Solve et Coagula
✦ ───────────────────────────────── ✦
mentions| @Ilias Lahlou
ooc notes| the sweeties meet!
date| xx/02/26
✦✦✦
"Secrets in her lipstick mouth."
Valour’s descent into madness had taken a harsh turn after that moonless night mere days ago. A glowing girl, made of moonlight, sweeping her off her feet to bed with some sort of kiss of death that lingered into the day. Now, every moment spent in the land of the living felt unnatural, as though she was some vestige of a person that was meant to have moved on from this world a long, long time ago. Clinging to what she had long lost. Sanity, a grip on reality, connection. Whatever it was, Valour simply ached with every passing moment, growing smaller with each second.
What was worst about their entire predicament was there was a dread that had settled deep in her bones. The worst was yet to come. Their cursed intuition could feel it, like the subtle birth of an earthquake miles and miles away.
Still, Valour tried to adjust to this new normal of theirs. They fell into a momentum of sleepless nights and wakeless days, drifting from place to place as they did in and out of consciousness. They were slightly embittered to find that no one had really noticed; or arguably worse - they had and no one dared to speak of it. She was wrought tight, like an over-tuned bowstring, ready to snap at anyone who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. With no intervention from the living, steadily went the cycle. Until one particular night.
If you have ever tried to recall the exact moment you fell asleep, you will quickly find that it's a futile endeavour. Hypnos sweeps down and steals you away while you are caught unawares. The trick is to pretend to be asleep until, before you even know it, you truly are. On this strange dejected evening, Valour found as their head hit the pillow, she fazed straight through in the realm of dreams instantly. Perhaps this was where that feeling of falling in your sleep came from - your soul being dropped off in the wrong place. She braced herself for the worst, prepared for the usual gore that lay out of sight, in the corners of her eyelids.
Instead, Valour found herself in a serene apocalyptic wasteland of barren brutalist architecture and rolling waves of fog. The scene was engulfed in greenery - nature had beautifully reclaimed the place in lieu of people. This world was devoid of humanity in the most eerily stunning way. She floated through the scene, finding herself wading through a pond of lily pads and lotuses. Life emanated throughout the dream, dragonflies hovering over her skin in a soft hello. And yet, that feeling of something being off remained. It lingered, despite subdued. Valour could only bask in the moment of peace she had found in the place, pleasantly surprised by the change from the usual fight for her life she’d grown so used to.
As the witch drifted out of the water, emerging muddied and damp, they could not shake the feeling of being stalked. Some kind of predator seemed to hesitate beyond the tree line, eyes drilling into the back of their skull. A pack of wolves, patrolling from afar. No - just one. Valour paused at the forest’s edge, head tilted in an almost-beckoning. It started with a rustling, a glowing figure flitting between the foliage. She stepped closer, standing now just at the woodland’s border. That’s when he emerged. A faceless boy, a silhouette of white, stepping out from the shadows. Valour shielded their eyes at the sight. He was cold and yet inviting, like the chill of a crisp autumn morning, the white-hot sun still young in the sky. Something about him screamed familiarity, but not in that typical sense. Not a face seen before, but one that must have haunted her in another life. As if the base elements that built them up came from the same dying sun, aeons ago.
He spoke with no mouth, or rather Val could simply read him like the stanzas of a poem once memorised. A childhood oath.
“You aren’t meant to be here yet.”
Something peculiar struck them at that very moment. The boy’s eyes, where they should be they supposed, seemed to truly see her. Not this ghostly vessel they inhabited in this foreign domain, but the eyes of her current conscious self, her present self looking through her dream body’s eyes. He knew she was peering into his world. That she was awake, dormant and watching this dream unfold, floating in lucidity. One particular word rang in her ears like tinnitus. ‘Yet’.
Filled with confusion, they opened their lips to speak, to say something to this long lost stranger. To her dismay, she felt the floor beneath her cracking and sinking, swallowing her back into the earth. They tried to reach for him, grasping for his hand to stay another moment. Though she could not see him really, Val spent their final milliseconds memorising everything that she could. That strange lack of a voice, the smell of hibiscus and petrichor. She was overcome with a strange urge to touch him. As soon as her hand met his cheek, a feather-light graze, Valour shot up in bed, awake and gasping.
"Shine me on never again."
