The curtain of darkness opened to reveal a world of nightmares. Part of me knew I was dreaming. The other part, the part that took over, drowned in a mire of unpleasant memories.

My first dream abducted me back to my elementary school classroom in Brooklyn. I stood near the chalkboard with my tiny, bushy brown hair and milk teeth that formed an overbite. My plus-sized red blouse and my pattered undershirt didn't fit my skin color; they looked like blotches compared to my awkwardly pale complexion. My knobbly knees trembled, the chalk piece quivering in my hand.

"Marissa, what is two multiplied by five," the teacher asked.

I tried to write it down, but my handwriting was so awful that my "2" looked like a "5" and my "5" looked like a "2" and everyone laughed.

The next dream made me relive the Grief Eater attack when I was seven.

And then, I relived the part when I shivered under my blanket and Dad told me there was no thing such as monsters. But the dream continued. While I was buried under my warm blankets in my cloud-soft bed, I heard voices outside. My parents were talking.

"Honey, I think we should separate," my mother said behind the door.

"What makes you think so?" Dad answered.

"I don't know, it's just a general feeling. Rissy makes me concerned. Her grades aren't good, the other kids only laugh at her and I'm not sure if my people will accept her."

"Do you think our marriage was a mistake?"

"I am not sure, honestly. Our people are very different."

No. No. Don't have that be the reason why Mom had to leave us.

This isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real.

"I am very real," Darcy said as she pulled me back to my feet.

We had landed in the PPE Library. Despite the cobwebs in the library shelves and the poor lighting, the abandoned facility felt fresher than expected. The faint moonlight streaming through the windows was like sunlight to my cat-like eyes. I noticed dusty books that still lay in the shelves, torn posters of scientific presentations hanging on the walls, and graphs speculating about the causes of the recent PPE increase. Just because no-one did research anymore didn't mean this place was left to decay. It hoarded treasures of knowledge that the public had a right to see. If only because researches failed to solve those mysteries and declassified the information.

So, we were at the crime scene. I hope the small transfiguration potion I drank also changed the DNA I left, but I wasn't sure about Darcy.

Knowing she was a law breaker, Darcy now wore an owl mask matching my kitten face. She held a doll with my hair strands in one hand. In the other, she held her potion against harmful Otherworldly effects.

"Thanks," I said. "To get the obvious question out of the way: How did we get here?"

"Portals," Darcy said, "are normally around doors and corners. The mare made you walk into one that sent you here."

"And, you-"

"Yes. I ignored the police tape to follow you. I don't know the mare's range, but it needs to be in the library to attack you."

Which meant we were luring it out.

Since Darcy had far higher life energy pools than I did and shielded her mind better, we agreed to let her walk ahead. I stood in place while she led with her flashlight. My potion-enhanced sensitive eyes watered with tears any time I looked at her light cone directly. Yet, my muted color vision sufficed for me to notice my star-necklace's bluish glow.

The mare was nearby.

Darcy started to walking faster. It wasn't the controlled, pacing walk of someone impatient. She ran, she stopped, she cowered, as if she were fleeing away from something.

I watched from the corner of a bookshelf. She ran near a wall, put her flashlight away, and whispered. She whispered the same words again and again.

"I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry!"

A cloud of dark energy manifested around her. I didn't dare moving closer. The attack was specifically targeted at Darcy. If I got caught in the mare's line of fire, I'd suffer an even worse fate my more experienced senpai. And, personally, I prefer suffering my nightmares one at a time.

"It's behind the bookshelf!" Darcy suddenly screamed.

Her mind-shielding, it worked. But she still had her eyes squinted shut and leaned against the bookshelf in agony.

"It's focused on me!" she yelled. "Go!"

I was slammed to the ground before I could help. The mare swooped down from a bookshelf, slammed me on my back, and paralyzed me with a glare of its bulging, Gollum-like eyes. I yelped. The bat-eared, toad-skinned creature pressed its feet onto my stomach. It hunched over like a goblin until its head was close enough that I smelled its rancid breath. Its greedy glare hypnotized me, trapped me, made me feel helpless.

I focused my will into the iron bracelet around my chest, but I wasn't Darcy. I lacked the power to ward it off. My vision faded to black and my mind slipped into a morass of dark thoughts. I heard my mother's voice again

"Rissy makes me concerned. Her grades aren't good, the other kids only laugh at her, and I'm not sure if my people will accept her."

Was this a real memory? My classroom anxieties, the Grief Eaters, and my sleepless nights were real, but this? I didn't remember Mom saying anything like that. Did she leave me and Dad not because of the Council but because she thought I was a burden.

