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During the day, the town of Byr looks like a peaceful place. Cobblestone roads are adorned with lampposts that bathe the streets with warm light. Sweeping, willowy trees called Feather Myrtles grow across the town; opalescent leaves called feathrels, which resemble and feel like down feathers cover their smooth and delicate branches. In the daylight, Byr is reminiscent of its happier days, but even the sun cannot mask all shadows.
Some of Byr’s townspeople have a strangely solemn and empty appearance. They walk aimlessly with no sense of purpose. If spoken to, they speak, but with listless words, and their eyes stare, but they do not see.
In Byr, the coming of night is equal in gravity to the procession of a funeral. When the last dying rays of daylight give in to shadow, Byr morphs into an abysmal darkness. The lamppost lights flicker like dying flames and barely illuminate the patch of ground they stand above. The Feather Myrtles wither and blacken under the oppression of darkness, and veins of red light pulse under their brittle bark. As the shadows stretch across Byr, the unimaginable awakens...
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Jace’s footsteps sounded thunderous in the near-silence of the forest around him. Towering trees and their patulous branches loomed above him, creating a canopy of a starless sky. Though it felt like he was in an endless void, he had no other choice but to keep running.
He stumbled on a broken brick laying in his path and crashed into the leaf-ridden ground. Scrambling to his feet; he ducked into the nearby ruins of an old building, illuminated by the sudden appearance of the waning crescent moon. His heartbeat raced like the pounding of a drum and adrenaline pumped through his veins like blood. A high-pitched sound was starting to ring in his ears from sheer terror.
Snap… snap… snap... branches cracked under foot. The thing’s breathing was raspy, the sound like a death rattle.
But the thing was very much alive.
He dared to peek around the corner, and froze in horror. The thing was hunchbacked, and stooped low to the ground. Jagged claws scraped the earth and left divots in the dirt. A long tail dragged through the leaves like a slithering snake. With a start, he realized that he could see part of the moon’s light through it’s body, almost as if it was made of shadows. Thin, cicada-like wings wrapped around it’s body like a cloak of shifting darkness. Two petrifying green eyes pierced through the inky blackness of night.
As Jace tried to pull quietly back behind the wall, he shifted his weight onto a dry leaf and it crackled under him. A fresh wave of terror crashed over him and he froze in his tracks. He didn’t even dare to breathe. For an agonizing moment that seemed like an eternity, the world went still and the creature’s breathing paused. Then five long, jagged claws curled around the top of the wall above his head...and the monster’s death rattle breathing was hot on the back of his neck...
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Jace sat up abruptly, panting heavily. Eyes wide with terror; he looked around frantically, falling out of his bed in the process. He hurried to the window, threw open the curtains and surveyed the street, looking for any signs of the beast. “What was that thing?” He thought to himself. “Could it be? Did he just see the... NO! The Dream Eater.” An awful sense of trepidation settled over him, like fear’s cold breath on his skin.
The people of Byr believe that, when the Dream Eater enters your mind, it will first take your dreams, then deprive you of your will, and consume your life’s energy until you become just an empty shell of your former self.
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A few hours later, he was making his way to the town’s apothecary to see Drea Meeter. She was as old as Byr herself, and her knowledge was vast. Jace held a tiny hope that she could help him.
“Hey… Jace?” A voice called from behind him, “Wait up. Where are you going?
Jace slowed to a stop. “Uh… hi, Ferrin. I’m going to my house.”
“Right, that’s why you’re coming from your house. I’m your best friend, Jace. I know when something is wrong.” Ferrin pointed out dryly.
“Okay, fine. I’m going to Splinterdust Apothecary.”
“You never go there. Why are you going to Splinterdust of all places?” Jace heaved a heavy sigh. “I saw it.”
“It. Could you please define ‘it’?”
“The Dream Eater,” he whispered hoarsely.
Ferrin’s jaw dropped. “Oh, no. You too?”
Jace threw his hands up into the sky theatrically, and exclaimed through gritted teeth, “Yes! That’s what I’m SAYING!”
“Okay! Okay!” Ferrin raised the palms of his hands into the air, backing up a few steps. “Well then...you might need some backup along the way; you never know what you’ll run into.”
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As the two friends neared the apothecary, they could see the top of the ornate weathervane that was placed atop the white weathered brick cottage. It was a neat little shop, or at least Ferrin thought so. Its door was eccentric, made of willow wood, studded with pieces of hematite and rose quartz- precious stones meant to ward off sickness. Exotic flowers spilled out of handcrafted wooden boxes that perched on the windowsills.
The
door opened with a creak. “Hello, there boys!” an old voice said
warmly.
Jace
leapt backwards. “How did you know we were coming? Can you read
minds?”
Drea Meeter laughed and her long silvery hair caught the light. “There are such things as windows, you know."
“Oh. Yeah! I knew that...” he mumbled, looking away.
“Let’s just cut to the chase. Ms. Drea… he had the nightmare,” Ferrin interjected politely.
“Oh, dear.” Drea clucked, peering at Jace closely. “You boys had better come inside. I may be able to help.”