✦ ───────────────────────────────── ✦
sta 5 | eva 8 | str 5 | wis 2 | arc 1 | acc 9
seer | intuition
sta 5 | eva 8 | str 5 | wis 2 | arc 1 | acc 9
seer | intuition
Solve et Coagula
| IN DREAMSCAPE WITH @Valour Argentum | SOMETIME IN FEBRUARY, 2026 |
After being passed around in the foster system, Ilias had endured his fair share of changes. Some of them were good, like the time an officer had barged into their small, one bedroom New York apartment and taken him away after he’d found his mom passed out on the living room floor. Or rather, the same floor that served as their bedroom, kitchen, and living room all at once. Changes had been scary at first, even when they’d felt inevitable. He’d cried when they carried him out. Lots. However, thinking back on it, he knew their situation had been unsustainable and had made him cry far more times than the police officer ever had. Worst of all, he still felt guilty for being taken away, for some reason believing he was at fault for how things had turned out. Other times, he was begging the tired CPS lady to get him out of another, particularly horrible foster home. Some deserved the label, sometimes Ilias was purposefully being difficult. With all those experiences in his baggage, you’d think the boy would have found change easy by now. Moving to Montana had been a piece of cake, compared to the cursed afternoon when the bombshell had been dropped on him. He was going to pursue wizarding education, and Lachlan was going with him. Whether that improved his situation or not was debatable. Nevertheless, six months later, Ilias had still not come to terms with his major change of path. He was bitter. Only an idiot would complain about free education in the United States of America, which was not exactly known for its charity. He’d seen the brutal reality of it first hand. Still, he did. That was another thing to be bitter about: the monumental class difference in the “No-Maj” world— what he called the real world— versus the magical world where he was forced to belong. Medical school had been his dream—still was, and attending Ilvermorny felt like a stick in his wheels. What rarely changed was the dreams. The details and underlying threat shapeshifted once in a while. Sometimes he was being chased through the woods by wolves and other dark, sinister shapes. They forced him to run between trees, roots, and trenches, sharp, clattering teeth inches from his legs. The dream usually ended with him climbing up from a tree, or throwing himself into a riverbank to escape. In his dreams, the wolves couldn’t swim, a fact he’d quickly learned whenever it returned. Sometimes he was hunting the wolves, burying his arrow through fur and flesh with uncanny precision. Of course, he was always better in the dream. Sometimes, rarer, he was the wolf. However, the wasteland landscape remained the same. Empty. Void of humanity, and any human-esque figure was of sinister nature. At first, he’d jolted awake when the chase ended. As time went on, he had learned to linger. When the threat was gone, he’d allow himself to drift through the foggy wasteland and memorize its landscape. Nature had begun to reclaim most of the architecture present. Past the riverbank that usually served as his refuge lay an abandoned school bus, wheels missing, just beyond the forest line at the road’s end. It was always there, in the same place, like so many other constants. Follow the road, and a rotten gas station would appear to the right. Windows broken, abandoned like everything else, as far as he knew. The cash register was empty, though he’d managed to grab a few cans of soup during his first raid. The second time, the novelty had worn off. None of it was necessary anyway. The dream never stayed long enough to simulate hunger. He’d never ventured beyond the gas station, either, unaware of what might lie further. He preferred nature anyway, and from what he had seen, Ilias knew the layout by memory. Anything out of the ordinary immediately stood out among the constants. So far, he’d never encountered anything strange. Stranger than usual, obviously. This night, something was different. Taking his usual route, once the wolves were warded off, Ilias quickly noticed that something felt… off. A light, dulled by the thick fog, drew him in. At the forest’s edge, he glimpsed something—someone—moving beyond the trees. Stepping into view, they were blinding, a solid mass of white in the silhouette of a younger girl his age. The light blurred her features into something unidentifiable, leaving only her silhouette and hair to give him a hint of recognition. Squinting, he raised a hand towards his face to shield his eyes. The presence of something unfamiliar would have alarmed him, yet, she didn’t feel threatening. Neither did she run towards him, nor did she run away from him, in the typical game of cat and mouse that tended to play out between him and his dream visitors. Visitor… The word that had come to him lingered in the forefront of his mind. Something about them felt strangely familiar, more tangible than the usual monsters and shapes that haunted his dreams. Ilias boiled down the feeling of familiarity to it being his dream. Anything that happened here was only in his head. Right? He stepped closer, or perhaps the fog carried him closer without his knowledge. Next thing he knew, he was standing before her within arms reach from the girl, closer than he’d ever dared be to the mysterious figures in his dream. You’re not like them, are you? The question remained unsaid, merely an echo in his own mind. The words left his mouth as if carrying a universal truth, a vessel for something higher rather than his own will. “You aren’t meant to be here yet.” The words came out of his mouth— if he’d uttered them at all, he couldn’t say— leaving him bewildered by the meaning of them. Yet, no lie had been spoken. He imagined the figure tilting her head, confusion lacing the empty features. A hand lifted towards his face, and Ilias felt the urge to retreat. A brush of invisible fingers ghosted his cheek, before the stranger had disappeared in the fog. Shortly after, Ilias was ripped awake from his dream, greeted by nothing but a dark, empty, Horned Serpent dorm. |
| SEER | INTUITION |
Camille De Varenne | Hogwarts
Solve et Coagula
✦ ───────────────────────────────── ✦
mentions| @Ilias Lahlou
ooc notes| sorry ilias
date| xx/02/26
✦✦✦
"Secrets in her lipstick mouth."
