Erica was torn from her sleep by the now familiar scream of a child. Despite having heard it so many times, sometimes even several nights in a row, it still sent chills down her spine. Throwing her blanket to her side and rushing out of her bed she dashed towards the hallway leading through her small, rundown home. The long, blue nightgown which covered most of her thin and seemingly fragile body strained her motion somewhat, forcing her to pull the fabric up to give herself more leg room as her movement stretched the cloth to its limits. Her long, messy, dark brown hair which seemed to be tossed around in an uncontrollable fashion behind her would normally be something that immensely bothered her, but at times like this it was easy to ignore. The long bangs which usually fell to the side of her face or sat atop her head kept still by a simple hairpin had fallen into her face as if purposefully trying to block her vision and get in her eyes, but fortunately Erica knew the layout of what was left of her home better than the palm of her hand. She could find any room in this house blindfolded if she needed too.

The recent stress-filled years had made not just her hair seem unkempt but also her face, with dark bags under her brown eyes being something that people considered a permanent feature of her face now. Her nails would likely have grown uncomfortably long as well if Erica didn’t find herself biting on them until the tips fell off while anxiously looking over her finances. Each month was another fight against the overpriced rent, and to not have to touch her much needed savings Erica practically worked herself to death. Yet even when working double shifts almost every day at her simple waitress job she could not afford much more after her rent had been paid. After buying the bare minimum when it came to food, and mixing sawdust into her meals to keep her from going hungry, the last few gold pieces she had made were to be put aside for more important things.

While Erica did prepare a few meals each day that did not contain sawdust, they were not for her, but for her five year old daughter who’s room Erica burst into like a cannon ball tearing through the side of a ship. “Hey, hey. It is okay. Mommy’s here.” Erica said and wrapped her arms around the young girl, causing the screams to subside and instead turn into a gentle sobbing. Her daughter Molly, who was drenched in sweat, then quickly began wiping the heavy tears off her reddened cheeks while whimpering into her Erica’s chest, unknowingly getting plenty of snot on her mother’s nightgown. “It will be okay, the monsters aren’t real.” Erica continued in an attempt to calm her crying child who had now for the third night in a row suffered from nightmares. Monsters and abominations plagued her mind, and Erica felt hopeless as she could do nothing to chase these dreams away. She hated lying to her daughter, but telling her that monsters were real would likely destroy any and all chances of Molly ever ridding herself of these night terrors.

Molly had always been a sad sight ever since she was born. Not only was she born several weeks prematurely, but somewhere during the first few days of her life she had caught some strange disease that neither doctors nor priests could explain. Her entire life she had been small and bedridden, with some strange illness eating at her from the inside out. The doctors claimed that they had never seen anything like this before, and the disease that matched the most with the symptoms Molly showed was some long since exterminated plague, but even then there were plenty of symptoms which they couldn’t explain. None of the expensive medicines they had sold her had even helped Molly in the slightest, and some of them had even seemed to make her worse.

Despite her condition, her poor health was not the only thing that made her a sad sight to Erica. The girl's bright blue eyes, her sandy blonde hair and that small mole on her cheek sometimes even felt as if they were an insult to Erica, as the girl's features almost perfectly resembled those of her father. Richard Thunderspike was the name he had used to introduce himself, but it wouldn’t take more than a few days before Erica learnt it was nothing but a silly fake name, a simple rip off of Duke Seth Thunderpike of Alterwood and his family’s name. He was likely using a name similar to the duke’s to attract the attention of commoners and farmers who didn’t know better, people whose education was so poor they couldn’t even read or write. Those were the people he shamelessly conned, people already on the brink of poverty whose lives could easily be ruined by even a handful of gold coins going missing. She had promised herself that if she ever met him again she would kick him so hard between his legs that he could kiss his dreams of fathering another child goodbye. Unfortunately he had likely already brought several children into this world and then abandoned them like he had abandoned her and Molly.

