- Gabriella -

Everything is smoke and darkness.

I can't feel anything as I drifted away, pulled by an invisible force. Time does not flow here. Neither can I discern whether I am falling upwards or downwards.

It is a black empty void of space or time. Distantly, a small part of me knows that I am dreaming. That my physical body was still sleeping peacefully in my bed. I stayed here, floating for a long long time. Closing my eyes, I sighed, it feels very comfortable here. Maybe I could stay here forever.

Cries of pain and anguish broke my dream-like reverie and I found myself in a dark place that looks somewhere in the open. The night sky shone from above, and a thousand million stars illuminated the skies. I've never seen such strange constellations before. The sky looks foreign. Everything feels different from the one I used to stare up in the late nights of the capital city of Soren. I could make out dark hulking figures huddled together whispering in the night.

I frowned. Where am I? Am I in a remote town? Perhaps the suburbs? But wherever the openness stretched, no buildings or apartment stood. The trees here look much bigger compared to the ones in the city. Their bulking height makes the city's trees look like child's play. Even the roots look like they are larger than my forearm. What the hell is going on?

"Yeeeeghh..." The thing in the shadows gave a high pitched scream, laced with pain. It draws me in, an urge to watch what was happening. Curious, I moved closer. They looked like secret lovers embracing in the dark but something felt off. The other shadow, a man, grunted. He pulled out a wicked dagger from the abdomen of the dark figure that was bent over him. Blood as black as the night dripped from the stab wound. I clamped my mouth with both my hands to stifle a gasp as I watched something dark pooling on the ground.

"Hehehe... Ah Hahaha." The dark figure cackled wetly, the sound bringing my hairs on stand. The dagger had punctured his lungs as he coughed out blood, wheezing. His breath came out as gasps of air, like a dying animal.

Closer and closer, I brought my dream self nearer to the huddled pair. "You can't...cough... get what you...cough ...want princey." He/It snarled at the last word, sneering at the man in front of him. More blood oozed from the wound as he brought himself to his full height against the tree, towering over the other man by a head, a dark black mass of disjointed features and dirty matted fur.

A scream of pure terror escaped my lips as I realised what have been staring at. I am near enough to get a clear view of a creature, made of disjointed body parts of different animals sewn together in a haphazard manner. As if his maker was in a rush, and couldn't be bothered about its looks. What is this monster?

It has a face of a hyena, its hideous lupine features pulled back in a snarl, revealing rows of sharp yellow canines. Blood dribbled from its hideous maw, down a chest of fur matted with more blood. Paws with claws gripped the man's shoulders as it stood on its hind legs. Saliva dribbled from his open maw that hung loosely. Dark patches dotted its dirty matted fur. Suddenly its eyes fixed upon mine and stared at me with naked hunger in its eyes.

I screamed again. This time so loudly that the man in front of the thing flinched. He stared into the eyes of the monster and swiped his dagger across its head so quickly that all saw was a blur and then I heard the wet thud of the head on the floor. I shuddered in horror as I watched the severed head rolling on the grass before coming to a stop in front of me. Black pupiless eyes stared blankly ahead lifelessly, blood still dripping from its neck. I threw up, emptying the contents of my stomach at the side.

Wiping my mouth, I looked up hoping to wake up from this horrible nightmare. But the same scene greeted me again and the smell of death lingered in the air. Something in me tells me that this is wrong and everything here is off. Not real not real not real. I repeated the mantra silently in my head.

Something silver flashed as the male wiped away the dark blood that coated his dagger. "Who are you?" I asked hoarsely. "Where the hell am I?" I squeezed my eyes shut. Something cold touched the sensitive skin on the nape of my neck and I shivered. My eyes flew open in surprise.

His dagger was pointed at me as he tippedmy schin with the blade. "That's my question. Who are you?" I stared into the darkness of his hooded face. All I could make out was a full sensual mouth and a smooth jaw. He had a melodic voice and he spoke in an ancient language that sounded as old as Earth.

"You can understand me?" I asked again, mouthing the words and tasting them in my tongue. My words felt lyrical and old. Shock filled me as I realized that I had been speaking in the same strange language as this stranger. But the spell was broken when the sound of footfalls of several men pierced the air. The hooded man looked towards the direction behind me in alarm.

"Run."

I don't need to be told twice, I ran like the wind. The male beside me easily overtook me in swift strides. I tried not to gape as he shot past me like an arrow. I may not be a national runner, but my timings exceeded all the girls in my high school. I am faster because I am a tad taller than my classmates. Breaking record timings has always been as easy as a breeze. Never once have I doubt my my atheletic abilities until now...

The stranger overtook me easily. His long strides as elegant as a swan dipping into a pond. What in the world?! His movements looked too graceful that I was beginning to feel unnatural. I squinted at the air around him and above him. Nope, definitely doesn't look like there are wires attached to his body.