Over the days that followed, Valour could not shake the image of that strange creature, dwelling just out of sight in her mind’s eye. A boy that felt so unbelievably real – so much so that she could not fathom how he had ended up lost in her dreams. As much as they tried to accept he was a mere figment of her overactive imagination, the being continued to roam freely amongst her thoughts. Valour spent each spare, fleeting moment of daylight scribbling notes into her journal, trying to grasp at the encounter and rationalise it. She documented every sensory experience she could recall and found herself longing to return to that bizarre post-apocalyptic world. The Black Lake drew her in more often, particularly in that strange hour of dusk that cast a ghostly gauze over the world of the living. She day-dreamt of how she’d emerged from the depths, like a long-forgotten shipwreck, a remnant of the past resurrected. The nights that followed fell back into their usually distorted rhythm, a sickening string of desolate nightmares that made that wasteland seem like a paradise. They prayed to return – to taste serenity once more.
On this particular night in question, Valour awoke in the middle of a dense wintery forest, the sun red-hot and burning amid the hazy night sky. They were somewhere vaguely upon the Appalachian trail; the weight of its history sank heavy on her shoulders, and the air was thick with superstition. The stars, somehow visible beside the solar flares, seemed to spell out a warning. A church bell resounded in the distance, sending vibrations through Valour’s very bones. That was her mark to run.
She pelted through the thicket, batting away vines and ducking under low-hanging branches with rehearsed precision. They could scale these woodlands blind if she needed to – after all, these dreams were chopped and muddied with static and fog. A film noir on a spoiled, rotten reel. Valour, as she was in most of these dreams, was barefoot, feeling the stinging bite of nettles, rocks and thorns scattered upon the dirt trail with every step. She always appeared in this hellscape wearing the same white dress, a troublesome veil covering her features and obscuring her vision. At this point in the chase, she was caked in mud, the long grass whipping at her legs and leaving angry red stripes upon her flesh. They ran with a primal fear, feverish breaths fanning like smoke amid the freezing winter air. Even when they tripped and rolled to the ground, grazing their elbows and knees until they were bloody, they would be on their feet in a heartbeat, driven by fear. They’d learnt to serpentine their way through the trees, sharply changing directions and doubling back to confuse their assailants. Alas, it never worked.
There they were. They were difficult to spot at first, especially to the untrained eye. Towering, pale-fleshed demons, stalking slowly through the night, slender and stretched beyond all proportion. At their monstrous height, they took their time, pacing behind and yet always remaining just a hair’s breadth away. Valour could never understand how they always managed to find her. They had no eyes. No ears to hear her pants and cries of exhaustion. No nose to smell her sweat and fear. The witch knew there was no hope – the forest was endless. Many fruitless attempts had been made to strategise and think their way out. Mapping out the woodlands while awake and trying to summon a knife to carve slashes into tree trunks to mark her location. No matter what they did, they always circled back into endless purgatory. These things were inevitable, much like fate itself.