No, Marissa, focus. Think of the principle of antipathy.This thing wasn't as nature-associated as elves or the helltree and consequently less weak to iron. It was a creature of nightmares. Instead of focusing on the iron bracelet, I focused on my star necklace which my mother gave to make it easier for me to sleep.

Something symbolizing positive dreams beats a nightmare monster. Gosh, those weaknesses get embarrassingly obvious.

My necklace gleamed with good memories and burned the monster like holy water burned the devil.Once I could move my arm, I punched its jaw and rubbed the iron from my bracelet into its face.

The mare dropped off my belly. Wow, one hit from my bracelet and it was down. For a monster that literally put the "mare" into nightmare, this thing was a wimp.

It did a great job at distracting me though. 'Cause while it fired its nightmare beam at me, we got a little scenery switch. My vision was still blurred, but I could feel that the aether levels around us increased a notch. And, once I saw clearly again, I saw precisely where we got teleported.

Instead of standing in the library, Darcy and I found ourselves trapped in a dark, foggy grove. Shrubs, charred trees, oaks, Alders, and chestnut trees towered around us. Their golden-brownish leaves swayed in the autumn mist while the printed newspapers pinned to their stems proudly displayed the Erlking's killings. At least, their headlines said so. Can't read them with that short-sighted cat vision, sorry.

It wasn't hard to guess in whose Domain we were in. Hint: It belonged to the guy who was really proud of the media attention his murders got. And, judging from the autumn trees, it was near the Unseelie Kingdom of Autumn, Winter, and Death.

"Darcy," I said. "You said you couldn't track my Dad when I asked you. I-is he here?"

Darcy showed me a doll that looked like an unkempt, burly man with a strand of my father's hair pressed against it. "He used to be here."

"U-used to be?"

"There are pieces of hair and sweat of him in this place, although my poppet doesn't indicate a full body."

So, no corpse or anything. "Do you know where those pieces are?"

"I'll try to find them. I think they are at the edge of this grove."

Luckily, I still had the plastic bag on the ground where I woke up. It fell off my belt when the mare tackled me, but it still had the Molotov cocktails, water balloons, and the water bottles I needed.

The grove didn't reach very far. At its edge was a rocky slope that led down to a black sea of mire. Darcy and I walked near its top to get a better view of the landscape below. The sky was scarlet and the landscape behind the lake composed of rocks, hills, and occasional Alder trees covered in armor-like bark. The lake's surface was as smooth as glass to the point that you could drop a stone in it and no-one would see ripples.

Which made it even scarier when the water suddenly moved. Darcy and I took cover behind a boulder.

A humanoid head emerged from the surface, joined by the head of its horse. The rider's skull was way too big for its tiny neck. It rolled back and forth, never quite settling in place. The horse, by contrast, carried a massive skull with only one eye. The horseman lacked any saddle or legs. He had fused with his horse and, once the water streamed down, it revealed exposed, skinless, bleeding muscle as if it were the Colossal Titan.

The Nuckelavee. It was the most evil creature from Orcadian folklore. It rose from the sea to stalk the lands, causing droughts and famines while bringing death and disease over humans and horses alike with a scream loud enough to cause people pain. It pushed the boundary between D-rank and C-rank and its size alone showed why. There was a chestnut tree on the shoreline where it reached the land, probably no less than forty feet tall. The Nuckelavee was taller.

Its rider limped against the equine body. With its jittery movements, it felt more like a possessed doll than a living being. Once it set it eye on the plants we took cover behind, my breath left my body as if it had been sucked out by a vacuum cleaner.

Even Darcy only stared.

The hellhound and the helltree fell prey to well-prepared apprentices and mundanes, but against an upper D-rank like the Nuckelavee, even the mages struggled to win. Which left me with one shot. From my belt, I unclipped my Steam Machine TL-750 water gun and pointed it at the monster.

Darcy eyed me. "Are you serious?" she asked. "A toy water pistol?"

"This thing is weak to running water," I said. "It's the only shot we've got!"

Back when I had water fights with my cousins, my Dad gave me the best of the best. The Steam Machine TL-750 needed to be refilled after each shot, but it could shoot 55 feet wide; probably farther if I was shooting down a slope. I pointed my long-tubed barrel at the Nuckelavee and fired a half-an-inch wide water cone at the monster. The water stream reached the horse's forehead, but it didn't react.

The Nuckelavee's rider gave me the same confused look as Darcy did.

"When the legends say that the Nuckelavee is weak to running water, they mean a river stream or a thunderous storm," Darcy explained. "Not a children's toy!"

I shivered. "Y-you can fly on your staff, right?"

"Yes," Darcy said and grabbed my plastic bag. "Do you want me to drop its contents?"

I gave her my lighter. "It's got fire and water bombs."

"And what will you do?"

I turned around. "Running away!"