She had met the conman in a tavern back when her life was still simple. When she was still considered beautiful and before people began saying she looked like an ugly, old hag despite only having recently turned 29. The wine she had drank with her friends that night had been some of the best wine she had ever had, and likely some of the most expensive ones too. If she had known then that she’d only be drinking cheap bottles of garbage after that she would have savoured each drop for much longer than she did. She only wished she remembered what it tasted like, but all she could remember was that she really enjoyed it.

One thing she did remember though was how people’s heads turned as Richard entered the tavern. His long, sandy blonde hair that he kept in a bun at the back of his head rested neatly over the large lute he carried on his back, and his bright blue eyes sparkled in ways that put even gemstones to shame. His physique was impressive with a sword hilted on his hip and a fancy button up shirt which he hadn’t bothered to button up, showing so much skin that Erica would have likely considered him a manwhore if she was sober. Her friends had jokingly called him ‘Thunder Thighs’ as a reference to his muscular legs without knowing of the name he would later introduce himself by. Back then she found that incredibly amusing but now she couldn’t help but frown at the nickname.

When he had later that night offered to buy her a drink and her friends had left her so she could spend some time alone with the hunk of a man, she had laughed to the point where she snorted when he introduced himself. She wasn’t sure if it was the half a bottle of wine in her system, or the three cocktails she had before that, which had made her laugh like some wild boar. She wasn’t normally someone who snorted or loudly cackled like some mad witch, but someone who was more collected and rarely let out anything more than a light giggle.

Richard had looked greatly offended at her sudden outburst of laughter, so she had felt forced to tell him of the nickname her friends had referred to him by for most of the night. In return he had told her it was something he heard frequently so it wasn’t as fun to him anymore, but that her laugh was a charming touch to the joke which he didn’t experience as often.

She remembered acting all high and mighty as he teased her for sounding like a pig fresh out of the mud, but she also remembered how her heart had melted when he said that he appreciated how her laugh had been genuine. Followed by a bunch of meaningless nonsense which he said with a shit eating grin plastered on his face. At least that is what she considered it now, but back then she had found his smile charming. Had she been sober she might have been able to see through his facade, at least that is what she told herself. Yet part of her knew she would likely have been fooled either way, there was a reason why her friends would occasionally say that she was denser than a brick after all. She couldn’t help but wonder if that sour bitterness that now filled her life had taught her to be more sceptical of people.

That very same night she had taken him home with her, and she hated the fact that she had enjoyed what followed. He knew what he was doing, and Erica even now dreaded thinking about the events that took place that night after the door had been locked behind them, right up until she fell asleep on his arm.

When she had awoken the next morning, the paralysing headache from the hangover had kept her from realising that he had already gotten up and left several hours ago. By the time she managed to finally open her eyes it felt as if hours had passed, and when she put her hand on the bed next to her, where his chest had been the night before, all she could feel was the cheap bed sheets.

It had taken her what felt like forever to get dressed in her nightgown and drink several glasses of water, but eventually it felt as though her body and mind slowly began to function again, even if only on a very basic level. Throughout that day she had then slowly discovered things being missing in her home, and while frantically searching for them she had found a small but impressive drawing of him blowing her a kiss with some hearts in the air over the hand he had used to blow the kiss. The drawing was located in her sock drawer underneath several layers of socks, the place where she normally hid her coin pouch with the money she saved up after taking extra shifts at her job.

Her friends had always told her that using the bank to store her money was a scam, and that the rich were syphoning money from the accounts of the working class to fund their aristocratic lifestyles. They claimed small amounts were taken out of people’s accounts every month and transferred to the rich. Back then Erica had listened as she always did when her friends told her things, but now she felt stupid for listening to them, and angry at herself for blindly trusting them and not properly trying to investigate if their claims were true. Those very feelings festered and ended up being the very reason she had no friends left today.

Having looked down at the six gold pieces that the man had left her with, there had been a sort of emptiness filling her. Only the gods knew how long she stood there, trying to convince herself it was a dream or a twisted prank.