Just as she was ready to succumb to the violence of the beasts, Valour noticed a beacon of light deep into the impenetrable coppice. It was new and yet, hauntingly familiar. They raced towards it, hoping for some respite – a clearing to rest if only for a moment, before kismet had its way. And there he was, a blinding light amidst the forest canopy. That same glowing boy, the one that lingered in the back of her mind since their first meeting, blissfully ignorant to the stalking beasts that approached them. Valour had led them right to him. Horror dawned on the girl – a new sense of urgency overtaking her, invigorating her. Adrenaline coursed through her veins and she could feel the pressure of her carotid as her heart struggled to keep up. She tried to scream at him, her warnings falling upon deaf ears
“You need to run– Get out of here–”
It was futile. There was little else she could do. This time when she reached for the boy, the dream did not end. She grabbed his hand, feeling the shockingly human warmth of his palm against her own, and kept running, pulling him through the trees without sparing a moment to look back at him. The second her hand touched his, it was as though he was cursed see with her eyes. He could see them now, the faceless creatures, crawling on their overgrown limbs, bones jutting out in unnatural and painful angels and cracking with every step. All Valour could muster between pants was a gasp in vain.
“Don’t look back. Just trust me.”
"Shine me on never again."
✦ ───────────────────────────────── ✦
sta 5 | eva 8 | str 5 | wis 2 | arc 1 | acc 9
seer | intuition
sta 5 | eva 8 | str 5 | wis 2 | arc 1 | acc 9
seer | intuition
Solve et Coagula
| IN DREAMSCAPE WITH @Valour Argentum | SOMETIME IN FEBRUARY, 2026 |
Life continued normally over the following days. Rarely were the dreams worth any more of his conscious, awakened time once they’d ended. They were, after all, so common that most of the dreams blended together in a blur anyway. He had fallen victim to daydreaming again, slipping away from the present in ways so subtle that even he sometimes failed to notice the moment it happened. Staring into the void somewhere over the professor’s shoulder, Ilias’s eyes had glazed over until his body was only a placeholder occupying one of the classroom seats, present in everything except thought. Since his life had been put on hold indefinitely, he discovered during a History of Magic lesson that week that it was surprisingly easy to allow his mind to drift into daydreaming. Because yes, he still lived with the hope that everything would eventually return to normal, even if that hope was becoming thinner and more theoretical with each passing day. While it was unlikely that whatever grades he earned in wizarding school would translate into anything useful in the real world, he still clung to the idea that, once this living nightmare was over, he would apply for university. It was the only thing keeping him somewhat sane these days, and even that was slowly deteriorating, as his unconscious mind began introducing new shapes into his dreamscapes. It was almost as if his brain had said, “hey, you’re not suffering enough right now,” and decided with cruel timing to correct that imbalance. The day he would give up on his plan was the day Ilias might as well end it all. The thought was not dramatic to him anymore, but instead something disturbingly logical that he would never be able to escape entirely. As depressing as it sounded, going through it, plainly speaking, had taken its toll. Seeing what had happened to his mother before the authorities got involved, the boy had gotten disturbingly familiar with the idea of death. Not someone else's anymore, but what would happen if he one day decided to simply… give up, like she’d done. In his dreams, however, Ilias still possessed enough survival instinct to fight against it, and that instinct followed him into his apocalyptic wasteland. Over and over again, he ran for his life, scarcely dodging life threatening obstacles until he’d made escaping a sport. Otherwise, he would have already surrendered to the wolves. And, as of recently, whatever that new, blinding figure was. Unsettling, but harmless so far, though it was too early to tell. He hadn’t told anyone about his dreams, old or new, aside from the usual excuses he gave for his disturbed sleep patterns and the purple-tinted shadows under his eyes. Those, at least, were visible enough that he did not need to explain them. Ilias thought that he should try to pass for a fashion statement, considering how they had permanently etched themselves onto his face. “Is my class boring you, Mr Lahlou?” the professor's voice rang loud, sharp enough to cut through the haze and pull him back to his body with immediate urgency. Everyone’s head turned simultaneously, staring at him with varying degrees of judgement, expectation and amusement. The stifled laughter that followed made something in his chest tighten, and he straightened in his chair, heat rising faintly to his face. His gaze flickered between the professor’s expression and the surface of his desk, unable to hold steady on either. Guilt sat plainly across his features, though he said nothing in response, throat suddenly dry as sandpaper. His tongue acted as if glued to the roof of his mouth as he tried to swallow, his first attempt to begin to formulate an answer. “Not more than usual, professor,” he mumbled, barely audible. After a few seconds of staring, the class continued without further pressing interrogation, like nothing had happened. Relieved, Ilias tried his best to remain focused for the rest of the lesson. His attempts lasted about ten minutes, before he