Sooo...

I have no excuses other than I kinda lost my muse for well, a while...

Honestly this little piece is just to get the brain juices running. Due note my previous two fanfics aren't dead they're just... Well I honestly having some trouble continuing them for a reason or two, so PLEASE FORGIVE ME!

That said, whether or not this turns into its own full fic is up in the air right now, what with finals coming up right now.

And with that unrelated note, lets get started now~!

Dream(1)

It was quite funny really, how it all started; there'd been no great epiphany, no dramatic moment when fates wheel finally turned upon its crooked axis. There was no great awakening for some chosen hero. There was just a sort of... feeling. Not quite comfort, more so the distinct lack of discomfort than anything else. For the briefest of blissful moments everything was at peace; no niggling moments of self doubt, no guilt in failing a family legacy. Just a soft, quite surety in the loneliness.

Then came a vision; it was the hazy, double-vision esque sight that greeted a waking dreamer, there in between the moments of sleep and wakefulness. There was a promise there too, though for the life of me I could not remember it; a silent solemn oath I only knew had to be fulfilled.

'Ahh, you've found yourself a Hunter...'

And at last, I woke to the smell of decay.

Woke with my back on a rickety old medical table, within the confines of what appeared to be a decrepit and long abandon (or perhaps just neglected) building. Peeling walls were lined with tall bookshelves, which themselves were in turn lined with moldering books and jars filled with things I was fairly sure were long past they're expiring date, and even some of the floorboards had loosed. Though the smell of the room hit me the hardest; rot and copper and formaldehyde, and just the faintest whiff of alcohol struggling for a foothold to keep the air sterile in spite of the odds.

This was where I woke, and for the longest time I just lay there.

But seriously, just what was causing all that racket down there?

There was an odd sort of comfort in just laying there. Relief washed over me and exhaustion evaporated from my bones, and at last I heaved a heavy sigh. Shitty as this place may be, it was still leagues better than that ratty old apartment; at least the atmosphere was more bearable. But here-wherever here even was- there was an alien sense of serenity, dare I say, even peace in the empty silence.

And then the scratching started. Somewhere below me, so was I on an upper floor then? That thought aside there was definitely something below me stirring up one hell of a racket, and as much as I just wanted to lie there on my bed, er, table, whatever was down there was getting louder. And closer.

Climbing hesitantly down from the table, I noticed further details from the room; place looked like a clinic, or at least it was supposed to be; it looked Atalasian, if only several centuries to late. The floorboards creaked under me and whatever thing was stumbling about here with me. Giving the place one good look over I noticed only two potential ways out. Two doors flanked either side of the room, both leading either further in or out of the building, it was hard to tell. I tried the one on the right-hand side first only to find it locked firmly shut, that left the one on the left then.

Strangely, as I made my way there something caught my eye; there, on top one of the chairs was a peculiar note.

'Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt'

Don't know why, but something about that hastily written scrawl just unnerved me. Pushing pass that I made to open the door, which was easier said than done, thing was heavy and it took most of my strength to open it, or maybe that said more about me if I couldn't get a stupid door to open right.

It opened up to a staircase, faintly illuminated by slivers of sunlight clawing its way in through a filthy window, at its foot I could faintly make out another room; a ground-floor maybe? I took the stairs slowly and deliberately, timing my footfalls with my noisy neighbors racket, trying my best to keep the weirdness of my surroundings from getting to me all the while some tiny part of me decided it would be a perfect time to remember all those horror movies my sisters forced me to watch. This did very little to help calm my nerves.

And then I heard it; the heavy rap-tap-tap of claws on wood. Hoarse, panting breaths from a heavy set chest. The wet, ripping of flesh, and the crunch of bone.

At the bottom was another room, much like the one I woke up in, if slightly larger, but it was hard to see much. A further ways ahead, a singular wall lantern illuminated the rest of the room, and the thing causing the noise.

I was reminded of the stuffed Beowolfs my parents kept in the family training room, though the thing in front of me was anything but; It's got the fur and facial structure of a Beowolf, but that was where most of the similarities ended, everything else was just so blatantly wrong. It lacked the characteristic bone plating Grimm had. Its limbs were grotesquely long, but just set human enough to hit the deepest pits of the Uncanny Valley. Worse still, its hind legs were splayed rather that be directly beneath, giving the not-beowolf a gait more akin to a lizard rather than what any mammal should ever posses. In its claws and between its teeth was a lump of flesh that may have been at some point a man.