Drea pulled open her door and ushered Ferrin and Jace inside. Ferrin couldn’t help but notice the old woman’s peculiar mantle. The fabric was black, but there were veinlike patterns twisting across it’s surface.
“Ms. Drea,” Ferrin said quietly, “I can’t help but ask about your mantle. It’s quite strange, and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen one like that.”
“Oh, this old thing..?” She took a corner of the mantle between her fingers. “I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. Even before I moved to Byr...”
“Ms. Drea, where did you move from?”
“Somewhere very far away.” She replied absently. “But, enough about me. Let’s help your friend.”
Drea meandered over to one of her many cabinets, withdrawing from it a glass vial and various herbs. She set to work on mixing them into a smooth concoction, and returned to where the boys stood shortly after. “Take this when you get home. Let’s hope it works.”
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Ferrin wasn’t sure how long he had been running for. The abandoned mansion’s labyrinthian hallways seemed to stretch on forever. The pale blue paint on the walls was peeling, and the wood behind it was clearly in the advanced stages of rotting. Rusty nails littered the floor and stuck out of walls and ceilings. Worn carpets sped by under his feet, once laced with glorious floral patterns, perhaps, but now threadbare and indecipherable. In the corner of his eyes to his left, he glimpsed, a stairway with crumbling steps, the proud mahogany railing now falling apart.
Entering a large room adorned with frayed tapestries full of holes, Ferrin momentarily stopped and gaped at the colossal chandelier shattered on the cracked wood floors. The fixture spread across the room, rusty silver reaching in every direction. Fractured vines crawled up and down upon the ancient light fixture. Cobwebs strung between the arms of the chandelier, coating it like a ghostly cloak of dust. The chain that had once held the monstrous thing up lay snaking across the wooden floor, once gleaming links now dark with dust.
The mansion had a smell to it, like that of fermenting leaves and decay; it was also eerily cold. The piercing chills working their way up Ferrin’s spine like winter, as it spreads it’s icy tendrils across Byr.
Except, this wasn’t Byr...
He glanced around madly, but there was no place to go. No where else to run but backwards, back to the thing chasing him. He scrambled towards the chandelier as he cursed the huge light fixture in front of him, but momentarily froze when the echoes of raspy breathing filled his ears. Then without a moments hesitation, clambered as high as he could go onto the chandelier to look for another way out; squinting his eyes so hard, exasperated, trying to see through the darkness. “Come on, there has to be a door! A window! Something!...is that..a door...yes!!” He scrambled down quickly and ran towards the door, and threw it open.
Ferrin locked the huge double doors behind him, and continued to run. “Ugh, another hallway!” Feverishly looking left and right, desperate for an escape, he found another door and reached for the doorknob, only for it to fall off in his hands. “No! This can’t be happening.” Out of sheer panic, he threw his weight against the door and the old wood buckled under him. “Ugh, what is that smell..?” Ferrin choked, covering his nose. He looked around in an uncontrollable manner; debris littered the floor of the small room.
There was a tremendous crash from outside, and the sound of creaking wood. Ferrin knew the double doors wouldn’t last long. A series of bangs resounded through the mansion, then he heard the old wood splinter under the ruthless assault, then there was silence.
Ferrin had never been afraid of the dark. But in that moment, the darkness that gathered at the doorway became an insidious shadow.
Slowly, like flickering flames, two green eyes appeared in the absence of light.
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“Ferrin, Ferrin! Wake up!” Drea and Jace exclaimed as they shook his shoulders. “Uhh...Ferrin?” Jace asked, “Are you okay? Looks like you were having a nightmare?”
Clearing his throat nervously, “I, I was just in an old mansion!”
“Oh my...you fell asleep when I was in the middle of telling you boys the legend of Byr,” Drea’s rickety voice murmured, “and how some say, the Dream Eater was once a harmless creature. But despair and grief consumed it little by little, and it eventually succumbed to the darkness. The old apothecary, paused, gingerly shook her head, and blinked a couple of times. “Hmmm....however, no one really knows, I guess.”
“Well, that’s a terribly sad story!” Jace exclaimed.
“Wait, Ms. Drea... how come you’ve never seen it?” Ferrin inquired.
“I often wonder that myself. I’m as old as this town, but I can’t seem to remember the years past for some odd reason. Maybe it’s old age.” Drea chuckled. “Oh dear! It’s going to start getting dark soon. You boys best be on your way now; there should be enough of that potion for the both of you.”
“O-okay,” Ferrin said shakily. “Thank you for all of your help, Ms. Drea. We really appreciate it.”
“Of course, of course.” As she steered them out. “Come back whenever you wish. I don’t get a lot of visitors.”
The two friends stepped outside and took a deep breath of fresh air. The sun’s late afternoon light felt like a reassuring embrace, but Ferrin and Jace knew it wouldn’t last. A nearby Feather Myrtle tree’s branches were already tinged with black, foreshadowing the coming of night.
Ferrin stared at the branch for a moment, then without looking back, called solemnly, “Have a good evening, Ms. Drea.”
Drea watched the two boys run down the path. With the ghost of a mysterious smile, she turned to the blackening tree branch, and the sunlight made her green eyes gleam.
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