was drifting through the fog once more, among shadows and blinding lights. In his current state of mind, he almost looked forward to sleep, not as rest—God knew that was futile— but escape. When sleep finally claimed him that night, the landscape waiting for him was different. The wasteland he knew by heart and had experienced almost every night, for what felt like years, was gone, exchanged for a wintery forest on top of a mountain trail. Which mountain it was, or whether it belonged to any place he had ever heard of, Ilias could not have said. He had not travelled enough, in dream or in waking life, to recognize it. Empty hands stretched in front of him; whatever this new environment had in store for him, he was apparently expected to manage empty handed. He flipped his palms, examining the skin, counting his fingers. Ten. Clutching them into fists, he observed his nails to try to gain some more information. Was he prey or predator? They, too, looked normal. The stakes were usually routinely clear at this point in the dream, but in this rare change of scenery, Ilias had no idea what to expect from his surroundings. There were no wolves with clattering teeth and frothing mouths beyond the tree line, no shadows, no light either. First the light figure in his dream, now this. The timing was too odd to be a coincidence. The sound of a churchbell rang, drawing his gaze toward the distant forest. Based on intuition alone, his stomach sank, the hair on his neck standing straight. Among the quiet, it might as well have been an execution call. What was happening? At first, nothing happened beyond the usual still. Ilias stared in the direction of the bell, contemplating the best course of action. He wasn’t sure it would remain that way if he began to explore the landscape. Once the bell echo had faded, Ilias dared to move a few steps. Granted, he had no idea where either direction would take him. Almost as if his movement had been the catalyst for interaction, as feared, a sudden light appeared between the tree structures. It advanced on him, not only walking, but, as the shape grew into a full-fledged human silhouette, it seemed to be racing towards him. Despite not being able to distinguish any features, he thought he recognized it. Her. Strange light sources probably didn’t adhere to gender, but if they did, for some reason he was sure she would have been her. She didn’t scare him as much as the growing realization: what was she running from? Squinting at the overwhelming light, Ilias took an instinctive step back, seeing if moving out of the way would change the direction of the figure. It didn’t make a difference. She reached him and grabbed his hand, feeling unexpectedly solid in his hand. Overwhelmed by something that shouldn’t feel as real as it did, he felt bile rise in his throat. The moment she’d touched him, a new reality of the dream revealed itself. Monsters, demons, plainly speaking, were closing in on them: tall, ominous figures lacking faces but somehow moving with purpose. “Don’t look back. Just trust me,” the light urged him. Trusting the words of a faceless stranger that might be evil felt like a recipe for disaster. Before he knew it, he’d mentally said fuck all and decided to trust her. She pulled him in the opposite direction from where she’d hailed from, and his legs, heavy like lead, carried him on their own accord. They were running, to where, he didn't know. While never quite safe, he supposed, Ilias waited until they’d gained some distance before he asked, panting, “When does this end?” He didn't know why he expected his dream figures to know the answer to that. |
| SEER | INTUITION |
Camille De Varenne | Hogwarts
Solve et Coagula
✦ ───────────────────────────────── ✦
mentions| @Ilias Lahlou
ooc notes| angst!
date| xx/02/26
✦✦✦
"Secrets in her lipstick mouth."
Desperation left Valour’s mind in a gaping blackhole, absorbing all function besides pure survival-driven panic. Hardly able to speak, she pulled the light through the trees, which seemed to leer at her as their branches swat past them. Breath uneven and sporadic, they choked on each syllable.
“It doesn’t. Not usually. But– you’re here– maybe–” They refused to fan the small spark of hope that had ignited in her stomach. It would only lead to vulnerability. A waste of time and breath, essential to their endless plight. They dared to glance back at the savages, who continued their patient hunt with slow, daunting steps in their direction. By some miracle, Valour and the faceless boy had gained some distance between them. She tried not to dwell too long on the thought, gasping plumes of cold air.
“How is this possible–?”
She grasped the boy’s hand tighter still, sharp talon-like nails digging into his palm. The resistance of his flesh served as a frail reminder; perhaps this being was real. It was too early to tell whether that was a good or bad thing, though her intuition drove her to hold onto him as if they needed each other. This feeling of dependence – no, faith – was entirely antithetical to her. They raced down her typical path, each milestone serving as a grave reminder that there was no true escape. Under a fallen, dead trunk, through a circle of white mushrooms, over a weak stream of water. At this point of the chase, Valour would find herself where she started, beside a tree etched with tally marks of the infinite reincarnations she’d had there. A stark reminder that resistance was futile. Tonight, there was a house. One she had never seen before, rickety and decrepit, almost like a chapel with a decaying cross nailed above the door. She wasted no time on confusion – the pair burst inwards, disturbing years of dust and foul memories.