Once she had finally come to her senses she counted her losses, preparing to report the theft to the city guards. All her money except the few copper coins she had left in her jacket pocket and the six gold coins in her sock drawer had been taken, alongside her box of jewellery, her grandmother's earrings and her deceased mothers necklace which had both been in the family for generations. As well as a glass bottle of fresh milk which she had bought before heading out to drink with her friends the night before, which she had been looking forward to enjoying with her breakfast.

Later that day she made her way to the city guards, but while presenting the drawing as evidence the guards had laughed and joked about him leaving a calling card with a picture of himself. They had called him ‘the world’s worst thief’ yet those buffoons never found him. As if the man hadn’t already cursed her enough, she was pregnant with his kid.

While she loved Molly with all her heart, her appearance reminded Erica of the man who ruined her life, and that stung almost as badly as seeing Molly suffer from this mystery of a disease. She had sworn to herself that she would do what was needed to help Molly recover, because no child deserved to suffer through this hell.

Other than the vicious nightmares, Molly also suffered from high fevers, headaches, abdominal pain as well as strange blisters appearing in various locations all over her body. These dark, painful blisters caused the girl a lot of discomfort, and Erica had come to learn that they were filled with a strange black liquid.

It was a miracle that Molly was still alive, or so some thought, but a few months ago the doctors had brought Erica out of earshot to deliver the concerning news without Molly overhearing their conversation. The man had told her that it seemed as if the disease was almost purposefully letting Molly live as if to feed off of her for longer, or as if to make her suffer for as long as possible. They had been almost baffled by this seeming sign of sentience within whatever this thing was, yet they all refused to properly study her out of fear of them catching whatever she carried. They acted as if Erica caring for the child on a daily basis without getting infected was not proof enough that Molly wasn’t spreading the pathogen, as they themselves called it, and that infuriated her. There had even been debates on whether or not Erica was allowed to leave her home because of how often she came in contact with the child, but after much arguing they had allowed her to continue working as long as she agreed to taking part in daily medical tests to assess if she carried the illness or not.

All this had made her lose faith in the doctors of this town, yet she could not afford to move. Why Molly was not being quarantined was something Erica asked herself every day, yet the fact that none of the doctors seemed to have even considered that in these last five years only told Erica of their incompetence. She had no education in the field yet even she knew that if someone was incredibly sick they should be kept away from people.

Being this full of feelings such as rage and anger was not something she enjoyed, and it was something she had always struggled with in the past. Standing up for herself and getting angry was something she never really did, she only ever went with the flow and agreed to what everyone else thought to please them. Her friends jokingly called her a pushover, but back then it hadn’t bothered her. All she cared about then was if people liked her or not.

Being quick to anger must be something that became part of her when she started feeling bitter on a daily basis. She wasn’t proud of the time she had yelled at the doctors, calling them cowards, incompetent, horse dung and all sorts of other profanities after once again receiving bad news regarding her daughters health; while it seemed as though the doctors hadn’t done anything at all to try and help her. Normally she would be too proud to say anything like that, but watching her daughter suffer for years while the doctors drained her savings only to give Molly experimental medicine that did nothing or made her worse infuriated Erica in ways she didn’t herself understand.

In all this she felt hopeless, lonely and bitter and pushed through each day methodically while slowly losing each and every piece of her original, bright self. The one last bit of light in her life being her daughter, whose smile she had sworn to protect until the end of time. Though her heart ached in how little she could do for the girl, whose life was mostly filled with unimaginable pain and boredom. Yet each and every day the girl still smiled.

While Erica could do very little for the pain, she did everything she could to aid with her boredom. Such as borrowing books from the small, single shelf library belonging to the church of the sun god. The priestesses there had been kind enough to teach her the words she didn’t know in the few, simple children’s books they owned, allowing her to read her daughter to sleep. Stories of heroes and legends, adapted to be more fitting for the minds of children. While Erica knew Molly considered the evenings they spent reading together the highlights of her boring, bedridden and pained days, she felt conflicted about reading them to her. Every story she read to the child seemed to feed into the girl’s imagination, and while it made her happy it also made her nightmares worse and more frequent. Yet she kept reading them to her daughter, doing her best to milden or avoid any sections including any form of violence, because seeing her smile was Erica’s main driving force to push through this hellish time of her life. All the while she tried to convince her daughter that monsters, curses and heroes were all just something that appeared in fairy tales.

