As I opened my eyes, I felt incredibly strange. There was something off but I just couldn’t tell what that ‘something’ was. Opening my eyes, I noticed the humid, loamy earth all around me, joined by an almost oppressive weight coming from above, pushing me down as if the weight was trying to bury me. Blinking away the cobwebs, I looked around, wondering why I was resting in a burrow with roots all around me while using a warm, furry shape as a pillow.

“Finally awake?” a very canine growl asked, coming from right behind me.

Looking over my shoulder, my gaze was met by Ylva’s amber eyes staring right back at me, quietly challenging me to get moving.

“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to get my mind to work as it should, only to be trapped in strange, fuzzy memories that didn’t want to cooperate with me. I had no idea where I was, nor how I had arrived here. I could feel Ylva, but for a moment, I thought there was something missing, S… my mind couldn’t complete the thought, it just slipped away.

Before Ylva could respond, I heard a knocking sound coming from above me, transmitted through the roots all around me. The knocking had an effect not unlike a bell being rung, intensifying the pain in my head for a moment.

“Who’s there?” I groaned, trying to push the pain away but failing, it just didn’t want to go away, the rapping sound becoming a spike of agony that was driven into my skull with each repetition. At my words, the sound stilled, but only for a moment before the rapping returned, now accompanied by a strange, almost musical, whisper carried by a strange breeze that intruded upon the small chamber I had been resting in. Trying to make sense of the whisper, I focused on it, letting it fill my mind until it drowned out the rapping sounds.

“Lenore,” I voiced the whisper, letting it become a wish, a prayer and incantation, calling my dear friend to me, hoping that she’d be able to help me, to keep my mind from snapping as the ceaseless tapping haunted me. “Lenore,” I repeated, just a little stronger now but still a whisper, a desperate call for help as I tried to make sense of the reality around me.

Only, there was no winged helper, no feathered friend that came swooping in to rescue me, only rapping, tapping, no more whispers, only wind and nothing more.

Pushing myself up, I felt the wind swirl around me, the whispers changing, becoming unintelligible, present but strangely muted. Shaking my head, I drew upon the wind, letting it carry me into the air, out from the roots trying to grasp me and tie me up, burry me beneath the earth forevermore. No, nevermore.

Rising upwards, I could see the massive trunk of the tree next to me, and could smell the ancient forest and its numerous inhabitants. There were countless different scents in the breeze, magical, mundane and everything in between, all intermixed and intermingled, speaking of a harmony of predator and prey, of hunter and hunted, all intertwined in an endless dance of life and death.

The ground started to fall away beneath me and soon, I reached the first branches, high above the forest floor where there was nothing to tear off the shoots and devour the leaves. Even here, the branches were completely bare, just stretching away from the trunk until they reached the few patches of light that managed to break through the dense canopy above. There, in those sparse patches, the branches had leaves, catching what little light they could in the endless competition for resources.

On one of those branches, I could see yet another familiar figure, small, barely the length of my arm, with much of that length taken up by a furry tail. The fur on its face gave them a perpetually shifty appearance, the look not lightened by their habit of rubbing their paws together and generally looking like they were up to something. And, to make matters worse, experience had shown that just about a hundred per cent of the time, they were up to something, so maybe the white fur that gave the racoon its masked appearance was a perfect fit for Alex, warning those few who actually could notice the shifty racoon of its… creative endeavours.

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“Why, good evening dear Lady,” Alex greeted me, their chittering somehow forming into comprehensible, if strangely accented words. “It is so nice of you to drop by, those on the ground made a terrible mess of things,” they continued and I felt my gaze drop, peering into the dusky twilight of the deep forest. Down there, impossibly far below, I could see some torches, flaming with light, carried by hundreds, maybe thousands of bodies. For a moment, I felt my breath catch, realising that there was an army down there, an army that was hunting for me. I wasn’t sure how I knew that they were after me, I only knew that they were hunting me. Blinking, I could see their movement flash before my eyes and could hear the twanging of bows, the whistling of flying arrows and the sharp sounds of swords, tearing through the air. For a moment, I could smell her blood, could feel hot tears running down my face, before they were turned into Ice, drifting away on the warm wind.

“No, this can’t be,” I denied, trying to force my magic to move, to call upon the endless Ice or the darkest night, to call something to smite those who had wronged me, who would wrong me. But nothing came, my magic gone, forever more.

“No!” my scream tore through the darkness of the forest and all around me, I could see the trees sway and bend, some of them even starting to move away from me, pushed by the force of my magic. They bent and they groaned and then, they started to walk, with Alex waving to me and calling out their farewell.

As the trees moved away, the army below started to change, the sharp features of the elves disappearing, replaced by more familiar visages. Rounded ears replaced the sharp ones, and some facial hair grew as the army below disappeared. Now, I could see people I knew looking up at me, friends and students, people I had met. Only, while their features had changed, the hatred on the faces I could see had not.

“Why did you leave us behind?” Kevin asked, his eyes replaced by strangely swirling water, so painfully similar to the look of a Shattered but fundamentally different. Elementally, maybe.

“Why did you condemn my child? Sebastian was only a babe!” Jenn accused me, the young mother cradling her child as she wept tears of blood from empty eyes. The babe, still held against the mother’s chest, was equally empty-eyed but instead of dripping blood, his eyes were voids of endless shadow, staring back at me.

“Why did you take my child? Why did you turn my Chantalle into an abomination?” Kira asked and I needed a moment to realise that she was talking about Carnelia, my dear elder daughter.

Countless voices reached me from below, their numerous calls all joining together into an endless din of “Nevermore!”

“No!” I could only shout, trying to drown out their voices as power rushed out of me. The wind, still holding me aloft, surged, swirling into a tornado of Ice and Snow, turning the entire world around me white as it buried the screaming figures below, leaving behind nothing but a strangely familiar, silvery-white world filled with power.

“Hunted and haunted, caught by fear, carried by yearning, calling for the one you lost,” a tritonal voice filled the empty world around me and I could feel the wind that carried me fade away and yet, I didn’t fall. Instead, I gently floated down, towards the endless, empty expanse, the wind once again whispering in my ears, “Together, forevermore!”

My eyes flickered upwards, away from the endless expanse, and there far… above? Or maybe below, me I could see an oh-so-familiar round shape, a familiar blue marble. Only, the marble wasn’t blue due to the oceans but because it was burning in blue fire, a fire I felt burn through me, scour away my eyes and ignite the empty pits left behind.

“Alone, forevermore,” an eerie voice spoke as if passing judgment on me, sentencing me for eternity.

“Mom?” yet another voice broke into my senses, calling for me, calling me to the voice. “Mom, wake up,” the voice repeated and suddenly, the world around me was swallowed by darkness, only to be replaced with dim, flickering light as my eyes started to flutter open and shut. Finally, after a few, far-too-long moments, I could see my dear daughter Luna in the dim light, kneeling next to my head and looking at me with concern.

“Are you awake now?” she asked, making me realise I had only been dreaming. But what a nightmare it had been.