They worked like oiled machinery, racing to board up the windows and barricade the door with a hefty oak table under its handle. Candelabras clattered to the floor, with each step earning a cry of exhaustion from the battered floorboards. Then, there was silence. The hut was a single, meagre room, seemingly belonging to a lone hunter. Judging by the state of affairs, anyone would wager the inhabitant was dead, if not for the fireplace already burning with incensed embers of lavender and thyme. Taxidermied heads of prized catches stared at them, unblinking – deer, foxes, pheasants and jackalopes surveyed the trespassers with misty, beaded eyes. Moments of Valour’s life seemed to bleed into her dream, with photos of her parents adorning the walls. They looked content, not noticing the camera shutter capturing the pure moment between them. A few contained a small girl with raven locks and impossible eyes, always spotting the viewer behind the lens. Her face was murky with indistinguishable features, though she had an eerie omniscience to her. Kaavya’s Persian scarf lay draped over an armchair, while Ambrose’s Old Spice aftershave hung in the air, enveloping the pair with welcome arms. Valour’s tarot cards lay spread out in front of the fireplace, each member of the Arcana dancing upon the pages. Death’s skull shimmered as it turned to face their new company. Despite the warmth of the cabin exuding a sense of temporary safety, foreboding permeated the air. Mounted above the fireplace, a flash of gunmetal caught the boy’s eyes. Vada’s rifle sneered at them with malice as if to warn them – do not rest yet.
Valour’s knees buckled, no longer able to support her weight as if all they were fit for was running. Her heart pounded uncontrollably against her chest. Why was she still alive? Somehow, it was all too much. Her breath ran away from her, leaving her heaving and clawing at her own throat. Something unseen was strangling her, still willing her to die. The Seer pushed herself against the wall, crumpling inwards upon herself as she buried her head in her hands. No matter how she tried, she could not regain her composure, forgetting the boy made of light was there at all. Her eternal restraint had burnt away, and for once in her life, the witch looked small. The soles of her feet and the palms of her hands were bloodied and sore, staining her white dress as she clutched at the fabric. Her frame still trembled with adrenaline, canine teeth grit with carnal fear. In her dreams, she knew nothing but survival – what else could she do?
As the imposter watched on, attention fixated on his crumbling companion, a pair of amber eyes glittered from within the shadows. A low snarl vibrated throughout the cabin as it fixated on Ilias.
"Shine me on never again."
✦ ───────────────────────────────── ✦
sta 5 | eva 8 | str 5 | wis 2 | arc 1 | acc 9
seer | intuition
sta 5 | eva 8 | str 5 | wis 2 | arc 1 | acc 9
seer | intuition
Solve et Coagula
| IN DREAMSCAPE WITH @Valour Argentum | SOMETIME IN FEBRUARY, 2026 |
Reassurance was not a strange dream figure's forte. In his normal dreamscapes, the path from A to B was predictable and instinctive: jump into the river and you’ll be safe. From the wolves, anyway. There was always the quiet promise that, at the end of the river, Ilias could wake up if he wanted to. This new, foreign place knew no such bounds. The only thing he had to rely on for any kind of instruction on how to navigate it was a cryptic light, whose sole depressing offering was that it usually never ended. Without any further clarification, he assumed that meant until something resembling a symbolic death. Why she was still fleeing if the outcome was so depressingly certain, he didn’t know. There had to be a way beyond surrendering. And if there was a way, Ilias would find it, no matter if it meant fighting the beasts or jumping down the mountain. Unless he wanted to attempt negotiating with the monsters, the light’s limited assistance was all he had to work with. Summoning an image of them in his mind’s eye, he immediately shook his head, grimacing. Absolutely not. They did not seem like the type to be reasoned with. “You tell me!” he shouted, incredulity cutting through despite the circumstances leaving little room for banter. Fucking great. The damage caused by the dream would only last so long; it was only temporary, he knew that. Still, he swallowed around the lump forming in his throat when he imagined what the process of escaping might look like before he managed to wake. How much gore he would have to endure first. His imagination was nothing but creative in that aspect, and if the girl’s desperate running was anything to go by, he was right to worry. Ilias would rather not find out first hand. Then again, if this was a development of his dreams, did the light serve as anything else but an extension of his imagination—a pathetic construction from his own mind to comfort him with a false sense of protection? The next realization tasted more bitter. Had he actually begun