“Can you tell me the story of Grumgin again?” Molly sniffled in Erica’s arms, causing her heart to ache at the sight of her frail child, a new dark blister was seemingly forming near her right collarbone.

“I am sorry sweetie, I had to return that book to the church but I can see if I can borrow it again tomorrow.” Erica responded and pats her daughter's head, strands of messy, blonde hair tangling in between her fingers.

“What about Sindeldust?” Molly then asked with a slight bit of hope in her voice.

“I’m sorry sweetie.. while mommy is pretty good at reading books, she isn’t all that great of a storyteller.” Erica responded with a pained sigh. Even if she knew the tales of Grumgin the green giant that guided lost children back home from the depths of the woods, and Sindeldust the ghostly demon child who ate the nightmares that plagued kindhearted children, alongside many other children’s tales, she wasn’t confident in her ability to tell them in any sort of interesting fashion without some form of reference. She had been called charismatic in the past, and she knew she had a way with words when she wanted to, but she wasn’t a storyteller or even a good singer for that matter. Lacking those skills had never bothered her in the past but now that she was a mother her priorities had changed greatly.

“I hope Sindeldust will eat my nightmares someday… I dreamt of that scary woman again…” Molly said as a shiver ran down her spine and her eyes once again filled with tears. “This time she set houses on fire and people screamed… She also grabbed a woman by her hair then lit her on fire… I really hate her…”

The doctors had always told her that one's dreams are brought forth by one's imagination, and some of them had even blamed Erica for the dreams Molly was having. Claiming that she put these thoughts in the child's mind or that she was violent around her child, but Erica wholeheartedly knew that that was impossible. She had always been incredibly sweet around Molly and never told her any violent stories, so how she was having these sorts of dreams was a mystery to Erica.

She wrapped her arms around her daughter in a tight hug before letting her go, laying her down and gently tucking her in. “I don’t know where you get these dreams from, but mommy won’t ever let someone scary like that near you. I hope you know that.”

“I know mommy, I just wish you could chase the scary people away in the dreams too…” Molly said and pulled the blanket up to cover more than half her face, glimpses of fear, sadness and loneliness showing in her eyes.

“How about I go get you some ice cream and we can look at the stars for a few minutes before you go back to bed?” Erica suggested with a cheeky smile which caused Molly’s eyes to light up with a gentle glimmer as she nodded her head quickly. “Alright, I will be right back.” Erica added and got up to head for the kitchen.

Even though her daughter was once again safe, she didn’t feel filled with relief. Her steps were heavy and all she could think about was the doctor’s appointment awaiting her and Molly the next day. The sun had not even risen yet but she knew that tomorrow was going to be yet another day where she was delivered bad news.

Once in the kitchen she couldn’t help but aimlessly stare at the small, magical chest before her. It had taken her months to save up for, and was likely the most expensive thing she owned but it had been worth every gold piece. She used to feel proud over owning something like this, but now she couldn’t help but feel more empty than the chest before her as she opened it to take out the small paper box of ice cream. Part of her wished that her heart could have preserved the feelings of love and happiness she had been filled with a few years ago the same way the small chest before her preserved food. Back in the good old days Erica would store plenty of good foods in the chest, as nothing food related placed in the chest could go bad or rot, but now there was nothing but this box of ice cream, a paper bag filled with some deer jerky, and some leftover porridge.

With heavy steps she walked back towards her daughter's bedroom, once again filled with feelings of hopelessness. Two spoons in one hand and the practically empty box of ice cream in the other, yet her heart was filled with dread. How much longer would she have to keep fighting like this? She stopped a few meters outside her daughter's room and leaned against the wall, silently praying to the god she had offered her devotion too.

‘Aelius, God of the Sun and Lord of the Light, said to shine light upon the path forward for those lost in darkness. Please, I am begging you… show me the way out of this hell…’