I want to say I stood my ground, that I fought tooth n' nail against this monster like a proper Arc would, should. But I didn't.

I tried to run, to hide, I really did, but the not-beowolf was the size of a small horse, bigger than my parents dummies, and it was coming at me from the only way out, and it was coming fast.

I tried to look away from the thing, my head hurt something fierce the more I looked at it; At its gaping maw, at the bits of something sickeningly red caught between rows of too many teeth. I really did try not to see the tattered scraps of cloth that clung to its matted fur, to the belt stretched taut over its waist. All I could do was run with tears in my eyes.

I didn't get very far.

In reality it must have been over in a few moments, but it was still far to long for me. I felt those fearsome claws dig into me as it pounced shrieking a desperate sound that was far to human for something that sounded so animal. Felt as it tore into my back with a sickening symphony of flesh tearing and bone crunching. I tried crawling away, survival instincts demanding it of me even as the thing pressed its weight on my shattered ribs.

please.

I watched as the thing latched its yellowed teeth on my outstretched arms. I screamed in pain worse than anything I'd ever felt before, as the thing pulled, flesh and bone ripping as the beast tore my arms from me.

Please!

i tried kicking it. I flailed the bloody stumps that were my arms. I tried anything, everything to squirm away from it, but nothing worked. I just felt it as it tore strips of myself into its maw dripping with thick, caustic crimson liquid.

PLEASE!

"Don't let me die" I begged, I pleaded, to whatever god was out there.

Just please!

"I don't want to die here!"

The last thing I saw were those yellowed teeth. The instant it took for it to crush my skull felt like eternity.

And then at last, there was blessed darkness

I woke to hard stone, and opened my eyes to lilies and blooms.

Panic woke me fully in that instant. I pressed my hands against the sides of my head where the beast had crunched down. I startled when I realized I even had hands.

"Was tha-... was I just dreaming? No, but... am I still?" This place certainly did have an unearthly, almost ethereal quality to it. There was a garden filled with small, white flowers the likes of which I've never seen, which swayed gently and mesmerizingly in the occasional faint breeze. Rows of odd, lumpy stones jutted out haphazardly, forming a sort of perimeter around the place. The only notable structure in the place was a small, run-down building of brick and stone whose style I could not accurately place, though it had hints of either Valian or Atalasian in it. The sky was murky gray and cloudy, and in the distance, I saw countless pillars rise up from the fog cover below and up into the night sky, almost as if to hold up the sky itself. All of this was illuminated by the pale light of the solitary unbroken moon hanging forlornly in the sky, larger and brighter than I've seen my entire life.

...

...

...what

I've gone mad. That was the only explanation, the alternatives were to terrible to consider. That's right, I'm just crazy right? I'm going to wake any time now in a nice padded cell.

"Please just let me wake now"

Nothing. Absolutely nothing then that only meant...

"This then... am I dead?" No answer came, not that I expected one.

Well, only one way to make sense of this mess, I made my way towards the building, hoping against hope for something, anything that would make any sense of this.

I barely made it up the first steep before I was on my ass again. Something tapped my shoe, though with what happened to me, felt more like I stepped on a bear trap. My eyes must've been as wide as saucers now as I saw what grabbed me; it couldn't have been more than a foot tall, barely reaching my knees, and it was skeletal, a thin sheet of skin stretched tautly over its bones, all in all it looked eerily similar to a zombified fetus.

I could've easily crushed the thing right then and there but after everything, I was just to scared to do anything other than sit down stupidly. It only got worse as more of them popped out of the ground in the same spot, all of them slowly crawling towards me. I slammed my eyes shut, and just prayed it'd be quick. But nothing happened, I peeled them back, slowly, afraid the moment I opened them I'd wake to darkness once more. Instead I was meet with an odd sight; far from any sort of attack, the things regarded me with an odd mix of curiosity and appreciation, almost reverence, all of them having gathered in a small crowd near my feet.