to lose his mind? In the end, he was on his own. Sharp, claw-like nails dug into his palm and forced him to run faster, under a dead trunk and a small stream of water. Naturally, only familiar with the mechanics of his usual dreamscape, Ilias was drawn towards the body of water, serving as a beacon of hope amidst everything foreign. In their quick pace and the iron fist clasping his hand, he could only afford a longing glance back at the stream, in passing, before it was too late. The demon-like monsters claimed the ground behind them in threatening speed, while they did not slow down. There was no turning back even if he tried to fight against the light, who insisted on pushing onward. For something curated from his own imagination, it felt strangely real and insistent. Perhaps that had been his chance, but now he’d never know. As fatigue and hopelessness began to creep in after an endless flight, a house appeared, like a mirage, materialized in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Racing towards the decrepit building, they burst through the door. Dust and the reek of something half-rotten swirled through the air upon intrusion, entering his nostrils and lungs and forcing a deep cough out of him. There was no time to waste. It was a fight against time the moment they entered; releasing each other quickly, the pair began to barricade the door and windows before the monsters could catch up and finish what they’ve started. A pair of chairs, an oak table and planks of brittle wood would hardly keep them out forever, but it could ward them off long enough to search the house for anything useful. Weapons or explosives—anything that could maybe put an end to the chase. Once the entrance points were reinforced to the best of their abilities, Ilias turned to examine the room, on the hunt for something sharp, or lethal. It appeared to be a hunter’s cabin, taxidermied animal heads, large, empty eyes staring back at him decorated the walls, like trophies from a horror film. He’d never found the appeal in posing with death, like the guys posing with fish on Facebook like it would be their greatest achievement in life. The rest of the space suggested it belonged to a family, signs of being lived-in scattered around the cabin in the shapes of a scarf hung over an armchair, and after-smoke curling softly from the fireplace. He didn’t have time to examine the photos when the Devil came knocking at the door, but one quick glance at the couple with a young baby girl in their arms was enough to determine that he didn’t know them. What interested him instead was the rifle lined up over the fire-place. Eyes lit, lias crossed the room to the fireplace and ripped the shiny gun off the stead. It was heavy in his small hands, as he weighed it in the air tentatively. The American born-and-bred boy had never used a gun personally at his young age, except that one time a foster dad had allowed him to hold one while teaching his son the basics of hunting, but he knew enough in theory. The details weren’t important, anyway, since the dreamscape blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. He lifted the weapon towards his eye, squinting the other shut and pointed the end towards the door. As long as he could aim, the rest would follow. Lowering the rifle, his attention shifted to the figure who had begun to cave in; she clawed at the walls before shrinking down onto the floor and did the same to her throat, heaving and gasping for air. It was very odd behavior for a dream figure, something he’d never experienced before. Was it… panicking? Ilias stared at the source of light, confused and gaping, before quickly regaining his senses. “Hey!” He barked, alarmed. He moved towards her and crouched down. Placing the rifle on the floor next to him, he grabbed the girl by her shoulders, trying to hammer some sense into her. “You can’t give up now. They’ll be here any second.” With each and every word, his fingers tightened for emphasis. When she made no effort to pull herself out of despair, Ilias pushed himself up and stalked into the corridor until he found a small kitchen area. He didn’t pause to admire the woodwork—what was left of it after time had done its work. Pulling open drawers filled with rattling cutlery and mismatched kitchenware, he seized the sharpest knife he could find, leaving them hanging open as he hurried back to the main room. “Here,” he said, tossing the knife onto the floorboards beside her with a heavy thump. And as if on cue, sudden banging on the door forced him upright. The sound hit like a verdict. Dust shivered loose from the frame with each impact, the barricade already threatening to burst under the force. Grabbing the gun, he lifted it into position once more, shoulders tightening as instinct overtook thought. His breath came in shallow. Grabbing the gun, he lifted it into position once more, finger hovering on the trigger. With or without the light, he was not going down without a fight. |
| SEER | INTUITION |
Camille De Varenne | Hogwarts