"Will you please stop staring at my back? Look at the ground. You might trip and fall."

I panted as I focused my gaze to the road in front of me, too tired to retort something back. I wasn't sure how long er ran or how far away we were from whoever we were running from. I just knew that the road here feels different. More uneven. Like loosely packed dirt.

We reached a crossroad, the pathways illuminated by only the night sky and he skidded to a stop. I ran into him. My breath was knocked away as I careened into his back unable to react in time to his sudden halt. Ouch.

His back was a solid wall and I recoiled from the impact, my body flew backwards. He reached out a hand back to grab my elbow, holding me steady. All without moving his eyes away from the front. What the hell, how did he do that?

"T-thanks." I panted as I gripped my knees, trying to catch my breath.

"Shh.." The stranger placed a finger to his lips as he motioned for me to stay behind him. I huffed noisily in protest. But my irritation did not affect his concentration. He cocked his head to the side, angling his ears to the left as if he was listening.

"Wh-what?"

He tensed and then I could feel it. The reverberations on the floor. Something gave a blood-curdling scream as the sound of thudding paws came from the front. The pack of hyenas came bounding from the left fork-way, all with similar leering faces. I shivered in fear as their hideous lopsided forms came into view. "What in hell's name are those?" I whispered out loud without meaning to.

"Chimeras." The guy said. Cold disgust apparent in his voice.

But it seems that we got other things to be worried about. Shouts of blood cry rang from the back. Those menacing-looking soldiers have caught up.

We are trapped with no way to run. The front option is to face those hideous monsters, and the back is filled with armored men armed to the teeth with glinting weapons. Sweat ran in rivulets down my back and my face as I panted, still trying to catch my breath. In all the horrors, I'm surprised I'm even standing upright.

The glint of a sword flashed to my right and I felt pain lanced through my right abdomen. I screamed in agony and the last thing I saw was the hooded stranger fighting off the horde of enemies before I blacked out.

I awoke with a start, gulping in large mouthfuls of air. Sweat drenched my cotton pajamas and my blanket is tangled around me. The familiar view of my bedroom comes into view as my eyes begin to adjust in the dim darkness of my bedroom.

It was a dream. It was just a dream. I consoled myself trying to fall back asleep but failing even after several hours. The leering faces of the chimeras kept replaying over and over in my head. I got up and padded to my apartment kitchen. Through the little window, I watched the bright cityscape under the moon. The familiar sounds of distant traffic drifted in as cars passed by Soren's city in the early morning. I decided to make a cup of hot chocolate. It only helped a little, and I still couldn't sleep. So, I busied myself and went to pack the items I intended to bring over to Claudia's dorm.

***

- Night Court -

"What did you see?" Ezekiel asked.

"A... human. She's a girl." Matthias replied, as he tried to understand what he had just scried. "And blood." His royal brother sketched a brow at his vague description but said nothing. The young prince refused to divulge any more details or offer an explanation of what he saw. Not that he didn't trust his brother, but he felt that the visions are something personal to him.

His foretelling abilities had began manifesting recently, coming in sudden periods and hitting him in waves. None of his siblings possessed the ability to foretell, so they couldn't offer him much help. Only his third eldest brother, Ezekiel, volunteered to walk him through it and his brother Micah had offered that he would try to teach him how to control the visions.

After some practice, he could control it freely now.

The ability to foretell is a rare ability. It has been practiced by kings and queens of the fae courts once in a blue moon if circumstances allowed. Only the Three Sisters living on the Seer Island can freely foretell the fates of everyone.

But as the seventh child of the seventh son, he was foretold to be of great powers, which he found ironic. Because other than this child's play, he didn't have any special powers.

His magic mastery was still the poorest among his brothers and limited to only a few elements. So he always preferred to talk through his knives and fists.

The young prince remained silent as his third brother shrugged and walked out of the scrying room. Ezekiel would likely question him again about what he saw, but he had other matters to attend to.

Matthias began to ponder about what he saw in his vision. He had been scrying for a way to defeat their enemies, with the thought at the forefront of his mind. Yet, what he saw was a mortal girl with a strange pair of gold eyes. In the vision, he was plunged into a place filled with those dreadful creatures, and he was finishing them off one by one until a mortal girl appeared.

He rubbed his temples. What was the vision trying to tell me?

Moreover, this time it felt strange. He was sure that in the art of foretelling one can't communicate with whoever they see inside their visions. Has my foretelling abilities become impaired? Or maybe this time I have tapped into the dream realm.

But before he could test his theory out, he needs to find out the identity of that mysterious girl. The Human World is as vast as the Fae Realm and to find a single girl is going to be a pain in the ass. A human who can speak in the old tongue. Now that's one very gifted mortal.

Whoever she is, he knows with a growing sense of dread that the Decays seemed to be somehow connected to this girl.