They eyed me up appraisingly for a moment, before turning to one another and chattering in a soft, unknown language. They looked like they were discussing something, occasionally gesturing to each other, to me, or just waving their arms around like they were having a collective spasm. Whatever they were talking about, they seemed to have reached a conclusion, diving beneath the ground once more, before arising, jostling for position to hold up-

"Brothers, those look vicious"

They'd clumped up into two groups each holding up several tools, five in total. One group, unbelievably, held up a pair of guns, old guns, like really old, the kind I've only really seen in the old Arc armory. The other group held up the remaining tools-rather weapons, but it felt kinda wrong to call them that-they were ugly, brutal things, weapons only to those of unsound mind; one was little more than a crude slab of iron fashioned into the shape of a saw and stuck to a curved handle, the other two were only marginally better, one was a simple axe wrapped and bandages and with a head of brutal stone, the last one was quite possibly the oddest of the trio; A cane, at least until one took a closer look, it was edged, and the end came to a point like a spear.

I must be an idiot, because it actually took me a moment to understand what they wanted of me. They wanted me to choose between them. The last thing I wanted was to take one of them. Seriously, was I just supposed to accept some random weapons from a group of undead fetuses? But then I remembered the not-beowolf, were there more of those things out there, in the nightmare somewhere?

"I, uh-... this is nice and all, but I can't choose. What do you guys think?"

They looked like they weren't ready to be questioned, but to the little guys' credit, they seemed about as enthused to try as they were to do anything else. It was kinda heartwarming in a creepy sense. They jostled at one another for a bit, before coming to what I assume was an accord, because the rest withdrew back down, taking the axe and cane with them, along with an ornate pistol and left only the ones holding aloft a shotgun-looking weapon, a blunderbuss if I could recall correctly, and the handsaw thing, with its stained teeth looked about as viscous as the beowolf-thing's. All things considered a good weapon. Not that my Sister Blanc would've agreed; she'd probably be weeping tears of blood if she saw me ever holding this thing.

"This... you want me to take these?" apparently so, because the moment I picked them up, they burst into a round of applause, though there seemed to be only one dissenter, who sulkily sunk back into the ground. Both weapons looked old and worn, but were surprisingly well made from what I could tell; They had a weight to them, not quite unwieldy, it actually seemed quite fitting all things considered.

They even gave me some straps to hold them, along with this notebook. it didn't seem to be anything special, unlike the weapons, but its one of the few things I own that I can consistently keep clean of blood. I've started using it as a journal now, right now would be a good example, use it to keep track of this place. This place, its strange, I desperately don't want to remember this place, but something in me is terrified of forgetting it, or maybe its just cause I finally feel needed here. Don't like that thought all that much, makes me feel no better than the beasts. But forgetting things, losing them. Its worse than the beast, worse than the blood. Besides I feel better just writing these things down rather than talking to myself, helps my sanity a little better.

After that though, I was still lacking in the ways of answers.

"Hey! uh... thanks for the gifts I guess? But what do I do now?" As one they pointed at a stone, a-tombstone-I realized, one of many, all around the garden; just how many had gone for this many to be left? A bunch of the little guys rose from the ground in front of it and began waving me over. They'd seemed friendly enough to me, what was I to lose in trusting them further?

The grave was the bottom-most one, and tentatively I leaned down and reached out a hand towards them. A moment passed and nothing happened; I was just about to ask them what the point of this was when the world fell out from under me.

The transition was so sudden I didn't even get a chance to scream. And then I was surrounded by darkness, standing on nothing. I almost had another panic attack till I noticed something in the near distance; A pale light sat slightly above the 'ground' and as I made my way there I noticed it was, in fact, a lantern. I saw the skeletons of many more at the edge of its illumination.

As I knelt down to investigate the sole living light here, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as a tingling sensation crept up over my body. An image formed at the forefront of my mind; it was the hazy, double-vision esque sight that greeted a waking dreamer, there in between the moments of sleep and wakefulness, it was a clinic, old and abandon with peeling walls and long bookshelves...

It was the last thing I saw before slipping awake to a nightmare.

I woke to the smell of decay.

Woke with my back on loosed floorboards, in a decrepit and long abandoned building, with the sound of the heavy rap-tap-tap of claws on wood, and the hoarse, panting breaths from a heavy set, inhuman chest. I woke to this and I knew...

My nightmare was only just beginning.

So yah...

So just give whatever opinions you guys have, flames, hate, insults, praises I'll gladly take it all!

This has been N3Ber1us and thanks for reading!