn't have to ask why he was surprised. She could feel, at the tips of her fingertips, a chitinous material erupt from her skin, pulling her face upward, growing into two, curved horns that followed the contour of her head. They pulled and pulled, like an ingrown hair that just wouldn't stop. Gemma couldn't help it. Dream or not, she started to wail.

"Hey, shh!" The two started saying things that maybe would have been comforting if she took a moment to think of them, but nothing penetrated the pure bubble of dread in her throat.

"Your horns are pretty! I like them!"

"Uh, you look nothing like a tiefling?"

"Calm down!"

"Lady, this your ward?" This question shocked Gemma out of her sobs enough for her to look up, to see that the hairy and green men now looked at her mother, who stared at them from the base of the stairs.

"What?" she gasped again, looking between the two. Gemma's mother remained silent, still, as if frozen in ice. Ward. Never had she ever been mistaken for not being related to her mother before. Every stranger told her how she looked just like her, like a clone or a young version of her. After a full moment, though, Gemma watched the orc man's expression grow from worried to smug.

"Half-tiefling!" he called proudly, pointing to Gemma. "And half-changeling?" When Gemma looked back to her mother, she'd donned the blue skin from before, as if to make a statement.

"Get away from my daughter!" The scared wavering voice from before gave way for a proud, dangerous shout. For every step forward her mother took toward her, the men stepped away.

"Alright, sorry! She came out here!" Then, under his breath, the hairy man added, "Crazy freaks…." Gemma's mother knelt beside her and touched her shoulder, as if to tell her to move away. Gemma's strength failed her, though. Her heart weighed her down, her limbs refused to work.

The orc waved to them, hoping to stop them from moving. He didn't seem to be able to tell that Gemma was rooted to the spot, threatening to grow into the door frame with how heavy she was.

"Where'd you teleport here from, anyway? Is this some sort of Tiny Hut spell thing?"

"T-teleport?" Gemma stammered. "We've lived here all my life!" The orc considered her words with a look of grave concern.

"Your shop only appeared a few hours ago."

"Hours ago," she echoed. "But--but it's been dusk for…."

"Ah," interrupted the hairy man. "Don't know if you noticed, but the sky isn't working at the moment."

Gemma's mother gasped. "What does that mean?"

"I mean, a few hours ago, it was midday, then whatever that dark and scary cloud came and went, and the sun's been gone ever since. Thought it was some mad wizard doing experiments. Maybe it's more than that." While the two men looked at each other, Gemma looked to her mother.

"But it was night…," she whispered.

"Yeah, dunno what this is gunna do to the harvest," said the hairy man.

"Either of you know anything about magic?" continued the orc.

"Magic isn't…." But the words died in Gemma's throat, useless. An awkward silence fell between them all, full of unasked questions with no answers.

"Maybe…you ladies just go back to…that place," said the hairy man. "And we'll be on our way…."

Gemma and her mother took their advice. They locked up their store, locked the shutters to keep away any prying eyes, lit candles, and holed themselves up in Gemma's mother's room. They sat in chairs separated by an end table, staring at the clock. Each second ticked by as expected, right on time, but the sun never rose. Three hours into the afternoon, no midday heat. No wind. Nothing.

And while the two women had more questions than could fill the time, neither of them spoke. There were no answers. And as far as they could tell, from the two days they spent isolated in their home, there was no sunlight. No normalcy. More screams, more roars, more rushes of panic and silence in waves of chaos.

On the third day, at ten in the morning, the women stared at the clock together, eating their last scraps of bread and cheese.

"I don't think this is a dream," said Gemma finally, her throat hoarse from crying. She'd cried so much over the past few days. Crying from fear, from sorrow, from grief. Mourning the future she'd hoped for. But if everything she knew was gone…. "Do you think Papa's okay?" The man she wasn't really allowed to bring up in public. The person they hardly spoke of. Gemma's mother sniffled, nodding.

"I think he was better prepared for this than we were, really. If he's still alive." The flames of the candles burned brighter, higher, as if suddenly fueled by more oil.

"What?" cried Gemma, staring, now. "You said he was alive!" And what did his secret departure have to do with being prepared for the disappearance of the sun? Or the appearance of mythical creatures?

"I think he is. And the way he escaped, I mean…. I'm not supposed to know." And although they were completely alone, and her daughter shifted herself in anticipation for past-due answers, Gemma's mother whispered. Her softness made the candles retreat to a dull burn. "There are secret, ancient tunnels in the ground for fast escapes. It can take days or weeks to get to your destination, so wherever he ended up, he might have had to live without sunlight for a while." Gemma furrowed her brows.

"Tunnels?" Gemma's mother nodded to her question.

"I doubt the secrecy is important, now that things are the way they are. I don't know what's happened, or what's going to happen, but…but I do know that if you need to escape, there's someone you can go to. They can take you through the tunnels to safety."

Gemma scoffed. "Safety? What if everywhere is like this?"

"It can't be." She shook her head. "That's impossible. This is hardly possible." She gestured to the angry shouts of a fight breaking out outside their store.

"We should go," said Gemma. "We should get out of here. Try to find Papa. Figure out what's going on."

Her mother hesitated, but eventually nodded without looking up from the candle. "Maybe."

"What? Why wouldn't we?"

More hesitation. "We--we might not be able to…to afford passage."

"I'll go collect our treasury. We can count it, see what we have. Maybe they'll take jewelry, too." For the first time in days, Gemma's heart fluttered for something good. Hope. A reunion, maybe. She thought her mother would appreciate her optimism, but her smile looked sad, weighed down from her crow's feet.

"Maybe."

"What aren't you telling me?"

"I don't even know," she admitted. "Your father just said…. There are rumors that if people that aren't supposed to know go, you have to pay with a life."

"A life--as in…as in kill someone?"

"Not quite so autonomous." This made Gemma go quiet for a long moment.

"You're saying that if we both go, they'll kill one of us."

"These are rumors…but…."

"What if only one person goes? Do they just kill them?"

"I don't know."

"If Papa went alone…did they kill him?"

"I don't think so."

"Why don't you think so?"

"He, um…." Her mother took her time finding the words. "He worked with them." Like a zephyr popped mid-flight, the hope in Gemma's chest came crashing down.

"He what?" The silent answer was damning. "He was--he was a murderer?"

"I don't know--my sweet girl, I don't know." The sadness watered the older woman's eyes, her brows furrowed in anguish. "I found out too late. Alright? I don't know."

"What do you mean, you found out too late? How didn't you know?"

"He told me he was an acolyte, Gemma. I believed him. I didn't know until he had to leave."

"What was he?"

Gemma's mother took her time, dejected. A single tear ran down her cheek as she regarded the dull flame in front of the clock. "He was a Cultist, Gemma."

"Cultist as in--" Someone stabbing her in the stomach would have hurt less.

"The Cult of Mask."

Gemma scrambled to her feet, the knife in her gut twisting and turning. The room spun, the pressure between her ears too taut.

"They--they--they kill people, Mama!"

"I know."

"Publicly!"

"I know." Every outburst seemed to drag her mother closer to the wooden floor.

"They--they dodge the Enforcers, they hide from the law!"

"I know, baby girl. I know." Finally, a sob broke from the woman's lips. She covered her face in shame, crumpling forward into a ball. Gemma wanted to reach to her, to comfort her, but the inside of her cheeks began to sweat.

"I'm going to be sick…." But when she sprinted to the washroom, to the toilet, where she stared into the endless hole that emptied out to Wildfort's sewage, nothing came out. She couldn't throw up. She kept all this ugliness inside, churning her innards over and over again. No wonder why she looked like a devil….